Ask Me Anything Tuesday with Bernadette Boas.

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Hello and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negative mindsets so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create create and accelerate the riches you want in life. Join us here live every Tuesday at noon Eastern and dialogue with us at 818-572-2910. You can also chat with us at blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitch or share your stories on our website at sheddingthebitch.com. Whatever the bitch is that's holding you back from living your life to the fullest, it's not worth giving up the riches in life that you deserve. So call in now and let Bernadette Boas know what's holding you back. 818-572-2910. Good day, good day, good day everyone. How are you on this beautiful day? I happen to be sitting on the hilltops of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania looking out over the river and into the skyline of Pittsburgh with a beautiful horizon of mountain and hilltops. It's quite, quite lovely, and I am pre-recording this week's Ask Bernadette episode because, as I've been talking about over the last several weeks, we head out to a remote island in south of— South Canada, south of Ontario, where there will be very, very, very limited, if any, connectivity, any electricity, anything that would allow me to reach out and touch you, let alone do a recording of our radio show or a live broadcast. So I decided I better take care of it before we kind of cross the border, so to speak. But the first Tuesday of every month is devoted to Ask Bernadette, and basically what that is, is you can ask me anything. It might have to do with your career, your business, your life. It could have to do with your job, your boss, a client, it could have to do with a relationship or a personal issue you're dealing with and you can always go to any of our Shedding the Bitch handles on Facebook and Twitter, people reach out to me on LinkedIn, they send me emails, BernadetteBoas@SheddingtheBitch.com, whatever the mean is that you can reach me, do so if you are challenged or struggling, or you just simply need advice. I want to ensure that you're spending as little time as possible stressing over it, or confused, or stuck, or you just simply need something to move yourself forward. And what I'll do is I'll respond to you immediately upon receiving it or seeing it, but then I bring them those questions here to Shedding the Bitch radio program so we can dive into it a little deeper than what I can do on a Twitter post or a Facebook post. And then you even have an opportunity to come on live should you want to talk with me and really get some one-on-one coaching and mentoring. So, you know, I try to make it as easy as possible for you to get the coaching, the mentoring, the support, the motivation, the inspiration, or the kick in the butt that you need in order to create the riches in life that you deserve. So let's see, is there anything else before we dive into our questions? I would say not. I'm glad it's kind of quiet. I'm glad it's not too much havoc being wreaked in the world, at least in my world, and that's the only world I can control. Beyond that, I just have to leave it to all the crazies that are out there and all the heartbreak and tragedies and situations that occur, just because, hey, that's life. But let's see, let's dive into our questions. And though we are recording this program this week, please, if you have any questions or I didn't answer or give you some information based on the question that was posed, and it's something that you could even leverage and use in your life, then be sure to reach back out to me and just say, hey Bernadette, could you expound on that? And I will certainly do that in a blog post, on a Facebook posting, on a phone call with you, an email, whatever the case might be. And again, you could always call in the following week should you want to kind of backtrack and get more information on anything that we talk about today. I rarely— not rarely, but I don't often pre-record, but when you are going to a remote island in Canada, I want to make sure you're taken care of, so sometimes it's necessary. Okay, so I'm going to actually kick off with the first question, and then we'll take a commercial break, and then we'll make sure we get to all the questions. That you have asked before we end the show. Alright, so the first question that I was asked, and this actually comes up more often than not, and I quite honestly suffer from, you know, the same situation, but the question was basically, I have never been good at taking a compliment. How many of you can raise your hand? And a friend was offended when I dismissed her the other day. I brushed off her compliment because I didn't want to come off as, you know, kind of arrogant or cocky or conceited. How do I accept compliments gracefully? And I was very happy to hear or see this word graceful in her question to me because it at least means that she does want to be humble and gracious about it. And she's not looking to, you know, like this individual said, she doesn't want to be conceited or come off as arrogant or cocky. She wants to come off as accepting it but yet doing it appropriately or gracefully. So let's back up a minute and talk about the fact that, yes, does it seem nice when we kind of brush off a compliment as if we are being humble or we don't need the praise? Well, look, we all need praise. We crave praise. We crave, you know, adoration. We crave being recognized. It's just human nature. When you do something, you know, good, or you've worked really hard, or you've changed your appearance and you're really proud of it, or if you met a new, you know, person in your life, and that you're really proud of, you want other people to not only welcome it but even recognize and praise it. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, and we, we talk a lot about honoring your riches here in the Shedding the Bitch community because we all deserve to simply say thank you and accept when someone is adoring us, and a compliment is a, you know, is a degree of adoration. You know, we need to be recognized for the hard work that we're putting in, for the effort that we're making, for the changes that we've confronted and we've adjusted and shifted toward. We need to stay motivated and focused and determined and persistent and confident, and therefore compliments and praise and adoration helps us to do that. But why is it so hard for us, so many of us, uh, to feel as if we deserve those compliments? Well, we're gonna start with the end in mind, so let's first talk about what are some common responses that people have to receiving a compliment, being given a compliment. And a lot of times, the, the 3 basics are: there's rejection, there's deflection of that compliment, or there is acceptance of that compliment. So first, let's look at rejection. This is, um, probably the most popular one, and think about the last time you were complimented. It doesn't matter how big or how small, but think about the last time you were complimented. Did you kind of like, oh, it's no big deal, whatever, you know, or, you know, I was just lucky? I mean, did you absolutely reject that compliment that was given to you? Did you deflect it? Did you, oh well, Joe did a much better job than I did, or, you know, Mary did all the work, I just happened to you know, be part of it, you know, and totally deflect as if you had nothing to do with why you're being complimented and it's somebody else. And again, we, we think and we feel, we might even believe that we're just doing that appropriately so we don't, you know, seem cocky or conceited or arrogant, but at the same time you know, you can ask the person giving you the compliment. At the same time, you could be offending that individual because think about it, especially with social media, it's even harder today to compliment someone as it is to receive that compliment, right? It's hard for people to actually swallow their own pride or their own jealousy or their own insecurity to actually compliment someone else. And therefore, if the person, you know, the person that was to receive that compliment rejects it or deflects it, it's kind of offensive because that person put themselves out there to actually say, hey, you did a great job, or hey, you're looking great, or hey, have you lost a lot of weight or got a new haircut? It looks you know, really super on you, or congratulations on that, that promotion, you really earned it and deserved it. It's just as difficult, and it seems, you know, even more so nowadays with all the crap that, you know, is thrown at us through social media and the media as a whole. It's, you know, just as difficult to give as it is to receive. And the third, you know, way people deal with a compliment is to is simply accept it. What a concept! Simply accept it. And yet we all get in our heads about how to do that appropriately. Now there's degrees, like I had mentioned. It could be just a simple— because, you know, maybe you bought a new dress and the color of it makes your eyes pop, or maybe you got a haircut, or maybe you did find a relationship. And then there's bigger degrees of it. You've gotten that promotion, or maybe you know, you got an award in front of a whole room full of people and you're being handed a plaque or a trophy or something, and, you know, you receiving that, you can do as things as simple as thank yous or can go to an extreme to where not only that thank you is appropriate or graceful, but also just the way you've received it, you know, that your, uh, your posture is strong, that you're standing or sitting up and you're looking that person in the eye or that room full of people in the eye, and you're, you know, putting out your hand for a nice firm handshake or a pat on the back or whatever the case might be. Um, it, you know, it It is as simple as a thank you, and yet there is a lot of things, a lot of components that can go into how you accept that, or how you accept that compliment with a thank you, but it can all be very much done gracefully. Now, you can even accept it as an individual because it's, you know, solely directed at you and for you, and you have earned that compliment, or it could be something that is shared. It could be a team type of effort that you were a part of, or maybe you even led, and therefore you do say, "Thank you, and, you know, our— the team will be thrilled to hear that, you know, your compliment, and I'll be more than happy to share that compliment with them because everybody really worked hard in contributing to the success of this project or whatever the case might be. So again, you can certainly, without deflecting it or rejecting it, you can also not only do it individually but also, you know, put your team in there and share in that compliment while doing it very confidently, very boldly, very strongly without being arrogant or cocky or conceited. And again, that body language is very important because, again, if you're slouched over, you're looking down or looking away, you're not able to kind of firmly receive that compliment. Consider what that person giving it to you has put themselves out there, and you don't want to offend them. You don't want to just blow it off or deflect it. Because it could, you know, just be— it could be offensive to that person, if that makes sense. But going back to what I started with in regards to— I said that I wanted to start with the end in mind. So that's the end, is the ways that you could be receiving a compliment, whether you reject it, deflect it, or accept it. But it starts with how and if you're able to receive compliments actually starts with whether or not you feel you deserve it, you feel you are worthy of it, you feel you've earned it, and that's all bundled up in your own value and self-worth, and that's really, really what you need to get down to understanding and get down to really digging in deep and becoming very self-aware of is your own perception of yourself, let alone how others perceive you by, you know, by compliments or comments of any kind. So let me give you a, for instance, a friend of mine, sometimes she feels I'm too confident or I'm too, I value myself too high. Because I have learned that I'm well aware of things that I'm really good at or that I've earned and worked hard on and hard toward, and so when someone compliments that or acknowledges that, I have no problem, I have no insecurity, I have no, you know, doubt that I have earned that compliment and therefore I simply have learned and I've had to teach myself because I used to be a major deflector, major, major, major deflector, but so I learned to simply say thank you and not get into anything deeper or bigger than that because it really just isn't needed, you know, if someone just putting themselves out there to compliment you just simply needs you to acknowledge that you appreciate that compliment, and yet it drives her nuts when if someone says something to me that I simply say thank you, and because she would deflect it or she would even reject it actually even more so than deflect it, and when it comes to things that I just know, so for instance, I happen to have very bright blue eyes and in some situations they really, you know, they're really, really blue, and it's just a fact, and I, you know, and I do love them, I, you know, I love that characteristic about me, so when, when someone says, "You have beautiful eyes," or, "You have, you know, a beautiful smile," or whatever the case might be, I, you know, I'll simply say, "Thank you," and yet for someone that is questioning their own value and their own self-worth and their own beauty, so to speak, they would look at that as being cocky or conceited or arrogant because they're not comfortable in receiving that type of compliment. They would deflect it or reject it, and I just have to kind of not, not back down from, you know, receiving that compliment with a lot of graciousness and appreciation and not deflect it and not reject it just simply because someone else is uncomfortable the fact that I will receive it. So it's just, it's you finding your worth, your value, you believing in that compliment. Again, people don't put themselves out there that often and that easily to compliment somebody. It's much easier for someone to, you know, ball bash someone. Just go on Facebook or Twitter to, you know, kind of see how easy it is to put somebody down. So when someone actually steps out and, you know, gives somebody a compliment, they're making an effort too, and they're putting themselves out there as well. So don't offend and receive it and learn and pay attention to how you are receiving it so you can build that confidence, you can build that value and that feeling of self-worth. So then you know that when someone steps out to give you a compliment, you can graciously and simply say thank you because that really is all it takes. Okay, so we are going to take a quick break. I'm going to grab a drink of water, and when we get back— excuse me— when we get back, we'll move on to our next question, which is going to focus on another one that I loved when I got this question. It's all about how do I stop trying to control everything. Can you relate? Can you relate? So we will be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's books Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business. Available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors: TSR Consulting, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate size clients. Go to TSRConsulting.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistants and social media support for small to medium size businesses. Email deborahparker@deborahparker78@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone to Ask Bernadette or Ask Me Anything Tuesday on Shedding the Bitch Radio where I am giving you some advice, some tips and sometimes tough love on whatever career, business, or life question you might have. And if you were to go to our Shedding the Bitch Facebook page, Twitter page, LinkedIn page, you can email me at BernadetteBoas@sheddingthebitch.com at any time during the month. I will certainly get you information and tips and advice that you can use right away, but then we bring it right here on the first Tuesday of every month to drill into it a little bit deeper and maybe even have you join the call in the program to discuss it one-on-one. But our objective is just to get you the information and the support that you need to create the riches in life you deserve. So let's move on to our next question, and that is, how do I let go and stop trying to control everything? I feel like I'm suffocating. I could have wrote this question because this is something I absolutely, absolutely, absolutely used to deal with, and I'm so happy that I can say confidently that it's a used to be, it's a past situation and not a current situation in regards to trying to control everything, because guess what, we can't. You can't. You can't control everything, and I'm falling short to say you can't control anything, but there is one thing that you can control. You can control you. You can control what's happening in your world, how it's happening to you, how you're responding to it, what you're thinking about it, what you're putting out in regards to energy toward it. And, you know, how you're receiving it. All of that you can control, but after that, you can't control it. There is nothing that you can't control. So let me give you a few, for instances, and I actually took these from my own experiences as opposed to this individual's because they— she didn't really provide much examples for me to go on. But so let me give you a couple quick examples. You know, so it's even as simple as when you're driving down the street or the highway and you're hoping that everyone will respond to you. I'm not sure how, you know, maybe through— maybe you're psychic or maybe you control people's minds or you can, you know, put voodoo dust on on individuals. But so I used to have this, this obsession, this absolute drive to control, to the point where I could be driving down the street or the highway, and I thought that through my anger and my bitching and my yelling and my stamp stomping on the steering wheel, that I would be able to have that person or that whole highway of cars kind of almost part like the, the, the Red Sea so I could drive smoothly through it and get wherever I was going on time and when I wanted to be there. And I used to drive myself to absolute anxiety and angst as a result of it, expecting that my ranting and raving and, you know, shooting the finger at people and blinking my lights was actually going to be effective in any way, shape, or form, or move darting in and out of the traffic as if, you know, that's going to help me get from point A to point B even faster when we all know and it's been proven then that, that, that guy, you know, that Sunday driver that's staying very steady and consistent and slow in one lane actually gets to the exit before I would or before you would. And yet we've gotten all, you know, ourselves all worked up, all stressed out, expecting that we're going to be able to control anything that's happening to us. And we absolutely cannot. But another situation would be You know, when you're working really, really hard on something, and this comes up, you know, a great deal for my clients when it comes to, especially corporate clients, when it comes to them working on a project, and it doesn't matter what level of the organization they are, and then all of a sudden someone comes in above them or alongside them and derails what it is that they're working on. They either change course or they stall or cancel what it is that that person's been working on, or they make different decisions that are contrary to what it is that, you know, your work might be proving out, or they just take it out from under you, so forth and so on. And the next thing that happens is you or that individual is getting all wigged out, getting all stressed out, it's get— you know, they're getting all, you know, angry and bitter and questioning themselves and bitching about, you know, that individual or that team or that group or that company, whatever the case might be. They're going home with it, they're not sleeping over it, and they're just all tied up in knots because of a situation, quite honestly, that they have absolutely— I won't say no control— they have 99% of no control over that situation, and yet they allow that situation to just absolutely wreak havoc on them in all aspects: mentally, emotionally, physically. Spiritually, financially, their whole world is completely disrupted as a result of it. And it reeks of just pure devastation, and it just reeks in all aspects of your life when you allow that to happen. Now, the reason why I wanted to say 99% is because there is parts of that that you can control. And the key here, you know, in both situations, for the 99% and the 1%, is— let's start with the 1% first. You take care of the 1% you can control, and I'll talk about that in a second. But once that— once you've taken care of it, at some point you have to decide that you have to let it go or you have to go with that, that outcome or that decision that happens as a result of you doing that 1%. And the 99%, you have to make the decision that you're either going to accept it and let it go or you're going to push for that 1%. So let me kind of expound on that. So what you can control is when a situation like that happens, and it happens so often, especially if you're working with a team, let alone if you're working in corporate, let alone if you're kind of a contributor on a project and there's bosses ahead above you, or even when you're a big boss and the bigger boss comes along and, you know, wreaks havoc or derails what it is you're working on or makes a different decision. Decision. So your 1% is you go to them, you confront the situation, you ask a lot of questions as to why that 1% is happening. Why is that decision being made? Why is that cancellation or that stall or that, you know, total disruption, um, you know, of whatever it is that you're working on? Why is that, you know, being done? Uh, you know, you can make proposals or you can raise issue with what it is and, and always present it, and this is key about all of this when it comes to wanting to learn how to not go crazy over controlling everything. The biggest aspect of this is it's all about how you respond and react to it. So you need to be unemotional, you need to be logical, you need to present it in a very factual business case, uh, an emotional, logical way. Uh, so you go with, you go back to them, you ask a lot of questions, you raise a lot of, uh, concern. If there is actual concern, you back up that concern with facts. You build a business case as to why whatever it is that's going on is happening, and it's not going to work in everybody's best favor. Um, however, you then, you know, have to kind of succumb to the 99% because if they still choose to go with that decision or derailment or cancellation or postponement, whatever the case might be, you have to reach a point where you accept it and let it go. And unfortunately, the majority of us can't do that. The majority of us still will rant about it, will vent about it, will bitch about it, will drink about it, will eat about it, will lose sleep over it, more, for more minutes, more hours, more days than we ever, ever should. And so the best thing that you could do for yourself, from especially from a health perspective, but more so just from a, just from a quality of life perspective, just from an ability to breathe and just relax and just realize that you can't control what those other people do. You can raise that 1%, but once that, that 1% is kind of exhausted itself, you have to decide to accept and let it go. And that's unfortunately the hardest thing people deal with is the letting go, and that's where this question is coming from, is the whole, you know, how do I stop trying to control and how do I let things go? And all I can say, say to you is it'll take a situation that is that 99%, and maybe it's even 99.5%, where you finally, finally recognize and understand that that 0.5% is just not enough, and you finally say, you know, why am I, why am I getting myself so worked up about this, so stressed out about this, why am I drinking too much, eating too much, you know, not sleeping too much, Why am I spending too much money? Why am I doing things that I should not be doing because I'm just constantly sabotaging myself? It will really get to that situation, that occurrence, that event, that tragedy, whatever the case might be for you to just finally say, you know what, I get it when people say that I just have to let things go and not try to control everything because You know, people have told you, especially as women, people have told, you know, try to tell you, we don't necessarily hear it too well, but people have tried to tell you, oh well, you know, you can't change him when it comes to men. You can't change him. You could try. And I know tons of women say, oh, you know, when we get married it'll be different, when we have children it'll be different, when, you know, we're 90 years old it'll be different. And they realize the day you know, that they both are gone, they realize that, you know, that never— it never happened because we can't control anyone else other than ourselves. And so you have to get to a point where you understand, you believe, and you decide that yes, indeed, I just have to learn to let it go and that I can't control the situation. I can only do that 1% as well as I can do it, and after that, 1%. Maybe it's 10% in one situation, maybe it's 30% in another situation, but rarely will it get to a majority, you know, unless it is something that you're, you know, it's kind of stemming from you. Like when you own your own business, you have tons, a lot, you know, of more control over situations that have to do with career or business. Than you would if you're working for somebody else. That's true, but even as a business owner, you can't control if a customer or a potential customer says no, or you can't control when a customer cancels or no longer wants to move forward with a contract or a project that you're working on, or, you know, that they didn't want— they didn't accept your proposal, or they said no to the product or service. All you can do is think about that 1%. All you could do is go back and try to get information to help you understand, you know, why they made the decisions that they did, why are they not moving forward, what is it that they liked or disliked, what is it that they would, you know, want you to be doing differently, and they can still say, "No, everything's great, everything's great, this is this, this is this," but there's a reason on them. It's all about them at that point. Point and it's not about you. And so the other thing, the other caveat to when and how can you stop trying to control everything and let it go is when you realize that, you know what, the world and the time and the clock, it ticks on whether you're there or not and so it really isn't about you. Decisions are made with never even considering you. Things are done, plans are crafted, and people do, and a lot— majority of the time, it's not considering you. So we, we just have to learn, you just have to learn of, you know, not taking it personally, not thinking it's about you, and that will help you also to let go and not try to control control everything, if that makes sense. I hope it does. All right, let's see where we are. Let me see, I want to make sure I covered everything I wanted to talk about there, which we did. So we'll just keep going and I'll, um, I'll bring up our next question, and then after this we'll take a break and then finish up with our questions. All right, so our next question is, I've been fortunate to have some great mentors and teachers over the years, but I never seem to be able to apply the learning into my own life. What is that about? Now, I read this question and I really wish I had a lot more information, so I just kind of picked out some words And this, if you ever did coach with me or were in my workshops or in my engagements of any kind, you'll know that I listen for and/or I read and I pick up on words people use to then help to coach and guide them as far as what they might be dealing with. So when I read this question, it sounds very general, very open, without— there isn't any specifics, but what I picked up on, she, she has great mentors and teachers. Fabulous, love to hear that because we all definitely should be seeking, no matter if you're 5 years old or if you're 70 years old, we should always have great mentors and teachers in our lives, and we should always be wanting to learn every day of our lives. 'Cause if not, I mean, the way I see it is just put me in my coffin and nail it shut if I decide to stop learning or that I know everything. So I picked up on she's had great mentors and teachers but never seemed to apply the learning into her life, and she wants to know what that's about. But so I never seem to apply the learning into my life, which kind of, you know, makes me think Alright, so she's feeling as if they've been giving her some tangible, or at least some good knowledge, if not tangible tasks, or not tangible maybe, but actionable tasks, or actionable advice, or even, you know, specific next steps to be taken, and she just hasn't been applying them. Well, I too can relate to this. And I think anybody can if they think about it this way. What I would— what I'm suggesting to her is to think about it in the way of the same concept around when the student is ready, the teacher will come, or the teacher arrives. I would extend that statement, and I would say when the right teacher, the right lesson, the right knowledge comes along, then the student will be ready for it. And I kind of learned this myself and in a very impactful way to where I was able to recognize it and acknowledge it and become self-aware when it happened. And, and after that, because it was back in 2009 when it happened to me, and it does happen to all of us, So let me back up and paint you this picture. So in June of 2009, I went off to this international entrepreneurial forum. They meet 5 times a year. They meet for about a week at a time, and it's called CEO Space. If any entrepreneurs are out there and are looking for a place, an incubator, a place to go and learn and and get advisement and coaching on a regular basis. It's a wonderful forum, a wonderful group of people. They have expert coaches and consultants from all industries, from all sectors, from all different types of companies in order to help you start, manage, and grow your business. So I joined and became a member in June of 2009. Well, it's like I said, it's 7 days, but it's not only 7 days, it's 7 days from about 6 in the morning to about midnight or 1 o'clock in the morning, and basically every meal and every situation that you experience is a coaching opportunity for you. So every meal, for instance, that there's table, round tables, and every table has a coach assigned to it, of which it's centered around their specialty or their functional competency. So it might be about branding or finance or marketing, whatever the case might be, and you have a choice to, you know, first come first serve, get to that table and learn and use your lunch period, use your networking time, use your sleep time to constantly be, you know, asking questions or, you know, hearing other people's questions and learning. It can be quite exhausting, as you can imagine, 7 days a week, you know, 6 in the morning to about midnight or 1 o'clock at night. And of course there's classes and workshops and panels throughout the day. Well, you know, when you're— and it's a decent investment, it's, it's $5 figures, no, $4, yeah, $5 figures, and to join this year-round and for a lifetime. So you want to get the most out of your investment, so you're taking every class, you're showing up at every workshop, you're going to every, you know, coaching roundtable and every what they call snaps, which is like a speed pitching B networking type of activity that they do, and you're just dragging yourself to everything because you want to make sure, you know, your investment pays off. Well, you realize, and especially if it's 5 times a year, and for the first 3 years I went to every forum, so every, about every 2 or 3 months there's a forum, and you spend another 7 days. You might go for 3 days, but I would typically go for 7 days and you're learning and going to the same classes and again you're trying to get into and get everything in, in those 7 days. Well, you're realizing like, you know, 3 or 4 forums in that you haven't picked up a damn thing about that marketing or about that finance or about that, that, um, how to sell type of class and learnings that you've been receiving from these mentors and teachers like this this individual asked me about. Well, like the statement says about when the student is ready, the teacher arrives. Well, sometimes the teacher arrives and the student's not ready. I mean, it's just, I've, you know, I've experienced it myself, and therefore, you know, I make sure other people are aware that when you're ready, not only will the teacher arrive, but the right teacher will arrive, the right lesson, the right knowledge, I realized almost 2 years in that all of a sudden the branding and the marketing became critical for me. And, and that first year it was more the business plan, the strategy work, the finance work was bubble to the top. I'll say that of all those workshops I was running myself ragged to, it was that, that I needed. And I could have like slept during the, you know, the branding and the marketing workshops because I just wasn't ready for them. So I spent and expended a lot of energy sitting in a classroom or a workshop that, you know, I acted and looked like I was listening and learning, but I wasn't picking up a damn thing. So I think you need to— this individual needs to be easy on herself, and any of you out there, you need to be easy on yourself because you could, you know, go into a university, you could take night classes, you could take an MBA, you can go off to a personal professional development activity, and if you're not picking up on things or what they're saying, it doesn't seem relevant or doesn't seem even accurate to you, or you're blowing it off because it's just like whatever, it could be, and most likely it is, just because you're not ready for it. When I moved from a corporate to an entrepreneurial perspective, let alone when I started moving into personal development, you know, what I call the woo-woo, you know, area of personal growth, I didn't pick up on that for 3 or 4 years because I just, you know, it just turned me off to talk about transformation and personal growth and, you know, and spiritual healing. All of that just went right in one ear and out the other. And I thought, oh my God, I'm just missing something, that everybody seems to be so tuned into this stuff and I'm just blowing it off. And it just simply was that I wasn't ready to receive it. And so I kind of let it go, you know, and I just gave myself a break and kind of forgave myself for, you know, not leveraging that part of the investment, so to speak. And I just simply received it when I was ready for it. And I just, when I was ready for it, I knew I was ready for it because it made sense, it was relevant, it was becoming not critical, but it was becoming very interesting and very urgent in some cases. And therefore, I allowed myself then to really you know, get engrossed with it. So at any time you're thinking you're getting all this great advice or you're seeing this other person at work or at school or in their career or in their business doing something, as opposed to chasing what other people are doing, wait until you feel comfortable that it's the thing that you should be doing because you can be chasing, you know, what everybody else is doing, you know, for so long and none of it is relevant to where you're supposed to be going and what you're supposed to be doing and where you, you're supposed to be focusing your energies. So you just need to, again, like our previous question, you just need to be okay and let it go and make sure that you're opening and keeping yourself open to what it is that you're supposed to be focused on. So for that mentor, you know, for that individual with her mentors and and teachers, trust me when I say at some point in your lifetime, because you do and you are so appreciative of the learnings and the teachings that those individuals gave you throughout the years, you will— there will be a time when you use them and you'll all of a sudden go, ah, now that makes sense. Oh, now I get it. Or wow, now I get to leverage that piece of advice or that, you know, tough love or whatever the case might be. So just kind of shake it off, um, and be okay with it and, and just appreciate what it is you want to learn right now and, uh, what it is you want to be doing with that learning right now. All right. All righty, we're going to take a break. I'm going to get a drink of water And when we get back, we're going to talk about executive presence. Do you know what it is? A lot of people think it's one thing, and I can just say it's a portion of that one thing, and we'll talk of what it is in its totality when we get back. We'll be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to defeat discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, TSR Consulting, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate size clients. Go to TSRConsulting.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium size businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker78@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

All right, welcome back everyone to Ask Me Anything. Ask Bernadette Tuesday on Shedding the Bits Radio. I am responding to your questions, stories, or challenges that you're having. It could be in your career, business, or life, and I am providing you some tips, some advice, and some tough love. And you can at any time on any of our Twitter or Facebook handles reach out to me on LinkedIn, email me directly at BernadetteBoas@SheddingTheBits.com, and I'd be more than happy to immediately give you some advice and some support, but then we bring those same questions and dig into them a little bit deeper here on our first Tuesday of every month Shetty the Bitch episode, so you can even choose to join us and have a conversation with me one-on-one in regards to it, so I just want you to get the support and the help that you need to create the riches in life that you deserve. So that's what we are doing today. So this last question that we have today is all about executive presence. So the question basically was, my senior director told me I need to work on my executive presence. I feel I look appropriate, even more put together than most. What am I not getting about this? Well, One, I first said, did you Google executive presence? That could have, you know, kind of told you a lot right then and there. But at the same time, it's, it's logical if you haven't heard that term, you know, even in my corporate career days, and it's not a new term. It's relatively new, but not that new., but the term executive presence is just not something that is, you know, is bounced around a lot, though if you have leadership development programs in your organizations or in your own business or you're part of one, you definitely would hear this term come up because it is an aspect of leadership development. So one definition, a formal definition of executive presence is basically a blending of temperaments, competencies, and skills that when combined send all the right signals that you're a leader, that you're someone to be, you know, paid attention to, that you're influential, that you're engaging and collaborative, that you are a leader. Now I did come across, and I thought this was great, I did come across a reporter, John Medela, and I hope I pronounced that right. It's either June without the E or Jun Medela, um, in the Business Insider article on executive presence, and it basically states Larry Ellison has executive presence, so did Steve Jobs. Although they're very different people, they both had that confidence and composure that allowed them to connect with others. So going back to an earlier statement I made about my always paying attention to words, I picked out from there confidence, composure, connecting with others. Those are, you know, you can all start seeing and envisioning both physically and emotionally what executive presence would mean. And I would even add to all of that that it is confidence, it is composure, it is the ability to connect and engage and collaborate, but it also comes down to the physical, just as my client had asked me about. It does come back to, you know, how do you, you know, kind of appear and how do you position and posture and present yourself physically emotionally, not mentally, but emotionally. What's your body language? All of those things. How do you, you know, how do you walk into a room? How do you sit at a table? All of those things come into play when it comes to executive presence because it also comes, comes back to your confidence, your composure, your credibility, your confidence, all of those things. So if we, if we look at each one of those things, so for instance, temperament, so executive presence, it is that confidence, they're a logical thinker, they are a strong communicator, they are engaging and collaborative, their temperament— this is where I lacked my executive presence when I was in corporate. I physically always looked the part, and I also knew strategically kind of where to sit, when to sit, how to sit, you know, making sure I sit up, look people in the eye, take a seat at the table, so to speak. That's executive presence. You know, that whole lean in from Sheryl Sandberg, you know, that's referring to executive presence. Do you kind of step up? Do you lean in? Do you, you know, put yourself at the table as opposed to sitting in the back— background? Are you in the front of the room, like for a meet— big meeting or presentation, or are you always kind of a hanger in the back and you don't put yourself out front, so to speak? That's all executive presence, and it speaks to that confidence and that collaboration, that composure, that ability to connect with others. You know, it comes down to competencies. I mean, obviously, if you have executive presence, you have competencies in something, and it's, you know, not only has to do with, you know, how book smart you are, it has to do with how do you leverage the expertise that you've gained, how do you leverage the experiences, good, bad, or indifferent, that you had, how do you, you know, take the past and bring it into the present present to influence and change and innovate and create the future. All of that, you know, kind of lumps into competencies of which someone with executive presence would demonstrate. And then of course there is skills. Now skills aren't just, you know, those functional technical type of skills that people are looking for, especially when it comes to executive presence. It's those Other traits and qualities: good communication, for instance, influencer, decision maker, logical thinker, strategic thinking. It's, um, one's ability to be concise in their communication, written or verbal. It's the way that they draft and convey messages. Are they short and sweet, to the point? They're not robust, they don't go on and on and on, you know, it's all of, you know, is it strategic, is it, you know, giving facts, is it giving valuable information, and through that communication are they able to really connect with others. One thing when it comes to, and again I never thought of it as executive presence, and in some ways it's it's really not, but even as I was transitioning out of being a merchant in retail to being more in the technology side, we started calling ourselves that because we sat in the middle of the business people and the technical people. We started calling ourselves translators because, you know, if the merchants or the business people talk to the technical people, they rarely understood each other.