Thrive: Cultivating Career Confidence | Entrepreneur Series

Welcome to Thrive. Today we're going to be talking about cultivating career confidence. And I'm super excited about this one. This one's going to be super, super amazing. Your host today is actually going to be Jeffrey Shaw. Welcome, Jeffrey.

Hello.

For those of you who don't know, Jeffrey is actually the host of Creative Warriors Podcast and the author of Lingo, a book about discovering your ideal customer secret language and making their business, your business irresistible. Jeffrey, we've done some things together and I think some people may be familiar with you, but I'm going to turn it over to you and if you'll tell us kind of what we're going to do today and introduce our guest. So, Jeffrey, welcome.

Hey, thank you, Brett. I am thrilled to be here and I love participating in anything WIX because I love the platform and I'm excited to be here and certainly I'm excited to introduce you to my good friend. So, you know, in order to do your best, best work and approach your career with the utmost in confidence, I want you to consider the following. Have you ever experienced imposter syndrome? Would it be helpful to get out of your own way to unleash your creativity? Are you ready to unlock the blocks to rock your job? If you answered yes to even one of these questions, then today is an awesome day for you. Denise Jacobs has spoken in 23 countries around the world. She's a TEDx speaker and a LinkedIn learning course creator and the author of Banish youh Inner Critic, the premier handbook. There you go. And one of my personal favorite books on silencing fears to unleash creativity and cultivate career confidence. As we already know, Denise is joining us from sunny Miami, Florida, here, speaker, author, and superhero movie fan, Denise Jacobs. Welcome, Denise, I'm so excited to be with you.

Thank you so much. Well, you, like, tore that introduction up. Yes.

God, and lots of love for Denise. But I am so excited to have you share all that you know, about this because, you know, I read two business books a week. I'm a prolific reader. And Banish youh Inner Critic is truly the best book on the topic of banishing your inner critic. And what I love about it is how of all the other opportunities that come with Banishing Inner Critic, so, you know, let's dive right in. Most of us are familiar with, you know, the pesky Inner Critic, which we'll talk about many of them in much greater detail in a moment. But I'm curious, though, about the threat of your work. Right. Because you've gone from helping Us to banish our inner critics, to doing our best work creatively, to now talking about career confidence. So, Denise, if you will, connect the dots for us, how does one lead to the other from banishing our inner critic to our creativity to career confidence?

Well, so, you know, it's really interesting and we've talked about this kind of like just, you know, kind of personally, but it's really interesting, I think that there's this huge connect connection between creativity, first of all, creativity and the inner critic. And that's basically how I got started with all of this, right? Like starting to first focusing on creativity and how can we unblock creativity, how can we be more creative and then having all of that actually end up pointing to the inner critic and how the inner critic when, when you're, when you're in a place of self doubt, when you're kind of mired in this place of I can't do it, what if I fail? How will people, you know, will people judge my ideas? What if it's not creative enough when you're in that place, how that essentially blocks creativity and blocks creative thinking and gets you in a place where you're stuck and you can't. You basically have like creative block, right? So when I was diving into all of that, I was like, every time I was doing research on it, I kept coming back to this place of, well, if you're experiencing imposter syndrome and you, you know, think you're a fraud, you're not gonna be able to come up with ideas. If you're procrastinating, you're not gonna be able to come up with ideas. If you're a perfectionist and it's got to be perfect, you're not gonna be able to come up with ideas, right? If you're afraid of being judged, you're not gonna be come up with it. I was like, oh, there's this common thread. Well, I found that, you know, also in all of my research then about the inner critic, that there's this extraordinary connection between the inner critic and kind of creativity, if you will, even and career confidence and also experience this in my own life, right? That when I was in a place where I stopped worrying about what other people thought, I stopped trying to be what I thought I should be for other people to be accepted and valued. And when I really doubled down on my passions and my expertise and my unique skill set that nobody else has on the planet, that that's when I really, like, things just really opened up and that my career started to take Off. And also at the same time, my confidence built. And that also had to do with. With working towards big goals. And so I found that there was this interconnection between all of it. And I just really want to help other people experience the kind of the goodness and the positivity that I experienced myself.

You know, you mentioned a moment ago about, you know, evaluation, self evaluation, other people evaluating work, therefore, our creatives. You know, I think we all encounter inner critics. But are creatives more subject to experiencing because of that evaluation of ourselves, which we inherently do? And we're always putting something out for somebody else to evaluate, whether it's what they wanted or such. So are we more, as creatives, are we more subject to inner critics?

I think we are. And I think it's kind of the nature of the way kind of culturally, creativity is. Is dealt with and kind of thought about and approached. Right. That creativity in a lot of ways. And I know that I struggled with this for a long, long time in my own life, was that I basically didn't believe I was creative unless somebody else told me I was. Right? So, like, I used to, like, do something and I'd make something, and I'd be like, is it any good? Like, do you like it? Is it any good? And when people said it was good, then I would also have this thought of, you're just saying that to be nice. Like, is it actually. But is it actually good? Right? And so I think with that, because there's so much criticism around creative work, around artwork, around what you produce and all that stuff, and unless you get to, you know, kind of, like, superstar levels, and even then people, like, will jump on the train and start criticizing you and, like, nitpicking. There's always this. You're always up for scrutiny, right? And so I think that in some ways, kind of, again, because of this culture around creating and the culture, like what how was perceived in the kind of general. In society, there's always this. You're always in this place where you're like, somebody's gonna say something. I don't know who it is, but it's gonna come out of nowhere. And I have to be, like, kind of ready, you know, to deal with that. And so I actually do think that in some ways, it's built into it. And I think the superpower that creatives need to develop is to get to that place where it's like, okay, yeah, it does matter what people think to some degree. But I'm not for everybody. My work's not for Everybody. Part of what I'm here on the planet is, you know, know, like it's my life. I have to please myself with my work. And then I will find the people and I will attract and draw the people who this resonates with. And it's not going to resonate with everybody.

And to that point, our point you made a moment ago, I think is so important is that. And we're going to talk more deeply about imposter syndrome because there certainly has to be a connection here. But in fact, success can ignite the inner critic, right? I mean, because now there's an expectation. I know in my career as a photographer, once the reputation built, there inherently became an expectation, right? Because, you know, Jeffrey Shaw, the photographer, now had a reputation and then that became an expectation. So tell us a little bit about that. Tell us a little. Talk to us a little bit about the. As the advancement of our career and how in a way there could almost become a lack of confidence. And how do we overcome that as our career advances and we suddenly kind of feel the pressure of the reputation that precedes us?

Wow. And that's a tricky one, right? Because it is kind of this. It can be this situation where it's the self perpetuating cycle, right. Like you said, the higher up you get, the more kind of renown you get. And, you know, the more your reputation is, the more you feel like you have to live up to this stuff. I was actually, actually just reminds me of, of. Oh, the artist. Oh, God, I can't remember her name, but there was a singer, she passed away. But when I saw her biography, the movie that was about her, the documentary about her, I was so struck with how she wanted to expand her musical style and she wanted to work with all these different artists. And her managers were saying, no, people are expecting this from you. You have to keep doing this. Right? And she was like, but no, I want to. Like, I'm thinking about, I want to do this. I want to pull in reggae, I want to pull in jazz, I want to pull in all this stuff. And they were like, nope, stay in your lane. This is what Amy Winehouse.

Winehouse, yeah. I thought so.

And I was so upset when I watched this biography, this documentary, because I was like, she was such a talented artist. Like, if I was her manager, I'd be like, you do whatever you want. Like, you are a fricking genius.

Unleash her.

Unleash her thing. And so I think in some ways that's kind of that what is ends up what happens is you have this reputation, you have this thing. Your inner critic starts to kick in and says, I need to do the same thing over and over and over again. Instead of realizing that what made you, what enabled you to, like, kind of have the success is because you kept pushing yourself, right? Because you kept expanding what you were capable of. And I think that's another thing, actually kind of to tie it back to career confidence. I think that exactly what builds confidence, right? The confidence comes from overcoming that voice that says, I can't or can I? And pushing yourself beyond what you believed was possible, and then being able to get to this other level. And then you go, oh, my God, I'm able to do this thing that I wasn't sure that I could do, and I can.

So I'm fascinated. Of course, as a creative myself in the creative process, I love watching others create as well. And I think there's a lesson here for everyone in even observing your own creation, because, you know, you've kind of gone from this. I know you spent years studying the inner critics, and now your focus is on career confidence. You know, sometimes we connect the dots as we go, sort of like stepping stones being laid out in front of us, and in other times in the creative process, we recognize a pattern or we curate all the information that's currently in front of us in which we create from. Kind of curious, you know, And I don't think it's an either or. I think in the creative, as creative beings, we sometimes are, it's unfolding in front of us, and in other times, see the whole vision from which we can create from. There's certainly no right or wrong. It's not an either or. Just kind of curious. If you have an observation to share with us, like what needs to be, what needs to exist for creativity to come from that. From that. That. That place in us.

Right, right, right. Well, so just as a little background, that totally happened. That process obviously really happened for me. And one of the things that I realized is that every time I get to a kind of a different level or a different kind of vantage point, I look back and I look at kind of the seminal point in time that kind of started me on my journey. And I see it differently because the vantage point is different. Right. And so when I look back at the epiphany that I had that got me on this whole path towards creativity and then led me to the inner critic and now is leading me to career confidence, the original thing was that I had this flow state that was so incredible and so intense and so amazing. And that gave me so much energy. That literally was life changing. And my thought afterwards is, I want to help people feel like this. Like, I want to give people the tools so that they can remove anything that's in the way of feeling like this. Right. My original interpretation was, oh, it's about creative expression, because that's what I needed at the time. But then afterwards, you know, after a bit of time of looking into creativity, I was like, oh, it's. It's about the inner critic. Because what I discovered, and this is like one of my favorite things, is that when the inner critic is present, creativity can't flow. And this has been documented on a neuroscience level. So there's a great TED talk by Charles Lim called you'd Brain on Improvisation. He puts improvisational jazz artists and hip hop artists into an MRI machine, and he has them do improvisational jazz and like, and rap. And he measures their brain activity. And it shows that part of the prefrontal cortex actually powers down and stops functioning at such a high level when people are doing improv. Right. And that prefrontal cortex is the seat basically of the inner critic. It's the part of the brain that's in charge of self judgment, behavior modification, like all this, like, stuff that's like, right, creativity is intelligence, having fun. Love that. Exactly. And so, and so when I thought about that, I was like, oh, my God, that is the inner critic. That behavior modification, that self judgment and everything. You have to have that inactive or very, very low activity in order for your ideas and stuff to come through. Well, if. If you think about the times in your career or the times in your work life when you felt like a total badass and when you felt like, I can do whatever it is that, like, I can do what I put my mind to, or you worked on a project and you were successful with it, or you were working on a creative project and you came up with an idea and everybody was like, this is amazing. And you launched it and it worked. Right? That's the same thing. It's the same thing. It's the same mechanism is happening. That area of your brain that's in charge of behavior modification and self judgment isn't as active. And that is what enabled you to take those steps, to make those, make those changes and to let those ideas out and then have success from it.

One of the things I love so much about your book is the science and the research behind it. Because, you know, in order for creatives to really have career Confidence, it's more than just a good concept, Right. It has to lead to proof and science. And I think it's so valuable that. That you offer the science. All right, so let's talk then about some of the common inner critics, right? The root cause, how it's a block, what we can do to banish that inner critic, and how doing so unleashes our creativity and leads to career confidence. So let's kind of talk about a few of the common ones. Of course, I think it seems to me the granddaddy of all of them, but you just tell me is imposter syndrome. So again, root cause. How do we get it out of the way? How can we get it out of our way so that we step into career confidence?

So I want to take a step back for a moment from imposter syndrome. I'll get back to it. But to talk about where the inner critic comes from. So the inner critic and what it is. So inner critic is a psychological construct that develops over time from when you're young as a protective mechanism to help protect you from future hurt. Right. So if somebody says something to you, maybe you're in school. This is actually one of my kind of go to examples. But maybe you're in school, you're like, you know, in first grade, you're like six, like seven or eight or something like that, and your teacher says something disparaging to you, like, oh, man, you're never gonna be good at languages. Now all of a sudden, like, this person is entitled to their opinion, but they're not. God, they don't know. Like, maybe you are good at languages, you just need to learn them a different way. But all of a sudden, something like that goes in. No, your parents says, your mom says, oh, because you're such a selfish little girl or something like that. And all of a sudden, you know, one professor says, you're always a day late and a dollar short. Some things like that come in and they go in and you make them true about yourselves, and then you change your behavior in order to try to avoid having stuff like that happen again. Right.

So can I add to that just so this. That's so important. Everybody hears that. Because what's one of the, you know, enough about my work to know this is what drives me crazy, is how many creatives say to themselves, because of information like that, oh, I can't be good at business side.

Right?

At the business side, in fact.

Right.

Really? So the work, you know, I'm striving to do is get People to do business in a way that is natural to your creative self so that you can shut that old inner critic down. Whoever said it, however you came to believe it, it's not true, right?

And it's part of the kind of societal context too. If you're, if you're creative, then you're not a good business person. If you, if you're creative, you're not good with money. If you're creative, right? Like, and all this stuff, which is ridiculous because there are tons of creative people who are awesome business people, and there are tons of business people who are really creative. Like, come on. Like, let it, you know, so, so anyway, so the psychological construct, that's where it starts. The inner critic shows up in a lot of different ways. And this is one of the things I found out in my research and also from just the different kinds of things that people tell themselves, right? The different inner critical thoughts that I call them that people have. Like, I'm not creative. If I don't do it perfectly the first time, people will think I'm stupid. Like, all of these different things. And so one of the ways that it shows up for sure, and one of the ones that I think is like, kind of a hot topic these days is imposter syndrome. And so imposter syndromes, when you have this inability to internalize your successes, despite all of the evidence, the outward evidence that says you're awesome, you do great work, you think, oh, I just got lucky. I got the job because I knew a woman who knew a guy who knew another woman who happened to be in charge of stuff, like, at any moment, people are going to find out, I don't know what the heck is going on, and, like, I'm going to get fired, right? And so this is again, this way of, like, if I'm kind of constantly on my aware alert for this, then when something, you know, go sideways, like, I'll be ready or, you know, this is going to keep me from being. No, but it's not, because what it does is it keeps you, like, it makes you do all of these behaviors that end up potentially being able, you know, shooting you in the foot. So imposter syndrome is one way it shows up. Perfectionism was kind of dismayed to find out as a person who is a recovering perfectionist. Perfectionist is huge, huge way that the inner critic shows up. Perfectionism is also related to. And I also wrote an article about this. It was related to procrastination. So a lot of times perfectionists procrastinate because they are afraid that they're not going to get it perfect. And procrastinators want to get it perfect. And so they're perfectionists. And that it's this, this loop that feeds each other. It also shows up as high self criticism. It also shows up as fear of being judged. It also shows up as comparing yourself to other people. And then also this sense of. And I think this is really prevalent and nobody's really got a good term for it. I created a term for it. This feeling of not being enough, not being good enough, not being smart enough, not being talented enough, not being skilled enough. I refer it to as deficiency anxiety. So it shows up in all of these multitudes of ways. The trick is to how to have tools to be able to deal with each and every one of them when they pop up.

So to that point, do we need to handle each of those imposter syndrome high self criticism, which by the way, a phrase you use in the book around high self criticism that I will offer to everybody is put the hammer down. I love that when it comes to self criticism for creatives like put the hammer down. So is there. And Brett, showing up means we have some questions in a moment. But before we get there, is there a single tool that's going to just wipe away all these inner critics, or is there, in fact, do we need to have a different tool for each of them?

You know, what I like to think is we need to have a toolbox. It's not. And it's not, you know, it's nice to have, because I think kind of like everything. There's no one thing that is going to be the answer to any problem. Right. And that oftentimes you have a similar problem. But again, where you are in the vantage point, what you need to solve it is slightly different. So what I like to do is I just like to have like, you know, like at least 10, maybe five, you know, things that it's like, okay, that one didn't work. Let me try this. Okay, that one didn't work. Let me try this. Let me, you know, so that you can have that. And so. But I definitely, if there are questions, I definitely want to answer them because you and I have been talking a lot.

So does something come to mind as an overall talk? Let's go to the questions first. So, Brett, what have you got from some of our viewers?

Lisa's got a really good question and she's talking about some things that she's been through with her inner critic as well. Right. So She's. She's some. She thinks that sometimes. Or she's saying that sometimes the inner critic may have something relevant to say. Right. So how do you listen to your internal feedback without getting out of the flow or being too harsh with yourself?

This is actually one of my favorite questions to answer. So, Lisa, good on you for bringing this up. So what I like to say is that there is a difference, and a lot of people, I think, don't realize this. I think there's. I believe there's a difference between your inner critic, what I refer to as your inner critic, which is just, like, mean voice that is just going to nag at you and tell you bad things about yourself endlessly, and the inner evaluator. And the inner evaluator is more like a coach and more like a mentor. So your inner evaluator is like that part of you that's like, you know, we need to up the quality or we need to, like, amp up. You know what? We're doing that just to make this better. But it's not a disparaging voice. It's more of an encouraging voice. Like, I know you've got it. I know you're capable of this. Let's try. Try doing it this way. You know, let's try. Instead of doing what you were doing, let's just try this little extra thing. So there's a great quote by. I know his name is, like, totally going away from me. He does not. Wait, wait, don't tell me. But he does NPR anyway. He's.

All us creatives can relate when our brains go one way.

That one dude. And so he's got this great quote about, like, you know, when you start off and you're a creative, you know, quality, but you don't have the skills to be. Thank you, Ira Glass. Thank you, Jill. That you don't have the skills to be able to execute upon it. And I feel like that perfectly exemplifies and describes the inner evaluator. There's a part of you that knows quality. There's a part of you that knows what you're capable of, and you just don't necessarily have the skills yet to execute upon that. And so that's that part of you that says, hey, try this. Do this. You got this. Keep going until you get to that point where you actually have. You build that skill. Right? So, Lisa, does that help? I think that that's kind of a good way. That's a way that you can be gentle with yourself and still push yourself to do even more. Than you're capable.

Your offering of the difference between inner critic and inner evaluated is so valuable. That's so important. I love the fact also I think it was Juliet I saw pop up mention that communities can give you confidence. And that's so important. I'll add to the inner evaluator idea, which I love is I have a one time rule, like if you're listening to your inner evaluator, you actually need to hear it once the inner critic causes you to ruminate. And I probably have learned this from you, Denise, anyway, because I've learned about almost everything about beating oneself up from you. But that to me is a key difference too as to which voice I'm listening to. The inner evaluator. I only listening to listen to him or her once. If I keep replaying it in my mind, I know I'm listening to the intercourse.

That's actually great, Jeff, I'm going to use that because that is.

I probably have learned it from you, whether you realize it or not.

I think it was you who told me in a conversation that we had that like, if you kind of beat your, you know, if you criticize yourself any more, like give yourself three times and then after three times, it's self abuse.

Correct? Yeah, I use that phrase all the time. Anytime more than three times, it's self abuse.

Right.

All right, so great questions. Keep them coming in. Brett's here moderating for us and making sure those questions will get to nice. So by all means, feel free to ask some questions. So with the. And of course, you know, I just want to point out there are a multitude of inner critics, right. We also have self sabotage and fear of failure or fear of success, anxiety, overwhelm. I have a big loud inner critic of overwhelm. I can't handle this.

Oh, and Jeff, you do so much more than any other. Like, you are one of the most productive.

Like, but that's the irony of it, right? It's like, you know, it's. Our strengths are also our nemesis, right? So, yeah, I probably get more done in a day than most people get done in a week. And yet I suffer from the inner correct overwhelm. It doesn't make sense. But since when does the inner critic make sense?

Right?

So what? People are out of our way now we can start cultivating career confidence, which is what we're all here to understand. So how do we make. How do we make the turn, if you will, from working with what's been holding us back, Right? Which we have to for some period of Time. But how do we make that turn to now? Let's move forward.

Well, I think that. So I think the first tip again is to be aware, right? To raise your self awareness and to really start to be. To kind of understand and see the ways in which you're holding yourself back and to really see the things that you're telling yourself and the story that you're telling yourself and the story that you're creating based on these inner critical thoughts, right. Once you do that, then I feel like you have. Then you have the opportunity to like first to like, you know, see those things and to start removing those blocks and unblock them and then to actually start to reset your brain and reset those, those messages. So. And to replace these inner critical thoughts with more supportive thoughts and to have some really powerful reframes that will help you kind of shift your thinking and start to shift to a place of seeing possibilities and opportunities and seeing yourself differently. Right. And then once you get to that point, then I feel like that's when you can start to like recognize and rediscover in a way like your own brilliance, where your strengths are, where you have this kind of unique set of skills that nobody else does on the planet. Because honestly, when you think about. And this is also one of my favorite things to say, like, you are such a unique confluence of skills, experiences, thoughts, everything that literally does not exist anywhere else. You will never, ever exist in your form anytime in history. You never existed before, you're now here, and you will. Once you are not here anymore, you will never exist again. There is no other person on the planet in the universe who has what you have in terms of experience, skills, thoughts, everything. Nobody else has that. Even if you're an identical twin, your identical twin has had different experiences. They don't. It's just not the same.

Exactly.

So. So I was gonna. I'm all like, I'm all riled up. So in order to be able to, I think, really experience that confidence and to really start to skyrocket your, your career growth and really start to achieve these things that you want to achieve and make the impact that you want to make in the world, you have to recognize your brilliance and you have to leverage that. And so then once you do that, then you can start to like initiate new things, right? Then you can start to plan and you can start to plant. And then from there you can build that found upon that foundation you've got. Right. That you can like, recognizing your own value helps to empower you. And then once that Happens then you can get to a point where you. You have to sometimes shift, adjust and make shifts. And that's the whole thing. You start this feedback loop. And one of the things about building mastery is that when you get feedback, you work and you adjust to it. That's actually how you get into a flow state. And I think the other thing that happens is that when we do start to move forward and we do start to expand and expand our, you know, kind of our skill set to start to, like, more confidence, it's really important. And I don't think we do this enough to celebrate, to, like, acknowledge our wins and to actually, like, acknowledge the effort that we've put towards something and to, like, give ourselves kind of this, like, you know, reinforcement and then finally to, like, you know, just to reward ourselves, to celebrate and reward our efforts. Because, you know, that's like. That's like a whole process, right? And to, like, shift from being stuck and to move all the way through to a place where you have potentially achieved a big goal and really changed, you know, like, changed what's like inside of you to feel like there's more available for you and that you have more to give to the world. I think that's a huge. That's a huge thing. So I feel like that's kind of the process.

And I think we're seeing more in this time of pandemic and lockdown. I think we're seeing more people celebrating the small wins, you know, and I'm seeing a lot of things circulating social media, you know, small win Wednesday, or I'm just seeing more people actually have processes. And I think it's so important. I love that you're bringing that up because, you know, growth doesn't always come in these big, measurable things. And it's no short miracle that you watching this have adapted to all that life has thrown at us over the last few months. Like it is no small measure and it should be celebrated. I also love, you know, I want to stay for a moment with how we make that turnaround from. Because I think awareness, you know, 99% of problems start with awareness, right? So we have to become aware of this inner critics, but we do have to make a pivot, a turn, if you will, towards in order to move forward. You mentioned something earlier about how the root of these critics, how they start from someplace, maybe a message. I've done a fair amount of research with others on the idea of working with our strengths. And it was pointed out to me how socially we are, you know, Think about school, right? You get an A in one subject, get a C in another subject, and we're immediately told, oh, you better work on that subject. You got the C, right? We rarely have been socialized to actually work with our strengths. And that is what I'm hearing you say that awareness. Once you've introduced the awareness of the critic, you now have the opportunity to. To kind of focus on what you, you know, that strength in order to continue the process of quieting down that critic and moving forward. Do I have that right?

Is that, like, you totally nailed it. And that's the thing. Like, so many times people are so focused on what they don't have, right? Like, and this is what I talk about a lot with deficiency anxiety. When you're so focused on what you don't have, you don't realize what you have in abundance, right? Like, you're so like, oh, I don't have this, and I don't have this. And this is kind of like, I know, Jeff, that you've got a gratitude and what's going, right? Practice, right? And this is totally, in a lot of ways, in this same vein of feeling like, okay, maybe I'm not good at numbers, you know, like, maybe, like, I spent three weeks balancing, like, doing the reconciling for my business, and it, like, made me grouchy and it burned me out and everything. And I was like, you know what? My time and my energy is too valuable for me to spend this time and to lose all of this traction that I'm like, I need to just outsource this, like, completely outsource it and do this, because it's not my strength. It's not my brilliance, and it's keeping me from doing the things that are my strength and are my brilliance. And look, there are enough people on the planet. There are enough, like, tools and resources and fiverr and upwork and, nay, you name it, that people, you can get folks to do the stuff that you don't want to do at a very moderate, reasonable price. There's no reason why, or there are very few reasons why you need to keep trying to do stuff that's not in your zone of genius. And that. That, you know, that. That. That goes against. That. That goes against your strengths. And so, yeah, yeah, I love to

use the phrase strive to be bored, right? I mean, if you can directionally think about what can. Because really, the overriding concept is creating space for your genius and your brilliance, the more you can strive to be bored, get rid of that, which is taking up time that doesn't speak to your brilliance and genius. Then the more space, your empty space you're creating so that you can stay in that zone. Lupus around then how then. I'm so curious about the career confidence piece and how that can come from. I love the fact that Juliet said earlier that confidence can come from, you know, community. You know, I've as many of us. And I think this is realistic to many of us in the world today. We've had multiple careers, dual careers, if you. I've spent 35 years as a photographer, which, you know, I achieved what one would call mastery. Right. However many hours it takes, who knows? Level of confidence was ridiculously high. For some reason. I'm still kind of curious as to why I felt like I came out of the gate really confident, a photographer, and yet now as a speaker and an author, it's like I'm not nearly as confident, you know, and sometimes confidence has to do with staying in your own. Like you said, staying in your own zone of genius. What's. I mean, I want to hear more about the confidence piece and how even how that relates to mastery is another. Like I said, I would like to believe in a way that confidence comes from repetition, which. That must be part of it. But what other elements are there? We've got community. We've got maybe reputation, repetition, like, where. What are some of the other elements that we can look for to find our confidence?

You know, so one of the things. So I'm gonna speak for my own personal experience for a moment, and to say that, you know, even with the time and the reputation, repetition, and the community, your confidence can still wane. And that can be a situation where you experience like, you experience a situation that probably is like an inner critic inducing situation. I personally went to a speaker training, like, kind of in December of 2018, where, like, my confidence about speaking was completely shattered because I was so dependent on the validation from these people who were considered experts in the field of training speakers and all this stuff. And I so wanted them to treat. You know, I so wanted to get the accolades and the validation and everything that, like, some of the other people in my cohort had gotten. And when I didn't get that, I was just like, oh, my God. And it totally made me question everything about my speaking ability. Well, what ended up happening was then I. You know, it took me quite a few months to get over that, but then I ended up having a speaking engagement where I was with actually some of the people that were in my cohort. I was with some of my peers in the community and the community, like, I just was like, you know what? I'm just going to do what I normally do. I'm just going to do it the way. I'm not going to try to do it their way. I tried to do it their way. It didn't necessarily work for me. I'm just going to go back to doing what I know to be true for myself. And the community rallied around me and gave me all this validation that I didn't. That I didn't get from these experts and that, like, just, like, put up my confidence notch and then another experience happened, and that put my confidence up another notch and then another experience. And so. So I think in some ways, again, like, kind of what I keep going back to. And keeps going back to this zone of genius, right? This, like, and. And I think sometimes what happens is when we're in a new situation or new environment, like, I know that this is, like, true for. For, in, like, your case, where you're like, okay, I'm in this totally new industry. I'm doing this totally new thing. But this is what I always tell people, like, when I do, like, career counseling and stuff like that is like, what are the transferable skills? What are the things that were so. That you were so good at that were almost second nature for you in this other place, that you gained mastery that you can just take and port over to where you are now? Right. Go ahead and just, like, lean so heavily on those. Because it's from that place of kind of confidence, and I don't want to say comfort, but that kind of place of feeling strong within yourself, that you'll be able to build the new skills and the new things on top of that. Right. And so I feel like in a lot of ways, it's like. Because it's like confidence breeds confidence, right? And so if you can take that instead of looking at something. And so this is the other thing that I have discovered about myself and that I actually really like about myself is one of the ways that I learn fast is that I take. I make direct relationships between something I already know and the new thing that I'm learning. And so if I can isolate what I already know, like, if I can make a bridge between what I already know and the new thing, then it doesn't feel like I have a trillion new things to learn, that I have, like, a thousand things that are already the same, and then I have, you know, like, another couple hundred things of things that are new so then I focus on the new things without focusing on the stuff that's already familiar, right? So for example, if you drive a car and you rent a car, that's not the car that you're used to driving, you know that the signal confidence, you can do it, right? And because there are things that are already there, you know where the signaler is going to be, you know where the windshield wiper is going to be, you know that the hazard thing is going to probably be somewhere on the dashboard, right? And then if you find something different, you're like, oh, that's the difference. Great.

And then we just spend for it. We just spend forever looking for the button to open the fuel, right? That's that, you know, those are never in the same place.

They're almost never in the same place, but they're so, so, so, so to go back to the career confidence, to really like focus on, okay, what is it that I already know? What is it that I'm already, what is it that I'm already, that I'm already strong on? How can I take this and put it over here? And then what are the things that I don't know and everything. And then to also regularly assess, is this something that I'm afraid that I don't know or is it something that I genuinely don't know?

I think that's what's so important about that is I love the idea of skill transference. And what's so important about that today is that so many people are reinventing themselves and you already have a head start. You know, I agree with you 100%. I have coached. In fact, the only people I coach one to one because I love this so much are people that are transitioning usually from corporate into self employment because that's something I can help them with. And so often they want to completely abandon their past, right? They want to literally. I had a client want to pack up her trophies and accolades from her corporate position, throw them in the trash. I was like, don't you dare. Right? So I love that idea for career confidence, to understand skill transference and see how. And that fact from, as a marketing guy, that's actually what's going to make you different. What you can pull from your previous career and bring into will actually give you confidence. You said confidence breeds confidence. That's so important. The other reason why this is so important is I just want to add to this is because it's so current is, or I should say, I think one of the things that can break our confidence so current is relevancy, right? Anytime. You know, it's one thing to be confident as a photographer, when I was alone in the field, if you will, or at least in my market, as opposed to, okay, now there are a hundred photographers, or even worse yet, everybody has a phone, a camera in their pocket now, right? Part of what I want to. I wonder if you can speak to that a little bit too, because I actually think the impact of. You were such a leading speaker so many years ago. I think part of what broke your confidence, it seemed to me, was the fact that it was a much busier world of speaking now. And that can. Where. So for our partners listening in, you know, I think that can be part of their challenge, too. You could say it's competition or comparison, but what's going on there when the field that we're in seems to be expanding, and then we wonder, are we still relevant? Do we stand out? Do I matter compared to everybody else? What's going on there?

Well, so again, I mean, and that's the thing, like, that's why like, like you said, when you, when you coach people, you coach people who are transitioning and you say, wait, everything that you did before informs who you are and is what makes you unique. And just kind of like the same way that I said, you know, you're like, literally the only one of you that ever is going to exist ever in the history of the whole expanse of time and space, right? Ever. So that's, I feel like what you can line on, if you can figure out, and you're like, exceptional, like, brilliant at figuring this out for people Jeff is with, you can figure out what that unique stance is and then leverage the heck out of it, right? Like, that is. That's how you stay relevant. You stay relevant because again, you're not for everybody. But that also means that nobody else is for everybody either. That's how people get followings. They're like, what this person says has resonated with me, and this person is saying the exact same thing. And for some reason, it's just not landing. And I know that I, like, this is as a keynote speaker and as a trainer and stuff like that. I've had people say that before. Like, I've heard. And you even, even you said that you're like, I've read all of these books about the inner critic. Your book is the only one that actually that really, like, drove it home for me, and that makes sense to me. And it's the same thing. So I think, in a way, for Me, like in my own life, maybe I was a top speaker or whatever. I think what it, but what it was was that I was still searching for that thing about me that was the unique thing. And part of what kind of veered me off of my path was that I started actually veering towards, well, I should do this what everybody else is doing, right? I should be an innovation speaker instead of a creativity speaker because innovation, quote, gets paid more than creativity. But I'm not an innovation speaker. I'm a creativity. Like, you know, that's my love. You know, like, and then with the inner critic stuff, it's like, that's my love. There's not that many people who are talking about it. But that's not what's driving me. What's driving me is that this is really, this really speaks to my own experience, to my own struggles and I know that other people can relate to it. Right. And so you know, the relevance, I think sometimes when we focus too much on how is this going to be marketable, sometimes we start to lose track of how my unique, how am I going to you market my uniqueness, not how is what I'm doing going to be marketable. Yeah. Does that make sense?

Just literally just did a podcast a couple days ago on the balance between information and influence. And I hadn't thought about until just hearing you say that how what I was saying is the negative side of the influence can be that it ignites the inner critic.

Right?

Because that's a really hard balance. I mean I'm a huge proponent of gathering information, huge proponent of belonging to your trade associations and belonging to communities because there's so many advantages of belonging to a community and hanging out with your peers on like minded people and people who understand you and the information you can gain. But you do have to be careful at what point the information becomes so much influence that you lose your individuality.

Preach it.

Right. Because then that I hadn't thought about when the too much influence starts affecting your individuality and then that kind of ignites the inner critic that I'm not like everybody else, when it's exactly not being like everybody else that will make you successful, that will trigger the career confidence. Okay. It's all coming together. Denise, masterful job at connecting the dots in my spinning head. All right, so before we bring this call to a conclusion, because it's such great information, but you know, looking at your whole body of work and again, I can't help but as I like to do with creatives is look at the Whole body of work. And again, you have, you focus so much on banishing your inner critic and how that unleashes our creativity. And I love where you're taking this because it almost has a tangibility to it right now. The benefit of banishing your inner critic and unleashing your creativity is career confidence. Right? So now we're talking result of the work. And that's so important. One thing I came across and something you've written is that the theme of your work overall is that we should all learn to trust ourselves.

Absolutely.

So talk to us about trust. I think just to leave everyone, unless there's any questions, but to leave everyone with this thought about that sense of trust, I think would be really valuable.

Well, you know, it's really funny when you said that, it's like I got like tears in my eyes, like how important it is for us to trust ourselves. And because we are unique and because we have our own set of gifts to offer the world, like when we don't trust ourselves, like those gifts don't get shared, right? Like they stay in us, they stay kind of trapped inside us. And then the world doesn't benefit from them. And so it's so important, I think, not just from kind of an altruistic standpoint of this is beneficial to the world because there are so many things that need to be solved and we can be part of the key, right, to helping solve them, but also from a personal standpoint that our lives, I feel like we get a bigger sense of self satisfaction and love ourselves more. Right. That, that leads to this kind of appreciation for ourselves and this love for ourselves that, that we don't have when we don't trust ourselves. Right? And that's so important because that place of self love, like everything springs from that, that what we're able to give to other people comes from a place of self love. What we're able to give to the world comes from a place of self love. How we feel in our skins and how we feel every day, day to day, can be vastly changed by self love. And I again know this from personal experience. Back in 2005, I like, actually, over the course of the previous five years up to 2005, I had gone on a process of body transformation and I released 100 pounds and the last 50 pounds rapidly melted off of me. And it was triggered by this realization and this realization of deserve more and I'm worth things and. And it was the self love that bubbled up over this period of time that completely changed my life. Right. And so if people can access that, then you can, you can create all kinds of really positive transformations in your life and then in the lives of others.

And so, so interesting that there's this dropping into ourselves that actually makes us more available to others.

Yes.

And I think I will say in my work, I think this is such a unique aspect of Creatives, honestly, because I cannot tell you how many times people have said to me they're afraid to step out of humbleness, they're afraid to step into their full confidence, and often will say something like, well, I don't want to become that person. And I'll look and say, who's that person? Right. The fact of the matter is, those that are driven by a sense of purpose and coming from the heart centered in the first place are likely only going to become more so when they take care of themselves. Right. If you're not someone who ever puts people first in the first place, you're not likely to become that. But if you're already who you are and you're authentic and you are heart centered and soul centered and purpose driven, the more you drop into yourself to see your gifts, your brilliance and have that confidence, the far more likely you are only to magnify, to amplify that. As I know you like to amplify that to actually serve the world better. I know in a perfectly.