Battling Imposter Syndrome: Denise G. Lee

This is The Chris Project, where we discuss mental wellness, self-awareness, and mindset with entrepreneurs and experts. Set your perceived ideas and biases aside and let's go on our journey for yourself, for your family, for the world.

Welcome to another edition of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me as my guest today is Denise Lee. Denise, welcome.

I'm so glad to be here. Thank you so much, Christian, for having me.

Absolutely. So, uh, why don't you tell everybody, uh, who you are, what you do?

Okay, so On the surface, right, I would call myself a life coach for business owners, right? That's like the PR. But I am also a recovering addict. I'm an incest survivor. I've just gone through a lot of crap and lived to tell the tale. So I just want to just let everybody know that we have the image that we show everybody on social media and on our resume and everything, and then we've got all this other stuff that lurks behind. And Yeah, yes, that's it.

Yes. Well, I'll just dive in right there. I think one of the things that I've seen with entrepreneurs and business owners is this imposter syndrome facade, even like living into other people's expectation of what they should be. And that creates a very scary space to be in when you're trying to be something and you no longer can be it. Right? For whatever reasons, the walls are falling down, but you're still trying to put out this image of what you want other people to think. What was the point at which that changed for you, where you said, I'm done, I'm done hiding who I am?

So I'm not even going to lie and say that I didn't have little mini moments that reached that crescendo. But one of the conversations that really hit me hard was I was in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I was talking with my sponsor at the end of a meeting. And I said to her, sincerely, I said, "Who am I supposed to show myself to? How am I supposed to present myself to? What version of me?" And she just looked at me like this, ooh, ooh, long-toothed old lady said, "Honey, you just be who you are." And in that moment, I knew what she was talking about in the sense of I'm trying to hold up this facade of what I think other people would approve of me, and it was only making me an unsuccessful drunk. That was my version. Everybody has their own version, but for me, in order for me to stay sober, I had to stop the facade. And so when you were talking earlier, Christian, about the imposter syndrome, you got me thinking about what is the imposter syndrome really is. Right? And I've been thinking about it for a while. It's this idea of I'm trying to show up to portray a version of myself that's inauthentic to myself and the other person.

Yes. And I think, I think it's driven by fear that whatever we are is not going to be accepted. I think from an entrepreneurial standpoint, it's not going to be sufficient. That either my employees need or my family needs or investors or vendors, customers, whatever, that I have to give them something that they're expecting. I'm afraid that somehow what I am is not sufficient.

I think it just depends on where you are as a business owner, as a leader, as an entrepreneur. I love talking about Prince, you know, the artist formerly known as Prince. And I remember hearing about when he was first starting to get more popularity, he was opening for the Stones. And so here's this 5-foot-2 little man. I don't know how tall he is, but you know, that's about right. Yeah. Coming up on stage with leggings and stiletto heels, and they just booed him. They just booed him. And he did it again. And you know what? He decided, I'm never going to open again. I'm going to be me, and I'm going to still keep my leggings. I'm still going to keep my heels.

Yes.

I think everybody has to But I think at that point, he was so into embracing who he was, he didn't care.

Yes. Yes. Yes. And that self-confidence that comes from— I think the missing ingredient for me was not really knowing myself. You have to understand why you do what you do, why you say what you do, why you act the way you do. And sometimes that's not a comfortable journey, right? Asking those questions. But if you don't know yourself, then you have to show up as someone else. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. I mean, you're absolutely right about that. I mean, I mentioned Prince, but he's been by— at that point, he was well decade-plus in into his craft. I mean, what about people who are beginning in their journey as a business owner, as a leader, and they've— they're just fresh out of grad school, they got the MBA, and they've been taught and indoctrinated a certain way, and they're in close contact with their mentors, have this vision of what success is, and if they break the mold, it's that fear of I'm losing all that comfort, the solidarity that I I had. What do I do then? Will there be anybody else to— I mean, we are— we're humans, we're tribal people by nature. And so that loss— well, the confidence is really that loss of connection. And a lot of people are not willing to see whether or not there's something else to catch them when they are willing just to let go and release.

Yes. And, and that, that's interesting you, you mentioned tribe because that's a term I use inside my business, as in like, we are a tribe. And part of being a tribe is that you have rules. And, you know, there's a culture there. And if you step out of line, you know, it's possible that you could get kicked out of the tribe, right? And that's a scary feeling. And entrepreneurs oftentimes don't have a tribe of their own. You know, you may be part of the tribe of your business, but your employees are not thinking the same things and struggling with the same problems that you are. Right. So having a community, for me, it's been Entrepreneurs Organization and the forum, the small group forum format that has given me a place to go with those thoughts, feelings, ideas. But, you know, it's interesting. Two observations after having been in those groups for 13 years is one, there's still rules, there's still tribes, right? Even there. And I remember one time when we had a forum member that was basically telling us about a crime that had happened. He wasn't involved in it, but he knew of it. And, you know, all of a sudden, everybody else got real uncomfortable, right? Because it's like, okay, 'Uh, do we need to report this?' I mean, like, and like, even questioning, like, 'Why are you bringing this here?' Right? Because we don't really want to deal with that. Um, and it— so, so even, even if you've got, you know, a layer of trust and security that you can share those things, sometimes it's— there's, there's additional layers maybe that involve a coach or a therapist or somebody that is trained and competent to deal with those things. But the second thing I've noticed about the forum format is that regardless of the level of vulnerability and trust that people had in that group, there were always still layers that weren't shared. Right. And so I think it's kind of— I'm reading into what you're saying is that it's just this human condition, this tribal thing where you, you know, at some point, you're going to, you're going to hold something back out of fear.

There's so much I want to unpack. Please. Yeah, when you were talking earlier about you're in this group and they're talking about something that's questionable, suspect, maybe even illegal, I was thinking about an article that I just read in the Wall Street Journal about this. It was regarding the subject of people abusing ADHD medicine, Adderall. And so they were doing an exposé on a specific company called Control. It's based basically a virtual group where a virtual company where they dispense. You, you go online, you answer a couple questions, and they— you talk to a nurse practitioner remotely and then go to CVS and pick up your, your, your Adderall. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make of this is that the founder, he— I forgot, it was a woman, I forgot her first name— she came from a very cutthroat winner-takes-all culture. She used to work for Facebook. And she even bragged to— amongst her employees, she said, the first person who gets jailed for doing stuff gets a new Tesla for me. It was baked into the culture of overprescribe, making sure we're getting people who had— were flagged as potentially abuse, had suicidal ideations, just red flag. Oh, they deserve to get another chance. And that culture that she got was originally affected from Facebook— Meta, what it's called now. She dragged it with her to— and inoculated everyone with that same ideology. So for a lot of us, when we think about the tribe, we never ask ourselves, what's the ideology of the leader? And to think we can insulate ourselves from that mindset is insane. It's folly. She's now on house arrest, by the way. But good. Yeah. But the idea of, okay, I'm going to be confident while I'm unconfident around unconfident people. It's kind of silly when we think about it, but we never question it because we're all in a state of development. We're all half-baked.

Yes. Yes, there's, there's always things that we could grow, improve, things we don't like about ourselves, uh, our behavior that we want to be better at. Uh, and, and I, I, I like what you said there, is, is that being confident while being unconfident. Now, I don't know if you meant it this way, but I think it's— I, I think to me, it's what the author Todd Henry, in his new book, The Brave Habit, talks about is that bravery is doing the right thing, even when you're afraid of the results and the outcome. It's not this false bravado of, yeah, nothing scares me. No, it's not that at all. And so I think you can be in a space where, you know, there are a lot of unknowns, there are a lot of question marks that you have about yourself or that potential outcomes, but still have the confidence to lead the team, right? It's like, I know these things are scary. I don't have the answers, but I feel that this is the right choice and we're going to do it anyway.

I mean, I think about even the conversation we had, right? I don't know you. You don't know me. We don't know what's going to be happening. There's a lot of unknowns, a lot of variables, right? In this conversation, I could be a total weirdo. You don't know that, but you were confident in the fact that you were unknown, that despite all the unknowns, you're going to learn something for better or for worse. And I think being— I didn't misspeak when I say being comfortably confident in your unconfidence and saying, hey, when I am naive, when I don't know a lot, I'm more receptive to learning things I wouldn't otherwise know. Because when we feel like we're into something, right? When we've got it all together, right? I think about my husband. I know your wife probably is like, my husband probably talks about me. But anyway, I think about my husband when he has fixed our project. And even though he doesn't know a thing about doing certain things, I say, honey, do you need help? Honey, you want to go on YouTube? No, I've got it. So even if he doesn't get it right, he's like, at least I got it. At least I got something down other than just waiting for somebody to save me.

Yeah, and I think that's a trait entrepreneurs have usually in spades, in that they— you know, we kind of struggle with this paradigm of confidence in the vision or the future that we see. While not being clear on the present. Like, we're not always attuned to the present. And this idea that, no, I don't know how we're going to do it, but I'm sure we are going to do it, which, which may or may not be right. Like, you know, you may be wrong, but you have to have that confidence in order to proceed. Otherwise, you wouldn't.

For a lot of us who are entrepreneurs, right, who are leaders, we did the ultimate F you to society. You know, we could have just been in some cubicle box nodding and grinning our heads, even things that we disagree, just for the paycheck, right? Because that's the easy— I'm no disrespect to anybody who's listening.

You might have, Denise, but I was unemployable. No one would hire me. I mean, they have in the past, but I'm a horrible employee. Horrible.

Horrible. You know, I was the one— well, I was soon to be unemployable before I went into being a full-time entrepreneur. I was the one who always asked, what's the logic behind this? And everyone would say, because it's always been done this way, or we don't question authority, or it's the status quo. Does the status quo even make sense? Is this applicable? Is it relevant? And you will not make friends at the water cooler with that kind of mindset.

No, I had this— I worked for a bank for a while, and I had this coworker where she flipped her shit Whenever I opened the 3-ring binders without using the metal tabs, I'd just pull the clips open, you know? And I mean, she came across the desk like, "No, no, no, no, you can't do that." I'm like, "Why?" "Because you'll bend them and then they won't go back together." And I'm like, "Okay." But I couldn't understand, like, her response to that. Like, and, but that's— Yes, that's the mentality that, that makes me crazy. There is one, that there's one right way to do things.

There was a lot of— I've read a lot. I know you really read a lot too. But one of the books that really changed the game for me was reading the book I'm Okay, You're Okay.

Hmm.

Yes.

Oldie but a goodie.

Yeah. By Tom. Yeah, Tom Harris. And he later wrote a book staying okay with his wife, Amy Boudreaux Harris, rest in peace, wherever they are. And I remember when I was reading this book, they were saying from the moment we were a baby, we were always looking up for someone to affirm us, to validate us. And if we just behaved the right way, we'd be okay. We'd get the pacifier, we get rocked, we get stroked. And I don't think a lot of people ever left that state.

No. No. Yeah, no. I mean, the idea, again, the self-awareness, like, and it comes up for me, like right now what it comes up for me is I tend to say a lot of inappropriate things and/or jokes. And I'm kind of like, I'm 54. I've always been this way. It's not like a new habit I've developed. But I'm not really sure where it comes from. Now, am I doing that because it's causing a problem? No, I'm doing it because I don't know why. Right? And to me, that's a very important question. Why do I do the things that I do? You know, if I can write it off, well, okay, my dad did that and I just picked up the habit from him. Okay. But then the question is, does that serve you now? Right? Does it make sense to continue doing that? But, but most people don't ever get to the question of why am I doing it?

I don't know about you, but I love some Alfred Hitchcock. I'm going to be talking about a whole bunch of data stuff. So just forgive me. And I had the privilege of rewatching Psycho— I shouldn't say rewatching, watching Psycho. Yes. And everybody thought, oh, Norman Bates, he's crazy, right? He's psychotic. He's trying to pretend— oh, I shouldn't— I don't know if I should say too much of it for those who haven't watched it.

It's been out for, what, 70 years? Spoilers don't count.

Okay, so the whole point that I'm trying to mention that it was like, At the end, they had the psychiatrist that said he was assuming the role of both mother as well as Norman, and mother overtook him. Right. But there were still little pieces of him. And from the outside, everyone was saying, oh, he's crazy, he's killing someone. But it made total sense in the sense of he was— the mother inside of him never wanted anybody to take the authority role, the prime role, right? I worship mother. All these other women have got to go. And so when you were talking about like, I don't know what things are doing, it makes total sense when we understand what we are dealing with in our environment.

Go on.

So when we think about the ways that we may have been a little off-brand, right? What was really happening was you were embracing who you really were while others were tied to their fears. Because it takes bravery to be you.

Yes. Yes.

At least in my opinion.

No, I think it does. I think it does. Because the fear is it's not going to be accepted. It's not going to be sufficient. Even in your most intimate relationships. So, you know, like your spouse. I've been married 31 years, but I still find myself potentially holding back on saying things. Because I don't want the reaction, right? I know what the reaction is going to be. So I'm just not going to say it. You know, right? But it's like, if you can't— it's not like this worship of self, like, you know, recognize me, who I am, you know, see me. If you feel like something needs to be said, then say it regardless of the consequences. And that's kind of what Todd Henry was talking about in his book. And that's a hard place to be, especially when you're standing alone. Like, I'm not going to go into the whole pandemic COVID thing. But I remember I was the only one in my family that would not get vaccinated. And I was attacked by everybody in my immediate family. So like my wife and my adult children were they were all like, "You've got to." And I remember sitting there thinking to myself, "Am I the one crazy?" I mean, it was like that intense, their reaction. And, you know, in retrospect, I don't regret that. And I'm glad that I did what I thought was best for me. You know, I didn't say anything to them about what, you know, "If you want to get vaccinated, get vaccinated." whatever. But the fact that they felt compelled to tell me how to behave, standing up to that is hard. It's hard.

So you're speaking to someone who's a fellow unvaxxed.

Yes. Yeah.

Let's get it. I mean, for me, people were like, oh, they were doing all that research for 20 years. All this other stuff. I said, you know what, I'm not immunocompromised. I'm not in the high risk factor. And if I get sick, let me have some diarrhea for a few days or coughing, but I think I'll be okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I'm going to let my immune system do what it needs to do. I need to get exposed to it anyway. So in my mind, I was thinking to myself, if you feel that you aren't a risk factor, do what you had to do. And I think it all depends on the tribe that you're around because I mean, my husband also didn't get vaccinated. Vaccinated. He was called— my husband was called crazy by his friends. I'm like, we're still here standing 4 years later. Right. And what am I going to get, a lollipop after my 15th jab? It just seemed like a racket to me. And I'm sorry, no offense to anybody who's listening and thinking, well, I need that, and you're not saying— you're not believing in the science. Look, do whatever your conscience tells you to do.

Yeah, but I think that goes into— I think what we saw in COVID, and this ties in, I'm not going InfoWars on you and going down conspiracy rabbit holes. What it shows to me, the pandemic showed to me the power of fear. And when it gets into a group of people, I was shocked. I was absolutely shocked by the behavior of people. Like, I didn't think that people could be not coerced, but manipulated into behaving this way so quickly. Right. And so uniformly. And, but I think it ties into exactly what we've been talking about, is standing up for yourself. Is difficult because you want that acceptance of others.

Christian, I'm going to be honest with you. I wasn't surprised. I read Propaganda by Edward Bernays and I read The Crowd by Gustave Le Bon. I already knew that them books were there explaining.

No, I know. I know. It wasn't like it was without historical precedent, but I just, I'd never seen it. And that's what shocked me.

Remember when we were told of weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam Hussein had them?

Yes.

I remember when I first heard about that, I was like, they're gaslighting us all for some oil. They're gaslighting us all. But people would nod and grit their heads and say, we're going Operation Iraqi Freedom. 14— over 4,000 American lives, 40,000-plus Iraqis died. All because we did not want to say the emperor had no clothes. All because we wanted to make Northrop Grumman, Lockheed, and a whole bunch of other people rich and continue the machine. And that was unpopular to say that then and now. The war machine still is going on.

Yes. Yes. And I think, you know, what's interesting, Todd Henry, when I interviewed him, for a different podcast.

Yeah.

And we were discussing that book. He said he wrote the book because he was really disturbed by what he was seeing with the lack of bravery and people not acting solely out of fear and really doing what they believed to be the right thing. And I think that, you know, it's real hard to see the label of a jar when you're inside it. So I, I, it's real hard to see what's, what's really going on when I'm in it. But I, I, I, I agree with his assessment that there, there seems to be less bravery if we're defining it that way.

What I find very interesting, Christian, and this— when people say we're brave, right? Everybody's saying we're brave. What we're really saying is we're doing something that we thought we could have done better.

Hmm. Okay. Tell me more.

In our minds, don't we— I don't know about you, but I'm in my mind when I'm thinking about doing something right, I have this vision. Of all the stars aligning, everything, all the players acting as it is. And like, I have this vision in my head now, how I would execute it. That's completely different. But in our minds, when we see somebody doing it, they may not do it exactly the way we're doing it, but at least they got some of the, the directions, some of the ideas put in place that we think, oh, we need more time or resources or the right people. The other people say, screw it, I'm just going to go ahead and start doing it. And it always goes back to that permission. It's like I'm waiting for that permission, which may never even happen because the people who are waiting for permission are so caught up in their own fears and their own drama and their own issues.

Yes. And I think, you know, just because you were brave once doesn't mean that it's easy to be brave the next time because, you know, the failures that you have in the failures that I've had as an entrepreneur, uh, darken, darken my door when I start making new decisions. And I think about like, oh well, remember when you thought that but that didn't work out? And, and so sometimes that permission is from yourself. Like, you know, it's, it's, it— I don't know if it's just years and baggage, but I, I've noticed that I've tended to become much more cautious with experience. And it's, it's harder to stay true to the vision because of that.

So I have a lot of wonderful character flaws, and one of them was not only battling alcoholism, but 6th edition. And during that same time frame, music was very comforting to me. And one particular song that I played on loop over and over Christian was Erykah Badu's "Bag Lady." And it— the song is about a woman, a young woman who can't have a good relationship because she keeps dragging all the baggage from her past relationships. And then Erykah Badu says, "Pack light, leave those bags down." And I remember the reason why I would want to go out and have promiscuous relationships or watch pornography was because I kept replaying in my mind all the coulda, shoulda, wouldas, all the things that I did, all the mess up. And in fact, it just drove me back down a destructive path, back to indecision, back to procrastination.

Right. Yes, I would agree with that. Because what I've had to counsel myself— and, you know, I think working with a coach is very important to help you with this. But at the end of the day, you sleep with yourself. You go to bed with yourself. You're always there. And the way I counsel myself on that is, yes, you have made mistakes. You've made bad decisions. But they don't— they're not the totality, right? You've made good decisions. And on balance, you've made more good decisions than bad decisions. I'm not talking about moral decisions. I'm talking about business decisions. Right. And so that's given me the confidence to overcome and say, well, look, I, I may not be right in this decision. I could be wrong, but I've thought about it and I've dealt with the emotion around it. And now I'm going to proceed. One more thing. I was, I was interviewing another John Hewitt for this podcast. And he's fascinating. But the thing he talked about is, he said, well, when I'm in a decision-making process like that, and I have an emotional thought, he said, I am able to identify it as an emotional thought. And set it aside, so that he can proceed with his decision-making. And I think that I've come to this conclusion that if you are a more emotional person, like myself, I think decision-making can be harder than for those that are less emotional. I'm not talking about the people that think that they don't have emotions and are driven strictly by rational thought, because those people are lying to themselves, right? And they scare the hell out of me. But the people that recognize that they do have emotions, but they can set it aside easier than I can.

So there's a couple of things I want to talk about. Because I'm really enjoying the richness of this conversation. And I want everybody to understand the fact that there's no such thing as a bad decision. It was just a data point. It was just a data point. Yep. You know, just like on the x, y-axis, maybe it was a little higher up, maybe it was a little higher down, but it's data. Right. And we can make some correlations and triangulations and all that other jazz. And I think when we understand the fact that if we didn't have the data, We aren't as well informed today as we have been yesterday. And so when we, when we go to that, that mindset of, okay, well, I did all this stuff, right? So what are we trying to do? We're trying to rationalize paralysis. We're trying to rationalize avoidance. And like, I don't want to give power into that because I think I did a really bang-up job doing that in the past, and I have enough data points to prove that never worked well for me. And moving to point about, you know, being more emotional. You know, I was thinking about people who are more left-oriented, right? Logical, analytical, right? You know, emotional feeling. I think there's a place for all of it, right? Yes. And for a lot of us to think, well, I'm only left, I'm only left, like leaning on— well, that doesn't make sense. When you sit down and you eat dinner, you're using your right feelings to say whether or not it tastes good. Right. With your palatin, you're engaging your right brain. And so for, I think for a lot of people, when we think about, oh, I'm emotional, it's not so much I'm emotional, is how am I balancing my feelings? How am I honoring my feelings while not ignoring the facts? And I think there's a marriage that can be like, we were built to be relational people.

Yes.

Yes. We're built that way. And I think, think about when you met your wife, right? I mean, there was a part of you that wasn't just looking at her intellect.

No. Yes, you're correct. Yes, you're, you're correct.

I don't— and I think for some of us entrepreneurs, business owners who think, okay, I was taught to have my business plan, I was taught to have all this data points, but then my hunch is telling me that there's a good idea. And sometimes your hunches may not yield a great data point, but still a data point. And I think for a lot of us, we're afraid of accumulating more data points because we don't want to be judged by the appearance of our data plot or our situation. Oh, it's not tight. It's not a long line. It's a little scatter point. I'm like, well, that's what living life is. It's messy by design.

Yes. Yes. I mean— I think you're 100% right. If you take the attitude that it's not a decision so much as it is an action, and that action will lead to more data that you can then reinterpret and make additional decisions. So, right and wrong almost has this moral implication, right? Where it's not really right and wrong. It's, I came to the conclusion that I expected versus I didn't. Right? And some of those times, I mean, that's the brilliance of the human mind, is sometimes the the unexpected outcomes are what actually give you the brilliant insight, not reaching the outcome that you expected.

I hope to goodness that I'm not going to use my wisdom today to carry me tomorrow. There's a whole lot of stuff that can happen even between now and the time I hit the pillow. And I think for a lot of us, we think we got to be frozen in time And that best wisdom is somehow going to carry us the next 10, 15, whatever, how many years, God, once you land on Earth, keep on Earth. And I think for a lot of us, it goes back to the sense of control, right? This sense of, if I want to, if I can hold on to this vision or I hold on to what I believe it could be, then I'll feel safe. But there's no such thing as safety.

No, no. And there's no such thing. I mean, I'm going to say this. There's no such thing as predictable at, at, you know, the macro level. You, you can maybe— I know that if I drop the pen, it's going to hit the floor. Okay, great. Uh, but, you know, the idea that we— as a matter of fact, I would say pursuing known outcomes is actually counterproductive. Like, if all you're doing is something that you know exactly what's going to happen, you're going backwards. You have to be going into places where you don't know the outcome. And the human brain does not like that. It wants to know how the story ends. It just wants a loop. It wants closure. It doesn't Yeah.

I mean, I mean, Christian, when you think about it, there are professions where you want that bean counter type mentality. If you're an architect, you better make sure those calculations are just true. If you're like, they're, they're like an accountant. Like there are certain professions where you have to be dialed in. You have to know you. I think about, I was learning about the, uh, the, the, what was it? The discovery, um, that exploded. It was, I think, early 2000s. Yeah. And they were saying that they hadn't—

Challenger.

It was the Challenger. Thank you, Christian. Yeah. And they were saying how they— some of the, the contractor that was in charge of some of the flaps that, you know, they said, well, we've never tested it in the cold weather and our projections say this might explode. And they got overruled by NASA. Well, we know what happened later by that. Where they did the data crunching and they did the prediction. And unfortunately, they were right about it. But what about in other areas, nebulous situations where we're talking with people? People are the ultimate crapshoot. We don't know how they're dealing with it. Right. And how willing, how brave are we to be able to say, you know what, I may not know what's going to go down, but I can rely on my intuition, my right feeling side, my intuitive side, rather than— sorry, my instinctual side, rather than my thinking intuitive side. And I think a lot of people haven't been given permission because we live in a society that's more about control and structure.

Yes, there's, there's a brilliant book called Alchemy written by Rory Sutherland, and he is a director at Ogilvy, you know, the huge advertising company. And in the book, he really kind of takes aim at the whole age of reason and how, you know, because we're dealing with humans who are predictably unpredictable, you, you can't apply some of those things. But yes, if you're— if you've got a high-risk situation, like an architect or a rocket ship designer, you know, yes, you don't want to be doing things where you don't know the outcome. But for 99% of the entrepreneurs, that's where you create the value. That's where the magic happens, is when you don't know what the outcome is.

And it kind of goes back to the earlier part that we were talking about is confidence. Are you brave enough to deal with uncertainty? While knowing that you don't know a lot?

Yeah. Yes. Yes. It's— that's an uncomfortable place to be. There's another great book called The Big Leap. I don't remember the author's name, Stanford psychologist. And he's written several books, but that was the one I read. And it talks about how when your brain gets into situations where it doesn't know the outcome, it starts to, uh, work against you. Like, your brain will— I found, I found this, like, when I would have my meetings with my business coach, I would start to think of reasons why I had better things to do. Now, it was never a conscious thought of, these meetings make me uncomfortable. What it was, was my cognitive brain was giving me rationalizations of why not, why not to. And, you know, sometimes for some people that can even manifest itself as physical symptoms, like, you know, stomach problems and, you know, where your body is actually forcing the issue. Like, I don't want you to go there. I'm afraid. And understanding that that's just the way all of us are hardwired for predictability. I mean, you know, it was a big eye-opener for me that when I start to— if I start feeling like I don't really want to do that, you know, most of the time when I lean into it, I'm pleasantly surprised.

I've When you were talking, Christian, I was thinking about the book Feeling Good by Burns, and he wrote it another, I think, second, third edition, whatever. The point I'm trying to make is he was kind of one of the pioneers of cognitive behavioral therapy, cognitive thinking, right? And he's saying that we have all these feelings, right, that are triggered by memories. And because those memories were bad, had all those bad associations, We go to certain habits to help protect us, shield us, but in actuality stunt us. And so if we can catch and be aware of those feelings that churn in the stomach or the thoughts that it was useless, we are saying, oh, it's my mind trying to tell me that I feel afraid, alone, scared, uneasy, and it's resulting in these physical symptoms, maybe I can start telling my mind some other things.

Yeah.

I think about when I was pregnant, and I remember I had a friend of mine who just recently gave birth. This was many years ago, by the way. And I remember I'm 6 months pregnant and I was talking to my friend about it and she's like, She told me she delivered without meds, no painkillers. And I thought, what?

She just said, put a stick in my mouth.

And she— Christian, I was just— and I asked her, huh, what, why did you do? She's like, I just kept telling myself this was temporary.

True. She was correct.

It was just temporary. I said, was there pain? I said, nah, it was a little discomfort. Of course, it was probably some pain for sure. For sure. But I think— I mean, we hear this all the time, like people walking over coals, people lifting up cars and seeing babies underneath or stuff like that. We know that there was discomfort, right? How did they do this?

Yes.

There's an excellent book. I'm sorry.

No, no. It's just The Power of the Mind.

The power— there's a wonderful book, Norman Doidge's The Way the Brain Changes. And he also wrote a book, How the Brain Heals Itself. And he's talking about how we can train our minds into embracing discomfort rather than running away from it.

I'll recommend a book to you and to the audience, Holographic Universe. It's an older book. But it's— It's interesting. I mean, I think it was written 30 years ago. And so there's been a lot of information since then. But it opens up a discussion around the mind that I found very interesting. Not everything I read in there was I like, "Oh, yeah, I totally believe that." But it did raise some interesting questions.

You know, Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, right? Mm-hmm. How I— there was this part in this book where he says that in the midst of, of having horrendous pain, undernourished, he was envisioning himself in a lecture. It was warm, it was cozy. He was fully dressed and he was imagining exactly giving the speech about how to survive horrific events. Well, in the midst of that, I mean, there are so many catalogs of history of people who envisioned where they could be in the midst of what was happening.

Yes. Yes. And I guess I would tie all of that back and kind of summarize it by saying you need to know yourself, know your limitations, the limitations that you've put on yourself. So that you can remove those bonds.

But what are limits, though? Like, what really are limits? You know what I mean? Like, I think about— I think about— I think like a fake by Steven Levin and I forgot the other guy's name, the Freakonomics guys.

Oh, yes.

Yeah. And then the section they were saying, like, for example, you're out of shape, you want to do a push-up. And you're like thinking, I'm going to do 10 push-ups, right? And then how many do you do before you tap out? 8, 7. But what if you set it to 20? Maybe you can do 17, 18. You wrote— you forgot, like, we put these limits and the way our brain works is we only get to that limit we self-impose ourselves. Like, why don't we just blow the limit out of the water?

Yes. Yes. No, you're 100% right. We are capable of so much more than we realize. Denise, um, how do people find out more about you, get in touch with you?

Yeah, thanks for asking. I mean, the best place, only place really for people to find me is my website, deniseglee.com. And literally just look at my name, combine them all together, one long line, and add a.com at the end.

Yes. Perfect. I very much appreciate your time and your insights. Thank you for being on the show.

I'm so glad that we had this conversation.

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