Defining Inner Success: Tara Hallidy

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 episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. My guest today is Tara Halliday of Complete Success. Welcome to the show, Tara.

Thank you very much, Christian. Delighted to be here.

So I can tell from your funny accent that you are not from the States.

I am not.

Where do you hail from?

I'm in Wales right now.

Very nice.

Very nice.

The UK. Which, let's say that puts it at about 2 o'clock. Is that right? 3. 3. Okay.

Time change. Yes.

Yes. Yes. It's very confusing. Do you guys do daylight savings times in the UK?

We do. We just, we just end it at a different time to you. So there's this crazy in-between time when either it goes really small or really large.

I think that whole thing's stupid, but whatever, I'm not in charge. So tell us what Complete Success is about.

Yeah, so Complete Success is for people who are, have outer success. So they're business leaders, business owners. And there's a transformation that we run called Inner Success that leads to Complete Success. So Inner Success is really helping people transform and change to be the biggest and best and boldest version of who they really are.

I love that. So how on an inner basis do you define success?

That's a great question because that's the very first question we ask at the beginning of program. How do you define success? And everybody's different. And everybody's idea of what being successful means changes from the start of the program to the end. But it really is, um, clearing out all the things that are stopping you from being who you really are, aligned to your inner self, and, um, calm under pressure so that you're not reactive to the world around you. You do things proactively, and that leads automatically then to success in relationships, success in business and financial success as well.

Okay, so you said people's definition of success change through the program. Why? Why is that? Is— I mean, is it because when they come into the program, they're, they're not clear on what success is, or the work changes their definition?

Um, it's more how they view it, so it's more their beliefs about what success is to them. And, um, very many high achievers, um, either undervalue themselves, uh, they're always maybe criticizing themselves, or they're not, you know, embracing the success. So they'll look more to the negative than the positive and not embracing the really owning their, their success. So what changes is how they view themselves. So rather than having distorted lens where things are never quite good enough. They're not feeling like they're quite good enough. They always have to push to the next thing to prove themselves. By the end of the program, we have deep self-acceptance, and that allows them to embrace anything they have to learn, but embrace what they've already achieved and really feel justifiably proud of it.

Yeah, I, I can, I can definitely relate to that on my own journey that, um, Outer success, business success as an entrepreneur. I'm not a high-performance athlete, so that's not a way to measure. But in business, I think oftentimes entrepreneurs don't establish what success looks like. Right. And so they don't ever know if they've achieved it. And oftentimes, which was my case, they'll reach a level of success and they'll look around and say, okay, now what? And to your point, I think a lot of them, myself included, say, well, okay, then we just level up the success in the business. And, you know, there's a hamster wheel of sorts where you don't ever achieve, which I mean ultimate success, which I think is okay. Right. Like, I don't think it's bad to want to continue success in business, but I think it's dangerous when you don't have a purpose behind it.

Right. Yes.

Is that your experience with your folks?

Absolutely. Purpose and alignment. So very often I find with my clients that they have a definition of success that isn't even their own. It was handed to them by a teacher, by a parent, by somebody really significant in their lives. They say, this is what success looks like. And so they work very hard and they get— they achieve what they set out to achieve, and yet it doesn't feel much of anything. It doesn't feel significant enough, or it doesn't feel like it's complete, and it feels like more is needed. So you— so, so they do exactly what you said, run a bit faster on the hamster wheel, see if the next level of achievement will bring that sense of satisfaction. And yes, I've done a good job, and yes, I've made an impact.

Yeah. And, and I, I think you, you said that a lot of, uh, high achievers don't feel satisfied, uh, that they're, they're trying to scratch that internal itch with an outward success, right? Like, so, so, so, uh, that's proof that I am sufficient, that, that I, I'm okay, is look at what I've, I've achieved. However, I, I, I'm intrigued by, you know, the, the definition of complete success because I, I think So many times you see entrepreneurs and business owners, founders, however you want to define that, they will have outward success or some form of success, business success, financial success, impact, but their marriage is in shambles or they're struggling with addiction or their relationship with their children is trash. And I think any entrepreneur that is in that situation needs to really— I mean, that should be a gut check. Like, something's not right if you're having success on one hand and not having success, you know, in the other areas.

Yes, 100%. And this, this is why the program focuses on— well, this is why we get into that complete success, because it touches all points of people's lives. So whether that's with family and relationships, with their children, um, whether it, whether it's with their finances, their business, their spirituality, even everything, you know, as to what they would feel they would want to have as success is this rounded balance where they are basically comfortable and happy, at ease with themselves and with other people. Now, it doesn't mean they're gonna lie in a hammock all day and not have any ambition. In fact, the opposite happens. The more people accept themselves and the more people feel comfortable with themselves, the less they're afraid of making mistakes, the more experimental and adventurous they become. So they actually reach out further for the fun of it, for the satisfaction or the impact of it, rather than because they're chasing something to prove something to somebody or to themselves even.

I was— I, I've had Dr. Patel on this show twice, and the most recent time we discussed his doctoral research with entrepreneurs. And he came to this fascinating conclusion— not, not in his thesis, not for his, his defense, but just kind of as a sidebar. Um, he believes that entrepreneurship is a way for people to find emotional fulfillment, personal fulfillment that is not necessarily available to the general public if they stick with it. So the data was that essentially, the longer someone was an entrepreneur, the more likely they were to feel emotionally connected, which I found fascinating because I— but because that seemed counterintuitive. But I think what it boils down to is if you, if you're in entrepreneurship long enough, you have to do work beyond the business. You have to do work on yourself, right? And it's kind of a crucible of sorts where it forces you to address things about yourself that you may not have otherwise been put into a situation to have to deal with. Um, now what are your thoughts on that?

Well, I absolutely agree with the crucible part. Running a business is very different from being an employee and showing up, doing your 9 to 5, and going home again. So there's a lot more of yourself invested in it, and I completely agree that the longer you do it, the more of yourself you have invested and the, the more likely you are to persist. Saying that, you can find yourself in a crucible and find yourself not able to cope. You might find yourself overwhelmed, you might feel yourself burnt out, you might feel like just leaving it all behind and quitting.

Oh yeah.

So, so yes, it's a crucible, but I don't think everybody has the tools or the support around them in order to move through that and really get the transformation that I think he was suggesting.

No, I— yeah. And understand he did not go into— he was just observing the data. This was data he picked up working on his thesis, but he found it an interesting side project that he might pursue in the future. But To your point, I think that it does require tools outside of the entrepreneur, like whether that is a coach, whether it's a program like Complete Success. It requires the entrepreneur to actually reach out beyond themselves for help. Because I don't think— I think the people that stay in the crucible and don't look outside themselves for assistance, they're the ones that commit suicide. They're the ones that give up on the business and, you know, or burn out and become addicts of some sort. And there are people, I mean, you know, I personally know some that persist in spite of all of it, but it's just, it's a dumpster fire, right? Like they become really distorted people because they're hyperfocused on the success of the business to the detriment of everything else. Like, they'll burn any bridge to achieve success because that's all they have.

I would describe that as somebody whose nervous system has been triggered, triggered into fight or flight or freeze. So basically they're working in crisis mode. Their brain is telling them there's an emergency, they're going to die. And they're basically in this panic state. And you people can be in that state for a very, very long time. Unfortunately.

Yeah. But it changes them, right? Like you're not, you know, I mean, you're not the person that you were, even though you may perceive it that you are. But you're not. If you stay in that space, it changes you. And, well, not and. I'm going to kind of pivot, going back to what you talked about, complete success. I was having this conversation with a colleague yesterday that my experience has been, and I see it in others as well, that the problems that present in the business are— and the problems that present outside the business. So for me, it was, it was my marriage. Are they— don't seem the same, right? They seem very different. But what I found was that the commonality, of course, is me. Right. I'm the, I'm the person in the marriage. I'm the person in the business. So in working on me, even though the problems appeared different in different circumstances, both of them improved. Right. Yes. Do you see that often?

All the time. So, so the program that I run, Inner Success, is a leadership Transformation Program, and people go in expecting it to change their leadership, how they perform, their effectiveness, how they operate with their employees, how they have an impact, and all, all aspects of their business. But we go into the transformation part and they find the transformation changes how they interact with their partner, how they interact with their children, how they interact in their community, even how they step up and take leadership in other parts of their lives that aren't their business. And so yeah, absolutely, the, the, the transformation can't put a delineation between work and the rest of your life. You're right, it's— you're exactly the same person. Um, back in the 1950s, one of the great granddaddies of personal psychology, Dr. Carl Rogers, was kind of trying to answer this pro— question: why, when we have food, shelter, jobs, money, safety, why, when we have all that, are people still miserable? Why is there still suffering in the world? And he'd worked with tens of thousands of people and he's a great teacher, and so he went on this quest to find what that one thing might be, and he found it. And he found that it was a sense or a belief, an unconscious belief, that our worth as a person depends on what we do. Mm-hmm. Like, what we do is who we are. So you do something good, you are good. You do something bad, you are bad. So this is why when life's ups and downs happen, then people feel better or worse about themselves., and then that causes a certain level of reactivity, whether it's the crisis of being in fight, flight, or freeze, or whether it's just that you tend to get a bit snappy when you're tired. But that— it's, it's all the same. And he found that when people could develop the opposite, a belief that their worth is unconditional, their worth does not depend on what they do, then that's the transformation that changes every single aspect of their life. And that's the transformation that we work on in Inner Success.

Do you run into people when they enroll in the program that get to that point and balk? Like, uh, no, this isn't what I signed up for. I'm not, I'm not willing to go down this path.

Um, no is the short answer, but there's a reason for it. So we start really, really gently. It's a 90-day program and we start small and there's 8 modules and you go through each of the modules and you only go on to the next one when you've kind of got everything that you can from the previous one. So we never take people to that point where it feels overwhelming, where it feels too much. Every, every step feels doable, but it's a momentum program and it builds one step after the next, after the next. So that allows people to go through it. They might take it— some might take a little bit longer than others in a particular step, but that's okay. That's why it's personalized. But yeah, people, uh, we do not dig into the, to the biggest and worst things. And I, I think people get a little nervous about that when people talk about, oh, I'd never go to see a therapist, right? People who say this, and it's because they don't want to dig up these huge uncomfortable things that they'd rather stay buried. So yeah, we don't do that. We start really, really small and work your way up so that if you come across something big towards the end of the program maybe, then it doesn't seem big anymore. It's shrunk its effect and so it's then you can address it in a very gentle way.

Yeah, and I think what's fascinating is, I hate to reference Dr. Patel again, but what he, he, he exited his business very successfully and was, you know, in his 40s. And he was like, okay, now what do I do? And he went through, through some iterations, but he landed on getting his doctorate in psychology. And his motivation was that his experience with therapy was it was not designed for entrepreneurs. Like, you know, his experience was he'd go in and, and talk to the therapist and the therapist had no frame of reference for his problems. And, and so it was kind of like, well, that doesn't really sound like a problem. Right? And the therapy model is predicated— and my colleague and I yesterday were talking about this as well— therapy is predicated— the whole business model around therapy is to not fix you, right? Because then you stop coming. And a lot of people, you know, don't think about that. But like, you know, what's the motivation for the therapist to cure you, quote unquote, right? And I think that's what I— why I gravitate to the coaching model, both for myself and what I do for others, because it's outcome-driven. It's not, you know, yes, there are bad things that have happened to you in your life. Yes, we all have that. You know, some much worse than others. But it's not about fixing those things or even really coming to terms with them. It's acknowledging how your current behavior is impacted, right? So, and then how can you come to terms with your emotions? Can you be not reactive? Like you said, to, to your emotions, that they're not controlling you, uh, to achieve the outcomes that you want. Now, I'm, I'm not saying that therapy is not valid and that there aren't reasons to do therapy. I, I think there are, um, but I think the intent is different with programs like yours and, and my coaching, which is you're, you're focused on getting someplace different than you are. Not going backwards and analyzing what happened. Does that ring true to you?

Yeah, very much so. I mean, I see therapy and coaching working in very different areas. When you talk to a therapist, they're really working with people with mental dysfunction, like people aren't functioning as well. Things are, you know, so maybe this is people who are in extreme crisis. Maybe they've burnt out. Maybe they've they've got PTSD or something like this. So they're not functioning. So the therapist's job is to help people with dysfunction to bring them to normal functioning. That's their role. And they move, however fast or slow they move, that's the direction that they would say they're going. With coaching like yours and mine, we're taking people who are at normal functioning but would like to go further, would like to take this to higher functioning, easier functioning, more comfortable, more enjoyable, more productive, you know, whatever the definition that people would like. So I see it's two very different spaces.

Well, that's interesting. So, so you, you believe that the people that you work with in your program are operating or functioning, quote, normal, unquote, like not, not dysfunctional.

Yeah, for the vast majority, they can cope, right? So if they went to see a therapist and saying, well, I'm, I'm, I'm stressed right now, the therapist would kind of say, yeah, but you're functioning, you can go into work, you're doing your job, you're earning your money. That's, that as far as the therapists are concerned is normal functioning. Now it could be miserable, stressed, and very uncomfortable functioning, but it still would be normal functioning.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I, I, I guess that's, that's an important distinction of like, are, are you, are you functional? Whether, whether— I mean, I, I guess it's a, it's a squishy term to, to determine what's, what's functional or normal. Um, yeah. And, and that's probably a large gray area. I, I think personally most entrepreneurs are highly dysfunctional. Um, I've equated entrepreneurship to a mental disorder, in fact. Not to make light of people that have, you know, you mentioned PTSD or some other well-defined disorder. But what I've seen is that entrepreneurs have a there, it's not monolithic, but there are certain characteristics that entrepreneurs have that tend to lump together and create this disorder that I say, you know, I don't know if you've observed that.

I wouldn't define it as a disorder, but then I do have therapy and coaching training.

But you do see commonality of of characteristics of entrepreneurs?

I see a lot of people who are stressed. I see a lot of people who are nervous systems are triggered, who are chronically nervous system triggered, which makes them reactive. Now what, what's interesting about that is that when your nervous system is triggered, the, um, there are blood flow changes in your body. You're, you're, because you're responding as if there's a tiger in the room, right? So blood flow is is sent to your arms and legs to allow you to fight or run away, fight or flight. It gets taken away from the prefrontal cortex, which is just in the brain just behind the forehead, and that's your logical thinking and strategic planning and emotional regulation part of the brain. Princeton University studies showed that your IQ drops by 13 points when you're in the triggered state. Another study, creativity is reduced by 50%, 5-0%, it's huge. People are emotionally reactive, they don't make such good decisions and they're less cooperative. So if you think about just having your nervous system triggered, it has a massive effect on somebody who's trying to run a business, grow a business, scale it and do really well. It's it's holding them back in a way that they can't even see. So being able to stay calm under pressure and to have that level of resilience where you're not triggered, we actually remove those triggers, that then changes from normal function to really superbly high functioning.

I had another, uh, doctor of psychology on the show, and I cannot remember his name. I can see his face. I'm embarrassed. Um, but, but he works with people in, uh, he, he doesn't use the phrase high stress, he does high stakes. Um, and he actually is a professional stuntman, has been one for like 20-plus years. And so, uh, he works with people like in the military, EMT, first responders, you know, law enforcement, um, where the stakes are high and, and your, your body is is having that— your nervous system is having that response uncontrollable, like you can't control that. But, you know, his, his work was fascinating because he said that the, the nervous system state of, of being in those high stakes, like life or death, like doing stunts is the same response that your body would have when you're performing at a high level, like physically, right? And so it's, it's really in him— to him, it's about reframing that into a positive versus a negative. What would you say?

Yeah, so there is— so we've got several things here to unpick. Well, first is being triggered. Your body is responding. It's responding to a part of the brain called the amygdala, which, if you like, has a list of dangers. You know, this is going to kill you, that's going to kill you, watch out for this, right? So these are the triggers that your brain will respond to before you have a chance to think about it. So if once you're triggered, then the best thing you can do is to try and get your nervous system calm again. In fact, the Special Forces have got a very good box breathing. Absolutely. Breathe in for 4, out for 4, yeah? Specifically to calm the nervous system, calm the vagus nerve, which is getting, which is part of this whole triggering experience to bring back that capacity to the brain to be able to think. So the amygdala is unconscious. It's unconsciously programmed with these triggers and it receives the information from the world around you several milliseconds before the thinking part of your brain. So whilst I love the idea and I've heard the idea of reframing this, you know, making it— that's a conscious thinking about it. Now, you can reframe before an event, yeah? When I get feelings like this, it means my nervous system is triggered, but that's just me on alert, right? So you can not make it a bad thing, not judge it, which is wonderful, or you can get yourself calm afterwards. But if you want to absolutely change it, it's not how you think about it, it's about working with those triggers in the amygdala. The unconscious triggers. And that's the work that we do within Inner Success, is removing those triggers so that you don't even react to them. You forget that that's even a problem. And that changes everything.

Yeah, I mean, I can't remember his name. I think he was, you know, applying it in a situation where it really was life or death. Like EMT, those kind of things. And that when you're performing at that level, the increased adrenaline, the tunnel vision, the focus, those things are actually beneficial, right? To be able to, to do what you need to do. That's not necessarily the case in more cerebral endeavors like entrepreneurship, which usually that's, that's going to present as a negative effect.

It does. It has all those, all those detrimental things I mentioned earlier with the focus, the concentration, the— your intelligence drops, decision-making, all of those in the entrepreneurial sense. The problem for entrepreneurs is that the brain is reacting as if we're in a life-threatening situation.

It makes no distinction between I'm emotionally triggered by this. And there is a saber-toothed tiger. It does not know the difference.

That's it. That's it. Yeah. And this is what psychologists have been looking at in the last 10 years, a process called memory reconsolidation, where we can actually find the triggers unwind the triggers so there is now no longer an emotional charge to them. And by doing that, we defuse the triggers. And it's, it's, it's, it's incredible. And it shows that it's starting to work for post-traumatic stress disorder as well. So that is being used in therapy space, but it's also being used in, in programs like mine.

Tell us how you got into this complete success? I mean, what, what was your journey like to this point?

Um, well, I went to university to study engineering, and, um, because I wanted to study psychology but my family wouldn't let me. So we're talking about beliefs about what success is. So I had a 10-year career and I got a PhD in engineering and, you know, was doing very, very well financially, but I wasn't terribly happy with it. So then I went back to school and I retrained as a holistic therapist. So that's in looking at all aspects of people's lives. And, um, started working with people on a one-to-one basis, helping them. And it was all sorts of people, but it, it did gravitate towards leaders and entrepreneurs. I, I just, it just resonated for me. Um, and then some of them kept coming back. You talked about the, the model of therapy. My, my idea, my business model, which really wasn't a good business model, but was that they worked with me and then we tapered off and then they went fly free kind of thing. But there was some that kept coming back and I wasn't comfortable with that. So I started chasing why, why did these people keep coming back? And that's where I came across the work from Carl Rogers about unconditional worth. I came across a fantastic coach in, in Georgia called Dr. Greg Baer, and he focused on helping people move from conditional worth that 99.99% of people have learned to unconditional worth. As I then— I trained in that, and as I was working in that somebody came and asked me, um, is this imposter syndrome? Now, imposter syndrome, I hadn't heard of that, so I went to research it and I found that all the symptoms of imposter syndrome, which we can talk about in a bit, but all the symptoms of imposter syndrome were the same as the symptoms of conditional worth. So I thought, aha, I've got this. I, you know, is there a link? So I went out and I interviewed, must have been about 100 people about imposter syndrome and came to the conclusion that yes, this is the case. So I started working with people with imposter syndrome, and then I developed my program Inner Success to address the issue of conditional worth and turning into unconditional worth. I put it in the context of imposter syndrome, and I worked with people for, um, uh, it's 6 years now on that particular program. Last year I started training coaches to, to do it because it was going very well, and they rebelled. They said, they said, you can't be talking about imposter syndrome anymore. This is just so much bigger. This is whole leadership, whole person, everything. So we had that inner success, complete success focus But they said, you know, you've got to stop talking about impostor syndrome.

So why did they have that reaction? I'm kind of confused.

They said it's too small. The label of imposter syndrome is too small. And what we're doing is much more than getting rid of imposter syndrome, although we had the— it was getting rid of imposter syndrome, it's like 67%, 68% improvement, whereas other coaching improvement, the other coaching techniques were only getting between 20 and 30% improvements. Although we're getting massive improvement from the imposter syndrome point of view, the transformation was so much bigger. Okay. So they said, stop talking about imposter syndrome, start talking about it in terms of whole person transformation.

That, that's interesting, you know, because I, I can't help but bring a spiritual element into this conversation with the idea of worth. And I think you're exactly right. I think even, even if your parents are best intentioned, there is a stick and a carrot approach to this world, right, around obtaining behavior, right? And it's ubiquitous. It's everywhere. But this idea that we all have a universal worth as a person. Is, to me, is a spiritual matter, right? It's not of this world. And I don't think most people would disagree that like every human has worth, every human has value. Yes. How do you address that in your program?

That is the foundation of the program. It is, it is the transformation of, um, taking people to— from seeing that people's worth depends on what they do to that people's worth depends— does not depend on what they do. So unconditional acceptance of others, unconditional worth, and seeing it in yourself and seeing it in other people. And when you see it in other people and you see someone being reactive and you understand that they're doing that because something's triggered their nervous system, because underlying that, they're, they're tapping into this conditional worth, then you, you stop taking it personally. In fact, you can look at them again and say, okay, you're clearly very stressed. You might not say that, but you, you're clearly very stressed. It, it stimulates the part of society, that social part of you, the society part of you that makes you want to help. You start to feel naturally compassionate towards them, and that is the real you. That's the real you coming out. And that— I think you're absolutely right, you could describe that as a spiritual thing because we're, we're being able to access who we really are, being aligned with our values and not reactive to the world and people and events around us.

Yeah. And that's a hard thing to cope with because, you know, like I can stipulate that everybody has inherent worth and that that inherent worth is the same, you know, for every human.

Yeah.

Whether they're living on the streets, or they're a CEO, or they have Down syndrome, like, it doesn't matter. The, the worth of an individual is the same, right, at its core. But in this world that we live in, we have expectations that we want to achieve or to see. And then that— you use the phrase universal acceptance, I think. And that's difficult. Like, I can accept you as having worth as an individual. But if you're working for me, and you're not performing the way that needs to happen, then we have a problem. Right. And I think what I'm going to ask the question, but like, It's not saying that you can't expect behavior from people. It's not that. It's that whether or not you do what I ask you to do does not change your value as a human. Is that what you would say?

I would say that's exactly it. So how it often happens when you've got an employee working for you and they're not performing, they're either screwing up or they're doing something even deliberate or seemingly deliberate, we see that, like you said, we've got a problem. But it, it triggers us. We react to it. We get emotional about it. We get angry or frustrated or, or annoyed or disappointed. All of those are all these reactions to it. And that emotional reaction then changes the way that we might interact with that person. We might even go towards punishment. Right. Now, if we see that person as unconditionally worthy, unconditionally accept them as a person, then we see that what they're doing is not being done deliberately to us. It's not about us. Right. We can see that clearly they're struggling with something or something's going on in their life, and that's the best they've got in the moment. They haven't learned a different way to do it, a better way to do it. And when we don't have that emotional reactivity, then we can enforce consequences without us being emotionally reactive. Right.

So then, and it's, so then it's not personal, right? It's like, I'm not, I'm not punishing you because you didn't behave correctly. It's, it's like, okay, you know, I've, I've coached you through this. I've, I've led you through this, but you're not able to perform in this role. And we're going to have to part ways, but it's not personal. Like, I mean, I'm not firing you because you're a bad person. It's because this isn't working. This isn't fit.

Right, exactly. And when you're not triggered by other people, when you're not reactive, then you can do that calmly. You don't feel guilt for it. You don't feel like, oh, maybe there was something I should have done. Maybe I'm not a good leader because I didn't— you know, all of that doubt's not there. You just say, okay, these— this is the consequence, right? And it's— so you still— in fact, I would say you— this is getting into boundaries— you still hold people accountable. I think it's easier to hold people accountable when they're not triggering you. Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I wish we could continue the conversation, but unfortunately we're at time. How do people find out more about Complete Success?

Yes, so my website is completesuccess.co.uk and you'll find me most often in social media on LinkedIn, Tara-Halliday-PhD.

Perfect. I did see I didn't even call you Dr. Halliday, so I apologize. Is Dr. Halliday, everyone. Uh, if listeners will have those links in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. Until next time, remember, you are not alone.