Challenging The Status Quo And Managing The Imposter Syndrome With Veronica Kirin

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually help you discover and then live your why. You see, we believe that knowing your why, that driving force behind every decision you make and every action you take, is the essential first step to really knowing yourself. It allows you to move forward faster and have a bigger impact. If you're already a fan of the show, then you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys and then we introduce you to somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. This show will be more powerful for you if you've already discovered your why. If you still need to do that, head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. It'll only take you about five minutes. Now let's meet today's guest. Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually helping you discover and then live your why. And so if you're a regular listener, you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys and then we bring on somebody with that why to see how their why has played out in their life. And so this week we are going to be talking about the why of challenge. So if this is your why, then you live outside the box. You. You don't believe in the norm or following rules or drawing inside the lines. It is far more natural for you to rebel against the stereotypical or classical way of doing things. You aggressively seek unique ways of approaching the world and finding solutions that no one else has considered. You like to create and innovate, especially in game changing ways. You have eccentric friends and eclectic tastes and a large variety of both.

You may have diverse interests with little in common with each other. As an entrepreneur, you prefer to create a new market versus serving an existing market. You love to be different, think differently and challenge virtually anyone or anything that is too rote or conventional. People with your why often accomplish amazing feats. When you say you want to change the world, you actually mean it. Pushing the envelope comes naturally to you. And so today I've got a great guest for you. Her name is Veronica Karen. She is an anthropologist on author and serial entrepreneur who works with business leaders to scale their impact and income while managing imposter syndrome. She is also the author of award winning book Stories of Elders and creator of Stories of COVID which documents the pandemic in real time. Veronica, welcome to the podcast.

Hi Gary, thanks for having me.

So I asked you this before we started, but tell everybody now. Where are you right now?

I am currently in Berlin, Germany.

What the heck are you doing there?

Well, you know, we talking about challenge here, which is exactly.

So. So apropos for everything in my life. And I really wanted to have the opportunity to live in a different place than what I had grown up in. I wanted to see what the, what, what else the world looked like. And the pandemic, believe it or not, made that actually easier because it helped me cut ties, which is heartbreaking in a way. And I desperately miss my friends and they know it, but I wasn't seeing them anyway because we wanted to all be safe. And so when the opportunity came to move to Berlin, it was an easy yes, and we are loving it. It's been one month and it's just been glorious.

So where are you from then? Tell us a little bit about your story. Where were you born? How the heck did you get into anthropology versus where you are now? That's an interesting twist.

Yes. Most I can tell you that it's unusual for me to be asked where I was born. I'm usually the one asking where someone was born as the anthropologist, but. So I was actually born in Michigan, the Great Lakes State, and grew up in Michigan and a little bit between Michigan and Pennsylvania, which is where my grandparents were. My grandparents were very old world style grandparents and actually lived in an old steel mill town. So. So I got very used to this romantic feeling around brick roads and eating palatinka with my grandmother, which is a Croatian style crepe, except for much more fried. And the crepe is. So it's a lot better for you. Right. And so I kind of grew up already straddling two worlds and you know, talking about challenge as your why. It appeared very early for me. I was bullied in school, but I had that challenge. I didn't know it at the time, but I had that challenge in my head. And so when I was made fun of for being nothing like the other kids, I was absolutely going to the beat of my own drum at that moment. I was able to kind of pull out of it and think to myself, why is your way the better way? So automatically challenge was appearing in my life and it was protecting me. In fact, no surprise then that I would become an anthropologist if I, in that early age, was already thinking, why? Why is your way, your society, your culture the better way? Anthropologists study cultures and intentionally remove themselves from their own culture in order to be as much a tabula rasa as Possible thus to have a biased, unbiased lens to look into other cultures and societies. So there you go, is that string of events. But so you ask where did I move from to Berlin? And.

The short answer is I was living in Los Angeles at the beginning of the pandemic and I thought I wanted to try out the LA dream. I prefer warm weather because my blood is Croatian. I'm meant to be in Mediterranean style weather. I simply don't do well in the cold. It's a running joke with friends and family. It's the truth. But LA didn't feel very good to be, to be surviving a pandemic in. And I didn't have a support system there yet because I'd only been there six months. So I went back to Michigan, where my partner still was. We regrouped in Detroit and to Berlin there.

And how are you liking it there in Berlin? I mean, what's going on there as far as the pandemic and how are you guys surviving there? Do you speak German?

Ich learne German.

So all your listeners are rolling their eyes. My accent is terrible. I speak Spanish fairly fluently, French and a bit of Croatian and a little bit of American Sign Language. None of those are very helpful right now.

So we're learning German, but we're loving it. So currently the status of the pandemic here is we're kind of in a soft lockdown. So public transport is still open. Stores, like grocery stores are still open, but some of the bigger stores or the soft sell stores are all closed. So, you know, we wanted to get new bicycles and we had to find a store that was allowed to be open in order to buy a bicycle, for example.

So I can go on like coffee walks, but you can't really go on coffee dates. None of the cafes are open. So it's an interesting way to learn a new culture in society because it's, it's almost like an intentional baby step into Berlin since nothing is very open. So I'm able to get to know public transportation baby steps. And I'm able to get to know the grocery stores in baby steps rather than doing it all all at once.

But we are, we're really loving it. Everyone is, is just lovely. I've been having incredible meetings, networking with entrepreneurs. Since there's no networking events. We're doing it all via Zoom. And everyone's been really welcoming. It's been just really fantastic so far.

Oh, that is awesome. And so tell us a little bit about imposter syndrome and how did you get involved with that?

Yes. Well, I have my own imposter syndrome. I honestly just was talking to a client about it because she's experiencing her own imposter syndrome. She's going through a growth spurt. I just went through my own growth spurt. And with growth comes imposter syndrome. It doesn't matter if you have done whatever you are doing now a million times, if you do it in a new and different way, in a new industry or with a new title. Oftentimes, imposter syndrome rears its head because it's tied to our identity. So if our identity hasn't shifted to the new level we've reached, imposter syndrome will emerge.

So what is imposter syndrome? Define that for us.

Yes. Perfect question. So imposter syndrome is the feeling that you are in the wrong place, that you are literally imposter, that you've fooled the masses into thinking that you are capable or knowledgeable. And oftentimes it comes even more for people who are minorities, women, people of color. They find themselves in a room where there's other people that don't look like them or sound like them or act like them, and they wonder to themselves, how did I make my way here? Even though you have done it through your own merits. So I work a lot with entrepreneurs with imposter syndrome because they're going from founder to CEO mindset that usually.