Radical Confidence with Lisa Bilyeu

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Hey, this is JJ Virgin. Welcome and thanks so much for joining me. This is Ask the Health Expert here. I put the power of health in your hands and give you access to the top people in health and wellness. In each episode I share safe ways to get healthy, lose weight, heal your gut, detox and lots more. So if you want to get healthy and get off the dieting for life merry go round, I'll give you strategies that will help you look and feel better fast. So I did a big query to my audience a couple years ago and I said, you know, if you're not where you want to be in your health or with your weight or your body, why not? Thinking they'd say gluten or cheese or sugar or I don't like to exercise. And it wasn't that at all. And what it really came down to was confidence and self worth. So I was super excited when my girlfriend Lisa Bilyeu came out with radical confidence and I was like you more must come talk about this. You must, you must, you must. And if you have not heard of Lisa, well, Lisa and her husband Tom co founded the Quest Nutrition company and I met them a couple years ago. I went and did Tom's Impact Theory and Lisa has and also got a great show podcast, Women of Impact. And so she's been really in it for years now and along the way she kind of realized something that was really her kryptonite could become her superpower. So I'm gonna let her explain all of that to you. Lisa again is the co founder and president of Impact Theory Studios which is a revolutionary digital first studio producing original content focusing on the theme of empowerment. And she also is the author of this fabulous book you will want to get for your success library Radical Confidence. She's also gifting us her four part confidence series. So I was really excited when she said this one. She has this her confidence workshop. She is gifting to us. And I'm going to put that@jjvirgin.com forward/lisab all right, I will be right back with Lisa herself. Stay with me. Hey, it's J.J. here. Now, let's be honest. The holidays are basically a financial ambush. Travel, hosting, gifts, surprise holiday, school, things. Suddenly you're wondering how December turned into a spending spree. If you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using Monarch. It's rated the Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface on your laptop or your phone. What really grabbed my attention is how fast those little holiday expenses pile up with Monarch. Seeing everything in one place makes it a lot harder to accidentally overspend. And honestly, I appreciate anything that keeps me from starting January with a money hangover. You'll love exploring the holiday spending category. Imagine how good it will feel to actually see what's happening before your credit card statement does that whole dramatic reveal thing. Monarch basically shows you exactly where the money is going in real time. And that level of clarity could change everything, right? Don't let financial opportunity slip through the cracks. Use the code virgin@monarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with code Virgin.

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Lisa Bilyeu, welcome to the show.

Oh, thanks so much for having me, homie.

I am just going to bring up what you just said because it rolls perfectly into what we were going to be talking about. And I said, are you ready? And you said, I was. What?

I literally was about to say I was born ready. And I stopped and I was like, no, I wasn't born ready. I've built myself to be ready. Wait a minute.

Where did that phrase come from? Whoever in their life was born ready.

I think it's actually a way of soothing yourself to be like, no, no, you're born ready. And so if you can believe that you're born ready, it may jolt you into action and so even though I do think it's forced to, your point is that all the skills who we show up to be every day is an accumulation of years and years and years of practice and skill building and.

Assessment and hard stuff.

And a lot of hard stuff.

So I know you've got the great Women of Impact podcast and you've now written this book, Radical Confidence. And why. What the heck? Why did you write the book? Like, how did you get into. Because you're like, confidence queen now with all of your stuff. Where did this come from?

Is the fact that. The fact that people think that I'm confident and inside every day. Even this morning, I woke up going, oh, crap, I got an interview with jj. I better come with my A game. It's like, you're not born confident. You don't wake up confident. And when people kept saying that to me, I was like, what are they seeing? Because it doesn't feel true. And what I realized was people were seeing someone that wasn't. That would get in front of the camera, somebody that would speak up, somebody that would face challenges, face hardship. And so they think it comes from the confidence, but it doesn't. It's radical confidence, which means that I'm actually scared all the time. I'm inadequate. Like, I have skill sets that I am not the skills that I'm not good at. And so it is okay. It's okay to admit that, but you have to ask yourself, what. What do you want to do and what skills do you have to learn? And so now if you can just look at yourself and literally say, oh, you're not there yet. Oh, you're really bad at that. But I can get good. I can figure it out. That's what I have. That's what people see that they perceive as confidence. And so it's just the momentum of moving forward and figuring it out again.

The momentum is such a biggie, right? Holy smokes. You know, you can't course correct standing still, but I also listen to this and go, all right, so singing, yes, I'm really bad at singing. And I would argue that no amount of lessons is real, because I know I actually started out, I wanted to be a theater actress. So I took all these singing lessons. And I remember the poor music teacher said, gosh, when you start, I really didn't think there was any hope. And I'm not sure what she was going to say after that. Like, there's a little hope, but, you know, these things that we're really bad at. Do you think we Work to develop the skills, or do you think we go find someone who's really good at it and hand it over to them?

Oh, that's such a great question. I think the important thing is to first assess what does good look like and who are you listening to in giving that opinion? Because you just said that story. And I was like, okay, well, I have to hear you sing to actually see if your teacher was accurate or not. Because you take the story like Lady Gaga literally. Lady Gaga went for auditions and they were like, ah, honey, you should just give up now. Like. And this was theater production, right? She's the biggest freaking pop star on the planet.

Yeah. I can promise you I'm not Lady Gaga.

But that's the first point, right, of just assessing. Is the information actually accurate or not? Right. So that's going to be the first step. Is the person giving you the advice credible or not? Number two is.

And that's so important. Hold on. Is the person giving you the advice credible? Like, think about how many armchair quarterbacks there are out there that can dash your dreams when they had no business, like, giving you the opinion. I'll give you a funny thing that my ex husband John, his mother was one of those people who was an expert at everything that she didn't know anything about. And he was one of the top tennis players. He was like, number one in his state. His whole dream was tennis. And she would go watch him play tennis, which she doesn't play, and give him advice. And I'm like, she doesn't know how to play tennis. Like, so what's going on here? She tried to tell me how to make my mother's Cassimo while we were making it for Christmas one year. And she was trying to tell me how to make it correctly. And I'm like, it's my mother's recipe.

But that's the thing. And that's exactly it, because so many of us blindly follow what people say. And so it really is important to assess who's given me the advice. So when we started Quest Nutrition, my dad turned around, like, what the hell do you guys know about protein bars? Now what if I listen to him? He knew nothing about manufacturing, so what if I listened to him? I would have not have started questing Quest Nutrition. But here's the caveat and here's really the interesting discussion. If you want to go down this rabbit hole. We also had people in the industry that were experts that told us, guys, we need another protein bar. Like, we need a hole in the head. There's already 1500 bars on the market currently. Don't even bother. Now, these were experts. So now even in this discussion, you have to pass between the people that actually know nothing and they're giving you advice. The people that do know something, but maybe blind or maybe have blinders on, and let's face it, experience does that to you. Maybe seven years ago, they tried to make a protein bar. It didn't succeed. So now they have the adopted idea that the bar that we're trying to make cannot die.

And here's what's interesting. Have you heard Naveen Jain say this? Because it's like I go, that's the. Such. The quotable Naveen, is that it will take someone from outside the industry to come in and revolutionize, which is what you guys did in the bar industry. Yeah, Right. And so they couldn't see it, everybody in there, because they already had the ones they had, and that was the ones they had, and that was all they needed. And then you came in and really kind of created a whole new avenue in bars.

Yeah, exactly. And part of that, and this really ties into your singing question is, Tom and I started to play a game that I do, I've now done for like the last 15 years, is no can I swear on this podcast.

On this podcast. So just be ready for that.

I will be polite. Then how about this?

I know you saw that.

Yeah.

No, I will tell you with my audience because I came from so much TVs where I was used to never being able to swear ever. Is. I. I sent out an email saying WTF in the subject line. It was for what's the formula? And I got eight.

Okay.

Holy smokes. So. So there you go.

All right, well, I'll be polite. There we go.

Okay.

Yeah, exactly. Keep the kids out of the room as Lisa Bailey talks. So we play this game called no B.S. what would it actually take? So with Quest, let me break it down. No BS what would it actually take to create a bar that has never been made before? A bar that would. That people would go to, that tastes amazing and happens to be good for you? Okay. We have to understand manufacturing, that was number one. Number two, we needed finance. So we put a house on the line. We got rid of one of our cars. We. We cut our pay in a third. That was all because we played the game. No BS what would it actually take to create a protein bar no one else has made? We said to ourselves, we're going to overcome any obstacle. What does that mean? We're not going to listen to the word no. We're going to figure it out. And people to your point who've already been in the industry, they've already tried, they failed, they've adopted a mindset that it can't be done and they just stick with it. It's like their self soothing protective mechanism. And so I recognize that and I just. But in those moments, it's just like if you believe in it enough of who you are and how you're going to show up every day there is that moment of just blind belief where other people, their lessons have taught them, oh, this is where everything fails. So they don't try. But for us, because we played the no bs, what would actually take? So we had the finances to buy the machinery that maybe we needed. We also had the time because we had. Tom had stepped away from his other business. So we now had the time to figure things out. We gave ourselves a timeline of what that would look like. And every time we found an obstacle, every time we faced failure, we just said, okay, no B.S. what would it take to get back up? No B.S. what would it take to keep going? And so in that is where we faced obstacles and kept passing and kept figuring it out. Now back to your singing question. I would literally sit here and go, okay, no B.S. what would it take for me to possibly be the best singer alive? Okay, number one is I haven't even taken singing lessons yet, so I better take singing lessons. Number two, I would look at all the successful people in the world and I would say, what do in singing? And I would say, what do they have that I don't? Maybe it's a pitch. And then I would maybe, maybe even explore. What do vocal cords look like? Is that something that actually is a muscle? Can I stretch? What can I do every morning? What's my morning routine? What's my evening routine to optimize my voice. And now once I've tried that and I've done everything I possibly humanly can because I've played the game, no bs, what would it actually take? And by the end of it, let's say I've done all that and I'm still not great, I can with confidence say, you weren't meant to be a singer. There's something that you just don't inherently have that you need. And now I would give myself the pat on the back for being brave enough to give it a shot, for going after that dream when other people told me I couldn't sing. And I figured out, oh, no matter what I Do. Even as much as I try. There's a fundamental something about voice or whatever that I just don't have. And now I'm not quitting because I think people get tied up over the word quit, and that's where they worry. And in that moment, I would be proud of myself. I wouldn't think of myself as a quitter. I would think of myself as someone who pivots, knowing the reality of the situation.

Well, here's the other cool thing about what you just said, and it reminds me of one of my entrepreneurial coaches, Dan Sullivan, has You create an impact filter. It's basically, you know, a very intense impact filter where you're really looking at something going, what would happen if I. If I don't go after this? What happens if I do go after this? What are the metrics to say I succeeded and what do I need to do? And I could apply this to health easily because, you know, you look at. When people go to get healthy, one of the biggest side effects of being healthy is more confidence. Right. So that's why I was so intrigued to bring you on today. But you look at and go, okay, as you're saying this and you're talking about all the things you need to do to be a singer, what I realized pretty quickly was, this was not my dream. And, you know, I think with some of those things, when you run through all of that, like, let's say someone says, you know, I want to get healthy, and then they decide, well, what getting healthy means to them is they're going to. They're going to win marathons. And then they go through what the heck it's going to really take to win marathons. They go, wait a minute, you know, I don't really want to do that. You know, yeah, at least I'll start sleeping better, exercising.

Exactly. And can I just emphasize that point? Because that's the point is that we make excuses or reasons why we can't do something or have gotten to a goal that we have, Right? And the excuses, we start to feel badly about them. Then we internalize it, and we think it means something about us. Instead of saying, okay, what does healthy look like? What does that mean? Let's say you. And then you say, okay, I want to be able to run a marathon. Great. No bs. What would it actually take for me to run a marathon? And let's say people say, well, I don't have the money. I don't have the time. You know, I don't have the bandwidth. Okay, well, let's Just take one at a time. Okay? I don't. Let's say people say I don't have the money to buy new sneakers that is going to take for me to run the marathon. It's like, okay, let's actually play that game. No BS what would it take for me to have enough money to buy sneakers? Maybe you have to move out of your beautiful two bedroom apartment. Maybe you have to move in with your mates and you have to rent a studio apartment. Maybe you have to take a night job also that you can afford to get shoes so you can run the marathon. That's the playing why you play the game, no BS what would it take? And now the beauty is you can ask yourself, is that actually the life you want? Do you want to live in a studio apartment with your mates? Do you want to be working night shifts? And if the answer is now, now you can say, oh, okay, now I actually have come to the truth that actually don't want it bad enough. And now you can stop beating yourself up over the fact that maybe you're a loser, maybe you're not there yet. Like, oh my God, my friend can do it and I can't. It just knocks down all of that emotional turmoil that we then self sabotage ourselves and lean into.

So good. You know, I had a mentor early on who said the minute you start those things, like, oh, but I don't have the time. You just put after that so I don't have to. And what this does is cut all of that out because I think there's a lot of times we feel pressured to do stuff that we really don't want to do. But it sounds cool that we're going to do it. You know, like, I just went to Peru and I was like thinking, do I really want to go hike that Inca trail? Like, no, I don't really want to do that. You know, I don't really want to. Yeah, no, I don't like to go to the bathroom outside. So let's, you know, and just being.

Honest with yourself, right? Instead of like, we kind of like have the pressure of the other people saying, oh, but you're not going to do it, you're not going to do it. Or we pressure ourselves and go, but if you don't do it, it means something about you. And actually anything that we choose, I think in being able to decide it isn't the life you want. It's like that actually does say something about you. It says that you love your life enough, you, you love yourself enough to Assess the realities of the things that you say you want, and then you're just being honest with. Actually, does it compute with the life or the thing, your future that you see? And just being honest with that, like, that is in and of itself can be so damn freeing.

Mm. Now, you said in the morning, you wake up and you're like. You start your thing. And I think we all. We all have negative Nelly sitting over here that will talk to us, right? And just start, well, who are you? Like, who are you to do that? And I got to tell you, Lisa, part of my test for me, I love the quote, do one thing a day that scares you. And, you know, sometimes you have to really look for the thing that scares you. And I'm not talking, like, eating spiders. I'm talking, like, you know, having to step on a stage you never stepped on before or maybe go to a party where you don't know anybody. That's, like, my worst nightmare thing. Right? But what do you do? What are your tips for that voice, that little internal critic that we all carry around with us? And it's funny, you know, my br. My son, who's coming out of his brain injury, so he tells you all these things because he doesn't know what's normal and what's not normal. And he says, you know, like, I got to figure out how to quiet all these voices. Like, we all have all the voices. It's just not. That's not. You and your brain injury. That's like, all of us have that.

You know, there's something like. There's something like five people in the whole world that actually don't think so It. There's no thought process. It goes straight from, like. It goes, like, straight from their mouth outwards. Like, there's no emotional process, which is so bizarre. Like, is that.

Well, there's a little that when. When my son was coming out of the brain injury, you lose your internal editor. So that filter, you know, that filter that stops you from saying the dumb stuff you could say, it was gone. I remember the nurse walked in. He's like, you're so effing pretty. I'm like, oh, she's cute. I agree. But let's comment, you know. Oh, my goodness.

Yeah.

Back to the negative voices. Yes. What do you.

Yes. So. So if I was that person that would just speak what I thought immediately and had no filter, everybody would say to me, oh, my God, you're so mean to yourself. And I think that we would say that a lot to each other. Right? Like, wow, you think that of yourself. Like, you're so mean. Like, why are you so mean? Like, you're lovely. Why do you think like that? And what I started to realize was I have no control. Right? Like, it just comes to my head. I think these negative things, so now I say, what do I do about them? For the longest time, I had that voice dictate how I show up every day. It was telling me it was. I was no good. I believed it. So I wasn't going and trying anything because I believed I was no good. So the negative voice I think of, like my kryptonite, it was something that was really holding me back. And once I just admitted it instead of judging myself and go, oh, you have a very cool negative voice, Lisa. It's your kryptonite. Okay. What's the opposite of a kryptonite? Tonight your superpower. Okay. And this was all just me trying to figure out how the hell I stopped this voice from being crippling and keeping me where I was.

And so when did you become aware of this, that you had voice? Because I wonder how many people don't even really realize that they got this thing going on.

I think it was probably around when we started quest because I was a stay at home wife supporting my husband for eight years. And so the negative voice, I was just. I would let it run rampant. And when I think about it, I think that's a big reason why I never spoke up and said I was unhappy, why I never told my husband I wanted a different life. Because the negative voice was trying to keep me where I was. How ungrateful are you, Lisa? You're telling your husband you want a different life and you've got someone that loves you and a roof over your head. Right? Like that's how powerful the negative voice was. And so when you can play out what that ends up resulting to. For me, it resulted to eight years of profound unhappiness and I wasn't speaking up. And so when I.

Were you aware you were profoundly unhappy at the time? No, because it was like water getting hotter and hotter and hotter. And you're the crap.

Yeah, yeah. And even saying to what you was. What you were saying before is that you wouldn't. Oh, God, I wish I could remember the quote, but I wasn't. Oh, do the. Do the hard things. Do something that fears you every day. The things that feared me with things like asking myself, am I happy? And I think that sometimes it can start with that simple of a question that we are scared Of. And I talk about this in my book, where it's like, open the can of worms and embrace the ick. The can of worms are the hard questions, right? Think about. And the ick is actually everything that comes along with asking that hard question. So think about Jeff. If you're in a marriage, right, and you say, am I happy in this relationship? Just in aunts asking that question, if you look at the answer and the answer is no, the amount of, like, be like crap that comes with it, right? It just. It comes with, well, if you're not happy, are you willing to go to therapy? Is your partner willing to go to therapy? Does this mean you have to get a divorce? If you've got kids, who gets custody? Who gets the house? Who spends time with kids at Christmas? Are you going to die alone? All these freaking fearful questions, right, that come with one simple question, are you happy? And so, so many of us are so fearful of asking that. And that's where it comes to. Okay, just assessing. Why didn't I ask that question? And the narrative that I was telling myself, it was the voice in the head. It was the voice saying, you don't deserve what you're saying.

I was going to say, you don't deserve to be happy, right?

Or you really. It was more, you don't deserve to be universally happy. Because I could acknowledge I'm so grateful and happy to have a husband that loves me, I'm so grateful and happy to have a roof over my head. And every time. So that's the gratitude piece. But every time I would then ask for more, that gratitude became the toxic thing, and that became the thing. How ungrateful are you? You're happy in your relationship, and you're happy in your, you know, in your having a roof over your head. And you want more. And so I think that over time, we've somehow adopted this mindset that you can't be happy in everything. That if you're happy in a relationship, who do you think you are to go after an amazing career? Or if you've got an amazing career, who are you to go after having that perfect family and me writing the book and me figuring out my own life, I'm just like, hell, yeah, you can. You absolutely can go after having an amazing relationship, having an amazing career, go after the health and lifestyle you want, and let. Don't you dare let anyone else tell you differently.

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Do you think some of that? Because this was really wild a couple years ago we queried the community and we said, well, if you aren't where you want to be with your health, with your body, why not? And I thought they'd go, I can't quit sugar. You know, I figured it'd be something like that. And that was not what I got back. I got like these essays back and they said, I. And the gist of it was I'm not where I want to be because I don't feel worthy. Like I'm not, you know, right. Like I need to take care of everybody else, not take care of myself, the self worth thing. And, and so when you get to the, like, you know, I don't deserve to be happy. I've got enough here. Does it go back then to just that feeling of like, you know, self worth? And if your self worth isn't strong enough, then you'll like just say, I've got that little bit of happiness there. That's. That's enough for me.

Yeah, that is so true. And going back to your question earlier, which I like, we've just gone great.

Interviewing women because we can go all over the place.

You were talking about the negative voice. That was where we were going. So even with the negative voice, going back to that, with the. So once I started to process, right. I was too scared to ask myself the question. I was too scared to even admit.

To tell myself, yeah, administer yourself.

Yeah. And so that's why I didn't even acknowledge it. But in being thrown into quest, that jolt, that shift of your day to day, your habits, your routine starts to allow. Allowed me to ask myself certain questions of is this the life you want? And in reflection, I realized it was the negative voice that was holding me back. Now what did I do about it once I started to just recognize that's it, like with grace, recognize. You have a crippling voice. Okay. It's your kryptonite. What if it was your superpower, which is the opposite. Okay. What would be the opposite of being the crippling voice? It would be my bestie. And so I was like, how can I change the mean girl in my head to become my best friend? So that was where I started. And now I said, what does a best friend do? And I just took my husband because he is my best friend. So I was like, what does. What does he do? Is he always telling me nice words? No, Sometimes he has to tell me the hard things. Why? Because I trust him. And so now I started to be, oh, what if the negative voice was just trying to warn you? It actually really cares about you. And so what it's trying to do, it's trying to warn you. It's your ego, so it's trying to protect you. Okay, what is it actually trying to say? Which means step number one, you have to just take. Take note. Just start writing down what she or he is saying. And so that's what I started. As I started to step in front of the camera, the negative voice was coming saying, oh, my God, you're terrible. You're no good. Right? And so I was like, all right, what is she trying to tell me? Because if I listen to her, I'll never step in front of the camera again. And what I realized she was saying is, you're not prepared. You. You get uncomfortable, you may freeze. Right? All these things that are fearful, fear based. And so I said, what if she's right? What if she's saying you're not prepared? Okay. She's actually right. I've never been in front of the camera, so how am I thinking? I'm going to be amazing and totally prepared. Okay? So I just need to practice. That's what the negative voice is telling me. The second thing, negative voice is saying, hey, you're worried that you may freeze, right? The same thing happened with my speaking gig. That was one of the big things. I started to listen. Why is she being so mean? Oh, what if you freeze, Lisa? Okay, she's actually got a valid point. What if I freeze? And so as my best friend, she's just trying to point out a trap I may fall into. And so as my friend who's trying to point out the trap, now what she's doing is helping me create a blueprint so that I don't fall into the trap. So the blueprint goes, all right, what are you going to do if you freeze Lisa on stage? You're going to come up with a strategy. And the strategy was, if you freeze, you're going to laugh at yourself. You're like, well, that was uncomfortable. Like, literally, I came up with a game plan, and that allowed me to be kind to myself, right? It allowed me to move forward to say thank you. So Much for helping me listen to the voice take action, and then I can assess afterwards and use the negative voice to help me see what I achieved and what I didn't. And then it ended up, as a result, me taking the. The. The critic in my head and developing the best coach. And that was how I took my negative voice to be the critic to my coach.

Wow, that is huge. I mean, and again, I'm going to look at everything in terms of health, but think of all of the different places this could be in health, because in health, you know, you go on some kind of diet in a. For me, diets are something you do short term to learn something about yourself. So you can't fail because whatever happened, you learned something, you know, but people go on them, perceive they fail, and then now they've created this feedback loop of I always fail when I do these things. Right. Where the now the coach would go, oh, boy. We just learned, like, when we tell you that you have to, like, not eat for 20 hours a day, you get real bitchy. And meat not a good one for you. Wrong diet, right?

Yeah, exactly. And now you've listened to that voice that is trying to be mean, and you're like, oh, actually, thank you for highlighting the fact that this doesn't work for me. And now again, yeah, it's become this coach that you can start to use as a superpower, and it not only encourages you to move forward, it stops you from being stuck, because it can really become that crippling. It could hold us back for years and years and years. But not only does it release the stuckness, it can propel you forward with an action. And going back to the confidence piece, that's one of the reasons why so many people don't take action, is they feel they need the confidence in order to take the action. But as you know, right. The confidence is the byproduct. The confidence is the result of taking action, falling on the floor, getting back up, learning from it, adapting and growing and reiterate, improving. And then you become competent. And then once you get competent, you pat yourself in the back, you tell yourself you've got it, and then you've developed the confidence.

Yes. And I would argue, too, that, like, the things that actually make you the most confident, if action drives competency, that drives confidence, is doing those things that you were afraid of, you suck at. Were hard. You had to get back up. You had to do it again. You know, I always say that song. You know that song, I get knocked down, I'm like, That's my song.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I always get up. Yeah, I will get up again. I might be a little dirty and messed up, you know, but once you get to a point though, and this is where I think things might get a little bit sticky. Like, someone gets to a point and, you know, they've, they've got a nice life, they're doing well and they're comfortable. And then, I mean, I think by nature we're aspirational beings. Like, we always want to be personally growing, you know, especially if you're, if you're 40 plus, if you're not improving your health, it's. It's declining. Like, you can't. It's not stable. Like, we have to continue to work on it. But same with your education, your skills, everything else. So you know what happens when someone gets comfortable? How do you get them to go, you know, like, like, okay, let's push you out of your comfort zone a little bit. Maybe they go, why would I want to do that at this point?

Yeah. So here's a really interesting discussion. So I get asked, one of the most questions, I get asked is like, well, if someone wants to go out and also create impact, what do they do? And I'm like, let's stop assuming that everyone wants to create impact, right? It's like, as long as you feel fulfilled, life is about fulfillment. The game of fulfillment, period. And so if your fulfillment is, you know, sitting on the couch at 7pm, snuggled with your family and you have the fire on and that's a life well lived. I'm not.

Which you still created. Created impact. Like, if you raised a great family, that's huge impact.

That's true. Most people just like, how do you create global impact? And I'm like, why do we want to. Want to create global impact?

Helping one person. Person, yeah. And that starfish back.

And that's also the other. I think one of the problems so in me trying to find out who I was, I realized I didn't want children. And me realizing I didn't want children, I got judged a lot, and I got a lot of pressure. Greek Orthodox family, right? Oh, my goodness. Yeah, a lot of pressure. And so what I started to realize is the more I started to talk about how I decided, how I stepped into my own, how I built my radical conflict, confident, I started to realize the dialogue was slightly shifting. And now women who were deciding to stay at home to have a family were now feeling judged. And I, to be honest, my entire life, I'm just like, we just Got to stop judging each other and saying what each other should want. It's like, what life do you actually want? Are you living it? And so that's really the question I would ask. So for anyone that, like, who says they're comfortable, is that actually a fulfilling life? If your answer is yes, then amazing, you found a way to live a fulfilled life. Keep going. I am not here to tell you otherwise. But if you have a comfortable life and you are not fulfilled, then you need to recognize you're not being fulfilled. And you have to then identify what that thing is that's going to freaking jolt you awake, right? And so one of the questions I ask and so a lot of people say to me, like, oh, I want the confidence, I want the confidence. And I say, okay, what do you want the confidence in? Because as we just established, the confidence comes at the end. So you want confidence to do what? I want to tell my husband I no longer want to be a stay at home wife and I want to go out and work, right? That was like, have my internal dialogue. Or you want confidence because you've told your family that you want to climb a corporate ladder and you've spent the last 20 years doing it and now you actually hate it and you want to be at stay at home, you know, partner. Okay, like, what is that life that you want and why? What are you waiting for the confidence to do that gives you the goal, right? That gives you the end point. All right, now you go, I need to tell this person I don't want to this life anymore or whatever it is. Now you've got the goal. Now you create a blueprint on how on earth you're going to get to the goal. And you identify the things that you're weak at, the skill set that you're weak at. Because that then tells you what skill set you need to cultivate in order to step into that goal that you have. And sorry, I've actually lost. What was your question? I was like so into like my stepping stones. Like, damn it, I forgot the initial point. I'm like, I was like out of the comfort.

But I think it's important. Like, you know, it's, it's really the assessment of, okay, am I fulfilled here or do I want more? And it's either is fine. And the bigger point that you made, that I think is such a key point. And here, here's what I've been noticing with myself is when we judge, quite often it's what we're judging in ourselves. That's what I see, I'm like, you're being judgy. And then like you're being judgy and this is thing. You just stop it. You know, it's just like there's two things I think it's really interesting to check in on. It's like if you're judging or if you're envious on about something, it's like, what's going on there, right?

Yeah. And envious being the thing that makes you feel badly about yourself because there's the, there's the envy and there's the. Oh, sorry. Actually there's jealousy and there's envy. So jealousy is when you look at somebody who has something maybe that you want, that you love and makes you feel badly and so you start to feel animosity towards that person. Envy actually is when you look at someone and instead inspires you. It makes you. Right. Like you're like, oh man, I really wish I could have that. Okay, how can I get that?

Yes, exactly. And it's a great thing, right?

It is a beautiful thing. And now to your point of. You need to assess whether it's envy or jealousy. Is this the thing or the person or the act or the place or the Instagram person that you're following? Whatever. Is it developing envy in you or jealousy? And there's. Here's the thing, there's no right or wrong answer, right? Like if you're jealous, it's not, don't beat yourself up for being jealous. Right. It's just, it means that you have to identify what it's triggering inside you. Give yourself the grace to, to acknowledge that trigger and then say, does this serve you or not? And then if you can say, no, it doesn't serve me because it makes me feel badly about myself. It makes me not want to reach out to my friend or whatever. Now you can just say, cool. I recognize it doesn't serve me. And so what I'm going to do is every day I'm going to work towards how I build my self esteem, my confidence, my radical confidence so that eventually I can be in situation where I see someone either doing better than me, has more success than me, has more wealth than me, whatever it is, that is the trigger. And I can be happy for them. Now, again, it's not to beat yourself up that you're not there yet. It's just to acknowledge we all have to start at that point of acknowledgment and then giving ourselves the grace that we are starting from that point. Because again, we also beat Ourselves up of the shame, the guilt. I can't believe I feel like this. It's my best friend and I, you know, I'm not happy for her. It's like of, don't beat yourself up over it. You're going through an emotional reaction. It's okay. That's even another chapter in my book is about having emotional sobriety. It doesn't mean don't feel your feels. You should feel your feels. But know when that emotion is serving you and when it's not. And how many of us have had maybe too many shots of alcohol? It's the same thing. How many people have too many shots of anger, too many shots of sadness? Well, we end up saying something or doing something that we're going to regret. So how do you build emotional sobriety so that you can look at all these situations, keep your feelings and your emotions even kill, so you can see things with clarity and make clear decisions. Because let's face it, you never want to make a decision based on emotional reaction, right?

Everyone remember that. Me included. Everyone remember that. I was. I will tell you, Lisa, the biggest thing I ever learned the hard way, multiple times is like, you don't get upset. Write the email and hit send. You just wait till tomorrow. Like, you just wait, right? You know, write it, put it into a draft, send it to yourself. I actually don't even put the person's name in the email now. I put it, send it to myself because you slip and all of a sudden there it went, you know, But I think the critical thing here is the grace. Dr. Joe Dispenza says it's like have compassion and care for yourself. Like, like, you know, this is where we start. I love the fact that you're giving everybody first of all your book, Radical Confidence is amazing. Everybody needs this for their, for their success library. And then you're giving everyone your four part confidence workshop, which I'm going to put@jjvirgin.com lisabee for lisabilu Lisa B. Well, thank you. Because I mean this, I mean literally. I remember when I first started in health and I, we were trying to look at the outcomes, measure the outcomes of what happened, happen when people started to do these different things and the outcomes would differ, right? Some people was energy, some people like they could work out more. Some people it was fat loss. But there was one clear outcome everybody had and it was confidence.

Honestly. I mean that was like one of the biggest things that we didn't even cover. But like, I've had massive health issues over the like the last six years. And the biggest part to my healing, to getting my gut back on track, to dealing with Sibo, leaky gut parasite Candida. Like I had all, all of that to the point where I was 20 pounds lighter, my hair was falling. I mean, it was bad.

I remember.

Yeah, that was, I was carrying you.

Around in a party.

I was hitting you up like hell.

Like, how could I, I can like carry this person around. She's tiny. You're still, you're still tiny. But I'm six feet tall, so everyone's tiny compared to me.

But anyway, but it really did come back down to the confidence is trusting yourself, starting to listen to yourself, to listen to the experts and see does that actually compute with how I feel? Like it all comes to trusting yourself and yet also giving yourself the grace that things you may try, whether it's health related, fitness related, that you will fall, but giving yourself the confidence or sorry, giving yourself the grace that you know, you're the type of person that can get back up. Like that's it. It doesn't matter what you face, if you say to yourself, I'm the type of person that can get back up now, whether it's like I said, health related, fitness, confidence, business relationships, like that mindset allows you to find the strength to always to keep showing up. And that's really the importance because I'm not here to pretend that I'm perfect. I've had massive issues that I've had to deal with and yet I keep showing up. And that was through radical confidence.

There you go. You're the poster woman for it. All right, so everyone again, jjvirginia.com lisab grab the four part confidence course. It's free to you, the listeners and Lisa, thank you so much. I'm so excited to be hanging out with you in a couple days.

Oh, ditto, homie. Yay.

Awesome.

Thanks for having me on.

Thank you. All right, again, as a reminder, make sure that you grab the four part confidence workshop. And again, I'm putting that jjvirgin.com lisab and if you've not yet subscribed to the show. Hello. You don't want to miss any of the most fabulous content, so subscribe to JJ.com I'll see you next time.

Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I tag all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their Next Read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading. Next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years, and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And, of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader, and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now, wherever you're listening to this podcast, and Visit our website, whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.