The Change

For 20 years, I've performed strength for a living. Nursing, law enforcement, emergency services— environments where doubt was not an option. Or so I thought. Because behind every decision, every shift, every room I walked into, there was a voice telling me I wasn't enough. I just never told anyone. That voice isn't weakness. It's your inner edge, if you know how to use it. Welcome, I'm Louisa Tostrop, the founder of Tostrop Consulting, a mental coach and a motivational speaker, and I help CEOs, COOs, and executives break the silence around the inner voice that tells them they're not enough. This is Mental Awareness: The Inner Edge for leaders who are ready to stop performing confidence and start leading from the inside out. Out. Now let's get into today's episode. Welcome to Mental Awareness - The Inner Edge. If this is your first time here, I'm really glad you found this, and if you're coming back, then welcome home. Today I want to start with something personal, something I haven't said out loud in English before, or in Danish. This show was in the first version in English, and then I changed it into Danish. And the reason it was in Danish had very little to do with the language. It had everything to do with my doubt. So yet, even I knew my vision, I knew my mission, I knew exactly who I wanted to help and why, I still was in doubt because I got the question from the people around me, 'Why are you talking in English? You live in Denmark, you're a Danish girl, you work with Danish people, so why on earth are you talking English?' Knowing something on the inside and acting on it in the outside world. As I told you, I knew my vision, I knew my mission, I knew exactly who I wanted to help, but yet even though you know that and you want to act, Those are two really different things. So instead of making a decision that was truly mine, I followed the stream. I became a little bit insecure, I doubted myself, and I got a little bit, you know, a little high from the imposter syndrome, and I stayed in the language that felt safe, the audience that felt familiar, and the version of myself that the outside world already knew because Being, you know, getting out of that comfort zone is really something that can shake your ass off. I'm sorry, my language, but you know, you get insecure and you meet the imposter. You got that inner voice telling you that, hey, who do you think you are? You're not good enough for that. Just stay on your lane that you know already, right? So yeah. But it didn't feel right. As I mentioned, it's the inner voice, or it was the inner voice, the one that should have been pushing me forward, was asking a question I didn't want to answer. So what if you're not ready for this? So instead of challenging that voice, being, you know, asking questions, being curious about it, as what I'm actually telling the people that I work with to be, because the inner voice isn't necessarily a bad thing. But in this case it held me back, right? So instead of challenging it, I just let it decide for me. I called it being realistic and strategic, but honestly, it was me not fully believing in myself yet because I had one identity at the time. And I mentioned I knew exactly what I wanted. And even though people didn't believe me, that time, at that time, I knew which direction I wanted to go, I knew which people I wanted to work with, and yet I hadn't really grown into that identity yet, so I, you know, I was, yeah, trying to navigate in a new field and having that inner voice and didn't have that network that was really necessary for me to stay there. So yeah, but nevertheless, here's what I know now and what I want you to really hear: that the moment you follow the stream instead of your own direction, you don't lose time, you lose trust. You lose trust in your own judgment, you lose trust in your own voice, and you lose trust that what you know on the inside is worth acting on. So, and for high performers or for leaders as you are, that loss of self-trust is the most expensive thing you'll ever experience because it doesn't show up on a balance sheet. It shows up at 3 in the morning. So you wake up at 3 in the morning and think, and you got all those thoughts and you don't know which one to grab or are they true or whatever. So Let me ask you one thing. Where in your life right now are you following the stream? So instead of making a decision that is truly yours, you follow the stream, perhaps because you're afraid of losing the identity. You've, you've, you know, you've reached all those goals, you do this, you perform every single day, and you're afraid of if you choose or go outside that safety net you have, you would perhaps fail, or what will people think about you. So, but maybe it's a role you stayed in too long. Maybe you should go after that, you know, feeling that you really want to go after. It's a direction you haven't committed to and a version of yourself you haven't given yourself permission to be yet, but You really want it, but you're afraid. So you know what I'm talking about, right? Because you felt it in the moment I said it. So I want to give you 3 concrete steps today to start trusting that voice again. So you could either write it down in your journal, or you can just listen to it, or you can save my episode and listen to it all over again when you cannot recall what I said, right? So, step 1: Name the stream. Write down one decision in your life right now that belongs to someone else's expectations, not yours. It's not to analyze it, it's just to see it clearly. You cannot change what you haven't named. Hmm? So step 2: Find the original signal Before the doubt, before the outside world weighed in, what did you actually want? So go back to that moment and write that down in one sentence. And that sentence is your compass. Step 3, take one small action that belongs only to you, not a big leap, not a complete overhaul, but one decision this week however small, that comes from your voice and no one else's. So that is how you start closing the gap between you and who you appear to be and who you actually are. So that is why I'm here in English now, because not because I had it all figured out and, you know, but because I finally made a decision that was mine. And if you're listening to this, I think you're closer to yours than you think. So, hey, I'm Louisa Tustrup. This is Mental Awareness: The Inner Edge, and I've got the homepage louisataustrup.dk. I've got the Instagram, which is Tustrup Consulting. I've got the LinkedIn, which is my name, Louisa Tustrup, and I've got this podcast. So please follow me like everywhere. I'll put the link in the notes below. Share it. Make other people follow their dreams instead of just staying stuck because the inner voice is talking a little bit too loud. So thank you for listening, and I hope you'll do the homework, and I love to see you in the next episode.