Dethroning Your Inner Critic to Lead Your Meaningful Revolution, with Joanna Kleinman

How is your inner critic preventing you from leading your personal, meaningful revolution? That's what we're talking about today with guest Joanna Kleinman. And it's a wonderful conversation because we cover the internal things that you do need to lead. And on top of tons of amazing observations on just how people work, we really highlight this idea. You have an authentic self and an inner critic, and we want to work through the issues the inner critic presents to us throughout our lives in order for our authentic self to show up. So we nerd out about leadership and psychology and personal development in this episode. I know you'll love it. So welcome to the Meaningful Revolution. I'm your host, Sh. Sean Butner, and let's get to this amazing conversation. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Meaningful Revolution podcast. And I'm really grateful to introduce my friend Joanna Kleinman. And jumping right into it. Joanna, I know you help people figure out who they are so they can find fulfillment on their own terms, is how I'm paraphrasing it. Correct me if I'm wrong on it there, but on the topic of leadership and why people need to lead their personal, meaningful revolutions, could you maybe share a story about when your inner critic was a little bit louder than your ambition, your dream, your goals, or what you wanted for in your life?

Oh, yes. Okay. First of all, the truth is that I. My. The way that I teach my methodology is that we really don't ever get rid of our inner critic. Right? So we just. Okay. But I can tell you that my inner critic was the loudest when I had a dream to write my book. And who am I? I'm not an author. How to write. I don't need. How the heck am I going to ever write a book? And how my book got written was one foot in front of the other. And while I was writing my book, my inner critic screamed at me. Not just once a day, probably. And I just had to continue to separate myself from her and say, okay, thank you. I know you're trying to protect. Protect me from failure and criticism and judgment and not enoughness. And I just had to keep going. And I have million worries, like, because once you overcome what you thought you could never do, you're just presented with the next challenge that's outside of your comfort zone. And then your inner critic starts squeezing, screaming at you all over again. And then. And. And that for me, that's how my journey keeps unfolding, is I just keep going towards my vision while my inner critic is screaming in my ear all the stuff she continues to Scream at.

Me on so in taming your inner critic, right? And I, I feel like for me it's come up in imposter syndrome when I've started jobs where I didn't have, I was a software engineer before when I went to business school, so I didn't have that computer science degree. And like, what am I doing here? That was a lot. I feel like you have a lot to prove and stuff. How do you keep one foot in front of the other type mentality when that inner critic, especially maybe early on in your career or when you're starting something new, is the loudest?

Yeah, that's a great question. And part of why I, I, I titled my book and, and the name of my business is dethroning your inner critic is because I don't even know if we can say taming, silencing, quieting. For me, it's just continuing to remove her from that throne. In my mind, I think that at the core of our inner critics, okay, I, first of all, I don't think that there is a human being alive. I don't care who you are and what you've accomplished. And there is not a human being alive that doesn't have some version of an inner critic. And of course it manifests differently for all of us. But what I will say is that underneath our inner critics is what I refer to as the never ending message. And the never ending message is always some version of in some way, I am not enough. So when you can really distinguish what your never ending message is, you can start to see that when your inner, inner critic is screaming at you about something that you're doing now, the truth is that message is the same message that you had a year ago and five years ago and 10 years ago. And you probably had a version of it when you were 15, you had a version of it when you were 8. And that's really the key, is that when you can really understand, oh, this I always say, put her right here on the palm of your hand and you say, oh, okay, I get it. I see you. I know what you say. I know why you say it. I know why you're triggered. It diffuses your inner critic's power to derail you. Okay, don't think that's really the key. The never ending message.

Okay, Right on. So, and the first question that came up when you said never ending message, the I'm not enough is one of those that's maybe common in your work. Have you seen some themes or are common ones that tend to get 80% of folks.

Yeah. It's funny, I think if more people knew about this, if we were to whole, let's say like millions of people, I think you could distinguish down to like probably 10 or 15. Like we all land very common themes. And I would say the themes are, I don't matter, I'm unimportant, I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough. At the worst level, it could be a form of I'm worthless, I'm unlovable. And what's really interesting is that the intensity of your inner critic is not necessarily, it doesn't necessarily correlate to your life experiences. We've all heard of people that had horrific childhood experiences and are truly some of the most powerful leaders and. Right. Most influential people in our culture. And then we've got other people that were. Seem to be raised in loving, nurturing environments and they have the worst inner critics. Yeah, but the. But so the theme is, you really could say it's I'm not fill in the blank.

I absolutely love that. I think it's a really interesting insight. Cool insight. So I'm curious then about your message or your critic because to me, as I'm a high performance coach, so I'm correlating this with like a deep seated fear about who you are in the world perhaps. And so how, from your perspective as psychoanalyst, as a business owner, as a leader yourself, how do you manage that fear? Or how do you see the other side? Right. Cause I know it's sometimes it's finding that forward momentum like you were talking about before. Sometimes in my world, it's focusing on what you gain from it. Not focusing on like you're not going to die by going up on stage and performing your first show. Musically, you're going to gain that confidence that you can do that and survive type of mental jiu jitsu. So what do you think about that?

Yeah. So as you were speaking, there's a quote that comes to mind that says our pain pushes us until our vision pulls us. Okay. So biologically part of why we all have an inner critic is because biologically we've got the, this primitive brain that wants us to avoid danger. So anytime we're doing something that feels out is outside of our comfort zone, that's going to evoke fear. It's really primal in our DNA. And so I would say the thing that I focus on is building the muscle of being able to, to experience the fear, to have capacity for all that nervous system stuff happens when we're in that fear. And to keep our focus on the vision and our vision. You could have a lot of different visions in your life. Right. You could have a vision professionally in terms of being a leader. You could also have a vision for the kinds of relationships that, that you want, the kind of relationship you want with yourself. In fact, I think, I think it is important to have visions in every area of your life. That's important. And to really keep those visions front and center so that you are consciously taking steps towards those visions even when you are terrified. Yeah. And the. There's one other thing I just want to say about that because another quote that came to me when you were speaking, you may know Marianne Williamson. She is. Yeah. So she, she wrote Nelson Mandela's inaugural speech and it's one of the, my, my, my favorite speeches. It's called our, Our Deepest Fear. So for those of you listening, if you want to Google it, but I'm going to paraphrase here. She says our deepest fear is not that we're inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we're powerful beyond measure. And we ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? And then she goes on to say, who are you not to be? You are a child of God and you're playing small doesn't serve the world. But sometimes our fear, it feels like, oh, I'm afraid I'm going to be judged and I'm afraid that people are going to not like me and I'm going to be rejected and all that stuff. But on the flip side, we also have to look at the possibility, particularly as leaders. Are we actually afraid of our own power? Because sometimes, you know, we'll stay with what we know even though it's. We say, oh, I really want to get ahead. I don't know, I don't know why I really want to write that book. I really want that promotion or I really want to start that business. We don't do anything about it. And we say it's just because I've got too much fear and I've got too much self doubt, that fear and self doubt isn't going anywhere. So maybe also consider, are you actually really afraid of all the unknowns that will happen if you really step into your greatest potential and your power?

Yeah, that, that is something I've seen with a lot of my clients in that we talk in high performance, talk about three types of fear. There's process fear, there's outcome fear, and there's loss fear. And so the outcome fear of the grass is always greener on the other side. What if I start a business, build financial security for my family and I'm miserable. Right. And then we'll hyper fixate on and we're miserable. And if he did. And something that I noticed doing a little bit of research before here is this idea of having faith in yourself that I saw come up in some of your work. And I think that's very important to know that things are figureoutable to quote like Marie Forleo or you know, part of leadership, I think, and part of managing, managing your inner critic. I don't know if there's a better term for that. But is that idea of confidence that you can persevere?

Yes, absolutely. So what has greatly helped me and again what I also teach the. I think we're in the thousands of people that have gone through my, my, my work which I'm, I'm excited about. But the, the, the thing that has helped the most is I think what's given me faith in myself is trusting. You could say it's the universe, you could say it's God, you could say it's horse. You could say, you know what, whatever your version is, what I do think is that actually life is always taking us somewhere. So it's really one of two places. Either we're being guided towards the next door that's supposed to open or we're being guided towards the next lesson. And so it, and I, I wonder if you can relate to this, Sean. But certainly in my journey in creating what I have already created and all the things that I have yet to create, there are a lot of things that have not gone my way and there are a lot of things that have failed. There are a lot of things that have gone nowhere. I've spent a lot of money thinking this is it, right. And then, and, but if I'm now looking on all of those experiences, what I can see is that those experiences are just as much a part of the journey as my win. Right. And so thank goodness I was able to have that spiritual connection where I said okay, this didn't go my way. And I'm not going to take my inner critics, meaning that she assigns to that experience as face value because there's so much, there's so many other interpretations we can have for when something doesn't go our way. That's a major things. Right. I've had like business relationships blow up and of course that relationship was supposed to blow up. I still love my ex business partner by the way. She's Still a close friend of mine, but thank goodness it blew up, you know.

Yeah.

So if you're listening to this and you are in this place of oh my God, I am so frustrated and where am I going and where am I headed? I think that faith in, in, in trusting that the universe wants you to win. Right. And that's keep trusting that no matter what happens, you are being guided and you are being led and allow yourself to be led. Right. And sometimes when we believe in that inner critic, we don't see the messages like, wait, those inner whispers that we can trust and just take the next step. That's all we ever need. Just take the next.

Absolutely. It reminds me of one of my favorite speeches from Steve Jobs. He did a commencement speech at Stanford before he passed. And I think it's called like Connecting the Dots. Looking back where he talks about going to college, realizing it wasn't for him dropping out and then just attending a calligraphy class, right. And he's like, how is this ever going to do anything? It's just fancy drawing, right. Fancy writing. And that later became a basis as a for Apple's competitive advantage in fonts when the Mac finally launched. And you could never have guessed that through line and amazing having. Yeah, yeah. Trusting in your instinct. This is interesting. Let me follow that. And you never know what's going on. Is very important.

Very important. We, we get caught in our own demands, our own expectations, attachments, and I call those your inner critic attachments. And I even go so far as to say sometimes our inner critic even has addictions going back to that never ending message. Let's just say our never ending message starts when by the time we're like six, we've got it pretty solid.

Okay, okay.

That, that's, that's for another time, but let's just say you have, your never ending message is like, I have to be the smart one, right? Oh my God. What if you're faced with something where you're not going to be smart? You're not going to know, right? So you've got these, this inner critic addiction. I have to be, I have to be the smart one. When you start understanding like the origins and you break apart the addiction, you've got this whole other part of your personality that you now have access to that if you're in that automatic mind you didn't have access to before, now you can show up and you don't have to be the smartest one in the room and that actually allows you to step outside of your comfort zone. And take more risk, which, which of course propels you to very unforeseen future futures in your life.

Yeah. So you're saying that inner critics actually acting like a bouncer to parts of your personality in a lot of ways.

Oh, without question. See, I. The, the way that I define our inner critic is really that it's our automatic mind. So it's not even just the voice of you're not enough. It's actually the flip side of that is like what I was talking about, where your value comes from, being the smart one, getting the promotion, getting to this, this level of your life. Because when you need that in order to feel good enough, that gets you on a hamster wheel. And this is why, if we look at, and I'm going to put this in quotes, some of the most successful people in our culture, often the really important parts of their life, their marriages, their relationships with their children, their emotional well being, severely damaged. They. They've got all the money and the beauty and the fame and that's not a life. Yeah.

It'S so true. And so maybe a different way to phrase that is like looking for clues for. When you see people either on your team or leaders that you're interested in on art, do they have. Are they listening to that inner critic a lot or not? Is that. Do you have a holistic approach to your life where everything's in balance or are you super hyper focused in work or the things that are important to you that everything else breaks? Is that true?

Yeah. Yeah. I would say as we are within, so we are without. So it's somebody. We've all experienced leaders that again, they've reached a certain level of their career. But I wouldn't necessarily say that they are enjoyable to be on their team or it or right. Or they want good, healthy relationships. So they're certainly driven and there's a lot of cultural levels of success that they meet. But I personally don't consider that to be a successful life and I don't consider that to be a successful leader. And if I. What I think is most important in the realm of leadership is that people are really understanding their inner life on a much deeper level. Because if you're not doing that inner work, chances are you're being driven by unconscious thoughts and beliefs that are creating issues in your life, in your professional life, in your personal life and everything in between.

I'm immediately thinking back to managers I've had in my corporate career where they hadn't managed that inner existence and it comes out and angry Responses to very simple things or not being able to be persuaded out of a bad idea. They have big egos and whatnot. So it is, I agree with that wholeheartedly that if you're not doing that inner work, you can't be doing the outer work that'll make you successful. So that's hand in hand.

Absolutely. And the unfortunate thing is that again, if we're going back to that hardwired biology, many people run away from those deeper unconscious issues because they're, they've just spent their whole life running away from pain. And you may have heard the old adage, that which we resist persists. If you're like doing, if you're running away, you're like, I'm not, I don't do that inner work.

So if you have an inner critic that has a very loud voice that you either are trying to redirect, is there another voice you should be listening to that's on the inside? So what's that other voice? Or is there a way you can make your inner critic your friend and use that energy to fuel you into healthier habits and actions and mindset? So I guess it's two different questions.

But yeah, I think that we have an automatic voice in our mind and we have the voice of our authentic self. And what I hear over and over and over and over is that when people really start, start to understand their automatic mind, when they I, I, I created a methodology that I call the mind Method. The M step is meet your inner critic, right? That's really intimately familiar with your inner critic's voice, tone of voice, what is what? I'm a woman, so I say she, but what does she say? When does she say it? Why does she say it? The I step investigate the indication signs, the blinking red lights, behaviors, the body sensations, the emotions that alert you that your inner critic is taken over the. And of course the end step is the never ending message. So when you really start to understand every single facet of that voice, what I hear many people say is, I don't know who I am. I I to this automatic mind for so long, I actually have no idea who I really am. And I say that's great news because once you are able to what I call unhook yourself from your automatic mind, what you start listening to is the voice of your deeper wisdom, the voice of your intuition. Okay, you stop actually using this mind navigate your life. You start looking for answers more in your heart, more in your gut. You get quiet and still and you start to really actually Hear a different voice. That's been there all along, by the way. It's just that sometimes when we're so used to allowing this automatic mind to that right to navigate our lives, it drowns out the voice of our authentic self. So, to answer your question, I don't think that our inner critic mind is a trusted advisor or a companion now. I think that our inner critics came about initially, a long time ago, before we were 10, to protect us in some way. That protection is now bankrupt, doesn't serve us anymore, and we don't recognize it because we're human beings. And we'll keep doing the same thing over and over again because it once worked. And gosh darn it, it's going to work again.

Yes, we have the authentic voice. We have the untrusted inner critic advisor.

Yeah.

Question that came up is we just came from a very global experience where everyone slowed down whether they wanted to or not. And I know one of the things that human beings tend to do when there's. They're uncomfortable or there's pain or they're trying to avoid maybe that message that they've had their whole life is you tend to get busy, you tend to work, you tend to fill all your time with all this other stuff, so you don't have the time to sit down in that feeling.

Yeah.

Do you have any insights for what that might have done to us individually or as a society and how that's manifesting now?

Yeah, I do. I. I think the pandemic actually was, for many people, an opportunity to pause in. In a way that we hadn't seen in our lifetime. Now, for some, this was a terrifying time. Whether you were talking about what was going to happen to your physical health or what was going to happen to you financially. Right. So. So certainly when you're in that. When you are. If you are in that acute. Your state, it's very difficult to get quiet. But then I think for others, we saw something there. We saw what it felt like to get back to some basic parts of ourselves and our life that we were missing. And unfortunately, I think we are as a culture now. I think we're right back to where we started before the pandemic. And it's heartbreaking now. But the one thing that I will say, Sean, and this is, look at the conversation we're having. Look at the podcast you created. Okay. There is something that's happening within our culture where these kinds of conversations are happening in a way that they were not happening 10 years ago. So there is an There, there is a collective awakening that's starting to happen. There is a shift in consciousness that's starting to emerge, but it's starting to emerge for some and I think not for enough people. I'd love for this shift in consciousness to happen in a much bigger way. I'm hoping that it's not going to take something again that's so catastrophic as the pandemic, but we've got to wake up.

Yeah, I wholeheartedly believe in that. And which is why, astutely, this is why this podcast is happening, to try to help have that conversation for folks.

That's right. And it's amazing. I, I, I love to see that this is permeating our culture, particularly with younger people.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I'm not sure if you followed, like, the trends in, like, quiet quitting or how people are really dissatisfied with jobs.

Oh, yeah.

And the gut reaction of, oh, kids are just lazy. They don't know how to work. And, like, they're questioning a system that has been broke that nobody decided to be like, hey, maybe we should not treat people terribly for minimum wage or things of that nature.

Absolutely agree. I, I do not think that they're lazy. I think they're starting to poke holes in a system that is so inherently broken that it's not led to a mental health crisis the likes of which we've never ever seen before. I think that this is why we need to wake up.

So, on this thread, I just had this thought. Maybe this is interesting or not, but is there maybe in the US societal inner critic message that we're all telling ourselves that we haven't addressed?

Oh, for sure. I, I think that social media has played a very significant role in giving people a very false message of what a successful life is supposed to look like. And I think that a lot of people are comparing themselves and their life to a fantasy ideal that doesn't exist. And it looks like it exists because we see this tiny little snapshot of somebody's life, and in our minds we make up a whole fantasy about what this person's life must be, whether we know them personally or whether we're just, they're a celebrity or whatever, we make up all sorts of stuff. Now our nervous system can't tell the difference between a fantasy and a reality. And so we don't even recognize that we're comparing ourselves constantly to an ideal that literally does not exist. It's invented. And I wish that more people knew that. I think that's a big part of what creates such an Incredible mental health crisis where it is astounding to me how many leaders that have done the most incredible things in their life wake up day in and day out with feeling like they're still not enough. They. They still feel fundamentally unfulfilled. And by the way, that when you're waking up into a lack of fulfillment, a lack of gratitude, a lack of appreciation, feeling still like you're not enough, there's a ripple effect that occurs. Right. That doesn't just impact you. It doesn't just impact your. Right, your team, your organization. Right. It. It impacts. If you're raising children, it impacts them, it impacts your significant other. This really fundamental. We've got to shift the way that people experience themselves. And I say this all the time. It's because we're not taught how to think. We just automatically think. Our bodies breathe for us. Our bodies make our heart beat. Our minds just go. We don't have any clue where they go. And there's no education that literally teaches people this. These thoughts are not true and these are the thoughts to think. We don't. We don't. In our culture.

Yeah.

This is what we should start in preschool.

Absolutely. Yeah. So when I'm hearing. I'm going to paraphrase this and pose another maybe interesting question about this type of education. So to me, it seems like you have this inner critic person inside you, and now you have things externally that are either validating that critic or running a counter narrative and maybe something more healthy to it. So social media, I feel with your constantly comparing yourself to other people and how your friends are successful from high school and you're not and all that kind of stuff, and that's actually direct evidence that the senior critics building a case that, oh, you're not enough, because look at what Joe and Sally did from 30 years ago. You never talked to them again, but you can see their fancy cars and none of the struggle that took got them there or what's really going on. So we think of your authentic self and your inner critic as lawyers inside of you trying to build a case to trying to get you to choose which way to go on an argument. How would we start educating people to start building the case for their authentic self versus that critic.

Yeah, that's a great question. And I would say the first step in that is you have to be aware that you have an automatic mind and what it's saying and why it's saying. Right. This is why. Affirmations. Okay. And I'm not saying I don't believe in Affirmations. I do. But affirmations can often feel like you're blowing smoke up your butt because you're still believing what your mind has been telling you day in and day out again since you've been like five or six, right? So the first step, and always the first step that I have people do is to take some time and dump out your brain into a journal. Like every right. Kind of like you know, you how you dump out a bag and you need to dump out like the, you know, the crumbs in the corner of the bag. It's like just every day dump out your mind because what you're going to start to see and most people are like I do that. I don't want sit there and read all of that crap. But what starts to happen is that's how you start to see a picture better. That's how you start to see that the truth is you're not having new thoughts. You think you're having new thoughts every day. You're regard thoughts over and over again. And today it might be about your sister, but you had the same thought last week about your boss. You had the same thought five years ago about your father in law and you had the same thought 20 years ago about your prom date. It just doesn't, it doesn't matter. And so when you start to see that as a pattern, that's how it really starts to disintegrate. It starts to lose its power over you because it's gonna be there, it's gonna scream. It's it actually when we are doing our most important work, that voice gets louder. It doesn't get quieter, it gets louder. And so how we the, the recognition of it, the conscious awareness allows you, as I said before, unhook and then deliberately tune into things like looking back on your life and looking at just how far you've come. Right. That's another thing I have people write down, no less. They're not allowed to write any less than 50 accomplishments. They're like I don't have 50 accomplishments. I'm like yes you do. Think about the how you won the most sold Girl Scout cookies in your fifth grade brownie. I, I, I really make them go back far. We don't do that. We're always looking ahead. What's next? And if you really take the time to get quiet and to write your list of look at what I've overcome already. Look what I've already built. Look at what I've already created. Look at what I've created in my Family, look at the relationships I've created, look at the friendships I have, look at the love that I have in my life. We don't take the time to do that. So when we consciously devote that time, now we're actually rewiring not just different thoughts, but different beliefs about who we are. And over time, the more that we do that, unhook ourselves from our automatic mind and plug into different thoughts and beliefs that to change our brain chemistry, that starts to quiet our nervous system, that starts to have us not just thinking differently, but having different emotions that are having us take different actions and engage in different behaviors. And then just to take that to the next level, when we shift our nervous system reactivity, what we're doing is we're shifting our energy inside of our bodies. And like energy attracts like energy. So when you're going out into the world with the energy of gratitude and joy and calm and love and connection, not because you've done something that gives you that, but because you're shifting inside, an amazing thing starts to happen. You actually start to attract to you different people, different opportunities, different things, just. And we've all had that experience, right? We're like, I want something. And then all of a sudden at someday when you least expect it, it's like, boom, the universe delivered somebody. That's mostly, that's how it goes. We've got visions and we have to keep taking actions. But mostly the things that get us there are in the most unexpected ways. Does that make sense to you? Do you see that in your own journey as well?

Oh, definitely, yeah. Yeah. The, the thing that struck me is there's a time where I decided to learn how to run a marathon. Having not being able to run 15 minutes in a row. And before that time I hadn't assumed that identity. I never thought that I could run a mile, let alone 26.2. But I made this crazy decision out of. And that's a whole other story we could get into on another time. But the thing is, after that experience, I was a runner and I had that sense of pride, of identifying that identity, the confidence that like, oh, I can do an easy 10 mile run today, which is insane to say out loud, but it's like that. That confidence of, oh, I figured this out, I can survive this or actually thrive while doing this really difficult thing.

Yeah.

And then that experience is a hat brought confidence in other areas of my life that probably shouldn't have, but like, I can start a business. Cause I. It's just like running a marathon. You Just do the right thing day in and day out, and eventually you figure out what works, what doesn't work, how to adapt it to your unique body. And away you get. Then you're.

You're.

You've crossed the finish line.

So that's exactly. And the shift in you to define yourself as a runner. Mm. It's like you just hold yourself differently, particularly as you're running. It's like you just have a new level of, like, an experience of yourself where in some way you're fundamentally a different man than you were in that area. It's wild. It's really wild. That. And that's really how we evolve into a completely different version of ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. Love that story. That's great.

Would you mind sharing maybe a moment in your life where you completely redefined who you saw yourself as and maybe what happened before and after?

I have so many. I'm just. I think the biggest one comes to mind is again, just going back to the night that I published my book. I had this, like, just release. I was in a hotel room and honestly, I was like sitting on the bathroom floor sobbing.

Wow.

Yeah. Because it was like just this experience of, I'm an author, I can't. I never saw myself as an author. And it was just. It was this moment of just from then on, who I saw myself as would not be the same. And I can say that since then, I published my book in 2020, and like I said, I. Along my journey. Where I am now is light years from the me five years ago. If you had said to me five years ago, by the way, in five years, this is what your life is going to be. And I would say you. You're like completely out of your mind. That's just not possible. And that, I think is the most important thing is that if you keep doing this inner work and you keep putting foot in front of the other, the possibilities of who you're going to become in every part of your life that's important to you are unimaginable to you. Right?

Yeah. Could you maybe put some voice behind the transformation that happened since releasing your book that maybe you found surprising? I never thought in a million years that, that.

Yes, okay. I used to fantasize about what would that be like to be like the keynote speaker for Microsoft or a healthcare. And to me, it was like those people had something that I didn't. And I would say, one day I'm going to get there, but first I have to become someone else. But I didn't know how to become someone else. And what I realized now is that it's not about becoming someone else. It. It's actually about shedding the parts of myself that blocked me from seeing who I already was, which I didn't know at the time. I thought I needed to fix myself and change myself and perfect myself and get more knowledge and. And that's not it at all. And so now I've had these really unbelievable opportunities to speak at these amazing organizations. And I will also say these opportunities came to me. This is another thing that I would have. No, that's bullshit. That's bullshit. That doesn't happen now. Are there like a million puzzle pieces that happened before that? Of course. Course. But when the timing was right, I swear to you, I went to the gym one day and I ended up working out next to somebody that worked for Microsoft. And then she was like, oh, we need a speaker. And she brought me in for something smaller. And then her. And then somebody else said, no, actually we need her to come and be the keynote speaker. That's how it happened. Opened all these other doors for me and then all these other organizations started inviting me. That's what I'm saying. It's like when you least expect it, you have no idea what door is going to open when you least expect it. And it's all. Because that was a vision of mine. Oh, I didn't know that was going to happen. So that's like a sample.

That's amazing. And I love cheering on people that have these transform, transformative experiences by following something they are passionate about, something they care about, something they envision for themselves. And we're able to, to do it. So just. Right on. It's awesome.

And I will tell you, it took years of continuum. It's. It's. Anybody that you see and you're like, oh, looks like that happened immediately. Yeah. And 20 years before that, just never quitting and just continuing to do the next step. Even when you're afraid and even when you're terrified and even when it looks like it's not going anywhere. That's the key.

The phrase overnight success after 10 years of hard work is very true.

It's. And that's the only way to do it.

A hundred percent.

Yeah.

So with that amazing story, I think it's a great way to. And, But I'd love, if anyone wanted to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to get involved in your world to maybe do some of this mind work, as your framework is called.

First of all, my book is Dethroning your inner critic the four step journey from self doubt to self retirement. So that is on Amazon or Audible. I will also say for your listeners, I offer a totally free assessment that's called the inner critic assessment. You just go to inner criticassessment.com and it will show you I, I did a lot of research on this and narrowed down five Inner critics occupy our mind. And this will give you the specific breakdown of which inner critics are ruling your mind, when they first started, how they're impacting you professionally and personally. It's a really powerful tool. So inner critic assessment and then I'm on. Oh, and then my podcast. My podcast is Dethroned. So I also have a podcast and that's my website, Dethroning Urine Critic. And yeah. So if you want to follow me, you can follow me on Instagram, Facebook, listen to my podcast, get my book. And if you're interested in the, I have a six month program that I lead called mastering your mind, which is because it's really what I'm most proud of. And if you're interested in that, you can reach out to me.

Awesome. So all of those links I'll put in the show notes. So if you're like, hey, I didn't catch that, so don't worry, we gotcha. And with that said, I really loved exploring this idea of your inner critic and authentic self that this con or during this conversation, I know it's gotten me thinking about what is my persistent inner critic message that maybe I need to address a little bit more. So I know I'm, I'm gonna do some journaling about that myself. What did you love about our conversation real quick?

I, first of all, thank you so much for the opportunity because I do just love this conversation and I love that you're bringing this to the world. I, I, I think it's so important that you're helping to transform what leadership looks like in our culture because that's really pivotal. Keep going. And again, really thank you for the opportunity to have this great conversation today.

Pleasure is definitely not all mine, but it's mine to have you here. This has been a great conversation. With that, we'll see you guys in the next episode of Meaningful Revolution. Make sure to go down in the show notes again and sign up for that free assessment if you do one thing. But there's all the other ways too to follow Joanna, hope to have you back soon and we'll see you all later. Take care.

Thanks, Sean.