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Swallow your pride
Transcript:
Hey there. And welcome back to the reimagining success podcast. Today I want to talk to you about swallowing your pride, swallowing your ego, and this is a big one. It’s a big one for me. And I imagine, I know it’ll be a big one for at least some of you, if not many or most of you. So I’ll start with a confession because it always helps to be vulnerable yourself. And I hope you can bring that same energy as you listen, because it might be a little bit triggering. Some of the things I say [00:00:30] when I sign up to business coaching programmes. So of course, I see the value of coaching, mentoring, consulting, whatever you want to call it. And I’ve had various versions of that along the way in the past. And even now, because I’m going to say, it’s, it’s still the case.
I’ve hesitated. I hesitate to be vulnerable, to raise my hand, to admit, Hey, I’m not yet earning this amount, or right now I’m not earning that amount or this hasn’t been working.
I haven’t been able to do that, which is ridiculous because the whole point of working with a coach paying to work with an expert to join that programme, or even to follow someone for free, right, is actually to be open to their advice. If they offer advice, to ask for help, to allow yourself to be coached, to get that help, to, to allow yourself to who be vulnerable, to open up to those difficult questions and to find some insightful answers. Now, [00:01:30] in part, for me, the, the, the discomfort, I guess, comes because I’m meant to know it all right, as experts ourselves, we we’re supposed to be credible experts. We’re supposed to know everything about everything.
So we couldn’t possibly that, you know, this isn’t quite working for me. Oh, I’m having, you know, arguments with my partner right now, or I’m not being the best mom, or actually I’ve not been doing my fitness regime or I’m not getting the clients I want, or this workshop flopped or that programme, et cetera. [00:02:00] Now, actually, I, I do share those things in my smaller group, within my coaching for my paid clients. So there is an element of that vulnerability, but there is still the hesitation to, in a more public forum go, Hey, you know, I’m joining this challenge. I’m not yet there. That’s why I’m here obviously. And it’s a shame because you miss, I miss human connection. I miss opportunities. So that’s something I work on now in another area of my life, I wanna share a better example [00:02:30] or, or at least an insight as to what is possible.
So I’m working with a fitness coach. And in fact, I started working with her. I think it was may last year, and this is now February recording this. So, you know, it’s, it’s almost coming up to a year and we are gonna keep chipping until may is our plan. And then we’re going to sort of settle into more of a maintenance phase. But here’s the thing working with a personal trainer, a nutritionist, a fitness coach. It’s not that I don’t know what to do. I have [00:03:00] read a lot. I can lecture you for hours on what you need to eat, how to eat. Well, I know everything about macros and, uh, exercise, and I’ve done so many fitness videos online and I know hit, and I’ve done a lot of running and I’ve read and I’ve educated myself. And no, I’m not a qualified certified expert I’m of teaching other people.
But I, I know I have the information I need and it’s very hard then to raise your hand and say, Hey, I’d like, someone’s help.
However, in partnering with Hannah, [00:03:30] my fitness coach, I’ve now done things that I never thought were possible. And best of all, it’s been easy and super fun. So I’ve reached my, I wanna say dream weight. Actually, we set that goal initially. Uh, it was a, a weight that I had, you know, 10 plus years ago when I was living my best life in my twenties in Geneva. And I’ve reached that weight to me going a little bit further. I’m not saying, and I’m sorry if this is triggering for anyone, I’m not saying that it’s about weight and I’m always very reluctant to share, you know, the before and after pictures. And so, because it’s not about that, but the [00:04:00] truth is that for me, at least that number has meaning to it.
And it is a metric that I can use to see if I’m on track where I want to be more important than that is that I’m feeling fitter and stronger than ever before. I’m, I’m exercising regularly. I’m taking way more steps, just walking, essentially moving more. I’m really prioritising the exercise, the running I, some yoga and all, many other aspects of self care. And so, and I’ve learnt more about food and, and things I used to eat very healthily, but just too much, for example, [00:04:30] and that’s, you know, something that I, I guess I didn’t admit to myself at least. So the point I’m making here is it’s not that I didn’t know, and it can be embarrassing and it can feel like a of money to pay someone to help you with something, because I should know, I know I can do it. And yet there’s something clearly that stopped me for the last 10 years from getting there.
And now, again, it’s been easy. It’s been fun. I’ve been part of a group, speaking of group dynamics, and I’ve loved it. And I’m so happy and it’s such a valuable investment. [00:05:00] I’m gonna continue that for, for this foreseeable future. Coming back to business coaching, you know, it’s people who show up, it’s the people in my programmes, for example, who join every call, who ask the questions, who check in on the weekly. You know, these are my goals for the week. These are my wins at the end of the week who join the free workshops who listen to the podcast episodes who do everything. And I don’t mean do everything up. Sounds very overwhelming, but they, they show up, they make the most of what’s available to them. [00:05:30] They ask questions. They admit where they have gaps and they work to fill them. They’re being vulnerable.
They’re opening up. And they’re the ones who are going to learn. They’re the ones who are going to learn how to fill those gaps to ultimately get results. And so I really admire them and that’s what we all need to channel. We need to go hang on a second. You know what, yes, I could do it myself. And we’ll talk about this again in a couple of episodes. And yes, I’m incredibly competent and smart and capable and I can advise [00:06:00] others. And yes, I know a whole lot. And I can certainly advise, you know, based on the many years now, I’ve been experiencing and learning and researching and, and coaching. And so on. There is almost always more that we can learn. And it’s not a bad, it’s not a weakness to admit that. And by the way, funnily enough, or funnily enough, but I heard another coach saying recently that coaching doesn’t have to be remedial.
It’s not just when you have a problem athletes, don’t just have a coach. When they have an issue, [00:06:30] they have a coach always right leaders. Don’t these days only work with coaches when they have a performance issues, peop people, people at the top recognise now that they’ll get so much further, faster with the help of others. So coaching, working with mentors, this can really help to stretch you further to work towards goals. You might not even have admitted that you had, so it’s not just for when you have problems. So actually choosing to work with somebody, you know, one of the girls in my group to, uh, firm up her, her [00:07:00] BU and, and get better glutes or whatever the goal was, you know, something I’ve never even thought about getting a bigger bomb. She wanted to write, but Hey, she had an amazing body before and now she’s got the bigger bum she wanted.
So, you know, there are silly, silly example there, but coming back to the, the training fitness example, and maybe already super happy in your business, you know what I’ve got the clients that’s going well, and yet coaching can still be a worthy, worthwhile investment. So just to challenge your thinking a little bit on that. So what does swallowing your pride swallowing your ego mean? So I’ve said, you know, it means asking for help. [00:07:30] It means admitting you need help. You want help admitting where you perhaps have a weakness or a blind spot. It means getting comfortable of being uncomfortable. We talk about getting out of your comfort zone a lot. That’s part of the core of my concept. It means asking questions is that it means putting yourself out there, as we say, right? Sharing on social media, perhaps talking about your story and, and what you are learning, what you’ve learned.
It means yes. Taking some risks. It means allowing for the possibility of no, that’s a huge one.
We, I dunno about you, but I, I tend to hold myself back. Unfortunately, again, it’s something I’m working on. If I think the answer might be no, because we’re afraid of rejection. And yet if we can show up every day and remove that emotion from it and just, you know, put it out there, this person said, no, not to worry onto the next one, the right people will say, yes, that’s so much more powerful and not to take those things personally. That’s part of it as well, because it’s my ego that doesn’t want to be damaged. That’s, that’s keeping me small. [00:08:30] Right. That’s keeping me from showing up as I should be. So I think I’ll leave it there for now. Do you have another lesson? Because I think there’s quite a few important insights in there.
I’ve in a few examples, I’m sure you can think of others when you have worked with somebody in the past, when you have, you know, had that moment of vulnerability shared a story and that’s allowed for that deeper human connection, it’s allowed you to get perhaps some unexpected help to, to shine a light on something that you weren’t [00:09:00] aware of to, to move forwards in, in ways that you yeah. Hadn’t even imagined. So, you know, swallowing your prize, swallowing ego, this applies by the way to relationships, to being vulnerable with your partner, it applies to friendships. And as certainly applies again in business, you know, there are so many memes and things on social media, you know, failure is a stepping stone to success. And, you know, you only see the tip of the iceberg. You only see the successes, the book that they’ve published, the Ted talk, you don’t see the 10 years of struggle [00:09:30] of failed programmes.
You know, you see their successful, famous, any making scheme, but you don’t see the 15 failed launches before that. And so on. Right? So again, as ever, it’s sort of focusing on your own race and not getting distracted by other people, but allowing yourself to be on that learning journey to know that you are never finished learning, to still recognise and be confident about your expertise and what you do know, and that you are an incredible [00:10:00] capable person, expert business owner, and even, so there are opportunities to learn to make mistakes and that’s okay. That’s part of it. And to find a way to make that fun, to find a way to, to get the help and to, to not be on that roller of always taking it. So personally, because that my friends is stressful, if we’re really allowing our entire identity to be based on how many people show up to our workshop, or if that client buys after we have the chat or not.
And so, and that’s just a recipe for disaster. So I’ll leave you there. This idea of swallowing your pride, swallowing your ego. I’d love to hear your thoughts as you can obviously contact me on any social platform where you’re following me, or you can email me@podcastonestepoutside.com as well. And looking forward to continuing this kind of train of thought as it were in the coming weeks as well, but swallowing your pride swallow your ego, I think is an important one for many of us, especially in that transition from, you know, high paid high flying corporate job, having [00:11:00] that title and prestige of the company. And so, and perhaps, and then going out on your own, it can be a bit of a rough landing looking forward to hearing your thoughts. I see you next week.
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