Start Owning The Confidence

Speaker 1: [Music] A lot of people will say fake it till you make it. The problem with fake it till you make it is when you have made it and you still feel like you don't belong in the room. Confidence tends to be more situational. So every time there's a new person or a new room, your knees are shaken again. You can tell when someone is performing. Even if you can't consciously tell, I might actually be picking up that you're nervous and that might make me start to feel uncomfortable and then all of a sudden you're not going to be able to influence me as well. I'm Melanie Bar. Welcome back to the Sheba podcast, your go-to place to empower you to live the life and business that you crave. I'm here to talk about everything from having the courage to make life and career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively, create successful teams, implement strategies for growth, and infuse tech innovation. I'm here to celebrate your wins and navigate through your challenges. I live in the city now, but I grew up in a town of a thousand people. I've navigated major life leaps, a senior level corporate career, worked in professional sports, and now as a successful entrepreneur who loves business, technology, family, and making meaningful connections with you and the Sheila community. I also love a good workout and dose of self-care. Magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy. So, turn up the audio, open your favorite notes app, grab your favorite drink, and here we go. Welcome to the Sheila podcast. Thank you for joining us. Sarah, your journey has taken you from acting in LA to building a career in tech and now coaching leaders around the world. When you look back, what is the thread that ties it

Speaker 2: all together? It's been about like growing and staying in tune also with what is in alignment for me and what is not in alignment. And over and over again, choosing truth over comfort. those seem to be the two opposing forces. Sometimes I I get to another stage whether I have left a lot of things acting and then tech and then my own career and a lot of times it would have been easier to stay where I was and there was nothing wrong with where I was but if I was being really honest with myself I got to get up and go again and do something bigger and bolder and more courageous.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And we all have those pivots and it's walking around saying, "What do I really want to do?" Because sometimes we get so caught in a path that we stay there and maybe we should be doing something different. To your point, it's so important to ask ourselves over and over, what do I really want to do? Am I doing what I really want to do?

Speaker 2: Yeah. Am I playing it safe? a doing the safe thing that's easy to justify to everyone else or is impressive to other people but doesn't really land with me and what I want because I know I've been there many times before.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And it can be hard to make those leaps in a new direction. Absolutely. Yes. Especially I don't know if you've heard this term, but I hear it a lot in the area I'm in in Silicon Valley. They call it the golden handcuffs. you're making money or you have a good title, you're in a good position and that makes it harder sometimes for you to leave or to make a leap.

Speaker 2: Yeah. So true. So many leaders feel like they're playing the role instead of owning their power. What's the cost of performing confidence instead of embodying it?

Speaker 1: The cost is huge. You feel it. You can tell when you're performing it. And a lot of people will say fake it till you make it. The problem with fake it till you make it is when you have made it and you still feel like you don't belong in the room and there's so much energy that goes into feeling like okay I need to keep up this charade and while there may be some aspects where you see okay I'm good at this okay I'm getting a little bit more confident there is some confidence that comes but what I find is that confidence tends to be more situational it's not really a confidence in yourself. It's more okay, I think I'm good at this thing or I feel comfortable speaking to this person or in this room or in this context, but it doesn't easily transfer outside of that context. So, every time there's a new person or a new room, your knees are shaken again. So, that's the cost. And also that we can feel it. You can tell when someone is performing even if you can't consciously tell. There are parts even to get really nerdy in our whole system. When you feel really nervous, your vocal cords constrict and your voice actually changes in really subtle slight ways that other people might not consciously pick up, but we are biologically hardwired to look for danger. And so I might actually be picking up that you're nervous and that might make me start to feel uncomfortable and then all of a sudden you're not going to be able to influence me as well. I'm maybe not going to trust you as much as a leader because I can feel that there's something off or inongruent.

Speaker 2: So interesting because we don't think about all of those nuances. We don't think about how our voice might change or how we might be tense or how that might be portrayed within the room.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And to not have that complete control. For example, another thing that happens if we're really nervous or we're in a fight orflight state, our heart rate will get faster, our palms might get a little sweaty, our mind gets a little bouncier, a little more frenetic, and even our eye movements can tend to be a little more jilted. So all these things, there are some people out there who might teach the tactics of who was the Theronos founder? There was that famous founder, the woman who they would always talk about how she trained her voice to be lower. so she'd be more authoritative. It's like, yeah, you can completely Google how a confident person looks. Stand with your shoulders back. Try and lower your voice. Talk slower. I find that I'd rather just feel more

Speaker 2: confident and help my clients feel more confident because those things will then just happen rather than us having to try and remember all these things to perform it. It's too much work.

Speaker 1: Yeah, seems more stressful than going through the situation itself. When you're working with women to gain the confidence, what's one thing that you tell them? Say they're going into a pitch or speaking at a conference and they're worried about confidence.

Speaker 2: I'll give you two things. I'll give you something that listeners can apply right now. And then I'll also give you a way to think about it as a pathway if they wanted to work on it in a longer term. So the longer term path is working on both your mind and your physiology so that you start to train yourself to feel more calm and also to become completely aware of what are those thoughts that are coming up in that moment where you're feeling nervous and starting to unpack those. A lot of times we don't even realize that they're happening. But then when my clients start to notice and bring more awareness, they'll be like, "Oh, okay. Actually, I feel like everyone's going to be mad at me or that I'm dumb and that I haven't prepared enough or like whatever it might be." So, we can dismantle those, start to pull those apart over time. But in the moment, the quick trick that works really is instead of what we normally will do, which is this is going to go wrong. What if this happens? What if that happens? We instead, right before, let's say you're going into a job interview or a big board meeting or you're pitching to a VC or whatever it might be or you're pitching to a potential client. Before the meeting, take a moment, ground yourself, and then imagine not the meeting going well, but imagine 6 months to a year in the future, the relationship with that person. So, it could be you're thriving in the job and the manager is so happy they hired you or your client got all those incredible wins through your work together. And then you're picturing that, you're visualizing it. And what happens is when you go into the room with the person, there's something in your system that already feels familiar and warm and like they like you and friendly, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as well. So

Speaker 1: interesting to think so deeply about these situations that we all go through and a lot of times we power through them. Sometimes we go into them confidently, other times a little less. But it's so interesting to think about all of those layers underneath. I sit on the national board of a nonprofit and I used to have to speak on stage and I was thinking about this when you were sharing that example. I was on the stage the year before and then the next year when I went I didn't have to be on stage but I felt nervous and just had this kind of anxiety and I thought I had to tell myself you're going to enjoy this year. You don't have to get on stage and speak. So it's interesting how sometimes we have to tell ourselves those things

Speaker 2: going into the situations.

Speaker 1: Totally. And I I don't know if you know this about me but when I was in university I was a competitive public speaker. So I spent like every weekend traveling to different parts of the United States and performing prepared speeches. Very different from how I operate today because I would have run away scared if I had to do it impromptu. Whereas now like basically everything is impromptu for me. But I had a prepared speech. Every word was memorized. Even the hand gestures I had optimized to be like the right hand gesture. all these things. I was really good and I won a lot of tournaments and I did really well and I also had no trust in whether or not I would be able to actually perform as well as I knew that I could because I had a really overactivated nervous system and mind. Sometimes I would absolutely kill it. I would get number one and it would feel so good and other times I would blank and I wouldn't be able to think of my own name and I would just stand up there in front of everyone and I had tummy issues and like I had all these things happening that just goes to show you there is a component of being good at something or having natural talent or practicing it but it can't override our bodies and our physiology and our mind like now that I'm able to master those things paired with being able to be good at speaking. Now it's okay, I can actually trust myself that I can walk into a room and I'm not going to completely blank out and stare at people like a goldfish.

Speaker 2: And what a great skill to have. It's great that you kept doing it, too. You taught yourself to enter those spaces and perform well. And it's not easy.

Speaker 1: Yeah, it was tough. I like to win. And so the winning is what kept me going. But it really wasn't until like way later after my tech career, all these things that I started to get into the work that I do now. And now I'm like, "Oh my gosh, if only I had this then, it would have been wild."

Speaker 2: When leaders come to you, what is the number one thing that they're struggling with beneath the surface?

Speaker 1: I work with a caliber of leader who they wouldn't really say that they're struggling, right? Everything's going pretty well. They're successful. Everything looks good from the outside and pretty much from the inside they're feeling okay about things too, but they can tell in the little micro moments. And one of the number one ones that I hear is I have a seat at the table. I'm in the room and there comes this moment where I could speak up, but I hesitate and I may still say the thing even if it's minutes later or I send an email later, I set up a second call, but it bugs me. It bugs me that I have that hesitation in the first place and what is that? And I want to kind of get to that next level. And the other thing that I noticed too that actually isn't usually self-identified but I see as a pattern across the women leaders that I work with is what got them there won't get them to the next level in the respect of a lot of times when we're coming up in our career even as entrepreneurs you learn all the right things to do and you learn to polish yourself and you learn how to perform or how to present, but there comes a point where everyone will look at you and they'll be expecting you to have some big opinion. In those moments, I find that a lot of us will have this moment of frustration of I used to have big opinions and ideas and I think I polished them all away for you all and now you want me to have them again. Like I don't even know if I know how to do that. So that's what you need too. If you're going into the seauite or if you're going to stand out as an amazing founder or if you're going to get people's attention online with your online business, you have to have that special something. It can't be all polished because you're going to disappear.

Speaker 2: And we always want to level up.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And you're right, sharing opinions, sometimes you get worried about the audience the higher up you get and the farther along you get in your career. But I'm always thinking also, how can I level up? Yes. Yeah. Exactly. And I'm sure your listeners are too, and that's who I work with, too. It's like, how can I level up? And yes, sometimes it's a contrarian opinion, but sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's just letting little aspects of your personality that you have somehow compartmentalized as just personal and don't make sense to talk about in a professional context, but those might be the things that actually get people interested in you. Yeah. that make you vulnerable and real. Yeah. That make you real.

Speaker 2: We talked about this a little bit in college when you were speaking. What made you realize that confidence has to be built from the inside out?

Speaker 1: I don't think I learned that until I got into coaching truly because I was much more caught up in being impressive before. I have always had confidence on a certain level like other people from the outside would tell you that I was a confident person based on my behavior. However, I didn't feel that on the inside always and I felt really anxious. I really struggled with anxiety and it was much more of a power through pushth through situation then. And it wasn't until I started to dismantle some of my own inner criticism or start to learn how to regulate my system, which came later, that I recognized, oh, this could be so much easier. Maybe I don't have to power through or push through. There are actually ways where I didn't realize that I was faking it before. It wasn't like on purpose. I wasn't trying to be deceptive. It was just the way that I adapted make it in the world. And then there came this feeling of relief of, oh, I don't have to posture. I don't have to polish. I actually feel so comfortable just being myself. And then that's when a lot of it clicked for me where, oh, okay, everyone's got it wrong. Okay, we can do this differently. Yeah, it's interesting to think so deep about how we go through our days. And one thing that really helps me is five minute meditations. It is amazing what even 5 minutes can do. I know that's different than doing the deep work as to why, but that's really helped me calm myself when I'm entering situations that I might be a little worried about or thinking about as I walk into them.

Speaker 2: Totally. And that can be so counterintuitive, too. Even for me sometimes could go through phases but in the moments when you feel really busy and I bet a lot of people listening will relate to this. It feels like no I don't have time for that. We don't value giving our brain a little bit of space but that's actually what we need often in the moment.

Speaker 1: So true. And I've always gone through that in my career. I'm also a twin mom. So those five minutes I learned with them when the twins were born life became unpredictable. And then just the constant going all the time. So I learned to really with work and with the twins take those five minutes so important.

Speaker 2: Yeah. You created a method. How does it work and how is it different from traditional coaching?

Speaker 1: Yes. I work very experientially which can tend to be a little bit different than traditional coaching. And I always say I coach with some executives. I have executive clients but I'm not an executive coach. I'm not a career coach. People get a lot of ideas around what they expect from that and it's not what you get from me. So, the resonance method is something that I came up with after working with a lot of clients and taking them through. I have a program called lead out loud. I run a couple times a year and I take women through this process and it really breaks down to three pillars. So, just like what we were talking about before, we start with you as the client. We want to be able to understand like what are the thoughts that you're having on a daily basis that are impacting how you're showing up and how you're feeling and how other people might be perceiving you and also what are the feelings that are happening within your body that are connected. So they're not separate. I chose resonance because I think a lot of people are really wanting to improve their executive presence, but I think executive presence stops short of the connection with the people that you want to influence. So if we're really thinking about our presence and how we're being perceived as an executive, we're more focused on our self, what we're doing, how we're posturing. But if we're thinking about resonance, what we're thinking about is how can what I'm saying, how I'm showing up actually land and resonate within the person in front of me, which is much more important than you just looking good like an executive. We want to be able to have impact, have influence, and that's what resonance helps with. I also was thinking a lot about when I named it, if you have a tuning fork and you chime it and you have another tuning fork in the same room that is the same frequency, the other one will start vibrating at the same time just by being in proximity. Not all of them. So, not everyone will resonate with you because not everyone's on your vibe, not everyone's on your same frequency, but this is how we can make sure that we're landing. So, we start with you and tuning you. So, your system, your nervous system, your thoughts, what is your uniqueness? What are the parts that you polished away? Why are you scared? How can we bring that back out? How can we get you feeling comfortable? And then we move into pillar two. I talk about it like turning on subtitles. So if you notice that another person speaks French when you walk into a room, you don't change who you are or your message, but you do, if possible, turn on subtitles so that they can understand you. You try and speak French for them. Same thing. A lot of times we walk into difficult conversations or we're addressing an audience and we're thinking from our perspective and we're not always taking into account what does this person care about? What might they be afraid of? What's their objective? How can I frame what I want to talk about in a way that they're actually going to care? It's interesting to think about what's going on inside of us, but also how it lands. Sometimes we might be thinking of one or the other. Not always both.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And this is why you ask how is it

Speaker 1: different? Why is it different? The reason that we spend time on the individual first, you first is if you don't and let's say you're really nervous or you have emotions coming up or you're reactive. When we're in this state of reactivity or stress or fight or flight, then our brain actually doesn't work the same way. Our prefrontal cortex, which is the most developed part of higher reasoning in our brain, doesn't connect to the rest of our brain in the same way. So, there are a lot of leadership training programs out there that may tell you here's how to think from other people's perspective, but they don't take into account the fact that you literally cannot because in those moments when you're really stressed, everything goes out the window. So, that's why we address that first and then we go into how do we read people? How do we message? And then we go into how do we think about what our objective is as far as getting more visibility on our business, on ourselves to futureproof our career, whatever your goal might be. And how do we create relationship-based high ROI activities that actually help you with that rather than spray and prey or create a bunch of content or go to every single networking event? How do you get strategic about it in a way that actually feels good? We all go through our days and we do think about them in some ways, but so interesting to go that deep on all those levels. When someone stops chasing credibility and starts showing up as

Speaker 2: iconic, what changes? Yeah, this is the

Speaker 1: move from proving to power. When we're in a proving energy, we want credibility. We're always coming from a deficit. We're always feeling like, how can I make you happy, make you like me, make you impressed with me? And that doesn't help us stay grounded in our center. So, if we move into more of this power, iconic, that's when we're starting to really be in touch with ourselves like we were talking about in the very beginning. What do I actually want? What do I care about? which also helps us get rid of the noise of trying to please every single person in front of us because you're never going to get where you want to go if you're doing that. And then to get all the way to iconic is when you start to stand even more grounded in yourself and start to think about something I thought about a lot recently is if my life were a movie and I was the main character and I was watching from the audience. What are the things that I would just be shaking my head and rolling my eyes like, "Oh my gosh, why won't this girl just go do the thing already? What are the things that she's destined to do?" And that I think brings you to the iconic level.

Speaker 2: I love that you flip it like that. And to move from scarcity to abundance, so important. And you made me think I had a social media manager that I was talking to recently say, "Maybe we want to talk about some controversial ideas." And I thought, "Oo, my first thought, even though I know I have opinions, was I don't know if I can do that." But to your point, sometimes you go in a direction and you don't really know you're there to where you might not come out with a bold thought or bold topic.

Speaker 1: Yeah. We just play it safe. It's so normal if you think about it from like biology standpoint. Of course, we're trying to be a part of the tribe, but in reality, the people who are really making it and standing out, building empires or whatever it is you want to do, they are the ones who have the courage to say the thing. Not just to ruffle feathers, but what truly is on their heart.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And we talked about women and visibility and shrinking in a room instead of owning it. Why is the visibility piece so hard?

Speaker 1: There's something that feels so vulnerable about visibility. There's so much to unpack with that question. Especially as women, a lot of us are told, "Be the good girl." If you go far back enough, depending on your family or where you come from, as children, like you should be seen and not heard or don't speak up, don't upset other people. We're taught to optimize to not upset people for the most part. And so, we're trying to override that. And even if you don't have that, again, it's the whole will the tribe accept me thing safer not to be visible. And I always say everyone wants exposure and nobody wants to feel exposed. That feeling can just be uncomfortable even if there's nothing wrong. And I've noticed there are some people that I meet that you can feel if they're super present and they really see you. And that feeling even now I've learned to like it. But I know that before I had done a lot of this work on myself that felt I don't know like being an exposed nerve like it just felt overstimulating to actually be seen especially if it makes you start to think of what are they thinking of me? Are they judging me? Does my hair look bad? All the things we think they're paying attention to me like oh maybe I'm not worth paying attention to. They don't realize I'm not worth paying. There's so many different things that can come up. When that social media strategist said that to me, I thought, "No, I don't know." And then I thought, "I actually want to do that." I'm like, "No, that's actually what I want to do." Because then you stand for something. I talk a lot about switching our metrics and how every one of us has unconscious metrics that can rule our life that we don't realize. I want someone to like me. If I'm going into an interaction, I want them to like me or whatever it might be. Versus if you start to think about, let's take a goal. If you want to be better at public speaking and you have some opportunities to go speak in front of people without consciously designing your metrics, you might be looking at did they make eye contact with me? Did they look bored? Were they looking at their watch? And we don't know what's happening with these people. Like they may have gotten something on their Apple Watch from their kids' school and now they're really distracted. Maybe they have to pee. Like maybe something else is happening for them. All the things. all the things. And then if I make that about me, then afterward I feel bad about myself. I'm not going to want to go do it again. So, I'm not going to get better at it. And I'm also taking in feedback that isn't grounded in something real that's going to help me. Versus, if I want to get better at public speaking and I'm like, I know that I'm a little nervous, so what could I do to be less nervous? I'm going to take that 5 minutes before and I'm going to breathe and I know that I tend to look at the ground. So, I'm going to make an effort to look at five people's eyes. Now, after that, rather than letting myself spin out, I can just go through my checklist. Did I breathe before? Okay, good. Did I make eye contact? Okay, then I'm like 1% better. So, that can help quite a bit, too. If someone starts to take more speaking opportunities and the step towards real

Speaker 2: confidence, what effects have you seen

Speaker 1: in their career life and business? I had a client Amanda, she's incredible. She came in brilliant, was absolutely doing great in her career, and she was a little frustrated because she kept getting passed over for getting to the next level. And she kept being told like, "Yeah, we like you." when she was in all the rooms and she actually had most of the responsibility. It was just like this weird mismatch. Why won't they give me the title? Why won't they see me in that way? And they kept giving her the kind of we'll let you know when you get there. You're not there yet. We'll let you know. We worked together first privately for a couple of months and her manager started to notice. Her manager was like, "Something's different. Your energy's different. I don't know. Something's different." Then a couple months later, one of the executives on the team gave her a call and said, "Hey, we just want you to know we see you. You're doing good things. Keep doing what you're doing." And then it was like two months later that they gave her VP. She got like a raise in the in between, too. It's big things that you can achieve externally. And a lot of people think that they have to work on their resume or get another certificate or do something tangible, but actually these things that we've been talking about this whole time are what makes the difference where people start to see you as that leader. They want to hear your opinion. They think of you when you're not in the room. They put opportunities in front of you. or my other client who was at a law firm had a role created for her as the head of operations for a global company because of the relationships that she built, not because of everything on her resume. It's not necessarily the things, but the confidence within that comes out. too many brilliant people out there who are undiscovered and aren't able to shine because they don't really have that trust in themselves. Magic happens when we focus on the part of our business and ourel that brings us joy. What is one way that you make sure to find and live your joy? We've talked a lot about your business and work today. Yeah. So, outside of business and work because I get a lot of joy from that too, to be honest. But um I love new experiences and I love to learn about myself and grow, but I also just love a great dance party and I love to get together with my friends. A lot of my friends are all over the world and all over the United States and we went to a conference together and it was a business conference, but we all dressed up like rock stars and we danced and we like went out to dinner and we just had a good time and we coach each other and we support each other. So just being in community, having fun, letting loose, and letting yourself really have the big life that you do all this work for in the first place.

Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining us today. You've given us a lot to think about how we show up in the world and use our confidence. Please share with us how and where we can find you.

Speaker 1: Yes, I'm on Instagram, Sarah S. Anderson, A D R S O N_. I'm also on LinkedIn if you're there. Sarah Anderson coaching after the slash and sarah Anderson.co is my website.

Speaker 2: Thank you for joining us today. I'd love to hear from you. Reach out to me at hello@ shebiltit.com on our sheiluiltit website or at shebiltit on social. Thank you to my editor rich drefalino who always makes us sound good. Until next time, let nothing stop you from experiencing the life and business that

Speaker 1: you crave.

Speaker 2: [Music]