Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - #503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

For Women’s Month, I’m sharing insights from three powerful women; Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tonya Lester, on personal growth, healing, and transformation. The episode explores key themes of building radical self-confidence, overcoming perfectionism, understanding manifestation, and developing self-compassion. It provides listeners with strategies to rewire their mindset, tap into their intuition, and create meaningful change in every area of your life. In This Episode You Will Learn How often to check in if your actions still match your goals. Ways to practice self-compassion and intentionally build resilience and personal power. Manifest with conviction, not just mental calculation. The trap to avoid so you don’t stay stuck. How to build unshakable self-worth. Resources + Links Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/monahan Download the CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning at NetSuite.com/MONAHAN. Want to do more and spend less like Uber, 8x8, and Databricks Mosaic? Take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com/MONAHAN. Get 10% off your first Mitopure order at timeline.com/CONFIDENCE. Get 15% off your first order when you use code CONFIDENCE15 at checkout at jennikayne.com. Call my digital clone at 201-897-2553!  Visit heathermonahan.com Sign up for my mailing list: heathermonahan.com/mailing-list/  Overcome Your Villains is Available NOW! Order here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com  If you haven't yet, get my first book Confidence Creator Follow Heather on Instagram & LinkedIn

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million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash confidence creator. That's LinkedIn.com slash confidence creator to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Hi and welcome back. I can't wait for you to sink your teeth into today's incredible episode in honor of Women's Month. I'm bringing back three of your favorite conversations on the podcast with three unstoppable women, Lisa Bilou, co-founder of Quest Nutrition and Impact Theory, psychotherapist and author, Catherine Morgan Schaftler, and theta healing

practitioner, Tanya Lester, to bring you the very best of their insights on healing, confidence and reimagining perfectionism as a source of your power. You'll learn how to build radical self-confidence, tap into your intuition, and align your body and mind for transformational growth. Together, we'll say goodbye to burnout, gain a whole new perspective on perfectionism, and understand how to heal from the inside out. This episode is literally handpicked, life changing strategies and mic drop moments that will rewire your mindset so you can uplevel every aspect of your life.

Here we go. Come on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my closeup. The other thing you mentioned that I find really interesting is sunk cost fallacy. And for anyone that doesn't really understand what that means, so often, whether it be in a relationship or in a business, we say, I've got 10 years in on this, I can't, I know

I'm not happy, I can't walk away now because that's basically saying the last 10 years, I was wrong or that it's a waste or there's got to be, I can't do that now, there's too much invested in this. And some cost fallacy so interesting to me, I've done it in relationships before, I'm four years into this, I can't give up now, it makes absolutely no sense. Every time I've had that internal dialogue with myself, and of course, eventually something will happen

or I'll have an epiphany that I do need to make that change. And after I do, I have this moment where I sit down and say, yet again, here I am again, because so many of us have patterns in our life, you know, I stayed too long. And so that's dialogue I'm constantly aware of now. I don't allow myself to say just because I was in something for a year or two years doesn't mean it was too long. You know what, if 10 years ago was the right time, now is the only time pull the trigger. Yeah, it's so true. I go to like, is it still moving you towards your goal? Yes or no? So actually, there's two parts. Is it still moving you towards your goal? And is this still fulfilling? Because those things sometimes, right? It's like, well, no, we get, you know, especially in entrepreneurial world these days, it's like,

you know, be on your grind, hustle, hustle, work hard, move forward. And so the question is, yes, work hard, but are you working smart? And are you working in the right direction? It's like, think of, you know, I love analogies. So just thinking about going in the car, and it's like, you want to drive to New York, right, but you actually take the wrong freeway and you keep going. And you're just like, but I'm on this freeway now, I met, I should, it will eventually get me to New York, but do you want it to take 10 times longer? What if you now realize, actually I don't want to go to New York anyway, right? Like having these assessments of, am I still on the right path? Do I still want to go to New York? All these assessments, just because you're one year in, doesn't mean that you shouldn't. In fact, that's when you should. I wish I did that in eight years. I didn't do that even once.

Me and my husband, we play this game called no bullshit. What would it take? And so the no bullshit, what would it take to X, Y, and Z? So let's say your goal is to build a company and you're like, okay, no bullshit. What would it take? It would take me seven years to make $100,000. And in that path, I will have to give up on spending Saturdays with my partner, and I can no longer get my hair done. Like, that's what no bullshit,

what would it take me to get to your goal? Actually, we're fine. Where are you going? No bullshit, what is it going to take to get you there? And then are you willing to do it? Because that's the thing, right? Like for you with your C-suite, if you're just like, I want to run this company, great. Now you've got the goal. You know what you want to do. How do you get that? Okay, well, I need to fill this position. I need to work my way up the ladder. Okay, great. What skill sets are you going to build to work your way up the ladder? Now, when you're in the process, each year you need to assess, are you having fun? Is it a life you still want? You have to replay the no bullshit, what would it take?

Because now your goal still may be, I want to be to the top, but you know what? I actually really want to have a partner and I've given up dating for four years. And the truth is, this may not be the life I want anymore. I want a day I want to go out there. Okay, so now maybe you've assessed your goal of running the company may not align with your day to day. And now you better reassess does your goal still match the life you want. And I think that to your point of how do you make sure you're not wasting your years is the reassessment of is your goal still your goal?

And are your acts on a day to day filling your heart? Because if it's not, do you actually wanna get to your goal in the first place? I like that idea of revisiting and constantly reevaluating what those goals are and accepting that what was working for you even two years ago just might not be working anymore. And that's okay. I remember just growing up that it was this one path and it was corporate America and that's all I ever thought of right so when I was in it it was tunnel vision. I never thought what is available to me out is there anything available to me outside of this and

it's so important that we say we don't have to check the box and go to college and go to corporate America and get this prize. We can actually instead pick our head up and say, what suits me now? Just like that conversation that you had with your husband. And I so appreciate you sharing that. Ready to optimize your nutrition this year? Factor has chef-made gourmet meals that make eating, well, easy. They're dietitian-approved and ready to heat and eat in two minutes so you can fuel right and feel great no matter what life throws at you. Factor arrives fresh and fully prepared, perfect for any active busy lifestyle.

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that you thought would make you, you know, feel the way you wanted to feel or be who you wanted to be or whatever to certify your belonging to something. And you feel the opposite. You feel like shit, because you have to confront the fact that there is no substitute for self-worth

and there's no substitute for real connection with other human beings. So you talk about, thank you for breaking that down first of all, but you talk about these underlying issues, lacking self worth, fear, anxiety. How do you guide people away from those things into self love and self compassion and allowing and embracing and channeling this into a power instead of a hold back?

Yeah. Well, that was what I was most excited to talk about in the book because I think we're getting a lot of that wrong with this like, just love yourself. We talk about it like a panacea and it's like, you know, someone who's struggling to love themselves hears that and they don't know what that really means. I mean, I don't even know what that really means with when people say like, just be nice to yourself. It's like, what, like, give me actionable steps, you know? And I think what we, again, to go back to the emotional, illiterate piece is like the

self-compassion and like, this is what I am so excited to talk about, so I'm so glad you asked me that question. Self-compassion is not being really nice and sweet and polite to yourself. Self-compassion is a three-step resiliency building skill. And the framework that I use in the Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control is based on research by Dr. Kristin Neff, who was the first person to really research into compassion. She's like for self-compassion, what Brene Brown is to vulnerability, right? She's like the one. And she breaks it down into these three steps. And we don't know what those three steps are. And we don't understand that when you

exercise self-compassion, that ushers you into a sense of real accountability for your life, real power, instead of this like petty control. I mean, that's the spine of the book is like We are trading our inherent power For all of this control that doesn't even work and is an illusion in the first place and it's tantamount to like trying to move a car by getting behind it and pushing it instead of just sitting in the driver's seat and driving it but we don't know the difference between control and power or like how to access our power. And one of the best ways to access power is through self-compassion. But we live in a culture which teaches us that self-compassion is kind of like this hippie thing to do.

And especially in corporate America, it's not the move, right? That you need to be hard on yourself and punitive with yourself and bust your ass and do all of this stuff. And that's what's going to get you across the finish line. And the research says the exact opposite. When people are punitive with themselves, they burn out, they don't operate with premium energy, they're not solutions oriented, they have less creativity. They burn out. They don't operate with premium energy. They're not solutions oriented.

They have less creativity. It's just negative across the board. And so the three, do you want to get into the three steps of self-compassion? Okay. So the first is self-kindness. And again, what I love about Dr. Neff is she really funnels it down to like talk about what kindness is and she starts kindness with them in the most interesting way, which is being able to just acknowledge like you're in pain. And that's why you need to be kind to yourself. You're not just having a bad day. You're not just flustered like you're in pain right now and you need to move towards yourself instead of away from yourself and have some empathy.

So when I think about the difference between being kind and polite, empathy comes into play. And empathy is about being able to understand what someone is feeling. And the someone in this case is yourself. And so that looks like, you know, let's just say, you know, you had a really bad meeting and you're starting the negative self talk of like, I can't believe I said that I can't believe I said that I am so embarrassed. That was such a, you know, blah, blah, God, it is really hard to feel this embarrassed. I am in pain. Like this hurts. This is the worst. And you have to acknowledge that. Whereas

I think when people, when we tell people to just be nice to themselves, they have the exact same flustered meeting and then they're like, it's okay, you're okay. And it like falls flat because we know what the truth feels like. And that's not the truth. You're not okay. And it wasn't an okay meeting. You didn't do a good job. That's the truth. And that doesn't have any commentary on who you are. It just means you had a bad meeting. It was not your shiniest moment. And so that self-kindness is being able to acknowledge like, God, this is hard, I'm hurting. The second one is common humanity,

which is being able to say that we live amongst billions of people and billions of people have lived before us. And hopefully if we can switch gears, billions of people will live after us on this world, which is in fire. And someone somewhere is having your exact experience and you're not alone in that.

And that is part generating connection, part like get out of the narcissistic mindset that you're the only one who's ever suffered this much. And the more you're experiencing something that is taboo in our culture to talk about, the more shame you're gonna feel and the more alone you're gonna feel.

So for example, sexual molestation, right? We don't talk about that. It's not okay to talk about it, all the things. So someone who is feeling that is not going to feel a sense of common humanity because it feels so uncommon to them. They are probably thinking, nobody in my circle has ever had to experience something like this or if you... No, it's so common.

I want people to know this, and it's so common. I want people to know this and it's so common. It's so common. You know, same with domestic violence, you know, suicide, all of these issues which are so common but are still shamed in our culture and which are still weighed down with stigma. It's like, if you were in a, if you're feeling that stuff, one way to generate common humanity is just imagining yourself in a room full of people who are talking about that experience. That's why support groups are helpful, for example, because they generate a sense of common humanity of like,

oh, I'm not the only one who's, you know, X, Y, and Z. And that's why, you know, frameworks like AA and things like that, it's a community. It's community. And what community is, is like shared common humanity. And then the last component of self-compassion is mindfulness. Another word that's been radioactively commodified in our culture, and what Neff means by this is like being able to say, yes, that meeting was embarrassing. It was the worst.

I hated it. But also, that's not all I feel. And being able to turn your head a little bit and say like, what else do I feel? Do I also feel proud of myself for being introspective right now. Am I also looking forward to Saturday night with going out with my girlfriends? Am I also really curious about this book that's been sitting on my nightstand for two months

that has nothing to do with my job? And just being able to return to the sense that you're a whole human being and being mindful of the fact that this one experience you're having is not who you are. It doesn't say anything about what's possible for you in the future. It's feeling like it's eclipsing your whole reality day life, whatever, because your stress response is activated and that narrows your line of vision. Because when your body is stressed, you're wired to focus on like the next one minute of your life. And so you're contracting. And mindfulness is about

letting your body and mind know it's okay to expand now. There's no tiger in the room with me, you know? And you're safe. And this isn't all you feel. So perfectionists feel disappointment a lot amongst a litany of other emotions. And instead of asking yourself, like, how do I feel less disappointed? How do I get rid of my disappointment?

A better question is, what else do I feel? Because then you make space for the disappointment and you make space for the rest of your emotional landscape, which is, you know, not just bad. It's filled with a lot of other stuff. What does the future hold for business? Ask 9 experts and you'll get 10 answers. Bull market, bear market, rates will rise or fall, inflations up or down. Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 41,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the

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So yes, I feel that if somebody wants something to change in their life and they want to learn how to manifest, the first thing I ask is, what's your intention? Why do you want this to happen? Does anything scare you about this happening? You'd be surprised sometimes people will say things and I'm like, okay, that's from a fear base or a negative thing. So a lot of what you're seeing is miracles showing up. It's not just healing the mind, the body, and the spirit. It's also teaching the client how to access this energy field that some people call source, creator of all that is, so that they can actually have these manifestations come to fruition.

As everyone listening knows, you know, my old life was very much corporate America, never. I thought people who talked about manifestation were on drugs or hippies and just, I truly did not, I thought that was them, they're over there and I'm part of the hardworking population driving value in the US. Like I just saw that as so separate from me.

And so through this whole journey since getting fired, I've opened my mind to a lot of different things and I 100% believe in manifestation and that's something that you've worked with me on. And I'll tell you, you know, I've watched The Secret, I've read all these different books and you know, again, all this information goes back hundreds and hundreds of years, that you've worked with me on. And I'll tell you, I've watched The Secret, I've read all these different books. And again, all this information goes back hundreds and hundreds of years, if not probably thousands and thousands of years

that I haven't accessed yet. But one profound statement that you made to me that helped turn the switch on for me, and I don't know if anyone's struggling with this, maybe this will help them. I was saying to you, when we were in a session, I said, I just don't understand. It seems fleeting.

Like once in a while it will happen, but I don't have control over it. I don't know how to make it happen on the regular. I feel like I'm blessed at a certain moment or time it could happen, but I still don't know what I'm doing. It's not methodical and I don't have a handle on it. And I want to have a handle on it. And you said to me, do you know what your purpose is?

And I think you called it divine timing is why you're here on this planet. And I said, of course I do. Yes. I know exactly what it is. And you said, do you see that certainty in that conviction that you have in that? I said, yes. She said, you need to have that same certainty conviction and knowing when you're manifesting something, can you talk a little bit about that?

Most people are pretty much queued up. There's a lot of information out there. I'm not the only one. You're also a purveyor of health and wellness and success. Okay, so there's a lot of us out there. But all of this information that we read, that we're taught, there's a huge difference between having all of this information that we read, that we're taught, there's a huge difference between having all of this information in your mind, which you are consciously aware of

through your cognitive abilities of everything you've been taught, you've been hearing and you've read. There's a huge difference between what you have in the mind and what you actually, all of that information in your mind and actually feeling in your soul, in your heart, all of that information in your mind and actually feeling in your soul, in your heart, all of that information. When you actually feel in your heart and in your soul, everything you've read, everything that you resonate with, cognitively, that's really Heather when the magic happens. When you actually feel it with that conviction, when

you were like, of course, this is my divine timing. So that type of conviction and that feeling it in your heart, I think, is when the magic it happens before that transition. But I really feel like that's key for all of these blessings to keep coming to someone, to everyone, you know, to actually feel and know and just know that you don't know when it's going to happen, but that it's going to happen. So one of the things teach people is to make a manifestation list for their divine timing. And I think that's the challenge with most people. I want to have a family. I want to open my own business. I want to move to, I don't know,

Colorado, whatever it may be. And I think they start to in their minds, try to figure out how that's going to happen. And that kind of can slow it down as opposed to, I want to move to Colorado. I'm just giving you an example. I want to move to Colorado in 2023 for my divine timing to be able to do this, this, this, and this. Thank you, universe. Thank you, creator. And yeah, you want to Google real estate. You want to kind of see what's happening in Colorado, but you don't have to figure out

exactly how that's going to happen and when that's going to happen. I'm not referring to someone who's in a corporate position where the company moves to another state and they move you to another state. I'm referring to someone who just doesn't want to be somewhere and wants to move somewhere else or wants to move out of the country or whatever it is that their manifestation is. To put it out there and know that it's available

and that it's going to happen, staying in the present moment and not trying to figure out exactly how it's available and that it's gonna happen, staying in the present moment and not trying to figure out exactly how it's gonna happen. For me, I've spent my entire life white knuckling and working so hard, doing the last bit that you just said, but trying to figure out how to make it happen. So all this time I was spending all this effort and angst

on something that I should have been letting go of. Yes, I will use myself as an example. I've been practicing energy alternative medicine for 12 years now and I have a nice successful private practice, thank you, at the university. And a lot of my clients are video well before COVID because I've never had the privilege of meeting them, but we'll have a session every three or four months or what have not. And one of the things that I was manifesting was to start doing a podcast.

To start, I kid you not. It's like, wow, I really want to start being interviewed. My son's already 16 and a half, we'll be in college next year. I'll have the time to travel around, start speaking publicly. I just put it out there, put it on a list. And then, I don't know, about three or four weeks ago,

all of a sudden you're leaving and you turn around and you say, by the way, I'd love to have you on my podcast. I almost fainted and I was like, keep it together. Heather's your client. And I was like, so I was beaming with joy. I had a smile from here to here. And when you left and I was just like, yes, thank you, universe.

Because that's what I really wanted to happen. But I didn't do anything. I didn't start calling people, hey, can I be on your podcast? It just happened. And that's another example of just wanting something to happen, knowing that it's going to happen and just throwing it out there without an emotional attachment to when. I'm on this journey with me. I'm gonna make it happen again.

I decided to change that dynamic. And I might fail now. I couldn't be more excited for what you're gonna hear. Start learning and growing. Inevitably something will happen. No one succeeds alone. You don't stop and look around once in a while.

You could miss it. I'm on this journey with me.