This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 010 / 7 Things To Give Up (To Become Your Best You) With Kristin Andree

Episode Date: March 18, 2020

In this episode, Nicole welcomes guest Kristin Andree - Coach, Keynote and Author, who walks us through the 7 things to give up (don’t panic, coffee is not one of them) to become the best you in your career. Are you interested in growing both personally and professionally, but not clear on exactly what’s standing in your way? Believe it or not, the same things that are holding you back have held others back as well. Kristin not only points out these common challenges, but also shares some tips and strategies for removing these pesky roadblocks. Ladies, are you ready to be your best kick a$$ self? (Dollar signs not a typo) :) Join us as we work it (heels or flats or no shoes at all!) down this path together! This is Woman’s Work To learn more about what we are up to outside of this podcast, visit us at NicoleKalil.com

If it's true that we all have a twin out there, then Kristen Andre must be my career twin or my mission twin. Over the last couple of years, I must have heard her name hundreds of times. When people heard about my work or my mission, inevitably they'd say, do you know Kristen Andre? So about a year ago, I figured I needed to meet this woman that everybody spoke so highly of, and she didn't disappoint. Coach, keynote speaker, host of the No Limits podcast, and author, I feel lucky to even be considered career adjacent to Kristen. She is awesome and here today to tell us about the seven things to give up to become your best you in your career and your life. Kristen, I read on your blog about these seven things and I was like, yes, yes, yes. And I'm so excited for our listeners to be able to hear about these seven

things that we need to give up and let go in order to be our best selves. So walk us through this. And thank you for being here, by the way. Oh, I'm excited. And that intro, oh my gosh, like you're so sweet. But I agree because it was one of the same things on my end too. All my friends were like, do you know Nicole? How do you not know Nicole? And I'm like, we are, we're definitely twins in, you know, the business world and just our mission and how we're out to help women and grow and empower them. So I love it. I'm excited. This will be a fun time. Me too. So walk us through the seven things that we should give up. I know in reading your blog,

the first one was like, we could do a whole podcast on just this. I think you even have, um, but talk to us about the seven things. All right. So there's, you know, when I started looking at this and this kind of came, this blog post came from not only the work I do with my, my clients and some of the keynotes I give, but a lot of the work I'd done on myself, just growing personally and professionally over the last several decades, these were the things that I felt like, man, I wish I were to learn this earlier. So the first one is, this is the one we could do a whole show on. It's worrying what other people think of you. And too often

in business and in life, I feel like we put so much weight and credibility in what other people think or what we're worried they're going to think. And the truth of the matter is most of the time, they're not really thinking about us at all. They're more worried about themselves. So we spend all this time changing who we are as a person, kind of rounding out the edges a little bit, or maybe not stepping out or stepping up when we feel like we should. Sometimes it's we're holding ourself back and not going for a big goal because we're worried, what are the people going to say? Or what are they going to think of us? So, you know, since people aren't really thinking of us at all, it really starts to get in your head where you spend more time worrying than you do actually

doing. And if you really get where you've got the right people around you, it doesn't matter. Like if you surround yourself with the right people in your life, in your business, then what the other people think of you is going to be that you're a fantastic person and they're going to be supportive of it. So I think that's the first one is worrying what other people think. So if we can kind of get that and push that aside a little bit, it makes it a lot easier and allows room for us to do some really, really cool stuff. Absolutely. And you have a quote in your blog from Dr. Seuss that I'm going to read because it's so good. Yeah. Yeah. Be who you are and say what you feel because

those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. Dr. Seuss, I mean, can't he just tell us everything about life? Read the books as a kid. And I don't know if you do this, but like I read all the Dr. Seuss books and I'm like, okay, this is fun. We learned how to rhyme. But then when you really, as an adult, go back and start reading them with your kids or look back at them, like, oh, the places you'll go and all those types of books, you're sitting there going, he was pretty darn smart. But he had some good stuff in there. Yeah. No, I read to my six-year-old and I feel like more often than not, I'm walking away with a way bigger message than she is. For sure. Yep. Yep. All right. Awesome. So number one to let go is worrying about what other people think of us.

Yes. Okay. You ready for number two? I'm ready. Okay. So number two is obsessing over the past. And I don't know about you, Nicole, but I have been uber, uber guilty of this. Like definitely guilty of this. Probably more personally than professionally.

But let's take both sides. On the professional side, all of us have been passed over for promotions or, you know, didn't get an assignment or a job or a territory or something that we really, really wanted. And frequently, and I see this a lot more in younger people, honestly, we just start to obsess over it. What did I do wrong? Why was this not, why was I not good enough? You know, why did they pick him over me? So a lot of times we'll spend so many hours and so much wasted energy on that or over obsessing what happened as opposed to just moving forward. You know, now I've got, at my age now, I've got the luxury of being able to look back and honestly, honestly, honestly,

believing that all the things that didn't happen that I wanted to happen weren't meant for me anyway. There's an old song, and I'm so not a country music person, but there's this old, I think it's Garth Brooks song called Unanswered Prayers. I don't know if you've ever heard it. Yes. But the line from that song said, some of God's greatest gift are unanswered prayers. So sometimes like these jobs we really wanted or the promotions we were just pushing and pushing, pushing for that we didn't get can lead us to something even bigger and better down the road. So, you know, my, my rule, if you want to kind of live your best life and be your best self is you've got to stop obsessing over the past, you know, so whether it's the job you didn't get, the boyfriend that dumped you, been, you know, been there too. That's

the one I always spend too much time on. But whatever it is, if we spend all the time in the past, you can't move forward. You can't change it. So it's just kind of like, all right, we just got to figure out what happened and it's time to move forward. Because the more you look back, the less you're able to look forward. Yeah. My coach says you can do nothing about the past other than change how you relate to it. Exactly. And I always think that's so empowering. And, and this was a big one for me to read. Um, I do have a tendency to do this. And for me, at least at this phase in my life, it has been more career oriented. So everything you just said spoke to me a lot. Right. Yeah. And I used to, I think we're all guilty of that. Like, cause we,

you know, especially as women, when we look back at the past, our first tendency is what did I do wrong? Why was I not enough? And that's where we spend the time obsessing. And usually that's not the issue. It was really, it was, you know, it wasn't meant for you. It was the timing wasn't right. You know, there's bigger plans down the road. So we need to free ourselves of the obsession part so we can really move forward. Totally. I mean, I don't know about you, but have you ever done the thinking back on a conversation or an argument and like you replay it over and over about what you wish you would have said. Yeah. Cause like, I'm really good at the, what I would, you know, and I'll

get it in my head where I'm like, all right, next time this happens, I know exactly what I'm going to say. And the crazy thing is it never happens again. So all the time I spent trying to prepare my perfect speech, I never got to use. Yep. All right. Give us number three. Number three. Okay. This is a big one. I don't know. I don't know how many of you guys will sit listening. I'll see yourself in this, but number three is surrounding yourself with toxic people. If you want to be successful, if you want to kind of live your best life, you've got to, got to, got to give up surrounding yourself with toxic people. We know who they are. I will assure you, you know who they are.

And you probably know that you need to get rid of them. But that's easier said than done sometimes. You know, whether it's just that their energy is bad or whether they're just normally verbally and outwardly demeaning to you, the toxic people have to go. So wherever they are in your life, whether it's a personal relationship, friendship, marriage, your boss, your coworkers, whatever they are, if they're draining your energy, they're probably some toxic folks that you really need to assess whether or not that needs to be a relationship you continue to be a part of. And this can be true for toxic environment professionally as well. So you mentioned boss and, and, but if, and I know, you know, all careers, you have moments where things

are going really well and times where things can be really, really stressful, but generally speaking, if you're in a toxic environment, same rule applies, right? For sure. Yeah, because it's, and we'll see this with companies all the time. And I've had clients that I've worked with, you know, personal coaching clients of mine who are with larger corporations. And they're like, I really hate it. Like I go into work and I'm drained. I don't even like to go in the office.

And, you know, my coaching for them is typically if there's nothing changeable about that, you've got to remove yourself from the environment. You know, the thing to remember with toxic people and toxic environments is frequently you're not able to change them. Sometimes you can. But if you're in there and you're like, this is toxic for me, if you remain in that situation or in that relationship, that is a conscious choice you are making. And that's where a lot of people get off track when I start talking with them about removing themselves from those situations.

They're like, well, I can't, I don't have a choice. And my message to people around toxic environments or toxic people is you always have a choice. There's other companies, other people, other friends, anything that you can do to just kind of regain your energy. It's not easy. I mean, I've definitely had relationships that, um, have that I've consciously ended or consciously made a choice to like, I need to distance myself from this person because of the energy it was draining from me. And it's not easy. I mean, these are things where you're like, Oh, cause it's typically your closer people, the ones that you're around a lot. So even you're said than done, but I promise you, once you do it, it, what it opens up is the ability for the right people to find you and the ones that are going to

bring you energy. So I always tell my rule of thumb with people and my clients, my kids, everybody is if it's not bringing you energy or moving you closer to your goals, you need to be away from it, whether it's a person, a place, a thing, an event. So if something's really drawing on you and you're like, oh, you know, in the business world, here's what I tell the people I work with in the business world. If you look at your calendar for the week and you've got somebody on there that you're like, oh, I can't believe I have to go see them. They're not your person. That's probably, there's some kind of toxicity there that you really need to assess how you can minimize that relationship. Couldn't agree more and very well said.

We've got, so that was three. So number four, this is, all right, you and I, we've chatted about this one before. The number four is pushing for someone else's goals instead of your own. And I mean, I think you mentioned, you see this a lot in your practice too, don't you? Yes. Yeah. A lot of my individual coaching clients will talk about a goal or say they want to do something and then sort of not follow through on it, not act the way you would think somebody would act if they were really chasing a goal.

Yeah. And nine times out of 10 in doing a little digging and asking, we uncover that the goal wasn't their own. It was one they thought was important because it's important to somebody else or a goal somebody else put on them type things like that. For sure. That's it. I mean, that's exactly what I'm seeing in my own practice and in, and honestly out in the world too, because if, if it's someone else's goal, you're not bought into it. I mean, sometimes you are. Sometimes your goal and someone else's goal for you aligns, and that's awesome. But too often, I see this a lot in sales.

You and I both work a lot in the financial industry. And a lot of times in sales or in finance or people who are growing service-related business, your standards and your goals and your expectations are set. You're kind of told, I need you to do X. And I've found that if you're pushing for somebody else's goal because they've told you you need to do X, the likelihood of you hitting it is really, really low, as you mentioned. So what you need to do is figure out what your goal is. So they could align, they could get where you're like, okay, I want to hit X that they've put on me because it gives me the opportunity to vacation twice a year with my kids, or I'm able to work from home, or this will let me buy this beach house that I've always wanted. So tying your goals to something that's important to you, that and taking it away

from like, all right, I'm doing this because they said I had to, the likelihood of your success is much, much higher. You know, it's, it's the goals, goal, goal setting's big. I'm a big, big goal setter person, but it, unless you really are, have a tie to it, the likelihood of you hitting it, I can usually tell if somebody is going to hit a goal in talking to them based on their excitement around it. Absolutely. You can hear in what they say, how they say it. And I'll be upfront. I say this a lot with the people I work with. I'm not the best at helping people to uncover their goals. I'm best at when somebody has a goal and they're clear on the goal, the strategy and things to do to get there. So since it sounds

like you're pretty good at helping people with goal setting, if somebody's listening and thinking, hey, I have been chasing somebody else's goals. I have been living somebody else's best life. What are some tips or tricks or ideas in helping people to come up with what their own goals are? Right. And that's a good point. I think with first and foremost, you've got to look at what the hitting those goals are going to do for you. I mean, because let's face it, most of us, I mean, I'm in a career. I love what I get to do every day. So if I won the lottery, I'd probably still do it. I'm sure I would. But a lot of times people aren't like that. They're clocking in, clocking out.

They're doing a job instead of owning the job and being it. So the first thing I always tell people when you're setting goals or trying to figure out what it is, is what's important to you. If it's not your job, which honestly with a lot of people, it's not. It's what is that job going to do for you? What will hitting this goals allow you to do? That frequently goes back to family, finances, and fun. Those are the three things I usually see somebody tie a goal to. So if I can get them to figure out, okay, hitting this goal means X to my finances. I can pay off debt. I can save money for a house. I'll be able to gift my

children, you know, money or put them through college. So finances, family and funds. So if it ties to the money, if it ties to being able to do things with your family, afford to do things with your family, you know, and then fun, obviously, that's pretty easy one. If it's buying your vacations, buying you the boat you want, whatever material thing, you know, there's no judgment with why you hit a goal, honestly. You're not hurting anybody else in the process. But it's trying to figure out like, okay, if you want to do this, what do you first and foremost, what do you want to do?

What effect on your female, female, your finances, your family and your fun is this going to happen? If you start there, then you can easily identify the goals that you need to make those things happen. That's so good. Because as you were saying that, I was like, you know, I would turn myself inside out for a trip to Italy. I mean, I wouldn't hurt another person, but I would do about whatever it takes. Yeah, for sure. And that's where, you know, Italy's my big destination. See, we are twins. I swear. Italy's my destination. I got a big birthday coming up this year and that's

my trip. I'm doing a solo trip to Italy like that. So everything I'm doing, like I have mapped out what I need to do to, you know, pay cash for this trip. And I want to, I want to fly and, you know, first class and I want to do all this. So I know what it's going to take in my business to make that happen. So then it's fun. Like my business is fun anyway, but everybody's isn't. But if you can tie it to something that you're getting jazzed about, like a trip to Italy, that's awesome. Yeah. You know, I always tell people with, you know, since I've been in the financial world so long and people define freedom very differently. And somebody had asked me before, like, how do you define freedom or financial freedom? And the way I always define it is I never want to have to ask another person or my checkbook for permission. And this kind of gets

to the goals thing is I want to make sure that whatever I set out to do, whatever goal I have, whatever trip I want to take, that I've got the ability to do that. And if you can be so clear in your goals, it makes it a lot easier to kind of implement the things that will make them happen. So I think that ties really nicely into number five, because oftentimes we use our wallets and our calendars as excuses to not do the things that we want or that we say that we want. So talk to us about number five. So number five is like you mentioned, throwing out excuses. If you want to succeed, you have to get rid of this. You have to get rid of the excuses. I tell you what, I am the best at excuses. When I was new in the financial industry, my coach used to look at me and she'd

say, Kristen, if you don't hit a goal, I, if you come in here and you hadn't hit your goal, I know you're going to have a million reasons, really good reasons why you didn't hit it. And I'm like, yes, ma'am. But, but it was because she knew I was good at the excuses. Like I was, I had gotten to a point where I was so good at knowing why I didn't hit something, you know? So I had to, for me, channel that. Like I knew my excuses, but what I had to do is turn that excuse into an opportunity to look at what I'd done and say, okay, my excuse was that, you know, I didn't have time in the morning to make some phone calls. So that created an opportunity for me to time block and put time

in my calendar each day to make the phone calls I need to do so I didn't miss them. So we all have excuses. It's our natural tendency. Like we started this as kids. I mean, you know, you've got small kids. They've got excuses for everything. But when it comes to life and the business, they're all, I mean, they're all BS if you really think about it. So if we're being honest with ourselves, it's really looking at why you didn't get something done. You know, I'm a, I'm a single mom. I've got three kids, run a business. I travel. Hours are short. They're short for all of us. So I need to really be intentional with my time. So I don't have time to make excuses anymore. I know I'm not going to have time to get everything

done. So I need to be intentional around, Hey, I'm making a choice not to do, not to go to the gym because I need to get these phone calls made, or I'm getting a choice not to send these follow-up emails today because I decided to go to dinner with girlfriend. So it's, it's not, it's getting rid of the excuses and understanding that everything you're doing in your calendar and with your finances are a conscious choice. So two things really jumped out at me while you were talking. Number one, it sounds like the antidote to excuses is being honest with yourself and really, you know, for sure, not buying into your own bullshit for lack of a better term. And then the second thing that you said that really resonated with me is people

talk a lot about time management. And a long time ago, somebody said to me that it's not time management, it's choice management. We all have 24 hours in a day. We all have 60 minutes in an hour. Nobody's managing time. Time is neutral, right? It is what it is. And so what we're all managing are the choices that we make with the time that we have. And that was a game changer for me. Like it totally tweaked my relationship with my camp. Now that's not to say I never make excuses or I don't, you know, that I don't always make the best choices or that, you know, but, but just having that thought of, okay, I didn't go to the gym and I did this instead. And that was a choice that I made. Correct. I love that. I like that term choice management because you're absolutely right. It's,

you know, the excuse we all have them. So don't spend time making the excuses, just admit to yourself that you've made a conscious choice to do that. Because here's the thing, by the fifth time you're admitting, I made a conscious choice not to go to the gym, you might start going, probably should go to the gym. You know, it's just, we're not, you'll start to disallow the excuses if you're honest with yourself about them. Absolutely. Yeah. If I haven't kept my commitment to myself five times in a row, then I need to check my commitment to myself five times in a row, then I need to check my commitment to myself. Right. Because sometimes it's not important. And I always tell people with, and this gets back to

the goal one, the goal has to be important to you, not to, you know, Nicole or I as a coach, it has to be important to the person we're working with. And if it's not, they're not going to hit it. You know, so you're right. If, if you start throwing out or you find yourself throwing out excuse after excuse, you've got to reevaluate, is this goal important to me? Because sometimes, sometimes it's not, and that's okay too. But then that allows you to focus your energy and efforts where, where it should be on something that is important. Absolutely. So number six, I see a lot in the professional environment. Yes. I see it personally, professionally, everything. So number six is waiting for the magic bullet. You know, we all feel like, I don't know. I mean, it's with everything. It's

like when this happens, the floodgates are going to open and everybody's going to call and everyone's, you know, when I land this client, my business is going to change. When I lose 20 pounds, my life is going to be different. You know, whatever it is, it's just, we're waiting for this one thing. But the crazy thing is we're waiting on it, not acting towards it. So, and that's kind of what the main point I want to make with the waiting for the magic bullet. It's the waiting piece. I'm not worried about the magic bullet.

I'm worried about the waiting. So if you're sitting here thinking and listening to this going, yeah, down the road, you know, when this happens, I'll be fine. The second you catch yourself doing that, you're inactive in the moment you're in right now. So it causes us to kind of shortcut and wait and not push as hard because we know there's some magic coming down the road. You know, so the key is there's not, there's just not. Everyone I know that, I mean, think about

the people, you know, you're like, oh my gosh, she was so lucky and she was great and she worked her tail off. And, you know, it's because they, they got all these things because they did work and they did try and they did push. They weren't waiting around for things to happen to them. I think that's such an important distinction. I'm so glad you said that it's the waiting part. Um, you know, I talk a lot about confidence being built through action and not by, you know, thinking or waiting. And that just very powerful stuff right there. Even if there is a magic bullet, you're most likely going to find it or catch it if you're doing something, not sitting around waiting. It's not coming to you when you're waiting.

It's coming when you're out there doing. That's why they always call people lucky. You know, I know a lot of women, I live in Atlanta, and a lot of the women in Atlanta that I know that are hugely successful business owners, we'll have this conversation, you know, because I'm good friends with a lot of them. And we'll be at dinner and be like, yeah, it's so funny. People are like, oh, my gosh, you just got so lucky. And you know, they're like, yeah, my luck was happened. Because for the last 20 years, I've been busting my tail and no one knew who I was. You know, so it's I heard a podcast recently with our interview recently with Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx, who we can all be thankful for. You read her and she's here in Atlanta.

If you read her story and listen to her interview, she worked her tail off like she bootstrapped it. And she is a hard, hard, hard worker. And that's why she has a billion dollar company. It wasn't because she got lucky or because this magic bullet happened. It was because she worked her tail off. Yep. All right. Let's go into number seven because I think this is one, especially as women that we need to be mindful of. I'm sure both genders deal with this, but I do think women a little bit more so. So talk to us about overthinking. I think as women, we have perfected this one. So overthinking.

Number seven is overthinking because here's what's funny is whether it be a goal or an excuse or whether you know, whether or not I need to go to the gym, we overthink everything. I don't know if you're guilty of this, but for me, before I do something, I will likely think through the 18 possible scenarios and I will play those scenarios each out for the next 10 years and try to figure out, okay, which would be the best course of action? Like I overthink things so much where it's just like, you just obsess over it and you freeze and you don't take action. I'm not guilty of this anymore, but this was a big one for me when I was probably in my

twenties and thirties. And this, honestly, the overthinking goes back up to the very first thing we talked about, the worrying what other people think of you. Because frequently our reason for overthinking is the what will they say, what will they think scenario. So we're trying to really play out every detail of what we're trying to do. So, you know, my advice with overthinking is just, I mean, it sounds silly, but stop. Because most of the things that we're choosing to obsess about won't ever happen. Most of the scenarios we're trying to play out in our head ahead of time to protect us

or to make sure no one's going to think anything bad, those aren't going to happen either. So when it comes down to it, we've got to really look at what are we dealing with. So I kind of have a, it's funny, I'm very big into an assessment tool called the Strengths Finder, and it helps you figure out what your innate strengths are. Love this tool. Well, one of mine is what they call an activator. And an activator is somebody who just takes action quick, like they dive in and take action. I don't think I was always like this. But the activator, my description of it is ready, fire, aim. So meaning like I'm ready, I'm going to go and then I'll figure it out later. The aim comes

later. So you have to get rid of overthinking to be able to do that. So one of the things that's been very helpful for me is I do take action first and then I readjust as I go because I've gotten to the point in my life and my career where I'm like, you know, I'm going to mess up. You know, most of the overthinking I did when I was younger and earlier in my career was trying so hard not to mess up. So I thought through every scenario. So at my age now, I'm, I'm really starting to realize like, okay, I, I'm going to mess up. I'm going to fall down. I'm going to screw things up and that's okay. So it allows me to take action without having to overthink. So good. I, you know, same with me, this fear of messing up, I think held me back

from doing things. And in hindsight, you know, with a little bit of age and hopefully some wisdom, I look back and think it was in the messing up that I actually propelled myself forward faster. Oh my gosh, for sure. For sure. And I wish that we, I mean, that's anybody young that's listening, that's the message I have. I have three daughters. That's the message I have to them all the time. I'm not a helicopter mom or rescue type of mom. I let them mess up because I feel like that's where they find their strength. And that's where they find their tenacity and their grit. And these are all things that we need. So if we're constantly overthinking things, if we're constantly worried about other people,

what they think, or if we're throwing out excuses, we don't give ourself an opportunity to say, hey, I screwed up and here's what I learned from it. Because that's where we can really start to see some growth in our life personally, professionally, and financially is to embrace the things that were like, okay, here's what I was supposed to learn from that and to use that knowledge and move forward. So good. I'm trying to say the same things to my daughter. Yeah. I think the more of us that are saying it and the more of us that are practicing it and, you know, being an example

of it, the better it's going to be, not just for all women, but for all of us in general. It's true. And not everybody has that ability to do that. So I feel like the more, you know, kind of the toxic people, then the more you can surround yourselves with people who will encourage you to, you know, do these things, to not overthink, to quit with your excuses, to really find some awesome people to be around. The more you can surround yourself with those people, oh my gosh, it just gets so much easier to, to build what you really, really want for your life. Yeah. Kristen, thank you so much for your wisdom and your time. For those of you listening, if you want to learn more about Kristen and her work,

you can check her out on andreagroup.com. The spelling of that is A-N-D-R-E-E group.com, where you can find more about her podcast, her blog, her book, her work, onsite keynote. I mean, this woman is doing it all. And to quote directly from her website and from Kristen, we weren't put here to play small. We are all on this earth to play big and to make an impact on the world. And I, for one, feel more confident knowing that there are women like Kristen out there leading the charge. Will you join us? Are you ready to let go of these seven things to become your best you?

Women, let's get to work on letting go of what other people think about us, obsessing over the past, surrounding ourselves with toxic people, pushing for somebody else's goals instead of our own, throwing out excuses, waiting for some magic bullet, and maybe most importantly, overthinking. This is woman's work.