This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 080 / Overcome Your Villains with Heather Monahan

Episode Date: February 2, 2022

What if some villains are put in your life for a reason? What if they are put there as an opportunity for you to overcome them? So that you can be the superhero of your own story. Our guest today literally wrote a book on it. Heather Monahan is a best-selling author of her recently released book titled Overcome Your Villains. She was named one of the Top 40 Female Keynote Speakers for 2020 by Real Leaders, and you may know her from USA Today, CNN, Gary V’s Audio Experience, or The Steve Harvey Show, just to name a few. Heather and I have a shared passion as her first book, Creating Confidence, shot to #1 on Amazon, and was named a Top 5 Book for Women by Forbes. Heather shares with us her tips for being your authentic self and rising above your villains. Your villains are never meant to be the star of your show. That role is yours and yours alone. This Is Woman’s Work. To learn more about Heather and her work visit HeatherMonahan.com To learn more about what we are up to outside of this podcast, visit us at NicoleKalil.com

Coming up on this episode of This Is Woman's Work. But it's making that conscious decision that you want to be intentional about who you're allowing into your space and into your energy, because we all have enough bad energy out there in the world today. Protect yours and make sure you're bringing in those good people who want to help you get to that next level. I am Nicole Kalil, and on this episode of This is Woman's Work, we're going to talk about how to overcome your villains. JJ, my eight-year-old, recently asked me why there's always a bad guy in all the movies she watches. And I answered that

it makes the movie more interesting and more entertaining, but that in real life, it's not always so easy to recognize the bad people because mostly nobody is all bad or all good. We all have a little bit of both and we get to choose every day, which part of ourselves we're going to be. It felt like a good mini life lesson, but as most moms do, I questioned, rethought, and re-examined my answer for days while she probably never thought about it ever again. The reality is it's not just cartoons or movies that have villains. They exist in real life and they're typically neither entertaining nor interesting when those villains show up in your life. I doubt that most of our

villains are entirely bad people, but if they were horrible to you, it doesn't really matter that much how other people feel about them. And I think what ends up happening a lot of the time is we do conscious and subconscious things to try to avoid future villains and the pain that they cause, which is smart, but can also be taken too far and end up causing more or at least different pain. So I've been thinking, what if some villains are put in your life for a reason? What if they serve a purpose? What if they're there as an opportunity for you to overcome them so that you can live your best life, so that you can be the superhero of your own story. So let's play with that idea a little bit with our guest who literally wrote the book about it. I'm excited and honored to have Heather Monaghan on the show. Heather is

a best-selling author of her recently released book titled Overcome Your Villains, is a keynote speaker who is named in the top 40 of all women speakers by real leaders. And you may know her from USA Today, CNN, Gary Vee's audio experience, or the Steve Harvey show to name a few. Heather and I share a passion as her first book was called Creating Confidence and shot to number one on several Amazon lists and was named a top five book for women by Forbes. Like me, Heather is a fugitive from the C-suite. As a chief revenue officer in media, she was named one of the most influential women in radio in 2017. I could go on for days, but I'll leave it at this. Heather is a ridiculously impressive person who keeps it

real, which is one of my most favorite qualities in a human. And I'm honored to have her on the show. Heather, thanks for being here to share how we can overcome our villains. Thanks for having me, Nicole. Thanks for that amazing intro. Yay. I'm like your hype girl. I'll follow you around all your speaking engagements and rattle them all up. Let's do it. I love it. Okay. So I want to dive into how we do this, this overcoming our villains. But before I do, can you share a personal example or two, the villains that you've had to overcome in your life? Oh my gosh, I've had so many. And it's funny, people that might know you from social media or think they have the inside track on your life will say, oh, she's had it so easy or, you know, look so perfect. I'm here to let people know that I am far from perfect. And I have had so many crash and burn

situations with difficult people, challenging people. And like you said, listen, my villains, they're a villain to me. It doesn't mean they're a villain in their life or for other people. Right. And it's important for people to know that, that it doesn't mean that person is an evil, bad person. It's just not the kind of people you need to be rolling with. They're not. And I personally had the first one that comes to mind was a big one. I was in corporate America for 20 plus years. I had made it to the C-suite. And the whole time I was at that company, which was 14 years in leadership, there was one other woman on the senior leadership team running side by side with me. But she was always running with a foot out trying to knock me down, trying to stab me in the back when I'd walk out of a room would make a comment about what I was

wearing. You know, it's like that elephant in the room, nobody wants to speak about, but sometimes the biggest bully a woman's gonna face is another woman. And that's at least my experience, right? Because that woman was definitely my biggest villain. And she ended up firing me in Q4 2017, unexpectedly, when she became the CEO of the organization that I had been working for. So that was a major, major villain in my life. But then what's interesting is my thought process kind of works around this, you've got to clear out the villains around you so that you have the energy and space in your mind to start dealing with that big villain, which is the one inside you. And once I was away from that situation, right, I was in a toxic work environment where someone was trying to sabotage me on my own. Certainly was not easy, but I started processing things because I wasn't spending all this time and energy thinking, oh my gosh, how am I going to respond when she tries to

do this? Oh my God. Oh, wait, I'm walking into a meeting and someone's going to bring her up, right? I was always on the defense and that takes time, energy, creativity, and power from you. So suddenly I was finding myself with, you know, availability to start looking at other issues that were happening in my life. And I had this realization at the time, her brother, who I had been really close to my entire career, I started realizing, well, I was really close to him. And we got along well. And I definitely didn't see him as a villain. He was someone who benefited greatly from the things that I would do at work and, you know, and from our partnership. But I started thinking, wait a minute, when I would ask him for things, he wouldn't deliver.

He'd kind of give me the runaround. And again, people will treat you the way that you allow them to treat you or teach them to treat you. I was letting him get away with the stuff. And it was right then that I had this realization. This was right at a year after I got fired. I realized my fiance at the time was doing the same thing with me, right? He would say like, Oh yeah, yeah, no, we're going to get married. We're going to buy the house. We're going to do this. I was getting yes to death. And I was accepting that. And I wasn't saying, wait a minute, we've been having this conversation

ad nauseum for six months, the same way I was with that gentleman that I worked with for years, what was happening. And I was starting to see was the was these people who love me, who I thought I had a great relationship with, were treating me in a secondary way because I was allowing it. So whether that meant that I was the villain or that I was allowing people to evolve into villains in my life that didn't start out that way, either way, it wasn't beneficial to me. And I was able, once I was free from that situation, to tackle those other two situations and really put myself first and separate myself so that I could escape that negativity and let down. So all good stuff in there. One of the things that kept popping to my head as you were sharing that is how often, as I look back, my villains sort of kept reappearing

in different packages and with different people until I kind of learned the lesson that I needed to learn. And so I guess, do villains keep showing up? Do you see themes and patterns? Tell us about that. I truly believe that in a big way, right? And it can be over time. Like you said, I mean, you might see one person

in your life and say, that's like a sneaky villain, someone who's really nice to me at first. But as I spend more time with them, I feel worse and worse about myself or more drained, or I noticed I'm always the one giving, you know, why is this happening? Okay, I'm going to create some boundaries and separate myself. And then maybe a year or two later, in a different form, a different body, someone enters your life. You think they're great. You're excited to be around them. And you start seeing that same story play out. Right. So those are the moments where, yeah, I identify those people as villains in my life. And I think to myself, why, why this situation, the same situation continuing

to show up. And I actually, I'm training myself to look for that, right? To say, okay, what is it about me that I'm allowing this to happen? Or how is it that I'm behaving? Or how am I attracting these people? And how can I show up differently? Because one thing I've learned is one person might treat you this way, but that person would never treat so and so that way, right? So it isn't always just about the individual. It's about how we individually show up, what we individually allow for. And sometimes it's channeling that inner Sasha Fierce like Beyonce does to say, oh, not today, my friends.

I'm done with that game. Right. It's almost like people will show up in a way that we let them get away with. So, okay, you mentioned a sneaky villain. In your book, you talk about different types of villains. Can you share a little bit about those? Yeah. I think that we all know the obvious villain, right? The person that gives you that stink eye, the person that rolls their eyes at you, the person that doesn't return emails, the person that badmouths you. That is an obvious villain that needs to be fired immediately, right? And believe me, it is causing you pain,

it is diminishing your power, and it is crushing your confidence, whether you see it or not, that can happen very quietly behind the scenes. It happened to me, I know it firsthand, right? So get that person out of your life, whether it means changing departments at work, whether it means leaving a relationship, whether it means having a difficult conversation with your mother, right? I had that one. At one point in my life, I was getting divorced and my mother became a villain in my life. She did not want me to get divorced. So she wanted to put her will on me and it was crushing. It was, I was second guessing myself. I was doubting my intuition. And I finally had to have a very difficult conversation about

boundaries and how it wasn't helpful. So you know, those obvious villains in those situations, you've got to deal with them head on. The harder ones are the sneaky villains. And those are the people that are in your life that you notice, wow, you know, I really like this person, or I'm excited about this person. But for some reason, when I'm with them, I, you know, I feel discouraged, I start doubting myself, or boy, they always act like they're perfect. Gosh, I'm not perfect. You know, there are some triggers that we all have. And for me, perfectionism is one of them, because I'm constantly making mistakes, you know, I'm definitely not showing up as perfect. But there are people out there that want to pretend that they are.

And when they really, you know, bring that marketing, you know, that, wow, this is the best day of my life and everything goes seamlessly for me. I start not feeling good about myself. So that's a sneakier villain, right? And we all see those people on social media. The key is to unfollow those people from social media, because I promise you this. And I just had a conversation with a really good friend of mine. Actually, yesterday, there's a couple of women where I live in Miami that they're constantly through this pandemic, they go out every night looking beautiful at the most fabulous events. And I'm thinking, geez, I'm the knucklehead who's been stuck at home, you know, I don't want to get my son sick, or I'm not living my best life, hardly like I'm living the apartment zoo life and I do not like it.

And so I'll sense that I'm getting jealous. And my good friend said to me yesterday, she said, you know, they both had COVID like three times and you know, they're both in horrible relationships and they do whatever they can to get out of the house. And as she started talking about speaking the truth that they're not speaking on social media, I recognized she was right.

And I said, I just gotta unfollow them. This is not doing me any type of service. They're not bad people. And I'm not here to put them down. You know, I'm cheering them on best, best of luck to you in your life. But it's not helpful to me when I start feeling bad about my decision, right when I'm looking at their social media. So sometimes it's just unfollowing people. Sometimes it's just not being available for those people. but it's making that conscious decision that you want to be intentional about who you're allowing into your space and into your energy,

because we all have enough bad energy out there in the world today. Protect yours and make sure you're bringing in those good people who want to help you get to that next level. Right, and trust your energy, right? If, if you're drained from being around somebody or you're stuck in comparison or judgment or whatever, anytime you like, who cares if it's quote unquote, right or wrong or them or you like,

trust your energy and find your people. Oh, I totally agree. You know, the more we show up as that real version of ourselves, the more we'll attract the right people. For a long time, when I was in corporate America, I was trying to get that woman to like me, the one that hated me. And she always acted as if she was perfect and dressed the perfect way and the hair was perfect. So I would try to emulate that in hopes maybe that would make her identify or relate to me. What I didn't realize is when we start showing up as a weird version of ourselves, a not authentic version, we're going to attract the wrong people towards us because they're going to think, oh, there's someone like me. She's perfect and she's flawless, but I'm not. So I'm attracting people towards me because I'm putting this fake,

you know, make believe face on every day to try to make someone like me. I've learned that when I don't show up as the real me, I attract the wrong people to me. The most important thing to do is to listen to your own voice, show up as you flaws and all, and then you will attract those champions to you, the people that you should be rolling with. Agreed. I love it. Thank you. Okay. So give us some insight into the three step process that you share in your book for overcoming your villains. And side note, I love that you have a three step process. Like give me some tactics, give me some how to, I, you know, get frustrated when people just tell us to do something or to be something, but don't walk us

through the steps. Like if I had a superpower, I'd be like tactical girl or something like that, which is not sexy, but true. Heather, walk us through the three steps. So it's funny. I had a couple of years ago, I had a mentor say to me, you know what you're missing? Cause I'm always asking her, what am I missing? What am I not seeing? You know, cause everyone's got a different perspective. And if it's someone who's really looking to help you succeed, they're going to share some insights that could be valuable. He said, you don't have a simplistic process that others can duplicate to find success. And I thought, you're right. I don't. I said, cause I don't have one. He said, BS, I call BS on you.

He said, you have bounced back from adversity and succeeded too many times. You're just doing it subconsciously. So I thought, you know what, he has something here. So I challenged myself and I sat down with a whiteboard and I started writing out all the tough times in my life when I got divorced, when the 08, 09 recession, leading a company through that, when we laid off a quarter of our employees, when I got fired, right? All these different times. And I started writing down the steps I took to get me out of the difficult. And it, this took months to finally be able to see what the pattern was. But I finally identified it. It was the back system, beliefs, action, and knowledge, this three-step process.

It works every time, anytime, and all the time if you use it. And now that I'm conscious of it, anytime I wake up and I'm having a challenging situation, I'm like, okay, go to back. And I sit down and I write out the steps and I do the work. And once I do it immediately, you know, I know I'm setting myself down a positive path. So the first thing you want to do is you want to identify the belief, right? So I'll use the example of getting fired because it's an easy one to use. That day I got fired. I said, Oh my God, I've lost everything. I have nothing. It is over. I don't know what I'm going to do. I mean, literally when I got to the car, I didn't do that in the lady's office and

the lady's office, I was a complete badass. But when I got into my car, I had, you know, a breakdown. Now, if it was me now, I'd say to Heather, okay, distill that belief down to the most simplistic shred of fact, if there is any. And so here's what I would do. I'd say, I lost everything. Did I actually lose everything? No, I have my health. I have my friends. I have my expertise. I have all of my history. I have my resume. I have my network. I didn't lose everything. Wait a minute. So now here's the question. What did I just lose? And when I thought about it, I lost a paycheck. So I wrote down, you know, like now when I'm doing the work, I write down, I lost a paycheck. Well, saying I lost a paycheck is a heck

of a lot easier to handle than I've lost everything in my life. Right. So immediately just boiling that belief down to fact is going to, it's going to set you down a much more attainable path, you know, clear path. So step number two, and a lot of people, especially women struggle with this one, take immediate action. And I don't care what the action step is, but you have to take some action. It can be small, it can be big, that's up to you. So for me, I distill the belief down. So I say, okay, I lost a paycheck. Now what do I do? I go to social media and I post, I've just been fired. And if I've ever helped you, I need to hear from you now. I asked for help, right? So I put a post up on social media. I asked for help. That was my action step that I took immediately after getting

fired. That post went viral and it landed me on the Elvis Duran show. So that leads me to step three, knowledge. Be incredibly intentional about the knowledge that you're surrounding yourself with and that you're accessing. We are always accessing knowledge, whether it be the people that we're hanging out with, the therapists that we work with, the TED Talks that we watch or don't watch,

the books that we read or don't read, the podcasts that we listen to like this one, right? So be really intentional. And by that, I mean, you need to make sure that the people you're accessing knowledge from have been where you want to go, right? And a good example of that is I'll never forget my first book when I was writing it, I shared it with my family and my mother and my sister immediately said, you can't write this. You have to shut this book down. And I made a smart decision. I called my editor,

thank goodness. And I told him, oh gosh, my family said, I can't do this book. We've got to kibosh it. And he said, hang on, how many books have they written? And I said, none. And he said, how many have I written? I said, 19. He said, who do you think you should take advice from on this? And it was that epiphany moment for me, never take direction from someone who hasn't been where you are going. And it made my decision much easier. You're right. You've written 19 books. You are where I want to go. You're right. We should move forward. We did. And that book Trump, Donald Trump for number one on the business biography list, the first week it came out. And I was so grateful for that decision I made. So be really intentional about who and from

where you're accessing knowledge on a daily basis. I love every single one of those three steps and it aligns with everything I've learned and know to be true about confidence building, which I know is a shared passion of ours. Action builds confidence. We got to get into action and you hit the nail on the head that we as women tend to overthink, wait until we're quote unquote ready. And it's so important, this immediate action, being aware that we have control over our beliefs and our thoughts, right? So yes, our brain tends to go to worst case scenario or what I call head trash. But how do we step away from those negative thoughts or the worst case scenarios and begin to force ourselves to rethink from an empowered or productive place? And of course, yes, you are some of who you surround yourself with and what you surround yourself with. So

especially in challenging times, I think it's easy to go vent with other miserable people and to like force yourself to spend time with the people who are headed in either in the same direction or like you said, ahead of you. So I love, love, love all three. So what types of challenges are you hearing that women may be struggling with or really people in general, as it relates to overcoming your villains, but anything specific to women? Oh my gosh. I hear about so many women typically don't put themselves first. Women have been going through, as we were talking about earlier, so many challenges with virtual school and being a full-time zoom school, lunch lady, and a full-time professor and a full-time principal and a full-time mother and a full-time

employee, right? Women have had to take on so much in the past couple of years. It's ridiculous what we've been living through. We need to stand up and cheer for ourselves. And I shared this with you. My son was sent back home on virtual for a few days. And I went into my bedroom and I just, I was standing there just applauding myself. I really don't know how I did this for a year, but I'm so proud of me that, heck, if I could get through that, I can get through this one week, right?

Like starting to look back at some of these past experiences that we've had, we've survived so much. Again, I'm so impressed with every single one of us. And if we've been able to make it through all of these challenges, really there's nothing that we can't get through. I'm constantly reminding myself of that.

And it was funny today, I was in the car and I'm always giving myself pep talks. And right, I'm definitely my biggest cheerleader and I want everyone to be their own biggest cheerleader. Cause if you're not cheering for you, why would anybody else, right? If you're not advocating for you, why would anybody else? And I was in the car this morning, just thinking like, gosh, you know, things are really challenging right now. And I've got, you know, some tough things happening with my business and all of a sudden Millie Vanillie came on the radio, Nicole, and I haven't heard Milli Vanilli since whatever the 90s, right? And I love 90s music. And I just started thinking to myself, if flipping Milli Vanilli could make it to the big

time, and they weren't even singing. And if these people could make it as big as they did, then you know what, Heather, you can survive whatever business challenge you're having. You can make that next big stage. You will definitely make it because we know that we're showing up, being honest, doing that next right thing. If those guys could make it under false pretenses, oh, I know I got this thing. And so I was like cranking up the million vanilla. That's going to be my new go-to now. Oh my gosh. I love it. So I'm a big fan of nineties music myself. And if color me bad comes on, I lose my mind. So embarrassing, but it is true. Let's talk a little bit about confidence. Uh, what are maybe two or three things you've learned about confidence that have been the biggest game changers for you? Oh my gosh, this is a huge one. I used to be one of those women who

apologized all the time. And I thought it was friendly or kind of me to do that, right? So I'm late to a meeting. I'm so sorry. I mean, I would apologize profusely. I am so sorry. Everyone's so sorry. Someone would bump into me. I'm sorry, right? Someone would cut in front of me. Sorry. It was ridiculous. And what I didn't realize is I was just putting myself under others. I was blaming myself for things. So one day I was at Barry's bootcamp and a huge guy bumped into me and I found myself saying, sorry. And I thought, no, no more.

I'm not doing this anymore. I'm going to challenge myself. And I have a chapter in my first book, Confidence Creator, about the 30 day challenge. For 30 days, apologize for nothing, nothing for nothing, unless you trip an old lady accidentally. Okay. I'll let you apologize for that, but that's it. Right. Nothing else. So I taught myself to reframe apologies as gratitude, which makes the other person feel better. Right. So you show up late to meeting, you say, thank you so much for your patience. I'm ready to begin. Oh, wow. That's powerful, right?

You you're late on a deadline. Thank you for understanding. Can you work together with me to, you know, make these changes and come up with another date that we can get this done, find ways to thank people, find ways to make it about gratitude towards them. And then you're not being selfish at all. And you're not putting yourself beneath other people. So that was a really, really powerful way for me to figure out a small way to create confidence in a very tight window, like 30 days. It made a huge difference

and I've never gone back since, right? So definitely take that 30 day challenge, find ways to reframe. I'm sorry, that's a big one. Another one is, I love this analogy of when you're on an airplane and they say, okay, if we run into trouble, the oxygen mass is going to come down. Do not put it on the child next to you. Put it on yourself

first so that you have enough air within your lungs to go ahead and save the rest of the plane. It makes perfect sense. However, in our day-to-day life, right? When my son has some crisis going on and I have things I need to do, I found myself running to save my child all the time, then being exhausted, then being frustrated, then being upset that my things aren't getting done. And so finally, I pumped the brakes and said, I'm going to put the oxygen mask on me first. And I constantly use that analogy, because I'm a visual person, right? And it makes sense. If I don't save me first, how can I save everybody around me? How can I make great decisions to help everyone else? I can sense. If I don't save me first, how can I save everybody around me?

How can I make great decisions to help everyone else? I can't. So I have to get enough sleep. I have to work out first thing in the morning, no matter what, even if it means I'm getting a babysitter, right? Like I have to do the things that make me happy, me productive and me creative. And when I do those things, then I can show up and give so much more to everyone around me. Yeah. I think it's hard, especially for women who tend to be more others focused, impact focused. And I even have a few friends that are just very giving, kind, loving others oriented people. And I know that this is really hard sometimes for people to wrap their arms around this idea that when

you take care of yourself, it makes you better for the other people. It makes you more available, more, you know, at your best because you have the energy and the focus and the ability. So I know we all struggle with this one, but it's such an important point. One point that I want to add to that is take care of yourself so others don't have to, right? And so I know we all struggle with this one, but it's such an important point. One point that I want to add to that is take care of yourself so others don't have to, right? Because if you think of it this way, frame it as if I don't put myself first, take care of my health, my child's going to be the one taking me to the hospital.

That's not okay, right? So take care of yourself so others don't have to is one way that I would look at it. Heal yourself so others don't have to heal themselves later. Meaning if you deal with the trauma from your childhood, if you deal with all the tough things and experiences you've gone through, if you put yourself first and you get that help and give yourself that attention you need, then the people around you aren't going to be negatively impacted by that and carrying that on into their futures. So there's a lot of things that in ways you can look at it so that you're actually protecting the people around you and setting them up for further success. Those are so fricking good. Like what a different spin on it, but super impactful.

Okay. If you are listening and you want to learn more about Heather and her work, you can visit her website at heathermonaghan.com. We'll put all of this in the show notes. You can follow her on LinkedIn or on Instagram at Heather Monaghan. Please go buy her books, visit your local bookstore or order them on Amazon, overcome your villains and creating confidence or her two books. I'm sure there's more to come. And you can also listen to her podcast, which debuted in the top 200 called creating confidence. And if you're listening and you have a big speaking event coming up for your company or, you know, an organization that you're part of, definitely hire her for your next big speaking event. Heather, thank you so much

for joining me today and sharing how we can overcome our villains. No, thank you so much for having me. It means the world to me. Oh, it's my pleasure. All right. Ladies, we can overcome our villains. No, thank you so much for having me. It means the world to me. Oh, it's my pleasure. All right. Ladies, we can't live our lives avoiding everyone and everything that could cause us pain. That's no way to live. So I lovingly remind all of us that when you're facing your villain,

that they're no match for the superpowers that lie within you. And then it may not make it suck any less when you're battling that villain, but remember, they're probably there for a purpose, for your higher purpose. And sometimes the only way to get to the other side is through. Check in with your beliefs and boil it down to a simple fact. Take immediate action and be intentional about the knowledge that you surround yourself with, because your challenges will build confidence if you let them.

And because your villains are never meant to be the star of your own show. That role is yours and yours alone. You are enough exactly as you are. And that is woman's work.