This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 131 / Maximize Your Success By Managing Your Ego with Christie Garcia

Episode Date: March 29, 2023

Today we’re going to talk about our ego (and for the record, we all have an ego), and how to manage our own as we work to become better humans. I’m joined by Christie Garcia, a Leadership Coach, Speaker, Contributor to Forbes Coaches Council, and Founder of Mindful Choice Leadership Academy. One of Christie’s super-powers is helping her clients identify and manage their Ego in real time. Her clients build authentic confidence (which is my favorite kind) so they can communicate more effectively and maximize their impact within their professional teams and personal relationships. Even though we use the word ego often to describe the dark side, the reality is there IS a healthy side. Our opportunity lies in understanding and managing it. And at the end of the day, we all have ownership over our beliefs, actions, words, and decisions. I believe that there are lots of influences and contributing factors, but at the end of the day YOU get to be responsible. In short, It’s ok to have an ego, your ego just shouldn’t have YOU. To learn more about Christie and her work go to: www.mindfulchoiceacademy.com. To access her free resource go to: www.mindfulchoiceacademy.com/womanswork  To learn more about what we are up to outside of this podcast, visit us at NicoleKalil.com. 

I am Nicole Kalil, and if you're new to this show, let me start by telling you that I have a stalker-like obsession with confidence. I read, research, experience, and observe just about everything I can get my hands on about what confidence is, what it isn't, and what it takes to build it. And the most frequent question I get when I speak on the topic is, how do I raise confident children? And I get it. As a mom, I understand the burning desire to give our children the best, the ache that exists to protect them and give them everything we can so they can lead good, joy-filled lives. But the question in and of itself can be problematic. The fact that this is by far the most popular question, the most asked question when I talk

about confidence, tells me that far too many women are still more focused on other people's confidence than they are on their own. And the best answer to the question anyway is about how to raise confident kids is to be or become confident yourself so your children can experience and observe it firsthand because that's how everyone learns everything the best. Which brings me to the second most frequently asked question and the reason for our conversation today, which is some version of the question, is there such thing as being too confident or having too much confidence? And my belief is the answer is no, because confidence is when you trust

yourself. And I'm not sure one can ever have too much of that. But I understand the question because confidence is being misrepresented and misinterpreted in so many ways. We see people acting like a-holes in the workplace and call it confidence. We see leaders modeling arrogance and even narcissism and think they're demonstrating what it looks like to be confident. We think confidence is having all the answers, doing everything right, looking the part, and definitely never making a mistake. The reason I don't think we can be too confident is because I don't believe any of those things are an accurate representation of confidence. What we're seeing is the dark side of ego. And trust me when I say ego and confidence are not one and the same.

So today we're going to talk about our egos. And trust me when I say ego and confidence are not one and the same. So today we're going to talk about our egos, and for the record, we all have an ego, and how to manage our own as we work to become better, more successful, and more effective humans. I'm joined by Christy Garcia, a leadership coach, speaker, contributor to Forbes Coaches Council, and founder of Mindful Choice Leadership Academy, as she works with current and upcoming leaders from fast-growing organizations, including Airbnb, Twitter, and many more. One of Christy's superpowers is helping her clients identify and manage their ego in real time. Her clients build authentic confidence, which is my favorite kind, so they can communicate

more effectively and maximize their impact within their professional teams and personal relationships. Christy, thank you for joining me. And I know I opened our episode by talking about the unhealthy or more common understanding of ego, like when we say somebody has a really big ego, but I want to start our conversation today by focusing on what ego actually is. What are we talking about here? No, that's such a great question, Nicole. You know, I love that intro that you just did. Everything has a dark side, right? And I think confidence is one of those. So when I use the word one authentic confidence, it's by managing our ego because the ego is really just our unconscious brain. It's the mindset, the beliefs, the behaviors that design, you know, when we were children

at one point in our life, they served us. And then we start to become career women and we start to need to lead a team or be a good team player, or we're being a parent now or a spouse. And now all of a sudden how we got here, that maverick energy, I have to win. I have to be the best. I have to get to the top or I have to prove myself, um, but no longer serves the greater good. Right. And so it starts to sabotage us. The tactics that got us to success are not the ones that are going to get us to the next chapter of success. And whether we're talking about parenting our kids and giving them confidence or just being a really great leader within your organization or within your own life, that confidence is so powerful.

And it really does come back to just managing those unconscious habits, mindsets, and beliefs that we're not even aware of. Okay. So I'm at risk for either pissing people off or being totally off base in this question, but I think we've sort of romanticized childhood a little bit. Like we all have this belief that children are perfect and we need to not screw them up. But I'm curious, you just talked about ego and childhood, need to win, need to, and I've observed in children sometimes this unmanaged ego. Curious your thoughts on that. What does ego look like in childhood? And is it really unblemished?

The reality is the tantrums look the same, honestly. I always laugh when I'm in a room and I'm having to manage all the egos because a tantrum is a tantrum, right? It looks maybe a little less ridiculous on an adult, but, um, it's all tantrums and usually they're unconscious. Uh, so, you know, for a child, let's say, well, I I'll use, uh, a child that's in my life. She's, uh, very driven, incredibly ambitious. She's the oldest child. She, uh, she loves to be the best. She wants to win. She loves that attention. And so she is, you know, she will do

everything to make people like her and to make herself be at the top, which is a great trait, right? You're like, yeah, that's awesome. Well, unfortunately she's very hard on herself. She's a perfectionist. She, uh, can't, she can't lose, right. Or she has no worth or value. And so again, that's no different than myself. When I look at how I am, when I write half of us who are business women out there, we think we can take on life by ourselves. We think we can do everything. We, we try to do everything and really we're just burning ourselves out. We're exhausted. We're worn out and we're putting unrealistic expectations on ourself and others, including our kids, which then kills our confidence. So it's kind of this double-edged sword of, um, egomania.

And then you've got the opposite side of that trait. You've got the quiet, shy, you know, they don't, they appease to make sure that they're just going along or, you know, skimming through, not making too much noise. Don't want to rock the boat, just so people would like them or to make sure that they are fine. And, you know, that looks the same when you grow into adulthood. Now you're, maybe you don't speak up at the boardroom or you wish someone would notice you and give you a promotion. Or maybe you're just sitting back waiting and you expect people to just hand you things because you don't have the courage to actually ask for it. And you resent the colleague or peer that does ask for it because again, comes across as more arrogant or too confident.

And so, you know, that's where the ego really is just our strengths and our weaknesses. All those have really good qualities to them. Those traits that we just acknowledged, but when they are overused, they do hold us back. Okay. I want to dive a little bit deeper into ego. I did a little research because this is not by any stretch of the imagination, my area of expertise. It sounds like there are three different egos and or nine different representation. There's like all this stuff on it. So what do the three different egos look like?

Yeah, so in Mindful Choice, we've classified it into three egos. There's the complier, the protector, and the controller. The complier is the people pleaser. The one that cares and is compassionate, walks into a room of strangers, walks out with friends, warm and inviting. And we all need that part of them. Unfortunately, when the complier is overused and we start to overuse those gifts, it can be where maybe you put everybody else's needs before your own. Maybe you don't hold your team accountable or even your kids accountable because you're scared that they won't like you. Maybe it's just easier to go along to get along than to speak up and share your own truth. So that's kind of the

downside of the complier. The protector is the one that holds all of our authentic confidence. It's where our values live, our integrity, where we love deeply, where the protector, because it is so extreme on the values, uh, it can be a very black and white brain. So it's where also our very deep emotion lives. And so it can be very ugly. That's usually where the, the loud, arrogant ego that we all think of it's probably because it's coming from a protector stance. And so it has very strong intensity behind it. Um, I have to be right is the motive behind the protector. If I am not right, I have no worth or value. So you're constantly battling to, you know,

that internal voice in you that say, don't speak up because you know, it's going to be wrong or wait until someone else gives their feedback before you give your own lots of wisdom comes from the protectors perspective. Unfortunately, you just don't always offer it. And then you've got the controller. The controller ego is that driven results oriented. Um, you just don't always offer it. And then you've got the controller. The controller ego is that driven results oriented. You know, they're motivated by being the best and winning. And so a lot of times they put the task before the people. They don't always have the emotion behind anything. So it's more of just like, hey, this is tactical. This is how we're going to handle it. This is how we're going to move forward. This is what we need to do. It's a great energy when it is in that kind of fire drill or high

emotions are at stake and you want that, you know, kind of grounded energy. But unfortunately, a lot of times we leave people behind. And so we end up at the finish line by ourselves. And that's usually where a lot of business women end up is they kind of over control to feel in control because especially if you've got, you know, families and outside ventures outside of work, you you're maxed out. You've got so much going on that you you're spread thin. And so that controller over control is to feel under control. And it just kind of sabotages our good intentions. We usually become a little more intense, a little more direct, a little more controlling, lots of micromanaging when, when we don't need to. And so I think, again, that's an ego that usually sabotages a lot of women when they're

in this business space. And are we born with one of these three? Are we socialized into it? Is it a combination of both? Most of the time we have some level of all three, you know, the gift of our ego, when we're our best self, we're using all three about at 33%. We usually have one to two dominant egos that show up again, designed through childhood circumstances, life. So, you know, if you're, let's say maybe you're the first child of siblings and all of a sudden your whole life for the first two, three, four years of your life, you were the center of attention. Everybody loved you. You couldn't do wrong. And then all of a sudden you got this little sibling. Well, usually most likely that is going to trigger an ego.

That's probably in that complier arena that now all of a sudden they're going to over, over love, over perform, over give in order to be liked, right. To still back the attention. And again, that's a very much of a guesstimate on what people actually do, but just for an example, um, let's say someone died that was close to you when you were a small child and you had a lot of trauma and something hurt you, you're probably going to be a protector because your heart got hurt at a young age. So it's a danger, danger. I'm going to protect myself and put up wall. Maybe you got praised as a child for all the good things you did. Didn't really get, you know, a lot of the hard work praise. It was mostly like, yeah, win, win, win. And so now you're just, you know, controlling and that's how you seek attention and love is through the trophies.

So it really kind of depends on life. Also, it can change, you know, whether you're in your 20s, all of a sudden, some life changing circumstance happened, or you learn, hey, being a controller didn't quite serve me. So now I'm going to over comply in my career. So it kind of can work both ways. It really just depends on what's going on in your world. And it can bounce back and forth between all three on a regular basis or with different people. You know, certain egos trigger our egos. So if we're dealing with a complier, it might push us more into a controller stance. If we're dealing with a controller, it might push us into a complier. And so really self-awareness is the key to figuring out, you know, which ego you are and knowing the egos around you as well is really important. Okay. What, if any, role does gender play? Do we notice that,

for example, people who identify as women tend to be more complier protectors? Does gender play any role in this? I do not find that that is the case at all. No, I think it's very much based on humans and how, again, your life circumstances have developed you to say, hey, this is safe. This isn't safe. This is what I need to do to get ahead. This isn't what I need to do to stay where I'm at or whatever. So I have just as many complying men clients as I do controlling women clients. I'm a controller protector. So I'm very much on the black and white tactical side of things. And I have to really try hard and bring that empathy and that emotion to the table. So yeah, I don't find that there are any gender biases for the ego. Ego is the ego, the ego,

it's in our brain. Yeah. Okay. So then you mentioned understanding the egos of the people around us can be helpful. I guess, how does ego play a role in our, let's start with personal relationships. Oh man. I mean, the ego is so loud and apparent in our personal life for the good and the bad, right? When you think about your family, they get all the best qualities and all the worst qualities. I mean, most people never get to see that ugliest side of us, except for the people that we put into our super inner circle. So I think the personal side is really just being aware of what are your trigger points? You know, what is that emotional response that you're not even aware of when you're grumpy, when you're not feeling good, how do you respond? Are you one that avoids, are you one that, you know, just kind of barks and

yells? Are you one that dictates and controls your family in order for it to feel in control? Or are you one that just goes along to get along and you do what you're told because that's comfortable too? I think the big thing about ego is it's not making it wrong. It's just being aware of it because the reality is if you're aware of it, you may possibly make different choices, right? You can be more intentional with how you want to show up when we're unaware of it. We don't even aware we might be as grumpy as we are. We might not be aware that we're being as passive or as compliant. Um, and so when we can stop and say, Hey, am I happy right now? What's going on? You know, the word fine. If you're saying that you're fine, I guarantee your ego is running your show and you're not fine. There is something going on and you need to be addressing it. And so just little cues like that, I think are easy ways to really identify the ego and how it shows up in your partnerships and your parenting. And even just in your personal life to self-care, do you feel like you have the worth and the value to put you before your kids or your husband or your partner? Do you have

the self-worth to be able to stop and say, Hey, you know what? I'm grumpy today. And I'm really sorry about it. Uh, and just take ownership of that. So I think a lot of it is just, you know, recognizing where you're at, taking ownership and not making yourself bad, not judging yourself for it. We're so hard on ourselves as women. You know, we either have to have it all together or we just let it all go. And the reality is, is you can have both, right? You can have it together and still have a day that where you just let it all go. And it's not a big deal and it all be there tomorrow. Okay. So two thoughts popped into my head. There's a quote about feelings that I really like that I'm going to tweak for ego. And it goes something like, it's okay to have your ego, but your ego shouldn't have you. And sort of this, what I'm hearing you say is acknowledging,

not making it bad or wrong and understanding there is healthy side to our ego, but then also the appreciation that we can manage, communicate, influence, impact. Said in other words, our ego doesn't need to be in the driver's seat, like a three-year-old throwing a tantrum type deal. Correct. Yes. I always say, if you don't control your mind, someone or something else will. And really it's that ego, the ego will, right? It'll be triggered by something and then it'll control your next action or your next behavior or your next thought. And usually it's not serving us. Yeah. Another thought, when you said the word fine, I read a lot of Louise Penny books. She's kind of run a mystery, but in there, there is a character who says that fine stands for fucked up, insecure, neurotic,

and egotistical. So every time you say FINE, you're being those things. And I just thought, it's so true because especially as women, like, are you okay? I'm fine. It's like the most opposite of what we actually are in the moment we say it. Right. Okay. So let's talk about, well, actually, can I elaborate on that? Cause I think that's a really good point. You know, I think if anybody is conscious in that moment, when they say the word fine, what I love about the ego is everybody knows your worst self and it's usually us that aren't aware of it. Right.

And so when you say the word fine, everybody else knows you're not fine. You're putting off energy that says, no, I'm pissed off. No, I'm not okay. No, this is really not what I want to do, but I'm going to do it because you want to do it. Right. Everybody knows that you're unhappy. So the only one that's not owning their unhappiness is the individual. Right. And I think that goes back to that authentic confidence that we started the show with. Like if you're just going to tell people you're fine, there's nothing confident in that decision. There is nothing conscious in that

communication. So there's no possible way you can convince your child that you're a confident adult in that moment. Um, and then if you're teaching your kid to just be fine, they're not going to know how to speak their truth in those moments because mom told me how to just be fine, go along to get along, say what people want to hear, you know, put the mask on. And that, that I think is where fine really is the death to happiness, confidence, you know, anything that makes you powerful. I couldn't agree more and work in progress in this area for sure. But I often find when I want to say that I'm fine, what I really mean is I'm massively pissed off, but I don't want to say something I regret, right? Like I don't want to speak from this place because I'm afraid I won't be able to collect

back what just came out of my mouth. And I know I'm not in a good place. So what I probably would be better served saying is not fine, pissed off, don't want to say something I regret, give me some space, I'll circle back. Some version of that going back to, it's okay to have your ego, your ego should just not have you. So I love this conversation. This also plays out, and I'm so glad you made the point that we do bring our worst often in those personal relationships to those closest to us. Let's talk about how ego might be impacting us in our work and business lives and our communication with colleagues and clients.

Let's talk a little bit about that. Yeah, the ego shows up so many different ways at work. You know, I can be where if you're in a leadership role, maybe you are struggling to delegate. Maybe you're micromanaging. Maybe you feel like no one is doing their job well enough. So you just have to do it yourself. You know, I think those are all ego tactics that are very, very common. Taking on too much, over committing, feeling exhausted and worn out at the end of the day, staying busy. You know, busy is one of the most common things that I hear and busy really is an ego's tactic. It makes you feel important. It makes you think you've got a lot going on, but really at the end of the day, busy is not productive. Busy does not pay the bills. Busy does not create success. It's just busy, you know, and so really looking at your to-do list every day and reprioritizing what really matters, what do you really need to do today and why, and just being asking that conscious question allows you to look at your task list and say,

Hey, those 72 things that really don't need to get done today. Maybe I only need to do five of them. And that just relieves a lot of pressure and stress that we prematurely put on ourselves in order to control the situation. Right. And so I think being able to be honest with yourself is a big part of the ego in the workplace. The other part could be where, you know, you're not happy. I hear, you know, my boss is just really, they suck. They're mean, they're this or that. The ego loves to blame, accuse and judge people, right? And so if you are saying, you know, I'm unhappy because of my boss, I'm unhappy because of my colleagues, I'm unhappy because I have this or that, your ego's got you paralyzed

in your career. And unfortunately, that means you're probably not speaking up. You're probably not asking for what you need. You're probably not feeling confident in what you're doing. There's some form of insecurity that is pushing you to play small and make someone else your problem. And I think that's a big part of how the ego shows up in today's world as well. Especially as women, you know, we can pretty much do whatever we want in the world today. If we have the confidence to do it and we have the courage to speak up and ask for it. And I think the ego is the thing that holds us back from that. It's not always the men in the room or the policies. It's a lot of times just our headspace and our

mindset around it. I actually agree that a lot of times it's ourselves or our lack of confidence that is holding us back. Now, I respectfully disagree a little bit that I think the environments in the history and the people we interact with play a part. I mean, personally, I learned just about everything it is to be professional, successful, and I put in air quotes, confident from the masculine perspective. 90% of business books are written by men. All of my mentors, all of the leaders, all of the powers that be, and I worked in a very male dominated industry for the vast majority of my early life were men.

And I'm not saying that's bad or wrong, or they were bad or wrong, but it was really hard for me to show up authentically in an environment that I perceived. And I don't think inaccurately valued the masculine at a much higher rate than the feminine. So if the healthy demonstration of ego is authentic confidence, I do think our surroundings and our environments and the people play a part in that. But I agree that making somebody else, the problem is usually not serving us or some sort of justification. And sometimes, well, often the thing that has us continue to play small versus move on, stand up for ourselves, speak our truth, show up confidently and all that curious your reaction. Yeah, I agree with you. I think our environment

absolutely plays a role in how our ego tactics show up. Right. And I will say I have just as much men that show up with the exact list of words that you just used, right. Not as confident, um, feeling like somebody else is dictating your happiness, all that stuff, like everything. And again, I think that goes back to, are you using your complier ego or your controller ego? Is your protector ego showing up? Not saying our environment does not impact our world. Absolutely not true at all, right? Our environment absolutely impacts us. It absolutely triggers our ego. One ego triggers another one. I think what you describe is a world that is struggling. Even men are struggling to bring their feminine leadership to the table. So I don't think it's necessarily based again on gender. I think we're in a leadership transformation that really has nothing to do with men or women. I think it's just the

evolution of leadership in general within our world. And what we're asking for is a more balanced leader. We had a very masculine definition of what leadership was. It was success. It was task. It was direction as it was tactical. And we've decided that's not good enough. We want some of the human components back in our leadership, which is more of that feminine energy, more empathy, more caring, more balanced. So, you know, I struggle to, again, put it just on the responsibility of the situation. I think each individual, whether you're male or female, if you're falling more into that complier energy, that's just playing small because you don't feel confident to step up

because of the surrounding, because it is intense. Sometimes that masculine energy is very intense, very aggressive, very direct. And it feels like that's the only option is to play small. But I just think there's opportunities for all of us to really take the reins again and find our power within that. Because there's always going to be a jerk in our life, whether it's a male or a female, you know, there's always going to be someone that makes us play small or makes us want to play small.

And how do you get to show up, manage your own ego so you get to feel confident in those moments and they don't dictate your happiness. They don't take away your power. Even if they want to come across as louder, more powerful than you, you still get to hold your power. You still get to look at yourself in the mirror and say, you know what?

My best self showed up. I didn't have to react to them. I didn't have to be as aggressive or as passive or whatever. You just get to be you. And that is real authentic confidence, knowing that you showed up to your fullest, no matter what the situation was. Yep. I agree with that completely. I think nobody gives us confidence and nobody can take it away. It's ours to hold on to. And I also believe that there are differences in socialization. And I mean, the statistics show that women are entering the workforce with less confidence than their male counterparts. I couldn't agree more that we are in a leadership transition,

how we define leadership. And I've had so many conversations with men who feel that the more feminine qualities, you know, they haven't been able to access or haven't been valued or appreciated. So know, it's, and I don't know necessarily because of our careers, I think sometimes it's just, you know, we live in a very kind of doggy dog world, right. And women are hard on each other. So from, you know, childhood, we're taught to have it together, you know, look good, have your, you know, your cake and eat it too. I mean, you've got to, you've got to have it strong and willed. And I think we, we just don't always allow ourselves to have the feelings and the emotion and I shouldn't say have them. We have them. It's reality. We all have them and have them too. Um, but I think that the struggles we have is communicating them. And I don't think that is again, a gender thing. I think that is very much have is communicating them. And I don't think that is, again, a gender thing.

I think that is very much a human nature thing, a cultural thing that we've created. We don't allow ourselves to be vulnerable to say, I'm not okay right now. Or, hey, this is the feeling I'm having. One, because the ego doesn't allow us to always acknowledge our feelings. It doesn't always allow us to acknowledge the emotion because emotions are scary. And if we don't know how to put words to them, it's really hard to communicate through them. So whether it's a good emotion or a bad emotion, like love, right? Think about dating.

Dating is one of the hardest things a human can go through because it does trigger every emotion we have, good, bad, and ugly ones. Plus it is triggered by all the fear, right? And so you worry, is he going to like me? Are they going to call? You worry, well, you know, once you are at that point, now it's like, oh, I can lose them now. Now this can hurt even more.

And we start to put walls up. So there's just always things we have to be aware of that the ego is constantly trying to, you know, control our mind in those moments. And I just think the more we can learn to communicate through our emotion, the easier it is to manage the ego. Agreed. Agreed. And we have to practice that because unfortunately I think it's getting so much better, but a lot of times we don't have

been taught the tools to communicate our emotions, or we've been taught that certain emotions are bad or certain emotions are good and navigating through all that can be really challenging. So I guess my final question is around any tips or even tactics that you share with people that can help us manage our egos or maybe more specifically the unhealthy side of ego when it inevitably flares up, which I'm sure it will for all of us. Yes, it does for all of us throughout the day, 99.9% of the time we're unconsciously going through the motions, which means the ego's probably making your decisions. Um, you know, so I, the easiest ones, obviously self-awareness and ownership. Those are the two things that you have to have in order to manage your decisions. You know, so I, the easiest ones, obviously self-awareness and ownership. Those are the two things that you have to have in order to manage your ego. And I'm not talking

like self-awareness. Yeah. I know I can be a jerk sometimes I'm talking deep level of self-awareness. Okay. So when you're a jerk, what does it look like? What's it feel like? Why do you do it? You know, what's the mindset and motivator behind it. And then taking ownership when something's going wrong, when a communication or a conversation goes south, when something doesn't feel good, stopping and asking yourself, what's my part? You know, the first reaction is to blame someone, accuse someone, judge someone. So asking what's my part, what, what part did I take? Whether it's 1%, 45% or 97% of the situation, you know, what was your part?

And from there, you could start to talk about your emotions, how it made you feel, why you did what you did, um, without having to accuse someone else, which is a natural egos tactic, which then makes the other ego show up. And now you have confrontation. So ownership is a huge part of ego management from there. It's just consciously waking up. You know, one of the tools that I have for your group today is how to be 1% better as a spouse, a friend, a leader, a boss, an employee, whatever your roles are, identify one simple thing a day. Most people will say, especially ambitious people, I'll ask, why just 1%? Because the ego wants you to be 95% better tomorrow. Not realistic. Unrealistic expectations are the death of all of us.

And so being realistic, what's just one small thing you can change today? If you are intentional and conscious with one small thing, now by the end of the week, you're 7% better. And by the end of the month, you're 30% better. And by the end of the year, you're 365% better. And so that's really how the change happens. Here at Mindful Choice, we're all about simplicity, keeping it simple, keeping it real

and making this stuff practical because the ego is such a huge part of our world. Being able to just, again, 1% every day can make massive changes in our culture, in our families, in our kids, in our upbringing, all of that fun stuff that really creates just more authentic, confident people, which allows all of us to win. Yes. So I want to reiterate ownership and the word responsibility kind of came up for me too.

This awareness that we all are playing a part in everything that's happening in our lives. And I know sometimes it's easy to go victim blame, point the finger, but I have found a ton of freedom and asking the question, what part am I playing in this? What are my emotions, my responses, my feelings telling me from like a neutral place, what insight is this giving me into what I want, what I desire, what I don't want, what I value. And it's challenging for sure, but can be really rewarding. And at the end of the day, my favorite part of it is it keeps that confidence in our own hands. We're not looking for somebody to give it to us.

We're not looking for somebody to validate it for us. We're not blaming somebody for taking it away. It's only ever ours. And I just think that that's so powerful. Christy, thank you for your time and for your wisdom. I want to make sure our listeners have a chance to find and follow you. You mentioned a free resource. If you go to mindfulchoiceacademy.com forward slash woman's work, you will find the resource that Christy mentioned. We'll put this in show notes as well. And you can also find her on LinkedIn at Mindful

Choice Leadership Academy, and we'll put all sorts of other ways to connect with Christy in show notes. Thank you so much for having this conversation about ego. I know I kicked us off with focusing on confidence, but this was something I was very curious about and happy that I learned so much in such a short period of time. So thank you. Thank you, Nicole, for having me. It's really a pleasure visiting with you.

Okay. I'm going to close this out by sharing a few of my big takeaways from our conversation today. First, even though we use the word ego often to describe the dark side, the reality is there is a healthy side and we all have an ego. So our opportunity lies in understanding and managing it. I've also learned that we should stop saying we're fine. It's probably the most obvious word we use to let people know we are absolutely not fine. Unless you agree that fine stands for fucked up, insecure, neurotic, and egotistical,

then you probably actually are fine. At the end of the day, we all have ownership over our beliefs, our actions, words, and decisions. I believe that there are lots of influences and contributing factors, but at the end of the day, you get to be responsible. In short, it's okay to have an ego. Your ego just shouldn't have you. Authentic confidence. Now that is woman's work.