This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 5 Steps To Forging Your Own Path with Katie Horwitch | 232

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

One of my favorite quotes that sits on my desk says “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail” - Ralph Waldo Emerson So how do we do that? Here today to teach us how to forge our own path is Katie Horwitch. Katie has spent almost two decades studying the conversations we have about ourselves, and the implications of them out in the world. She speaks about self-confidence and shifting the stories that help shape our negative self-talk patterns, is the host of the WANTcast: where the word WANT stands for Women Against Negative Talk, a mindset coach, and author of Want Your Self: Shift Your Self- Talk and Unearth The Strength In Who You Were All Along. Katie is a living example of all that we can do when we decide to forge our own path. At the end of the day, you’re the only one who gets to walk and choose YOUR path. And comparing your journey to someone else’s makes no sense, because they’re not on your path and you’re not on theirs. So I’ll leave you with another quote I love - “Run your own race at your own pace”. Connect with Katie: Website: https://www.katiehorwitch.com/  Book: https://www.katiehorwitch.com/  Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/  IG: https://www.instagram.com/katiehorwitch  FB: https://facebook.com/katiehorwitch  Like what you heard? Please rate and review  Thanks to our This Is Woman’s Work Sponsor: Breathe better with AirDoctor, the air purifier that filters out 99.99% of dangerous contaminants (allergens, pollen, pet dander, dust mites, mold spores and even bacteria and viruses) so your lungs don’t have to. Visit airdoctorpro.com and use my promo code: TIWW to get up to $300 OFF air purifiers and a free 3 year warranty (and additional $84 value).

I am Nicole Kalil, and if you're a regular listener of the This Is Woman's Work podcast, you know that I love me some quotes. I am quite literally surrounded by them. I have quotes on my quote board, quotes on sticky notes, quotes on my coasters, quote cards, quote notebooks, quote stickers. I basically require water, food, sleep, and quotes to survive. And I have a lot of different quotes for lots of different reasons, but I've noticed that many of them fall into the category of confidence and trusting myself, which I'm sure is not at all surprising. But there's also a running theme of being yourself,

being unique, and forging your own path. Authenticity is a core value of mine, but can we acknowledge how challenging it can be in a world that seems to value comfort and fear difference, that celebrates my way or the highway and dismisses everything else, that seems to send the message either you agree with me or you're wrong everywhere we look. I don't know about you, but it feels hard sometimes to have the courage to be different in the ways that feel true to you, to be fully and unapologetically you, while also acknowledging and celebrating the same courage in other people, especially when their authentic self and your authentic self don't see eye to eye. But somewhere inside me, I know that we are meant to be individual and also connected. We're meant to forge our own paths

while crossing paths with others. For some, it may be as brief as a nod as we walk by or a smile and a high five. In some cases, we may walk with others for a time. And in a few cases, we may hold hands for the long haul. And we may leverage some guides along the way, but we're not meant to blindly follow someone else's path. Which brings me to one of my favorite quotes that sits on my desk by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and it says, do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. So how do we do that? Here today to teach us to forge our own paths is Katie Horwich. Katie has spent almost two decades studying the conversations we have about ourselves

and the implications of them out in the world. She speaks about self-confidence and shifting the stories that help shape our negative self-talk patterns and is the host of WANTcast, where the word WANT stands for Women Against Negative Talk, and she's a mindset coach,

the author of Want Yourself, Shift Your Self-Talk, and Unearth the Strength in Who You Were All Along. And if that wasn't all enough, she's a certified neurolinguistic programming coach practitioner, that's a mouthful by the way, a fitness instructor with Equinox, and an actor who also sings loudly while she runs. Katie is a living example of what we can all do when we decide to forge our own path. So Katie, thank you for joining us. And I'm going to dive right in because I know you have five talking points about how we go about forging our own path and venturing into unfamiliar territory. And I'd really love to start there. So hi. Hi. When it comes to forging our own path, I'm like you. I am a quotes person. I love a quote,

love a mantra, love an affirmation. However, in, like you said, my almost 20 years of just obsessing over the story that we tell ourselves about ourselves 24-7 as we walk through the world and why so many people say, oh, I want to shift that. I want to shift my negative self-talk, but actually struggle really, really hard with that. I have realized that so many of us start with those quotes, those affirmations, and then we leave it at that. So we start with the talk part of self-talk, but research shows that if you don't already have a seed of belief in whatever it is you're saying, a form of cognitive dissonance can happen where then it feels like you're lying to yourself. So you actually could feel worse about yourself than before you said the phrase. So in order to shift your self-talk, you have to go into,

okay, what is underneath the talk, which is the self part of self-talk. And so I describe that shifting process as finding yourself, being yourself, staying yourself, and wanting yourself that is underneath all of that. And before that, you have to know why you need a sense of self, right? Because it's really hard to move forward and go into, like you said, uncharted territory if you don't know why it matters in the first place. Okay. So a lot of powerful things in what you just said. And that speaks totally to my experience with affirmations or positive self-talk where, you know, yeah, I can stand in front of a mirror smiling with my hands on my hips and say, you are an abundant badass. But if I don't fundamentally believe that now I'm not only

not an abundant badass, but I'm also a liar, right? Like this even worse feeling than just being awkward. That speaks to my experience. And then you, you said it quickly in there and I want to make sure to capture it. What are the, the five parts of yourself that you went through? Yeah. So you have to figure out why you need a self. Need a self. Okay. Need a self. Then you go through the process of finding yourself and finding yourself to be clear is not a search out there. It's a dig in here. And then distinction. Yeah. It's, it's a super important one because then you can't just find yourself and call it a day. You have to actually be yourself out loud in the world. And then this is the part that most people, myself included, struggle with the most is what happens when life keeps lifing and shit hits the fan and you need to be able to stay yourself when people are being people and the world is really hard

as it is and probably will be because the world is complex just like human beings. And then finally, that fifth step is getting to that place that so many of us say that we want to get to and think we could skip to, which is wanting yourself, wanting the self that you found underneath all of the different layers, all of the beliefs that you've picked up along the way. Okay. I love this. I love this framework. And I appreciate what you said where we do often try to skip steps, right? We want to just get through it quickly and get to the end. So let's start at the, you need a self. What does that mean? Yeah. You need a sense of self basically means you need

to know who and what you're working with as you walk through the world. And so many of us, I don't want to say so many of us don't know that because I do think that many of us and in the people that I've worked with, the majority of us really like we have those inklings, right? We have that inkling of who we are and who we know we're meant to be down underneath everything. But the world makes it really, really hard to actually want that person, skip all the way to the end where we want to go. And so recognizing that you need a sense of self is all about looking at where did your self-talk stories come from? And a lot of people, especially people who are in the spaces that you and I are in, they'll talk about separating like the beliefs that are yours from the beliefs of everybody around you. It's not as black and white as that because we are influenceable beings. Humans have survived for so many centuries and, you know, millennia because we have lived in community and we've picked up on

habits from each other. So it's not so much about separating what's mine and what's everybody else's. It's what am I carrying with me throughout the world? And what does that feel like? So it's not even about going deep and saying, how do I feel about it? It's, what am I carrying? What's my vehicle? What is the weight? How does this feel in my head and in my heart? And then you can start to go to, okay, well, how do I feel about it? Because, I mean, feelings are strong and they can take over

sometimes. Absolutely. So much of what you're saying aligns with what I uncovered and discovered in my research about confidence, which I define as trusting yourself. And that sort of first integral step is knowing who you are, right? And what I have realized is, and you said this too, is it's not that we don't know. I think especially as women is that we've been socialized to be so others focused. We've been socialized to spend so much time on other people and other things that we don't invest the time to get to know ourselves deeply and intimately anymore. And I have an exercise that I call the things I know to be true about me at this point in my life. And it's really a parsing out of, you know, what are our unique

abilities, superpowers, things that feel true and right, whether we have recognized this all along or whether or not it's something we've picked up, as you said, from other people, because I agree with you, we can't just say this is me and this is what other people think. There is an opportunity though, I think, to sift through it all and say, what feels true and right? What do I want to keep and hold onto? And then what do I want to let go of or discard that doesn't serve me or doesn't work for me or doesn't feel right or true? So the finding yourself part, and I love the distinction that it's an internal exercise, because I think a lot of us think about it as external. Something out there, someone out there is going to help us figure ourselves out or like ourselves or be confident or whatever the case

may be. And it's almost always an internal thing. So let's talk about that. Totally. Finding yourself, like I said, it's not a search out there. It's a dig in here. And this goes along with what you said in your beautiful intro about how to be authentic and create that authentic path for yourself. And I think authenticity, I don't know, I use that word now and I think it's become so buzzy that sometimes I'll bristle at it. But in order to get back to real deal authenticity, we've got to talk about all of that internal stuff. And a lot of times we think, again, about what authenticity looks like, but it's really about what it feels like and how the pieces come together. And so to find yourself, I think a lot of times the problems that people run into is they think that they

are all of these different pieces and parcels that are completely separate. And if you're someone who's like me, who has always been multi-passionate, who has done a lot of things and been told by people, wow, Katie, you do so many things, that can be really disorienting because then you're like, well, if I do all of these things, what am I actually good at? Who am I actually? So I like to talk about finding yourself through the lens of what I call your through line. So your through line is the common theme in everything you love and the common goal in everything you do. And you can actually formalize this through an exercise. And I walk people through this in my sessions and in the book, you basically make a list of everything

you love to do or experience personal, professional mix of both, and then a list of why you love to do or experience those things. And you find the commonalities. And from those, not everything is going to fit in the same bucket, but I am yet to find one person who does not see a very strong common thread through most of them. And you create a through line statement of I blank to blank. So like, for example, to make this tangible for me, I love writing. I love teaching. I love coaching. I love singing. I love singing and dancing at Beyonce concerts. I don't know if you've been to a Beyonce concert, but they're like the best concerts, a big laundry list. And then when I made a list of all of the whys, I realized that it wasn't just about me and my solo experience with this thing. It involved another person and it usually involved setting an example that people did something with. So I

created this through line for myself of, I use my unique voice to help others use and own theirs. And if I look at that, I can see it in all of these different various things you mentioned in the intro that I teach fitness, like I can see it all over. And so that through line phrase, what's really cool about that is I can use it as a sort of compass for what I say yes to, what I say no to, and I can use it when I start to feel a little wonky in my body or in my head. And I'm like, something just doesn't feel right, but I can't figure out what it is. If I go back to my through line statement, that can sort of steer me back toward myself, my authentic self using air quotes. And I have a place that I can start to move toward. Because if you're just fighting against things or saying, I don't want this, I don't want to be that, humans are creatures of habit.

And the second that we don't have that thing or we have fought against that thing and that's no longer there, whether that is a situation we're in or a feeling that we have, if we don't know what we're fighting for and what we're moving forward toward, there's a very good chance we're going to start to fall back on those old habits. And that's not because we've regressed or we don't know better by now or whatever people want to say to themselves. It's simply because it's habit. It feels safe. It feels familiar and familiar feels really good. So it's about creating new familiarities. The older and obviously wiser that I get, the more concerned I've become about things that I

never even thought about in my younger years. Things like the quality of my mattress and breathing clean air. I'm slightly obsessive about my air quality because air pollutants can cause all sorts of issues from itchy throat and sneezing to lung and heart disease. And did you know that we take about 20,000 breaths a day and Americans spend an average of 90% of their time indoors? Friends, I work from home, so I go literal days without leaving my house. And my favorite solution? Well, let me tell you about Air Doctor, the air purifier that filters out 99.99% of dangerous contaminants so your lungs don't have to. This includes allergens, pollen, pet dander, dust mites, mold spores, and even bacteria and viruses. I not only breathe better, I breathe easier because of my Air Doctor.

Air Doctor comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee, so if you don't love it, just send it back for a refund minus shipping. Head to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code TIWW, and you'll receive up to $300 off air purifiers and a free three-year warranty. Lock in this special offer by going to A-I-R-D-O-C-T-O-R-P-R-O.com. That's airdoctorpro.com and use promo code T-I-W-W. And now we head back to the show. Okay. I love the idea of a through line, and that really speaks to me. I'm excited to do that myself and come up with that. I feel like I already can link some commonalities and I've already done some things that might make this a little bit more apparent or obvious, but I haven't ever thought about it that specific way. So I'm excited to go through that exercise. So being

yourself, that doesn't sound, it's one of those things that is simple but not easy. That's the way I see it. So when you say being yourself, what do you mean? Well, I don't mean the affirmation on the doorway that says, be yourself. You've got this. I mean, do be yourself and you do got this. But how do you actually make that happen? happen. So I am as creative minded as I am, I am someone who loves a structure and a system. And human beings love structures and systems. And part of my frustration when it came to helping people shift their negative self-talk and why people I could tell wanted to, really wanted to, but that just couldn't crack the code,

I was like, well, there's no framework. How can you go on this journey and say that you want to get to this place if you don't have a map? And so the being yourself part of a map is really about getting clear about how you want to show up in the world in a granular way. So there's something that I did not create this phrase. There's something called pre-paving. And this is from like the Abraham Hicks school of thought. And it's basically a form of envisioning what you want before it happens. And I learned this from a fellow coach who was on my podcast. Their name is Jay Pryor. And I remember digging into that and being like, huh, well, if you can prepave a certain outcome out there, why can't you just prepave yourself? And so I started to put together like a rubric of how to pre-pave yourself as, you know,

walking out into the world and also a rubric that you could use in very specific scenarios, like a job interview or a conversation with a partner or a child that feels like it's really weighing on you. And pre-paving is basically envisioning the outcome of yourself before yourself shows up in the world. So asking yourself questions like, how do I want to look? How do I want to sound? How do I want to act? What are the one to three points that I want to be heard? How do I want people to feel after they've left me? How do I want to feel after I've left the situation? Because that's when a lot of that negative self-talk can start to come up. And then what are my anchor words? And I define anchor words as one to three words. You don't really want to get more than that

because it's too hard to keep track of for most of us. One to three words that you can come back to that anchor you in who you are and what you stand for. And again, those be like values. They could be values. Okay. Anchor words could be values like, you know, community. For me, anchor words that I have used often in both specific scenarios, like if I've gone to give a keynote and just out in the world as I'm maybe going out and I'm in a new city and I'm feeling a little bit uncomfortable and that desire to maybe fit whatever the mold is is starting to come in, anchor words that I've used for myself are, they've got to be super, super specific. So you have to be able to define them for yourself.

They can't just be pretty. Visionary is a big one that I've used. So I can see something or feel something that maybe others can't. Worthwhile. And that's different than worthy, which maybe is somebody who's listening, but worthwhile is mine. That those visions, those ideas, those feelings, they are worthwhile. They are worth paying attention to, and they're worth bringing out into the world. And then a big one for me throughout my life that I use often is fearless. And I define fearlessness as not feeling the fear and doing it anyway, but when the fear you have, a situation, of a thing, whatever it is, is less than the faith you have in yourself.

So fearless is when the fear is less sign than the faith. And that's really cool because it's an equation. And if I say, okay, my anchor word is fearlessness, lowering your fear is really hard. But how can I up my faith in myself in this moment? What do I have faith in? Like you said, believable stuff. What can I trust already exists? So again, Katie, really powerful distinctions. And I'm so glad it was fear less than the faith or trust you have in yourself. That is so powerful because I was

going to challenge you on fearless. I was going to be like, friend, that does not exist. But I like the equation. 100%. Because that is actually, again, true to my experience. It's about increasing the trust or faith that I have in myself or for myself, not about making the fear go away. Right. Because fear is a really important emotion for us to have, right? It's kept us safe and will continue to keep us safe. And if we dull it and we force it down, then we run the risk of not being able to access that really important kind of fear when it matters most. So it's really like the equation and the visual of

it. Like you can even make lists of here are the things that I fear, here are the things that I have faith in, and you can number them and keep going with the faith points until they outnumber the fear. And it's like that fear stuff hasn't gone away. And I haven't even focused on making it go away, but look at all the things that I have to have faith in myself. Love it. Love it. Okay.

So the stay yourself, when you said that, it instantly brought to mind that in the face of other people's expectations or opinions or thoughts about who you should be or how you should show up, the staying with yourself part can be very challenging and so important. Is that what you're talking about here or do you mean something different? Oh, yeah. Okay. Oh, no. 100%.

That's exactly what I mean. And I think especially, I mean, I feel like I say this every year, but especially right now, staying yourself, it is very difficult. And many of us expect that that's not going to be the case one day. And what's more helpful and more useful is to manage that expectation so that we can start to allocate our energy in ways that are useful and proactive, not reactive. Ways like getting curious, asking people, tell me more about that, without adding that sort of condescending tone of, tell me more about that. Yeah, you idiot. Yeah, getting curious, being clear with who you are. I talk about something, people talk about mansplaining or manterruption. I like to refer

to it as talk blocking. So the gender neutral, also slightly sassy and pithy term. So like when people are talk blocking you, what do you do? So many of us will either shut down or we'll get defensive or, you know, we will just retreat. We'll literally just tap ourselves out of the conversation. And staying yourself is about going back to those anchor words, busting what I call like your power move. So Amy Cuddy talks about the power pose, which you're nodding your head vigorously, so I'm sure you're familiar with. Making your body as big as possible and taking up, literally taking up as much space as possible in the theory is that that can help you feel more confident and self-assured. Power move is kind of like that where it could be, you know, doing the going to the bathroom and making yourself really big and your face really big in the mirror. Or it could be, and again, this is thinking about it beforehand because we're managing our expectations and this is going to happen. It could be when you hear something that makes you bristle, leaning in, in a meeting instead of crossing your arms and

leaning back. Or it could be having a phrase like, tell me more about that. Or if somebody is challenging you saying something like, well, if they're speaking over you, like, oh, I want to hear that. I just want to finish what I'm saying first. These little phrases that actually aren't, they're not revolutionary. This isn't revolutionary stuff, which I think is the great part. The tough part is that it's uncomfortable stuff. And so yeah, moving forward with like the anchor words, busting your power move, and then being proactive, not reactive. That's how I define positivity. And so asking yourself in the face of staying yourself or retreating from yourself, how can I be proactive, not reactive in this situation that will help you

take those tiny, but very large steps forward really. And I can't express strongly enough how much I agree with having some things I call, like I always think about them in my back pocket, like some phrases or some things that I can just pull out in those moments where I want to say something that I might regret, or I want to shut down or whatever. One of the powerful ones I always have in my back pocket is, you know, that's interesting. That doesn't align with my experience, right? When somebody says something that makes my skin crawl or that makes me want, you know, it's like, okay, that doesn't align with my experience. And then we can either move on or have a different conversation. But anyways, I love that. That's a good one.

Want yourself. Because when we think of wanting, I think we often think of wanting others or wanting things. This concept of wanting yourself feels new, even though it shouldn't feel new, right? So what are we talking about here? Yeah. Wanting yourself is, I mean, if we're going with the framework that you just talked about, wanting other things or wanting other people, wanting yourself is the exact same thing. It's let's say that you met you and you wanted yourself. You were like, oh, that person. Like I want to be with that person. I want to be friends with that person. I want to be in a relationship with that person. I want to have a conversation with that person. That is wanting yourself. And so I like, and the title of the book is Want Yourself, and it's three words, not two words. It's not want yourself. It's want yourself. So really

isolating that self part is saying, okay, I found myself. I want that person. I am being myself. I want that person. I am staying myself. I want that person. All of that builds up to, oh my gosh, I want the self that I already have that's been here all along. And what's really cool is that when I think of wanting yourself, I think of when people talk about loving yourself. People will say, love yourself, but it's like, but how do you actually do that? And so let's go back to taking the self versus others look at it. If you think about the people in your life that you love unconditionally, so anyone listening, think of that person. Or if you don't have a person, maybe you have a pet. I'm literally looking at my dog laying and sleeping on the ground right now,

and I was like, I love this being unconditionally. Does that mean that I always like or agree with or am a fan of what that person, or in this case, my dog, is doing or what this person says or what they are choosing for their life path? No, absolutely not. The people that I love the most unconditionally, I don't necessarily like their choices all of the time. I don't necessarily like the way that they handle certain things. I'm thinking of maybe family members or spouses. Like, yes, people that you love unconditionally are going to get under your skin. But that doesn't mean that you don't necessarily not love them anymore, right? So if we can think of self-love and loving yourself

through that same lens of unconditional love, then we start to tease apart these two concepts of self-love and self-like, which is super, super helpful because that allows you to have days where you don't really like what's going on. You don't like what you said in that conversation. You don't like how your body looks in these clothes. You don't like how X, Y, Z, fill in the blank. That doesn't affect that unconditional love you have for yourself. And that unconditional love is built back to confidence and trust, which literally, like if you look up confidence in the dictionary, it says trust. Building unconditional love with someone, that takes time and it takes trust. And it's that trust that's reinforced over and over again.

And so to build that unconditional self-love, we've got to get into the habit of giving ourselves reasons to trust that we're good for our own words and that we are on our own side. And so what's cool is that when you think of wanting yourself then, it's like, well, of course I want myself because of course I want the people who I love unconditionally in my life. That includes me and that self that has been in there all along. So it's this really cool ecosystem that, again, like I said, can be uncomfortable to build and to nurture. But the great thing is, is because it isn't rocket science, I like to say to people that my work isn't how to work.

It's you already know how to work. And it's about unlocking those little pieces in your brain and in your head and your heart that already know, but are like, well, but what if, or, but maybe, and it's about being able to move forward fearlessly with more faith than the fear into the you you've known you're meant to be. Again, tons of alignment. I often think of my work with confidences about reminding and reconnecting. It's this idea that it's not how to, it's not something you don't know. It's not something outside of you. I believe our answers, our trust, our confidence, all those things live inside of us. And it's our opportunity to reconnect to it because society and experiences and other people's opinions and

expectations have sort of created the separation over time. And it's our opportunity. And in fact, our obligation, I think, as we walk around in these bodies to reconnect with our individuality, with what makes us us, with all the important things. And as we started this conversation in us forging our own path. Yeah. Yeah. And it's really, I would love, I want to stress to people so much that forging your own path is, it really starts with this work because forging your own path can look like bringing a bunch of different interests together or different ideas together. It can also look like going back to something that you used to do a really, really long time ago and like bringing it out from hiding. In my book tour, I've been doing a book launch cabaret because I have a musical theater background. I haven't done musical theater

on stage in 15 years. However, if you want to forge your own path, it's so cliche, but you are going to have to do things that feel uncomfortable and remind yourself, it's not that they're uncomfortable because they're wrong. It's uncomfortable because they're new or I haven't done this in a long time. And so it's really about building the habit of being yourself. Well said.

Okay, I know I'm not the only one who's gonna run to Amazon right after this and order the book. So it's want yourself. Y'all should order it. And then of course you can go to Katie's website. It's katiehorwich.com. We'll put that and all the other links and show notes. Katie, thank you for an incredibly compelling and important conversation. Thank you so much. This was so wonderful. I could talk to you for literal hours. Same. All right. There you have it, friend. You, me, all of us are meant to forge our own paths. And yes, there will be doubt and fear and negative self-talk, but we can do something about all of those things. We can find our faith. And don't forget, getting lost a few times is part of the

journey because something must first be lost in order to be found. And because that's often where you find those beautiful, less traveled paths. There are times where you may need to blaze a new trail and times where you may need to take a fucking break, sit down and just look at the beauty that surrounds you. There are times where it may be dark and lonely and moments where you see the light peeking through and times where you may have the benefit of great company or a map and a guide. But at the end of the day, you're the only one who gets to walk and choose your path. And comparing your journey to somebody else's makes no sense because they're not on your path and you're not on theirs. So I'll leave you with another quote that I love,

run your own race at your own pace. This is woman's work.