This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - VI4P - Final Thoughts & What’s Next

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

Click here to get your FREE Confidence Building Workbook or visit nicolekalil.com - this workbook will be available for FREE only thru the end of February ‘24. Each Monday I’ve been bringing a chapter of Validation Is For Parking: How Women Can Beat The Confidence Con) to life.  This week we cover the last few pages, the Final Thoughts, and I share what you can expect for our future Monday episodes. If you’ve been listening to all our VI4P episodes you just finished a book. Congratulations! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. And I’d greatly appreciate if you’d write a book review (or just click the 5 stars if you’re short on time): To leave a review on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62689458-validation-is-for-parking To leave a review on Amazon: https://geni.us/ValidationIsForParking  Like what you heard? Please rate and review on Apple Podcasts

Well, friend, we've made it. This is the final official recording of me reading from my book, Validation is for Parking, How Women Can Beat the Confidence Con. If you're new here, we've released a chapter a week over the last 12 weeks, so this is sort of like an audiobook but podcast style. You might be wondering why I did this. Well, I can certainly tell you it wasn't for income reasons because you can listen to this podcast for free and technically don't need to buy the book now. And it wasn't for simplicity or ease because it doubled the time and expense associated

with our podcast because we doubled the amount of episodes we release each week, which of course meant more recording time for me, but also more time for my editing and production team. So if not for those reasons, then why do it? Here's my reasoning. First, the business reason was to test out increasing our podcast to two episodes per week. I had many, many people suggest that I do this and it felt really daunting.

So this was a good way for us to test this out. And second, and more importantly, having more women connect to their confidence to experience having firm and bold trust in self is both what keeps me up at night and what gets me up in the morning. Well, that and my one cup of half-calf coffee, which is a requirement for me to start any day. And because this is a super duper important reason for me, we also offered you free access to our 40 plus page confidence building workbook, which will be available to you for free on my website, NicoleKhalil.com through the end of this month. So make sure you download that as soon as possible.

NicoleKhalil.com. It'll pop up right on the homepage, or you can follow me on Instagram at Nicole M. Khalil, and I'll share it in my stories. So I'm curious, did you have any judgment about me having both a business and an impact reason for doing this? The reason I ask is I'm curious, did you have any judgment about me having both a business and an impact reason for doing this? The reason I ask is I'm noticing sort of a trend, and that's how often people say that the reason they do anything and everything is because of the impact or the difference it'll make or to help others. And I am all for all of those things. But I also think we've gotten away from

allowing space for other reasons to make our decisions, to do what we do, as if anything else is somehow bad or wrong. Some people only work just to have an income and that's it. And that's okay. Some people make business decisions for the reason of impacting business revenue. Assuming it's not illegal or doesn't hurt people or destroy the environment or anything like that, it's not only okay, it's business. If a business doesn't care about profitability, it's not a business. It's a charity or a nonprofit or you're volunteering, which is of course wonderful, but isn't the point of most businesses. Some people do things for no

other reason than enjoyment or pleasure. And guess what? We should probably all be doing more of that. Being creative, dancing, painting, lying in the grass, whatever. Not everything needs to be about productivity or impact. So I did this because of a passion, but I also did it because it was a great way to test something out. And I also enjoyed it. I hadn't read my book since it was released, so it felt like I got to read it and hear it from a totally fresh perspective. And I got to read it from a place of detachment. Not that I don't care, but that it wasn't so raw and so loaded with meaning as it was when I first wrote and released it. It's been out in the world for well over a year, so I've already hit the bestseller goal and nobody can ever take that away from me. And I've already

received many reviews, mostly good and some not, which I ultimately feel really good about. So with that spirit of enjoyment and fresh perspective, let me read you the last few pages of Validation is for Parking. I close out my book and this episode with some final thoughts and a little bit about what we're going to test next for our Monday episodes. So here are my final thoughts from the book, which of course starts with a quote, you know I love me some quotes, that says, confidence is fidelity to the self. You probably started reading this book thinking you knew what confidence was, what it felt like, and what it looked like. I hope you've been able to reconnect with the true definition of the word, which is knowing who you are,

owning what you're not, and choosing to embrace all of it. In its simplest form, which is knowing who you are, owning what you're not, and choosing to embrace all of it. In its simplest form, confidence is the trust we have in and for ourselves. And let's face it, women have been lied to so much about confidence. It's time we take that definition back into our own hands because trust me, it's not living out there anyway. While building our confidence may not solve all the problems of the world like gender inequality, it's an area where we can make our own individual impact. It's our own little piece of a very large and complex puzzle that we have ownership over.

No one can take it away from us unless we let them and nobody can give it to us either. I often think about what would happen, what could happen in our world if it were filled with more confident women. I firmly believe it would look very different from the way that it does today for the better. And that's why I wrote this book. That's why I speak to women and men and anyone of any gender about confidence. Often people ask me how they raise confident kids. And my response is always to be a confident parent, not to be perfect, not to have it all figured out, not even to read every parenting book you can get your hands on, but be a parent who chooses confidence, even when you're not feeling it, who practices trust even when you make

mistakes. Demonstrate confidence in a way that ripples out and makes waves the next generation can ride. The answer is also the same if you're asking how to create confident employees or teams. Be a confident leader. What would corporate culture look like if women had more confidence? How many women would be raising their hands for the promotions and the C-suite positions? Better yet, how many women would leave corporate cultures or refuse to do business with companies who don't value women in leadership or value pay equity, making those companies lose profit and their competitive edge? How many women would start their own companies and build their own businesses? What would happen with food scarcity, access to health care, or issues related to racial

inequality in a world of more confident women? My experience is that when women rise, everyone else rises with us. And listen, I know you just want to be happy. We all do. But I also believe that as a society, we've become overly obsessed with that feeling. This journey isn't about feeling happy all the time, and there's nothing wrong with you if you don't. It isn't about avoiding challenges or pain because you can't. The important thing is that it's always in our power to stand for our happiness, to choose happiness, and our own confidence is the force that enables us to get back up no matter how many times we fall. Author Anne Mora Lindbergh once wrote,

do not wish me happiness. I don't expect to be happy all the time. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor. I will need all of them. And if that were my quote, I'd add confidence to the list. I wish you confidence because I know you'll need it. We all do. So I will leave you with this. Get into action. Whether it's taking the first steps toward a seemingly impossible

goal or taking on the confidence derailer that affects you the most, get proactive and get in motion. Try an exercise or build a habit from this book and see what happens. Remember, this work is always about progress, so don't be discouraged if your whole life isn't transformed overnight. In fact, don't expect that to happen at all. This will always be a journey. And over time, you will feel trust building within yourself. There's no use in waiting because no one is coming to hand your confidence to you. And you can't think your way into it. So the time to act is now.

Who would you be with more confidence? What risks would you take? What decisions would you make? What dreams would you chase? I say it's time to find out the answers to those questions. Take this as a loving reminder that you are not alone. I'm right here climbing that mountain alongside you, and I will always be cheering you on. And there are many, many other women climbing mountains out here with us, putting one foot in front of the other, just like you. When we pass each other, let's give a high five instead of cheering each other down. Let's leave that comparison and judgment behind. It's too heavy to carry anyway. We're in this together, and the time

has come to see what's possible. We get to create and experiment. We get to play like the confident children we were before the world conned us. Play is silly, and it's fun. It's taking risks, big and small, without worrying what everyone will think of our creation. Do you like it? If you do, that's all that really matters. And if not, the world won't end because of it. You get to try again as many times as you want until you feel like you've got it right for

you. You'll be okay even during the hard parts. Keep choosing confidence. Keep choosing trust. You've got this. Consider yourself validated. And there you have it. Validation is for parking, how women can beat the confidence con from the first page to the last with a free 40 plus page workbook companion that you can still download for free at NicoleKhalil.com. I debated about reading the acknowledgements at the end here because I always read other authors' acknowledgements. I feel like it gives me insight into them, their world, and the people who fill it. But I think that's just a me thing, so I decided to skip it. Anyway, if you track your books or have a goal to read a certain amount this year, make sure you count this one. And please leave a review and rate it on Amazon or Goodreads while you're at it. So what's next for

Mondays? Well, we're sticking to the theme of confidence for now because again, there's not much more I care about than you connecting with your confidence. One of the challenging things about writing a book is that after you've locked it in and released it, you learn new things and have ideas or information that you wish you could go back and include. And since I won't be writing another book anytime soon, I figured we could release podcast episodes about confidence that I wish I could go back and add into my book. Things like more of the confidence derailers. I only focused on five in the book, but there are many more. Things like people pleasing and some new learnings about perfectionism among many others.

And we're also going to dive deeper into all the different ways you can build internal trust. I listed 10 somewhat briefly in chapter 10, but there are, of course, many more. And many of the ones I listed deserve a much deeper dive. Because if confidence is firm and bold trust in self, and it's built internally, which I absolutely believe that it is, then we could all use some more ideas, tactics, and examples of that, right? Some of these episodes will be me sharing some of my learnings. Many of them will include guests with a fresh perspective. And in some cases, we're going to re-release some of our favorite, let's call them classic episodes of This Is

Woman's Work that I wish I would have heard prior to writing my book, because some of that information would have absolutely been included. In short, Mondays will still be all about confidence, your confidence. So you can make the decisions, take the risks, have the tough conversations, and chase the dreams each and every week. I, for one, can't freaking wait. Thank you for listening. And remember, confidence is when you know who you are, own who you're not, and choose to embrace all of it.

And validation is for parking.