Not Nice. Clever.

Habits That Are Killing Your Confidence with Shadé Zahrai

• Kat Torre and Candice Carcioppolo

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Today, we’re calling out the habits that are killing your confidence… because you can be brilliant at what you do—booked, busy, and bringing in results—and still feel like you're constantly questioning yourself.

Our guest today is the incredible Shadé Zahrai, a “leadership alchemist”, peak performance researcher, and the person top execs call when they want to stop getting in their own way.

We are breaking down what neuroscience actually says about confidence, performance, and the sneaky ways we self-sabotage without even knowing it.

If you’ve ever left a meeting thinking, “Why did I say it like that?” or you catch yourself shrinking in situations where you should be leading—this episode is your permission to stop playing small. 

Show Notes:

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 We're living in a world where so much feels like it's out of our control. When things are busy, when things are uncertain, there is a joy deficit. Mm-hmm. We don't feel like we deserve joy. We don't feel like we should be experiencing joy when there's so much hardship in the world and other people are suffering.

But then the only person who suffers most is us.

So I've always been fascinated by human behavior. I love people. I have loved watching people, analyzing people, trying to understand people. I was noticing that a really common theme, every single person who was seeking out help and support was they doubted some aspect of themselves. They doubted some aspect of their ability, their worth.

And I thought, okay, so it seems like in my experience, everyone's experiencing self-doubt. But it's, it's manifesting in different ways, shapes, and forms. And so I spent the next, essentially five to seven years up to where we are now investigating what is it that really holds people back. So how is this self-doubt showing up, especially the ways that are less obvious.

When we are making a first impression with someone or when we're meeting with someone, there are generally two dimensions that we're judged on, humanness and courage. We will generally either be higher on a humanness dimension, which is all around making sure everyone else is okay. You're being kind, you're being warm, you're being approachable, and then courage is.

Prioritizing the need to do what needs to be done. The ideal state is to have these both imbalance. Women typically score higher on the humanist dimension, which is things like warmth, things like agreeableness. And so when we're talking about beliefs, this, it's generally a thought that you have repeated so many times and it may have not even been your thought to begin with.

It might have been a thought someone else had and said to you and you internalized it, and then that creates a belief. But this is often where we see people say, my friends and my family are now calling me fake. They're now telling me that that who, who do you think you are is coming up When you grow?

When you change, it can often shine a spotlight on other people's weaknesses because they may not be growing as quickly as you are. This is even more confronting to people because they feel like they know you and they, they know a version of you, but that. Not the way you always wanna be necessarily. And you can choose at any point in your life to show up as the person you want to become rather than show up as the person that you have been.

You're not faking it till you make it. You're being it until you become it. Okay, clever Crew. Today we're calling out the habits that are killing your confidence. Quietly, the overthinking, the people pleasing, the need to prove your worth in every room you walk into, because we are all guilty of these things from time to time to help us break it all down.

We're joined today by the incredible Shaday Rahi, a Leadership Alchemist, peak performance researcher, TEDx speaker, and the person, top execs call when they wanna stop getting in their own way. So without further ado, Shaday, welcome to Not Nice, clever. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.

We're so excited to have you on, and our clever crew are, you guys are in for a treat today with Shaday. Uh, before we jump into this, we've heard a little bit about your professional accolades and the things that you've done, um, online. What is something that someone can't Google about you? Oh, when I was about a year and a half, I ate a snail straight from the ground.

I must have been fascinated by it moving. Uh, my mom caught me chewing something, sitting on the ground looking at her chewing something, and she thought, hold on a minute. She's sitting on the grass. I didn't give her anything to eat, scooped it out of my mouth as you do and saw the snail with the shell. I feel bad for the snail, but that, that's something that, I mean, I've never shared every day.

So you were exactly right out your time in French. Yeah. You, you had fine tastes from a young age is what you're, you're saying? I did you up that. Mm-hmm. So you have many amazing TEDx talks on your YouTube channel, and we have learned a lot from many of them, but one specific one really stuck out to us because of what we hear from our clever crew often.

You talked about three habits that kill your confidence. We'd like to talk a little bit, dive deeper into that today, if that's okay with you? Absolutely. So what is one habit that is killing our confidence that we might not be aware of? So before I share the habit, I know everyone's probably really wanting to know what is that one habit?

I wanna take a step back. And yeah, just tell us what it is. I wanna take a step back just to share a little bit of my journey of how I discovered these things. So I've always been fascinated by human behavior. I love people, I have loved watching people, analyzing people, trying to understand people. And it's, it's very much been a theme throughout my entire career, even though I started doing very different things, but it was probably around.

Five to seven years ago when I started picking up on, so this is when I was coaching, I don't coach anymore, but when I was coaching, it was just before the pandemic started. I was noticing that a really common theme that was consistent among every single person who was seeking out help and support was that they doubted some aspect of themselves.

They doubted some aspect of their ability, their worth, their capacity to influence an outcome, which is a super interesting element of self-doubt, which I'll talk about. And I thought, okay, so it seems like in my experience, everyone's experiencing self-doubt, but it's, it's manifesting in different ways, shapes, and forms.

And so I spent the next, essentially five to seven years up to where we are now investigating what is it that. Really holds people back. So how is this self-doubt showing up? Especially the ways that are less obvious? And so I've just completed my PhD research, just submitted my thesis, literally waiting for examination, and it's been fascinating.

Wow. That's a big congratulations. Massive feat. It was a, it was like a COVID decision. And then five years later I was scratching my head thinking, why did I do this to myself? But I'm glad I did. Glad I did. I've written a book, which is coming out, which has a lot of the insights, but mm-hmm. So that brings us to the present moment.

And so some of these habits that. Are both behavioral and cognitive, because a habit is anything that you do repeatedly to the point that you don't even need to think about it anymore. It's a default. So we talk about habits as in terms of being both behavioral, like I brush my teeth every day and cognitive, I wake up with a negative thought about how terrible the day's going to be, or I tend to default to thinking this about myself.

So two types of habits, behavioral, cognitive. And what we found, and so this goes to this, uh, YouTube talk that, uh, the TEDx talk that we, that I put together, and I'm gonna say we a lot. That's me and my husband Fasel. We run the business together. Everything we do is together. So we thought we need to share this message with people because it was so interesting.

Okay, so let me take you through these habits, and I think you asked for one, but I'm going to share with you three, please. These are things that we were consistently seeing coming across in those who were, you know, they had the potential, but something was stopping them. So the very first one was, it came out of a conversation that we had with one of our early clients.

He was so talented and had so much promise. He was working for a big tech employer. He'd literally made his employer like billions of dollars through his work there. And he really wanted to, he had these aspirations to have his own startup doing amazing things to really change. It was actually autonomous driving vehicles, and this would've been maybe seven years ago.

He had it all mapped out. He had the investors who were interested. He had his business plan, yet he was stalling for years. He was stalling on this idea, and he kept doing more research and going a little bit deeper here and trying to plan a bit more there. There was always an excuse that he had. From taking that first action.

And so he was actually exhausted because he was, he constantly felt like he was doing things because, you know, researching and planning, it feels like you're being busy and productive and in a way you are, but it's not actually taking you forward if you're not implementing. And so he was stuck in this, this soup of options, and he just wasn't taking that first step.

And so we call this treading water and it shows up in so many different ways. Why we call it treading water is funny little story. When I was in school in physical education, we had swimming class, and one of the very first things we did is turn up to this class dressed head to toe in big baggy clothing.

Tracksuit pants, hoodies, and shoes. And we had to jump into the water and keep our head above water for 60 seconds. But we couldn't move anywhere. We had to stay in the same spot. Mm-hmm. And this is called treading water. And it was to basically look at our stamina, our physical, uh, you know, health and wellness, whether we could maintain that.

And also to make sure we wouldn't drown if that ever happened, if we fell into the water. So treading water, you're exhausted, you're doing a lot, but you're not going anywhere. And that is one very common habit, especially for entrepreneurs, for people who want to create, and there's a number of reasons that contribute to that.

One of them is what is something that you find your listeners, people in your community do a lot that holds them back? What do you think is, and, and social media makes this really easy to do. What would you say to this? They're reiterating over and over and over before they actually hit posts, for example.

Yes. So they don't have any data to actually make it better. Yes. Or any input. They're just iterating by themselves the same thing. What do you think is causing a lot of the iteration? Fear of being seen as less than perfect rejection. You know, if you put yourself out there, you can be taken down. But if you stay yes, behind the screen and never hit record, you don't ever have an opportunity to be, um, disagreed with.

Right? Or to have somebody go off in the comments or somebody to say, well, who, who does she think she is? Right? Candace, we hear that all the time from our clients. Talk about, yeah, who does she think she is? Is what everyone is so afraid of. Interesting. For someone to tell them that. So this, this fear of almost rejection or criticism from others.

And there's, there's two elements I wanna touch on here. Firstly, why things like social media and living at this age where we have access to so much information, why that really contributes to this is we're comparing ourselves constantly. A lot of entrepreneurs will follow other entrepreneurs in their space.

But instead of often feeling inspired by those people, they feel completely daunted by the fact that I am here, they are there, I'm not gonna be as good as they are. What if this, and instead of inspiring you to move forward, it actually holds you back because then you have these layers of perfectionism.

I need to speak like that person. I need to have as much success as that person. So there's this whole comparison element that undercuts our confidence. And then the second piece is this fear of judgment. It's incredible how when you strip away this fear of judgment, so much of what's blocking us is removed.

It's such a strong driver and there's a reason for it. We are social creatures. Mm-hmm. Social comparison theory explains how we have evolved in communities and we're constantly assessing our status to others to see if we're safe, if we're part of the community, who do I trust? Do they trust me? So it has a very important function.

But in our modern day and age where we're exposed to everything and everybody and what they're sharing and their stories and on LinkedIn, and it actually completely strips us of the confidence in ourselves, the self-trust to say, Hey, it's okay if not everyone agrees. And in fact, and I'm sure this has come up before in this podcast and with guests you've spoken to, if you live a life.

Only wanting to satisfy other people and be approved of by others and be acceptable by other people. You are going to live a life of sacrificing yourself. Mm-hmm. You're gonna live a life of sacrificing yourself. 'cause there is nothing that you can do actually. Well, there's a lot you can do to only be accepted, but then you are conforming to what other people want, other people need.

You're never coming up with something that's going to rock the boat. And that's often when real innovation happens. When real success happens, you need to shake things up a little bit. Mm. And again, it's, I could go into a lot of the science around how physical pain and things like social rejection, they activate the same underlying neural pathways in the brain.

This was a, a pioneering study out of UCLA in the early two thousands, found that when you think about, oh no, what will they think of me? What if they think I'm this or that? That feeling of potential social rejection hurts. On a deep neurological level, and our brain is wired to do what? It's to protect us so that we survive, so that we can continue living our lives.

So there is an imperative for it to keep us safe. And how it keeps us safe is by filling us with doubt, with fear, with what ifs. And that's often why we catastrophize. Mm-hmm. When we don't know what an outcome will be, our brain prefers certainty and so we'll make up possible. Outcomes that are never generally like what if it works out?

It's more what if it doesn't work? What if this happens? What if this person sees it? What if I lose all my money? So we're going through that whole process. Understanding that that's doesn't mean you're broken, doesn't mean you need to be fixed. It's really just your brain doing what it's meant to do can take a lot of the pressure away and you realize, Hey, I'm not alone.

Everyone experiences this. And I'm sure later on we'll go into, okay, well what can we do? How can we work through this? Um, I, I realize I haven't actually touched on the second two habits, but we can get to them as we, as we go through. Okay. I do want to know how we respond to this. I saw a reel that you have on your Instagram.

If you guys don't follow her on Instagram, we are going to definitely link her in the show notes. So follow, give her a follow and then make sure you check out her pinned posts. But one of them, you talked about this quadrant, and I'm wondering if this quadrant is in any way related, because the quadrant was.

Humanness, I believe, on the vertical axis and courage on the horizontal axis. And you talked about each of those four quadrants. And is courage a solution to this? Absolutely. Absolutely. So super quickly, what Candace is referring to is there's a lot of research that has been done around how. We, when we are making a first impression with someone or when we're meeting with someone, there are generally two dimensions that we're judged on, and also two dimensions that we judge other people on, and that's humanness and courage.

And this also comes through in how we run our businesses, how we lead, how we are in teams, how we are with friends. We will generally either be higher on a humanist dimension, which is all around making sure everyone else is okay. You're being kind, you're being warm, you're being approachable, and then courage.

Is prioritizing the need to do what needs to be done, and the ideal state is to have these both in balance. Now, I know that a lot of your listeners are women, and women typically score higher on the humanist dimension, which is things like warmth, things like agreeableness, and we could go into where this comes from and the, the nurture and the nature.

We're not gonna go into that. This is just the way that it is. A lot of women struggle with elevating that courage element because of everything we just talked about. If I elevate that, what if I hurt someone's feelings? What if someone isn't okay with me having a different opinion? What if I create conflict?

You know, conflict aversion is very much a part of this. Mm-hmm. And this can, again, hold us back where, you know, when we think of the root cause of all of this, I mean so much of this pain that we experience, there's really one piece that it comes to, and it's our thoughts. It's our thoughts because what is a belief?

Okay? You could say, well, it's your beliefs, but really what is a belief? When we look at the neurology behind it, what's going on in the brain? A belief is, okay, let me take it a step back. Let me share a story with you first and then I'll go into this and it'll, it'll help sense. I'm taking notes over here, Sade, so please continue.

Fantastic. And the crew, I'm sure. So when I finished high school to celebrate my friends and I, we went to a Beachside town. It was called Nelson Bay in uh, north of Sydney. And it was beautiful and we had a number of days to relax and one of the things that we did is sand dune surf. So we surfed down these sand dunes.

So we got driven up in this, you know, sand buggy, sand dune, buggy, and then they gave us what looked like a mini surfboard. We had to climb up this hill, sit it at the top, and then lean, you know, sit on it, lean forward, and it went down the hill. Now, we would do that many, many times, really good workout for the legs.

But what we found is when you sit at the top and you create that first pathway down, when you come back up and do it again, even if you try and follow that pathway down. You're going to veer off it a little bit, but the more and more times you do it, you will start to create a path, which is basically just where the sand has parted and your board will naturally go down and then you get to a point where without even having to try, the board will just follow that path.

And in the same way, this is essentially how beliefs are created, even how habits are created, how anything default is created in the brain learning. It's that you have a particular thought that you repeat. Again, and again and again, and it becomes etched in to the point that you don't even need to think about it and your brain will make that connection.

And so when we're talking about beliefs, this, it's generally a thought that you have repeated so many times and it may have not even been your thought to begin with. It might have been a thought someone else had and said to you and you internalized it, and then that creates a belief. So the beauty of knowing that is that, okay, we can't, we can't erase.

A belief. We can't erase a habit, but we can set new, healthier ones over the top of it and it's going to take time. In fact, there's this really interesting little piece. How many days does it take to form a new habit? 60 twin one. I. So we get, I've heard 21 and 60, but I feel that in anecdotal experience it takes longer than three weeks to instill a habit.

So it's so interesting. So 21 was, it came outta the work of Maxwell Maltz who was seeing, actually, this is a really interesting piece. Let me share this as well. 'cause I think it'll relate to listeners and people in this community. So Maxwell Moltz, he was a doctor, a surgeon, turned author. He had, he wrote the book called Psycho-Cybernetics, might have heard of it back in the sixties.

He observed something really interesting. So he had a plastic surgery clinic and his patients would come to him because they had a physical flaw that they wanted to be fixed. You know, they wanted their nose to be smaller or they had a scar that they wanted fixed. So there was something in them that they didn't like and they wanted it to be fixed.

And their thinking was quite simple. It's okay, well if I get this floor fixed, then I will be more successful. Then I will get the man of my dreams. Then I will, you know, be able to start the business. They had all these then, you know if what then moments? Mm-hmm. But what he found is that is absolutely not how it happened.

In reality, they would come in, fix the floor, feel amazing for maybe a couple of days. Then they were experiencing all of the same challenges, and it's because he, as he explains it, he calls it your self image, which is this visual mental picture that you have of yourself, which is a belief that you have developed for a very long time.

It's been etched into your brain like this sand dune path, and you cannot rise above your self image. You cannot rise above your opinion of yourself because your brain will pull you back to that pathway and tell you, you don't deserve this. You are not worthy, you're not as good as them. So it keeps wanting to confirm.

It's called self verification. It keeps wanting to confirm whatever belief you have about yourself. And so for a lot of us as women, we might have the view of I am the good girl. I am the one who does the right thing. I am the one who makes sure everyone else is okay. And a lot of the time it's because of how we were raised and what we saw when we were children.

I know for me that was it. Absolutely. I was the one who packed the table at dinner and, and I mean, I have a mom who's an entrepreneur. She has her own business, and yet I still absorb these, these cultural scripts. Mm-hmm. And still today I struggle when, like, an email sounds a little bit too assertive, you know, I'll put in a smiley face just to soften the phone.

Wanna soften it? Yes. Yeah, exactly. So there are these, we have a self image and we have to, we have to think, okay, what am I trying to mask? That is actually still going to be there. How do I really uncover those deeply held beliefs about who I think I am and what I think I'm capable of or deserving of?

And how do I fundamentally shift that slowly? Because again, you can't just create a new pathway immediately, but you can overwrite the old one slowly until that one becomes stronger. And until, and unless you do that, you're always going to veer back into this old self image that you have. What does this actually look like in practice?

How does one change their self image? Great question. And it's, it sounds super easy, like, Hey, I'm gonna draw a version of me and then I'm gonna draw a new version of me, and then I'm gonna be, it doesn't work like that. We know it takes time. And this brings us back to habits, so, mm-hmm. Habits. When we look at a lot of the meta analyses, it can be anywhere from.

A couple of weeks to a year, depending on the habit, and the person and the, oh, but the 21 days came out of Maxwell Maltz work. Mm-hmm. He noticed that most people were doing it in 21 days. But of course, again, it depends on who you are and all of these things. The very first thing, which is often the hardest, is to notice the thoughts, to notice the thoughts, because when you have these default thinking habits, you're not aware of them.

Because they just are who you are. In fact, the one of the greatest limiting beliefs that I have ever heard, and I only realized that it was so powerful in keeping people small, is the belief of that's just who I am. That's just the way I am, because it implies that I am not capable of change. Mm-hmm. I cannot.

Grow and that's breaks my heart because what we know from all of the research and our own experiences is that everyone can grow. In fact, for a very long time, there was a view that you couldn't even change your personality. Your personality is what it is. It was developed as a result of, you know, your natural temperament and the experiences you had, and that is who you are.

Part of my PhD research was looking at whether we can change a personality trait. Mm-hmm. And the good news is you can, but only if you choose to. You have to target it. You can't just will it into existence. So I find that fascinating because it, it really does turn on its head. A lot of the beliefs a lot of us have about, well, this is just who I am and that's my limit and replacing these glass ceilings on ourselves.

So I, it comes to mind where, you know, in relationships when I'm counseling friends through hard times, or even when I'm working through disagreements in my personal life, I always remind myself, my belief is that people can change, but only if they wanna change for themselves. Yes. Whereas before I just thought, oh, people can never change, and that's it.

So if, if how they are right now is it doesn't work for me, I need to move on. Mm. Instead of giving them the opportunity to help them notice and then not to enable, but to just give them the space to say, Hey, is this how you still want it to be? Is this how you always wanna be? But that was a big shift for me about, I don't know, I'd say one to two years ago.

And it was very freeing because. The fact that we can change is exciting. It doesn't box us in. And also your past doesn't have to dictate your future, which is very liberating for people born and from all walks of life. True. And I love what you said, your past doesn't have to dictate your future. There's this quote that I came across, I don't know, more than a decade ago.

It said something like, you are a product of your past, but you don't have to be a prisoner to it. Which implies that you can grab the key at any moment and choose to change the story. It's wonderful that you had that experience, Kat, that and you, you experience how freeing it is when you realize it.

Firstly, it's not your responsibility to try and change people. Mm-hmm. People are only going to change if they want to change. If they choose to change. And importantly, as you touched on. If they, well firstly, believe that they can change and if they know what they need to change. So it's actually it.

There's a little bit That's fair. More to its, yeah, but creating the space for them being a mirror, uh, a compassionate mirror to show them, Hey, I believe in you. In fact, there's such, uh, I was just, uh, what was I, oh, I'm working on some new content, some long form content for YouTube, and I was talking about, or rather writing about, there was this, there's this Greek myth.

And there was this, uh, sculptor and he sculpted this beautiful woman, stunning woman, and he fell in love with this sculpt of a woman. And he wished for her to become real so strongly that the goddess of love, Aphrodite had a little bit of pity for his experience, and then made her turn into a real woman.

Mm-hmm. And his name was Pygmalion. This is where the Pygmalion effect comes from. And so this idea is that you can believe something so strongly that you can bring it into existence, not by sheer will, but because what often happens is that when you believe something about yourself, it also influences how you believe other people will respond to you.

So if you believe that, uh, I have, I have nothing valuable to share, I'm not worthy. Then you are going to expect that when you share an idea in front of your team investors, whoever it is, they're not really gonna take you seriously. They're gonna brush it off. Mm-hmm. And then that shapes how you then show up and deliver your idea.

Which is probably not going to be with a lot of confidence. So then they respond in the way that you expected them to, and then you've just confirmed your belief. Taylor Tomlinson, who's a comedian, she shares in one of her standup routines. This conversation she had with her therapist, and it's really funny and very poignant.

She says that her therapist said to her, Lily, you might be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Lily's like, what is that? It sounds kind of cool. And she's like, no, no, it's not, it's not actually that great. In your context. Yeah. You, let's say you have a partner, I don't know whether this was a she, something she'd experienced, or this was just the analogy her therapist gave her, but let's say you have a partner and you expect them to cheat on you, so how are you gonna show up around them?

You're gonna be suspicious. You are gonna maybe look over their shoulder when they're texting. Mm-hmm. When they don't come home late one night, you're going to assume things, so you're gonna show up cold. You are gonna have that defensiveness in you, and then eventually that person feels disconnected, goes off and cheats on you.

And then guess what? You just created your reality. Not that it's your responsibility that they cheated. Mm-hmm. But there is always a sequence of events that happen. And so when we're talking about habits and the beliefs that we hold and how our self image of ourselves shapes how we show up in the world and how people respond to us and then what we achieve, it's so important to bring it back to us because fundamentally, we are the only things we can control.

We cannot control anybody else what they say, what they do, what they think, which is hard. We'd love the certainty of being able to control what people think of us. I do. We can't so much. Yes. But once we bring it back, that's when we start to realize, okay, I actually have a huge amount of power here. And Candace, you asked the question like, how do you start changing your self image?

It starts with recognizing what is my self image. It's hard to ask yourself, what is my self image? It's a bit of a big, heavy concept, but something else to ask yourself is how do I expect people to respond to me? You take, make it less about you and more about others that can actually reveal how you see yourself.

Because how you see yourself is usually mirrored and how you expect other people to respond to you if someone shows interest in you. Okay? Assuming you're unmarried and and single, if someone shows interest in you, are you immediately gonna think, well, I have nothing interesting to offer. Offer. Why are they showing interest in me?

They must want something out of me that is reflecting a self-image. If you are about to pitch to VCs for funding for your startup. If you expect that they're gonna scoff at your idea and not take you seriously, that is reflecting a self-image. Mm. So that can really help. And then the next step is, okay, well how is that manifesting?

How is that coming across in how I show up? And then how do I interrupt that pattern? I know the clever crew is listening right now and they're thinking, okay, this sounds great. I want to change my self image. But this is often where we see people say. My friends and my family are now calling me fake. Mm.

They're now telling me that, that who, who do you think you are is coming up. Because one of the things you also talked about in the beginning of this podcast is how important community is and why we kinda operate in this way. So we know our community is really important, but they are also most likely the first people who are going to call us out when we begin to change our self image and act differently.

How do we navigate that? It's funny, Candace, you said you have so many questions. I have so many ideas. I should take notes as you're asking your questions as well, because I don't wanna forget there's so much here. I'm loving this conversation. I'll share a personal example of this because this is really, really valid.

When you grow, when you change, it can often shine a spotlight on other people's weaknesses because they may not be growing as quickly as you are. Mm-hmm. You may be growing in all the ways they wish they were. Yeah, and it's safer for them to feel like someone is not shining a spotlight on where they're lacking and they wanna pull you back down.

But I wanna share an example. So if sometimes when I watch videos of myself speaking from seven, eight years ago, 10 years ago, my accent's very different. My accent is very different. I lived in Australia, I was raised in Australia, and had a very strong Australian accent. My accent today has been neutralized intentionally because we have a global audience and we want a global audience.

And I no longer live in Australia, and a lot of that has been a result of my husband Faisal. He has a neutral American accent. His background is fascinating. Um, he was raised in Algeria, oh, well, born in Algeria, but then raised in the UAE, then moved to Australia, lived in Korea, spent time in China. He's been all over and he has helped me realize that you don't have to.

Even when it comes to speaking, you don't have to speak the same way if it's no longer serving your goals and, but I've had people say to me, you're faking your accent. I get sometimes though, I admit my accent's super confused, like depending on who I'm speaking to, it will change a little bit. If you both had English accents, I'd probably have a little bit more of a twang in it.

My family, before they went to Australia, they were in England, so like there's all these things that come in, but I have intentionally changed a part of myself that some people would say is fake. And initially it really hurt when people would point it out. I'd feel like I had to defend myself and all of these, but now I'm just like, well, yes, I have chosen to change that.

Just like how if you're learning a second language, you might get a language coach, an elocution coach, because you want your message to be better understood by your audience. So you'll take steps to develop that. So why can't we as NA, native English speakers, why can't we take steps to improve how we speak?

So that's one little example of how other people don't necessarily understand the changes that you are on. Now when it comes to bigger changes, like you embodying the type of person you wanna be, this is even more confronting to people because they feel like they know you and they, they know a version of you.

But. That's not the way you always wanna be necessarily, and you can choose at any point in your life to show up as the person you want to become rather than show up as the person that you have been. I mean, I think of Ginny and Georgia. I don't know if you've seen the, the current season on Netflix. No, I haven't seen the current season, but I'm familiar.

It's so, it's this show about. Mother-daughter relations. I, I refer to it to my mother as, um, because my mom and I used to love Gilmore girls, so I'm like, mom, it's mom. It's like, have girls with a side of trauma. Like that's kind of what it is. But the, um, the, the mother, the character of the mother, she had an incredibly challenging upbringing and she's chosen to transform herself.

And I mean, there's so much else there in terms of weight and heaviness, but it reminds me of that you can choose. At any point in time to start showing up as a person you wanna be because something magical happens when you make that choice to embody the, it's almost like embodying a new kind of self image, so you're not faking it till you make it.

You're being it until you become it. I don't know who said that. Someone said it and has stuck with me. I resonated with fake it till you make it, because it sounds disingenuous. Insincere and as women, that doesn't resonate with many of us. But when you're being it, till you become it, that taps into what's happening around embodiment.

Like when we talk about embodying bias or um, embodying who you wanna be, and then you start to internalize those ways of thinking and those behaviors. There's this fascinating line of research around how they did studies with children. And they said, okay, kids, I think three to five year olds, they said either they need to imagine that they're Batman or imagine that they're dore the Explorer or someone they look up to.

And they said, when things get hard, imagine that you're this person. What would that person or that character do? Mm. And they found that the kids who embodied this other brave version of, you know, this other persona ended up persisting more. They stuck with the task longer and. A lot of people do that today when they're, A lot of music artists, when they're about to step on stage, they will channel a different Beyonce.

Yes, exactly. Mm-hmm. Adele also has one that she uses as well. They've got a different version of themselves, like a different image that they embody to allow them to perform these tasks or to to show up as a different version of themselves. And it may be that they never take on that persona through the rest of their lives, but when they need it, they step into that role.

And I think that is so incredibly powerful because it means, and actually it reminds me of something else. The very first leader I ever had, he, the first time I ever saw him speak. So I, I worked in a bank first. I worked in law, legal industry. Total wrong move for me, moved into banking and finance. Also, wrong move for me, but that's okay.

That's a story for another day. But in my second, uh, it was my first year in, at the end of my first year, I was invited to go along to an offsite for a particular team, a retail team. So I'm sitting in the audience and this man comes out on stage. He's wearing, I think he was barefoot. He was just in a t-shirt and shorts.

So already we're like, who is this person? Very uncharacteristic of that environment. And for two hours I was absolutely captivated by how he spoke and what he talked about. And he was passionate about psychology and about, um, you know, self-image. All of these concepts that I loved and I hadn't yet explored in terms of my own research.

And I. Uh, remember just thinking, I need to work for him. So I, I walked up to him at the end of his talk and I said, I loved everything that you shared. I would love to work in your team. How do we make that happen? And he organized a meeting with his business manager a week later, and I got a role in his team.

Shortly after. Mm-hmm. Yes. I know. That was what my mom used to say, if you want something, go and ask for it. So that was one example of that hasn't always, I haven't always had that much courage. But then I learned really shortly after that this man who was able to captivate an audience and was just so inspiring.

He was a introvert and very, very strong introvert. Mm-hmm. And I couldn't get my head around it. I thought, aren't you either one or the other? How can this person who's standing in front of. Thousands. There weren't thousands of people. There were probably, it was under a hundred, but how can he stand there with so much confidence and yet be an introvert?

And that's when he taught me about the power of learned behaviors. So he was an introvert with learned extrovert behaviors, which allowed him when he needed to, to be on a stage channel, those learned behaviors, to do what he needed to do, to inspire, to empower, to motivate his team to perform. And then he'd go back to being the introvert that he was really comfortable with being.

And so when we're talking about being on this journey, changing yourself, embodying who you want to become, sometimes that idea of embodying who you wanna become is daunting because you might be an, I'm an introvert, so after this conversation, us, you are as well. Or us so are, so, yeah. So we and it, a lot of people will think, I'm an introvert, I can't do these things.

Woo-hoo. Mm-hmm. Collective. Yeah. People become more comfortable with acknowledging their introverts the older they get. Because they stop trying to perform for other people. Mm. And they start acknowledging, actually, I'm much more comfortable in this space and I'm more comfortable with who I am, so I'm not gonna push myself times too far beyond what I'm comfortable with because then I end up depleted and I can't be myself.

Pat and I talk about how our podcast is a great way for us to continue to be introverts because we have this one conversation that really goes out to all of these people who feel like they were in it with us and we're still able to. Builds our community, but it doesn't take the maintain our of the energy.

Right. Beautiful. And you've found an avenue to do it. It's brilliant. Well done for the both of you, for also cultivating this community. Thank you so much. We wanna be mindful of your time. We obviously could talk to you forever and we would love to have you back if that is something that you're interested in.

Absolutely. We would love to have you. Yes. Can't believe that so much time has passed it. So much time has gone by already. If anyone wants to know the other mind pits, watch the TEDx talk. Maybe we can just link that in the show show notes. You can learn the others. Um, one quick thing I wanted to mention is when we compare, so we started a conversation talking about comparison.

Mm-hmm. How we are constantly comparing, we're wired to do that. Something I found really beneficial, and I I talk about this in the book. Comparing is just natural human nature. You, it's very difficult to completely stop doing something, but it's much easier to replace that behavior with something else.

And so the first step is, okay, when I'm comparing myself to these other people, is it making me feel less than? And if it is, okay, that's your red flag. If it's not great, there are people who are inspired by what they see and that's great, keep doing that. But if it is making you feel less than, then move away from comparison.

Move to emulation. What does that mean? Instead of comparing and thinking, I am here, they are there. Look at this giant gap. You go, I am here. They are there. What can I learn? How can I emulate one thing that they're doing? Maybe how they speak, maybe how they share their content, maybe something they've done in their business.

You're not copying your emulating. You look at how can I incorporate that into what I do? And then you try in a really small way, set yourself a tiny little goal to emulate that. And then you build. That's how people improve. That's how people improve their speaking. That's how people improve their confidence.

They emulate what others are doing. And then it stops you thinking, I could never do that. And instead you start thinking, cool, I'm going to emulate until I get there. So that's a really powerful little mindset shift that I would encourage. A very quickly, we'll touch on the book because it's still a very long way away.

I mean, it's coming out in on the 20th of January, but it captures. Essentially all of my insights around self-doubt, around what holds us back, and we didn't get a chance to go into it. But essentially what I found is when I was interviewing and researching people with self-doubt, I found out that there are two groups of people.

There's one group who experience self-doubt the most, and they are consumed by it. They are constantly trying to fix themselves, to criticize their way out of it, to analyze their way out of it to. Overthink everything to try and stop themselves overthinking, but it just backfires. And then the second group actually fascinatingly experienced the same levels of self-doubt objectively, but instead of focusing on the doubt and the negative thoughts, they lean into other parts of themselves.

Other strengths that they have that allows them, and this is the beautiful part, when we bring it back to self-image, it allows them to build their self-image from the inside out so that even if they experience a doubt, it doesn't attach itself to their identity and say, this is who you are. They say, no, this is who I am, and that is just a thought and I can choose to listen to it or not.

And these four attributes that form up our sense of self-image, there's acceptance. Do I believe I'm okay as I am there is agency? Do I believe that if I set a goal, I can reach it either through my own skills or getting help from other people? Do I believe I can do that? The third one is super interesting, and I never expected this to be part of it.

Do I believe that I can control my path? So if I put in the effort now, do I believe that it will make a difference to the outcome? Or is it doomed to fail anyway because of bias, discrimination? Other people always get ahead. So this is, we call this autonomy. Do you have choices? Do you use those choices and belief that they will have an impact?

And then the last one is what underscores all of it, which is emotion. If you strip emotion out of self-doubt, you don't have self-doubt, you just have random thoughts. And, you know, self-doubt is fueled by what you feel as a result of it. It's not even the thought itself, it's the emotion that attaches to the thought.

So what the, the research has found, what my research has found, what's gonna go all in this, what is in this book is when you face any kind of self-doubt, the first question to ask yourself is, which of these four attributes is it undermining? Which one is weak right now? And then how do I lean on an attribute that might be stronger?

To help me in that moment. Some people are really good at emotional regulation, but they struggle with accept accepting themselves. So in a moment when they're doubting themselves and starting to feel the emotion, how can they channel all of the tools they've developed for emotional regulation to help them feel better emotionally, which can then help them start to think more in more healthy ways?

So that's essentially what what's happening, and I love the fact that it, it's really reminding us that. There is always something we can do. That's the, you know, if there's one thing that I want people to take away from our conversation, from anything that I do, is that you're never stuck. Stuck is a state of mind.

There's always something you can do, whether that is to change a thought, change a behavior, go for a walk, call a friend, listen to this, you know, this podcast series, whatever it is, there's something you can do to get you out of that rut. Something that we've noticed, and it's very common when you experience doubt in yourself, you struggle to speak up.

In the key moments that matter. Mm-hmm. And so if anyone is. Finding themselves part of that group where they struggled with the words initially because you freeze because of all of these processes that are going on within you and in your mind. I actually have a series of scripts, so I've got 20 plug it and play scripts for key career moments that we're currently promoting.

Now it anyone can access it from sade zari.com/confidence. Maybe we can add them to the show notes. And then it'll just give you very simple, wor essentially my words that you can borrow until you find your own. Because often what happens, it's just that initial point where you freeze up, I dunno what to say.

Uh, I, my brain's gone blank. Because your body's going into fight or flight typically. As soon as you can have one prepared script, uh, line that you can say you are rebuilding that self-trust to, to tell yourself, remind yourself, Hey, I've got this. I can, I can do this, and then everything calm and then you can continue.

So if, if that's of interest to anyone, it's sade i.com/confidence. We'll definitely put that in the show notes and I'm sure Kat and I are gonna grab that as soon as we're done with this as well. In fact, I'm downloading it as we speak. No, thank you Sade. So, uh, today's not nice advice, uh, is from spiraling, but smiling.

I feel you, girl. Okay, so she's asking, uh, saying, with a lot of uncertainty in the world right now. Lately, it feels like everyone around me is running on empty. My clients are stressed, my team is stressed, and I'm out here just trying to keep the vibe positive and hold it all together, but honestly, I'm overwhelmed too.

How am I supposed to keep everyone else calm when I feel like I'm barely holding it together myself? Thank you for sharing this question first. This is a vulnerable question and something that is very, very relatable. You need to look after you first. You cannot be your best if you're neglecting yourself.

You have to protect your energy. Do the things that bring you joy. Take action what, however small that is. Remind yourself that even when we're living in a world where so much feels like it's out of our control, there is always something we can do. And then when you identify what that is and take action on it, you suddenly feel a lot more empowered, Hey, I can do this.

And a piece that I mentioned there about find things that bring you joy. We are living in a, you know, when things are busy, when things are uncertain, there is a joy deficit. We don't feel like we deserve joy. We don't feel like we should be experiencing joy when there's so much hardship in the world and other people are suffering.

But then the only person who suffers most is us. Do the little things that make you happy, because when you have that little, I always say the emotions are like a, it's like a bank account. We have an emotional bank account, and when it's constantly depleted. You're, you're of course, running from empty find ways to make deposits and these comes from moment, moments of joy, moments of connection.

It's not self-indulgent. Think of it as depositing into that emotional bank account so that you can be better for everybody else. Thank you so much.

Thanks for joining us on Not Nice Clever. Remember to follow our podcast wherever you listen to audio and head to www.notniceclever.com to connect. For more drop a question, we'll shoot you an answer. We're not gatekeepers here signing off. You're not so nice, but also clever bestie that mean business.

See you next week.

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Candice Carioppolo

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Kat Torre

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