297. The Courage to Reinvent Yourself - Wendy Valentine

You are listening to Ideas and Leaders Podcast. I'm Lena Paventa, Executive Communication Coach and TEDx Organizer. With each episode I'll share with you communication tips and ideas from top business leaders to help you excel in your career. Welcome to the next episode of Ideas and Leaders Podcast. Today my guest is Wendy Valentine. She is a midlife invention expert, she is a speaker and she is an author of Women Waking Up book. So today we're going to speak about reinventing ourselves in business. Hi Wendy, welcome to Ideas and Leaders. Thank you so much and hello to all the ideas and leaders out there in the world. It's great to be here and I'll try to share lots of wisdom with you in my 53 years of life. Great to have you Wendy, I love your energy. So let's share your story with our listeners in the beginning. So how did you get to where you are right now? How did you get to write the book and start doing what you're doing? Yeah, wow, that's a loaded question, but I'll try to summarize it. So I've been an entrepreneur for 25 years and for 20 of those years I did not like what I was doing. I actually started a medical billing company. I was a single mom, two kids and I was trying to fair it away that I could stay at home with the kids and be able to be there with them when they got on the bus and got off the bus. I started this medical billing company had no idea what I was doing. But I went for it, right? And that ended up leading to Mary's physician and then managing integrative practices and teaching other doctors how to run medical practices. So yes, so those 20 years of doing all that, I was very successful at it, but I did not enjoy it. And then about, let's see, the age of 46, 47, I, you know, up to that point, I'd only heard of a midlife crisis. And then I finally get to experience one. So I went through my second divorce and I was in an empty nest with 150 grand in debt and because I was in business with my, with my husband at the time, I was then unemployed. And going through chronic illness, I had black maltoxicity, chronic Lyme disease, menopause, you name it, my body was just completely falling apart. And within about six weeks, my dog died, my cat died, and my brother died. Needless to say, I went into a major depression suffered from panic attacks and anxiety. And to me at that point in my life, here it was, I remember thinking like, oh my gosh, I'm going to be turning 50 soon. And my whole life is completely unrivaled, completely fallen apart. And everything that I had worked so hard for was just disappearing in front of me. And I can remember the quote from Robert Frost of two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less traveled by. And to me, those two roads were one road was the woman that I had been and the life that I had been living and the other road was the woman that I could become. And I realized that I had a choice at that point in my life. And I think the most important thing that I realized was I had tying this back into your podcast. I had a ton of great ideas. And I was definitely leading in lots of ways, but I was leading everyone else except for me. And as a recovering perfectionist, people please are a approval seeker. I realized I was like, I cannot carry that anymore. And it was time for me to chose that road less traveled, the road that would lead to the woman that I wanted to be. The woman that I wanted to be personally, professionally, financially, and my relationships, everything. And for the first time in my life, and that at that point, yes, I was almost 50 years old. First time in my life, I asked myself the most important question that I think every single human being needs to ask of themselves. And that is, who do I want to be? And when I got quiet enough to listen to myself, to the leader within myself, I finally arrived at those answers that I had been wanting. And I'll be honest with you, I think, and maybe this is for a lot of us here, that sometimes we don't really want to know what we need to do. Well, like deep down, we truly need to be doing in our lives because that means that we might have to lead differently. We might actually have to take action on some of those ideas that we've had that have been brewing inside of us for so long, whether that's a book that we want to write or a podcast we want to start or do keynote speaking, whatever the case is. Deep down, we know what we need to be doing to evolve and to really allow ourselves to blossom in life. But who to actually give ourselves permission to do that and to take that step forward is very bold. It can be very, very scary. I know that to be true. But leap and then that will appear as I always say, and you're the net, just trust that you will actually catch yourself that you will figure it out as you go along. Thank you for sharing your story. I think that many leaders, many people who are listening to us, they are operating on this autopilot. I'm running, I have this function, I'm running this company, I'm doing this, and this is who I am. And we do it for years and years and years. So how can we recognize at the certain point that maybe this is not necessarily what I want to do and maybe this is not who I want to be? Yeah, and you know what? I love that you ask that question. And there's a couple of things been in my mind lately and I kind of treat myself as my own little guinea pig, my own experiment, which I think we all need to in life. We kind of try things out and go, how is this working for me? We need to be doing check ins with ourselves, right? And seeing where we're at in our lives. How do we feel about everything? Because yes, we can all go on autopilot and be like, oh, you wake up one day and like, what am I doing? You know, like, we're definitely as human beings. We're creatures of habit, but we are also creatures of change, right? And one of the things that's been in my mind lately is being more proactive than reactive, preparing rather than repairing, right? I mean, if you look back at, you know, years ago in my life when my whole life fell apart, I was definitely in survival mode. I was definitely in repair mode and being reactive. I had no choice, right? I had to like, all right, it's feast or famine. It's time to get up and do something, right? But yes, try to be as proactive as you can and you can do that by checking in with yourself. You can do that by getting quiet enough and listening to the ticker tape of thoughts going across in your mind. And the number one thing that I did to change my life was to change that ticker tape of thoughts going across in my mind, because I realized how poorly I spoke to myself. And all of us, I mean, if you just tap on the top of your head, right, unless you're driving, this right here is either your best friend or your worst enemy. And whichever one that you choose is the one that leads your life, right? I mean, you create your thoughts, your thoughts create your life. We've all heard that, but I don't know if it really, really sinks in with us. And so if you just start with your thoughts, with your emotions and with how you feel about yourself and about life and the energy that you're putting out there in the world and the energy that you're taking in, it's like you're unstoppable. Like once you fully tap into that and know, like if there's any control freaks out there, like I was, the one way to be a great control freak is controlling those thoughts in your mind, right? And knowing that if you have and we all do nasty negative thoughts that are coming across in our mind, you can stop those thoughts and you can replace them with nice, positive, wonderful, wonderful words of affirmation and inspiration for yourself. And again, yes, we're human being, we're built with all these different emotions and different thoughts and it's okay to have like you're not supposed to be perfect, right? Just like I said, I'm a recovering perfectionist. I thought for majority of my life, I had to be perfect or I was not good enough and that's not true. Allow yourself to be messy. Allow yourself to even have like, "Okay, well that didn't work out well. That's okay. Give yourself some grace." But yes, the most important way you can change your life and how you lead yourself and how you lead others and how you implement those ideas is by focusing on your thoughts. I can remember that same, we talked about this the episode, the last episode with Federico. I apologize if I'm not pronouncing his name correctly. But you mentioned about your book and writing your book and how you realize that you really needed a concentrate on your inner dialogue, right? Like the critic in your head and how you're speaking to yourself and you're like, "Okay, like I've got a focus here. I've got a duality." We all have it. We all have this inner critic. But it's whichever one that you're feeding the most and the goal is to make sure that you're feeding that best friend in your mind and you're cheerleader, right? You want that cheerleader to be louder than the critic. In your mind. Yeah. I feel, I totally agree with you on this. I feel that many people and myself included, we don't want to or we don't have time to go that deep or we just explain to ourselves that, "Oh, I don't have time. I have so many tasks to do." And we don't just go there, the thoughts and emotions. So what would you recommend to people who are listening to us and who would say, "Okay, I don't have time to act journaling and thinking about my thoughts and I just need to do the work?" Where can we start to not to dive deep immediately, but what are some of the first steps that you would recommend to do to actually uncover those patterns? Yeah, I would recommend and I know like I'm throwing somebody and I'm like, "I don't want a journal." Okay, well I'm going to give you like a few options here. You can journal, yes. You can sit in silence. You can do some yoga. You can go walking. Walking without, I mean, yes, I have a podcast too because yes, I love to listen to podcasts, but don't listen to podcasts. I'm going to tell you and take a walk, listen to the birds, watch the trees, watch the people passing by, and then listen to those thoughts that are going across in your mind and catch them. Like really think about your thinking, yes. Think about your thinking and how you feel as you're thinking, right? Are you walking? Are you on a nice walk in the morning and the sun's coming up and you're thinking like, "Oh my God, what am I going to make for dinner?" "Oh my God, I have this meeting today." (sighing) Just nice deep breaths. You deserve that. You deserve that quiet time with your heart, your soul, give yourself that gift. And so whether it's walking, it's spending some time in meditation. I learned meditation with silent meditation and I could not stand it. (coughing) So you don't have to do silent meditation. There are tons of guided meditations that you can do, which is what I do. Like I do Dr. Joseph Spenza or anything on the com app. I even have my own meditations now, but if that's bigger out what works for you, whatever works to get you to tune in to your body, to your mind and to your soul. And here, I wish I had my journal in front of me, but I don't, I would show you. But here's a little trick you can do with journaling, which I love. Because I've noticed some people do not want a journal and really let their emotions and their feelings and their thoughts out onto the page. Because they're worried, oh my gosh, what if my spouse reads this or my child reads this? Oh my gosh, this is like no. So then therefore, what do they do? They keep everything inside, right? Here's a little trick. So when you journal, just journal one page, you fill out that one page and you literally just let your heart pour onto the page. If you're angry, if you're happy, if you're grateful, if you're, if you're, if you're, if don't worry about your penmanship or periods or exclamation marks, just let it flow. And when you finish that one page, turn your journal upside down and you write over exactly what you just wrote. And it ends up becoming like this hodgepodge. It kind of looks like artwork actually. No one can read it. And then you're like, at least I got that out, right? And you're not holding that in. So that is just a great way to kind of let everything out and into, and you notice your thoughts, right? And again, give yourself grace of whatever it is that's going on in your mind. You're in the other point I wanted to make earlier. Now I just remember that's part of menopause. You forget everything. [LAUGHS] But the main thing is that when you decide that person that you truly want to be in life, as you get quieter and you start to listen to those thoughts, you want to step into the shoes of that person. It's like acting as a, right? Like an actor preparing for a role. You immerse yourself in the thought, beliefs, and behaviors of that person that you want to be, even before that person fully becomes you, right? And that's exactly what I did. I mean, when I was in the darkest moment of my life, I imagined the woman that I truly wanted to be in life. I wanted to be an author. I wanted to be an inspirational speaker. I wanted to start my own show. And what I did is I did journal about this woman. And I designed this woman. I was like, OK, how does she walk into a room? How does she take care of her body? How does she think and speak? And what are her relationships like? What are her boundaries like? Everything. And literally just designing this woman that I wanted to be in every single day. I stepped it into the shoes of that woman. And then eventually, talk about sleepwalking. That's the best way to sleepwalk. If you're sleepwalking through the person that you actually want to be, and then you wake up one day, and you're like, oh, I actually became her. It's the greatest feeling. Hence why the book is called "Women Waking Up." Yeah, so I want to ask you about your book. You have a book, "Women Waking Up," "Beautiful Cover." So what are some of the recommendations from that book that you would give to our listeners about reinventing yourself, about becoming the new version of yourself? I really like what you're speaking about, about changing the way we think, and having more of those positive thoughts, and also imagining the person that we want to be. What are some of the practical steps that we can do on the way? Yes, thank you so much. And by the way, if there's any mentalist and you can just take off the woe. And then it's "Women Waking Up." I actually do have a lot of men that read the book. So it's great. But really, the lessons apply to everyone. But "Women Waking Up," first of all, I wrote it because I didn't want anyone else out there to feel lost, stuck, invisible, or just quietly dissatisfied, or if they got to a point in their life, no matter how small the trauma or large, that they-- there is a way out. Yes, you can get unstuck. Yes, you can actually follow your dreams, and you can make it happen, right? And catching up the story a little bit, after I had that complete breakdown in my life, I had this crazy out of the blue vision of driving an RV across the country. And it was something I'd always wanted to do. And I thought, what if I could actually make this happen, right? And start a podcast and become a writer. And so it wasn't so much that I was excited about this RV journey across the United States. It was more so the woman and the driver's seat. I imagine this woman, again, that was happy and healthy and financially free, and that's what I was after. So after that complete breakdown that I had, it took me about two years. But I ended up taking a job in the corporate world, something I had never done before. But sometimes-- and this is a lesson right here for everyone-- sometimes we'll end up having to take jobs or having to do certain things where like, OK, this isn't quite ideal for me, but for this season right now in my life. This is what I need to do, right? It's like a stepping off point. It gets you to that next point in your life. And so over the course of those two years, I ended up working really hard at regaining my health, regaining my strength. I ended up selling, which is so crazy, over $45 million in houses because I became basically a real estate agent in Chicago. And climbed my way out of debt. So yeah, I went from 150 grand in debt and being unemployed and paid of all the debt, bought the RV, and took off across the country. So the book is that story. And I think what I was telling you earlier, it's pretty much 30% of my story and 70% prescriptive. And I wanted it that way for people because I don't want the reader just be like, oh my god, that's so inspiring. But how do I do it? So I gave the reader all the tools. and techniques and the methods that I used to get me from that point A of angst to point B of bliss, if you will, right? So no matter what you're going through life, if you're feeling stuck, there's a way to get unstuck and to actually gain that clarity in the book. And so the book is pretty much my journey, that two-year journey of how I went from crying on the bathroom floor to taking off in an RV across the country and becoming an author. Just kind of crazy. Well your your journey is really inspiring and I think it's inspiring for many people who think that this is just who I am and this is just my work and this is what I do and this is the way it is but it doesn't have to. So we can start reinventing ourselves at a certain age, doesn't matter what age you are right now. I think that we need to understand that we can do certain steps and we can start thinking about the new version of yourself. So to sum up our conversation, I wanted to ask you for a little maybe a roadmap for our listeners. So when we want to reinvent ourselves, when we want to start thinking about the new version of ourselves, what are the steps that we need to do in order to get there? Okay so three simplest steps that I can give you and they do sound simple but they work if it's consistent for you in your life and it's kind of repeating what I talked about before. It's believe, behave, become. So believe that goes back to your thoughts and your beliefs and that is changing those thoughts and beliefs to support the person that you truly want to become right and the second thing is behaving. It is stepping into the shoes of that person that you want to be and even research shows that when you change your identity first your habits follow right. So a lot of us concentrate too much on the what, when, where, why, and how when we're setting goals and we're making our plans but we forget about the most important element of them all and it's the who. So when you concentrate on who you want to be, what type of leader you want to be, whether that be as a spouse, as a friend, as a coworker, as a boss, whatever that is, we're all leaders, right. It's just how we're leading, right. And then finally become and eventually as you change those thoughts and your beliefs and you change your behaviors, then you become that person that you want to be. And it's funny because at the very beginning when you started off the podcast you had said about my energy and it's funny because that's probably the number one words that's used to describe me as energy, but I want to remind everyone we are all energy. We're actually 99.9999% energy, right. And when you can focus on that energy and knowing that you can change your energy you can even have the capability to change the energy of a room or the environment or and you tap into that knowing you were much more than the point 001% matter that we see with the human eye tap into that energy. And it's almost like the person that you want to become just it's like on you know it goes fast forward. It's just it happens so much quicker when you're able to really tap into that energy of that person that you want to be. Yeah, thank you. And thank you so much for the inspiration. Now where can we find your book and where can we find you online so that our listeners can reach out and ask questions and get more of this beautiful energy from you. Thank you so much. Thank you. The best ways to go is just wendyvalentine.com. You can find anything and everything on there. The book is available on Amazon and it's in Europe too. And the Midlife Makeover Show podcast is everywhere you listen to podcasts and also on substack and you'll have to come onto my show when your book comes out. We can promote your voice. Wonderful wonderful. Yes, I would definitely I would love to continue your conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you Wendy for being an ADS and leaders. It was such a pleasure talking to you. And yeah, thank you for all of the tips for for our listeners on reinventing themselves. Thank you so much. Thank you leaders. Thank you for listening to ADS and leaders podcast. Did he enjoy this episode? Let me know that you listened by tagging me in your LinkedIn profile and using a hashtag IDSNLeaders. See you in the next episode.