Women Empowerment & Personal Growth: Healing, Leadership, and Self-Trust

My life began on a park bench. My mother was homeless when she gave birth to me and she didn't have a place to take me home to after leaving the hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And there was an angel who saw my mother crying on this park bench and guided my mother to the government housing authority where she received placement and access to housing in a government housing project. And that's where I grew up. And it was my mom was a rock star and she had some challenges in life and that was the way our lives started, the way she brought me into this world. I was raised by my powerful strong mother, single parent. I do not know my father. I was abused as a child. I was bullied by the popular kids in school. And I experienced colorism in my own neighborhood chuck because my fair skin didn't fit so well in my neighborhood of all darker skinned African Americans. So as a child of mixed race, I struggle to find a sense of belonging. And most kids struggle, most kids as it is our natural one of our fundamental needs is to belong as human beings. As kids were sponges and we're trying to soak up all the environment around us because we're trying to find the place where we belong. It's part of our survival need. And so I survival need led me to believe what we make up about our sense of belonging isn't always true. In fact, most of the time it's not true. And my sense of belonging led me to believe that because I experienced colorism, because I don't know my father, because I was raised in the government housing project, because I was born homeless, because I was bullied, because I was abused, that I don't matter. It was a decision I made about my sense of belonging and not belonging in the world. I'm a person who doesn't matter. And this became sort of the fundamental self-limiting belief of my life that is now the what I call a shame base belief. And it's the undercurrent runs as the undercurrent of my belief system about who I am in the way of belonging and not belonging in the world. So I believe this is a fundamental thing that all human beings, most human beings, yeah. I, I, what you're saying, it always leads me to think that the worst saboteur is is ourselves. We are, we sabotage ourselves more than anybody else. Absolutely. Absolutely. And this is the fund, my belief system is that this is the fundamental reason why we sabotage ourselves. It's not because we aren't deserving of the life we want or we aren't really aspirational or we are, or we're weak or we're fragile or timid. That is not the truth. The reason we sabotage the sabotage our lives is because we've built our, our sense of our identity on a lie. And the lie is the lie that we made up. And then we spend the rest of our lives chuck proving and disproving that lie proving that it is true because our belief system doesn't want us to believe, my belief system, I'll use myself as an example, does not want me to believe that I actually matter because it doesn't know what to do with the truth. It has convinced itself that it's true, that I don't matter is the truth. But real truth, the truth that I actually do matter is a conflict. It becomes an internal conflict. And so we don't know how to live in two worlds. I don't matter. I matter is are two worlds that we can't live in internally. And so sabotage happens when the, I don't matter is trying to get its way. It's trying to prove itself right. And that's when sabotage happens. The moment we're at the cusp of something good, a great opportunity, a dream fulfilled, the, you know, the riches that we desire, whatever those riches are in the world, when we're at the cusp of this and it's confronting this, I don't matter or someone else might be I am unlovable or someone else might feel they're not enough, someone else might feel like they're bad, someone else might feel like they're unworthy, right? When this thing is running the show and we're at the cusp of something great. And this is trying to say no, you are lovable, you do matter, you are important, you are not going to be abandoned. We accept you, we want you. When this is being confronting this, that's when sabotage occurs. Absolutely. Then you know the moot, I think one of the very difficult things is if when you're, you're young and you're growing up in, I think you said this, but you a child is like a sponge and you know, you soak everything up and we know what the sponge is always going to remain wet. It's, it's gained that information until you squeeze and ring it out. So that to me is kind of like this, changing your mindset, you have to squeeze that negativity out, you know, you may not get all of it out at one time and it takes a little bit of work over time, doesn't it? I mean, it's not automatic like one day, you're like, I am the best person, I am the best self. It's not like that. No, it's not unfortunately because what happens Chuck is this belief system gets tied into a nervous system. It becomes part of the energy of who we are. And so as there are stimuli around the world that we're responding to, we're responding within the construct of this same energy of, I don't matter, I am unlovable, I am too much, I am not enough as we are responding to the world around us to all the stimulus inside this what I'll call the bubble. And the bubble is, I live in this world and believing I don't matter. And all the energy around me that's confronting that keeps me here because I've built a wall to protect it. And so it's not so easy to get that belief system out of the nervous system. We've convinced ourselves that it's true. It runs as the energy in our body. It runs like the blood runs through our veins Chuck. And so as easy as it sounds that we can shift our mindset to turn this thing off, it doesn't quite work that way. We actually have to go through a physical release of being able to replace energy with energy internally. And that's the way that we can begin to transform our lives from being attached to this belief system as being the truth. Now, how and when did you begin to figure this out? Because you again, you are very successful. No matter how, where, who, what anybody looks at, you are a very successful woman person. Thank you. Thank you, Chuck, for that acknowledgement. I accept it. I really do. Thank you. And yes, I learned this only after I hit rock bottom when I was at the top of my career. So at the time, I was, I had built my career to be in interior design. And I grew to be named one of the top 20 African-American interior designers. And I actually received the acknowledgement twice, two consecutive years on a row. Now, back to what I was saying about these two hands. On this hand, I don't matter, is my life story. Right? My life belief system is I don't matter. Now, the world in my professional life has told me that I do. Now, along my entire life, I've had achievement, Chuck. I was one of, I was very studious as a child. So I excelled in school. I graduated top of my class. I delivered the, you know, the home, the, the graduation speech aside from the valedictorian. There's always a person in our school system who would deliver a graduation speech. I was on the stage almost most of my life. I had some kind of profile, despite what I had, how I had grown up. I had aspirations in life. So I had success. I earned an MBA. I worked in significant corporations and climbed the corporate ladder before I found my way to interior design. I was outspoken as a thought leader in my community. But when I was named one of the top 20 African American interior designers in the United States, this was really a test for me because it told me that the world saw me as someone who matters. And this sabotage that we talked about earlier happened in my life. And that's when I hit my rock bottom. And what rock bottom looked like for me was I had not been making very smart business decisions in my business. So I sabotaged my business by undervaluing, undercharging what I was worth, giving my services away to clients, making poor financial decisions without doing the proper research, landed my business in, in a debt of about $2.5 million that I somehow had to fill. So I did that with credit cards. So now my credit cards are maxed out. So I'm having a little bit more time. personal financial challenge. My husband and I separated and all of the stress of everything I had been dealing with in my life led me to be the misdiagnosed with the medical illness but at the time that I hit my rock bottom I thought I was dying and so that's what rock bottom looked like for me and it was a completely sabotage. I'd like to ask you this about, like you said, on one hand you had that negative self worth. On the other hand you had this powerful woman who everybody said she must be the greatest and the best. That's almost like a dual, not a dual personality but it's two people in one. You, the negative, the other people praising you and it's a clash. So that's like my sleeping time. I'm sad I'm depressed I'm negative. By waking hours at work I'm a go-getter and then you hit rock bottom. How did you merge the two worlds or how did you kick the one negative out? Yes, I never kicked it out. What I did was learned I mentioned earlier Chuck that one strategy that I've learned is to replace that fear-based response. So most of us live in the world in survival 90% of the time Chuck. 90% of the time we live our lives in survival most of us. Meaning we respond to the world through our fear-based automatic responses and surviving life is much different than thriving. The driving is when we are at ease and we're grew and we grew with life and we feel an alignment with the world around us. And you can tell when you're surviving based on how you feel energetically in your body you feel constricted you complain a lot you're agitated you might hesitate you might shrink you might people please you might overreach or over excel or over-prove right that's surviving life. The driving is expansive our heart is open our body is open we smile freely we give happily we experience the world through these senses that are of connection that just feel rich and rewarding and we probably only spend about 10% of our lives in the thriving myself included and so I've had to learn how to replace more of this the driving energy with the surviving energy with just all fear-based and keeps me stuck inside this bubble because a lot of our responses in life are from this bubble in my case I don't matter and so I've just learned I'm learning continuing to learn it's an ongoing practice of replacing fear-based energy with the driving energy. Now this may be a stretch but I want to ask this because I I picture and I imagine if you have those that fear-based life and then you have this praise and you have the two going if you are faking it and saying I'm wonderful I'm great it takes a toll on your body mentally and physically that's what I believe because you still you yet do not believe in that and you're forcing yourself into something that you are not comfortable with so therefore it takes more energy is that a correct assumption? Yes I agree with you 100% and not only yes it does take more energy but the thing that is is the real energy suck is the frustration you feel when you fail repeatedly to convince yourself that this other thing is true you know so it's the sense of failure I'm trying really hard to tell myself that I'm not this and so I'm not if I'm trying to tell myself that I'm not whatever this thing is over here and it's just draining the energy from me but more than anything I fail at it every time I still find myself doing the thing that tells me this is true. There's steps to help women men and women to to like say place your your replacing or slowly replacing those negative thoughts or negative aspects that you feel about yourself and putting in the positive building blocks are there steps to doing this? Yes yes I think I can think of three strategies so the first strategy I would recommend is know the truth the truth is not what the self-limiting belief the shame-based belief is telling you that's absolutely not the truth in fact I believe our self-limiting beliefs are big fat lies and I stand firmly that they're big fat lies and so much of what we're doing inside the self-limiting belief is responding to a we're experiencing fear-based responses to traumas that we've suffered in the past and we've had to learn to survive and the challenging part is this bubble that we built from my case I made the decision when I was eight years old that I didn't matter but now here I go out in the world and at the time that I was named top 20 African-American interior designer for the first time I was 42 so now here I am as a 40-year-old woman and I'm still inside this bubble and the work that I'm doing in the world cannot be successful from the point of view of the eight-year-old who believes she didn't matter I couldn't be successful being a top 20 African-American interior designer serving at the level I needed to serve to have that kind of worth inside the bubble of an eight-year-old girl but that's what's happening and so what I've had to do is recognize that inside this bubble is a lie but belief system is a lie so I have to accept that first but what is the truth to get to the truth we have to understand next second strategy is that the fear-based response gets replaced so our fear-based responses are freeze-fold flight fun or freeze-fold flight or fun and so fun is capitulate to give in so what happens in life is all of our responses fit inside the context of one of those four we're either running or capitulating we're pausing stopping procrastinating or I'm forgetting which one I'm missing in the moment right now Chuck but so what's what's so what's occurring in the world around us is a great an automatic response to a fear-based stimulus and we've learned to create responses based on how we felt we needed to survive when we were little children inside this bubble to some of us fight back some of us sit quietly and take it some of us will push to the ends of the earth aggressive you know be demonstrative and aggressive and do whatever we feel we have to do right that we each have a different kind of response and so so the second strategy is to recognize that those responses are being sourced from our fear-based self and that we must now recognize how to replace those responses with more empowered responses responses that get sourced from our truth even though we haven't yet accepted the truth as a truth because it's not in to you with the energy that you can then begin to see this thing over here is a possible truth now before we move on to the third third strategy with the second one you know I think human nature we tend to take the easiest road so if there's that roadblock or something and you were talking about you know the fight the flight you know certain individuals will do that they'll fight back to get I think a lot of us will take the easy road which means we stay within that bubble it's almost like hiding not avoiding but just hiding to make things easier because if I don't acknowledge it I know it's not there I know it's not there and then we keep ourselves in that negative bubble of our own is that kind of how it is that makes sense yeah yeah but inside that bubble are all for the responses it just depends on which response you've determined in your life to accept as as the way you survive right so there's a person who could seem very might appear to be a go-getter or you know a high achiever right and that person's aggressive and you know and and determined and persistent that aggression determination persistence is very often sourced from this survival place they felt they needed to have in order to survive life with the belief system that they hold and so we see in leadership very often we have great examples in leadership currently in which there's this aggressive, demonstrative sort of arrogance that's seen, it's demonstrated as if it's a strength. When in reality, I believe that's coming from the little broken child inside as a survival mechanism. Yes. Yes. I 100% understand now and agree with everything you're saying on that. And I want to throw in one other thing before we move on to the third strategy, because I think this part plays a lot, especially for women, the social impact, because I think if you're trying to break out and you want to be that positive, sometimes women who work hard are viewed negatively because other women, I think, may think that they are being a, you know, the be word, because they are trying to get ahead or whatever it may be. So I think it's more difficult for women. And that's where, that's where I want to ask how, how can people, how can women get that third party thought out of their head, because that again is feeding into the negative self, or it prevents you from achieving the greatness as well. Right. Well, I'm going to take it all the way back full circle because I stand firmly. I did a lot of research, Chuck, on this subject. It was been a decade long journey to get to writing my book to understand this idea of the shame-based responses and how they run our lives. And using myself as the personal, the initial study case study. And so what I want to, this is such a meaty subject, and I hope I can do this justice. What I want to make sure we understand is that what's happening inside whatever view you stand on, and this scenario you presented around social media, wherever, whatever view it is, if it is the person who's feeling like she's the beward, or has being, is feeling that her behaviors, her way of being, is leading someone to call her a beward or to be aggressive. That person, most likely, is not standing in her thriving self. Because when she is in her thriving self, she doesn't approach life in an aggressive, demonstrative way that she could be perceived any other way than as a leader or as an influencer. She can't be perceived as a beward. For the person who is viewing the woman and is calling her the beward, that person is not in her thriving self. Because she would not have the desire to judge this woman in any other way than expect this woman to be her greatest. So when we are in our thriving self, when we are not inside any construct of this survival, like I said, I believe we operate 90% of the time in survival. So that causes us to judge, that causes us to overreact, that causes us to be aggressive, it causes us to people please, it causes us to retreat. That's all of those fear-based responses to the stimuli around us. And so what's occurring inside this world in which we've expanded such that we have the beautiful gift of social media. Social media has given us a gift. It's given us opportunities to connect in ways we could never have connected before. Chuck, you live outside of Seattle. I live outside of Philadelphia, the manner by which you and I would have had to connect in the world before there was social media, it would have taken any number of odd sets of circumstances to bring you and me together in some way, shape, or form to get here, right? Through social media, I met you, we are now conducting an interview as if I've known you for forever, right? And so we have this gift of the tool that brings cultures together. It brings people together, it allows us to see each other. We have a wonderful gift. The challenge with it all is if the billions of people on the planet who engage in these levels of social media are operating inside 90% of their survival, then what we're seeing is not the truth of most people. We're not seeing their truth. We're not seeing the way they react to themselves, to each other, to situations, what they promote, what they say about themselves, what they say about others. That means 90% of what we're absorbing, if my theory is correct. 90% of what we're observing around us is not true. So that means we have to find that 10% that is, and that's like finding a needle on a haystack. So until we can do the work to come to know our own truth, then we can at least take responsibility for that. And that's the work I want to do with women, to have women be able to come to know their truth, so they who we show ourselves up as in the world can be seen as leaders, not bees. Tonya, can you remind us again the name of your award-winning book and where people can actually go to find out more information about you or the book and they go to a web page or anything like that? Absolutely. My book is in high heels on a ladder, the seven power tools for designing your life. And this book is a love letter to women. It is clearly documented steps to get from surviving in life to thriving. And I document seven, what I call seven steps, are seven power tools. And it's a pathway of emotional healing that allows us to get to a place where we can actually lead from our wholeness. And the book is found anywhere around the globe where books are sold. It's obviously on Amazon globally. It's on Barnes & Noble, it's on Goodreads, and it's in almost every bookstore. And if your bookstore, your local community bookstore doesn't have it, you can ask for it and they can order it for you. Thanks for letting us know on that. Yeah, I think, can we say this is almost like a guide to help women? Absolutely. It is very much. It's very much a guide, Chuck, absolutely. It's a guide for, I call it, a love letter, because it's written with, you know what, I have had Chuck. I have had so many men read my book and celebrate the book. In fact, it's been endorsed by Jack Canfield, who celebrates my book. Wow. And he has obviously read it from his own perspective, but it is his phenomenally received by men as well. My goal in life is to enrich this world with feminine energy, the energy of love. And so I've written this to women for that purpose, because I believe that we need, we need more feminine energy in this world in order to save the world, to save the planet. And it's time for us to rise now more than ever before. But what's written in this book is not exclusive to women. It's just my mission is to support women in the journey of growth and leadership globally. We need more of that. We really do. The support of women and women in leadership. Absolutely. Absolutely. We may be the biggest economic country in the world, but we just don't have enough women, I think, and we're probably, probably somewhere down in the middle bottom as far as women in power. So I'll say from a guy to you, thank you for doing this and putting this out there for women to begin feeling comfortable and being comfortable with who they are and their potential. And also to make men understand that there is a definite place to empower women to become their fullest. Absolutely. Thank you for I loved what you've added about to help men understand that there's a definite time and place for women to become their fullness. I love that because, in fact, I wish I had said it first because it is important that men embrace this opportunity as well. You know, it's not a, my intention is not to have a feminist movement. My intention is to have a movement in which the feminine is celebrate and embrace so that together we can create a world that works. Yes. 100% on that. Yes. Now, we've gone over a couple of the strategies and I think there's a third strategy that you may want to mention. Yeah. So let me repeat the first two. So the three strategies that I believe will take us from surviving life to thriving. The first we talked about is expose the lie. The big fat lie, it's not. the truth. The second was to interpret the fear and to understand that we have a fear-based response, we want to replace that fear-based response with an empowered response. And then the third is trust. We trust ourselves to take aligned action. So what's happened is you know when we're in survival mode and you even raised this question so perfectly Chuck, when you said you know we we get we use so much energy trying to have positive talk inside a bubble of negative belief system. And so what occurs in that situation is the energy dream also drains our trust. We lose trust in ourselves. We lose trust in our ability to have the success we want, have the lives of our dreams, the careers of our dreams, the you know whatever it is that we want we begin to lose trust that it can actually happen for me for you, right? And so what the third strategy is, yeah. And the third strategy is to break in trust in ourselves so that we can trust our voice so that we can look, stop looking outside of ourselves for permission, acceptance, approval, and we can begin to connect with our inner knowing. There is a knowing inside of us that knows that this belief system over here is false. So now we have to connect with that inner knowing so that it guides more of our life. So maybe instead of you know 80% or 90% of our time we spend in survival, we begin to trust ourselves more so 80% of the time we're in survival and 70% of the time we're in survival and 30% of the time. So as we begin to have more trust in ourselves we begin to replace this control that's happening over here. That's where to me you've used word belief often and I think you believe in yourself and you trust in yourself. They go hand in hand you believe and then you begin to trust yourself. I think it to me at least it seems like it's in that order. You don't trust person then believe you you have to believe and that's a foundation to me again that's a foundation in order to change believing yourself. I trust in myself now. I trust I can do this because I believe in myself. Right. Which sounds simple but it is a very difficult thing to do both to believe and to trust. You might you might have you might have trust and I go I trust that I could do that but do you really believe it? I don't know well then I guess you don't so how can I trust you now if yet trust isn't coming from that authentic real place of you believing in yourself. That's right. That's absolutely right. Absolutely right. Yes it has to come from the aligned what I call the aligned place. The aligned place Chuck is that knowing. There's a knowing that we all have and we do experience it from time to time. That it's that natural place where we feel centered where we feel alive where we feel expanded where we feel there's a place for us a dream for us right. So it's to allow us to connect to the aligned place and that's our truth. I say this to the folks who are watching or listening to feel it in depiction it just close your eyes and think of a river and how that river is flowing freely it's going over rocks it's going over stones it's it knows where it's supposed to go. Man puts a dam in front of it just the same way as we do we put a dam in front of our own belief in our direction and it causes us to get backed up just like when a man puts a dam in front of that river it causes it to back up the river flows freely that might sound corny but that's that's what pops into my head and I see that river and I see that it's effortless when you see it just flowing it could be a small creek a trickle but it's flowing effortlessly. Love that I love that analogy I love that analogy because yes it is it is when when our inflow it flows naturally and no matter what the obstacle is even the obstacles we put there ourselves like the dam when we are inflow we move through those obstacles a heck of a lot more easily than when we're in survival and we're trying strategy to figure out how to overcome the obstacles that we placed in our own lives. Yes yes. Wow I mean this conversation has been really powerful in my hopes that women really understand what we're talking about what you have to offer but also to really understand themselves and as I said earlier I hope that the men whether it be men in general husbands, boyfriends or whatever stop to listen to their wives or girlfriend or their sisters and to take the time to listen just don't go oh I hear you but you need to listen and understand so that's my hopes that what we're talking about and what your book accomplishes. Thank you Chuck thank you Chuck for this time thank you for your openness during this interview it has been since meeting you several months ago I've been delighted to have an opportunity to show up as a guest on your podcast to support the truth that you are and the wisdom that you are in wanting to deliver rich content to an audience of people to make it different and so thank you for allowing me to play a small part in that this has been so expansive for me and I'm grateful for you and I'm grateful to have met you Chuck. I feel the exact and we thank you Tanya.