253. Your Inner Critic Is Costing You More Than You Think

The pressure of being a visible leader, the second-guessing before a launch, the vulnerability hangover after a big talk, the spiral when something doesn't land…  all of that lands on you. Nobody's coming to save you in your business. Not a mentor, not a mastermind, not the next program you buy.  So if you don't know how to manage what's happening between your ears, it will burn you out faster than a full calendar.

This episode is about self-leadership. Specifically, the three internal roles that are competing for control of your thinking at any given moment and why most leaders are stuck in the wrong one almost all the time.

This episode gets into: 
– why leadership is lonelier than anyone warns you about, and what that actually costs you 
– the Critic, the Coach, and the Cheerleader roles and how to use all three on purpose 
– why your brain defaults to critic mode (and why that's not entirely your fault) 
– what my two-year-old taught me about praising yourself 
– how to shift out of a negative spiral without fake positivity or toxic optimism 
– why self-leadership is the foundation of every room you walk into
– why stepping up as an external leader is actually one of the best ways to improve your self-leadership
– what your business can and cannot grow beyond without this internal work in place

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Transcript

Heather (00:02)

Well, hey there, and welcome back to another episode of the Hint of Hustle podcast. We're digging into the inner work of being a strong leader on stages, on podcasts, in your business with your team, in rooms with peers. Like when you show up, we you have to come across as an authority, right? That's the whole purpose of the work that we do. I guess not purpose of the work we do, but you know what I'm saying, right? It's it's a big part of the work that you do when you sell your ideas.

To people, right? Through courses, through coaching, through whatever, like you're conveying your ideas. You need to get people to follow you. You have to have some conviction around it. But last week we talked a lot about how you present yourself as that leader, as that authority. We talked a lot about executive presence and the external realities of it, how you come across. But today we're going to talk about the internal things that we must focus on as leaders because.

Something that I don't think we talk about enough in entrepreneurship is just how lonely and difficult it is to sit with your own thoughts and all the pressure that comes with the weight you hold of a business. And even if you let's say you don't run a business, let's say you work at a company, when you have a like a big job, there are a lot of pressures. It's quite metaphorically, you're carrying the weight of the business on your shoulders. And

One of the things back when I I remember when I got promoted from a manager into a director role and started having a lot more direct reports. When I was a manager, I had had a a team of a few team members on my events team. And then I was promoted over to the head of training, which was a director role. And I suddenly had, I think, 18 direct reports, which is a lot of direct reports to have. And then when I was a VP, we had probably, I don't know, 60 something people on my team at one point.

When you manage people, you feel the weight and the pressure of people. But something that we don't talk a lot about in entrepreneurship is well, you might not have a lot of direct employees, or maybe you have contractors. You don't have the weight of direct employees. You have the weight of a lot of eyeballs and a lot of attention on your business. Like it's not direct reports, but these are people, whether they're clients, whether they're students. ⁓

Whether they're people who download your freebies or listen to your podcast or in the audience for the events that you speak at or guest podcasting that you do, you have the weight and pressure of all of this attention. And with that comes a lot of internal junk. It also comes with this idea that it's really freaking lonely in the spotlight.

It's really lonely in the spotlight. That was something that I discovered in that leadership role back in corporate, is I never realized how how true the expression of it's lonely at the top is. It's lonely at the top. It's like this buzzword phrase, right? And when you're not at the top, you're like, well, it must be nice being at the top because you can make more money, right? But it it's really lonely when you're in a leadership position. And and here's why. When you're an employee or when you are

⁓ like you're in an organization and you have a team, right? You have other people to talk to. You have a boss that you speak to, right? Whether you air out your concerns or you bring problems and then solutions, you have someone to talk to and you have team members, peers to commiserate with about all this shit. But when you're an entrepreneur or you're an executive director or leader of a team, you don't get to

Whine, complain, vent about what's going on. Like you are the person that handles the problems. So if you see a problem, you should handle it. Now, side note, I would argue that to be a really good team member, you should see the problems and solve the problems, but that's a story for another day. But when you're a leader, people look to you for the direction. Who do you have to look to? No one, it's you, babe.

Like even when I was an executive and I technically had a boss, I was still the owner of my department, my budget, my vision, my direction. All of that fell on me. So what does it mean to be lonely at the top when you're an entrepreneur? I know this comes up a lot in talking to rooms. People feel very lonely in entrepreneurship, right? Especially if, like me, you came from corporate, you're used to working around people, and now all of a sudden here you are staring at your laptop, you and a microphone, whether you're working from your bed or a desk or the kitchen table.

It can feel really lonely. And that's why I think a lot of times people seek out masterminds, they seek out communities, they want to be around other people. But here's the interesting thing. I was just talking to one of my business friends about this the other day. Even when you're in those communities, there is this there's this feeling that even then you still have to show up in a certain way. I mean, think about it. Are you in any communities right now?

Okay, I'm gonna be very careful when I say this, but I'm in a lot of online communities, right? Especially like larger programs. And you know, the people who vent and talk about their problems very openly. And it's wonderful because they get coaching and support. But deep down you're like, what? Like you're a hot mess. You're gonna are you gonna figure it out? Like people who are constantly problem, problem, problem. Now, I say this with a grain of salt because I think about

We you join programs, right? Because a lot of times you're looking for help. But what happens if you're in that role where your peers are actually your clients? And this is what I see a lot of times when I work with clients who do B2B work. That means business to business work. So the communities that you're in, the masterminds you're in, or maybe you're in ⁓ communities where you're collaborating with other people, there's this this toggle between I want to show up and be authentic and real and talk about the real stuff.

But also deep down, I know that I work with these people, right? They could be my clients. So I don't want to come across like I'm a hot mess and I don't know my stuff. And I don't want to come across as struggling because who hires someone who is always struggling? Sorry, ⁓ I hate this hard truth, but we don't hire people who are constantly struggling or in the mess. We hire people who have this calm confidence about them. We trust.

them more, at least trust them more to help us navigate, right? If we're going crazy with our stuff, we are looking to someone who's more sturdy. When we're shaky, we're looking for stability. Leaders have a stability, right? Good leaders. Good leaders we're drawn to. There's this sense of calmness and stability about them that we're drawn to, especially when we're shaky. Okay, how does this all come about here? Well

What I learned really early on in my professional career, rising to a leadership position so quickly, is that if I wanted to be successful, I needed to learn how to stabilize myself, which means that I couldn't look to someone else for direction. I couldn't look to someone else to help me get a hold of my own thinking, help me stop second guessing, help me stop spinning with the

victim mentality like we talked about a couple weeks ago or help me stop looking at things pessimistically or help me every time I was ⁓ in a difficult situation help me walk off the ledge. That's not the right term. I shouldn't walk off the ledge. That would mean to my death. You and I mean my backup from the ledge or whatever the expression is.

So often I see people, especially when they're moving into a big leadership position. And I don't mean positionally in a company, I mean like when you're an entrepreneur and you are growing a business and you are growing a personal brand, you are put into an authority leader position. And if you cannot manage your own internal stability, you will struggle. Everything will feel hard. It is up

To you to learn how to bring the chaos that happens between your ears and your brain, bring it to calmness. Leaders need to be steady, strong. That's the key. Now, the reality is: are you always calm as a leader? No. But your presence needs to come across as calm. People look to those who are self-assured, confident, right? We talked a lot about this with executive presence last week.

That executive presence bringing that out in that sturdy way, that's not gonna come out if your internal world is constantly second-guessing and you're going into death spirals every 17th hour. It just doesn't work that way. But the answer isn't just fake it till you make it, until you learn, like otherwise, you can't just pretend that you're not having that dialogue in your head. You have to learn how to manage it. And that's really what I wanna dig in today. Now, situationally, let's talk about it. You're gonna get into head junk.

When you launch something for the first time, because you're going to be second guessing, is this the right thing? Did I make the right decision? Is anyone gonna buy it? Does it make sense? like what happens if it fails? You're going through the launch and you're freaking out because are people gonna buy it? Why are the numbers not matching? my gosh, if it's not new, you're like, this isn't working as great as it did last time. We have all these things that happen when we go to sell hedgehunk. If, like many of my clients, maybe you're saying yes to bigger visibility opportunities and you're going, my gosh.

I'm so excited, but holy shit, who am I to even think about this? Maybe as you start crafting your talk and you start putting things down on paper, you realize, my gosh, this is actually really basic shit. This is too simple. my gosh, it's too simple. my gosh, they're gonna think I'm stupid. my gosh, why am I even doing this? Why do I even have a business? and then you spiral. Or after the talk, maybe you stumble on something and you get off stage and you have the biggest vulnerability, visibility hangover ever, and you're like, I have no idea if that was even good.

People are saying it's good, I don't believe them because who's gonna come up to a speaker and say, you did a terrible job? No, people are gonna smile and be like, that's so great, and then move on, right? Because that's the kind, polite thing to do. Feedback from people at events doesn't actually tell you anything about how you did on stage. So you're left with the big question of how did I do? Was it good? I don't even know. I don't even know how to measure the results of this because a lot of it is very much qualitative.

And that's what we're talking about here: you have to hold space for the unknown where all these thoughts flowed into your head and you choose what you do with them. A leader, a powerful leader, a magnetic leader knows how to manage these thoughts and not spiral. Because what happens is so often, especially when we're rising to new levels of visibility.

Maybe you're stepping onto bigger stages or you're growing your audience in a really big way. Maybe you're in a new, a new role. I ha I have a client, she started doing some partnerships with a really big company. And she's like, my gosh, I have to be like fancy pants, serious now. Like when you're in a new, like a new level, what's that expression? New level, new devil. Yeah, the new devil is there's so much pressure that's put in our head where we start questioning ourselves and second guessing everything. It's it's kind of like when you work out at a gym.

I know I use my gym examples a lot because it's just a really easy metaphor, but when I started working out at my hit gym, I remember I started using no weights because I could barely do the moves. Then I moved up to 10 pounders and then I moved up to 15 pounders and I felt like a frickin' champion. And then about five, six months ago, I switched to 20s, like 20 pound dumbbells. And I felt like a beast. And this morning I was doing 25s in our in our workout. And let me tell you this, every time I would move up, there was bigger questions.

And what I mean by bigger questions is my body was going WTF. When I would I you, there's this thing called the snatch, which I didn't really know what a snatch was up until about two years ago. It's essentially where you pull the weight from the ground and like thrust it up over your head while bringing the weight close to your body. Couldn't do them really well, but I was we were doing that this morning. And what happens is when you bring a heavier than you're used to weight up over your head, your whole body goes WTF.

And what I mean by that is it's stabilizing and your arm is going, holy shit, this is this is heavier than normal. my gosh, we need more effort. And your abs are going, hey, please stay engaged so that you don't throw out your back and all these things are firing, asking questions. And those questions translate to, what the fuck are you doing? This is happening for you and your business too. Every time you say yes to a bigger opportunity, your nervous system, your brain, everything that you know is going, What the fuck are you doing?

Go back to what we were doing before. Even though your goal is saying, we want bigger, your body's going, bigger means more exposure. Bigger means holy crap, more opportunities for people to pick us apart, to bring us down, for us to fail in public, for us to flop on our face. all of those things are going off. Now, like it or not, it happens.

Right. This is this whole idea of stretching beyond your comfort zone means you're going to be uncomfortable. And when you're uncomfortable, your brain starts screaming at you, saying, We don't like this. Whether you're aware of this or not, I know in this moment, as I'm saying this, you're nodding your head, going, Yeah, okay, I get that. That's what's happening here. But in the moment, right, when we're doing things in our business, we're not actively thinking, ⁓ here I am, stepping outside of my comfort zone.

Unless we're doing self-deprecating humor and we're like, right, doing things when we're nervous. But we're not cognitively consciously, what's the proper word here? We're not actively thinking about it. What we're actively thinking about is wait, wait, maybe this isn't the right choice for me. Or Mo, I need to prepare more. Or what am I even thinking about here? Or maybe I'll just delay this till later, or whatever other excuse comes up again to either avoid the opportunity, to either try to over-prepare for the opportunity.

We have all these different coping mechanisms that we do, but what we really need to think about is what role are we sitting in as a leader in our own internal thoughts? And that's what I want to navigate you through here in today's ⁓ conversation. So this is what I'm always thinking about. Now, let me just preface this with you. I am not a one of those people certified in neuro-linguistic programming, right? That's a really fancy term that a lot of people use.

⁓ I am not a therapist. I am not I am not even like a life coach, school certified life coach to help you with your internal negative mindset. These are all things that are very well and great. I am a high performance coach and I am a very experienced leader where I've coached a frick ton of employees in their careers and the 400 plus business owners that I work with, both in my programs, through my digital courses, and one-on-one through coaching.

What I can tell you is most people, right, when we start working on some of the internal stuff, is they want a secret hack or a secret way to figure out how to remove the negativity from their brain. And I'm just gonna tell you right now, like, that's dumb. Stop it. Like you're always going to have some kind of negative thought happening. I our brains have

I'm gonna make up this number here, so do not quote me on it. This is totally pulled from my ass. But I remember reading at some point at some time, there's like a bajillion, let's say one bajillion 4,026.3 thoughts that enter your brain every single day. Like our brains thinking all these thoughts all the time. We're bringing all these inputs in. We're aware of some of the thoughts, we're not aware of some of the thoughts, but the the idea that you think that all of a sudden you're only going to think positive and empowering thoughts is quite frankly.

delusional. And to have that as a goal would be dumb. So let's not do that. As a high performance coach, what I'm trained to do is to help you stay focused on the future. And what I mean by that is high performance coaching, think about this as a we're leaning in. What's the goal we're moving forward? All everything is about moving forward. We don't spend time dwelling to with like, well, why are you this way?

What age were you when you first felt that feeling? And I'm sure all of that is great. And if you need to download any of that, maybe you have some things that you need to do in therapy. I think it's a really great tool. And many of my clients discover that they actually need to unpack some of these things in therapy. But in business coaching and in my world specifically, high performance coaching, which quick reminder, when I say high performance, I know that kind of feels like a masculine term. High performance essentially means this.

Sustainable success, so success over the long term while maintaining your well-being and relationships. So essentially means that you're able to kill it professionally and chase your ambition while having an awesome full life. You have great relationships, you have ⁓ great health, you feel great in your mind. Like overall, you're not sacrificing home or health for your career. Like it's all that like the quintessential have it all, you have it all because you understand that all is.

What you deem as important, right? So coming back to it, when I say high performance, to get to that place of high performance, right? Leaning into your ambition, while staying aligned in your personal life, we focus on the future. So we're looking at what does success look like? What's my definition? What's future me look like? Where ⁓ where am I experiencing gaps in my current reality and what do I want to be different in the future? We might look to the past, but it's only as a reference point for.

How do I typically handle this? When's been a great time that I've done this? And we're leaning towards the future. Okay, why am I why am I drilling down on this high performance piece? Okay, this is coming in because I want to help you with self-coaching. And I can say this, and I could go off a little tangent here, right here. A lot of coaches would be like, oof, well, our job right now is to tell someone.

That in order for them to change, they need to hire me, which sure you can hire me. I would love to be your coach and talk with you through many of these things, especially if you were getting more visible as a leader. Like, let's help you with this internal and external piece around making sure you're handling the internal pressure and externally your executive presence communication skills are up at the level that you want to come across as the authority and thought leader that you desire to be, right? So we can absolutely do that. But even if you were to work with me, I'm not in your brain.

Every single moment of every single day. Leadership is lonely. And you have to learn how to be present with your own thoughts. So here's the best, ⁓ here's the best way that I like to look at it. When I was talking to my friend this morning, we were talking about this balance between the two. And we were talking about the episode that I did a couple weeks ago around the bitter bee trap, right? And being pulled underwater with that negativity.

And her follow-up question was, okay, well, what if I'm noticing that I keep getting dragged into these negative thoughts? How do I get out of it? I'm like, ooh, great question. What I like to think about is when it's me, myself, and I, right? I'm the leader. So I'm responsible for my own mental state. I don't know if you just heard that. My dog was shaking and it was pretty aggressive. Say hello, Luna. She likes to lay on my feet while I'm recording these podcasts.

but me, myself, and I as a leader, right? It is me ultimately that's responsible for holding the vision, staying positive, believing in a vision, even when it's like maybe a little delusional. It's me, myself, and I. And I say that because I I literally think about myself as different personas. So stick with me here for a moment. When I'm working with clients, I tell them to imagine, you know, those like ⁓ memes or those old cartoons where they would pop in a devil and an angel on your shoulder.

I want you to think about that. I want you to think about there's a devil and an angel on your shoulder, but instead of a devil and angel, we actually have three different roles. So on one shoulder, let's say on your right shoulder, we have let's call the cheerleader. And we have let me just give you all three. We have the cheerleader, we have in the middle is the coach, and then on the left side is the critic. Okay. The cheerleader, the coach, and the critic. That was weird to say. The cheerleader, the coach, and the critic.

Right? All three of those roles. Now we play all three of those roles at any given time. We don't play them at the same time, but there's three separate roles. So here's what I want you to think about. If you're the leader and the leader is responsible for their own thinking, their own attitude, their own stop freaking out about things, get out of your spiral and get back into visionary leader calm mode. We have to understand what role has taken over our thoughts. The cheerleader.

The coach or the critic. And I can tell you, 98% of the time when I work with my clients, they are in critic mode when it comes to themselves. I should have said this. I didn't do that. All of these nitpicking, shitty things that we do for ourselves, it all comes from that left shoulder critic. And where this typically comes out is when I'm working with clients on, let's say practicing.

Right, practicing their introduction, practicing their story, practicing a role play of a difficult difficult conversation, practicing their pitch, all these different things that we practice. I was just got off the phone with a client I'm working with on some video scripts for the sales campaign that he's doing with his marketing agency. And as we're practicing, right, it's so easy for us to go, ⁓ that was lame. Right. Or if I ask someone to self-critique, right, they instantly go to all the negatives. I talk too fast.

that sounded flat. I went off on here. Every single time. Like it's a running joke in my group program that anytime someone presents and they go to the self-critique, even though I always say I want you to focus on what you did right, like nine out of 10 times, like I don't think I've ever actually had the experience where someone has followed my instructions, our brains cannot help it. You go straight to critic because you're so good at looking for the opportunities to improve.

We all are, right? That's part of what makes us good at what we do, is because we're really good at refining and growing and making things better. But what happens is when our internal thoughts as a leader are all critical, how can you expect to be inspiring to other people when you are critiquing the shit out of yourself all the time? There is a time and place for the critic, but the critic should not come in until we've done some other things first, until

We're clear on the problem that we're trying to solve. That's the key. If we're just critiquing things based off feeling, that's not helpful. But until we identify what's the problem that we're actually trying to solve here, then the critic can come in and give construction. Construction? No, constructive critiques. And what I mean by constructive critiques is: is it changeable? Saying things like, my face looks weird.

Is not helpful. Or I hate how I look on video. Well, that's not helpful information. Okay, what specifically? Do you hate that like you look tired? Okay, did you take a shower? Did you put on makeup? Did you drink coffee? Did you open your eyes while you were speaking? Like, are there things that you can do are changeable? Or are you just griping or critiquing yourself in a way that's not helpful? It's counterproductive. You see where I'm going here?

I think you know, right, when you start thinking about your internal dialogue specific to yourself or your business, you know when that critic is on. And it's the that's not a problem, meaning that you have no problem going to critic mode. Okay, that's not the problem here. It's being aware that you're in critic mode and then asking, what are the other two roles and how can I use it? So let's say you're in critic mode. You catch yourself, right? Based off what we talked about a couple of weeks ago, you're in that bitter B trap.

You're in critic negative thinking. How do I get out of it? Okay, the difference between critic and coach is a coach would not shit on what's not working. A coach wouldn't just point out the problem. The coach's job is to help you perform better, right? Future focused, what's the goal at hand? Okay, we're gonna come back to that. But on the other side of things, what people typically do when they get caught up in that negative spiral in their brain, they hear, I need to be positive.

So maybe they use questions like, what opportunity does that create? Which is a question I gave you, right? And that puts you more to coaching. But a lot of times what people do is they swing the pedgelm under the other's shoulder and they try to fake it till you make it. I'm just gonna focus on positive. I should be grateful that I have the opportunity to get feedback. I should be grateful that I had the opportunity to speak to that group. I should be happy that yada yada. There's a lot of shoulds with this, right? But they try to pop it over to the cheerleader. Now there's a time and place.

For being a cheerleader. Now, I've told you this before, and I'm gonna tell you this reminder again. One of the best things that you can do as a leader is to be a cheerleader for your people. Give people praise. Tell them they're doing a good job. Praise them on the effort, praise them for their ideas, praise them for their thinking, praise them for ⁓ for showing back up. Whatever it is that you do, give people more praise. In fact, I think I wrote an entire, if I'm remembering correctly.

I don't know if said this on a podcast. I think this was in my newsletter a couple weeks ago. I was talking about how there's so much power in seeing and appreciating others. We should do this more, especially with ourselves. I taught my toddler this over the last couple of weeks. He ⁓ he was working on puzzles. So my little guy, he's two and a half. And a few months ago, he we found in one of our storage boxes we're still unpacking from our move a while back.

he came across his older brothers, little Melissa and Doug wooden puzzles. And when he found them, he was probably just turned two, maybe two in a few months, and he could not figure out how to put two pieces together. Like it did not compute. He like didn't understand. So I let him do it, and then I would show him how to do it. And he needed me to put the pieces together because his little fingers couldn't figure it out. And I'd sat there with him and I would do it, and he would try and he would fail. And then I would help him and we would do it together.

And then one day he all of a sudden started putting two pieces together by himself. And I'm like, that's so awesome. But I didn't want him getting focused on my praise. I wanted him to get excited for himself. So I taught him Brooksy High Five, meaning Brooksy puts his hand in the air. Brooksy's his name his name is Brooks. We call him Brooksy. Name it his high hand in the air above his head. And then he high five. Brooksy high five.

And then he goes, Go me. So every time I would put two pieces together, I'd be like, Yeah, good job, go me. And I would high five. And then he was doing that too. Now, fast forward, he now puts those entire puzzles together by himself. But what's super cool is as I see him trying things around the house and succeeding, I hear him go, Yeah, Brooksy, go me, high five. And he high fives himself. And I know it's really adorable when I'm talking about this sweet little two and a half year old.

But I think that, I think we undervalue as leaders how important personal praise and celebration is. If you're like me, you suck at celebrating yourself because you're like, I don't have time for that, right? Yay, good job. Way, go me. Ha ha ha ha. But let's get to work. Let's work on what to improve. And this is the pattern for most leaders as we move on to the next. But what this does is it subtly sends this message to our brain that we never get to celebrate and appreciate our work. There's always work to do.

And the reality is there is always work to do. But also, if we want to build into high performance, right, maintaining our well-being and relationships, we need to model how we would treat other people. We need to treat ourselves the best, which means sometimes we need to put on that cheerleading hat and say, you freaking rock. That was awesome. And I used the phrase before, fake it till you make it, right? And I don't want you to fake it. But what I don't want you to confuse is the fact that sometimes

If you are not comfortable giving yourself a high five or saying, dude, that was actually awesome, or damn, that sounded good, I want you to practice praising yourself. And it might be uncomfortable at first. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it. It means that you're just out of practice with it. I want you to start giving yourself Brooksy high fives. I want you to recognize not only what you got right, but where you're making progress.

⁓ I'm proud of myself for sticking with that. I'm proud of myself for sticking my neck out there. I'm proud of myself for doing whatever it is that you do. You should be praising yourself every single day. Now, one of the ways that I do that, because I tell you this like hand on heart, I freaking suck at this. So one of the things that I do is every single day, I write down five awesome things about the day before. Now I can write these as gratitudes or just moments of things that I appreciate. So sometimes I'm writing things about others.

Like something that my husband did that I thought was really sweet or a really cool moment that I had with my kids. Many times though, these are about things that I did. I love that I made time for this. I like one thing that I'm always writing down is holy shit, that was a good gym session. I'm so proud of myself for waking up and going. Or whatever it is, right? It's a blend of others and myself, but writing down moments of gratitude or moments of awe or moments of praise or hot damn, I did that.

It doesn't have to be the same every single day, but I want you to start recognizing how freaking much progress you're making. If you want more ease, if you want more positivity, if you want more calm and steady, tell your brain you are calm and steady. Show your brain more examples of you at your best. Praise the good and you will get more good things. You picking up what I'm putting down here?

You have to tell your brain what you wanted to think about, which means you have to do a better job at being a cheerleader and champion your own success. Those two things, the critic and the cheerleader. If you only just focused on those two things of being aware of which mode you were in, I guarantee, I guarantee, if you were to take your brain thoughts and where you put your focus and your thinking over in a given day in a pie chart, I guarantee right now, like the b the majority.

Bajority is the bulk and the majority together. The majority of the pie is critic. Fight me on this. I want you to tell me if you have a different scenario here. But it's critic. I guarantee that's what it's probably is for you right now. Now, leaders who have that calm sturdiness about them that they know that they can manage through the pressures of whatever challenges is placed upon them, they've learned to balance this out a bit. Is it 50-50? hell no. But they learn to pull that critic.

down and what they replace it with isn't just more cheerleader. This is where we bring in the role of the coach. The coach is where we direct our creativity, our decision making, our brainstorming, ⁓ our like critiquing muscle that we want to use, but we do it for good. So coaching, self-coaching, this is an exploratory process, like what true coaching is, it's this exploration.

Where we then make decisions is explorative and decision-making. That's what coaching is. Coaching isn't telling someone what to do, coaching isn't telling what your what yourself to do, right? So often we want to just have the answer, and we hate it when we don't. Coaching allows you to sit in the brainstorm. It allows you to explore and then decide. Discuss and decide. That's what really good coaching does, moving you forward to be the better version of yourself.

To move into that higher performance. Now, I bring this up here because most leaders don't take the space to have a discussion with themselves. Because even just saying that out loud, that sounds kind of cuckoo town. Do you sit here and talk to yourself? I mean, I do. I mean, I'm talking to myself right now. I mean, I'm talking to you, but I'm really sitting here talking to myself in the wall, right? But do you have brainstorm sessions with yourself? Even right now, maybe you do that with ChatGPT or Claude. Curious to know how you feel after those sessions.

I would also challenge you. What if you turned off AI and literally just talk to yourself? Now, if you're like, this sounds cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, you could pretend like you're on the phone if you want. sometimes when I go on a walk, ⁓ I have hearing aids, so it doesn't work for me. But some people use those wire headphones that have that microphone in it. Literally pretend that you're having a conversation with someone, but have that conversation be with yourself. I think that's a great thing. Say shit out loud. Self

What do we think about this? What are we gonna do about this? What opportunities does this create? Where can we go from here? What good come from from this? What are three ways that I can navigate this differently? Start asking yourself questions to discuss it and stop expecting your brain to have the right answer on the first guess.

Usually the first thing that you come with is probably the shittiest idea, or it's the most prevalent idea that you've been thinking about, or maybe it's something that comes up because something that had happened recently, it doesn't mean it's the best idea or the one that's going to help you move forward. You have to be willing to discuss or explore, said differently. Maybe you like to journal on things, explore your own thinking. That's what coaching is. But notice I said discuss and decide. So that coaching hat.

Is you asking questions, but you have to lead to a decision. What am I gonna do with this discussion? So from that point, if you're just exploring ideas in your brain, I wonder what I could do about marketing. And you're like, well, I could do this, or I could try this other strategy, or maybe I should do this, and you're just writing all these dias. The question is, what are you trying to decide? What

question are you trying to answer like ultimately what's the business problem we're trying to solve? You see how we have to balance those two things? Cause sometimes we just brainstorm for the bank the sake of brainstorming, but then we kind of forget what are we even brainstorming on? But we come up with 73 different ideas which bring on different challenges, but none of this actually matters because it's not actually solving a problem that you need to solve. And maybe you're just deflecting and distracting yourself. Oof, just me? No, I don't think it's just me. So you see the difference between

Our inner thoughts being critic mode, cheerleader mode, or coach mode. You have to get really good at understanding what role am I playing with my own thoughts right now? What role are my thoughts serving as me as the leader? Because as we started this whole episode about, ⁓ no one's coming to save you in your business. No one's coming to save you in your role as a leader. If you want to be more visible, if you want to book ⁓ more higher stakes.

Opportunities, if you want to grow your business, the pressure on your shoulders is only going to get greater. There's a common expression that your business is only going to grow to the level of problems that you can manage. My coach, James Wedmore, he says this all the time. And I 100% believe it to be true. I go out an extra layer and say your business is only going to grow to the level of your communication. And for me, it's not just communication to your clients or to your peers.

I also think it's the communication that you have with yourself. It's about how you talk with others, but also how you talk with yourself. That's the name of the game here as a leader. And the more that you accept that and start talking with yourself, whether it's verbally, whether you're thinking through it, whether you're journaling, I don't really care what format that you use, although I think if you want to be a more visible, authoritative leader, you should practice the muscle of talking out loud a heck of a lot more. But

You have to get really good at how you talk with yourself. But the challenge is most people don't realize they are in constant dialogue with themselves. They just let their thoughts operate. You need to claim that and be like, this is a dialogue that is happening in my head right now, consciously or not, become conscious to it and categorize it. Am I in critique mode, critic mode? Am I in cheerleader mode? Probably not. Maybe I need a little cheerleader in my life, or am I in coach mode? We need to shift that pie.

The majority of the pie, right? We have to shift that and make sure that our thoughts are being productive. Shut down the critic, redirect it in the coach, bring in the cheerleader to cement the habits, behaviors, and thinkings that we want to have more of. And if you struggle with this with yourself, I know it can be really awkward, right? And sometimes it almost can feel a little embarrassing talking to ourselves. I don't know if you've had that experience, but the way to pull out that sting is to do it more, get more reps.

But here's what I find to be really true. This is my biggest hack. If you want to be better at self-leadership, step up at external team leadership. Now, for you, you may or may not have a team. Your team might be your audience, right? You're stepping more into that thought leader mode. That how am I actually leading my industry? Talk more. Start using your voice. Talk to your clients. Talk to your social media audience, talk to your email list audience. I want you talking more and exhibiting the characters.

Of the kind of leader that you want to be. You might need to fake it till you make it a little bit, but the self-leadership, the me leadership directly a packs the we leadership, me with other people. Both are really, really important here. And if you want others to see you as a leader, if you want to have that calm magnetic energy we talked about at the top of the episode, you have to get really good at balancing the two. Now, the good news is, ⁓ and maybe bad news, this isn't a light switch.

Like you're not gonna instantly know how to do it. And the reason why I say that's a good news is because you're gonna grow into a version of yourself that's really gonna work for you. What works for me is probably not gonna work for you. You gotta figure out that self-leadership level for yourself, that combination between these three roles we talked about today. ⁓ and you gotta put on the reps. And the good part about this is the more that you do it, the more comfortable it'll feel, the more bolder you will become.

And the more calmly magnetic you will be as an authoritative leader. So ⁓ I don't have a secret hack for you to how to stop having that vulnerability hangover after you do a big speaking gig or how to not go into a volatile spiral. I can tell you, I can't point back to an exact moment in my history where it just stopped happening. And this is with all the leaders I look, look at. There's not an exact moment in time. It's a series of putting the reps that if you do it over and over again, one day you're just like,

You just notice that your thoughts are different. You're just built differently. You're more resilient in your personal leadership. And that's what I want for you. But it starts with you one taking responsibility around where are you at right now with this personal leadership level? How are you leading yourselves? Or are you letting your brain just lead you? You step up as a leader and you start taking responsibility for how you think and know that yes, it's gonna go on autopilot.

But at any given time, you can take the reins back and you can step up as the leader in your own life. Do that and you'll notice yourself stepping up better as a more calm, magnetic leader for your audience. Okay, I hope this episode met you at just the right time. As always, I love hearing from you. So please send me a direct message on Instagram at the Heather Sager. Tell what resonated with today, right? Which coach do you which or which role do you find yourself in? Does that critic coach?

What's like? What's the constant phrase coming up for you? Let's start a dialogue. Shoot me a message here. ⁓ and if you haven't yet jumped on Hint of Heather, my weekly Friday emails where I show you how to show up better for your business, how to speak better, how to lead better, how to live better, ⁓ you can head to Heather Sager.com forward slash newsletter. Or as I just published in my this week's newsletter, which as you're listening, this would be last week's newsletter, ⁓ I just shared.

Y'all, I revamped my homepage last week. You can check out the new Heathersager.com. It's a work in progress, but the homepage is updated. if you want to explore options for how we can work together and how you can develop that magnetic presence and magnetic leadership so that you can really step into that next level of thought leadership in your business, I would love to help you. So head on over to Heathersager.com for more details. And I will see you next week. Bye, friend.