EPISODE SUMMARY
Join scientist and mindset & high-performance coach Claudia Garbutt and hi-tech sales executive & life|career transformation coach Becca Powers as they talk about harnessing your inner CEO and consciously creating your dream life.
In this episode we talk about:
– The power of pattern interrupts that disrupt your habit loops
– Why working HARDER is not a sustainable long-term strategy
– Including your body in your healing journey
EPISODE NOTES
Becca is an award-winning hi-tech sales executive, motivational speaker, best-selling author, life|career transformation coach, and a kundalini yoga teacher – not to mention a mom and a wife!
With a huge vivacious energy, a strong yet warm confidence, Becca embraces that she is highly dynamic and encourages others to do the same.
With over 20 years of corporate experience, her career boasts Fortune 500 giants such as Cisco, Dell, and Office Depot.
Her career is filled with trials and triumphs which she boldly shares in her book “Harness Your Inner CEO” to inspire employers and employees to create environments where the individual can thrive both personally and professionally.
Buy „Harness Your Inner CEO” here:
https://www.beccapowers.com/harnessyourinnerceo
Or on Amazon:
Website:
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LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/beccapowers1313/
——————
Music credit: Vittoro by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue)
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TRANSCRIPT
00:00.000 –> 01:54.054 Claudia Garbutt
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to a brand-new episode of the Wired for Success podcast, where we talk about all things science, self-development, and entrepreneurship that help you get to that next level of success in your life and business.
Today, I’m super excited to bring you another interview episode and Leaders are Readers – Wired for Success Book Club feature. If you’ve been following this podcast for a while, you might already be familiar with the segment. But if you’re new to this show, you might not know what this is all about. So here’s the gist:
Leaders are Readers – Wired for Success Book Club is dedicated to introducing you to the best books from the science, self-development, and entrepreneurship categories that help you get wired for success.
So what I do is I invite top scientists, thought leaders, and super successful entrepreneurs to discuss their latest books so that we can all explore new ideas and proven frameworks together.
And without further ado, I would like to introduce today’s featured author. My guest today is Becca Powers. She’s an award-winning Fortune 500 sales executive. She’s a motivational speaker, life/career transformation coach, kundalini yoga teacher, and best-selling author.
And I have actually had the pleasure of recording a regular interview with Becca for this podcast – which isn’t out yet – but I can tell you that you are in for a treat. We found out that we are on the same mission to help people be successful, healthy, and happy – all at the same time. And that’s why I’m so super excited to have Becca on the show again to dive into her wonderful book “Harness Your Inner CEO”.
Welcome back, Becca, and thank you so much for taking the time to discuss your book with us today!
01:54.212 –> 02:02.670 Becca Powers
Yes, you are welcome. And Claudia, thank you for the invite back. I am so excited to talk to you again!
02:02.670 –> 03:24.722 Claudia Garbutt
I’ve been looking forward to this all week long!
You know, I really enjoyed reading your book and there was so much that I resonated with, I don’t even know where to start. So why don’t you start with a common problem that I see in a lot of high-achievers and that we sort of touched on the last time we talked?
If I had to characterize a typical high achiever, I would say that one of the things that sets them apart from other people is their willingness to endure hard times. They have an incredible drive, this David Goggins mentality that they can just power through everything and ignore discomfort, ignore challenging emotions, ignore pain, and ignore all evidence that tells them to stop. So, on the one hand, this mindset and attitude often helps them to become super successful in the first place because they’re willing to play full out. But on the other hand, they often have to pay a hefty price later on because they sacrifice their health, relationships, and happiness at the altar of success.
And there are many examples in your book that illustrate this pattern. So why don’t you pick one that you feel illustrates this best and talk us through how this showed up in your life and what results it created for you?
03:24.856 –> 06:03.050 Becca Powers
Yeah, I would love to. And I think you summarized it best as far as high-achievers go, and I always say it’s our greatest strength, but also our greatest weakness. This like, inner resiliency we tap into. And I did this myself, as you’ll see in the stories, the overall arc of the book as you’re following my journey through my trials and triumphs.
But that asset is really what got me in trouble. So I powered through a sales leader in a work environment that was great for other people but wasn’t great for me. And because I believed in the mission. And that’s like another thing I just want to digress on too, in that high achiever profile is like, we are very impact-based. We want to make a difference and we do that with all of our being. And so what I have found too, is when you believe in something, when you believe in your mission or the mission that you’re working for, or you know that what you’re doing is going to make a positive change or make an impact on other people, you go all in.
That’s the high achiever. It’s an all-in. And I was all in to my detriment, which is exactly what you’re talking about. I stayed probably two years too long in a role that wasn’t an exact fit. And as a result, it had horrible effects on me. As you read in the book, I ended up with two with autoimmune disease, two anxiety disorders, adult ADHD, and I gained 30 pounds.
I had disconnected relationships with my kids. They still to this day, feel like I was emotionally neglectful during those years. Because all my stuff, all my passion, all my purpose was going into providing for them too.
So that was tied, this provider element, was tied into all my doing. My marriage was on the verge of divorce. So I’ll stop there. I wanted to go somewhere else, but I’ll just pause there. Because that’s some of the dynamics to what you were just kind of teeing up is thank to this inner resilience I was able to wake up every day and be like, I got today. I do my affirmations. I’d be like “I’m a badass!” and pump myself up. But I was pumping myself up to stay in a role that ultimately wasn’t working for me.
06:03.050 –> 07:13.250 Claudia Garbutt
Right. And oftentimes I feel that we’re just pumping up that facade, but there is nothing behind that facade. Trying to look good even when we are feeling really terrible. And this is definitely a pattern that I recognize in my own life. And my default coping mechanism is the same: To simply keep going and just power through difficult situations. And as we said, this is such a double-edged sword because sometimes the very things that help us become so successful in the first place, our determination, our drive, and our perseverance, become the things, that cause the greatest pain. Too much of a good thing can in fact become a bad thing. Especially when it’s applied in the wrong context or the wrong situation. I like to think about it like a medicine that works really well for one condition or in one circumstance, and it may even see safe lives, but in another context, it might actually be really harmful.
07:13.250 –> 08:08.690 Becca Powers
Right. For the listeners and the people that are watching, I think that’s a really important part because it’s very specific to you. What works for one person too, might not work for the other person. Like I said, I was at a company where majority of the people thought it was the best job they’ve ever had. So like, if I said, hey, this place isn’t working for me, people looked at me like I was crazy. But part of the process of where I am now and what I’m so passionate about teaching about is that what might be good for others might not be good for you. And you need to learn to trust your inner guidance and the signs that your body is giving you to help you thrive. We talk about this a lot, but there’s a way to go about success that actually is supportive and sustainable. You’ve got to learn to listen to yourself.
08:08.690 –> 08:17.390 Claudia Garbutt
Yes, exactly. Listen for that feedback. Because your body will tell you what’s right for you and what isn’t.
08:17.390 –> 08:18.590 Becca Powers
Absolutely.
08:18.590 –> 09:38.598 Claudia Garbutt
And another thing that I noticed about a lot of high achievers is that they have had some early experiences with competitive sports. You said you grew up playing soccer. I’m a runner. Another author I just interviewed grew up playing baseball. And yet another friend of mine was a cheerleader.
So I don’t think it matters what kind of sport you were into. What matters is that your young mind learned that you get rewarded for playing full out, for not giving up, for trying really, really hard, and for continuous effort. And that is the pattern that we fall back into. Which again, is probably not a bad pattern in general.
But it’s tricky if things don’t work out the way that we want them to and when we don’t get the rewards we anticipated. Our natural tendency is not to adjust our strategy but to simply try harder instead. And that’s when things start to fall apart. Now, in what way have you modified this default pattern? And how has the updated version served you in creating sustainable success without losing your edge? Because that’s what a lot of people are afraid of, right?
09:38.684 –> 12:22.830 Becca Powers
People are afraid that if they modify, they’ll lose their edge. And I would challenge you to think differently. I have found that instead, I’m actually more successful than I was in those days of powering through. And I think because I’m moving from a pushing state to, like, a flow state, and part of my flow is rest and recovery – which never existed before.
I still work a lot. I would say that I probably still work 40 to 50 hours a week because I run two businesses. But I’m doing it from a place of passion and a place of, like, my fire, which I talk a lot about in the book. And when you’re working from passion, it feels different. Kind of like a life force or like eating food. You have energy behind it. And also, the part two to that is that I’ve had to learn to listen to my body. Especially with autoimmune immune disease, there are days I couldn’t get out of bed. And I never, ever, ever want to feel like that again. So I know for me, my zone of highest productivity is from 06:00 am to about 11:00 am. That is when I pump, I do all my administrative stuff, or my big push. And then I like to have a lot of my meetings after lunch. That’s my preferred state. And then 5 to 5:30, I’m done. With the occasional exception. But here’s the thing, guys, you get to make that choice. It’s not where Claudia was saying it’s the powering through. Or I’m just going to do this because I have to.
It’s like, okay, this call that I have to take at 07:00 is a little bit outside my zone. I know I’m going to push to exhaustion, but maybe I’ll push off some stuff in the morning so I can sleep in. Now, I know that you talk about science a lot, too, and not to digress, but there is a cause and effect. So if I choose to do something that’s going to potentially drain my energy, I’m very conscious to put something back in that’s going to pump it up.
12:22.830 –> 13:08.130 Claudia Garbutt
It’s so important to have this balance. And it’s totally natural to have those times in your life when you have a lot on your plate and you just power through. But it shouldn’t become the norm. It should be the exception. And you should, as you said, try to find the things that balance this out so that it doesn’t drain your energy.
Now, another thing in your book, that you talked about was the importance of pattern interrupts to disrupt your automatic behavior. And I totally agree. As you probably know, it’s estimated that about 95% to 99% of your thoughts and behavior are run by your subconscious mind and thus on autopilot. That’s a huge percentage!
13:08.130 –> 13:13.470 Becca Powers
That’s insane. When I thought about that too, it’s like, oh my gosh.
13:13.470 –> 14:06.450 Claudia Garbutt
And we need a pattern interrupt to break free from that habit loop so that we are able to entertain new ideas. Have you ever wondered why it often takes a sudden catastrophe of some sort to change the trajectory of your life?
Well, I think it may have to do with the fact that those catastrophes act as powerful pattern interrupts because by definition, those are changes that are not gradual. They are sudden or they are simply too big to be ignored. So you get to a point where your default behavior is no longer an option and you are forced to look for new strategies. And those are the tipping points that can either make you or break you. So why don’t you tell us about the time that you got arrested?
14:06.450 –> 17:20.370 Becca Powers
Yes, so that was a really good pattern interrupt for me. So I was in my mid-20s, with small kids. I was on the verge of divorce from the father of my children. And I’m a relatively good girl. I was in my pattern, home, taking care of the kids. My husband came home one day and I was just pissed. And I was like, I’m going out with friends. I hadn’t been out in months. And I may have had exactly one drink too much. And I got pulled over on the way home from Reggae Night, which was a lot of fun, by the way. And this is back when CDs were like a thing and I had reached out to get CD. And as I went to reach for it in my vehicle, I took the wheel with me, came back, put my CD on, and next thing I know, there’s flashing lights behind me. And the thing that I want to say is that in relation to pattern interrupt, that was a huge pattern interrupt for me because I was exhausted. I was trying to, again, another situation in life where I was trying to power through. I was trying to power through motherhood, and I was trying to power through a marriage that was dysfunctional at the time. And in powering through, I started making bad choices and that’s what happens. And so here I am cop lights behind me. And the only reason that I got arrested was – because I actually passed all my sobriety stuff – because I was so defeated in the moment that when he asked me how many drinks I had, I’m like, I had three. He had it on audio.
So anyway, to wrap up that story. I did end up getting arrested for a DUI when I was in my mid-twenties, and it changed the trajectory of my life. I’m not really embarrassed by it. I was in my twenties and whatever, but it is something that people are like, oh, my God, she got arrested.
But I can tell you it was the pattern interrupt. It was a trajectory-changer. It was something that made me stop. There’s nowhere to go when you’re sitting in a holding cell. And I was like, what the hell am I doing? I got two babies at home. This is like, I just went out to go have a good time, and now I’m sitting in jail. Like, this is so stupid. And really, after that, it helped me reprioritize what was important to me. And it was a huge learning lesson in that, I needed to prioritize myself and my children and things like that.
And of course, life has its way of sending patterns, because I go through this – not the arrested part – but I go through a similar piece later, which is where the bigger arc of Harness Your Inner CEO comes from, is that power through the work situation. But it’s really interesting that you say that. That was a sudden interrupt, and it changed my life and got my life on track in a way that was really supportive for me.
17:20.370 –> 18:58.390 Claudia Garbutt
Yeah, I agree. It’s such a great story that illustrates the power of pattern interrupts. The moment when your reality shifts so dramatically that you have to come up with a new plan, which you did. Good on you!
And another thing you said in your book is that vision equals possibility, and action equals probability. And I absolutely, absolutely love this quote because it’s so true. If you can’t imagine it, you can’t create it.
Because without a vision, your subconscious mind just doesn’t know where to guide you. And creating a vision is like giving your subconscious a destination on a map, saying, like, this is where I want to go. And once you have this big picture or this macro goal, you need to translate it into an action plan that helps you get to that destination.
This is exactly what I do with my clients, too. So we start with this initial assessment to figure out what’s working for them and what’s not working for them right now. Then we create a vision and set those goals, and then we map out an action plan that will get them there. So we stay committed to the goal, but flexible in the approach, because, as you said, not everything is working equally well for everyone. So if it’s not working, we pivot. We try something else. Because I’m not married to any tool or technique. I want to focus on the results. So if it’s not working, it’s not working, right?
18:58.390 –> 20:30.970 Becca Powewrs
Not to interrupt, but I really love what you’re saying. And we talked about sports a little bit, so anyone who’s listening who has that sports background, I really think I embraced that from my days of playing soccer because I was a forward and I was responsible for goals, right?
And I remember my coach telling me very early on, like, you need to envision yourself with the goal. I’d never had a big arc. Like, I never had the power kick, but I had a really good straight line that maybe was this high off the ground, but it was hard to tell what side of the goal net I was going to kick to, and that was like, my power move.
But all I knew is that from a vision perspective, I needed to get that ball on the goal. And then my coach worked with me with all the different strategies of how to do that with my skill set. He didn’t try – to your point – he didn’t try to make me into something that I wasn’t. He took my strengths. And I talk about this a lot in the book, too. He took my strengths and showed me how to use them in a way that works for me.
And it took me practicing because I didn’t have that big kick. So I couldn’t stand center and just be like, I had to learn how to navigate that. And that took all those little action steps to figure it out.
20:30.970 –> 20:47.930 Claudia Garbutt
Yeah, I love that. Now, I’m curious, when you look at your own experiences with working with other coaches, like in your business, for example, what coaches help you create the biggest breakthroughs, and what was it about their approach that helped you the most?
When you think about the business coaches or people that you worked with to help you with your business, what was it that helped you create the biggest breakthroughs? Was it a special set of tools and techniques they taught you? Was it their energy and personality, their ability to hold space for you, the way they held you accountable, or something else entirely? What was it for you that helped you create breakthroughs?
21:29.426 –> 22:58.034 Becca Powers
So I want to talk about my two current coaches, because I’ve had coaches my entire life, so I could probably talk an hour on coaches and just be like, I love them all, but I have two coaches, Nancy Levin, who is a Hay House author. I engaged her in early 2020 because I did want to write this book, and I had tons of fear. I was up against imposter syndrome, and I really knew, like, my nervous system was scared. And I had wanted to try to write a book since I was in my 20s. Here I am in my early forties, and I’m finally like, I think I can do this. I was in the writer’s closet, too. I mentioned that in the book. But I’ve been journaling, writing song lyrics, writing poems, all this stuff since I was, like, six or seven years old.
I mean, I got journals stacked up all the way up to the ceiling if I stacked them on each other. But my point is that a lot of the things that we want to accomplish, we’re afraid to show up for. And she really helped me see that I already had all of this in me. I think I spent a lot of time prior to that. And I’m a researcher, kind of like you. I study, I research. Which is really great, except that I can get into procrastination and never come out of that space.
22:58.132 –> 22:58.718 Claudia Garbutt
Yeah.
22:58.864 –> 23:43.010 Becca Powers
And so she was like, go write! Do it! We talked about programming and pattern interrupt – so my pattern was fear. My pattern was “I can’t do this or people are going to judge me”. And then her reinforcement was “Just do it. Each time you write a chapter, you’re going to get more confident. Each time you finish a section, you’re going to feel better.” And it was right. Like I just kept going and going and going. And by the time I was done, I had a manuscript in my hand and I’m looking at her like, I did it!
23:43.010 –> 23:56.270 Claudia Garbutt
It’s the “do until you become”, right?! You just have to do it. There’s no way around it. If you want to be a writer, you have to write. If you’re not writing, you’re not a writer.
23:56.270 –> 25:47.990 Becca Powers
That’s exactly right. And so it was simple but also hard because I had to face all of that. And then my current coach, Allison Walsh, she’s a VP of a business development, its Advanced Recovery Systems. But it’s a dual diagnosis mental health and drug recovery place. And she’s phenomenal. She works with branding, she works with powerful women and authors and just different influencers and things like that.
But she has really helped me with my message, I would say. I think that when you are an entrepreneur or when you are a thought leader and you feel like there’s something powerful you need to share it’s like “How where do I start? What does that look like? How do I get what I have to say down into 60 seconds?” And so she was very good at showing me how can I say what I need to say in a simpler way. And then also some branding, some coloring, and things that help me be consistent and recognizable. But all of those things again, I was really scared to put myself out there like that. It’s very vulnerable to do what we do.
We have podcasts, we’re interviewing, we’re writing, we’re sharing. And you’re no longer hiding, so you’re very visible and again, vulnerable. Both of my coaches believe in me so much that it makes me believe in myself. And I’m like yeah, I’m just going to go out there and change some lives. So that’s my mission.
25:47.990 –> 26:44.930 Claudia Garbutt
That’s awesome. Yeah. Sometimes you just have to have someone in your corner to believe in yourself. It’s so hard. When I started my own podcast, for instance, I was so afraid of public speaking. It was one of my worst fears ever. The thing that I didn’t want to do ever. But then I felt like I had an important message to share and I really had to rewire my nervous system to not be so afraid of showing up, sharing my message, and being seen. Because it hurts when people judge you. Of course, it does. And I don’t think it really goes away, but it doesn’t affect you as much if you rewire your nervous system because then you can kind of brush it off and it doesn’t sink in.
26:44.930 –> 28:27.230 Becca Powers
Exactly. And having that support when you’re first rising is super important. And I want to say that to the listeners too, because I know this audience has a lot of leaders and a lot of entrepreneurs. So if you’re working for an organization and you’re a leader, there’s a certain responsibility of visibility that you should be owning. People look to you for guidance. And I know it’s a lot more common to see director level and above start sharing their voice too. And I just want to reinforce that a coach, regardless of whether you’re a leader or an entrepreneur, is probably going to be a game changer for you. I’d say build your executive Dream Team.
That’s part of the conversation. It’s chapter eleven, I think. But I’m like, you need mentors. You need a fan club. I always say in addition to a coach, you need a mentor. Someone you can call maybe once every 90 days that has some vested interest in seeing you succeed. And then like a fan club, a peer group, people that support you, that when you call and you like me and I’m like, hey, I’m scared to do this. They’re like, you got this, you’re amazing. Because so often we call people when we’re not thinking of intentionally building a support network, we might call the wrong person. Like I joke around, I think, in the book. And I’m like, I’m not going to call my grandma to write a book. She doesn’t know how to do that. I hired Nancy Levin. That’s what I did. But if I need motivation or need that grit, then I’m going to call Grandma because she’s going to tell me.
28:27.230 –> 28:56.442 Claudia Garbutt
Exactly. We need our support system. I want to talk about another quote from your book that really resonated with me.
So you said, “we need to include our bodies in our healing journey”. This is something that I experience too, and it plays out on so many different levels. One is the primary emotion that we’re subconsciously seeking to obtain. Can you share how this was showing up in your life?
28:56.636 –> 30:43.770 Becca Powers
Yes. So I want to digress and just share the science real fast, too, because I think it’s so important. Like I read the book “The body keeps the score”. One of my takeaways, which makes this conversation have more meaning, is that 80% of our wisdom is contained in our bodies and not our minds. And that’s twofold. So our decision-making, our bodies know whether it’s good for us before this does, before our mind does.
And then also when we bring it back to pattern interrupts: Our bodies remember the trauma or the good and bad of the experiences. 80% of our experiences are held in our bodies and not our minds. And we spend so much time in talk therapy and working our minds, which is awesome. But what I realized is that my body was sharing so many messages that I just completely ignored.
And it started, I would say, six months in with pain down my neck, wrapping into my shoulder. After a year I had points where I couldn’t turn my head all the way, and I was just like, maybe I worked out funny or maybe I’m not drinking enough water. I started dismissing the signs that my body was giving me and went into that powering through. So not to reiterate, but to share again that I ended up with an autoimmune disease. And that was a direct reaction of to not listening to my body.
30:43.770 –> 31:43.810 Claudia Garbutt
Yeah, I kind of had a similar experience happening to me. And what’s so important for people to understand is that there is underlying physiology to your psychology. So, in other words, hormones and neurotransmitters create those feeling states, and your nervous system will try to keep you in the feeling states that you spend most of your time in.
Because that’s what’s familiar and feels safe, even if it’s an uncomfortable feeling, like being stressed or anxious. But your body gets used to those states and you’ll subconsciously try to create more of them. And that’s why you might have a really hard time relaxing when you have a high-stress, high-pressure job that usually requires you to be alert and focused. For example, I’ve noticed that I’m tempted to fill my vacation time with lots and lots of activities to recreate that alert and focus state of my mind.
31:43.860 –> 31:46.930 Becca Powers
I have been the same way. Yeah, exactly.
31:47.100 –> 31:49.414 Claudia Garbutt
Is that something that you’ve experienced, too?
31:49.572 –> 32:25.810 Becca Powers
I sure have. And now I’m, like, consciously like and that’s it. As we talk about the healing side, it’s about pausing so you can catch the pattern and be like, okay, I see myself overbooking myself. That actually, even though there’s fun, I know the end result will be me exhausted and not feeling like I rested. So, yeah, I have been the same way. And now I take vacations and I’m like, I might have one day that’s like, my action day, but then I make sure that I have a rest day. So it’s funny that you mentioned that.
32:25.980 –> 33:20.182 Claudia Garbutt
That’s right. Another way that I’ve experienced this deep body-mind connection is the way that my muscles tens up when I’m stressed. For me, it’s a lot of tension in my neck and shoulders, and upper back. So something that I have found super helpful is deep stretching that relaxes those muscles again. And what I found to be even more helpful is to combine those long stretches with affirmations.
Because that way I teach my body to relax into a new belief, for instance, and over time, it reduces the mental and physical resistance towards that belief. So, as a yoga teacher, you might have had some similar experiences. What techniques that involves the body have you found to be most helpful for healing the relationship with yourself?
33:20.376 –> 34:43.770 Becca Powers
One of the things that I still do, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to get it all in video or not in the frame. But as you were mentioning, there’s a deep mind-body connection. And one thing that I love to do is a practice I learned in yoga and then stopped doing for a while. And then when I remembered it again, I was like, now I do it all the time.
So I put my left hand on my heart and my right hand on my gut. There’s like that saying, gut instinct. There’s a reason that there are these cliches, right? We have a gut instinct. And so one of the ways that I come back into myself and make better decisions is I put my left hand on my heart, my right hand on my gut, and I ask myself, how am I going to feel? What do I think I should do? I ask my body, how am I going to feel when I make this decision?
And you can feel when it’s positive. You get the butterflies, or you feel like your emotions rise up, or you feel your energy increase, or you might even smile. When it’s not good, you can feel it. Like, I know my own body signs and I start feeling, like, a little nausea. So that’s one thing that I learned from my yoga world that I use on a pretty regular basis. It’s pretty practical.
34:43.770 –> 35:05.430 Claudia Garbutt
That’s awesome. I have to try that. I bet that as a yoga teacher, you probably are able to spot all the high achievers straight away in your class straight away because they are competitive, just looking around, comparing themselves to the others all the time, trying to be perfect, and then leaving before Shavasana because they think it’s a total waste of their time.
35:05.430 –> 36:58.650 Becca Powers
Yes, 100%. And there’s something in that that I want to rewind back to as well. It’s kind of in that high achiever profile. But one of the things is that as far as even leaving a Shawasana, there’s a lot of survival. You were kind of indicating this when we’re talking about the last rounds of patterning. When we’re children, we have survived. We wanted love and acceptance from our parents, period. And so for some that is performing. It’s being a straight-A student. It’s not talking back or it’s achieving in sports and getting all the highest honors.
So for high-achievers, we probably, as a child, got rewarded for being a good girl or a good boy. That’s how our nervous systems were conditioned or programmed to survive. This way, it’s like, oh, if I achieve, then I’m safe.
But after 30, 40, 50 years of performing, your body gets tired because it’s an outdated program. And that’s why it’s so important, like how you’re saying to pause and stretch. If you slow down just enough, you can rewrite your program, you can rewire your nervous system. And it starts with just noticing oh my neck is starting to tense up. Uh, let me stretch into a positive affirmation. All of these are pattern interrupts into a state of thriving. Ultimately where the book lands, is, hey, there’s this whole other way.
36:58.650 –> 37:24.990 Claudia Garbutt
Yeah, I think there’s a Chinese proverb. Something along the lines of “tension is who you think you should be, relaxation is who you are”. And this is, I think, something that people have to remind themselves over and over again. Whenever we start to tense up, there’s something that we’re doing that’s not quite aligned, and we have to pause and become aware of that. Right?
37:24.990 –> 37:28.666 Becca Powers
Yes, exactly. Practice the pause. I love that saying.
37:28.848 –> 37:34.110 Claudia Garbutt
Yeah. Is there anything else that you would like to share with our listeners today?
37:34.110 –> 39:06.690 Becca Powers
One of the things to just close out, and we’ve touched on this as we’ve gone through, but – strengths and weaknesses, I just want to end on that. We spend a lot of time as individuals strengthening our weaknesses, and we’re only going to be able to bring a weakness up to maybe a mediocre status, right?
And I don’t want to digress too much. I know we’re getting close to time, but during one of my Kundalini meditations, where it got pretty cosmic on me, and we are being brought through a guided meditation. And in this meditation, I kind of got brought back to tribal times. And I remember seeing myself as a tribal woman thousands of years ago, and I had bracelets all the way up my arm, and each bracelet symbolized my strengths. And the other women and men in the tribe, too. Men had like, necklaces, and women had bracelets. But either way, these were more than just a vanity thing. They were a way of symbolizing what you can contribute. What are your strengths? What are you good at? And when I came out of that meditation, I just had a very deep, profound reflection of, like, we spend so much time in modern society hiding our strengths.
39:06.690 –> 39:07.054 Claudia Garbutt
True.
39:07.092 –> 40:09.750 Becca Powers
And I’m like, what would it look like if we owned our strengths and displayed them almost with that pride of like, hey, here’s how I can help you. Here’s my bracelet. I’m really good at writing. I’m really good at connecting dots and determining patterns.
And then people will know how to help you. And I just encourage you as a listener to lean into your strengths and maybe even like how we were sharing before, find coaches that are willing to help you develop your strengths. Because when you are in your strengths, not only are you breaking your own patterns and rising into your true you and into your becoming.
But you’re now in a position where your confidence is high enough that you know who you are and how you can help other people. So it’s just really we spend so much time hiding that when we become vulnerable and we rise into it and show who we are, it just makes such a huge impact on so many things. So that’s where I want to close. I’m, like, rise into who you are and show it off!
40:09.750 –> 40:26.590 Claudia Garbutt
Oh, that’s so beautiful. I love the image of the bracelets and just showing off your strengths, not hiding anymore.
Last but not least, where can people buy your book and connect with you online?
40:26.590 –> 40:51.550 Becca Powers
All right, so let’s start with buying the book. You can go to beccapowers.com/harnessyourinnerceo. It’s right there. Or Amazon globally has it, so you can go to Amazon and find it. As far as following me, I’m on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. All the handles are the same. It’s at Becca Powers, 1313.
40:51.550 –> 41:00.910 Claudia Garbutt
Perfect. Again, thank you so much, Becca, for sharing your insights, your story, and your book with us today. It was a pleasure having you back on the show.
41:00.910 –> 41:03.410 Becca Powers
Thank you, Claudia. It was such a pleasure being back.
41:03.580 –> 41:09.000 Claudia Garbutt
Bye. Take care and talk to you soon. Bye.
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