25. Visibility + Mindset Rapid Fire
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Hello, hello and welcome back again to Pause On The Play. As always, it is amazing to see you here, where you are challenged to examine your beliefs, question your predisposed notions and consider realities you may be unfamiliar with in order to understand that they too are real. I am your host and conversation MC for the day, Erica Courdae, here to get the dialogue going. I am getting tongue tied. That's not good.
Erica Courdae: Welcome back. You hear my cohost, India is with me again. India Jackson of Flaunt Your Fire. Hey lady.
India Jackson: Hey lady. I'm listening to your tongue tied.
Erica Courdae: Oh gosh. I'm like, what happened? I'm going to drink water when you talk because I don't know what happened there. So we were talking previously about impostor syndrome, how it's not what you think and during kind of that conversation, comparison came up and just how this thing of staying in your lane sometimes, making you look side to side like, "Oh, well what are they doing? What am I not doing? What am I not able to do or what should I not do?" And how just this comparison-itis can render you inactive, but it can also be something that brings up fear, shame, guilt. It can really bring up some very powerful and sometimes debilitating feelings in taking action.
India Jackson: Yeah, I think that it's an important subject, especially because we have been talking to people in different professions and one of the professions that has been coming up, without going too much into detail, requires people who work in this field to leave themselves on the shelf a little bit and not bring themselves into the room, and so as they step into new businesses that do require them to be seen and market themselves and brand and show a little bit of who they are, it can be really easy to take a look at all these other people online that have started to do that and compare and be like, "Oh my gosh, I'm not that interesting," or, "I'm not there yet. I'm still figuring it out." It's a big thing.
Erica Courdae: And you just hit a really big note in that for me in that, I'm still learning kind of piece. There is something to be said about being in a place of learning and furthering your knowledge base and expanding your kind of go-to thoughts, feelings, actions, emotions, any of those that somehow it can make someone think, "Oh well I'm learning, so I can't do," and I don't necessarily agree with that for the simple fact that there are some things you should not learn and do. Being a doctor, I need you to learn before you do anything. That's a little different, but when we're talking about something that requires you to be in action as a part of the learning, and actually even as a doctor, there is a point to where you still have to be ... You're under someone else, but you're doing some of the things as you're learning because you do have to be hands on.
Erica Courdae: So you need to be in the thing to understand what it feels like and what it looks like in actual action versus just theory, you know? Oh I'm going to ... and I'll use an example from myself as a coach, I'm just going to practice on all these people how to be a coach, but I'm going to resist having actual coaching clients, having coaching conversations when I've been invited to have these with people that do want to be a client. A round table, a workshop, any of these types of things where you are actually utilizing these skills. Oh no, I can't do the thing yet. Why the hell not and when is this magical time going to come up that you can?
India Jackson: Yeah, I think that imperfect action can be very tied into comparison syndrome, which then can affect our mindset of whether or not we're there yet, you know? Whether or not the post was good enough or do we keep editing it over and over again? That's a thing I see coming up as like a red flag with some of my clients is, if it's taking you more than like 15 minutes to find a picture and write a caption for Instagram, something else .... It may be a sign that something else is going on beneath the surface, like are you afraid to share? Do you have pictures that feel aligned? Is the caption that you're writing really feel like it's your story or are you saying what you think you should say?
Erica Courdae: Are you afraid of being seen? And that's where you get to the visibility piece and you have to begin to question, am I afraid of being seen? Am I afraid of being visible in a way that I'm actually showing myself, my story, my platform, my message, letting my impact actually have that impact? Because if you're afraid of being seen, then comparison syndrome just kind of feeds into it because somehow or another, you can't be seen because, oh no, no. They're doing that. That's how they're doing it. I can never do that. I can't do that, and it's somehow or another rooted in some type of unhelpful mindset that undermines the possibilities of what you can truly do or maybe are doing and just aren't willing to step into, that there's that.
India Jackson: I can agree 100%. I would love for us to blow some holes in that. Maybe-
Erica Courdae: Word.
India Jackson: -we could do a rapid fire style. Try something different.
Erica Courdae: Yes, do it. Let's do it.
India Jackson: Hole blown number one, none of the women that I hold closest to me in a business space are alike. They're all unique, they're all special and they're all kind of a lot like us on whether they curse or not, kind of fuck it. I don't want to fit in.
Erica Courdae: Agree, agree. Rapid fire number two, just because someone is not visible, does not mean that they're not successful and just because someone is visible does not mean that they are successful.
India Jackson: Yes.
Erica Courdae: How much you do or do not see of somebody has absolutely nothing to do with success, whatever that is. Success is a sliding scale. Everybody's idea is different, but it doesn't have anything to do with it.
India Jackson: Agreed. Hole number three, visibility doesn't look the same for everyone and I'll give you a great example of that. Some people are incredibly visible face-to-face, one-on-one, person-to-person at events and others are incredibly visible online. There's no right or wrong way to be visible.
Erica Courdae: Agreed. This is number four. Number four, feeling the fear of visibility. You can feel the fear of comparison and or visibility and still do the thing. Just because you're not completely comfortable with it, it makes you nervous, it's not maybe something that is inherent to you, doesn't mean that you can't be visible or that maybe something can cross your mind about comparison. These are not feelings that you are automatically immune to because, "Oh now I'm visible. All those things go away." Bullshit. It's how you allow yourself to feel your feels and still do the thing.
India Jackson: Next one, your audience actually wants to know the real you. They want to like and trust that that is the real you and therefore, ruminating about how much makeup you have on, whether or not your hair is done perfectly before you show up, is not actually what your audience wants you to do.
Erica Courdae: Agreed. Number six, your audience wants to know you, but that does not mean that you have to give every single thread of you, your life, who and how you are. You still get the opportunity to choose what it is that you want to share based on what you're comfortable with. I am someone that I want to let you in, I want to show you. What's off limits for me is showing my kids. I will talk about my two minions all day long because they are funny as hell and they are amazing, but I'm not giving you pictures of them. That's my choice. So I am visible. I am there to give of myself, but it does not come from a place of, I have to let every single messy piece of me see the light of day when I'm not ready. Don't have to do that.
India Jackson: Oh, that brings me to number seven. You can be in the messy middle of life and still be visible and there is a way to do that where you are not sharing the messy middle when you're in the thick of it. It's called bash and boo. No excuses.
Erica Courdae: Word. Number eight. I'm going to wrap you up with, comparison and vulnerability are two statements that you can decide what they mean. Nobody else decides the definition of these two things but you. Whatever visibility means to you in a way that feels good, aligned, and authentic. Whatever comparison means, if you don't want to step into that because it doesn't do you any good. If it fuels you, everybody's different. Some people are competitive and it's like, "Oh, I like that. I actually am interested in what that looks like for me," or, "Nope, I don't care what anybody else is doing. It doesn't matter." You have to do what feels good for you, what is aligned. You set your definitions. That is what you take action with.
India Jackson: I love it.
Erica Courdae: Yay. All right, so I think what I ... What do I want to do? I think what I like is the fact that we brought up mindset and visibility. Two things that are very related. I think they intersect in a huge way and a lot of people aren't always aware of it. I think it's something we've talked about before and I definitely want to continue to bring it, but I want to have the takeaway for today that I want you to go take and think about, ponder about, journal about, whatever it is that works for you. What does visibility mean to you and what does mindset mean to you and how do they intersect?
India Jackson: I love it.
Erica Courdae: Yay.
India Jackson: That is a great question.
Erica Courdae: I think it's a good place for you to start in really kind of having more awareness around your thoughts, feelings, beliefs and actions, what you're doing, what you're not doing, how things feel in your body, because our nervous systems are very wrapped up into things. So when you allow yourself that space to kind of get tuned into what's happening for you and you can then say, "Let's figure out what this is." I think that that makes a big difference in how you can move through things and how you can be propelled forward in a way that you want to be and that actually does feel good as it's happening versus, I'm going to push through and do the things because that's what I'm supposed to do. We don't believe in the, I'm supposed to or, I should. To hell with all of those. You don't shit on yourself around here, just saying.
India Jackson: And you have full permission to come up with your own definitions. They don't have to look like anyone else's.
Erica Courdae: I encourage you to actually because I want you to do something that feels good to you because that means that you can actually do the thing. When you base it on someone else, it's a whole lot harder for you to take it on and to be able to step into it. So creating what is best for you is integral. So that being said, I am going to thank my cohost, India Jackson of Flaunt Your Fire. Guys, go ahead and get your takeaways. Share with us if you'd like, but more than anything, just do it for you and we shall be back.
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