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Self-Confidence & Leadership: From Climbing Mountains to Motherhood · No Shrinking Violets Podcast for Women

• 0:00
  Simone Knego: So I am someone starting off that I struggled with self-doubt for the majority of my life.
• 0:06
  Simone Knego: I am exactly what you described.
• 0:08
  Simone Knego: I never thought that I was good enough, that I was doing enough, especially when I was a stay-at-home mom.
• 0:17
  Mary: For centuries, the phrase shrinking violet was used to diminish women, to suggest we were meant to be small and meek.
• 0:24
  Mary: But in nature, violets are anything but weak.
• 0:27
  Mary: They're resilient, beautiful, and essential to the ecosystem.
• 0:31
  Mary: Hi, I'm Mary Rothwell, licensed therapist, and each week I sit down with women who remind us that being compared to a violet isn't an insult.
• 0:39
  Mary: It's a testament to strength, endurance, and the power of taking up space and living by your true nature.
• 0:45
  Mary: If you're ready to stop shrinking and start thriving, you're in the right place.
• 0:50
  Mary: Hey violets, welcome to the show.
• 0:54
  Mary: One of the most important lessons I learned from my work and from my career trajectory is that women often have skills that we don't fully recognize.
• 1:03
  Mary: I spent most of my early career as a school counselor.
• 1:06
  Mary: In that environment, I needed to make dozens of decisions every day.
• 1:10
  Mary: Every so often, the life of a kid actually hung in the balance.
• 1:14
  Mary: When one of my most influential mentors and favorite friends suggested that I apply for a leadership position at one point, I immediately gave five reasons why I didn't have the skills.
• 1:25
  Mary: Yet facilitating therapy is all about deciding what information is important, how to maximize and build skills, and most importantly, how does my client function in the system of their life?
• 1:35
  Mary: And systems theory, really understanding how one part of an organization impacts another, is crucial to effective leadership.
• 1:43
  Mary: Bottom line, I did have the skills.
• 1:46
  Mary: Even and especially, women who spent much of their lives as domestic engineers and mothers have cultivated leadership skills in spades.
• 1:54
  Mary: Often they build a plane while flying it.
• 1:57
  Mary: They need to understand financial strategies, encourage each member of the organization, i.e.
• 2:02
  Mary: family, to be their best self and build skills to be successful.
• 2:06
  Mary: They need to manage a daily agenda that can be upended at any moment, and they often answer to competing stakeholders.
• 2:13
  Mary: And honestly, that's the tip of the iceberg.
• 2:15
  Mary: All of these skills are leadership skills.
• 2:18
  Mary: My guest today seems to do it all.
• 2:20
  Mary: She is a mom of six kids and is building a powerful platform as an international speaker.
• 2:25
  Mary: She's the author of the book The Extraordinary Unordinary You, and she too is a podcast host.
• 2:31
  Mary: Oh, and by the way, she climbed Kilimanjaro.
• 2:34
  Mary: Her name is Simone Canago, and today she and I are going to reframe some of the ways that women overlook important leadership skills that not only can change their everyday mindset, but that can be leveraged to create important career advancements.
• 2:48
  Mary: Welcome to No Shrinking Violet, Simone.
• 2:50
  Mary: Thank you.
• 2:51
  Mary: I'm so excited to be here.
• 2:53
  Mary: You have so many cool things that I want to talk about, but I would love to first start with having you talk a little about some of the key moments in your own life that led you to where you are today, including the work that you do.
• 3:06
  Simone Knego: So I'm gonna give you two big moments.
• 3:09
  Simone Knego: One, so I am someone starting off that I struggled with self-doubt for the majority of my life.
• 3:16
  Simone Knego: I am exactly what you described.
• 3:18
  Simone Knego: I never thought that I was good enough, that I was doing enough, especially when I was a stay-at-home mom.
• 3:24
  Simone Knego: I thought everybody else is doing so many things.
• 3:27
  Simone Knego: And I'm just raising six kids, right?
• 3:29
  Simone Knego: Raising kids is one of the most important jobs in the world, raising good humans.
• 3:34
  Simone Knego: So always remind yourself of that.
• 3:36
  Simone Knego: But I was at this women's event and with good friends of mine, this video came on, Colby Calais Try, and I started crying.
• 3:48
  Simone Knego: My friends had never seen me cry before.
• 3:50
  Simone Knego: That that is the wall that I had put up.
• 3:53
  Simone Knego: I always pretended that I was so strong and that I had it all together.
• 3:56
  Simone Knego: And inside I was completely falling apart.
• 3:59
  Simone Knego: And so this video is about peeling back the layers and showing your true self.
• 4:05
  Simone Knego: And that moment, my friends were like, oh my gosh, what do we do with her?
• 4:09
  Simone Knego: She is the go-to person.
• 4:10
  Simone Knego: And I said, This is actually the real me.
• 4:13
  Simone Knego: Like I completely struggle with so many things, and I've just never said it because of many reasons, right?
• 4:19
  Simone Knego: That's what we all do.
• 4:21
  Simone Knego: And that was kind of like the beginning of an awakening for me, that showing that I didn't have to hide behind this facade.
• 4:27
  Simone Knego: I could be the real me.
• 4:28
  Simone Knego: And that that was like the beginning of my work with other women.
• 4:33
  Simone Knego: Because as soon as I shared, they all shared what they were struggling with, what their lives were like.
• 4:39
  Simone Knego: And because from the outside, I always thought, oh, they have the perfect life.
• 4:42
  Simone Knego: Like, why am I going to bother them with my problems?
• 4:44
  Simone Knego: We all struggle, right?
• 4:45
  Simone Knego: And it's such a huge reminder that we need to talk about the things that we're struggling with and we need to show who we really are.
• 4:52
  Simone Knego: Because when you're pretending to be someone else, you're not helping anybody else.
• 4:58
  Simone Knego: You're not helping yourself.
• 5:00
  Mary: Very true.
• 5:02
  Simone Knego: That was moment one.
• 5:03
  Simone Knego: That was moment one.
• 5:04
  Simone Knego: Okay, what's moment two?
• 5:05
  Simone Knego: Um, moment two was when I was asked to do something completely out of my comfort zone, which was climb Kilimanjaro.
• 5:13
  Simone Knego: I am not a climber.
• 5:14
  Simone Knego: I've gone camping a couple of times.
• 5:16
  Simone Knego: I live in Florida at sea level.
• 5:17
  Simone Knego: We have 16 steps in our house.
• 5:19
  Simone Knego: So very much out of my comfort zone.
• 5:22
  Simone Knego: I've had many people ask me, why did you say yes?
• 5:24
  Simone Knego: And a couple of reasons.
• 5:26
  Simone Knego: One, I used to be the yes girl.
• 5:28
  Simone Knego: I was a people pleaser, right?
• 5:29
  Simone Knego: And I don't want to disappoint anybody.
• 5:31
  Simone Knego: Let me, let me be the brownie troop leader.
• 5:33
  Simone Knego: Let me pick up your kid from school, whatever I needed to do to kind of make other people happy to my own detriment.
• 5:40
  Simone Knego: But this yes was a different yes.
• 5:41
  Simone Knego: This yes was I understood that I needed to get out of my comfort zone.
• 5:45
  Simone Knego: And so that's what this yes allowed me to do.
• 5:47
  Simone Knego: Now, did I realize exactly what I was going to do when I signed up?
• 5:50
  Simone Knego: No.
• 5:51
  Simone Knego: 19,341 feet.
• 5:54
  Simone Knego: So, but it changed everything for me because I realized that when I put in the work, it's not about setting the goal, it's about putting in the work and believing in yourself.
• 6:03
  Simone Knego: You know, that constant, that the negative self-talk that we have, we have to move past.
• 6:07
  Simone Knego: And it's the telling yourself that you can do this, right?
• 6:11
  Simone Knego: I mean, why should we tell ourselves all the time that we can't do something?
• 6:14
  Simone Knego: Like, what fun is that?
• 6:16
  Simone Knego: So it's going through the opposite direction.
• 6:18
  Simone Knego: And it really changed everything for me.
• 6:21
  Simone Knego: And it changed everything for my family.
• 6:22
  Simone Knego: That's when I started speaking.
• 6:24
  Simone Knego: That's when I started writing.
• 6:25
  Simone Knego: And not necessarily my message wasn't about Kilimanjaro, but it was about doing the things you think you can't because we all had those things that we think we can't.
• 6:34
  Mary: Yes.
• 6:35
  Mary: Totally true.
• 6:36
  Mary: Okay.
• 6:37
  Mary: Wow.
• 6:37
  Mary: So let me go back to first your first reason or your first point.
• 6:42
  Mary: And I think so often we start with having a situation socially or what imbued in our relationship with other women where we are competitors.
• 6:53
  Mary: And it makes it so hard to do what you did, to let that wall down so that people are like, oh my God, like she actually struggles with the things that I do.
• 7:06
  Mary: But I I so often put things into that social context that I think we're just set up to be competitors in a different way because there's so many things we're expected to do and to do well.
• 7:17
  Mary: And the, you know, not to go too far off the path, but then now we've brought in social media.
• 7:23
  Mary: So now we can publicly judge what we see of other women.
• 7:27
  Mary: So, what are your thoughts on that society kind of script of, you know, you have to compete with other women and always look good?
• 7:37
  Simone Knego: Yeah, I I I really question it, especially now.
• 7:40
  Simone Knego: Like, why do we need to?
• 7:42
  Simone Knego: First of all, when you're competing with someone else, they don't even know you're competing with them, right?
• 7:47
  Simone Knego: When you're judging them, they don't know, right?
• 7:49
  Simone Knego: It's it's making you feel bad.
• 7:51
  Simone Knego: And that's what I, you know, that's what I say to my kids.
• 7:54
  Simone Knego: That's what I say to my podcast co-host is my 22, 23-year-old daughter.
• 7:59
  Simone Knego: It's nobody else, you know, is thinking about you, right?
• 8:03
  Simone Knego: You're you're so worried about what everybody else is doing, they have no idea that you're thinking about them.
• 8:08
  Simone Knego: So they're not thinking about you.
• 8:09
  Simone Knego: So it's reframing that.
• 8:11
  Simone Knego: And why do we want to compete with other women in that way, right?
• 8:14
  Simone Knego: If we change the way we do things, if we say, let me help you rise up instead of let me let me think about the ways I can knock you down.
• 8:23
  Simone Knego: Like, how do you want to wake up every morning?
• 8:25
  Simone Knego: Do you want to wake up thinking, like, what negative things can I say about someone today?
• 8:29
  Simone Knego: Or how can I really help someone else today?
• 8:31
  Simone Knego: Personally, I want to do the second part, but it is a mindset shift of thinking that why do I need to compete with this person?
• 8:38
  Simone Knego: And I know a lot of it starts for you know women in the workplace where you know there's one opportunity to excel and you want that opportunity, right?
• 8:49
  Simone Knego: So you're competing against that person.
• 8:51
  Simone Knego: But really, the only person you should compete, compete against is yourself, right?
• 8:55
  Simone Knego: Be your best self.
• 8:56
  Simone Knego: And if you're not chosen for it, then you're not the right person at that time.
• 9:00
  Simone Knego: That's all it means.
• 9:02
  Mary: Well, and I think if we look at history, women did support each other.
• 9:06
  Mary: You know, it was this idea of the the village, everyone helps each other.
• 9:10
  Mary: And then I think as we had that advancement you're talking about, we started to go into the workforce more.
• 9:16
  Mary: Then it started to be well, how do you, how can you be a mom and a wife?
• 9:21
  Mary: Because it was back in, you know, the day, it was back in the 50s, the 60s, the 70s.
• 9:26
  Mary: How can you be those things and also have a career?
• 9:29
  Mary: Because there's always something where you have to prioritize constantly and the priority changes, but then there is going to be someone saying, You should do this or you shouldn't do this.
• 9:43
  Mary: And I really think that's when it started to flare up.
• 9:47
  Simone Knego: Yeah, I agree with you.
• 9:49
  Simone Knego: I so my mom went to medical school in 1961.
• 9:52
  Simone Knego: She grew up in rural Pennsylvania on a farm.
• 9:55
  Simone Knego: Her mom had a sixth grade education.
• 9:57
  Simone Knego: Her dad worked in the coal mines and at a local brewery.
• 10:00
  Simone Knego: And she went into a library for the first time when she was in 10th grade, and that library changed her world.
• 10:06
  Simone Knego: She knew at that moment she wanted to be educated.
• 10:09
  Simone Knego: She moved in with another family, and he happened to be an orthopedic surgeon.
• 10:13
  Simone Knego: Like she, so she moved in with them to raise, help raise their kids.
• 10:17
  Simone Knego: And she applied to college and got in.
• 10:19
  Simone Knego: And then she applied to medical school four late four years later and got in.
• 10:22
  Simone Knego: And there were five women in her class.
• 10:24
  Simone Knego: There were 120 people, five women, five of them were women.
• 10:27
  Simone Knego: And all five women graduated, all five women practiced.
• 10:30
  Simone Knego: And for the majority of her career, she was told that she was working in a man's world, that um her voice didn't matter.
• 10:37
  Simone Knego: You know, even when she was in medical school, she was told that she took a man's spot.
• 10:41
  Simone Knego: Like that's not fair.
• 10:42
  Simone Knego: She took a man's spot, which is so crazy to think about, right?
• 10:45
  Simone Knego: But things like that still happen.
• 10:48
  Simone Knego: So, but the idea of competing against other women, for her, it actually didn't happen because in medical school they really stuck together to work harder, right?
• 11:02
  Simone Knego: They, and then when she was in practice, same kind of thing because they were still during a time where the men made more than the women.
• 11:10
  Simone Knego: So they had to stick together so that they could overcome those obstacles and and fight for equal pay, and they won.
• 11:17
  Simone Knego: But today it's definitely different, right?
• 11:21
  Simone Knego: And and what exactly what you were saying about the shift that is what's happened.
• 11:27
  Simone Knego: And then the other thing that you said too, social media just makes it worse, right?
• 11:31
  Simone Knego: Yeah.
• 11:31
  Simone Knego: When we see what, oh, everybody else is doing.
• 11:34
  Simone Knego: Okay, those are shiny moments.
• 11:35
  Simone Knego: Who knows what's happening in their real life, right?
• 11:38
  Simone Knego: I mean, and again, stop worrying about what anybody else is doing.
• 11:42
  Mary: Doesn't really affect your life.
• 11:43
  Mary: It doesn't.
• 11:44
  Mary: Well, and it's the first thing I thought of when you talked about your mom, which what a great story, is that was her Kilimanjaro.
• 11:51
  Simone Knego: Yes.
• 11:51
  Mary: Yes.
• 11:52
  Mary: Like that such a thing to overcome.
• 11:54
  Mary: And then you're talking about this, you know.
• 11:56
  Mary: I know for me, sometimes people would in my past have suggested something, just like my friend and mentor said, you know, here's this leadership position, you should apply.
• 12:05
  Mary: It was instantaneous in my mind, no.
• 12:08
  Mary: And it always takes me a little bit of time to like lean back and think, well, wait a minute, what would that be like?
• 12:15
  Mary: And I think that is where for you and your mom, it was almost like you kept the door open to think, okay, this isn't like I'm not going to be skipping through the tulips here, but what a great challenge and what an amazing outcome for each of you that changed your lives.
• 12:37
  Simone Knego: Absolutely.
• 12:37
  Simone Knego: And if you think about it in terms of how how we do things on a daily basis.
• 12:45
  Simone Knego: So thinking about how you can move forward, even when you have those thoughts that say, oh no, you're not ready for this, would you say that to your best friend?
• 12:54
  Simone Knego: I mean, your friend said to you, you should do this, right?
• 12:57
  Simone Knego: But you would never say that to yourself.
• 12:59
  Simone Knego: And it's such a crazy thing.
• 13:00
  Simone Knego: We need to treat ourselves like we treat our best friends.
• 13:03
  Simone Knego: We are going to live with ourselves until the day we die.
• 13:06
  Simone Knego: So why do we want to treat ourselves crappily, in my made-up word?
• 13:11
  Simone Knego: But, you know, I mean, it's such a weird thing that we would constantly encourage our friends, but we don't encourage ourselves.
• 13:18
  Simone Knego: And so I think if we can have that shift that says, wait, I am my own best friend.
• 13:24
  Simone Knego: This is how I need to treat myself.
• 13:26
  Simone Knego: I am capable of this.
• 13:27
  Simone Knego: Like, why would I say that I'm not?
• 13:29
  Simone Knego: I've put in the work, you know.
• 13:30
  Simone Knego: I know it's that imposter syndrome that we always think we got there by mistake, like someone's gonna find us out.
• 13:36
  Simone Knego: But it's not true because we have put in the work.
• 13:38
  Simone Knego: We deserve to be there, we deserve a seat at the table.
• 13:42
  Mary: Yeah, and you talked about the word ready, and no one's ever ready.
• 13:46
  Mary: I that's where I think that is fear.
• 13:49
  Mary: That's fear saying, I'll do it when X happens.
• 13:53
  Mary: And then you just don't do it.
• 13:55
  Mary: And so many things have happened before we're really ready, and that makes it messy.
• 14:02
  Mary: It makes it much more prone to, and I'm putting, I always put failure in air quotes because failure to me isn't an end, it's a it's a learning experience, it's the next opportunity.
• 14:12
  Mary: So I think that idea of being ready is false because you just do it.
• 14:17
  Mary: And you the other thing you brought up, I know on your website it says 75% of executive women have faced imposter syndrome.
• 14:25
  Mary: And I'm gonna say the other 25% just don't recognize it.
• 14:30
  Simone Knego: Or they're not telling the truth.
• 14:31
  Simone Knego: So yeah, I mean, definitely.
• 14:34
  Simone Knego: I think that there's not a person that I know, and male or female, that doesn't struggle with something, but we're so afraid to talk about what we struggle with, but that's where we're hindering ourselves because we don't grow if we don't struggle.
• 14:54
  Simone Knego: We we don't grow if we don't fail at things.
• 14:57
  Simone Knego: And I think, you know, the idea of so I created uh a method called the real method.
• 15:03
  Simone Knego: It's all about building confidence.
• 15:04
  Simone Knego: So respect yourself, embrace your failures, ask yourself what you want and live without limits.
• 15:10
  Simone Knego: And the embrace your failures part is, and the way I say it like that, because failure is a word, but it's about learning from it, right?
• 15:18
  Simone Knego: And it's not about, oh, it's a stop sign.
• 15:20
  Simone Knego: I can't ever do this again.
• 15:22
  Simone Knego: I mean, that's how I used to think.
• 15:23
  Simone Knego: I was like, oh, I messed up there, I'm done.
• 15:26
  Simone Knego: No, like, okay, what can you do differently next time?
• 15:29
  Simone Knego: How can you help someone else do it differently next time, whatever the scenario is?
• 15:34
  Simone Knego: But don't let making one mistake stop you from doing something you've wanted to do your entire life.
• 15:41
  Simone Knego: But that's what we tend to do.
• 15:44
  Mary: Yeah.
• 15:44
  Mary: And I it makes me think of the term authenticity because we look at the finished product often.
• 15:51
  Mary: So I'll talk about my experience podcasting because I think you can relate.
• 15:55
  Mary: I would love to first of all have a daughter or a best friend to do a podcast with.
• 16:00
  Mary: So that actually planted a seed for me of a second podcast.
• 16:03
  Mary: But um, the love, the idea of authenticity, I think when we see something like a podcast with a celebrity, first of all, we have to remember they put more money into equipment, they have a team, they have editors, they have all kinds of things.
• 16:20
  Mary: So before you see that final product, they've it's gone through a lot, the same way as we see the cover, a woman on the cover of a magazine.
• 16:28
  Mary: And we have sort of normalized this as that's what it looks like.
• 16:34
  Mary: But if we look at anybody successful, they have had sometimes depths of failure before they arrive there.
• 16:42
  Mary: So it's always interesting to me that we continue to have this um this idea of what success looks like that is just so false.
• 16:55
  Simone Knego: Yeah, I I agree.
• 16:57
  Simone Knego: Every successful person out there, it depends on how you define, you know, however you define success, right?
• 17:03
  Simone Knego: I mean, because everybody's different in in their definition of everything, basically.
• 17:07
  Simone Knego: But every successful person has failed many, many times.
• 17:12
  Simone Knego: It's the idea of getting back up and doing, right?
• 17:15
  Simone Knego: It's not it's the taking action part, and that's a big part of confidence as well, is that you have to take action.
• 17:22
  Simone Knego: The thing you said before about waiting until you you feel ready, right?
• 17:26
  Simone Knego: I mean, I love to say that waiting until you feel ready is like waiting for IKEA instructions to actually make sense.
• 17:32
  Simone Knego: It is not going to happen, right?
• 17:34
  Simone Knego: And it's so true because we're like, oh, I'm not ready for that.
• 17:38
  Simone Knego: I'm not, nobody's ready.
• 17:39
  Simone Knego: You go and you do it and you learn on the job.
• 17:41
  Simone Knego: You know, there's a I think HP published this statistic that men, you know, women will only apply for a job when they meet 100% of the qualifications.
• 17:51
  Simone Knego: I think for men, it's 60%.
• 17:52
  Simone Knego: Okay.
• 17:53
  Simone Knego: If you meet 100% of the qualifications, you are overqualified.
• 17:56
  Simone Knego: You don't need to be doing that job, right?
• 17:58
  Simone Knego: I mean, part of a job is learning as you go, like so that you can expand your knowledge base, you can expand your skills, but we hold ourselves back so much to say, oh no, I can't do that.
• 18:09
  Simone Knego: That's way too much for me.
• 18:11
  Mary: Yeah.
• 18:12
  Mary: And that brings us back to what I started with that women who maybe took a break from working or they prioritized being a mom first, they don't have time to learn it.
• 18:24
  Mary: They have to do it.
• 18:25
  Mary: You know, you have a baby.
• 18:27
  Mary: It's not like you can say, oh, I'm just gonna put the baby over here on the shelf for a couple of days.
• 18:31
  Mary: I'm gonna go read this book about how to do this thing.
• 18:33
  Mary: It's ludicrous.
• 18:35
  Mary: But when we're in a position where, you know, we're getting paid, I think that's the other thing that we feel this sense of I need to earn this in a different way than men.
• 18:46
  Mary: Well, you're earning an awful lot when you're running a household and you're being a mom, but we don't monetize that because how could we?
• 18:55
  Mary: No one could pay that amount if we really could monetize it.
• 18:59
  Mary: So I think we hold these two things in our mind often that all these things I do, and you mentioned being a helper, and much many of us, we were we were not only wired that way, and I think there is truly brain wiring that women have a different level of nurture, a different ability to pay attention to those tasks in the environment and hold a lot in our brains, but we also have this idea of worth.
• 19:25
  Mary: And I've talked to a lot of women in the financial field, and women just think about money differently.
• 19:30
  Mary: We think about what it will do in instead of how do we grow it.
• 19:34
  Mary: And so I think when we go into a workplace, it we go in there with this idea.
• 19:40
  Mary: As you're saying, I need to be able to do every single thing well when I step in the door the first time.
• 19:46
  Mary: And we've we forget to look back at all the things that we taught ourselves in other situations in our life.
• 19:55
  Simone Knego: Yeah, I would say that exactly what you said about being.
• 19:59
  Simone Knego: A stay-at-home mom, having kids, whatever, whatever it is your situation, I mean, the amount of skills that you learn in that position, I'll call it a position, is greater than you can learn anywhere else, right?
• 20:12
  Simone Knego: I mean, patience.
• 20:13
  Simone Knego: I mean, imagine taking the patience you have with your kids and using it with coworkers, right?
• 20:18
  Simone Knego: I mean, a lot of coworkers don't have that patience.
• 20:21
  Simone Knego: Understanding that everybody's at a different level, everybody learns differently, everybody communicates differently.
• 20:26
  Simone Knego: Those are things that they don't teach you at work.
• 20:28
  Simone Knego: That those are things that you bring in and make a huge difference to a team because you understand that you've lived that, but we don't give ourselves credit for that.
• 20:36
  Simone Knego: And we think, oh, I'm I'm underqualified.
• 20:38
  Simone Knego: I'm not qualified because I stayed home for however many years.
• 20:42
  Simone Knego: Well, yes, you are just as qualified or more, honestly, probably more qualified.
• 20:47
  Simone Knego: Um, you just have to package it differently, right?
• 20:49
  Simone Knego: You just have to position yourself differently to show what you're capable of and not go in there with the I'm the underdog, right?
• 20:56
  Simone Knego: I think that's that's the mindset a lot of times we go in.
• 20:59
  Simone Knego: I mean, I did that, you know, when I was when I was a stay-at-home mom, I remember being out at a dinner and it was at a friend's house, and the woman I sat next to was a CEO of some big company.
• 21:10
  Simone Knego: And of course, we're making the small talk, and she says, So what do you do?
• 21:16
  Simone Knego: And I said, Oh, I'm just a stay-at-home mom.
• 21:19
  Simone Knego: And she said, Oh, I can't imagine anything worse.
• 21:23
  Simone Knego: I was like, okay, so I always feel I already feel like crap about myself.
• 21:27
  Simone Knego: And now you say this, like, yay, okay, this is gonna be a really fun dinner.
• 21:31
  Simone Knego: But it really just made me go more into my shell because I was already feeling like, okay, I'm not doing anything.
• 21:37
  Simone Knego: Like I really am not.
• 21:38
  Simone Knego: I'm what am I doing with my life?
• 21:40
  Simone Knego: And what I was doing was raising six amazing humans to go out and change the world, right?
• 21:47
  Simone Knego: And but we don't see it like that.
• 21:48
  Simone Knego: We're like, oh, we're changing diapers and we're, you know, but it it is so important that we understand our value and understand that the skills that we learn in that situation so that we can move forward.
• 22:01
  Simone Knego: And I feel like all of my life experiences have brought me to exactly where I am right now so that I can help other women realize what they're capable of.
• 22:11
  Mary: Yeah.
• 22:11
  Mary: And so one thing I want to mention before I go, take a little side road, but one thing I want to mention is when we go into that work situation, we already historically have not earned the money of men.
• 22:25
  Mary: So we're told from the beginning you're not worth as much.
• 22:29
  Mary: And so I think that feeds into that whole worth thing, which I'm sure we could do an entire episode just on that.
• 22:35
  Mary: But the other thing that I am so curious about and I want to ask you about is being a mom.
• 22:40
  Mary: I know you have three adopted children, right?
• 22:44
  Mary: Can you talk a little about what that's been like?
• 22:46
  Mary: How did that, how did they blend with your children?
• 22:49
  Mary: What just some of the some of the highlights or your thoughts about that?
• 22:53
  Mary: Because I just love that part of your story.
• 22:56
  Simone Knego: Thank you.
• 22:57
  Simone Knego: Uh chaos, complete chaos.
• 22:58
  Simone Knego: We'll start there.
• 22:59
  Simone Knego: No.
• 23:00
  Simone Knego: Um, so we had three biological children.
• 23:04
  Simone Knego: Then we adopted our son Noah from South Korea.
• 23:07
  Simone Knego: He was a baby, he was nine months old.
• 23:09
  Simone Knego: Then we adopted um Ari.
• 23:13
  Simone Knego: Yeah, Ari from Ethiopia.
• 23:15
  Simone Knego: He was four and a half years old, and then we adopted Millie from Ethiopia as well, and she was two and a half years old.
• 23:21
  Simone Knego: And, you know, it was the whole family had to come together.
• 23:27
  Simone Knego: So it's not me raising a child, it's the family bonding and raising children together.
• 23:32
  Simone Knego: So we did a vote every time we adopted, it had to be unanimous.
• 23:36
  Simone Knego: It didn't matter if they were little or not, they still had to be part of the process.
• 23:40
  Simone Knego: And I think that was really important for us because when something was happening and that was really hard.
• 23:46
  Simone Knego: The kids were like, let me help.
• 23:47
  Simone Knego: You know, we all, we all agreed for this, you know, we all agreed to this.
• 23:52
  Simone Knego: And, you know, I'm almost an empty nester now.
• 23:55
  Simone Knego: My youngest daughter is 18, which I cannot believe.
• 23:58
  Simone Knego: She'll be going off to college next year.
• 24:00
  Simone Knego: And it's just flown by.
• 24:03
  Simone Knego: But there have been so many amazing moments.
• 24:05
  Simone Knego: You know, people would ask me, do you love them any differently?
• 24:09
  Simone Knego: No, they're all my kids.
• 24:11
  Simone Knego: Like I feel exactly the same way.
• 24:13
  Simone Knego: You bond exactly the same way.
• 24:15
  Simone Knego: Doesn't matter how old they are.
• 24:17
  Simone Knego: It's, you know, every and nurture versus nature, every single kid is completely different.
• 24:23
  Simone Knego: Doesn't matter if I gave birth to them or not.
• 24:26
  Simone Knego: So just understanding working with them where they are, helping them where they are.
• 24:32
  Simone Knego: And it's just been really fun to watch.
• 24:35
  Simone Knego: I mean, my kids see the world differently because we have a multicultural family, right?
• 24:39
  Simone Knego: They they have really great humor, right?
• 24:42
  Simone Knego: They're they're just really fun to be around as they become adults and they're good humans.
• 24:48
  Simone Knego: Like that's the most important part to me is that they are the kids, they're homebodies too, which is kind of fun.
• 24:54
  Simone Knego: Where when they come home, they're like, okay, I don't want to stay over at that person's house.
• 24:57
  Simone Knego: I'm I'm staying home.
• 24:58
  Simone Knego: Okay, great, you know.
• 24:59
  Simone Knego: Um, so yeah, it's been a really great event, like to watch them grow into amazing humans.
• 25:08
  Simone Knego: And I think it's been great for our friends too, because uh being honest, I mean, we live in a very white place, right?
• 25:14
  Simone Knego: And so for them to see uh a little bit of cultural differences and wait, oh no, I shouldn't say things like that, right?
• 25:25
  Simone Knego: No, you should not say things like that, even if you're joking.
• 25:28
  Simone Knego: So I think that's been really good to watch my friends change in that way.
• 25:34
  Mary: Yeah.
• 25:35
  Mary: Well, and I think about so you had your your hat three children biologically, and then you decided, okay, let's now bring more children into this home.
• 25:44
  Mary: And I I often think about what is this like to hear when the listeners hear this?
• 25:51
  Mary: And I work with exclusively women now.
• 25:54
  Mary: So I guarantee you, and you probably know this too, there are women listening thinking, I could never do that.
• 26:00
  Mary: They might have one child and feel totally overwhelmed by that.
• 26:04
  Mary: That is valid.
• 26:05
  Mary: But you have done so many things.
• 26:09
  Mary: So for the women out there listening to this, listening to the family that you have raised and loved, this career that you've created to help other people, and they're thinking, well, that's her.
• 26:21
  Mary: I could never do that.
• 26:23
  Mary: That is limiting narratives, it's fueled by that.
• 26:26
  Mary: So, what are some of these underlying things that you would gently say, hey, reflect on this, or what fuels that when people do that?
• 26:35
  Mary: As we talked about in the beginning, they do this thing of, oh, that's her.
• 26:39
  Mary: I could never do that.
• 26:41
  Simone Knego: Would you want to?
• 26:42
  Simone Knego: I mean, that's that's the question.
• 26:43
  Simone Knego: It's really, again, words are so powerful.
• 26:46
  Simone Knego: So, same thing when I climbed Kilmanjaro, I had women say to me, Oh, I could never do that.
• 26:50
  Simone Knego: That's so hard.
• 26:51
  Simone Knego: Would you want to?
• 26:52
  Simone Knego: No, I would never want to do that.
• 26:54
  Simone Knego: Okay, well, that's your answer.
• 26:55
  Simone Knego: I would never want to do that.
• 26:56
  Simone Knego: Not I can't do that, because you absolutely could.
• 26:59
  Simone Knego: Again, I've gone camping twice.
• 27:01
  Simone Knego: You could do it, right?
• 27:02
  Simone Knego: You just have to put in the work.
• 27:04
  Simone Knego: But a lot of times that's what we do to ourselves.
• 27:08
  Simone Knego: We tell ourselves that we can't do something.
• 27:10
  Simone Knego: Most people don't want to have six children, right?
• 27:13
  Simone Knego: So that's the response.
• 27:15
  Simone Knego: It's not that you couldn't do it.
• 27:16
  Simone Knego: I mean, my sister has two, and she was really funny.
• 27:21
  Simone Knego: She said when they were little and it was like really tough, she would say, if Simone can do six, I can do two.
• 27:25
  Simone Knego: If Simone can do six, I can do two.
• 27:27
  Simone Knego: But, you know, every struggle is valid.
• 27:31
  Simone Knego: So I'll have people say to me, Oh, oh, I only have two.
• 27:34
  Simone Knego: Like, that's no big deal to you.
• 27:35
  Simone Knego: I'm like, no, your struggles are valid.
• 27:38
  Simone Knego: It doesn't matter where you are in life, like, and it's not a comparison.
• 27:44
  Simone Knego: It doesn't matter that I have six kids.
• 27:46
  Simone Knego: Did I do everything right?
• 27:48
  Simone Knego: No, what is right?
• 27:49
  Simone Knego: I mean, honestly.
• 27:50
  Simone Knego: Um, was it messy?
• 27:51
  Simone Knego: 100%.
• 27:52
  Simone Knego: You know, did we lose shoes all the time?
• 27:54
  Simone Knego: Did kids leave the house naked?
• 27:56
  Simone Knego: Yes.
• 27:56
  Simone Knego: I mean, all these things.
• 27:58
  Simone Knego: And people just have this idea of like, oh, she must, one, she must be really religious.
• 28:03
  Simone Knego: Like, that's the first thing I always get.
• 28:05
  Simone Knego: Oh, you must be really religious.
• 28:06
  Simone Knego: No, I'm not really religious, right?
• 28:08
  Simone Knego: I mean, and so that's always the funny one to me because people assume if you have a big family that you're religious.
• 28:14
  Simone Knego: Um, the second thing is that either I'm a little crazy, which maybe I don't know.
• 28:19
  Simone Knego: Um crazy in a good way.
• 28:21
  Simone Knego: Yeah, crazy in a good way.
• 28:22
  Simone Knego: Um, but you know, that it is really interesting to hear the assumptions that people have, but it is breaking that narrative of that you're capable of anything that you want, but you have to want it.
• 28:36
  Simone Knego: And that's like the third part of my method is ask yourself what you want.
• 28:40
  Simone Knego: Because it doesn't matter if someone else is doing it and you're not, because if you don't want to do it, it doesn't matter, right?
• 28:47
  Simone Knego: So it's reminding yourself of that.
• 28:49
  Simone Knego: Now, if you wanted to have six kids, you can absolutely do it.
• 28:54
  Simone Knego: If you want to climb Kilimanjaro, you can absolutely do it.
• 28:57
  Simone Knego: If you want to run a 5K and you've never done it before, it's setting the goal and putting the work, like taking action and not wait waiting for someone else to say, Oh, I think you can do this.
• 29:07
  Simone Knego: It's waiting for yourself to say, I'm and not waiting.
• 29:10
  Simone Knego: It's telling yourself I can do this now.
• 29:13
  Mary: Yeah, and you point out something really important with that idea of want, because it it brings us back to you don't do what everybody else does just because they're doing it.
• 29:24
  Mary: There's not one right path.
• 29:26
  Mary: And, you know, when I left my job when I worked for somebody else for 32 years and started to do my own thing, there's a lot of that.
• 29:33
  Mary: There's a lot of, oh, here's the right way to build your business.
• 29:35
  Mary: And nothing felt authentic to me.
• 29:38
  Mary: Like I'm not a marketer, like I can market to the end of the day, but it's not my love is really just impacting people.
• 29:47
  Mary: And so I think that authenticity and giving yourself permission to be different.
• 29:52
  Mary: So there's, I'm I have a book coming out called Nature Knows.
• 29:56
  Mary: And the the basic part of it is that we don't judge a plant that's not thriving.
• 30:01
  Mary: We don't say, oh my God, it's so lazy, it's not doing the right thing.
• 30:04
  Mary: We don't say that a sunflower should look like a fern.
• 30:07
  Mary: So in the natural world, we understand that different that different species are just different.
• 30:15
  Mary: They need different things, they don't have that brain that we think is so powerful when really it defeats us a lot.
• 30:22
  Mary: So I think the idea of think about what you want, not what you think you should want, because that's where the rich soil is.
• 30:32
  Mary: Because somebody can look at you and be like, oh, I'm such a failure because I'm raising these two kids.
• 30:37
  Mary: Why didn't I, you know, do these other things?
• 30:40
  Mary: And I think we all have a gift.
• 30:42
  Mary: You know, you're everybody brings part of themselves into the world in a different way.
• 30:47
  Mary: You have a tolerance, I think, for sort of that messy, chaotic, beautiful part of life.
• 30:54
  Mary: I don't have children.
• 30:56
  Mary: You know, I worked with kids my whole life, but I don't have my own children.
• 30:59
  Mary: And so I think for me, that would have been challenging in a different way.
• 31:03
  Mary: So I think connecting to this idea of who are you at the core?
• 31:10
  Mary: And what do you really want?
• 31:11
  Mary: Because you're right, once you know what you want, you can get there.
• 31:16
  Mary: But you need to have a goal that's yours, not somebody else's.
• 31:20
  Simone Knego: Absolutely.
• 31:21
  Simone Knego: And also, you know, so often we look at other people and we question, like, okay, first of all, why does anybody care that I have six kids?
• 31:28
  Simone Knego: Right.
• 31:29
  Simone Knego: I mean, like, why are they being like, oh, what's wrong with her?
• 31:31
  Simone Knego: Why would she have six kids?
• 31:32
  Simone Knego: Why would she adopt kids when she already has three kids?
• 31:34
  Simone Knego: It's for me, that's like always such an interesting thing.
• 31:37
  Simone Knego: And I know people are curious, and curiosity is really important.
• 31:40
  Simone Knego: But the same thing, like when you when you talk about not having kids, you know, so often, like I have a lot of friends that never had kids, and they'll get the question all the time, is there something wrong with you?
• 31:51
  Simone Knego: Like, why would you not have kids?
• 31:52
  Simone Knego: Like, why do we think that way?
• 31:54
  Simone Knego: Right.
• 31:55
  Simone Knego: I mean, or I don't understand why she can do all the things with six kids and I can't.
• 32:01
  Simone Knego: Well, I go, I do it.
• 32:02
  Simone Knego: Like that is that's really all it is, is that I decide that I want to do something and I do it.
• 32:08
  Simone Knego: And I have done this for years now, where, for example, I am just finished writing my second book.
• 32:14
  Simone Knego: It comes out in February.
• 32:16
  Simone Knego: So was I a writer when I started?
• 32:18
  Simone Knego: No, I went to school for accounting.
• 32:20
  Simone Knego: I'm a CPA by my background, but I decide that I want to do something.
• 32:25
  Simone Knego: Maybe I'm like an impulse buyer.
• 32:27
  Simone Knego: I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do it, right?
• 32:28
  Simone Knego: And I think there's benefits to that because then we can look back and say, wow, I accomplished that instead of saying, I wish I would have.
• 32:36
  Mary: Yeah.
• 32:37
  Mary: Okay, so a lot of this is about mindset.
• 32:40
  Mary: So I'm curious because I can't really relate to climbing Kilimanjaro.
• 32:44
  Mary: I did have an experience where I hiked about 220 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail.
• 32:49
  Mary: And thinking when I got there, I was in shape.
• 32:52
  Mary: And then the first day was like 23 miles, and I was like, my feet were bleeding.
• 32:58
  Mary: That is mindset.
• 32:59
  Mary: So, what were some of the things that either you encountered in that situation, you encountered raising your family, whatever it is, where you realized I got to shift this mindset where you had a big challenge and you realized the answer here through this is how I'm thinking about it.
• 33:16
  Simone Knego: So, so many times in my life.
• 33:18
  Simone Knego: So, yes, Kilimanjaro, I could have stopped on day one, right?
• 33:22
  Simone Knego: I mean, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so hard.
• 33:25
  Simone Knego: And Kilimanjaro, you start in a tropical brain forest and you end on a glacier.
• 33:29
  Simone Knego: So you're you go through so many different climate zones.
• 33:33
  Simone Knego: It's and it's a hike.
• 33:35
  Simone Knego: It's not, you know, you're not, you don't need crampons.
• 33:37
  Simone Knego: You don't, you're not climbing over boulders.
• 33:39
  Simone Knego: I mean, a little bit at the end, but you know, you're not, it's not that technical.
• 33:44
  Simone Knego: It's just challenging because of the altitude.
• 33:47
  Simone Knego: And it hurts.
• 33:48
  Simone Knego: I mean, you're going a lot of miles.
• 33:50
  Simone Knego: So I have a little mindset hack that I use.
• 33:53
  Simone Knego: It's a very creative title.
• 33:55
  Simone Knego: It's called control alt-delete.
• 33:57
  Simone Knego: Um, so back in the day, it was how you would uh restart a frozen computer.
• 34:02
  Simone Knego: Now it brings up um, oh my gosh, what's it called?
• 34:06
  Simone Knego: Project task manager.
• 34:07
  Simone Knego: I don't know what task manager does, but um it I guess it manages your tasks.
• 34:11
  Simone Knego: But um, so but sometimes our minds freeze too, right?
• 34:14
  Simone Knego: We get caught in the comparison game, we spiral in self-doubt, we tell ourselves, oh, we can't do it.
• 34:20
  Simone Knego: So control is about awareness, right?
• 34:21
  Simone Knego: We have those negative thoughts that come into our head all of the time.
• 34:24
  Simone Knego: You have to be aware of what the story that you're telling yourself, right?
• 34:28
  Simone Knego: So it's, you know, is this real?
• 34:31
  Simone Knego: Is this valid?
• 34:32
  Simone Knego: Like, what is the story that's running my moment, my day?
• 34:35
  Simone Knego: The next part is alt, the alternative.
• 34:39
  Simone Knego: Tell yourself a better story, right?
• 34:41
  Simone Knego: Our thoughts become our reality.
• 34:43
  Simone Knego: The way we talk to ourselves becomes our reality.
• 34:46
  Simone Knego: So instead of saying you can't do something, yes, you can, watch me, right?
• 34:50
  Simone Knego: Instead of saying that, um, oh, I'm gonna wait for this to happen.
• 34:54
  Simone Knego: No, you're gonna do it.
• 34:55
  Simone Knego: Like though those are the alternatives to kind of holding yourself back.
• 35:00
  Simone Knego: And the last part is delete.
• 35:02
  Simone Knego: Uh, delete the habits and beliefs that don't serve you, delete the comparison game, delete the belief that you're not enough.
• 35:08
  Simone Knego: Um, you know, delete all of the things that are holding you back.
• 35:11
  Simone Knego: Delete those toxic relationships, right?
• 35:14
  Simone Knego: Because we all have them.
• 35:15
  Simone Knego: And and that's how I move forward in the moment.
• 35:18
  Simone Knego: So if I have something happening, so on Kilimanjar, I was like, oh no, yes, you can do this, okay?
• 35:23
  Simone Knego: You know, that's not real.
• 35:25
  Simone Knego: Yes, you can, you know, and and I just kept going that way.
• 35:28
  Simone Knego: But I can tell you with raising kids as well.
• 35:31
  Simone Knego: So um my son from South Korea, he's on the autism spectrum.
• 35:37
  Simone Knego: And, you know, he's off at college now.
• 35:39
  Simone Knego: In elementary school and early middle school, we thought he will be living at home forever.
• 35:44
  Simone Knego: Like, and that's great.
• 35:45
  Simone Knego: Like we're we're set, we're good, you know.
• 35:48
  Simone Knego: Um, but it was a lot of work, a lot of patience.
• 35:53
  Simone Knego: And he is at college, he drives a car, he has friends, like all of these things that at first we thought would never happen, but I had to do that mindset shift.
• 36:04
  Simone Knego: And why, why am I thinking this way?
• 36:06
  Simone Knego: Let's see what can happen.
• 36:09
  Simone Knego: Let's think of all the positive things and let's work to the point where he can have exactly the life that he wants.
• 36:17
  Simone Knego: And so so often we get stuck in the other thing, like, oh no, they'll never be able to do this, or I'll never be able to do this.
• 36:24
  Simone Knego: Yes, you can.
• 36:27
  Mary: Yeah.
• 36:27
  Mary: And for people that I think can't fully believe that immediately, think in somewhere in between.
• 36:34
  Mary: Let's see what happens.
• 36:35
  Mary: I'm gonna do this.
• 36:36
  Mary: And I know for hiking, it's you know, let me try one more day.
• 36:40
  Mary: I never thought I'm gonna hike 220 miles.
• 36:42
  Mary: I'm gonna, I said, let me see how far I get.
• 36:45
  Mary: And then it's each day, it's that renewed commitment.
• 36:48
  Mary: And I think it's kind of like anything.
• 36:50
  Mary: It's a marriage.
• 36:51
  Mary: It's each day you recommit to saying, I'm gonna try to do this the best way I can.
• 36:56
  Mary: But, you know, I think from working in therapy when we use cognitive therapy, flipping that script, there's so many people that are like, the uh again, imposter syndrome, this is so not true.
• 37:07
  Mary: I'm lying to myself.
• 37:08
  Mary: It's like, well, you're you're you're believing a different thing that's not necessarily true.
• 37:13
  Mary: So let's just try it this other way and see what happens.
• 37:18
  Mary: And so I think that idea of letting it be possible because you're gonna find out that the new narrative is truer because you created it.
• 37:29
  Mary: You didn't listen to someone else's version of what you can do.
• 37:34
  Mary: So I love that control alt-delete.
• 37:36
  Mary: So before we end, can you talk again first about your real method?
• 37:41
  Mary: Run us through that again because I love those different parts of that.
• 37:46
  Simone Knego: Absolutely.
• 37:46
  Simone Knego: So respect yourself, embrace your failures, ask yourself what you want, and live without limits.
• 37:53
  Simone Knego: And the reason I started with respect yourself, first of all, I like the word real, I like it better than authentic.
• 37:58
  Simone Knego: But the idea of respecting yourself, I think for me, I didn't learn that until I was much older.
• 38:06
  Simone Knego: Right.
• 38:07
  Simone Knego: When I was a kid, I was taught to respect my elders, my peers, right?
• 38:10
  Simone Knego: Um, but never once do I remember being taught that the most important person to respect is myself.
• 38:16
  Simone Knego: And so that's kind of where I needed to start.
• 38:20
  Simone Knego: And I I had a lot of experiences when I was younger that did not involve self-respect.
• 38:26
  Simone Knego: I had an abusive boyfriend in high school and I didn't get it, right?
• 38:29
  Simone Knego: I didn't understand.
• 38:31
  Simone Knego: So I think when we start there, it really we're like, oh yeah, I can set boundaries without feeling guilty, right?
• 38:37
  Simone Knego: I can take care of myself.
• 38:38
  Simone Knego: I mean, self-care is so important.
• 38:40
  Simone Knego: You know, there's so many things that are part of self-respect, but we don't see them that way because nobody's ever said that.
• 38:48
  Simone Knego: And then embrace your failures we talked about before, which again is is crucial, right?
• 38:52
  Simone Knego: Why is failure a stop sign?
• 38:55
  Simone Knego: Failure isn't.
• 38:56
  Simone Knego: Failure is like, oh, what did I learn from that?
• 38:58
  Simone Knego: Well, that didn't go the way I thought it was going to go.
• 39:00
  Simone Knego: I um did something really dumb about two weeks ago.
• 39:05
  Simone Knego: So I had shoulder surgery about five months ago.
• 39:07
  Simone Knego: And my and the one thing the surgeon said to me is just don't fall down for the next year.
• 39:13
  Simone Knego: Don't fall down.
• 39:14
  Simone Knego: Like that's all.
• 39:15
  Simone Knego: Like everything else, you can start doing all the things now.
• 39:17
  Simone Knego: What did I decide to do?
• 39:18
  Simone Knego: It was like two weeks after I saw him, I wrote a mechanical bull.
• 39:22
  Simone Knego: Like, why?
• 39:23
  Simone Knego: I don't know.
• 39:25
  Simone Knego: And guess what happened?
• 39:26
  Simone Knego: I fell on the shoulder.
• 39:28
  Simone Knego: So it's been hurting ever since.
• 39:29
  Simone Knego: I'm I'm sure it's gonna be fine.
• 39:30
  Simone Knego: But you know, we we sometimes like that was a big fail.
• 39:34
  Simone Knego: Like, Simone, what were you thinking?
• 39:35
  Simone Knego: I wasn't thinking that was the problem.
• 39:37
  Simone Knego: But am I am I gonna be like harping on myself forever?
• 39:40
  Simone Knego: I'm like, no, this makes a great story now.
• 39:42
  Simone Knego: Like it is what it is.
• 39:43
  Simone Knego: So again, we're all gonna fail at things.
• 39:45
  Simone Knego: Ask yourself what you want.
• 39:47
  Simone Knego: We talked about it's it's one of the hardest things to do as women to say, like, what do you want?
• 39:52
  Simone Knego: Right.
• 39:53
  Simone Knego: Um, but it's so important that we we ask everybody else, how can I help you?
• 39:57
  Simone Knego: What do you need?
• 39:58
  Simone Knego: What do you want?
• 39:58
  Simone Knego: yourself what you want like do you want to be doing the job you're doing today i'm not saying quit your job tomorrow but you know really take a a hard look at what you're doing in your life and then living without limits i think is that's the ultimate goal but it's also a time for us to kind of reflect on stuff like the idea of how I used to talk about myself when I was younger I'm just a stay-at-home mom I'm just Rob's wife I'm just a volunteer justifying my existence and it's so important that we the way we talk about ourselves is like we would talk about our best friend like I said earlier.
• 40:40
  Simone Knego: So drop the just you are you are important you are valuable you are necessary in this world and that's exactly how I go through my method and it really you know it's all about building confidence from the inside out really understanding your value and your worth yeah and your book is coming out about mid-February is that about the real method or what what tell us a little about the book.
• 41:06
  Simone Knego: Yeah so it's all about the real method.
• 41:08
  Simone Knego: So the book is called um real confidence.
• 41:12
  Mary: I'll show you my little book.
• 41:13
  Mary: Oh exciting I love when the the actual thing arrives it's great.
• 41:17
  Simone Knego: Real confidence a simple guide to go from unsure to unshakeable and it it's really a vulnerable book for me.
• 41:26
  Simone Knego: You know I really talk about my life and talk about how raising six kids and how many times I was on the bathroom floor and my abusive relationship in high school but what I learned and and then other people's stories as well but taking my real method and helping women build confidence from the inside out because confidence is a skill it's not something you're born with or you don't have and everybody else does.
• 41:52
  Simone Knego: That's what I used to think.
• 41:53
  Simone Knego: Oh she's so confident I'll never be like that right because I wasn't born that way.
• 41:57
  Simone Knego: No, it's a skill that you build like every other skill you have to work on it every single day.
• 42:02
  Simone Knego: Just like we, you know, I mean if we're going to learn a language we don't study it one time and say, oh I'm fluent now.
• 42:07
  Simone Knego: No, we work on it every single day.
• 42:09
  Simone Knego: And it really stop starts with how you talk to yourself, right?
• 42:12
  Simone Knego: Do you really want to wake up every morning and look in the mirror and say, oh I hate everything I see.
• 42:16
  Simone Knego: No, you don't like so it starts with that self-love piece of saying you know it you can start small but looking in the mirror and reminding yourself like what you're capable of, what you like about yourself.
• 42:28
  Simone Knego: Don't go to the negative things first, right?
• 42:30
  Simone Knego: There's we're always going to have things that we don't like about ourselves but it's really about taking care of yourself and really loving yourself.
• 42:37
  Mary: And it's not about being perfect.
• 42:39
  Mary: No you know there I'm sure you have days where like with the shoulder thing where you're like what was I thinking you know we it's not that we don't we don't arrive and then we're perfect and then we never have any doubt.
• 42:51
  Mary: It's it's a process but like you're saying with learning a language building muscles the more you do it the less you're gonna fall deep into that pit of self-doubt and you're gonna just yeah you build the confidence so that the next time it's not so devastating if there's a setback because it's like oh yeah I expected this to happen at some point.
• 43:14
  Mary: And what did I learn?
• 43:16
  Mary: How am I going to get through it?
• 43:17
  Mary: So 100%.
• 43:19
  Mary: Yeah.
• 43:20
  Mary: Well thank you what a great discussion.
• 43:22
  Mary: I appreciate that you were here today.
• 43:24
  Mary: Yeah thank you so much for having me here.
• 43:25
  Mary: And I want to thank everyone for listening.
• 43:27
  Mary: So one of my dreams is coming true.
• 43:29
  Mary: I'm publishing my first book in a few months I'd love for you to be a part of it in the form of emails not spammy and not often that will be a fun break for your inbox kind of like recess with behind the scenes stories, free audios of books, excerpts and giveaways including signed copies of my book.
• 43:46
  Mary: You can sign up at maryrothwell.net forward slash launch team I will put that in the show notes as well as all the information to help you find Simone.
• 43:55
  Mary: So until next time go out into the world and be the amazing resilient vibrant violet that you are