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Luana Marques: Using Fear to Fuel Your Bold Growth · The Bold Lounge

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: My name is Leigh Burgess and I will be your host.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: If you're anything like me, you love hearing inspiring stories of people who have gone on bold journeys and made a positive impact in the world.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: This podcast is all about those kinds of stories.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Every week, we'll hear from someone who has taken a leap or embarked on an extraordinary journey.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: In addition to hearing their stories, we'll also learn about their bold growth mindset that they use to make things happen.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Whether they face challenges or doubts along the way, they persisted and ultimately achieved their goals.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: These impactful stories will leave you feeling motivated and inspired to pursue your own bold journey.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I believe everyone has a bold story waiting to be freed.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Tune in and get ready to be inspired.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Today I have Dr Luana Marquez.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: She is a global speaker, author, executive coach, associate professor at Harvard Medical School and past president of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Dr Luana's personal story of overcoming adversity, trauma and poverty while growing up in Brazil provides authenticity and depth to her message Today.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: As an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and past president of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America and bestseller author, dr Luana is the paragon of resilience, determination and boldness.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Her latest critically acclaimed book, bold Move a three-step plan to transform anxiety into power, is a testament to her ability to translate complex scientific insights into actual strategies.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Whether she's addressing a room full of CEOs, community leaders or corporate teams, she empowers them with the science-backed tools that can implement immediately to catalyze change.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge, luana.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Thanks for having me Leigh so excited to jump in.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: We just had some really fun and interesting pre-talk before the show, so would love to talk about your definition of bold.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: How does Dr Luana define?
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: bold.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: So for me, being bold is living a comfortably uncomfortable life that is guided by my values.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: So I'm always striving to be out of my comfort zone, but also always, always, knowing that my true north are my values.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: So kind of being in alignment, would you say, with your true north and with your values, and is it also a knowing when you get out of alignment?
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Our brains and our bodies are pretty good telling us when we're out of alignment right, we start to feel stressed, burnout, anxious Right, and I love that you put alignment.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: It's exactly right.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: It's this idea of like.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: If I care about impact, how do I define impact and what does it mean to live bold within that value and being here with you and all the amazing work that you do in your book coming out To me, this is impact.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: We're sharing with people, science-driven strategies.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's definitely a connection between being bold and the impact it can have in your life and the life of others, and I love that about your definition.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: So, when you think about your definition, what's a memorable moment or one of the first moments of bold, whichever comes to you first around you know you take your definition and this is when you lived it.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: I think the first time in my life that I really lived boldly was when I was 17.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: I was finishing high school in Brazil.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Portuguese, of course, is my first language, and I had an opportunity to become an exchange student in the United States, which was a dream for me, but that meant I came to the US without speaking English and so you know every day in the first six months were so hard to learn English, connect with people, but I so wanted this idea of the American dream and knowing English and what that could do to my life, and I think that was the first true bold move I made.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you stepped into fear, and what's interesting about my podcast is I asked this question right at the beginning of every podcast what's your definition of bold?
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: So I have over 200 definitions of the word, and what was interesting for my book is we went through them and looked where the words crossed over or where things were very different, and there's definitely a change that I think happens when it comes to some of the ways that people define boldness as fearlessness, which I do not.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: I think boldness is filled with fear at times and it's meant to actually keep you safe in those types of things.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: But I'm curious about do you think boldness equals fearlessness or do you think fear is part of being bold?
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: Every corporate keynote, I finish with a quote for myself, which is being bold is not being fearless.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: Being bold is living a values driven life.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: Because the reality is, if you're being bold in the way you and I are talking about, you're going to have anxiety, going to have to have fear, but you need to use that fear to propel you towards the things that matter the most.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: And, as you and I talked to before the podcast, it's hard to be bold and to invent yourself and to build your own business.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: It's going to come with fear, and so you just bring that fear along, but keep, as you said it before one step in front of the other.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: Keep going, yeah.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Fear, doubt, anxiety, stress, all these things that I know you talk about.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: They certainly all can come into play for an entrepreneur, but even in my corporate setting I'm sure I had those as well Like it doesn't discriminate, I think, from the environment, right, you know, when you think about anxiety are there certain misconceptions people have around anxiety and its connection to being bold, because one of the things that I think is there's a myth that when you're bold, that you know you're always confident and you just step into it and you just do it and you're like I'm wonderful.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: And this doesn't always for me pan out that way and I think that's a myth.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: I think it's a huge myth.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: I have anxiety most days of my life.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: In fact, growing up, I probably was a very anxious kid.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: I share about this in the book that as a kid I used to have asthma attacks, or what we conceptualize as asthma effects.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: And you know, when my parents finally divorced and my father left, the asthma attacks disappeared, and asthma doesn't disappear.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: So today, as a clinical psychologist, when I was writing Bold Move, I was like, oh my God, I had panic attacks.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: I probably was so scared for my life that the only thing I could say is I couldn't breathe.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: And so I think for most of us, when we are being bold, we are going to have some level of anxiety.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: I think what people want everybody that I've worked with doesn't matter if it's a billionaire, a millionaire or somebody coming out of prison.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter who it is.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: Everybody wants anxiety to disappear.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: They want me to take away their anxiety.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: And the reality is we can't.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: It's biologically wired to have that fear response if we perceive threat, and so I think some fear is going to be there, some anxiety is going to be there, and so the bold person is not fearless.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: They are just taking steps towards what matters the most, like you did when you started a podcast and pivoted your whole life.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a big pivot and I imagine it was scary right.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: In certain days it still is, you know, but I think you know it's that what I call the right left.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: You know, you just keep moving forward in your learning and you're figuring things out and it's really the best you can do.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: And as long as you're doing that, then I think you're ultimately working towards what is your purpose and I think that's why we're all here and it's knowing.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Going back to your definition of you know, knowing when you're out of alignment and paying attention to it, and I think for a long time in my career, like I just didn't pay attention to it, I just thought work harder, you know, be tougher, do more, and that ultimately landed me in burnout land.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: And so I think just pay attention to the signs, you know, and anyone listening hopefully they, you know, they're starting to see that and feel that and if they feel out of alignment, just don't brush it away like explore it.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: I think the same thing with anxiety, you know.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: So we have this, I think, opportunity from your book too, to understand how the patterns of our anxiety can contribute to our actions or inaction.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: How do you think we get into or what can we learn more about from all the things that you've researched around our patterns and how they contribute to anxiety, which may keep us from making those bold moves.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: Well, I think, before I even jump to patterns, I'm just going to echo what you just said to get to us to patterns, which is we all need to pause and check on our alignment.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: I liked how you said alignment, because most of the time people are just an automatic pilot and they don't even pay attention, right?
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: So in the book I talk about the idea that pause is our superpower, because if we pause, then we can observe our thoughts, our emotions, our behaviors, and I think that's how we get to the patterns.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: If you notice that every time you're driving to work, your heart is pounding a little more, your brain is racing, you're dreading a meeting with somebody, you walk out of work and you're stressed out, if you start to notice that, you're going to notice your anxieties going up and you're starting to feel stuck.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: And most people that I've worked with, when they're stuck, they do more of the same old stuff.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: They're going to work longer hours, they're going to produce more, they're going to work on the weekends and that lends them, as you called it, in burnout land instead of pausing and saying, okay, wait a second, I'm doing the same thing, I always did, but I feel horrible.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: So I need to look at this to understand.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: How do I get out of here?
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: So your three steps, which are brilliant, are shift, approach and align.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: So can you give us just a?
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: We'll jump into each one of them, but can you give us a kind of an overview of the three steps?
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: So whenever we're stuck, like you were talking about a minute ago with anxious, there's three things that happen, right?
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: One is we talk to ourselves in a very negative way, right?
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: Have you ever noticed that We've never talked to our best friends the way we talk to ourself?
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: In fact, we would never have a friend.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: Hey, you looked a little chubby today.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: You shouldn't have worn that outfit.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: You are not smart enough to sit at the table, not sure?
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: I like your tone in there.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't like your tone.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: Your voice is crackling a little much.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and all of that is that chatter in the brain, right, and those, those distorted enough, the negative thoughts, lead to a lot of anxiety.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: So shift is to literally shift our perspective, because, after all, thoughts are not facts.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: They're things, they're passing on on our head that we attach meaning and we believe, but they're not necessarily accurate most of the time.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: So in shift, I help people change their thinking, their perspective.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: Approach is my favorite skill in the world, which is every time you feel anxious, you tend to avoid, you tend to walk away.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: So instead of making a bold move, you say you know what?
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: I'm just not going to ask for a raise today because maybe I don't deserve one or no, I'm not going to tell that person that what they said upset me.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: We just sort of decrease ourselves, and so to approach is to take a step towards discomfort, right In a comfortably uncomfortable way, and then align is the idea.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: There's two ways we can approach our lives.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: One is a values-driven way, so identifying your values and aligning actions with those values, versus what most people do in emotion-driven way.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: You're driven by your anxiety, your distress, your burnout instead of actually your values.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: So in Align, I encourage people to really really align daily actions with their values, because we know scientifically that decreases stress, decreases burnout and just leads to a happier life.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what if someone at this point doesn't know how to define their values?
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Where do you help them begin to find them again?
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Because I think you know, throughout my career, somewhere along the way in my 40s, I started aligning what I was doing with the organization.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: I was in incredible organization but, like I, I wasn't all of me most of the time.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Like I became whatever I needed to do to you know, get promoted to work harder.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: To you know, do whatever the next step was and do a good job at the highest levels.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: But sometimes we may lose ourselves a little along the way and may become misaligned and ignore the signs.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: If someone's trying to find how to get realigned with their vision and their values for themselves, where should they start?
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Great point that we just said that for most of us, values will shift in different domains of our career, our professional career, and often you're going to know there is misalignment because you're doing the same thing.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: I'm going to give you a personal example.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: In my job as a researcher, harvard Medical School, in my early days I really was driven by ambition because I said to myself I work hard and I get promoted and I write more grants and more papers.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: I'm never going to have poverty again, I'm never going to be hungry.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: I need to just do this.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: And early on you loved it, like I loved writing grants.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: About 15 years into it, I wasn't loving it anymore and I just wouldn't stop and look at my values.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: I was so terrified of seeing what was going to be there that I didn't stop.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: It took me literally almost thinking I was having a stroke to pause and be like wait a minute, this is no longer working.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: And so there's two ways for us to get to those values.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: One is what I call a sweet exercise and the other one is a sour exercise.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: The idea is here.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: I'm going to stay with the sour for a second.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: The idea here is the pain, emotional pain.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: The idea here is that pain emotional pain only exists because a core value is being violated.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: So, for example, in my case, ambition was important, but at that stage of my career it was not the thing that mattered the most.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: What mattered the most to me was really impact, and I just wasn't feeling like another paper that only 100 people read actually had impact.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: You know, it felt to me like we're in early stages of the pandemic.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: I had a wait list of two years.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: People were burned out and anxious and I'm like how do I get there?
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: And so I stayed with that pain for a while and actually out of that pain came bold move, because I was like if I write a book and I share, then I can do impact right Early.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: I was like I just don't want to write anymore.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: I'm never going to write anything.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: That was avoidance, it was not about writing.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: Is that the writing needed to have a meaning?
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: And for me, the meaning was impact, and so, by asking why I was having so much pain, I identified a value that was important.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: Does that resonate with you?
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: Can you think about a time in your life?
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: Maybe?
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you know what you're getting at is like.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Sometimes the thing that is coming up as not working or feeling like it's off is the thing you need to pay attention to, but it doesn't mean you have to throw it out, Like when I suffered burnout.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: I thought, oh, I don't, I'm never going back into healthcare again Like I, it's healthcare that got me here.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: It wasn't that, it was how I took on certain things, how I own things that I didn't need to own.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: My belief system, you know.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: So like believe, own, learn, design is kind of my framework.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: But, you know, my belief system led me to think I owned everything.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: I didn't apply my learnings as much as I could, and therefore I had really designed a life that wasn't aligned with what I wanted to do, which was make a difference.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: And so I can still make a difference now, and I'm still working in health care.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Difference.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: And so I can still make a difference now, and I'm still working in healthcare.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: But for a little while I thought it was healthcare that needed to be thrown out.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: I just needed to do something different.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: It didn't have to be totally different.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right, and it sounds like you've found yourself looking at your values and thinking about how do you design your life now so that it is aligned, so that you can make an impact, but within a way that is not eating your life to make that impact.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Right and a big knowing there too.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: And I, you know I'm sure you've found this and I, you know, I see it in parts of your book is you realize you're also in charge of that?
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Like no one else owns that right.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Your bold move is your bold move.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: It's personal, being bold is personal and that definition is personal as well.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: So I think that's something too like where I was looking to get a promotion or get a title, or, you know, that wasn't the whole me either.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Like I wanted to feel aligned with my values in a 360 degree way, which was something I had to do.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: Introspection on what that would look like.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so important.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: I'm so glad you brought this up because often when I'm talking about bold move, they're like, well, it has to be a grand bold move.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: I was like no, it's your bold move.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: And sometimes for some people a bold move is just taking a walk every day because they haven't exercised and moved their body and for them just getting out of the house is a bold move.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: Talking to a stranger, asking somebody else on a date, saying no, saying no is such a bold move?
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely I think.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: And your anxiety is something that you know that's personal to how it affects you.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: How it impacts you, how it may feel like it's keeping you from doing something is very different about how you are going to address it, because it's your journey, it's how you do it.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: So, like that bold move, like you said, taking a walk, talking to someone, like you know, it doesn't have to be something big, it doesn't have to be on social media, it doesn't have to have a picture Like it's something that's yours.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: And I think I I've said this before, but some of my boldest moves are, you know, between my ears, you know like they're just me getting out of my own head of like, yes, you can.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: No, you're not, that's okay.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Yes, sure enough, like get over it.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Whatever the mantra is of the day, it's sometimes just me and myself that need to kind of work through it.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: As we said in the beginning, being bold is not being fearless, and sometimes it's just stopping that inner chatter from actually controlling our actions and just continue to make bold moves and eventually, you know, they take off.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so tell us a little about you.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Have this awesome concept in there in your book.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: It's called the cognitive triad, so it's our thoughts, behaviors and emotions, so the TEB cycle, and so tell us a little bit more about how that also comes into play when we're thinking or moving through anxiety and our next move.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: So the cognitive triad is a classical concept on cognitive behavior therapy, which basically is the idea that what we say to ourselves affects how we feel and how we feel affects what we do, and they ping pong together.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: So let me give you an example.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: Right before this call, I shared with you that my husband has a career opportunity.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: They might land us to move.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: We don't know yet, but the situation is a potential move.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: And I woke up this morning my brain's like, oh my God, I can't move my son.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: This is going to be horrible.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: He loves his schools.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: Then my heart started to pound.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: I felt really anxious and then my behavior was like maybe we shouldn't move.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: I called my husband to say you know, I don't know if we should really do this to try to control.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: So it really is like a situation pretty quickly triggers this cascade of thoughts, emotions and behaviors.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: But the thing is this we can slow it down.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: I talk about this in the book.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: The thoughts, emotions and behavior cycle allows us to pause and activate our thinking brain.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: So what I had to do before this interview really actually was sitting down and write my own thoughts, emotions and behavior cycle so that I can be present with you Because I was like OK, my thinking today is a lot distorted and I need to calm down my brain so I can show up with you.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then we had a really fun conversation and some commonalities about some of the things.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: So it's kind of serendipitous and talking today for sure.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: So a strategy is to slow down when sometimes we are thinking we need to move faster or do more.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: So I don't know if that's common in kind of the work that you've done, of someone that wants anxiety to go away or wants something to be easier.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: It means I just need to do more or maybe try harder.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: So how do we get out of that loop of?
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: That is the solution, when sometimes it might be slowing down and doing less?
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: So by the time I'm in a corporation, I'm working with CEOs or teams, I'm running workshops with teams.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: What I always joke about is doing more had worked.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: You didn't have hired me because you're all doing and here we are Right.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: The reality is it's sort of like this you cannot drive a car with four flat tires.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: You can't.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: And yeah, we keep saying we can.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: We're just going to fill up the tire here, fill up the tire here a little bit, and we try to push more and more.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: And what I say to people is the first thing we need to do is pause.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: Let's recalibrate your life a little bit.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Let's activate your thinking brain, identify values eventually, so that you can think about where you're going.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: Otherwise, you're just spinning, burning rubber and not going anywhere.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how do we know we're going through the cycles, when we're getting through shift and getting to approach?
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Is there anything like that's a marker for it or helps us understand like well, we're really doing it, we're moving through to the next phase of our bold move and defining it?
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: So when you get what psychologists call cognitive flexibility which I just think about as yoga of the brain, really is the idea that a thought comes up you don't buy into that thought immediately.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: You can either counter it with a more balanced thought or you can just sort of go oh, that was silly.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: I don't believe that I am enough.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: Like for me, growing up with adversity and trauma, I had this early belief that I was not enough and my way to manage that was doing more and more and more.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: I was never going to be enough by doing I needed to be.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: So we can know we're doing well with shift and getting to approach when we don't get so stuck on our thinking and then when we get to approach?
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: how do we know what we're supposed to actually get at or address?
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Is it what?
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: Like we talked about the noticing of what's coming up or where we're getting anxiety.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: That is our first step.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Friday to Saturday midday off mentally, and then I would be back to work.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Afternoon of Saturday and Sunday was a full work day and then, you know, I was usually dreading going to work on Monday because it was just like full on.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: You know, it was just the way life was like.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: This is just how it is and that's really a messed up way to be living.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Honestly, now that I can say it out loud, but I was doing it it really is miserable, isn't it?
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think for me, you know I'm not sure I shifted early enough Like I got to a point it was affecting my health and my relationships and my whole persona, like I just wasn't me.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: That's when I was like that's enough, like I just can't do it.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: So it like I hate for people to get to that point that it's that that's enough.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Like I just can't do it.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: So it like I hate for people to get to that point that it's that.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: That's that deep, that's that egregious you know it'd be nice for people to see it sooner.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: I think your book kind of lays it out nicer, so people don't have to get to that point.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: But is that really the first noticing when you get into the approach?
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: So you know, if you think about approach, it really is what in the book I call opposite action.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: If about approach, it really is what in the book I call opposite action.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: If we think about for in your case, I'm just going to use your example, if that's okay I heard that you're stressed and you're anxious and to not feel that anxiety and stress.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: You overworked, right.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: So the way that you're trying to manage is avoiding emotions by overworking.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Opposite action on that would be something like this let's take a walk at lunchtime and listen to your favorite song.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Let's leave work at four instead of six.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Let's create space in your life for you, because what I hear you telling me is that you weren't there anymore.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Your actions were there.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: You're doing everything.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: You're getting what I think is the M&Ms of life right Good job, good reputation, great school that you're working on.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: People are saying, oh my God, you're climbing, doing great, but internally you're feeling miserable.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: So the opposite action would be to not overwork, but my prediction you're stuck on.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: What I would have called remain to avoid Is the devil that we know is better than the devil we don't know.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: Is this story we tell ourselves.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: So we do more of the stuff that's hurting us and the solution here is really to halt.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: I often say to somebody we need to implode your life a little bit and in fact I hear that you did exactly that.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: You said you know what done like I'm your textbook.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: Like done this is not no longer because, see, by the time you got to that done I hear that your fever was so high that was either out or your physical health would be a cost you needed to implode.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: And I hear that today you're living a value-driven life.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: You have your be bold today book coming out and I can just from the brief conversation we had before you're living with a lot more value, a center point, and that seems to me what changed significantly for you yeah, I kind of figured out who I was again and then honestly started accepting who I was and who I was not.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: And because you go through your career and there's these conventions or expectations that that people have of you, and some of them for good and some of them, you know, people really don't know you.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Like you said, oh, you're climbing, you have this role.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Look, look at you, you're a chief and you're only 40 years old, like wow, that's incredible.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: But I paid the price.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: You know, for me, like things that were important had to be back, partnered and those types of things.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: So I think for me I did get to that point of implosion, which we don't want people to get to, but, like, once it happens, like for me it became this freedom and I think it's interesting that I think people try to at least I think, and you can educate me but they think anxiety is a bad thing.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: I got to get rid of it, I got to avoid it, I got to make sure it's, you know, muted, when actually it's telling you something, right?
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: Yes, anxiety is in what I said.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: It's a high fever and it tells you that some part of your life is not working well and you've got to pause, listen to it and realign as fast as possible.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: And let's be honest with everybody listening to us, it's going to be scary.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: You're going to have a little more anxiety in the beginning because it's uncertain and the brain doesn't like uncertainty, but it's, in my professional and personal opinion, is the only way to have a meaningful life.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's not a one and done, like it's not like.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, I just do the three steps once and I'm good, it's all.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: I just do the bold framework once and I'm done.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: No, like you're going to come back and visit it.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Maybe you don't need as much time on step one, but you need to revisit.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: You know how you're approaching things right now and what you're doing with some of the things that are popping up in your life, but I think that's important too.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: Right, it's not just like you do it once.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: No, everybody wants to get a six pack overnight.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: I've never seen one.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: You have to go to the gym, you have to eat healthy and really focus on it and bold move.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: The way I wrote it is you know, exercise for your brain.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: And the same way, if you stop exercising physically, your body won't look the same.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: If you stop exercising your brain, your brain won't be the same.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw a quote yesterday.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: It was like everyone is a 10 year overnight success.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: Yes, meaning like what you see on social media is like an overnight success, but it's taken them 10 years of hard work.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: I'm in year four and I'm like this is tough stuff, you know, making it this far, first of all, like women, entrepreneurs usually don't even last this long Doing the things that I've done in the short period of time.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Most women don't do that, but it's like I don't think about that kind of stuff, I just think, wow, I'm in year four and I still feel like it's tough on certain days and I still feel like I don't have things figured out and I still get anxiety.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: you know, and I think what I'm doing now better than I did before, now that I know some of these things, is that I'm rebounding faster.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean anxiety doesn't come up and like you're anxiety free.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: That's just.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: That's not real right?
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: No, and it's a great perspective you have.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: You know the anxiety lasts not as long.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: You're able to shift a lot faster, in my experience, and also you start to tolerate that discomfort a lot better.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: That's my experience as well as an entrepreneur, as a woman that's just launching my own business the idea of saying, oh my God, I have a business and like, this is what the business is and this is what we sell and this is what I do, and I can tolerate the discomfort better, but it's going to be comfortably uncomfortable.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and I think that means you're growing, and that means you're learning and you're doing something.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: You're already succeeding because you're doing something other people wish they could.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: I think sometimes too, like making sure we have the right voices around us when we're going through.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Some of this is important, like thinking about your community.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: What point, you know, when you think about the three steps, where does community and connection and, you know, support come in?
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Is it more so when you're in the shift, is it when you're in approach, or is it when you're in a line or all the above?
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: And the reason I put values as the last part in the book is it's really hard to identify values if you're just negative in your brain all the time or if you're scared all the time.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: There isn't enough capacity.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: And so for most people when I'm guiding them, by the time we get to values, the temperature has come down a bit, they're not as anxious, their brain's not spinning as much they might have left.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: The situation.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: That wasn't good for them.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: And then I think belonging and connection and it has to be purposeful right.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: For me, as I shared with you in the beginning, impact is my top professional value and in my experience it's really hard to hold more than three to five values at a time and live a value-driven life.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: And so for me, every time that I go to do something that's professional, I was like what is the impact?
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: And I define it Like today, if we finish this conversation and I knew that you learned one little thing about my book and me, then to me that's impact and your listeners will get that.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: And if I'm giving a presentation, if one person comes to me and says, wow, that was really helpful, that's impact and we have to like really to get connection.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: As you said, in belonging we need to be very thoughtful about what the value is and what is the action aligned with it.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think sometimes it's such an important thing you just said.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: I think sometimes we think our impact equals something that can be unreasonable, at least in my case.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Like I think impact is, you know it's it just doesn't need to be just like a bold move, it doesn't need to be this huge loud thing, right, like someone asked me, why are you writing a book?
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: And I said I just want people to believe that they can live their life aligned with their passion and purpose.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: And they said what's your goal?
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: And I said I want to sell one book, which I already did because my mom, she, bought my first book.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: But I think just having an impact to me like making a difference, you know, helping people solve problems for good, like that for good they don't come back and for good of our world, you know.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: So I think you know really thinking about what your values are, taking time to do, that is really, really important because it will lead to your bold move, your quiet bold move, or your loud bold move, or somewhere in between.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so, as you get into alignment, as we kind of finish out the three steps, what should someone begin to realize or feel or have a knowing about that.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: They didn't when they first started in the steps.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: So by the time we get to a values driven life and you identified your values, what you should be able to do is what we've been talking about a minute ago, which is you're going to tolerate the stress a lot better.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: You're going to know.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: For me, one of the best things about identifying my values and really being purposeful about it is my yeses and nos are value-driven.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to say no to something just to say no or yes.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: I ask myself is this aligned with impact?
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: Is this aligned with you know, this year for me, professionally, I want to build some sense of wealth and stability financially, and so I need you to go okay, is this going to financially be stable?
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: If not, then what kind of level of impact this is going to have so that I can still dedicate my time for it, and so it allows me to have less stress on a day-to-day.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: I do this every Sunday, for example.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: I look at my calendar and I go impact, health and family.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: I look at my agenda and I ask myself is my day aligned that way?
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: And if there's like five meetings that are not purposeful, I might reschedule something.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: We still have to do some meetings that we don't really are super aligned because maybe they're exploratory meetings and you don't know what's going to come out of them.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: But I try to not go one after the other without impact or family or health, because otherwise I feel stressed and burned out.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so when we think about kind of going through those, is there like a finish line or like, is there something that we feel or like, when you've made it through those steps, you're aligned, you're dealing with things better, you're pivoting, you're noticing.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: So those are all things I think people can use as they go through your three steps, particularly in their bold move.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: And their bold move maybe choosing themselves and maybe you know taking that walk and maybe making that phone call to that person they haven't talked to in a while.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: You know saying I'm sorry, I mean there's so many variations of bold, but what would be your guidance or advice for someone who now realizes they've been avoiding something, avoiding change, avoiding the conversation, avoiding they have to do something different.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: What would be your guidance?
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's start fighting.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: The real enemy.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: In the book I call avoidance, psychological avoidance, and it's our reaction to perceived threat.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: And so you walk in your house, your partner gives you a look, your brain says he's bad at me and you decide to walk away instead of approaching it right.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: Every time we avoid, we are training our brains that we can't handle the situation, and avoidance, then, is the real enemy.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: It's not anxiety, it's not stress nor burnout Not that those things are not problems, right.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: But what maintains anxiety, what maintains burnout, is avoidance.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: Right, we talked about your situation before you had to implode.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: My sense is you're avoiding the reality that what you're doing no longer was satisfying for you in the current definition of your life, similar to where I was writing grants and going wait a minute.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: Another grant is not going to change the mental health in the world.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: I need to be out there making those bold moves to help people do it, and so really is identify avoidance and then use these skills in the book to get out of avoidance.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: All right, let's stick with this just for a second, because I think one of the reasons that I think I avoided now that I see it is that I felt it was selfish, like I thought, wow, I have responsibilities, I have, this is an important job.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: Like I have a team, like I have a family, I can't make a change.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: I have to tough it out, I have to keep going and it's so selfish of me to think that I could change.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: This is important because women often think of that right.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: Women often believe that they can't put themselves first.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah Right, but the reality is you're about to, you know, earn yourself physically and your relationships that matter the most.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: That's not selfish, right.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: It's illogical what I said.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: It's totally illogical what I said, but that's how I felt.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: Like you know, I can't not have a job.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, we need this to pay the mortgage and to have a house and, you know, to have a car.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: That you know.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: So.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: But it was like all these rationalizations of why I was avoiding and so I was rationalizing it out the wazoo.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: We tell stories to ourselves to maintain the avoidance, and it's really hard when there are financial situations, like for me, for example, as I am starting my business, as I told you, and I'm taking some bold moves towards moving away from academia.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: It's very, very scary because my brain says you're going to be poor again, you're not going to be able to pay the mortgage, and so it's not like that.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: I don't have the very similar thoughts.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: The only thing and we talked about this off of Lyme in the beginning academia was going to kill me Literally.
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: I just would be miserable.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't be a good mother, I wouldn't be a good partner, I wouldn't be a good human being anymore.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: So to me it is really scary to do it, but it's really self-love, so that we can show up fully as our human beings.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it wasn't selfish, it was self-love, and I think that's one of the things that I think I started to do, and we didn't talk about this, but I always thought it'd be cool to write an album about your life and like every song is a particular chapter of your life.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: So I ended up actually doing that with a band in Nashville and one of the lines in one of the songs I helped co-write they are all the talent, but I helped co-write lyrics One of the lines is fall in love with yourself and it was like I had to do that and it was the weirdest thing to be doing in my almost fifties, but it was so necessary because I had gotten to that point and I think, just you know, the majority of my listeners are women and I just want them to hear like making this move or even thinking about it or planning.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: It is actually self-love and that's so well said because it isn't selfish and it is something that you know.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: You want to be the happiest you, so that you can give to yourself and to others and be at the highest level of joy for the life that you have.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: So, so, so important.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: I love that you did that.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: One of my good friends in Brazil.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: She's written three or four books.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: Every time she releases a new book she releases a track record with the book and tell people to listen to this song before this chapter because it will help them feel like change their brain and I just I love that.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: Maybe I'll do that with my book.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: That's why I shared with you, cause I could see you doing it and you know she's big in the social media in Brazil and people love it.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: If you're connected to her, if you're connected to the songs, you're connected to songs?
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: yeah, definitely, so, yeah.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: So, so, explore, be curious, have fun.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: You know, I think that's one thing also I do more of is, even though I'm all about having fun like I, just I allow myself to have fun and and take a break, and you know that is a bold move, believe it or not, taking a break making time for yourself and living a joyful life is a bold move, because the majority of the world is not doing it right now.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd love to end on that.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being on the bold lounge, for sharing it.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: All the information about bold move where to get the book and pick it up and connect with Dr Luana is in the notes.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being on the lounge, thank you.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: Through the continuum of bold stories vulnerability to taking a leap you will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact for others through their unique and important story.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: By highlighting these stories, we hope to inspire others and share the journey of those with a bold mindset.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: We hope you've enjoyed this podcast and look forward to sharing the next bold journey with you.