#41 - Vulnerability & Ego
Hey, hey ladies. How are you? You guys, I cannot believe we're already on episode 41. I hope that you thoroughly enjoyed the last 10 episodes on competition prep. I have received so many emails and so many Instagram messages from competitors and women who inspire to be competitors about how helpful and inspiring and educating those last 10 episodes were, and I am so filled with all the good feelings you guys. I'm so glad you're enjoying this podcast and that the content that I'm putting out into the world is being received with so much gratitude and excitement. It makes sitting down to record these podcasts so much more meaningful.
So next up, we're diving into a new series. And originally I had planned to make the next 10 episodes about what I offer, the products that I've created, what I teach, you can work with me on all of that stuff. An idea came to me this past week that felt urgent. It felt important. It was something I couldn't put to the side. And so I've decided to change. What the next 10 episodes are going to be everything I pre recorded I'm going to, you know, put it aside. We'll come back to it. And I'm going to rerecord. And the next 10 episodes, I'm going to take you guys through. A journey of me getting really comfortable with being uncomfortable. The next 10 episodes are going to be called the vulnerability series. And basically I'm going to expose myself to you, not visually. I'm going to expose my inner thoughts to you, my fears, my most painful experiences, my secrets and everything I've learned along the way.
I'm turning 40 in just under 60 days and moving into my 40th birthday. I have been doing so much work on my emotional health, my ability to process emotion. And I've been working with what's called a somatic therapist, which is someone who through talk therapy and energy healing helps your body process emotion that may be stored from experiences that you went through, that you didn't process the emotion. And I have been deep diving into different experiences in my past that I've been holding onto that have been causing me internal pain or anxiety or sadness or shame or humiliation that I haven't released. And so I've been doing my own work on releasing these, but what I've learned is through speaking with my somatic therapist and talking to my friends and my family members about these very personal experiences, but every time I talk about it, I feel a little bit lighter. And I feel more connected to the person that I'm talking about it with. So I thought to myself, what is the biggest step forward? I can take over the next two months to process my emotional vulnerability. And I was like, I'm going to do some podcasts on it. I just gotta put it out into the entire world, to be judged and to be criticized. I'm going to risk it all in hopes that there are women out there who are holding on to the same emotions and their experiences to get to that emotion might be very different. But I'm going to share with you guys some of the tools, the techniques, the processing that I am doing and hope that it will help you. And that you'll feel more connected to me. And that you'll realize that we are all just human. Having a human experience and all of the emotions, we feel the good, the negative. Are part of that human experience. And we can find ways to learn and grow and become better versions of ourselves in the process. Are you ready?
Let's go. Episode number 41, vulnerability and ego. First, I looked up in the Oxford dictionary, what the definition for vulnerability is because I was like, why do we want to get vulnerable? vulnerability is not something I have ever tried to achieve, ever, right. I feel like I've spent my entire life trying to be the opposite of vulnerable. I've tried to be strong and courageous and armored right. Why is emotional vulnerability, something we need to lean into and what it says is vulnerability is the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed either physically or emotionally.
You guys can't see me right now, but I am rolling my eyeballs. Like, that doesn't sound great. I'm like, why do I want to expose myself to the possibility of being attacked or harmed? That doesn't sound good at all. So I kept looking and I came across you guys. Okay. First off, if you had never googled the vulnerability, go google vulnerability, the amount of information that came up, the websites and the content that came up was so good. Like so much better, I've Google trauma, I've googled self-help, I've googled a ton of topics that go along with that and vulnerability is by far the most educating word I have ever googled in terms of the good content that came up. So I came across another website called very well minded.. And it says vulnerability is a state of emotional exposure that comes with a certain degree of uncertainty. It involves a person's willingness to accept the emotional risk that comes from being open and willing to love and be loved. Now that definition I can, you know, I can get on board with that. That feels really good to me because some of you who are in my circle in Lady Sculpt, you know, I've been doing a lot of work on this, or if you're in the transformation program, we've been doing a ton of work on self love, and I'm learning to love myself on a level that I have never been on before. And I think that being vulnerable, emotionally invulnerable, exposing myself to the risk, is helping me connect with me on such a deeper level. So on the same website, they talk about, you know, why, what are the benefits of being emotionally vulnerable. And it talks about this, having greater strength, putting yourself into situations where you feel vulnerable can be a way to gain confidence and belief in your ability to handle challenging situations. This can help make you more resilient in the face of life's difficulties. I was like, yes, sign me up. It also says that being emotionally vulnerable will strengthen your relationships. Being vulnerable with others is a way to foster intimacy. It can deepen your compassion, empathy, and connection to the other people around you in your life. Again, I was like, yes. sign me up. And the last thing it mentions is improving self-acceptance and I was like, okay. This is why I'm here. It says being vulnerable allows you to accept and embrace different aspects of yourself. This can foster greater confidence and authenticity. You guys, this is the journey that I am on right now, moving into my 40th year, my 41st year. But my 40th birthday is just a complete self-acceptance and a complete willingness to fail forward and to love myself hard during the whole process of it. So I really want to encourage you to travel this journey with me. If you're somebody who is kind of shied away from being vulnerable the same way I have over the last 40 years of my life. I want to encourage you over the next 10 episodes to ponder and think about ways that you can show up for you in a more vulnerable way, and maybe talk to the people around you or write in your journal. And open up to yourself about how you feel about situations and circumstances, things you've said and done in the past that you might be holding on to emotion around.
Okay. So, along with vulnerability. I decided each episode over the next 10 episodes. I'm going to title them vulnerability and something. And I decided to start with ego because I think that ego is what gets in the way of us, stepping into emotional vulnerability, us stepping into being vulnerable with other people as well. Right. We have this thing called ego, this sense of self-importance, this sense of self esteem. And the little ego voice in our brain is like, oh, don't share with them. All of the things that you are scared of and feel terrible about and are ashamed of and are insecure about because they'll judge you for that, or because it will change their opinion of you, or because we want them to think that you're strong and invincible and superhuman. Right. So that ego in order for us to be emotionally vulnerable, we need to kind of grasp onto that personal ego. And put it to the side and really be aware of when our ego is talking. And how we want to and handle those situations. Something that I'm doing is I'm really noticing, when my ego steps in and I'm kind of leaning in to the opposite of what my ego wants me to do. I know that sounds weird, but my ego is like, don't do podcasts on vulnerability. That's crazy. And I'm like, okay. That means I should probably do it. I might go like, don't put pictures on Instagram of what you look like when you're, I don't know if you guys saw this. I posted a photo on Instagram, so yesterday I opened my zoom on my phone and it instantly turned my camera on facing me. Right. And I had my phone in my lap and I was looking down at it and I actually laughed out loud at the image of me that was on the zoom looking down with like, seven chins and just. It was, I've just, I've never seen myself look like that ever. So I screenshotted it because it reminded me, honestly, of like one of the alien actors in men in black, like, you know, when they were changing from. humans to aliens. I looked like that. I'm mad I took a regular photo of me and I put them side by side. And I posted this on my stories on Instagram. And my ego was like, what are you doing, man? He goes like, this is a terrible idea, but I leaned into that because both of those photos are me, in human form in different moments, only seconds apart. And they're both beautiful in their own way. And I can totally see the humor in that first photo and recognize that sometimes. I look like that. It's part of me and that's okay. Right. I love the idea of. being able to see that not cringe. I also have really embraced just all the photos of me. This is something I learned from my coach, Brooke Castillo. She talked about how she never judges photos of herself, you know how we go through photos? And we're like, oh, we don't like baby. Look at that one. And that one, we look funny and that one, our eyes are crossed and that one. No. Every single photo of you is you in a moment and in some moments we don't look, where we want to look, right? Some moments, we look a little hilarious, some moments we look, you know, half awake. It's fine. Right. When I embraced this way of thinking. Life became so much easier. Taking a selfie only meant taking one photo and being fine with it. Sometimes, you know, you still take two or three for that best image, but you don't judge all the photos in the meantime, you look for the best image and when I'm taking photos with other people or a group one at and done. If they want to take more than that, it's fine. I'll smile and, and be available to them for more photos. But I have decided to love myself in every photo. And this is me moving away from my ego because my ego wants to take 50 photos. Right. My ego wants the best photo, my ego judges every photo thinking about what everyone else will think, because it wants to keep my self esteem intact. But what if my self-esteem could be intact no matter what. And I think emotional vulnerability and learning to love yourself so hard and love every picture of you so hard, it's such a beautiful example of re-setting your ego.
Let's talk about this a little bit more. So I looked up ego in the dictionary as well, and it basically said a person's sense of self-esteem or self-importance, an example of ego ego is defined as the view of a person has of him or herself. An example of ego is thinking you are the smartest person on earth. But I think we can change our ego. I think we can find a beautiful place where ego and humility kind of come together. To me humility is kind of the opposite of ego. So the definition of humility is a modest or low view of one's own importance or a humbleness. And I want to offer that you are not your ego. You are not the thoughts you have of yourself that are judging you. I feel like our ego is like our own, self-critic, our own self judge. And I feel like the more we push into, that ego push back against that ego, the more we can change that ego. And make that ego more humble, make that ego full of self love, make that ego less of a critic.
So I want to give you an example. I want to give you a very recent example of my ego. And this was pointed out to me in such a beautiful way. And I don't think that anyone else noticed it, but recently I was on a call, a team sculpt competition prep call. And I was talking with one of my athletes who just went pro, shouting up to Ms. Tori. Congrats on your new pro card, babe. Um, she was at a competition out in Winnipeg, a WNBF Amateur competition. And there were seven bikini girls in the class and there needed to be eight in order for there to be a pro card given away. And one of the volunteers at that show stepped up and said, hey, I'm just starting my prep. I'm not going to win. But I'll compete just so that there are enough competitors to give a pro card away. Now, I don't know if all federations would allow this, but I've seen this happen now in multiple federations. And in this particular case, this volunteer got tan, she borrowed a suit from a friend or a family member that was competing and she jumped on stage at that moment. And she did it purely for the benefit of whomever deserved to walk away with that pro card. She went in from the ultimate place of humility and humbleness, knowing that it wasn't necessarily going to benefit her, hopefully she had a wonderful experience. Hopefully she got some of those first time onstage nerves out. May have fun during the experience. But my athlete, Ms. Tori benefited in such a huge way because she walked away that day with the pro card and had that athlete not, put her ego aside and offered to do that. Tori wouldn't have had a pro car today. And when Tori was telling us the story on this call, I realized that in the past I have, as a coach. I told my athletes that if they are asked to compete in categories, that they are not prepared for or in shows that they are not planning to do that. They should not do it because they won't be ready and it's not a showmanship of what they're capable of, what their best potential is. And what I realized during this call was my ego. If one of my athletes has the humility to offer to get onstage when they are not in their best, to benefit, to make available a pro card for someone else’s benefit. As a coach, I want to support that. I want to encourage that. I want to be able to put my ego aside and tell that athlete how proud of them. I am, I want to be that kind of athlete. So this was a huge learning experience for me. I actually sat down after this call. I had this moment in this call with my community where I noticed that my beliefs on this, my actions in the past had been from a place of ego. And it didn't align with the coach and the human that I want to be anymore. And so I sat down after the call and I did some journaling on it. And I recognized that having an athlete get on stage who wasn't ready or didn't know the right poses or was in the wrong suit for the category. Made me feel like I would be judged as a coach would make me look bad as a coach. But after being on the other side of this, after being the coach of an athlete that was able to move up. And into a pro class because of an athlete that stepped up. It was like, I was showing it from a whole different side, a whole different angle. And I was able to go, oh, I need to put my ego aside. I want to teach my athletes to put their egos aside. I want my athletes to be that kind of person. I want to be that kind of person. It was a wonderful, wonderful learning experience for me. And by chance, if that athlete out in Winnipeg, that volunteer who stepped up just a couple of weeks ago, if you're listening to this. I just want to say, thank you. Thank you so much for putting your ego aside and making such a humble gesture. We appreciate you. We are so glad that you are part of the WNBF family. Okay. So that's my story, that's my example.
Each podcast over the next 10, I'm going to give a personal example of me, working through something so that it gets it off of my chest. It allows me to process it in a really nice, healthy way. And you guys can see the process of it, right. That, the me realizing in that moment that my way of thinking my belief in the past was coming from a place of ego. And not just swallowing it, not just setting it aside. But actually sitting down and doing work on it, writing out how I felt about it. And how I wanted to do things differently going forward. That process, you guys, that awareness of past mistakes and past failures and that decision, that creation of what you want to do, what your future self can do better, is how you change who you are. It's what I teach in transformation in terms of how you change your nutrition habits. It's what I teach in contest prep in terms of how you become a world-class athlete. And it's also how we learn to be better humans. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about my ego and my sense of self. Are you guys ready?
So a sense of self is self-esteem and self-importance. So when I look back in my twenties, I thought I knew everything. And I was extremely insecure. So my ego was kind of this inflated. I thought I knew like literally I thought I knew everything. If someone had a different opinion than me, or was trying to teach me something, I was pretty closed off to it. I was like, my way is better. And I coached that way. I was like, this is how it's gonna be done. I was not open to working with my clients in the same way that I am now, by any means. And I wasn't open to what other coaches or what other trainers or learning in any way? I didn't listen to podcasts or YouTube channels or Ted talks or read books on self development, right. I did take courses. I would learn from professors on subjects that I didn't know about. I remember doing my business certification in my twenties. But when it came to fitness, I thought I knew everything and I was so insecure in my own skin. So I was constantly living in this state of trying to hide my insecurity by proving that I knew everything. It was a very tough time to be in who can relate to this who in their twenties thought they knew everything and was insanely insecure. All right. And then moving into my thirties, I realized that I had so much to learn and it kind of happened more into my mid to late thirties even I'd say my twenties kind of stretched into my mid thirties when I turned 30, I remember feeling like I'm an adult now and I can make my own decisions without having to justify them. But I don't think I really realized how little I knew and how much I had to learn and how much self development I needed to do. Until I was in my mid thirties. During this whole process, I was extremely hard on myself. When I realized how much I had to learn, I had judged myself for not starting sooner, so hard. And I deep dove into learning all of it, so hard. And I feel like my ego had a lot to do with that. My ego was like, girl, you thought you knew everything, but you didn't. And now you got to learn it all. And now you're like 10 years behind. So you better get going. That was my ego. And now, I'm quickly approaching 40 and I want to let you know kind of where I am now with my sense of self. Now, I am in the mindset that every single person that I meet, no matter their age, no matter where they came from their walk of life, no matter what they're doing with their life now, has something to teach me. If I am willing to listen and learn. And this has made me so much more open to experiencing all of it, every connection. A quote that I love and I really try and embody in my life right now is be interested instead of interesting. I spent most of my life trying to be interesting. I would meet somebody and within 10 minutes they would know everything I had accomplished and everything I knew, and that should have been a warning sign to me. If you can tell somebody everything, you know, in 10 minutes, you did not know that much, right. And now when I meet somebody new, I want to know everything I can, I want to learn everything possible about them. Other people are so much more interesting than I am. I know everything about me. I know myself. I want to learn about you. I want to walk away from our conversation, feeling like I made a connection. I got to know you better. I know a piece of your story. I feel like this new mindset, this new sense of self, this openness, this willingness, this pushing aside of my ego has opened me up to being more available to my human experience. And you guys, no matter what age you are listening to this podcast, it is never too late to do this. I feel like at 39 I'm still judging myself a little bit for figuring this out so late in life. But it feels wonderful. I feel like, oh, now we start living. This is when it gets really good. And I'm so excited for the next 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 50 years. Right? I'm so excited to move forward from this sense of self, from this new place where humility and ego meet. This new place of vulnerability. The new sense of ego that I want to create as a human, as a woman, as a coach. I want to be relatable and transparent. I don't want to worry or be fearful about people finding out about my insecurities. So over the next 10 episodes, we're going to talk about all of them. These next 10 episodes could be triggering. They might get a little bit intense. They might get a little bit deep. I'm not going to lie, I may cry. It's a very possible emotion when it comes to the surface, there's uncertainty with it. But I'm also going to try my best to make sure that there's lighter pieces and to laugh as often as possible, because I think that laughter is such a good form of medicine, especially emotional medicine.
And, uh, yeah, I would love to hear feedback. I would love to hear throughout the next 10 episodes. I would love to hear which ones resonate with you the most. If any of them trigger, you feel free to email me. If you want to connect with me, if you want to share your stories or get vulnerable back, feel free to email me. I would love to connect with you on a deeper level. Stay tuned as we dive deeper and deeper into vulnerability over the next couple of months, I will see you in the next episode. Bye for now.
