The Visionary Woman Podcast
The Visionary Woman Podcast
Use Your Voice, Change Your Future
Are you ready for a transformative journey to become the visionary woman you were meant to be? Join me, your host Kirstie Fleur, as we uncover the secrets to accessing your inner beacon and using your voice to change your future. We'll dive deep into the importance of agency, vulnerability, and turning failures into valuable lessons.
Together, we'll explore the power of personal agency and overcoming fear, helping you become a disruptor and catalyst for transformation. I'll share insights on how to embrace fear, open up in community, and find your true identity in the midst of life's challenges. As a visionary woman, you'll learn to navigate the turbulence of life and remain in control, even when circumstances seem out of your hands.
Finally, we'll delve into the power of contemplation, silence, and spiritual practices to access your inner voice and gain mental clarity. Discover tools and resources to help you take back your power and advocate for yourself, creating a ripple effect of connection to your mission and vision. Tune in for valuable insights and tips that will empower you on your journey to becoming the visionary woman you were always meant to be.
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Don't put your dreams to bed. You've done that enough. Now it's time to stir them up. This is your friend and host, Kirstie Fleur, with the Visionary Woman Podcast, and I love resourcing the Visionary Woman, the creative, the artist, the business owner, the risk taker, and on this show we will talk about what it means to get out of your own way and take your dreams to the next level. Join the conversation. Hi, we're back for the Visionary Woman Podcast and today we're going to talk about using your voice, to change your future. So we're going to talk about the importance of vulnerability and agency, in your words and in your decisions.
Kirstie:Something you'll hear me say a lot is the word beacon. So beacon, the word beacon. When you hear the word beacon, what does that mean to you? What are you? What are you hearing? So when I say the word beacon, I'm often mentioning the inner light that is inside of us, the light that is a guiding light, that is internal and it can help us transform and change our future. So that's the light I'm talking about, and often times what happens is we get so adjacent to that light, the light is no longer accessible, and so we're kind of like, doing all kinds of things. We're all over the place. We're not really centered on what our mission, our purpose and our vision is, and it doesn't matter how long we've been in business or if we've never started a business that we hope to start one day. That is a huge part of creating impact, that actually is influential and it moves not only you forward but other people forward.
Kirstie:I hear people say all the time, well, that's easier said than done. Access your light, your inner beacon, all of these things people are saying, that's really cute, it's you know it's, it's cliche and it's got like a little ring to it. But how can I apply this? How does it actually work? And does it actually work? Is this just a gimmick that everybody is trying to use now? Find your light, your light, find your voice. Is it a gimmick? It's not a gimmick. Here's the thing the people you're hearing this from are telling you, because they went through it and because they know that the only way to create impact is to actually get in there and to go inside and do that internal work first. It is easier said than done. I would never sell you a dream, sell you a lie and say that it's not work. It is going to be work. You're going to have to roll your sleeves up, and you're going to have to get in there. If it was easy, we know everybody would be doing it, because everybody wants kind of the shortcut or the easy way out. Unfortunately, there is no shortcut or easy way out. The only way to get to it is to actually go through it and that is how you access your sauce, your sauce, sauce. That's how you access your sauce, guys, and that is, you know, that's the only way.
Kirstie:So vulnerability in agency is something that I talk about often. Vulnerability in agency and the importance of vulnerability in agency and our words and actions. One of my favorite authors and researchers her name is Brene Brown. I'm sure you've heard of her. She's got a Netflix series. She's got several books, I think it's Brave Leadership and one of them is Braving the Wilderness. Amazing books, amazing resources. If you haven't got those, you've got to get those.
Kirstie:But those have been key components in my life and in my leadership. One talks specifically about braving leadership and taking brave leadership decisions and movements and things, but agency is so important because agency takes the power back and says I am not without power. I can make a decision that is going to impact what I'm doing. What I have done so far is this but how can I take responsibility? Agency really is responsibility. It is taking the thing that's happened. It's like, oh yeah, I've got my butt kicked in business and entrepreneurship. You know, I've heard all these, "no's", I've heard all these. Who do you think you are? I have all these things. What agency is? what happened? because of what happened, now I'm going to pivot and I'm going to make an informed decision to have the things that I want to have in life. That is agency Vulnerability.
Kirstie:Vulnerability is opening yourself up. It's exposure. When I hear the word, I hear exposed. I mean it's this exposure to. There's a possibility of damage, there's a possibility of fear. There's a possibility of criticism and rejection from your peers or people that are around you. There's a possibility that people might think you're nuts. They often think that those who are vulnerable are nuts, but the people who are vulnerable are the ones who, despite all the hard things, they're the ones who show up. They might be crawling in at this point because they've been through so much. They might be walking in with their hair all over their head, crawling in, basically just trying to get there, because they got busted up shins and knees and everything toothless. Because they have went through it. They have went internal and done the work. They've done what they needed to do to go internal.
Kirstie:But by the time you see them show up on the scene, you see this shining vessel and you see this person or you see this woman that looks like the epitome of what success is, the epitome of what you wanna be as an entrepreneur, what you wanna be as a wife or as a mother, as a woman in business. You know, maybe they have a unicorn business, who knows whatever it is, but you're like I'm gonna mimic what they did because whatever they're doing, then that is gonna help me become similar to what they're doing. And that is the problem. I see so many people teach that you know, hey, do it this way. Here's the model. If you wanna teach anybody a model, teach people to go internal and to do the work to access their true power, access their true voice.
Kirstie:I don't want anybody mimicking me. I think it's the oddest thing that you would wanna be like anybody else. You know, it's one thing to admire somebody and it's one thing to see somebody and have somebody as a mentor and guide, that's amazing. But to want to actually be that person, want their life, whatever it is, I don't know what they had to go through to get it, so I don't want what they got. I want what is for me. I want specifically when I go through, when I go through, I want whatever jewels, crowns, whatever comes with that. That's what I want and I want that for me, for my life, for my family. But it takes agency, it takes going through the hard stuff to access that internal beacon and that's the light that's meant to guide you and transform you. So, while you can have guides and people can teach you how to get internal, technically is what I'm doing right now, teaching you how to go internal and access that inner light, while not also giving you a formula to be like me, mm-mm. I don't want you to be like me. I want you to be better than me.
Kirstie:Do greater things, do amazing things that are curated and crafted to what your message is and what your life is. So in our society, our society says that vulnerability is weakness, but it actually is the strongest mark of courage. It shows that you've done the work that you're willing to expose yourself, to risk failure, to risk rejection, and you're gonna keep going. And it changes your mentality so much, you just have a different mentality when you can go in and say this is who I am, this is who I am, like it or not. This is the person that I am. This is the gift that I was meant to bring to this room. This is the laughter, the joy, this is the light, this is the, whether I'm more of a mild tempered person, whether this is my business model, whatever it is, this is the thing that I was meant to bring and I'm good with that. I'm okay with that. I can stand on my own two feet in that. What we need more people like that, being willing to show up, access your inner beacon.
Kirstie:How do you do it? How do you do it? I've told you all these things and they sound great. It sounds cool. It still, may be it sounds a little gimmicky, but here's the thing, here's how you access it. You embrace your failures. Super practical, super practical. I didn't say it was, I, said it was practical. That means that it is possible that you can do it. So embrace your failures, give it a big ol' hug.
Kirstie:Everybody's gonna go through failures. I don't care who you are, I don't care how, I don't care if you were given a silver spoon, I don't care if your life has been padded with all the nicest things ever, but everybody is gonna face failure. Everybody's gonna face issues where they lose somebody, where they lose friendships, where they lose family. Different things happen. Everybody's gonna face things like that, and so none of us in this society, in humanity, will ever live a life where we are devoid of that. So embracing your failures is a big part of accessing who you are, your influence.
Kirstie:Self-discovery is the second thing. Go on the journey inside and discover who you are, the things that have been suppressed whether it was abuse, whatever your story, doesn't have to be mine, but whatever your story was, the things that your body may have naturally suppressed because they were too hard to deal with, or the things you just said. When it comes up, I'm just not gonna deal with it, but take the first steps to go inside and see where you left that girl at, where you left that issue at, and go and pick up where you left off and do the work. Discover what happened, discover who you are inside so that you can get what you need to be. The third thing is integrity.
Kirstie:Be integrous, not just that, who are you behind closed doors? Integrity, I'm talking about, say, when you walk into the room and you are who you say you are. Meaning, this is what my life mission and my motto is. My life mission and motto is freedom and justice. I have got it branded on the side, branded on the side of a hat. I wear it in my heart. The place where my family is, from is Ghana, and the motto is freedom and justice. You know, I'm always doodling freedom and justice. My business is Freedom Fleur. Our mission here is freedom and justice and it's all about resourcing the visionary woman. That women get the access and the freedom and all the things that they need as well to go on their journeys.
Kirstie:So, who are you? Discover who you are, be who you are without apology, and don't put that on the back burner, because the moment that you put it on the back burner, is the moment that you start traveling backwards and if you've made it this far on your journey, you've made this much progress. You cannot tell me that you want to go backwards. Sometimes you do have to go backwards to go forward, because I'm telling you to go inward, to do self-discovery, but you go inward. It's if you've ever heard the term, Sankofa, it's an Akan phrase, but Sankofa talks about being able to go back and look backwards and see what happened in the past so that you can learn from it. Not to go back, so that you can stay there. Because, remember, we're talking about agency here and agency does not leave you powerless.
Kirstie:When you take agency in personal decision-making, you don't stay there. You don't see the thing that's happened or the thing that's been suppressed and just sit with it and stay there forever. If it's grieving that's needed, if it's time that's needed, you take that and then you use it. This is the point where you become a disruptor. You get, you take what has happened and you use it. It becomes a catalytic, catalytic moment for transformation for you, for your business, for the people that are around you. So be integrous, show up. That's something that I tell my son all the time. Show up.
Kirstie:The next thing is to do it scared, do it scoured! I ain't scared! I'll be scary y'all, but I still do it. Most of the time people can't tell because I am so comfortable with fear. I'm so comfortable with fear being present, fear being in the room, and I'm just like I'm gonna do it anyway. You know, I'm like not gonna let anything stop me from reaching the goals that I need to reach or do the things that I need to do. So embrace your fears, do it scared. If it's scary, do it anyway. Let that be a mark for you. It's kind of the mark for me. You know you don't have to do it this way, but if fear is presenting itself when I'm about to do a new thing, sometimes that comes off as me being like frustrated or I'm angry, or you know, I'm.
Kirstie:Honestly, when I'm afraid or when I'm anxious, I clean. So I'm sure all the people around me are very happy when I am feeling anxious because I have cleaned the whole house and I've swept the floors and I probably put a new fresh coat of paint on something. So it ain't all bad. But, but that's the thing. So if there's fear there, I learned to go, I'm feeling fear and I just asked myself, what in the heck is going on? Why am I feeling like this? What is coming up right now? What do I need to just deal with? I'm avoiding. The cleaning is avoiding. It's like, am I'm avoiding something, but what am I avoiding? So I stopped for a minute.
Kirstie:Sometimes I just have to cry. I'm a crybaby. It just is what it is. Sometimes I have to cry, sometimes I have to journal, write it down. I'm like what is happening? Okay, I'm feeling afraid because I'm gonna go do this pitch again. Or I'm feeling afraid because I'm now reaching this level in my business and there's another level of responsibility. There's another level of this and now I'm responsible for. Okay, that's real. I have opened it up, I have talked about it, I visualized it, I've dealt with it. I'm doing it scared and now I'm like okay, what's personal agency attached to this? What can I do? What are the decisions that I can make so that I don't feel powerless? Right now, feeling powerless is the absolute worst. I don't want to feel powerless. My power has been taken before. As a kid, I was young and abused, and I am at the point of my life where I'm like, I'm not allowing anybody or anything, any setbacks, to render me powerless again. Yeah, okay. So do it scared, do it scared.
Kirstie:Another thing is open up in community. So sometimes it won't always be community, it'll maybe be a random person but open up, talk about the things that you're afraid to talk about, and the reason why you do this is because you don't want to spend your whole life being a fraud to please other people. That fraudulent behavior. It does catch up to you. At some point, you look back and you're like, oh, I can't believe I did that, I can't believe I wore that. Why did I change my voice when I was around this person? Why did I? Why am I doing this?
Kirstie:When we find ourselves doing that, it's because we're not as connected to our core and our soul as we think we are. We are mimicking other people and we're mimicking. People say that it is a sign of like, when you are reflecting somebody else's body language and emotions and stuff like that, we do it naturally. But if you continue on doing that, this is your relationship, where you're constantly mimicking somebody's behaviors, actions, business models, all the things or whatever, then that shows that there's a lack of identity there and that is a huge problem. You do not want to be mimicking things from other people because you're not connected to what your mission, your purpose and your identity is. So if you feel like, hey, when I'm around I do this because I really don't know who I am. I've lost friendships because of this, because this is the thing that I do, then this is a moment, this is a challenge. This is definitely a challenge for you to go inside and to do the work and open up and tell people who you are.
Kirstie:What do you like? It doesn't matter if they like fly fishing and you don't like it. It doesn't matter if you think that this is justice and they don't and they build a whole organization around it. It doesn't matter. What do you like? What do you like to do? How can you show up? How can we get your voice in the room? We want to hear what matters to you. So open up. We want to hear about it. Take the risk to show up as yourself.
Kirstie:So the other thing, the other component this is number six. If you've been taking notes, if you've been keeping count, number six is embracing the turbulence. So we can't control everything that happens in life. It's just absolutely impossible. There's so much happening in the world, so much outside of our control, and sometimes we can attempt to be the master of the or the God of all the things and try to change all the things, but the reality is we have to embrace it, embrace the friction, embrace the turbulence. Sometimes you just have to rest. Sometimes you just have to say, okay, this is what this situation is. Can I, what can I do? Again, it's personal agency. What can I do? Is there an action or something that needs to be taken right now? You know, sometimes the the action is simply, I need to step away from this and get, take a beat. I need to take a beat. Sometimes the action is, I need to rest. Sometimes the action is, I do need to do something. But the reality is, embracing the turbulence is a huge part as well of walking in your personal identity and and using your voice to change your future in your life.
Kirstie:Silence. So I've told you all these things. I'm like, hey, open up and talk. And then I've now said silence. And so now it sounds like I've contradicted everything that I just said. But there is a place for silence. I actually had to learn this in therapy. Okay, shout out to my therapist. She is a gem, she's amazing. She's actually more like a life coach. So that's cool. But finding your voice in silence, to find your voice in silence, it really is you going internal, right. So there's a place for words and there's a place where words don't need to exist just yet. So what you do is you make peace with the silence through.
Kirstie:It is my spiritual practice. It doesn't have to be yours, but you don't even have to call it a spiritual practice, but for me it's a spiritual practice of contemplation and silence. I am naturally a contemplative person, so this is easier for me to do. For other people, contemplation is a challenging, a very challenging practice, because your mind is going a mile a minute and you have to settle yourself to be able to sit and be in silence, and sometimes the things that are coming up in your brain when you're using this spiritual practice can be annoying or weird, or you can be bored completely bored out of your mind, just sitting for five to ten minutes in silence and figuring out and hearing what your soul is saying. But there is an inner critic that is in there. There is a lot of internal noise, there's a lot of external noise, and so what the contemplation in silence does is it actually brings you to the center, it grounds you and it leans you into your voice and into the right energy, your soul's energy, and it helps you gain the mental clarity that's needed, and also, silence is not weakness. You know, sometimes, with everything that goes on culturally, you know, and societally, politically, and everything, it can feel like you need to be abreast of and on top of and in every single conversation. But you don't need to be in every single conversation, and finding out who you are and the inside is going to help you know what things you need to lean your voice into and what things you need to spare your voice from and save your energy for what is best suited for your gifts, your mission, your calling, all the things. Yeah, okay. So how can you use your story to create a new path forward?
Kirstie:I'm going to make this one brief because I've shared my story so many times about my struggle with PTSD, with eating disorder and the residual, the leftover residue of sexual abuse that had actually silenced me as a kid. But after all that I went through holding all the things in, I actually got to a place where I couldn't hold the things in anymore, and once I couldn't hold them in anymore and things started rearing their ugly head. I had to do the work and deal with it, and I started looking at myself saying what the heck am I wearing? What am I doing? Why have I been? And I felt like a fraud because I had been doing so many things and living such a life where I didn't recognize the girl who I was anymore. And it wasn't for good reasons, like, oh, you've changed and you've transformed into this amazing thing it was. I don't recognize myself in a good way and I felt numb and disconnected from my actual physical body, like just not connected.
Kirstie:So the way that I was able to create a path forward was to do the work. All these tools, all these resources that I just gave you, everything that I just talked about is not from out of nowhere, it's not from some book, something like that is literally me going through the practice in my own life and having to do the work. It was not pretty, it was extremely messy, but because of that, I'm able to tell you this right now. This is how I was able to create freedom from it. It came from this place of being able to advocate for myself, choose vulnerability and personal agency, take accountability for things, and to do the work and be responsible for my life, in the direction that my life was going, and so this is how I was able to stay on my soul's path, and it is every day.
Kirstie:I'm not telling you that once you do this, now everything is perfect. Things are going to come up that are going to challenge you to go in a different direction, that are going to challenge, you know, if you show up in the room or if you don't show up in the room. Honestly, sometimes simply showing up in the room is just being present, just being a presence and a light. Sometimes I'll just sit in places and people are like, wow, you're just such a light and I haven't said a single thing, all I did was sit there. I didn't have to fight for position and power, and I'm not going to fight for position and power, if I feel the need to interject. You know those things, but that is knowing your voice, that's knowing who you are. There's so much power in that, and so this is how I was able to create a path forward, and you can create your path forward in a similar way.
Kirstie:Use these tools, use these resources to change your own life, to write a different story, to write a different narrative, one that includes the things that you've been through and that builds upon it, and then it creates a spark. And now what do you have? You have this butterfly effect, where it's not just you that's impacted by it, but it's people everywhere that are impacted by it. Start small and then it just starts growing, and so that's what we need. We need people who are more connected to their hearts and souls not just hearts, but their souls and their true mission and vision. They're really connected to the work that it is that they're doing. We don't need just some other businesses out there. There's a lot of stuff you know. We don't need those. We need businesses that are soul connected and that are moving things forward in a way that are helpful for humanity.
Kirstie:So a few quick tools to help you strengthen your voice and your power, is to practice writing your visions and dreams and goals. I'm gonna go through these pretty briefly. The next one, something that I do, is create a visual or mood board. I have mood boards all around this office. I just need to see it in front of me and I need to chart my goals to see where I'm going and where we got off or where we didn't, or how we feel the spaces. But creating a visual mood board is pretty key for me. However, you have to do it, or on your phone. I personally have to feel it, touch it. That's just how I learn, and I have to cut things out, so you can do it that way as well. Another thing is practicing seeing your dream or your business idea. Say it in front of people, especially when you feel like the time is right and you have some support, but that'll help you grow and also hold you accountable to your vision. Another thing is creating a playlist to help you keep on track. You can do things like motivational songs, business chats, affirmations, my podcast, the Visionary Woman things like that. Create a playlist of things that motivate you and inspire you to keep going on your journey.
Kirstie:Well, thank you for being with me today. Thank you for listening, thank you for talking with me about how to use your voice, to change your future. If you have enjoyed what you heard today, I invite you to subscribe and also to check out kirstiefleur. com. That's kirstiefleur. com and subscribe to our newsletter to get updates about when the soul health approach sessions will go live, and those will go live soon. So thanks again for joining us. Bye. Thanks for listening and joining the conversation today here on The Visionary Woman Podcast, if you enjoyed this episode and would like to join our growing community, the FF Social Club, please comment, like and subscribe so that you can be updated on our upcoming episode and more happening over at freedomfleur. com. To catch the latest from me and to access amazing resources for visionaries just like yourself, please visit me on the web at www. kirstiefleur. com. Thanks again for hanging out with me and I'll see you next time. Until then, don't forget to be visionary. I'll will see you all next time.