Bloom Your Mind

Ep 01: You’re The One We Want

• Marie McDonald

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Why do we care so much about what other people think of us? 
Why does our brain work so hard to find the ONE right answer;  as if there was one right answer? 

Why do we stay stuck wanting the same things for a long time instead moving towards them? 

These questions and more will be answered on this podcast, in the first of many weekly episodes that will deliver bite sized nuggets that you can implement right away to make life easier, to get unstuck, and to love the skin you're in.

What you'll learn in this episode: 

  • Why each one of us can say, see, create, and be something that the world needs, that has never happened before and will never happen again
  • How to value our own voice, and stop apologizing for it
  • How to become part of the solution, instead of contributing to a culture that only values certain types of people
  • Why we should celebrate our uniqueness instead of fighting against it
  • How to turn perceived flaws into strengths to make an impact in the world

When we start becoming our own biggest fan, and when we start believing in ourselves and taking actions on the things that we want to create and do in the world, something magical happens. 

Listen to learn all about what happens when you give the world more of what it wants...

more of YOU. 

Featured in this episode: 

How to connect with Marie:

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind Podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want, and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it.

Well, hello. You're here listening to the very first episode of Bloom Your Mind, and I'm so pumped to be here with you. I've been wanting to start a podcast for a very long time because I love this modality. I love the idea that I can share my work in a way that's bitesized and immediately applicable for you, so you can use ideas and skills and tools right away in your life and in the world to make your ideas for what you want.

So, here's what we're up to in this podcast. I'm going to take my work and knowledge from 15 years leading in the field of innovation coaching leaders there. And then my 20 years of experience coaching anybody. 

So, I've coached educators, CEOs, leaders in the field of innovation, kids, stay at home parents, and people that just want to change something in their life to turn their ideas into real things.

So, I'm going to combine the experience coaching people to have a different relationship or switch jobs and move, or people that had an idea for habits they wanted to change in their life or their physical health, people that wanted to be better listeners or better parents, CEOs scaling companies and wanting to revitalize their own leadership and the culture of their companies, or people founding new businesses. All these different people.

I'm going to sort of synthesize what I've learned from coaching these people from leading workshops and trainings for them. Because what I find in coaching all these people and also in my research in the fields of innovation, psychology, education, business, self-improvement, all those things, that the thinkers in these areas that I've studied and the people that I've coached were all struggling with the same things, and those things, whether it's a CEO or a10-year-old kid, where they're pretty much the same. 

And all of us ask these similar questions. Not only do we struggle with similar things, but we ask similar questions like, why are we afraid to be ourselves?

Why are we hesitant to share an opinion that's different than the predominant opinion of a group. What makes us so focused on getting people to like us all the time instead of getting busy learning to like our own selves? 

And why are we so afraid to fail? What's that thing that happens in our brain that keeps us from moving forward because we are afraid, we might fall down or fall down in front of other people?

Why does our brain work so hard to find the one right answer as if there was one right answer, right? Why do we stay stuck wanting the same things for a long time instead of just, you know, getting moving towards them? 

So, this podcast will combine my experience in those fields, and I'll share weekly nuggets for you to make your life easier, to help you get unstuck, to help you love being you in your skin, and to help you value your voice.

What you want, what you decide, your ideas, and to value those things more than all of the reasons that the world is going to give you. And it will to stay stuck and stay invisible and stay small and stay thinking that you're not ready or right, or don't deserve the change that you want or the thing you want to make and put in the world.

I want to teach you some ways that you can learn to value what you can create in the world so much that you start making incremental changes in the day to day and in the story of your life. Because if you shift just a little bit, shift direction, just a couple degrees, you can end up in a totally different place.

And at the end of the day, you are the hero of your life, my friends, right? You are the lead actor in the movie of your life, so I want you to love it. I'm here to help with that, but I'm also going to tell you what's going on for me. I'm a business owner. I have a marriage. I'm a new entrepreneur. I worked for 15 years in a company setting, which I loved, but now I'm new to creating my own business that's thriving.

After eight months, I've learned to be my own thought leader. Put my voice out there instead of being a spokesperson for the ideas of other thought leaders that I really respected and respect. And I have two kids under 10, and I'm recording this from my husband's design build house. He's awesome. His guys are awesome. His people are awesome, and it's not where I thought I would have an office or where I thought I would be recording this. 

And so, I'm also going to share the unexpected things that happen in my life and how my brain thrashes and creates a bunch of drama for myself, what comes up, and then what I do to like chill it out and get it refocused on what I want.

I'll share what works for my clients too. As they get unstuck, they get out of drama, and they get back in action. The life they want, the things they want, instead of trying to run away from the things they don't. So, I'll share some personal stories so we can all keep getting unstuck, because we all get stuck, and then get our ideas and our desires out of our head and into the world where they belong. 

So, you can do things like, you know, make a podcast or change your relationship, make new friends, change a habit, whatever it is that you want. 

So, I'm starting today with episode one. Yes. And I'm starting with you. This episode is all about you.

No matter where you want to go, what you want to make, what you want to change, who you want to be, I'm going to offer that. You need to accept where you are first before you change anything. You got to be in the skin that you’re in. Be where you are right now before you can go anywhere else. Be who you are right now before you can make any changes to that person, you gotta be in this skin.

This is amazing skin to be in. Why? Well, first I just want to acknowledge that we're socialized to not want to be ourselves. We're trained to see what's wrong with us, to compare. To try to be all the things that we possibly could be and should be and can see out there in front of us and other people. We're trained to meet all the expectations for how we'll speak and who we'll be and what we'll accomplish, especially women, but everybody really, in different ways.

We are socialized to be what other people want to see, and this is no good. In my opinion, this is a slippery slope that leads away from happiness and wellness because this is what it looks like. So, when we're trying to be what others want first, we have to understand what we think they want, which means guessing what they want to see when they look at us.

So, we get that guess from looking at what everybody else is doing, what are the most popular versions of being a person? And like those change over time. So, what's the most popular version of being a person right now? That's what I'm supposed to do. And I mean, that's bananas, right? That all these people on the planet, millions of us are trying to be like10 prototypical people, right?

Like 10 perfect images of perfect. Plato talked a lot about that. I'm still talking about it. Then we go to work. Once we have the idea of what we want, that guess about what other people want to see when they look at us, we go to work hiding the parts of us that don't match what we think other people want to see.

And sculpting and augmenting the parts of us that do, into more of what we think other people want to see. And this is a slippery slope because when we're hiding, that's the start of all kinds of problems in our brain. You just take us a moment to think about how you feel when you're hiding, right? Unhappy in whatever form that takes for you.

Whenever we hide, we're more likely to feel anxiety, fear, dishonesty with ourselves and others, all kinds of things. Also, it makes us a little creepy and socially awkward when we're interacting with others. We're like looking for approval from other people to give us a little dopamine hit, and this is normal.

We all do this right? Instead of finding that deep approval and love inside of ourselves. And when we're looking for those signs, we take them to mean we're on the right track in the person that we're being. 

We're looking for clues that people like us approve, and we're paying all our attention to that, those clues, instead of like being in the world, listening to what they're saying, experiencing the things around us and thinking about what we think and what we want to say.

And what that does, the reason that's so problematic is that it robs the world of something that belongs to it. That thing that belongs to the world. That's you that I'm talking about. 

So, today's episode is all about Robinhood. We are going to start robbing from the rich stereotypes that we're all trying to be like and give the world back the one-of-a-kind person that you can be so that we can give the world back, the gift that you are, let me, let me tell you why. 

Stay with me here, you are happening one time. There is one unique set of lived experiences that you have had walking around with the face you have, speaking with a voice you have, speaking the ideas that you have, the way that you have, of believing and perceiving. 

With the sense of humor that you have, the attitude that you have, the physical body that you have, and the combination of all of those once ever happening things. That's a phrase, right? The once ever happening, very unique, very you. Things mean that you can say something, be something, create something, see something that the world will never get to see or hear, or experience, right? 

So, if you don't use your voice, if you try to make your voice sound like everybody else's, which is so what our brains are wired to do, right? There's nothing wrong with you if you're doing that. We all do it, right? But if you try to make your voice sound like theirs, like ours, or try to make yourself look like everybody else, I will just suggest that you are robbing the world of something that can never happen again. It's impossible for it to happen again.

So, our brain is outdated and is designed to keep us out of danger. It thinks that danger is people not liking us. So, this is why it's so normal for our brains to do this. There's nothing wrong with us, right? Our brains are trying to keep us small and invisible because they're telling us that's more safe.

That's why we look around us for things to be like, for things to emulate, for people to be like and sound like, so that we can maintain our invisibility in the crowd. We don't want to stand out because our brain tells us that's it's safer to stay small and hidden and invisible, but our brains are old school.

They need like a new operating system. They are outdated, they're wrong, they're not right about this. It's not safer anymore to just be invisible so that you don't get eaten by sabertooth tigers. It's not, they're not out there. It's not fun. It's not good for us to try to hide who we are and it doesn't work.

Remember how we talked about how we get kind of like awkward and creepy? We all do it in a different way. Ironically, people love you when you start being that awkward version of ourselves, is when we're hiding something, right? So, when you're really embracing who you are and the package, you're in, you start getting more present, being able to listen to what other people say, because you're comfortable in your own skin.

You also stop taking things as personally, and then other people can see that you are happening right now. You're interesting, you're happening once. And they can tell, and they want to be there for it. I want to be there. There's this philosopher named Kaja Silverman. She is from Berkeley. I used to be so obsessed with this philosophy of hers.

She's written multiple books, but my favorite one of these is called World Spectators, and she has this idea where she says that our subjectivity is objectively intended. So, what I get from this brilliant woman, what I think she means is that the things that you can see and feel, and experience as you walk around the world, they actually help the world to be more itself, more realized in its potential.

So, you're adding to the world's existence and the world's full expression by seeing with your own eyes and thinking with your own brain in the way that only you can see and think. So here are a couple examples …

Alright, you're walking down a path. Imagine yourself in a forest or on a trail, wherever you like to walk in your neighborhood along the sidewalk, and you notice based on your heights, your footfalls, your presence and time and space, your gaze, that there's like a fern that is unfurling.

You know how they like make those little spirals and curl up, and then they slowly unfurl and you're noticing it. Have you ever had that moment where you notice like a bloom or a fern or a tree or something, this magic, and you look around, you're like, “is anybody else seeing this? Is this happening? Am I the only one? Is this for real? This is wild.” 

And I mean, maybe not. Maybe nobody else is seeing it. Maybe that moment just exploded in your brain. You witness this beauty and no one else is ever going to see it. That moment in time will never happen again in the same way. And that is true because you being there for it, you captured that beauty in that moment, and it wouldn't ever have gotten noticed without you.

And even if somebody else does walk by and they see it, they can't appreciate it in the exact way that you can. They might be more scientific or logical or extra about their appreciation of it, but nobody else can see it like you can. So, boom, you help that little unfurling piece of flora come into a more full existence by being you.

Alright? And if that's you know, too woo for you, that's cool. Let's say you're ordering a latte, and the barista, an exchange that's happening just between you and her, you notice that she's listening really carefully to you order. She is taking extra time to make little swirly things in your foam and giving you the exact amount of cinnamon that you want in your latte, and you notice it.

You start appreciating a moment that only you and she can see from your vantage points because you are in it and you are two totally unique people, fully yourselves, maybe. In noticing it, you give off a little bit of a smile, show some body language that shows that appreciation for giving you the exact amount of cinnamon you want in your latte.

Or maybe today you take a step further and you say it. When you do, you might open up an entire new world of possibility in somebody's mind. All of a sudden, you say something that opens up this possibility where she's like, “oh, well, I'm great at connecting with people. That's amazing. I didn't think of myself like that. I'm charismatic.”

Or maybe she thinks, “I have good customer service,” or whatever light you shined on her because of the new reality that you created with what you saw and said in the world. Both because you're the only one there, and because only you can appreciate things and express them in just your way.

So, that's our subjectivity adding to the world all the time by us witnessing it and speaking what we witness. So, I remember when I was a boss, visiting sites and sharing observations of these innovation communities with staff members. And a couple things happened to kind of illustrate this idea. I remember appreciating someone that was a staffer for her leadership.

She was wild. Amazing at her job. And I thought I was saying something that was very clearly obvious to everyone. I was like, “you are on fire girl! You are an incredible leader, inspiring these children and your other staff members around you.” And then years later, like we're talking like 10 years later, a woman approaches me as a director in the organization. 

She's applying for the job at this point. Then she got it later and she said, “you know, one day you came up to me and you said what you saw in me. You told me that you saw incredible leadership in me. And it kind of blew my mind. I'd never seen that in myself. That never would've occurred to me. But then it did start occurring to me like more and more I started thinking of myself as a leader. And then I started leading and look at me now.”

I've seen this a lot with parents and kids. I hear kids saying things like, “I'm just really talkative and I don't have very good ideas,” or “I'm just really shy,” or “I'm too much for people,” and I think, “what the heck? This child is great.”

Why do they think they're too much? Because someone has said that to them and it created a reality in their mind. So, we do this with our own kids, our own families, our own partners. We call out things that we're annoyed by and by calling them out, we create more of a listening for those things, more awareness for the people in our lives.

To think about each other in those ways and to think about themselves in those ways, and we're doing it inadvertently. So, I'm not saying that you need to overlook problems or be poly positive or saying any of that. I'm just saying that our words can create realities for people around us. Every single one of us is very powerful walking around, seeing from a very unique perspective.

So, as we create more awareness of that power, we can use it for good, both to create a better world, and to create a better life for ourselves. So, here's some ways to use it. So, give your brain something amazing to focus on. Help your brain focus on what it likes about you, because otherwise it will do what comes naturally to it.

And it will start focusing on your faults and helping you find things that you don't like about yourself, helping you find places to hide. We talked about why it does that. So, you got to help your brain focus on what it likes about you, and that will help you get off the hamster wheel of getting people to like you instead of doing the harder work of getting to like yourself.

So, when we get off of those quick dopamine hits that we get from people approving of us and telling us that they approve of us, we start developing the long-term belief in ourselves. And the reason that is so wonderful for the world when we do this is that when we start becoming our own biggest fan, when you start believing in yourself and taking actions on the things that you want to create in the world and the things you want to do in the world, something amazing happens.

You stop needing other people to focus on you. So, when you do have an exchange with somebody else, you don't need them to say anything or do anything specific. You stop taking things personally. You stop people pleasing. Instead, you actually start witnessing what's special and amazing about them because you're not threatened by it.

You're more in tune with what's special and amazing about you. It decreases your impetus to compete, to be in competition with other people, and it increases your ability to collaborate with others. Isn't that ironic? You loving yourself, valuing yourself is actually what allows you to value others and collaborate more successfully.

When you value your voice, you also stop apologizing as much for yourself. Stop overexplaining yourself, making excuses, hiding. Stop saying you're sorry when you walk out of a bathroom door and somebody else is walking in. that, is that just me? Am I the only one that does that? I mean, I keep catching myself doing that.

Sorry for existing, you know. And if you do things like that, you can't beat yourself up for it. We've all been socialized to do that. Our brain is wired to hide in the crowd, apologize, make ourselves not noticeable. So just notice those moments with compassion. I try to laugh at myself and maybe laugh with the other person, like “why am I saying sorry to you when we're in a doorway at the same time?” And then just give it another shot next time. 

When you do this, you will be more free, more present, more happy, and also you will stop contributing to a culture that only values specific people. So, you can start becoming part of the solution instead of part of the problem. And then you'll start noticing what's amazing about the people around you instead of what you don't like.

Your relationships get better, your life just blooms. Think about what the world would be like if everybody thought like this collectively for real. Like imagine it for a second. People would be looking for what they can contribute. For how they can use their unique voice to make the world better instead of looking for what's wrong with them, and then resenting the world for what they think is wrong with them and looking for what's wrong with everybody else.

So again, don't use these ideas against yourself. If your brain does some of that unhelpful stuff, it does it for a reason to protect you from tigers. So just thank it with compassion for being a part of you that has your back so hard, and then invite it to just like come along for the ride, but you're going to drive.

Now if people thought like this, if we all thought like this and were noticing what we liked about ourselves instead of what we don't like and noticing that in others, what would the world be like? What would your family space be like? What would politics be like? Your job? What would your school or community be like?

Or even like the future of our planet and our environment, if everyone was looking for how they could contribute to a solution and looking for what they liked about what others have to say. Amazing to think about, right? And this can all start with you. It's a lofty goal, but it can start with you right now.

So, all right, so this is what you can do this week to start. Ask yourself some questions:

1.) If I were a window and something amazing could just come through me, what would that thing be? 

2.) If it were like a light shining through me in my own way, what would it be like? What would I be like? 

3.) And then ask yourself what's unique about me that I fight against, or that I apologize for, and what would happen if I stopped? 

So, an example is that since I've been a little girl, I've been teased for having polka dots, for having freckles all over my skin for being short and little. Being a girl in communities of all boys in lots of different ways. I learned to be apologetic for myself. I had an awesome family.

I still do, and I still learned from all the environments that I was in to apologize for the space I was taking up every day to apologize for the shape of my body, for the freckles on my skin, for the fact that I was a girl, for my voice, for having ideas for all the things, and all of these things are packaged in a way that only I can be.

So, I started looking at my freckles and seeing like a thousand tiny tans, okay? I am not a tapered ballerina, but I am strong, and this is my body, and this body's strength is a symbol of overcoming many things in my life with strength and resilience and keeping my joy intact. I started thinking like maybe my perspective growing up in male-dominated culture and being someone who believes in the power of a community, of women, and the voice of women, maybe this can add something to the world?

I also stopped apologizing for how much I love people, how easily I forgive people, how much I think about the future. How positive I am, and all the energy I have, the ideas I have. I stopped feeling bad about those and instead started wondering how the world might benefit from me sharing in the way that only I can.

So, this week I invite you to do the same. What are you apologizing for about who you are? What are you hiding about, who you are and what would happen if you stopped? 

In the next few episodes, I'm going to give you some ideas for how to develop a unique vision in the world for what you're going to put out and how to believe in it.

When everything around you is giving you the opposite feedback, telling you it's too hard or not possible, or you can't do it, I'm going to give you ideas for what you can do to take action toward that vision. Have fun with it. Start failing and enjoying it even. I know that sounds wacky, but it's possible.

I'm so excited to be here with you today and week after week, and I'm going to invite you again to spend this whole week noticing what you're hiding, what you're apologizing for, and asking what would happen if you embraced the idea that you are happening one time ever. With this voice, with these ideas, with this body, what you can say, what you can be, what you can see will never happen again, and it's time to put that into the world instead of keeping it under wraps.

We want to see it. And if you're like, “did I just listen to an entire episode of Marie telling me I'm special?” Yes, that is what just happened. That is what I got for you today. Thanks for being here. I will see you next week.

Thanks for hanging out with me friends. If you like today's episode and you want more of them, please take two minutes right now to subscribe and give me a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, then send this episode to a friend. See you next time.