22. Invest In Yourself-Part One, Polka Dot Powerhouse
Oct 12, 2023Episode 22
Nickie Kromminga Hill
Ever felt like a chameleon, constantly altering your persona to fit in with those around you? That was me until I decided to embrace my authentic self. Join me in this transformative conversation as I share my journey from being a people-pleaser to stepping into my authentic self. As I prepare to be a vendor at the Polkadot Powerhouse's annual conference 'Celebration', we will discuss the emotional rollercoaster of showing up as you truly are and the importance of investing in your own personal growth and mental health.
Ever felt like a chameleon, constantly altering your persona to fit in with those around you? That was me until I decided to embrace my authentic self. Join me in this transformative conversation as I share my journey from being a people-pleaser to stepping into my authentic self. As I prepare to be a vendor at the Polkadot Powerhouse's annual conference 'Celebration', we will discuss the emotional rollercoaster of showing up as you truly are and the importance of investing in your own personal growth and mental health.
*For speaking inquiries or for questions or comments on the podcast, contact Nickie at healandgrowwithnickiepodcast@gmail.com
Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal health or professional advice.
Nickie is not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast.
This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical advice.
Speaker 1:
Hello everyone. I want to start out today's podcast by thanking Alison Johnson for buying me a coffee this week. Thank you, alison, I shall enjoy my delicious coffee and think of you. If you would like to buy me a coffee this week, just check out the show notes. You just click on that link down there and you can throw me a few bucks so I can buy a coffee this week. Other ways that you can support me is by purchasing my book Things I'm Thinking About A Daughter's Thoughts on the Loss of Her Mom. You could purchase that right off of Amazon or it will also be linked below in the show comments. You could also hire me to be a speaker at your event. I actually have a gig in just a few weeks down in St Ansgar, iowa. I'm so excited to be a speaker down at Ladies' Night down there. Thanks, st Ansgar for hiring me.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to Heal Grow with Nikki. I'm your host, nikki Kraminga-Hill. Here we talk about everything Grief, hope, illness, work, family, tragedy, possibilities, fun stuff and not so fun stuff. It's all on the table. Let's take a look at our lives and work to Heal Grow together. I'm so glad you're here.
Speaker 1:
Hello, hello, this episode is going to be a two-parter Ooh, exciting. I'm going to start out today by just giving you some background info. Some of it you probably already have if you've ever listened to this podcast before or if you are new to this podcast welcome, I'm happy to have you. Let me tell you a little bit about myself. So in the past I've done a really great job of sort of hiding in plain sight. What I mean by that is that I would show up, arrive, be present, but I wasn't really myself. I was a very good chameleon for a long time. I'm very great at adjusting to whatever culture I'm engrossed in at the time, which can be really great for certain situations. But I ended up doing it for like 30 years, growing up, seeing what everybody else was doing, what everybody else was saying, and just sort of fitting in, because I thought that that was really important. I didn't share my opinions on anything because I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. I was taught by my parents and by my church to always be an excellent citizen and an excellent Christian, which meant that I couldn't really be myself as an actor. I act, obviously right. That became my profession. So that's what I was doing most of the time, both onstage and off. As an ACA, an adult child of an alcoholic, I am a people pleaser. I grew up being afraid of my parents.
Speaker 1:
I've spent a lot of time trying to be in service to others and not really thinking about myself. I'd like to pause here and just say I love being in service to others. I really do. I gravitate towards jobs where I can help out other people, because I really enjoy helping out other people. What I would like to start doing, and what I have started doing, is being in service to others while also being myself. Being in service to others while I'm sharing my own story, just showing up as a real person, as my authentic self, instead of trying to fit in with everyone else. Because what I would like to be doing with my life, dear listener, is speaking about what's been going on in my life, like how I do with this podcast, but I'd like to actually be a speaker and I would like to empower others to share their own stories as well. The tagline of Heal and Grow with Nikki is empowering you to lead and love with vulnerability and authenticity, and one of the ways in which I do that is just by showing up exactly the way I am on any given day and this is very much a work in progress. It has taken me several years to get to the point where I say hello, this is who I am and what I am about and what I stand for. It's taken me a long time to do that because I've been very afraid. I've had reasons to be afraid and a lot of it is me just putting this on myself, thinking that I need to be afraid. At any rate, the point is, it's taken me a long time to get where I am at this exact moment. Today. I have something fun and exciting and a little bit terrifying coming up this weekend. I've talked to you about this in a previous episode.
Speaker 1:
I am a part of a networking group called Polkadot Powerhouse and it is for female and female presenting entrepreneurs. I've been a part of this group for about two and a half years, but really only started taking it seriously maybe the past six to nine months, meaning I show up to our meetings and I've spoken also about a previous speaking engagement that I had. That was through Polkadot Powerhouse. Polkadot Powerhouse's annual conference is this weekend. It's called Celebration and it is here in Minneapolis. I've gone one other time. That was two years ago when it was also in Minneapolis, and I'm going back again this year and I'm really excited. Dots we call ourselves dots. Dots are coming from all over the country I think they'll be about maybe 400 of us and we gather for two days and we listen to speakers and we connect and we laugh and just be together in fellowship and community, and I'm really looking forward to it.
Speaker 1:
I actually am going to stay at the hotel this time, even though I only live 15 minutes away from the hotel. I've decided to stay at the hotel because I think that that's better for my health. That way I can go up to my room and rest whenever I want to. And I'm also going to be a vendor at Celebration this year. So a vendor just means that I have a booth it's not really a booth, it's a table right and I stand there and I sell things and I talk to people and I'm really excited. It's my very first time being a vendor anywhere and I'm also a little bit terrified and special shout out right. The second to Paul, who has helped me so much getting this project together. I've been working on it for months, but also the past two weeks I took over our entire living room and set up my booth and played around with it and made sure I had everything that I needed. So, as a vendor, I get to choose what it is that I am selling, and I have decided to sell my book. I'm also selling these necklaces, like a silver chain with a silver small spoon on it. I'm calling it a Spoonie Solidarity Necklace so that all of us Spoonies can find each other if we need to Quickly.
Speaker 1:
If you don't know what a Spoonie is, a Spoonie is a loving title for people that struggle with chronic illness, and it derived from a woman whose name I don't remember right now, but you can go to your Google machine and look it up who's explaining to someone why it was so challenging for her to figure out how much energy she was gonna have in a day and how challenging it is to sort of dole out where your energy is going to go at any given moment. And thank you for watching. In the story that I heard, she was talking with a girlfriend at lunch and she had a spoon next to her and she said okay, say that this spoon is one unit of energy and you only get 10 units of spoons a day 10 units of energy a day. A spoonie is someone who has to be very methodical and strategic about how they're spending their spoons. So a spoonie might take a shower but that's going to eat up probably three spoons because it takes a lot of energy to do that. So then you only have seven spoons left. What are you going to do with them for the rest of the day? If you have an eight hour job, there goes all your spoons right. If you've got kids that need to be carted around from here and there, that's probably taking up four of your spoons. So that's like a really small generic definition of what a spoonie is.
Speaker 1:
Anyway, I've made these necklaces with spoons on them so I can maybe someone will buy one and I can find my spoonie sisters out there. And I also really love painting. If you follow me on Instagram, sometimes I show what I've been working on with painting and I love to paint with acrylics and lately I've really been into poor painting Again, you can Google that, but I've been making these paintings and then I end up calling them Scrabble Tile Art, because then I glue Scrabble Tiles onto the painting in fun little sayings or whatever. So I'm selling those three things my book, my paintings and my spoonie necklaces. I also am trying to get people to sign up on my newsletter list, which only goes out about once a month, so I'm hopeful that they will sign up. I also had to put together brochures about who I am and what I do, because I really want to start booking some speaking engagements. I didn't have any recent business cards, so I had to get those made and I decided to use QR codes on my business cards so that you could just scan it on one side and it takes to my podcast, and I could scan it on the other side and it takes you to my website. Well, the first time I ordered them, I accidentally had the same QR code for both things, so I had to redo it Anywho'sits.
Speaker 1:
I'm just letting you know that it's been quite a bit of time, quite a bit of energy and, honestly, quite a bit of money in order to prepare for this weekend. And it's exciting, right? It's exciting. I'm stepping into myself and saying, hello world, this is me and this is what I do, and maybe I can help you out, maybe you could purchase something from me or maybe we can make a connection somehow, and it's really exciting and it's also terrifying, for those exact same reasons. I mean, really this is the first time, or one of the first times, that I'm showing up completely as myself. I'm not acting like someone else. Now there's a little bit of an acting hat that I can put on right. I can pretend like I'm confident in those moments where I'm not, but for the most part, I'm showing up as myself, and that's fun and also scary when you aren't used to it.
Speaker 1:
I'm wondering if anyone will, will buy anything from me, and I'm hopeful that if I don't sell very many things, that I don't take that personally. It doesn't mean that just the items that I'm selling are crap. It just means that maybe this particular group of people isn't interested in what I'm selling this weekend, and that's okay. And I'm wondering if I'm gonna make any connections or new friends. I have a group of friends from the chapter that I belong to that will be there, but I'm excited and nervous to meet more people and, honestly, this has been a huge investment of money. I have spent, oh gosh, probably around $1,000 on all of this in terms of paying for the hotel, paying for my tickets to celebration, paying to be a vendor, making sure I have all my books, all my supplies, all my business cards, all my everything ready to go. It's a huge investment and I'm not saying that it's not worth it. I'm just letting you know that it's a big investment. $1,000 is a lot of money.
Speaker 1:
And I wanna tell you something else. This is hard for me to share publicly because, well, I'm working on it, but it's hard for me to share. But I am really stinking proud of myself right now. It hasn't started yet, but I'm really proud of myself Because I'm putting in the time and the money and the energy into making my future life and my current life better. I'm moving away from the thoughts that I sometimes have that it's selfish to want something that's mine, and I'm moving away from the thoughts that self-promotion is just veiled narcissism. And it feels really good to start thinking this way. It feels really good to be building my own confidence and to walk into my power and to just show up and say this is who I am, because it actually takes less energy to be yourself than to act like someone else. I just didn't realize that because I'm really good and I've been trained in acting like someone else. But, man, I just feel so much more free and light. Just being myself and doing this podcast has a lot to do with that, so thank you for listening to it, because it really means a lot to have anyone listen to anything that I have to say. So on my next episode, I will talk about the payoff of investing in myself.
Speaker 1:
This weekend, I'm guessing that I will be talking a little bit about actual money made, but also the other perks of spending this weekend in community with like-minded people and people who want to make a difference in others lives but want to do it on their own terms, which is exactly what I want to do too. If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, check out what I'm up to this weekend. I'm sure I'll be posting things. If you don't follow me, my handles on both are at heal and grow with Nikki. Nikki is spelled N-I-C-K-I-E, so I'm sure I'll be sharing. If I have the time and the energy to do it. I'm sure I'll be sharing on socials what's going on this weekend.
Speaker 1:
Please send me up some positive vibes that I don't completely wear myself out, although I'm sure I will, just because that's the nature of these conferences, right? Anyone that goes to conferences like this, you know what they're like. They're all day for one or two or several days in a row and they could be really fun and energizing, but they can also be incredibly draining too. So I'm hopeful that I don't expend all of my energy for the rest of the month in these next couple of days. So I will work very hard at taking care of myself this weekend, so wish me luck.
Speaker 1:
I'm excited to report back next week and tell you how it went, and tell you how investing in myself paid off, and in the meantime, I'm hopeful that you can take some time to reflect on whether or not you've been investing in yourself. You know and I don't necessarily mean money, although sometimes it does mean money what are you doing for you, not just what are you doing for your family or your school or your job or your church? What are you doing for you? And if me asking you that is sort of triggering because you're thinking, well, I can't do anything for myself, because that's quote unquote wrong, I'm going to ask you to rethink that If you aren't taking care of yourself, you aren't able to do a very good job of taking care of anyone or anything else.
Speaker 1:
That's just. That's just the reality of it. You have to take care of yourself, you have to invest in yourself, you have to love yourself or at least like yourself. And if you don't like or love yourself yet, I hope that you are finding your own ways to figure that out, because you deserve to be loved and you deserve to be liked exactly how you are and you deserve to invest in yourself, period. Okay, thanks y'all. As always, I'm so happy to be with you and thanks for healing and growing with me today. This is not intended to replace professional medical advice.