Self-Confidence & Leadership: From Climbing Mountains to Motherhood

We reframe self-doubt, motherhood, and messy life moments as a training ground for leadership, confidence, and authentic growth. Simone shares the REAL method and a mindset reset that turns “I could never” into clear choices and courageous action.

• redefining “shrinking violet” as resilience and strength
• reframing caregiving and domestic labor as leadership skills
• Simone’s vulnerable turning points and Kilimanjaro mindset
• competing vs supporting women and the social media trap
• readiness myths, imposter syndrome, and action bias
• adoption, family culture, and transferable skills
• control alt delete mindset tool for resets
• the REAL method for building confidence

You can find Simone at https://simoneknego.com/

Transcript

Opening: From Shrinking Violet To Strength

Simone Knego 0:00

So I am someone starting off that I struggled with self-doubt for the majority of my life. I am exactly what you described. I never thought that I was good enough, that I was doing enough, especially when I was a stay-at-home mom.

Mary’s Leadership Reframe For Women

Introducing Simone Canago

Mary 0:17

For centuries, the phrase shrinking violet was used to diminish women, to suggest we were meant to be small and meek. But in nature, violets are anything but weak. They're resilient, beautiful, and essential to the ecosystem. Hi, I'm Mary Rothwell, licensed therapist, and each week I sit down with women who remind us that being compared to a violet isn't an insult. It's a testament to strength, endurance, and the power of taking up space and living by your true nature. If you're ready to stop shrinking and start thriving, you're in the right place. Hey violets, welcome to the show. One of the most important lessons I learned from my work and from my career trajectory is that women often have skills that we don't fully recognize. I spent most of my early career as a school counselor. In that environment, I needed to make dozens of decisions every day. Every so often, the life of a kid actually hung in the balance. When one of my most influential mentors and favorite friends suggested that I apply for a leadership position at one point, I immediately gave five reasons why I didn't have the skills. Yet facilitating therapy is all about deciding what information is important, how to maximize and build skills, and most importantly, how does my client function in the system of their life? And systems theory, really understanding how one part of an organization impacts another, is crucial to effective leadership. Bottom line, I did have the skills. Even and especially, women who spent much of their lives as domestic engineers and mothers have cultivated leadership skills in spades. Often they build a plane while flying it. They need to understand financial strategies, encourage each member of the organization, i.e. family, to be their best self and build skills to be successful. They need to manage a daily agenda that can be upended at any moment, and they often answer to competing stakeholders. And honestly, that's the tip of the iceberg. All of these skills are leadership skills. My guest today seems to do it all. She is a mom of six kids and is building a powerful platform as an international speaker. She's the author of the book The Extraordinary Unordinary You, and she too is a podcast host. Oh, and by the way, she climbed Kilimanjaro. Her name is Simone Canago, and today she and I are going to reframe some of the ways that women overlook important leadership skills that not only can change their everyday mindset, but that can be leveraged to create important career advancements. Welcome to No Shrinking Violet, Simone. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. You have so many cool things that I want to talk about, but I would love to first start with having you talk a little about some of the key moments in your own life that led you to where you are today, including the work that you do.

Simone Knego 3:06

So I'm gonna give you two big moments. One, so I am someone starting off that I struggled with self-doubt for the majority of my life. I am exactly what you described. I never thought that I was good enough, that I was doing enough, especially when I was a stay-at-home mom. I thought everybody else is doing so many things. And I'm just raising six kids, right? Raising kids is one of the most important jobs in the world, raising good humans. So always remind yourself of that. But I was at this women's event and with good friends of mine, this video came on, Colby Calais Try, and I started crying. My friends had never seen me cry before. That that is the wall that I had put up. I always pretended that I was so strong and that I had it all together. And inside I was completely falling apart. And so this video is about peeling back the layers and showing your true self. And that moment, my friends were like, oh my gosh, what do we do with her? She is the go-to person. And I said, This is actually the real me. Like I completely struggle with so many things, and I've just never said it because of many reasons, right? That's what we all do. And that was kind of like the beginning of an awakening for me, that showing that I didn't have to hide behind this facade. I could be the real me. And that that was like the beginning of my work with other women. Because as soon as I shared, they all shared what they were struggling with, what their lives were like. And because from the outside, I always thought, oh, they have the perfect life. Like, why am I going to bother them with my problems? We all struggle, right? And it's such a huge reminder that we need to talk about the things that we're struggling with and we need to show who we really are. Because when you're pretending to be someone else, you're not helping anybody else. You're not helping yourself.

Mary 5:00

Very true.

Moment Two: Saying Yes To Kilimanjaro

Simone Knego 5:02

That was moment one. That was moment one. Okay, what's moment two? Um, moment two was when I was asked to do something completely out of my comfort zone, which was climb Kilimanjaro. I am not a climber. I've gone camping a couple of times. I live in Florida at sea level. We have 16 steps in our house. So very much out of my comfort zone. I've had many people ask me, why did you say yes? And a couple of reasons. One, I used to be the yes girl. I was a people pleaser, right? And I don't want to disappoint anybody. Let me, let me be the brownie troop leader. Let me pick up your kid from school, whatever I needed to do to kind of make other people happy to my own detriment. But this yes was a different yes. This yes was I understood that I needed to get out of my comfort zone. And so that's what this yes allowed me to do. Now, did I realize exactly what I was going to do when I signed up? No. 19,341 feet. So, but it changed everything for me because I realized that when I put in the work, it's not about setting the goal, it's about putting in the work and believing in yourself. You know, that constant, that the negative self-talk that we have, we have to move past. And it's the telling yourself that you can do this, right? I mean, why should we tell ourselves all the time that we can't do something? Like, what fun is that? So it's going through the opposite direction. And it really changed everything for me. And it changed everything for my family. That's when I started speaking. That's when I started writing. And not necessarily my message wasn't about Kilimanjaro, but it was about doing the things you think you can't because we all had those things that we think we can't.

Competing Narratives And Social Media

Mary 6:34

Yes. Totally true. Okay. Wow. So let me go back to first your first reason or your first point. And I think so often we start with having a situation socially or what imbued in our relationship with other women where we are competitors. And it makes it so hard to do what you did, to let that wall down so that people are like, oh my God, like she actually struggles with the things that I do. But I I so often put things into that social context that I think we're just set up to be competitors in a different way because there's so many things we're expected to do and to do well. And the, you know, not to go too far off the path, but then now we've brought in social media. So now we can publicly judge what we see of other women. So, what are your thoughts on that society kind of script of, you know, you have to compete with other women and always look good?

Simone Knego 7:37

Yeah, I I I really question it, especially now. Like, why do we need to? First of all, when you're competing with someone else, they don't even know you're competing with them, right? When you're judging them, they don't know, right? It's it's making you feel bad. And that's what I, you know, that's what I say to my kids. That's what I say to my podcast co-host is my 22, 23-year-old daughter. It's nobody else, you know, is thinking about you, right? You're you're so worried about what everybody else is doing, they have no idea that you're thinking about them. So they're not thinking about you. So it's reframing that. And why do we want to compete with other women in that way, right? If we change the way we do things, if we say, let me help you rise up instead of let me let me think about the ways I can knock you down. Like, how do you want to wake up every morning? Do you want to wake up thinking, like, what negative things can I say about someone today? Or how can I really help someone else today? Personally, I want to do the second part, but it is a mindset shift of thinking that why do I need to compete with this person? And I know a lot of it starts for you know women in the workplace where you know there's one opportunity to excel and you want that opportunity, right? So you're competing against that person. But really, the only person you should compete, compete against is yourself, right? Be your best self. And if you're not chosen for it, then you're not the right person at that time. That's all it means.

Mary 9:02

Well, and I think if we look at history, women did support each other. You know, it was this idea of the the village, everyone helps each other. And then I think as we had that advancement you're talking about, we started to go into the workforce more. Then it started to be well, how do you, how can you be a mom and a wife? Because it was back in, you know, the day, it was back in the 50s, the 60s, the 70s. How can you be those things and also have a career? Because there's always something where you have to prioritize constantly and the priority changes, but then there is going to be someone saying, You should do this or you shouldn't do this. And I really think that's when it started to flare up.

History, Work, And Women Supporting Women

Simone Knego 9:47

Yeah, I agree with you. I so my mom went to medical school in 1961. She grew up in rural Pennsylvania on a farm. Her mom had a sixth grade education. Her dad worked in the coal mines and at a local brewery. And she went into a library for the first time when she was in 10th grade, and that library changed her world. She knew at that moment she wanted to be educated. She moved in with another family, and he happened to be an orthopedic surgeon. Like she, so she moved in with them to raise, help raise their kids. And she applied to college and got in. And then she applied to medical school four late four years later and got in. And there were five women in her class. There were 120 people, five women, five of them were women. And all five women graduated, all five women practiced. And for the majority of her career, she was told that she was working in a man's world, that um her voice didn't matter. You know, even when she was in medical school, she was told that she took a man's spot. Like that's not fair. She took a man's spot, which is so crazy to think about, right? But things like that still happen. So, but the idea of competing against other women, for her, it actually didn't happen because in medical school they really stuck together to work harder, right? They, and then when she was in practice, same kind of thing because they were still during a time where the men made more than the women. So they had to stick together so that they could overcome those obstacles and and fight for equal pay, and they won. But today it's definitely different, right? And and what exactly what you were saying about the shift that is what's happened. And then the other thing that you said too, social media just makes it worse, right? Yeah. When we see what, oh, everybody else is doing. Okay, those are shiny moments. Who knows what's happening in their real life, right? I mean, and again, stop worrying about what anybody else is doing.

Mary 11:42

Doesn't really affect your life. It doesn't. Well, and it's the first thing I thought of when you talked about your mom, which what a great story, is that was her Kilimanjaro.

Simone Knego 11:51

Yes.

Mary 11:51

Yes. Like that such a thing to overcome. And then you're talking about this, you know. I know for me, sometimes people would in my past have suggested something, just like my friend and mentor said, you know, here's this leadership position, you should apply. It was instantaneous in my mind, no. And it always takes me a little bit of time to like lean back and think, well, wait a minute, what would that be like? And I think that is where for you and your mom, it was almost like you kept the door open to think, okay, this isn't like I'm not going to be skipping through the tulips here, but what a great challenge and what an amazing outcome for each of you that changed your lives.

Simone Knego 12:37

Absolutely. And if you think about it in terms of how how we do things on a daily basis. So thinking about how you can move forward, even when you have those thoughts that say, oh no, you're not ready for this, would you say that to your best friend? I mean, your friend said to you, you should do this, right? But you would never say that to yourself. And it's such a crazy thing. We need to treat ourselves like we treat our best friends. We are going to live with ourselves until the day we die. So why do we want to treat ourselves crappily, in my made-up word? But, you know, I mean, it's such a weird thing that we would constantly encourage our friends, but we don't encourage ourselves. And so I think if we can have that shift that says, wait, I am my own best friend. This is how I need to treat myself. I am capable of this. Like, why would I say that I'm not? I've put in the work, you know. I know it's that imposter syndrome that we always think we got there by mistake, like someone's gonna find us out. But it's not true because we have put in the work. We deserve to be there, we deserve a seat at the table.

Mary 13:42

Yeah, and you talked about the word ready, and no one's ever ready. I that's where I think that is fear. That's fear saying, I'll do it when X happens. And then you just don't do it. And so many things have happened before we're really ready, and that makes it messy. It makes it much more prone to, and I'm putting, I always put failure in air quotes because failure to me isn't an end, it's a it's a learning experience, it's the next opportunity. So I think that idea of being ready is false because you just do it. And you the other thing you brought up, I know on your website it says 75% of executive women have faced imposter syndrome. And I'm gonna say the other 25% just don't recognize it.

Readiness Myths And Imposter Syndrome

Simone Knego 14:30

Or they're not telling the truth. So yeah, I mean, definitely. I think that there's not a person that I know, and male or female, that doesn't struggle with something, but we're so afraid to talk about what we struggle with, but that's where we're hindering ourselves because we don't grow if we don't struggle. We we don't grow if we don't fail at things. And I think, you know, the idea of so I created uh a method called the real method. It's all about building confidence. So respect yourself, embrace your failures, ask yourself what you want and live without limits. And the embrace your failures part is, and the way I say it like that, because failure is a word, but it's about learning from it, right? And it's not about, oh, it's a stop sign. I can't ever do this again. I mean, that's how I used to think. I was like, oh, I messed up there, I'm done. No, like, okay, what can you do differently next time? How can you help someone else do it differently next time, whatever the scenario is? But don't let making one mistake stop you from doing something you've wanted to do your entire life. But that's what we tend to do.

Mary 15:44

Yeah. And I it makes me think of the term authenticity because we look at the finished product often. So I'll talk about my experience podcasting because I think you can relate. I would love to first of all have a daughter or a best friend to do a podcast with. So that actually planted a seed for me of a second podcast. But um, the love, the idea of authenticity, I think when we see something like a podcast with a celebrity, first of all, we have to remember they put more money into equipment, they have a team, they have editors, they have all kinds of things. So before you see that final product, they've it's gone through a lot, the same way as we see the cover, a woman on the cover of a magazine. And we have sort of normalized this as that's what it looks like. But if we look at anybody successful, they have had sometimes depths of failure before they arrive there. So it's always interesting to me that we continue to have this um this idea of what success looks like that is just so false.

Motherhood As A Leadership Skillset

Simone Knego 16:55

Yeah, I I agree. Every successful person out there, it depends on how you define, you know, however you define success, right? I mean, because everybody's different in in their definition of everything, basically. But every successful person has failed many, many times. It's the idea of getting back up and doing, right? It's not it's the taking action part, and that's a big part of confidence as well, is that you have to take action. The thing you said before about waiting until you you feel ready, right? I mean, I love to say that waiting until you feel ready is like waiting for IKEA instructions to actually make sense. It is not going to happen, right? And it's so true because we're like, oh, I'm not ready for that. I'm not, nobody's ready. You go and you do it and you learn on the job. You know, there's a I think HP published this statistic that men, you know, women will only apply for a job when they meet 100% of the qualifications. I think for men, it's 60%. Okay. If you meet 100% of the qualifications, you are overqualified. You don't need to be doing that job, right? I mean, part of a job is learning as you go, like so that you can expand your knowledge base, you can expand your skills, but we hold ourselves back so much to say, oh no, I can't do that. That's way too much for me.

Mary 18:11

Yeah. And that brings us back to what I started with that women who maybe took a break from working or they prioritized being a mom first, they don't have time to learn it. They have to do it. You know, you have a baby. It's not like you can say, oh, I'm just gonna put the baby over here on the shelf for a couple of days. I'm gonna go read this book about how to do this thing. It's ludicrous. But when we're in a position where, you know, we're getting paid, I think that's the other thing that we feel this sense of I need to earn this in a different way than men. Well, you're earning an awful lot when you're running a household and you're being a mom, but we don't monetize that because how could we? No one could pay that amount if we really could monetize it. So I think we hold these two things in our mind often that all these things I do, and you mentioned being a helper, and much many of us, we were we were not only wired that way, and I think there is truly brain wiring that women have a different level of nurture, a different ability to pay attention to those tasks in the environment and hold a lot in our brains, but we also have this idea of worth. And I've talked to a lot of women in the financial field, and women just think about money differently. We think about what it will do in instead of how do we grow it. And so I think when we go into a workplace, it we go in there with this idea. As you're saying, I need to be able to do every single thing well when I step in the door the first time. And we've we forget to look back at all the things that we taught ourselves in other situations in our life.

Adoption, Family Culture, And Belonging

Simone Knego 19:55

Yeah, I would say that exactly what you said about being. A stay-at-home mom, having kids, whatever, whatever it is your situation, I mean, the amount of skills that you learn in that position, I'll call it a position, is greater than you can learn anywhere else, right? I mean, patience. I mean, imagine taking the patience you have with your kids and using it with coworkers, right? I mean, a lot of coworkers don't have that patience. Understanding that everybody's at a different level, everybody learns differently, everybody communicates differently. Those are things that they don't teach you at work. That those are things that you bring in and make a huge difference to a team because you understand that you've lived that, but we don't give ourselves credit for that. And we think, oh, I'm I'm underqualified. I'm not qualified because I stayed home for however many years. Well, yes, you are just as qualified or more, honestly, probably more qualified. Um, you just have to package it differently, right? You just have to position yourself differently to show what you're capable of and not go in there with the I'm the underdog, right? I think that's that's the mindset a lot of times we go in. I mean, I did that, you know, when I was when I was a stay-at-home mom, I remember being out at a dinner and it was at a friend's house, and the woman I sat next to was a CEO of some big company. And of course, we're making the small talk, and she says, So what do you do? And I said, Oh, I'm just a stay-at-home mom. And she said, Oh, I can't imagine anything worse. I was like, okay, so I always feel I already feel like crap about myself. And now you say this, like, yay, okay, this is gonna be a really fun dinner. But it really just made me go more into my shell because I was already feeling like, okay, I'm not doing anything. Like I really am not. I'm what am I doing with my life? And what I was doing was raising six amazing humans to go out and change the world, right? And but we don't see it like that. We're like, oh, we're changing diapers and we're, you know, but it it is so important that we understand our value and understand that the skills that we learn in that situation so that we can move forward. And I feel like all of my life experiences have brought me to exactly where I am right now so that I can help other women realize what they're capable of.

Mary 22:11

Yeah. And so one thing I want to mention before I go, take a little side road, but one thing I want to mention is when we go into that work situation, we already historically have not earned the money of men. So we're told from the beginning you're not worth as much. And so I think that feeds into that whole worth thing, which I'm sure we could do an entire episode just on that. But the other thing that I am so curious about and I want to ask you about is being a mom. I know you have three adopted children, right? Can you talk a little about what that's been like? How did that, how did they blend with your children? What just some of the some of the highlights or your thoughts about that? Because I just love that part of your story.

Simone Knego 22:56

Thank you. Uh chaos, complete chaos. We'll start there. No. Um, so we had three biological children. Then we adopted our son Noah from South Korea. He was a baby, he was nine months old. Then we adopted um Ari. Yeah, Ari from Ethiopia. He was four and a half years old, and then we adopted Millie from Ethiopia as well, and she was two and a half years old. And, you know, it was the whole family had to come together. So it's not me raising a child, it's the family bonding and raising children together. So we did a vote every time we adopted, it had to be unanimous. It didn't matter if they were little or not, they still had to be part of the process. And I think that was really important for us because when something was happening and that was really hard. The kids were like, let me help. You know, we all, we all agreed for this, you know, we all agreed to this. And, you know, I'm almost an empty nester now. My youngest daughter is 18, which I cannot believe. She'll be going off to college next year. And it's just flown by. But there have been so many amazing moments. You know, people would ask me, do you love them any differently? No, they're all my kids. Like I feel exactly the same way. You bond exactly the same way. Doesn't matter how old they are. It's, you know, every and nurture versus nature, every single kid is completely different. Doesn't matter if I gave birth to them or not. So just understanding working with them where they are, helping them where they are. And it's just been really fun to watch. I mean, my kids see the world differently because we have a multicultural family, right? They they have really great humor, right? They're they're just really fun to be around as they become adults and they're good humans. Like that's the most important part to me is that they are the kids, they're homebodies too, which is kind of fun. Where when they come home, they're like, okay, I don't want to stay over at that person's house. I'm I'm staying home. Okay, great, you know. Um, so yeah, it's been a really great event, like to watch them grow into amazing humans. And I think it's been great for our friends too, because uh being honest, I mean, we live in a very white place, right? And so for them to see uh a little bit of cultural differences and wait, oh no, I shouldn't say things like that, right? No, you should not say things like that, even if you're joking. So I think that's been really good to watch my friends change in that way.

“I Could Never” Versus “Do I Want To?”

Mary 25:34

Yeah. Well, and I think about so you had your your hat three children biologically, and then you decided, okay, let's now bring more children into this home. And I I often think about what is this like to hear when the listeners hear this? And I work with exclusively women now. So I guarantee you, and you probably know this too, there are women listening thinking, I could never do that. They might have one child and feel totally overwhelmed by that. That is valid. But you have done so many things. So for the women out there listening to this, listening to the family that you have raised and loved, this career that you've created to help other people, and they're thinking, well, that's her. I could never do that. That is limiting narratives, it's fueled by that. So, what are some of these underlying things that you would gently say, hey, reflect on this, or what fuels that when people do that? As we talked about in the beginning, they do this thing of, oh, that's her. I could never do that.

Simone Knego 26:41

Would you want to? I mean, that's that's the question. It's really, again, words are so powerful. So, same thing when I climbed Kilmanjaro, I had women say to me, Oh, I could never do that. That's so hard. Would you want to? No, I would never want to do that. Okay, well, that's your answer. I would never want to do that. Not I can't do that, because you absolutely could. Again, I've gone camping twice. You could do it, right? You just have to put in the work. But a lot of times that's what we do to ourselves. We tell ourselves that we can't do something. Most people don't want to have six children, right? So that's the response. It's not that you couldn't do it. I mean, my sister has two, and she was really funny. She said when they were little and it was like really tough, she would say, if Simone can do six, I can do two. If Simone can do six, I can do two. But, you know, every struggle is valid. So I'll have people say to me, Oh, oh, I only have two. Like, that's no big deal to you. I'm like, no, your struggles are valid. It doesn't matter where you are in life, like, and it's not a comparison. It doesn't matter that I have six kids. Did I do everything right? No, what is right? I mean, honestly. Um, was it messy? 100%. You know, did we lose shoes all the time? Did kids leave the house naked? Yes. I mean, all these things. And people just have this idea of like, oh, she must, one, she must be really religious. Like, that's the first thing I always get. Oh, you must be really religious. No, I'm not really religious, right? I mean, and so that's always the funny one to me because people assume if you have a big family that you're religious. Um, the second thing is that either I'm a little crazy, which maybe I don't know. Um crazy in a good way. Yeah, crazy in a good way. Um, but you know, that it is really interesting to hear the assumptions that people have, but it is breaking that narrative of that you're capable of anything that you want, but you have to want it. And that's like the third part of my method is ask yourself what you want. Because it doesn't matter if someone else is doing it and you're not, because if you don't want to do it, it doesn't matter, right? So it's reminding yourself of that. Now, if you wanted to have six kids, you can absolutely do it. If you want to climb Kilimanjaro, you can absolutely do it. If you want to run a 5K and you've never done it before, it's setting the goal and putting the work, like taking action and not wait waiting for someone else to say, Oh, I think you can do this. It's waiting for yourself to say, I'm and not waiting. It's telling yourself I can do this now.

Mindset Hack: Control Alt Delete

Mary 29:13

Yeah, and you point out something really important with that idea of want, because it it brings us back to you don't do what everybody else does just because they're doing it. There's not one right path. And, you know, when I left my job when I worked for somebody else for 32 years and started to do my own thing, there's a lot of that. There's a lot of, oh, here's the right way to build your business. And nothing felt authentic to me. Like I'm not a marketer, like I can market to the end of the day, but it's not my love is really just impacting people. And so I think that authenticity and giving yourself permission to be different. So there's, I'm I have a book coming out called Nature Knows. And the the basic part of it is that we don't judge a plant that's not thriving. We don't say, oh my God, it's so lazy, it's not doing the right thing. We don't say that a sunflower should look like a fern. So in the natural world, we understand that different that different species are just different. They need different things, they don't have that brain that we think is so powerful when really it defeats us a lot. So I think the idea of think about what you want, not what you think you should want, because that's where the rich soil is. Because somebody can look at you and be like, oh, I'm such a failure because I'm raising these two kids. Why didn't I, you know, do these other things? And I think we all have a gift. You know, you're everybody brings part of themselves into the world in a different way. You have a tolerance, I think, for sort of that messy, chaotic, beautiful part of life. I don't have children. You know, I worked with kids my whole life, but I don't have my own children. And so I think for me, that would have been challenging in a different way. So I think connecting to this idea of who are you at the core? And what do you really want? Because you're right, once you know what you want, you can get there. But you need to have a goal that's yours, not somebody else's.

Simone Knego 31:20

Absolutely. And also, you know, so often we look at other people and we question, like, okay, first of all, why does anybody care that I have six kids? Right. I mean, like, why are they being like, oh, what's wrong with her? Why would she have six kids? Why would she adopt kids when she already has three kids? It's for me, that's like always such an interesting thing. And I know people are curious, and curiosity is really important. But the same thing, like when you when you talk about not having kids, you know, so often, like I have a lot of friends that never had kids, and they'll get the question all the time, is there something wrong with you? Like, why would you not have kids? Like, why do we think that way? Right. I mean, or I don't understand why she can do all the things with six kids and I can't. Well, I go, I do it. Like that is that's really all it is, is that I decide that I want to do something and I do it. And I have done this for years now, where, for example, I am just finished writing my second book. It comes out in February. So was I a writer when I started? No, I went to school for accounting. I'm a CPA by my background, but I decide that I want to do something. Maybe I'm like an impulse buyer. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do it, right? And I think there's benefits to that because then we can look back and say, wow, I accomplished that instead of saying, I wish I would have.

Mary 32:36

Yeah. Okay, so a lot of this is about mindset. So I'm curious because I can't really relate to climbing Kilimanjaro. I did have an experience where I hiked about 220 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. And thinking when I got there, I was in shape. And then the first day was like 23 miles, and I was like, my feet were bleeding. That is mindset. So, what were some of the things that either you encountered in that situation, you encountered raising your family, whatever it is, where you realized I got to shift this mindset where you had a big challenge and you realized the answer here through this is how I'm thinking about it.

Cognitive Reframing And Small Wins

Simone Knego 33:16

So, so many times in my life. So, yes, Kilimanjaro, I could have stopped on day one, right? I mean, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so hard. And Kilimanjaro, you start in a tropical brain forest and you end on a glacier. So you're you go through so many different climate zones. It's and it's a hike. It's not, you know, you're not, you don't need crampons. You don't, you're not climbing over boulders. I mean, a little bit at the end, but you know, you're not, it's not that technical. It's just challenging because of the altitude. And it hurts. I mean, you're going a lot of miles. So I have a little mindset hack that I use. It's a very creative title. It's called control alt-delete. Um, so back in the day, it was how you would uh restart a frozen computer. Now it brings up um, oh my gosh, what's it called? Project task manager. I don't know what task manager does, but um it I guess it manages your tasks. But um, so but sometimes our minds freeze too, right? We get caught in the comparison game, we spiral in self-doubt, we tell ourselves, oh, we can't do it. So control is about awareness, right? We have those negative thoughts that come into our head all of the time. You have to be aware of what the story that you're telling yourself, right? So it's, you know, is this real? Is this valid? Like, what is the story that's running my moment, my day? The next part is alt, the alternative. Tell yourself a better story, right? Our thoughts become our reality. The way we talk to ourselves becomes our reality. So instead of saying you can't do something, yes, you can, watch me, right? Instead of saying that, um, oh, I'm gonna wait for this to happen. No, you're gonna do it. Like though those are the alternatives to kind of holding yourself back. And the last part is delete. Uh, delete the habits and beliefs that don't serve you, delete the comparison game, delete the belief that you're not enough. Um, you know, delete all of the things that are holding you back. Delete those toxic relationships, right? Because we all have them. And and that's how I move forward in the moment. So if I have something happening, so on Kilimanjar, I was like, oh no, yes, you can do this, okay? You know, that's not real. Yes, you can, you know, and and I just kept going that way. But I can tell you with raising kids as well. So um my son from South Korea, he's on the autism spectrum. And, you know, he's off at college now. In elementary school and early middle school, we thought he will be living at home forever. Like, and that's great. Like we're we're set, we're good, you know. Um, but it was a lot of work, a lot of patience. And he is at college, he drives a car, he has friends, like all of these things that at first we thought would never happen, but I had to do that mindset shift. And why, why am I thinking this way? Let's see what can happen. Let's think of all the positive things and let's work to the point where he can have exactly the life that he wants. And so so often we get stuck in the other thing, like, oh no, they'll never be able to do this, or I'll never be able to do this. Yes, you can.

The REAL Method Explained

Mary 36:27

Yeah. And for people that I think can't fully believe that immediately, think in somewhere in between. Let's see what happens. I'm gonna do this. And I know for hiking, it's you know, let me try one more day. I never thought I'm gonna hike 220 miles. I'm gonna, I said, let me see how far I get. And then it's each day, it's that renewed commitment. And I think it's kind of like anything. It's a marriage. It's each day you recommit to saying, I'm gonna try to do this the best way I can. But, you know, I think from working in therapy when we use cognitive therapy, flipping that script, there's so many people that are like, the uh again, imposter syndrome, this is so not true. I'm lying to myself. It's like, well, you're you're you're believing a different thing that's not necessarily true. So let's just try it this other way and see what happens. And so I think that idea of letting it be possible because you're gonna find out that the new narrative is truer because you created it. You didn't listen to someone else's version of what you can do. So I love that control alt-delete. So before we end, can you talk again first about your real method? Run us through that again because I love those different parts of that.

Simone Knego 37:46

Absolutely. So respect yourself, embrace your failures, ask yourself what you want, and live without limits. And the reason I started with respect yourself, first of all, I like the word real, I like it better than authentic. But the idea of respecting yourself, I think for me, I didn't learn that until I was much older. Right. When I was a kid, I was taught to respect my elders, my peers, right? Um, but never once do I remember being taught that the most important person to respect is myself. And so that's kind of where I needed to start. And I I had a lot of experiences when I was younger that did not involve self-respect. I had an abusive boyfriend in high school and I didn't get it, right? I didn't understand. So I think when we start there, it really we're like, oh yeah, I can set boundaries without feeling guilty, right? I can take care of myself. I mean, self-care is so important. You know, there's so many things that are part of self-respect, but we don't see them that way because nobody's ever said that. And then embrace your failures we talked about before, which again is is crucial, right? Why is failure a stop sign? Failure isn't. Failure is like, oh, what did I learn from that? Well, that didn't go the way I thought it was going to go. I um did something really dumb about two weeks ago. So I had shoulder surgery about five months ago. And my and the one thing the surgeon said to me is just don't fall down for the next year. Don't fall down. Like that's all. Like everything else, you can start doing all the things now. What did I decide to do? It was like two weeks after I saw him, I wrote a mechanical bull. Like, why? I don't know. And guess what happened? I fell on the shoulder. So it's been hurting ever since. I'm I'm sure it's gonna be fine. But you know, we we sometimes like that was a big fail. Like, Simone, what were you thinking? I wasn't thinking that was the problem. But am I am I gonna be like harping on myself forever? I'm like, no, this makes a great story now. Like it is what it is. So again, we're all gonna fail at things. Ask yourself what you want. We talked about it's it's one of the hardest things to do as women to say, like, what do you want? Right. Um, but it's so important that we we ask everybody else, how can I help you? What do you need? What do you want? yourself what you want like do you want to be doing the job you're doing today i'm not saying quit your job tomorrow but you know really take a a hard look at what you're doing in your life and then living without limits i think is that's the ultimate goal but it's also a time for us to kind of reflect on stuff like the idea of how I used to talk about myself when I was younger I'm just a stay-at-home mom I'm just Rob's wife I'm just a volunteer justifying my existence and it's so important that we the way we talk about ourselves is like we would talk about our best friend like I said earlier. So drop the just you are you are important you are valuable you are necessary in this world and that's exactly how I go through my method and it really you know it's all about building confidence from the inside out really understanding your value and your worth yeah and your book is coming out about mid-February is that about the real method or what what tell us a little about the book. Yeah so it's all about the real method. So the book is called um real confidence.

Mary 41:12

I'll show you my little book. Oh exciting I love when the the actual thing arrives it's great.

Confidence As A Daily Practice

Simone Knego 41:17

Real confidence a simple guide to go from unsure to unshakeable and it it's really a vulnerable book for me. You know I really talk about my life and talk about how raising six kids and how many times I was on the bathroom floor and my abusive relationship in high school but what I learned and and then other people's stories as well but taking my real method and helping women build confidence from the inside out because confidence is a skill it's not something you're born with or you don't have and everybody else does. That's what I used to think. Oh she's so confident I'll never be like that right because I wasn't born that way. No, it's a skill that you build like every other skill you have to work on it every single day. Just like we, you know, I mean if we're going to learn a language we don't study it one time and say, oh I'm fluent now. No, we work on it every single day. And it really stop starts with how you talk to yourself, right? Do you really want to wake up every morning and look in the mirror and say, oh I hate everything I see. No, you don't like so it starts with that self-love piece of saying you know it you can start small but looking in the mirror and reminding yourself like what you're capable of, what you like about yourself. Don't go to the negative things first, right? There's we're always going to have things that we don't like about ourselves but it's really about taking care of yourself and really loving yourself.

Closing And Book Launch Invite

Mary 42:37

And it's not about being perfect. No you know there I'm sure you have days where like with the shoulder thing where you're like what was I thinking you know we it's not that we don't we don't arrive and then we're perfect and then we never have any doubt. It's it's a process but like you're saying with learning a language building muscles the more you do it the less you're gonna fall deep into that pit of self-doubt and you're gonna just yeah you build the confidence so that the next time it's not so devastating if there's a setback because it's like oh yeah I expected this to happen at some point. And what did I learn? How am I going to get through it? So 100%. Yeah. Well thank you what a great discussion. I appreciate that you were here today. Yeah thank you so much for having me here. And I want to thank everyone for listening. So one of my dreams is coming true. I'm publishing my first book in a few months I'd love for you to be a part of it in the form of emails not spammy and not often that will be a fun break for your inbox kind of like recess with behind the scenes stories, free audios of books, excerpts and giveaways including signed copies of my book. You can sign up at maryrothwell.net forward slash launch team I will put that in the show notes as well as all the information to help you find Simone. So until next time go out into the world and be the amazing resilient vibrant violet that you are