Unbreakable Mind & Body

62. Echo Chambers, Intuition, & The Courage To Be Weird

• Tiana Gonzalez • Episode 62

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0:00 | 23:57

Feeling stuck in an echo chamber where every scroll sounds the same? We dig into the cost of chasing trends, the courage to be weird, and what it takes to rebuild after a flop without diluting your voice. From raw early work to polished releases, we unpack why the projects that matter most often start as outliers—and how to hold your vision long enough for the right people to find it.

I share why I left a few platforms, what pulled me toward Substack, and how separating art from content changed my creative energy. We talk about the difference between making for clicks and making for truth, and why choosing rooms that reward depth can revive your curiosity. 

This is a practical conversation, too: I map out the plan for 2026, how my in-person coaching and this podcast connect, and the decision to pivot a heavy online course into a private podcast designed for real schedules and real workouts.

If you’ve wrestled with imposter syndrome or stalled projects, you’ll hear an approach for telling fear from intuition and a simple way to try again differently. 

Want more? Subscribe, follow me on Instagram for daily sparks, check out my Substack for unfiltered long form, and join the wait list for Lift Like You Mean It—my private podcast that teaches you to build your own program with confidence. 

Substack: https://substack.com/@tianamoves 

Waitlist for Private Podcast: https://tiana-gonzalez.mykajabi.com/podcast-waitlist  

Send Tiana a text!

Connect with Me

Instagram: www.instagram.com/tianamoves

Website: unbreakablemb.com

Email: info@unbreakablemb.com

Get on the waitlist for my new Strength Training Program: HERE

Disclaimer: This show is for education and entertainment purposes only. This is not intended as a replacement for therapy. Please seek out the help of a professional to assist you with your specific situation.


SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Unbreakable Mind and Body Podcast. I am your host, Tiana Gonzalez, a multi-passionate creative, storyteller, and entrepreneur with a fierce love for movement. This is our space for powerful stories and actionable strategies to help you build mental resilience and elevate your self-care practice. Together, we will unlock the tools that you need to create an unbreakable mind and body. Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Tiana, and I want to talk to you about how important it is to pick yourself back up and try again, especially when you're working on something that is near and dear to your heart. And the reason why I say this is because I understand what it feels like to have a dream, to have a wish, to work on something, to make it real. And then when you share it with people, it flops. Or you created a product or an offer and it didn't sell. Or you put yourself out there and people didn't get it. And the reason why I want to discuss this with you is because we are living in a time where everything we do, particularly if it's online, whatever applications you're using, it's feeding you more of the same types of things that you're already watching or paying attention to. For example, if you go on to your Netflix account or your Amazon Prime account, if you watched a few films or shows, it will recommend other things to you that are maybe the same genre, maybe the similar vibe, maybe the same actor. So there's some kind of thread of similarity or something in common with the other material that you have watched. Now that's not necessarily bad, but when you are experiencing that everywhere you spend your time, you start to feel like you're living in an echo chamber. Or let's say you go onto your favorite social media platform. It doesn't matter which one it is, because it could be YouTube, it could be TikTok, it could be Instagram, it could be Facebook, and you see a piece of content that has a trending sound, and you scroll to the next thing, and it's the same sound, and then the same sound, and then the same sound. And you and I both know there are quite a few that live rent-free in your head for a period of time. And if you heard some of the older sounds now, you would actually remember pieces of content that you saw or watched or consumed or saved or shared with your friends and family with that same trending sound. And so that's what I mean by being in an echo chamber. It's almost like a snake eating its own tail. Now, I want to encourage individuality, and that's what this conversation is gonna point to because using trends to gain popularity or using trends to get more people to look at your stuff can be helpful. However, I want you to be weird, to be different. A lot of the music artists that you listen to now, at one point in their early stages of care their career or when they were kids, they were weird. People didn't like their stuff. I can think of so many right off the top of my head. Lady Gaga, Prince. There's so many. And yet I can only think of two, but that's because I'm on, you know, I got the pressure on with the mic, the green light is shining in my face. But you understand where I'm coming from. The artists that you love and adore, that people now follow, that people want to now be like, at one point in the past, they were an outsider, they were weird, they were different, they were unusual, their music was not understood, their messaging, people didn't get it, and they kept on with it because they knew it was important, because they knew it was valid, and because they held true to their vision. And they knew that eventually the right people would get the memo, and then their careers would skyrocket. Now, I'm not gonna get into like the all the politics and you know, he said, she said, and rumors about the music industry because I don't really know everything about it, but if you look at any artist and you look at their early work, and then you see how they've progressed over time. There are so many that started out very different, and yeah, of course, their sound evolves and they changed, but you probably love their early stuff the best. That was the most real, that was the most raw and vulnerable, that was before their image had to be taken into account to sell records. So I want to encourage you to be weird, to stick to your vision, and maybe if you're putting yourself out there in any sort of way and your people are not finding you, don't change your message, maybe change where you're going, where you're spending your time, which leads us right into what I really wanted to talk about today. And it'll all make sense at the end of the episode. I've started a Substack account, and what I love about it so much is it seems like most of the people on that platform are there because they love to write andor they love to read and they want to connect with other like-minded people. The cool thing about the platform is there's a space for long format and as well as shorter format. Uh, there's a way to connect with people, and you could also, as a creator and as a writer, you can add a paywall to certain pieces of work if you wanted to be compensated for your hard work in writing your material. I'm gonna try to avoid using the word content because content is different from writing. It's content is you know an overarching sort of thing. And it's not necessarily the same as art. It is similar, but it is different. So going back to Substack, why did I choose to explore this platform? Well, first things first, I have removed myself from a couple of things. I found I was consuming more than I was creating on threads as well as TikTok. So I deleted my profiles on both of those apps, and it doesn't mean I won't ever go back, but for now, I'm not going there. And I decided for the second half of 2025 and going forward into 2026, I was only gonna focus on a few things, but I was gonna try to do them well. Now I am referring to putting myself out there on social media in any sort of way. Prior to, I don't know, 2023, I was on social media all fucking day. I think I shared this in a previous episode. At one point, I was basically a full-time content creator and I was miserable. I fucking hated it. Uh, it consumed my life. I felt like I was just, you know, pulling at straws. Some pieces of content landed, most of them flopped. I had a few go viral, which is not fun by the way. Um, virality is not fun at all. And I took a big step back when I went into the construction industry because I just didn't have the bandwidth for it. I didn't have the desire to be on the internet, and it was a nice break. Summer of 2024, probably spent a little bit more time on there, but I wasn't consistent. And in the fall of 2024, I went back to working as a personal trainer in person full-time. And I wanted to be sure that what I share has a purpose and there's, you know, intention behind it. I'm not just randomly sharing, you know, behind the scenes or a day in the life of a trainer that lives outside of New York City. Like, who the fuck cares? I wanted it to be more meaningful, more impactful. And I will say most of 2025, it was a little bit of a dance. It was like one step forward, two steps back. I'd post a little of this, I'd share a little of that, but still kind of the same nonsense, you know. I wasn't really getting traction. And I thought I was gonna launch a course last year. I did not do that. And I'm working on something that's gonna be launched this quarter in Q1 of 2026. Super pumped about it. And in the interest of being able to share what I have with my network, with my community, in order for people to see anything you post, you do need to have a presence. And so I made a calendar for myself and came up with a schedule of like a number of posts I want to put up online of different different types of posts, and then how many times I want to share in my stories. And there still seemed to be this like itch that I wanted to scratch with my writing. And a couple of years back, uh, a good friend of mine had suggested maybe starting an OnlyFans with my work, my writing work, because it was so good. But I just couldn't get myself to put my my writing on that platform. And um, I didn't, and I haven't even shared any of my real personal writing um just because I didn't know how I felt about it. So Substack is pretty cool because it offers the option if I wanted to have a paywall that only select individuals can see it and see the writing that it's offered to them. I haven't gone there yet. So I'm just starting to explore on this platform, and it's interesting to me because there's definitely a vibe of like having a blog, which I used to have years ago, but then also these shorter form notes that tend to get more traffic to your account and your profile, and you can exchange ideas like in shorter format. So it's pretty cool. And the reason why I'm exploring this is because it's important to me to learn new things, and it's also important for me to stick to my commitments. So what's cool is you can create something shorter format in one place, and then expand upon it and dive into the details and put the reader in the situation with you and describe the scene with much more depth and texture and emotion. And they're there because they want to be there, which is the cool part. So this is what I mean when I say that art and content are not the same, because content has a very like specific purpose. You are creating something with the intent to have the viewer take some sort of action or do something, even if it's to leave a comment or to like it. But art is created for the creator. If the people looking at it, the viewer, enjoys it as well, that's cool. But I'm not writing for you, I'm not painting for you, I'm not sculpting for you, I'm not dancing for you, I'm dancing for me. If you like it too, great. And if you want more of that, you can pay for it. And I think that that's kind of cool. That's why I'm I'm attracted to this new new platform. Now, I am gonna share my link in the show notes. So if you want to check out some of my work, that's great. No pressure. Um but it's cool to have a space where being lengthy, being wordy, yapping a lot is encouraged. And that really speaks to my inner child in a very special way because I always felt, and it's it's no one's fault because this could have just been something that I internalized deeply as a wound, but I always felt like I needed to be quiet and I couldn't express myself authentically, and nobody cared what I had to say. And so I was very much like repressed. And then when I would go to school, I would act out. And I remember in elementary school, some of my classmates, a lot of my classmates actually didn't like me at all because I was so loud and obnoxious and annoying and always showing off. And I'm embarrassed and I feel a little bit of shame because I thought I was just being silly and being me. But the truth is that school, especially elementary school, was the only place where I felt like I could really be myself. And when I went home, I had to reel it in and just be quiet and just stay below the radar and do what I was told. So for you, if you are expressing yourself creatively, I encourage you to explore and maybe find a space where you feel safe to do that. Now, I know the internet is a scary place because once you put something out there, it's out there. I mean, even if you delete it, it's still out there. You know, people have receipts. And so finding a space where you feel comfortable and you can be yourself and you can be weird, going back to how we started this episode, is really, really important. Now, 2026, my online stuff. What am I doing? In the last episode, I I ended it saying I was gonna share with you a little bit about my plan for 2026, what I would like to do. I actually don't know my plan for the whole year, but here's what's going on right now. So I work in person doing one-on-one training and nutrition coaching. I absolutely love what I do, it is so important to me, so meaningful, so impactful. It is what I was put on earth to do. Now, as far as this podcast, we publish a new episode every Monday. That's not gonna change. With my online presence, as far as any social media, you can primarily find me on Instagram. That's my jam. That's my favorite place to be. You can check the show notes to see how you can follow me there. And I that's my favorite. I really enjoy that platform a lot. I enjoy looking at my friends' posts, I enjoy being entertained, and I like I do like to create, so it's a fun platform, in my opinion. Um, I also have a little broadcast channel there called Done Is Better Than Perfect, which is also the title of episode three of this show that was published in late March of 2025. Now, Substack, I don't really know what I'm doing with it. Right now, I'm in the learning phase. And my plan and what I've done so far is really more about introducing myself and who I am and how I've mixed all of the different things that I've experienced, that I've learned, and that I've put forward and presented to the world as my work and creation and created the current situation where I have this, you know, physical body strength training foundation, as well as working on the mind and mental health, professional development, growth. That's the podcast. And now piecing it all together with my social media so that everything is connected and it makes sense. So I think that up until recently, I always felt like all the things I love to do are great, but they don't, it's not really cohesive. And I went to a conference in August of 2025 in New York City, and I met with uh a coach there. She was one of the speakers, and she presented a really cool uh lecture. And afterwards I told her I thought it was great. And she asked me what I do, and I said, Well, I kind of do two things and they're not related, and I just go into the whole thing, and she's like, No, they're very much related. You work on the body and the mind. And I was like, Oh my God, that's brilliant. So now, how am I gonna piece this all together? Well, by the end of quarter one of this year, I will have a private podcast available for purchase, low-ticket offer. And it's for women who want to put their own workout routines together and follow their own program. So this is for the people who cannot meet me in person, but who want to learn from me. And initially, this was going to be this big online course, you know, with a slide deck and workbooks and like several modules. And while creating it, I got to a point where I just froze. And I was really stuck because I had no motivation to do it. I had the whole course outline of I had everything lined up. I had created branding and a funnel and started talking about the course before I even put it all together. And when it came time to record, I just didn't have it in me. Well, that was my intuition telling me to slow down, telling me to really evaluate is this something you want to do? And thinking about that imposter syndrome, I started to say to myself, well, you've done this before and it didn't work. Remember? You spent almost a year building out a program and a six-month mentorship, and you didn't have a lot of people really interested in it. And the people who were interested in it were not a good fit. So do we really want to go down this road again? And so having the discernment to really understand was it imposter syndrome or was it that I was thinking about doing the delivery in a different way? And that's really what I came up with. It's not the course material itself, but it's how I want to deliver it to my ideal client. And how can I make this something a little bit more palatable? Because my impression right now is that we are all so freaking busy. I cannot imagine sitting down to work through a course right now. So why would I sell one? Why would I expect somebody to not only buy it, but then sit through it, learn from it, integrate the lessons, and then implement? I don't think so. So with the private podcast, it's just like this. It's delivered like this, right to your device, and you can listen. If you want to take notes, if you want to print the attachments, you can. You don't have to. But this is how that project will be rolled out and delivered. Now, if you are a woman that's looking to put your own plan together and you want to make sure you do it in a way that it makes sense and that it's a cohesive program and that you can crush it out on the gym floor with confidence, you can sign up for the wait list so that you can be notified when the product is available for purchase. That link will also be in the show notes. All right. So I'm sharing everything I have with you right now. You can follow me on Instagram. You can check out my Substack if you want to get to know me on a little bit more of a personal level. I am unhinged on Substack. Okay. There's no fucking filter there. You can make sure to subscribe to this show. And if you want to get on the wait list for Lift Like You Mean It, which was the name that I had for a downloadable PDF that I released last year, I'm shifting it to the private podcast, which will be available for purchase. You can sign up to get on the wait list there. I know that I have said a lot. And if you don't want to do a fucking thing, don't. That's fine. I'm just happy you're here and you're listening to the show. I appreciate your time and attention. I want to remind you that sometimes imposter syndrome is going to bubble up and it's a fucking lie. And sometimes it's your intuition just kind of leading you in the right direction or in a different direction. But you can do something similar to what you've done in the past, but maybe do it a different way and see if you find success that time or that go around. I'm so grateful for you. I appreciate you. And I'll catch you on the next one.