The Confidence Shortcut with Niki Sterner
The Confidence Shortcut is your permission slip to start before you’re ready. Hosted by actor, comedian & producer Niki Sterner, each episode is packed with honest conversations, mindset tools, and practical shortcuts to help you silence your inner critic, develop a growth mindset, and get unstuck.
Designed for high-achieving creatives, performers, visionaries, and entrepreneurs, this podcast helps you build the habit of courage in the face of fear—so you can finally share your voice with the world.
If you’ve ever wondered how to build confidence, overcome self-doubt, or stop overthinking and start taking action, this show is your weekly boost of momentum. Whether you’re battling imposter syndrome, stuck in perfectionism, or simply afraid to take the next step, you’ll leave each episode with real-life tools and the confidence to move forward—one bold (and sometimes messy) step at a time.
Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show wherever you’re listening, and grab your free “Confidence Kickstart” in the show notes.
The Confidence Shortcut with Niki Sterner
#10: Faye Laroux | The Ballerina & the Wild Dog | Embodying the Three Bodies to Heal
Former ballet dancer Faye Laroux shares her journey from perfectionism to authenticity through her Three Bodies methodology, helping sensitive, purpose-driven people embody healing and confidence. Through personal stories of trauma and transformation, Faye reveals how aligning our physical, emotional, and spiritual bodies can unlock our most authentic expression and highest potential.
• From professional ballet at 17 with the American Ballet Theater in New York City, to walking away 4 years later after experiencing the dark side of the elite ballet world and perfectionism
• How rescuing and rehabilitating a wild dog became a profound metaphor for human healing
• Understanding your "high destiny trajectory" by aligning with your deepest values
• The importance of feeling grace and alignment in your physical body as a doorway to confidence
• What it means to "withdraw permission" from your inner critic instead of fighting it
• A powerful guided practice for grounding and connecting with your three bodies
• The willingness to change as the essential habit for building authentic confidence
• How taking responsibility without blame creates transformation
Ready to explore the connection between your physical, emotional and spiritual bodies? Visit Faye's website to learn about her coaching programs and upcoming retreat in New Mexico. The Three Bodies approach can help you discover, explore and attain your most fulfilling destiny trajectory.
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Welcome to the Confidence Shortcut, the podcast for ambitious creatives and entrepreneurs who are ready to stop overthinking, take bold action and finally step into the life they've been dreaming about. I'm your host, nikki Sterner mom, actor, comedian and producer. After years of playing small and waiting to feel ready, I went on a courage quest and found a shortcut to confidence. Each week, I'll bring you real stories, simple steps and conversations with experts in mindset, courage and confidence, plus heart-to-hearts with fellow creatives who are turning their dreams into reality. It's time to get unstuck and start showing up. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Confidence Shortcut. I'm your host, nikki Sterner.
Speaker 1:Today's guest is Faye LaRue, founder of Three Bodies and a transformational coach who helps sensitive, purpose-driven people embody healing at the deepest level. A former professional ballet dancer turned embodiment expert, faye guides clients in using the three bodies to discover, explore and attain a fulfilling destiny trajectory. Explore and attain a fulfilling destiny trajectory. Her work blends movement, nervous system repair and spiritual integration to turn insight into livable wisdom, helping people lead, love and create from their most aligned self. I'm so excited to get into this story, faye. Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Nikki. I'm so delighted to be here.
Speaker 1:And you're in Santa Fe. Is that correct? Correct Santa Fe.
Speaker 2:New Mexico.
Speaker 1:How is it there? Today Is it a beautiful day.
Speaker 2:Absolutely stunning day. Yeah, stunning spring day.
Speaker 1:Did you get to go outside already?
Speaker 2:I go outside every morning with my dog. I call her my beast. She can't get out, so she's not just a walk around the block kind of dog. We get out for a hike.
Speaker 1:Oh, really, that's fantastic. I was just speaking with a nutritionist and she was saying how a really good way to wake up your brain in the morning is to get outside and walk like into the sunshine. And it just helps your brain wake up, and I've been doing it and it's really been helpful.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, it's an amazing shift as soon as you're out there, sometimes I don't really want to go and I'm always incredibly grateful that I have this beast, as I call her, to get me out there every day. I don't have a choice. What kind of dog is she? She is a mix, she's a rescue and she was actually a wild dog. She was pulled from the Mesa, so I didn't know that when I adopted her and she was actually a wild dog. She was pulled from the mesa, so I didn't know that. When I adopted her and it was this in unbelievable learning experience for me, I worked with quite a few specialists to figure out how to rehab and basically domesticate a wild animal so that she was safe and happy and fulfilled and in our life. It took an incredible amount of dedication on my part and about a year and a half to two years just to even turn the corner. Now she's five now.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Never know that she had been so shut down, so throw herself against a wall. If you looked in her direction, she's still very independent. That's why I call her my beast. She isn't really a normal dog, that is, we have an expectation around dogs, but I do believe that was part of this. Incredible medicine for me was expectation. I changed a lot around. I was able to view our societal expectations on humans as well as just how behavior is supposed to be and the expectation to be something you're not, and then what it takes to scale back expectations to zero, to be able to build something foundational that you can actually live on, versus keeping up or trying to. If you miss these foundational stages, you'll never. It's never really sustainable.
Speaker 1:Wow, that is so mind-blowing right there, Just even reflecting back on us as humans. The same way we go through trauma and we get in that kind of I don't want to call it wild, but it does feel a little bit like that Prepared for anything, that danger is everywhere and you're just prepared for that instead of prepared for growth or relaxation. Wow, I can imagine that was almost like a mirror, like in your life. How can I use this?
Speaker 2:Incredibly so, almost to the ridiculous, you know, almost like whoa? Yes, absolutely Especially because at that time I was healing from a pretty intense trauma. I think we all have trauma and then some of us have these more acute moments of trauma. So it was a very interesting kind of flip of the switch, you know, like the script changed around what I thought I was going to be doing with this dog and what I ended up doing with this dog and how I transformed and how, seeing how I needed to reduce expectations and my willingness to reduce expectations for her, and how that, knowing that that is what I had to turn towards myself and be able to depart from normal society, to be willing to do that, to create something much greater than I ever could have done, trying to fit into what I'd known already.
Speaker 1:Tell me a little bit more about that, if you will.
Speaker 2:In regards to creating something greater than what I. I think it comes back to what we were just talking about in regards to being able to give yourself the time and space to actually heal, to actually understand who you really are, get the medicine from what you've been through so you don't miss that or end up having to go back 10, 15 years later when it erupts into something, when you're triggered and it starts to destroy something and you don't understand why. And then, when you learn what healing is as a lifestyle, you do understand why. But it's more that foundational aspect where there was no walking this dog around the block. She could barely go outside in a car ride.
Speaker 2:I had to put her in the car, sit in the car, take her out of the car and go back inside. Put her in the car, put the car into neutral, let it roll down the street a couple of feet, stop the car, take her back inside. You know these were the levels at which we had to slowly. Sometimes it took me when I was eventually walking. Her took me sometimes two hours to get around the block because we would just have to stop and her sensory overload was so extreme. But you can't just drag her through that. I mean you can? That's what most people do, because you know I got, I got to get to work, I have things to do, I have to go show up, I have money to make, I have this, I have that. And it was just an interesting process for me to surrender that and show up purely for her to trust in what that could become.
Speaker 1:Now can you take me back to when you were 17 and tell me a little bit more about that time in your life?
Speaker 2:Sure, 17 is when I moved to New York. I was hired by American Ballet Theater. I was recruited the year before, but my mom thought I was too young to go. So I guess at 17, I was old enough. Where did?
Speaker 1:you grow up before that, just so I have perspective.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was born in Long Beach, california. I started dancing when I was three. I went from studio to studio, teacher to teacher and I did the summer program starting around, I think, at age 13. 15, I moved up to the Bay Area to train with a specific school and some specific teachers and I had a coach in the city and I started finishing up my high school early and ABT had heard about me, asked me to come take class with their company.
Speaker 2:It wasn't really a proper audition, it was sort of a viewing, so to speak, and they were in a semi-company tour in Sacramento and I went and took class and at that point they were very much so like oh, we want you to join, wanted me to come now, probably so that nobody else could scoop me up. And so then, a year later, I had to re-show up to class, basically re-audition. And yeah, it was just like okay, now you're coming to New York. And so from California, from a pretty sheltered, focused life around ballet, a lot of sacrifice I was just thrust into the world of New York City on my own. It's not like going to a dorm or something. You're an adult. Oh, wow, yeah.
Speaker 1:Was there a lot of perfection in the world of ballet?
Speaker 2:Of course, yes, extreme, pretty extreme level of perfection. And I think perfection and control they go together. Yeah, they're very married, because it's the illusion of control and the idea that you can control everything that then gives you the ability to feel perfect or try to hone in on perfection, or try to shape yourself to something that then is perfect, and when you think about that, it's really just about then how you are perceived as perfect. You strive for it, but perfection is really just how you are perceived by those around you. Because I do believe that you lose sensation to yourself in over-perfectionism, lose sensation to yourself in over-perfectionism. You're so preoccupied with what people think about you, how their perception of you will either, for instance, in ballet, forward your career or stop it, and when you've given your life and your childhood away to ballet, that feels like the end of the world. But I think that's relatable to all of us out there in the world, when we sacrifice heavily for something and then it feels like there could be a roadblock. But if you could just be more perfect.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, any type of performance. I feel like that we're all trying to win the love of the audience or the approval, like you're saying, to get to the next level of the rung up the ladder and just keep building your career and building an audience that loves you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. There's so many aspects to that in performance for sure. And yet, as we know, on a spiritual level and on a growth level, it's all about authenticity. So that wedge about where are you authentic and where are you striving for perfection, and how that can thwart ultimate success, basically, is really interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how did you go away from perfection and more toward authenticity? What were some things that you did, or points along your path where you realized, oh, this is what I'm doing and that's not working anymore?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great question. You had posed a question to me before too, about getting curious, and I feel like this is in a similar vein. I was feeling the pressure of perfectionism to the extent that it was affecting my psyche, my physical body and, of course, my emotional body. So this relates to the three bodies and methodology that eventually, over time, I developed and came up with, because I was breaking down physically, but I was also breaking down psychologically. I was having panic attacks going to work, and so I stepped out of my job with American Ballet Theater. I quite literally walked out of the building, the rehearsal studios at 890 Broadway, and never went back. Part of that felt like something much bigger than me moving through me, like I don't know exactly how I had the courage to do that at the time, but really that was me stepping towards healing, transformation and understanding what power really was and not being willing to lose myself completely.
Speaker 1:How long were you there before that happened?
Speaker 2:Four years.
Speaker 1:Oh, you were there four years. Wow. I don't know if you want to talk about those four years at all or any sort of trauma that happened or what caused you to walk away.
Speaker 2:There was tons of really twisted stuff, and there is tons of really twisted stuff that goes on inside of the elite professional ballet world.
Speaker 2:It's got an incredibly dark patriarchal influence to it and at the same time there's an accepted culture or was, and at this point I don't know its evolutionary state it's been 20 years now since I've been in a company but there was just an accepted culture of kind of base level molestation among colleagues, parties, weird stuff, all kinds of weird stuff's going on.
Speaker 2:I mean, you're a dancer, You're practically naked with each other all the time. But there's also this culturally accepted thing that was just normal and as a very young person coming into the company, there was also a culture of who's going to get the baby, who's going to get this new one that's coming in. I mean, I'm not the only one, it was for all of us younger and it was just accepted. It was 20 years ago. We've come a long way in our perception, what we understand, even having language around what's going on. So I didn't really know what was going on. What I did know was how my body felt, how I was struggling in my mind and how my emotional body seemed really far away from me.
Speaker 1:Like almost you had detached from me, like it's like almost you had detached right from your physical body in a way to protect yourself.
Speaker 2:Right, and I'm sure that happened over time. I'm sure that wasn't just my four years in the company. But because of excessive pressure, childhood stuff was coming up to the surface that made it more difficult for me to deal with. So I walked out and that was really when I took a step towards authenticity, true confidence, really trying to understand who. I was not willing to go any further down this path at the expense of at that moment in my life, at 22 years old, kind of everything I had worked for.
Speaker 1:Did your mom know anything? Were you able to tell anyone, or did you just hold it in, like so many of us do when that sort of thing happens?
Speaker 2:I mostly held it in. I didn't really have parents that were there for me in that way and I didn't have any mentors. We weren't really set up to have mentors to be able to talk to. It wasn't provided in a way. Again, the culture was really more about control. So they don't necessarily want you to be super stable and we have a bunch of people running the companies in upper management at this point that went through the same stuff without healing. Healing is not healing. Personal responsibility these things are very important to me. That, to me, make a life of fulfillment, being able to attain that high destiny trajectory, mandatory. We don't have people in that vein running the show and when you're a 17-year-, 18 year old coming in, you know you need that in that upper influence, you absorb that upper influence.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, you keep saying high trajectory. Will you explain that to me?
Speaker 2:Sure. So my understanding this is through my experience personally in my own growth, but then also how, the way I work with the alignment and the communication between the three bodies, you can align your energy towards a lot of different expressions that can come out. There's no right, wrong, good or bad way to be able to express yourself on the planet, to live your life, to attain a high destiny trajectory. Is that idea of taking a spiritual warrior approach? If you really know your highest values, there are things that are going to have to shed for you to truly attain what means the most to you. That's that fire that you'll align yourself with to burn away whatever needs to be burned away to be able to express at that purest, most authentic, high, most, in alignment with whatever that is that you came, came down here to get out in this lifetime. You all, we are truly so unique. We each have something very unique to put down and to give.
Speaker 1:I love that. So, from the point where you walked away that day in New York and you were searching for your confidence and your authenticity, I'm wondering what happened along the journey, what you got curious about and decided to fall into on your path.
Speaker 2:Gosh, so many things. I started with body work. I received a gift certificate to get a session Heller work. It is in the field of structural integration. Joseph Heller was a NASA scientist and engineer and he got rolfed very early on and he basically expanded what rolfing was at the time in regards to just a physical thing to a multifaceted. Your body is your psyche, it's all you can find it all in here and now we have more resources that speak to this. The body keeps the score. Everything is ultimate right. So he was an early visionary on this.
Speaker 2:So, seeing the body as the subconscious and unconscious. So when you manipulate the body, a dialogue process and understanding of what's coming up, being able to connect these three bodies, the spirit, essence, our infinite potential, the emotional body and then the mind and the layers of the mind, not just the conscious mind but the unconscious and subconscious minds this changed my life so dramatically at 22. It felt so incredible, the freedom I was feeling in my body after such compression. So it was really the door swinging wide open towards yeah, sense of freedom, I think more than anything. And I had been traveling the world with American Ballet Theater from living in a very small world, so my mind had been quite opened up around gosh, there's a whole world out there. And now my body was being opened up to feel like gosh, there's a whole world of movement even out there that I had no idea. We are expanded as we grow into the world. So the idea of staying in this box of ballet and this box, of moving my body a certain way just became a no, I can't do that anymore. I have to keep going down this other path.
Speaker 2:And then I still had a lot of childhood trauma that ultimately ended up showing itself in my intimate relationships. So, as my life looked great, I ended up with a starring role on Broadway. My career reinvented itself. I went to Copenhagen and danced, I guested, I was in film, dance came back to me and my career came back to me. But I was more curious, and even through all of these beautiful things that were happening on a dance level, which was wonderful, there was still a pain that kept showing itself in my life and I kept wanting to get to the bottom of that.
Speaker 2:So I went deeper into the mind, deeper into epigenetics, deeper into really understanding karma, a higher spiritual or a deeper spiritual drop to understand things. So that has been how my journey has led, where I feel, in a way, I've gone from body to body to body, and the physical body really is the portal. It's the portal to train the mind into the body, to get the mind behind your intuitive, authentic faculties and to also, as the vessel, to bring in the spirit's authentic expression. And so it's this twofold you got to let go of what isn't serving that happens through the body. You need to understand what is right for you, that happens through the body, and then also to embody these higher ways of being, once you really align with those that happens through your expression, that comes out onto the planet through your body if you've been living with chronic symptoms like pain, brain fog, sensitivity to smells, light or sound, it might not just be your body, it could be your brain, stuck in a survival.
Speaker 1:I love If this speaks to you, click the link in the caption. It might be the answer you're looking for. I love that Releasing what no longer serves you and then figuring out what does and what you're aligned with, and then full body experience. So I'm curious what I could do to help myself release something that's no longer serving me. First off, how do I figure that out? And then, is there a way to release it? The story that you had one day that was like an aha moment that happened. That helped you release it.
Speaker 1:I've done burning ceremonies in the past where I've written down things limiting beliefs, and I brought my family outside with me and I read it I'm no longer going to do this and this is what I'm going to feel and lit the paper on fire with them and it was a really spiritual moment and magical, and I watched as the paper danced in front of me on the driveway and it was just. It was like my spirit was dancing. It was so happy to be finally seen and felt, and so I'm wondering if you've had anything like that.
Speaker 2:Certainly I've had so many moments like that. What you're speaking to is that idea of ritual and ceremony. It's not something that we really have embedded into our culture anymore. It's a big miss, because when we grow, there is an essence of what we're leaving behind and what we're stepping into. There's so many ways we could go in this conversation and there's the idea that grief isn't something that we know how to deal with in our society, but every single time you grow, you're grieving what you're leaving behind. So it isn't just this idea of once you get here, it's going to be great. You need to grow to this level or get unstuck and it's all going to be fine. Healing really is a lifestyle of growth. A mastery is a pathway. It's not a destination. It doesn't. You don't ever get there. You get really good at being on the path, about being in yourself and learning how to take the things that don't, for instance, like you just said, that don't serve you, and create something ceremonial or ritualistic around it.
Speaker 2:I think for me, I equate a lot of it back to grace. It's easy to look at ballet as a metaphor for this, because it's a very graceful art. It's an art that is about mastery. You do your plies and tendus. No matter how good you get, you never stop doing your plies and tendus. It's always the very first thing you do. I mean you do all of bar.
Speaker 2:But it's understanding that grace actually comes from the technical skill of letting go as much of what you're activating. So it's like balance right. If you imagine a ballet dancer on point, she or he is not full of tension. If you imagine trying to hold on to that balance point, they will immediately fall off balance. It's about this ever subtle shift and playing with your beingness in this kind of subtle moment.
Speaker 2:So your attention to the subtlety of energy, your attunement to the subtle bodies that we are in energetically, to me is really a power path. And that is where I think. For me, my kind of base layer tendu and plies that I do every day now to stay unstuck, to drop into my higher alignment, is about feeling that sense of grace, aligning myself, this physical body, in the gravitational field, feeling myself in that alignment, and to then understand that when that sensation of alignment and that sensation of energy gravity having you connected to be able to bring, and then attunement to the subtle bodies of energy moving through your body that is also making alignment through the mental bodies and making alignment through the spiritual bodies. It's the bodies coming together, it's your experience of self in any given moment.
Speaker 1:Do you feel like you find the trust in yourself in those moments? Is that what helped you to find your confidence after going through that in New York and traveling the world? Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I think, at a very core level, this is like a baseline. There are a lot of different things that have helped me find my confidence, my authenticity, to trust in myself and to really know the scope of myself. But, yes, absolutely, this is a baseline of like, okay, come back home, which is in here, in this alignment, exactly where I am right now, letting go of the striving to be somewhere else, which is huge for all of us and in that moment you can let go of that striving to be somewhere else. You could just be here but also enjoy yourself here. Enjoy your energy moving through the body, enjoy how it feels to be grounded.
Speaker 2:How are you standing? What do you stand for? Well, let's just see. It's an energy we love to just jump up to our head and be like well, what do I stand for? Let me see if I can think about this. Don't think about it, it's in your body. What you stand for is here, in the way that you stand on the earth. What you stand for is here, in the way that you stand on the earth. What you stand for is here, in the way that you're willing to be with yourself, breathe with yourself. Take that moment to realign, reconnect.
Speaker 1:I created the Confidence Kickstart morning routine because I know what it's like to have big dreams and still feel stuck behind self-doubt, fear or the pressure to get it right. As an actor, comedian and award-winning filmmaker, I've been on over 50 stages. But confidence didn't come first. Action and habits did. This free guide gives you the exact 15-minute routine I use every morning, with journal prompts, a guided audio meditation and a simple step-by-step process built on the three pillars of the Confident Shortcut mindset, path and action. These aren't just feel-good ideas. They're habits that work, that build confidence, that move you forward.
Speaker 1:If you're ready to stop overthinking and start showing up the link is in the caption Go grab it and start your day with clarity, courage and real momentum. I love that so much. You said how we initially like hop up to our mind. But what did you say? What you stand for is in your body, not your head. Oh, that was so good. I just felt that so much in my body. Like yes, because I do find myself often jumping ahead in the day Like, oh, I need to be prepared for this, I need to be, and I'm already there instead of being here. And I loved how you said to bring joy into this moment and that energy of being present. And I feel like, when I do that and I take that moment, it's so relaxing, it's so calming, it's so grounding and I'm like why don't I do that more? Is there a way to make this a habit, like you said, like doing it every day? Is there something we can do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely the easiest way is to if you can stand, because this is where you start to feel your body. So if, for those listening out there, if you can stand, if you can't, just you can just go with the energy, but the idea is.
Speaker 1:Can I stand with you, sure, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So as you come into a stand, you're going to take your mind's awareness, your consciousness, down to the bottom of your feet and if it's comfortable, if you feel safe, you can close your eyes to really come into the body. And as you close your eyes, you can take your awareness back behind your eyes almost like an elevator, start to move it down the body, down the central channel, down the inseam of the legs to eventually come all the way to the bottom of your feet without needing to change anything. Resist the urge to change. Just notice right now how your feet actually come into the ground. Do you have more weight on one foot versus another? Do you have more? Do you feel more connected on the outsides versus insides? Are you more on the balls of your feet, your heels? Take some deep breaths, relaxing breaths, where you let your consciousness become highly aware of your connection and how your weight with gravity brings you into this alignment. There's nothing wrong with the way it is. There's nothing wrong with the way it is If you feel very uncomfortable in this position before you even shift anything. Just become aware of that. Give yourself a little bit of extra space to feel uncomfortable without immediately trying to change it. That in itself is grace. And then if you want to swing a heel out, adjust a little bit, go ahead and do that now and just notice what you did in your body and how it feels now to be connected, to better be able to this is your mind getting behind your body to better support your process, to better align you. And now what I'm going to have everybody do is just tune into the backs of the knees. If your knees are locked, soften the backs of your knees ever so slightly. This opens the energetic channel from the electromagnetic field of the earth into the body's, your system, and from your system down to the earth. This starts to align you to your divine place, your divine purpose. You are here for a reason and you come from the earth and you will go back to the earth. This is your alignment with her, your support from her, all of that root chakra stuff that comes through in this energetic connection. Now you're going to bring your consciousness back up through your body as you feel this alignment, all the way through the central channel, all the way up through the third eye, out the crown and then around. See the energy almost like you're cleaning your field. Go all the way back down underneath of you, six or so feet under the ground, and then just see if you can lightly attune to this flow. The subtle bodies, the soul body, the energy bodies, even the emotional body is in here. And then to ground again. We're gonna bring our awareness to come back through the crown, back down the central channel, back through the bottom of the feet, in your mind's eye. Blossom, the bottom of your feet, open like flowers, let energy like roots go down, come back around, up and over and around you like a protective field force. Again, this is your alignment, this is your place. And then, when you're ready, bring your awareness fully back behind your eyes. Before you open your eyes, tune into your environment to reorient yourself on a subtle body level and then, when you're ready, bring your eyes open and come back fully into your visual, dense reality. There you go.
Speaker 2:So that is a general process of just finding alignment between the three bodies, getting your mind behind who you are really and then getting yourself set up to move through life from that same authentic place. What do you stand for? But also, what is your movement? Our life is a movement really, from the moment we're born to the moment we die, we're moving. When you stop breathing, you die. That's our baseline movement. It stems from that diaphragm flow which affects the lymph system, which affects the nerve body. It's's all one big movement. So initiating that movement from a place of connection, alignment leads towards, I guess, in a way, magic happening from there and out, because it's your authenticity coming through you out onto the planet.
Speaker 1:First off, thank you. That was so beautiful, that was such an experience for me and, I'm sure, for the listener so many things that you did so well. Having us sit in the uncomfortable space and recognizing that I think even having confidence to be in the uncomfortable is such a gift that so many of us don't like to be in or avoid that so many of us don't like to be in or avoid. So training with this every day of being in the uncomfortable is genius. And then also, I really loved when you opened up the portal to six feet below.
Speaker 1:Just having that visual really helped me to think and picture in my mind the earth and just the earthiness and connecting with the energy of the earth and mother earth. And then seeing the roots go through my feet was so powerful. And then having it come back around and almost protect me and my authenticity, and then moving into the world with that feeling like, oh, I already have this, this is a part of who I am. All of it was just really, really powerful and moving. So thank you, faye, that was just such a gift. You're welcome, wonderful.
Speaker 2:It's beautiful.
Speaker 1:Yes. So I want to hop into our last part of the podcast right now, and it is the confidence quickfire round. So I ask every guest who comes on these five questions, and I'm going to start with number one, which is please define confidence.
Speaker 2:Confidence is trusting yourself and your decisions and knowing your worth. So I think for me it's about embracing the full scope of strengths and brightness and imperfections, really knowing and having gone through that process of accepting it, because it actually is our power. There's so much power in that. So it's really knowing the scope of what. When I say capable of, I'm not just talking about the wonderful things you can do, but also the ways in which the demons in us have come out, and just knowing what we're really, truly capable of. When we bring that in with love, when we own it, when you really own that, you're not manipulatable anymore and that's that deep sense of confidence in you, then no one can thwart your mission. Or if you get a little thwarted, you know quickly that something's off and you can bring yourself back mission. Or if you get a little thwarted, you know quickly that something's off and you can bring yourself back because you know who you are.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that so much. Okay, what is one bold move you made before you felt ready?
Speaker 2:A few times, leaving an unhealthy relationship.
Speaker 1:Wow, what made you go? What gave you the confidence to leave?
Speaker 2:I don't necessarily confidence that gave that. It was just in knowing that I wasn't going to be able to attain what I needed to what I felt called for in it, and I just that just meant risking everything and just kind of boldly moving on, being willing to let go and lose maybe what I'd invested in.
Speaker 1:Like you said earlier, grieving what you're leaving, willing to feel that and keep moving.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. More bravery, I think, and faith than necessarily confidence in those moments. But doing those moments, looking back and being able to take in the scope of myself in that relationship, that builds confidence. Doing those brave things, digesting all the information, digesting the scope of what that was and knowing that you did that brave thing, that builds confidence.
Speaker 1:I totally agree with you there. I feel like it's not having the confidence to actually take the action. It's taking the action and then reflecting back on it and saying, wow, look what I did, and that's where you actually build it, like you're saying, yeah, absolutely Nice, okay. So the third question is how do you quiet your inner critic?
Speaker 2:You know, I'm not sure I quiet my inner critic as much as I work with it. I think we have a culture of trying to squash things we don't like, and I think that actually can be self-sabotaging in the end. Most inner critics I have found actually stem from sometimes these traumatic experiences we have in entities getting attached to us to protect us in those times. But those entities are posing as parts of yourself when they're not actually. They came in to serve you but they also are parasitic and they are very much embedded in the ego. The ego is not just inflammatory. The ego is anything that keeps us safe, and so that's how it works. So, rather than trying to quiet it or get it to go away, I think the power move here is to look at it. Are you really me, or did you come in from some other moment in my life and are you actually still serving me and in what part did you serve at that time? Can I withdraw permission for me for you to be here?
Speaker 1:Wow, so it's almost giving them permission to leave Withdrawing permission for them to be here.
Speaker 2:I guess I use it that way, where I at some point I gave permission for them to be there because it served me at some in this moment that I needed it right likely in a trauma that then now there's a voice associated with this thing.
Speaker 2:it's posing as like it's, you know, part of you, but most of the time it's not actually part of you. It's something that's living with you and it's so embedded in the ego which is really more of a matrix of existence that's kind of a bubble around you. It has a lot to do with how we perceive and create reality. So, understanding how to go, take a look at that, see the inner critic for what it is. And then I like to yes, you're giving it permission to leave, but you're actually withdrawing. I think it's more powerful to withdraw permission from it to for it to be there than it has to go because it's permission to leave, but you're actually withdrawing. I think it's more powerful to withdraw permission from it to for it to be there than it has to go because it's permission to leave. It might be like but I'm so cozy here it's working.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I don't want to leave yet. Yeah, I'm comfortable. I've been here for a long time.
Speaker 2:I'm getting lots of energy from you. You don't have to go anywhere Right. Right, almost like we're besties. I'm getting lots of energy from you.
Speaker 1:You don't have to go anywhere, right, right Almost. Like we're besties, I'm staying Totally.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So you're like no, I'm done, you can leave, and then you take your power back. I love that, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly Like you know, draw the permission. I gave a time and we can move on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, I love that. Okay, the next, the fourth question is what's one habit that's helped build real confidence?
Speaker 2:The willingness to change. That's the habit totally for confidence. For me is keeping willing to change. You know part of that can look like what you, what you were saying about. I'm no longer willing to do this. I am willing to go through difficult things for this and I am no longer willing to. That sets boundaries, so it's twofold. But it's the habit of willingness to change which requires both. I'm not doing this anymore and I'm willing to go through this for change.
Speaker 1:I love that. It's almost a mindset of I am willing to step into the uncomfortable, I'm willing to be uncomfortable. I'm willing to grow through this, whatever this is uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:I'm willing to grow through this, whatever this is. And that can look like speaking up in ways that are uncomfortable and that can look like going through challenges that are uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, Okay. The fifth and final question Do you have a favorite book or resource that changed how you think?
Speaker 2:This is such a hard one, right? Because there's so many.
Speaker 2:There's so many, yeah, so many. What really comes to me is one of my mentors as my favorite resource, and she's still an incredible resource. She'll always be part of me because there's a transmission of energy when you work with somebody as a mentor, so as a resource, she's there, her energy is there, her wisdom. But she really gave me a tool. Her energy is there, her wisdom, but she really gave me a tool that profoundly transformed my thinking and empowered me to act towards changing my perceived reality. It was this tool that she was able to give me.
Speaker 2:It was around responsibility, understanding how the three minds actually work and how reality is created from the unconscious at like 98 percent. Our conscious mind is so, so small in comparison to the vast unconscious, so we don't have control. It is not about top down trying to control and this idea that we're bad manifestors if we can't do it. It's learning how to clean and clear what's coming up from the unconscious and subconscious. That tool is the game changer, because when you know how to clean and clear, you can go to work, and I'm the type of person who was. I will go to work. Oh yeah, you know getting that Okay If I feel stuck and I have in the past and before I met her, and this is why I think it really stands out as my kind of most profound and there've been so many big, pivotal moments in my life this one just felt like where has this tool been?
Speaker 2:Because here I am with a reality that I want to take responsibility for. I want to step into a more empowered way. I don't know how to move it. It just keeps coming up. It keeps coming up. This tool absolutely changed how to actually clean and clear the stuff that's in the unconscious. It could be stuff that's coming through generationally, it can be karma, it can be past traumas, whatever memory data bits you have stored plus, and there's just the collective unconscious. So those pieces of data are gonna come up too. So it's really the biggest service you can do to our collective reality to also have this tool and just clean and clear.
Speaker 1:This tool? Is this something that you said to yourself when it came up?
Speaker 2:The tool. Whether you want to call it outrageous ownership or radical responsibility, I see the tool like a scalpel. I see the tool like a scalpel. The way you use it is very important because if you're not using it appropriately, you can take blame and responsibility, and our culture really loves to get stuck in blame. If it's not your fault, it's my fault. It's not my fault, it's your fault. Whose fault is it? How do I reconcile what's happened, some things you can't reconcile.
Speaker 2:Really, it's about movement. It's about learning. It's about movement. It's about learning. It's about growth. It's about these higher spiritual experiences to be able to move on from them, to be able to get the juice out of them, to be able to turn them into gold and then give back. I have another teacher who said eat death for breakfast. How do I eat death for breakfast? Digest it and turn it into some transmuted, be a master alchemizer. So this tool is about taking responsibility without falling into the pit of over owning stuff that isn't yours. That's equally as detrimental as not owning anything. It's finding that fine line of what's for me, how do I own, and clean and clear and release what I can't change and move on from those who aren't changing All of those things we talked about previously in our conversation, even leaving before comfortable being in the uncomfortable I'm sure this conversation could continue on.
Speaker 1:This is such a deep topic right here and I'm so interested. I'd love to have you back on the podcast in the future. I mean, I don't know if this is something that you talk about in your programs and your coaching and that kind of thing, but how can people connect with you? How can the listeners connect with you?
Speaker 2:Oh, my work is a lot about getting the bodies, the connection of the three bodies, to be able to start using this tool for rapid transformation, because there's a certain level of mastery to it and a honing of your own energy systems and understanding some of these, how you work and where you're going to then go, take this tool and go to work to get there. I have a website I'm sure you'll put it in the show notes. You can sign up for a consultation. I do one-on-one coaching, mostly at this point and speaking, and I'm working towards my first three bodies retreat, which will be body work, training and spiritual teachings, where we can be in person and really have an accelerated, full scope experience of the three bodies. Do we know when?
Speaker 1:that's going to be yet. We're looking at the end of October and November. It'll be in New Mexico this first one, new Mexico.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's going to be yet, or are we? We're looking at the end of october and november? In it'll be in new mexico, this first one mexico oh, that's fantastic.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love this so much. This was such a wonderful conversation. Faye, thank you so much for coming on. It was such a gift, the thing that you took us through. What do we call that?
Speaker 2:alignment, grounding, grounding oh, it was so good leaning into the subtle bodies.
Speaker 1:So good. Thank you so much, Faye. I do hope that you'll come back and have another conversation with us.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah. Thank you so much for having me here.
Speaker 1:It's been a pleasure. The pleasure's all mine. Thanks so much for listening to the Confident Shortcut. I hope today's episode woke something up in you, reminding you that your dream matters and you can start now. If this sparked something, share it with a friend who needs it too. And don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Nikki Sterner and join our Facebook community at the Confidence Shortcut. Ready to take the next step? Check out my free guide, the Confidence Kickstart, linked in the show notes. Keep showing up, keep taking action, and remember the shortcut to confidence is courage.