Crash Out With Me: You Do Not Owe Anyone Smaller Dreams

Someone asks you to “be humble,” and what they really mean is “be smaller.” That’s where this conversation starts. I’m joined by Atta Gracia Montilla, a community architect, facilitator, and leadership coach, to name the thing a lot of us feel but rarely say out loud: toxic humility, the explicit or unspoken expectation to shrink yourself, especially when you are exceptional and especially in white-dominant workplace culture.

We dig into what it looks like in real life, from being questioned for visible success to being told you can’t be celebrated because it might make other people uncomfortable. We unpack how individualism and comfort politics shape leadership, why talent hoarding is so common, and what a more human-centered leadership model can be instead. Atta also shares how ancestral and Indigenous community norms treat everyone’s gifts as something to be supported, not competed with, and why celebrating yourself and others can be a form of medicine against oppressive systems.

Then we zoom out to the pressure women face around beauty standards, weight, and aging, plus the internet-fueled FOMO that turns your real life into a performance. We close with practical tools: curating small moments that feel like yours, tracking your phone habits, using discernment in conflict, and building “conflict bravery” so you know when to engage and when to walk away. If you’re ready to stop dimming your light, hit play, then subscribe, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

follow Altagracia: https://www.linkedin.com/in/altagraciamontilla/

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Transcript

Welcome And Toxic Humility Defined

SPEAKER_00 0:00

A better tool than I've done live on Zoom and I do not recommend it.

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Hello everyone, and we are live. Welcome back to the Crash Out. My name is Madison Maddie B, if you know me, and I created the Crash Out as a reminder that everyone has some stuff that they're going through. Everyone has things that are taking up their brain space. And a reminder to be kind, but also a reminder that the human experience is messy, but also very normal. I'm super excited about today's topic because it is one that I talk about quite often. But first and foremost, would you like to introduce yourself?

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Yes, thank you so much for welcoming me into your space, for having me, Madison. It's a pleasure to share space with you and all those who are watching. My name is Atta Graci Montilla. I am a community architect, a facilitator, and a leadership coach. I'm the founder of AM Consulting. We are support organizations in designing relational strategies and human-centered cultures. My work, all of my work, is rooted in the belief that our future depends on our ability to connect meaningfully to ourselves and to others. I'm also the co-founder of the Seven Space Art Gallery and Wellness Center, where we blend music and art and healing practices to foster joy and connection, where we host art exhibitions and staff retreats. And I'm also the creator of Conflict Bravery, which is a practice that helps folks reimagine and reprogram their relationship to conflict to increase impact.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

I love that. And more most importantly, what would you like to crash out of?

SPEAKER_00 1:22

I love the little, I need to crash out about toxic humility, which is the term that I use for that explicit or implicit expectation to shrink ourselves, particularly in spaces where we are exceptional at things, right? This is something that I, in my experience, have seen folks from marginalized communities experience the most, being white, you know, persons of color and women. And so that's what I'm here to crash out about.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Oh God, I love that one so much. I love to talk about the idea that you don't get to humble me simply because I make you uncomfortable. So

The Sports Car Question

SPEAKER_01 2:00

I think it is such a common thing. Like I tell this story pretty often when I workshop, but I drive a sports car. It is neon green, yellow, depending on who you're asking or who's watching. But I remember a couple years ago when I bought it and when I was still in channel, my CFO at the time was like, Well, what are people gonna think of you when they see you in that car? And I was like, that thought actually didn't it didn't cross my mind. But it's an interesting idea that you would ask a black woman why why she bought that car? Because would you ask the CEO? Would you ask the CEO why he bought that five million dollar house?

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Absolutely. Probably not. I mean, listen, you know, it is also wait, how did you respond to that though? Did you speaking of did you how did you respond in that moment?

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Well, because he was like, Well, what he was like, people are gonna like know how much money you make when they see you have the car. And I was like, Well, one, I have I'm child free, I have no children. So like I could like this is what I have chosen to do instead. But I was like, I also have all these other things. I have a book, I'm a speaker, I do all of these other things that have nothing to do with my salary here, and quite frankly, how I make my money, where I make my money, and then where I spend my money isn't anyone's business.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

I'm assuming your relationship with this person isn't one that's close, right? Because no, no, no. It wasn't like a hee hee, what are people gonna think of you?

SPEAKER_01 3:20

It was like what are people going to think of you? And it's just not a question that we ask white men. We don't ask white men to become smaller to make the world comfortable because they're not doing it. Everyone bought a podcast microphone, myself included, but there's no shortage of white men telling us how well they are doing.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Oh, absolutely. Listen, my my and I was thinking about this as I was preparing to chat with you about it. I was thinking about like the moment where I really started to think about like what toxic humility is and the impact it was it was having on me, right? Because we can talk about the moments. The easy parts are for me to talk about the moments where I'm like, how dare you? Here I am, like post-healing journey. But there was a point in my chapters, it was a chapter of my life where I, you know, had to question like, am I sure, like, am I shirking myself? I gotta really think that. But I had an employer, a boss, who told me explicitly in a one-on-one meeting that I was said, you know, so good at what I did, exceptional. This person was willing to admit that, you know, they I was a mentor to them and told me that I was essentially so good that they couldn't celebrate me in shared spaces out of fear that other people wouldn't fulfill their roles, out of fear that others wouldn't feel motivated to do their work and to try their best. Which means to this person, exactly. Like what? To this person, to this person, it was a better strategy as a leader to tell someone who's exceptional at their work, who is bringing money and strategy and you know, good energy to the organization, to teams. It was a better strategy to tell this person to shrink themselves to be smaller, to not be celebrated than it was to talk to other people about their own performance, to tell folks, you know, how about you step up, or just to encourage people to try their own personal best. And so in that moment, I was like, wow. And I think, you know, there was a little bit of a period of time where I thought, okay, well, maybe, you know, I'm in this role. I was, you know, second in command. I was making a lot of money more than I ever thought I was be able to make. And, you know, there was a chapter again where I started to notice that I would ask questions instead of saying the thing. You know what? You know you know something and you know it confidently, you know how to do it, you're certain you've been spending years doing the thing, doing research on a thing, and still yet, you know, you may offer the idea, the thought in the form of a question, right? And so I noticed that um happen. And so I had to create this journey for myself of healing from that, um, so I could reverse some of the damage that being in a space like that did to me.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

So I actually want to circle back. I feel like I say that a lot on the show. So I like I'd like to circle back. Let's circle back to that thing that you kind of mentioned, which someone didn't want to celebrate you in charity spaces. So one of the conversations that I've actually been having more recently is the idea that black women specifically, women of color specifically, become a threat when they are so good at their leadership that they point out the gaps of their white peers. And even not necessarily intentionally, right? It is just very clear that the bar for the work we are performing is very different than the bar for everyone else. And that makes us a threat. Yes. And so I would love to talk about how you, especially being in a role that was very senior, very well compensated, how you navigated that scenario. Because of course, you have power, but only as much as your identity allows you.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Yeah, and you know, something I want to name too, because we we should really talk about the thing, right? And name it fully. You know, you're talking about the threat that we pose to others, right? Who have privileges, the fact that we expose the gaps in their work. And I think there's a number of other things that need to be named about the why, why it causes discomfort and why it is a threat. You know, when you are a part of a group of people that historically, generation after generation, folks have tried to diminish us, destroy us, erase us, right? To step into a space and still be great, brilliant, have a smile on your face, wear a bright lip color, maybe come in with good energy, have blue hair, right? Still stand and do your thing and still have like light shining. There is this fear, I think, that it brings in other people. Other people have to look at themselves and say, damn, despite everything you have been through, here you are shining brightly, like here you are alive and well. And I think there is, you know, it's like this threat because you're exposing me, but there's also this fear of, damn, how did you do it and not me? I don't know if I could do that. I don't know if I could be that. I don't know if I would be able to do that given the threats that you have to experience, and I have to watch you still be great. So there's an element of that that is present. And, you know, when we, you know, there is a culture within whiteness, a culture within white dominant spaces, a part of white supremacy culture is a right to comfort, is individualism over individuality, right? And if we have a space where persons can celebrate themselves, where they can celebrate each other, then it's no longer a space of individual individualism, right? Now we have to like, now we're a team, right? Because we're all being celebrated here, right? And challenging that norm of celebrating folks in a particular space, it comes up against that right to comfort, right? Because people feel a little bit uneasy in their in their chest when they feel that that norm being challenged. So there's that. And the question was, how to deal with that, right? How to deal with that, you know. So I

Praise Politics In The Workplace

SPEAKER_00 8:38

will name that I created a world for myself, and that was my solution. And I know you're very familiar with this, and what that looked like is it started my, you know, I started my own practice while I was an executive. I started to think about what kind of world do I want to live in and what kind of world do I want to be a part of. And I knew confidently that I would have to build that world. And it wasn't just for me, but it was for others. I want to be in communities where we, you know, this is very a norm for our culture, our people. You know, we snap it up for each other. We're a hype women to each other, right? You're doing this because you're hyping people up, right? We're on this space going to be hyping each other up. So this is a norm for us, and I want to live in spaces like that. So there's that. Now, to heal from the damage that I experienced, it the biggest thing I think that helped is I started to notice where were the spaces where I started to feel more relaxed or started to feel more like myself, where I knew I didn't have to like hide how great I was at certain things. The more that I leaned into those spaces, the more energy I had in spaces that wasn't doing that. And the more I was, I was going to put up with the BS, right? In other spaces, the more I had like I could stand up on my own too and my my spine up straight and be able to walk into spaces and say, this is we don't, this is not how we do things. This is not aligned with the way that I believe this world can can work. And so I don't have to exist in this space. I can find something else that's better for me.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

I love that. And so heard for a lot of you who know I divorced corporate America for really the same reason. Because I wanted a life that felt like my own.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

And I hype people up. But one of the things I have been talking about recently is when people are talking about why work sucks so much, it is because we live in a society that is incredibly individualistic. So their worth and how they feel about me is actually tied to my ability to produce rather than to my ability to shine or my ability to be just a good human or fun to be around or funny or whatever the thing may be. But I think it's a really interesting topic because when we get into the idea that we celebrate everyone, now we're talking community. And community makes so many people so deeply uncomfortable because one of the things you forget is you're actually not supposed to like everyone that you're in community with. You're just supposed to see them.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

I love that. And, you know, again, individualism are characteristics of white supremacy culture, right? And allows things, it allows oppressive systems to excel when we're only supposed to think about ourselves, right? So one of the things that I really lean into in my practice, and you say you divorced yourself from corporate America. Shout out to that. I love that framing too, the divorce.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Oh, I call myself regularly, corporate America's hotest sex life. Okay, okay. Oh, I like that.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Yeah, I love that. Absolutely. I and for you know, for me, when I decided to leave into the institutional spaces and the way that I was working inside of them, I was like, okay, I know

Community Over Individualism

SPEAKER_00 11:30

that the way the norms that I was a part of is not healthy and is not aligned with the world that I'm trying to build. How will I find the norms that I want to see exist? And I did two things. One, I feel like I did like a past and future thing. So I'm a huge nerd. So I went and started studying quantum theory, and then I started studying ancestral practices. So I wanted to return to the question I was asking myself is what are the norms that existed before colonialism? What are the norms that existed before, you know, our people were robbed from the land, right? So I returned to those practices, and I'm naming that because one of the norms in Indigenous cultures and Afro-Indigenous cultures, which is the cultures that I explored, um, it is norm to celebrate every single individual's talent. Like the idea, and in some cultures specifically, they believe that essentially ancestors bring us here to have a particular sort of like magic is a term I'll use. And so to be in a space, in a community, in a place that celebrates that, that says, all right, Madison, you're so dope and you're so fly this. Us as a community, we're gonna do everything that we can to support you so that you can do the thing, right? And I'm gonna trust you to be a part of the community and support me in being able to do the thing that I'm so good at and why I was sent here. And so to even celebrate each other and to celebrate ourselves is countering, it's a it's a it's an antidote, it's a medicine against these oppressive systems and cultures that we see exist now.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Well, and of course, what we are taught to do is like the crabs in a barrel thing, right? Like we have to view everyone as competition. But if you don't humble me and I think I'm the sauce regardless, I can't have that mentality because I don't view anyone's competition because no one is medicine, no one can do it like me. There are people who will do it differently than me, and I'm not saying it's better or worse. But I'm not truly worried because they're not me. But if you choose to try and shrink me, then I have to view everyone as competition because I view everyone as the same. And I think that is truly the goal, is it is actually super beneficial for us to not work together. There is so much power in moving as a community and moving in togetherness and moving away from individualism, that that I actually think is the biggest threat is if we find how powerful we are together, then what?

SPEAKER_00 13:39

Absolutely. I mean, organizing is a threat to status quo. Organizing is a threat to systems and power. We come together. And I will say, as someone who has, you know, had my own business for what year is it? You know, almost 10 years now. Like, I, you know, huge part of my success has come from my community-centered approach to doing the work. You know, I would say probably 80 to 85% of the work I get is from someone talking about me, someone highlighting my work, you know, someone saying, I saw her, I heard her, we've worked with her before here. Like that community has been that. And so I make sure to extend myself in that way so people know that I'm truly just about this community life. I really I believe in community um so much that I'm willing to overextend myself for others who are within my intentional community.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

It's funny that you just said what year is it the other day? Someone asked me how old I was, and I was like 32. And then I was like, wait, no, I'm not. I haven't been 32 in a very long time. Like, where did that answer come from? No idea. And I was like, did I even like the year that I was 32? I don't know. Um important year. Must have been an important year. I do feel like everything post-COVID has been like, I don't know what year it is. I don't really know what's going on.

Beauty Standards And Aging Pressure

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Um, I also feel like because I'm consistently getting hotter, I in my brain, I'm aging backwards.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

But I was a social construct, babe. It is a social construction.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

I mean, to be fair, I I am fundamentally obviously like, I don't care what anyone else does with their body. Do you get your fillers, get your BBL? I would actually have BBL, the mentality is part of the mortality rate. I actually find this is like a tangent, but I actually think it comes into play here. I find the idea of aging to be a privilege, and we are told that how your face will look as you age is not good enough, and so make it different, make it the same as everybody else, actually. And that's something that I have really been just like thinking about lately is like I actually love how I look as I get older because I finally look like an adult. I look like I was 12 to like I was 25, and so I was like, oh, people like don't card me now, at least not um, but I also think that's part of it, right? Is like we want women specifically to feel bad about no matter what it is, how they're how their bodies look, how their faces look. We are in the age of the like skinny regime has rolled its way right back around. There's this like TikTok going around right now that this one, and of course she turned up her comments, which is so unfortunate. But she was like, I need to ready to give her a little sign to she was like, I need women to act their age. Like, if you're not 160 pounds, like you don't get to have an attitude of me, like go to Pilates, go to the gym. And I was like, and we're I was like, are we losing the plot of like what people weigh? Yeah, are we just like losing the plot in general? But I I think all of that also plays into like then you feel like you have to play small because you don't weigh 160 pounds, or you don't have the perfect body, or you don't have a Eurocentric face, or you have curly hair. And I think all of that is intended for us to quote unquote fall in line.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

Oh, absolutely. Listen, let's talk about it because you know you're you're saying you don't you have to shrink if you don't fall within a certain don't look a certain way, and it is so interesting that the way that we're supposed to look is frail, and and listen, all bodies are beautiful, but you know, I recognize that the expectation for me is to be thinner or you know, and thinner for me doesn't necessarily mean healthy, right? It doesn't mean healthy, and so I have to be fall in line, and falling in line means to be unhealthy. Okay, that makes I feel like that's designed to be controllable, and something else I've been thinking a lot about, especially as I'm in my 30s now, and in our 30s, our bodies change, which also speaking of community, I want more spaces of us talking about just natural aging and what it means to age. I feel like this same thing we're talking about right now, I knew so many women growing up who are afraid of talking about what naturally happens when we age. And thank goodness I found my elders and my elders are now talking to me about just how what changes in our body and our minds. And so I want to name that. But I'm just I was thinking recently about how the expectation for what my body should look like according to these systems, looks like a much, much younger version of myself. And something about that makes me feel very, very uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

I had this exact conversation yesterday. This is not shade, but it is one of the things I've been thinking about recently is a lot of, and I want to make this position very clear. I very much believe sex work is work. So let's we can start there. But there is this subset of sex work right now, especially on OnlyFans, especially on TikTok, especially on Instagram, where these creators truly deeply look 12. And they're also all of the highest paid creators. And it is not just they happen to look 12, it is they intentionally make themselves look very young.

SPEAKER_00 18:27

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

And it is the idea, like I'm in a bunch of gym groups for a lot of people who watch this say no, I'm not like a gym rat, but so much of the like the gym rat community is also very hyper-focused on women who resemble adolescents, which I think also goes to the frailness, right? And it's something that I I definitely struggle with. You know, I've lost 80 pounds, and I do not have the body of a white woman, I have the body of a black woman. And it is something that regardless of how much weight I've lost, I get so frustrated with, and it frustrates me to be frustrated is that like no matter what I do, I have hips, no matter what I do, I have a giant buttons, no matter what I do, I have giant thighs. And although I actually aesthetically don't hate that on me, I feel like I'm not supposed to like those things on me.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

And that is like its own journey. But like I, again, like all of us, I hyperfixate on my body and I'm like, well, why don't I look like this? And I'm like, because you're not white. And then you don't know how to get there because you can't. Like if I look like what my BMI says I should weigh, I would simply float away with the wind. The wind with the strongest would take me.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

Right. And listen, the biggest threat to these standard is to really just love what your body, just the body you're in, to say, damn, like I love this. I'm into this, I'm into the body that I'm in. I think you know, that's the biggest fear. And and tied to that, you mentioned aging, aging's a privilege. I I agree. And laugh lines are a privilege, right? Like to to know that I've laughed enough that now like I see the you know, the the the map of how much I've laughed that's on my face now for good. I think that's a privilege too. And it's unfortunate that folks are feel this pressure to like not age, which also makes me think about like, you know, in a lot of cultures, aging is wisdom. When you age, you gain wisdom. So it makes me wonder like what happens to our appreciation for wisdom. You know, I was at an event recently where you know, there was young, younger people, younger folks who were dismissing what they would consider unks or aunts or aunties, or you know, which these phrases in our communities, these phrases were these were terms for of endearment. You know, we said unk, we said auntie to persons who we really respected. You know, and it's unfortunate to see folks now using that as a way to like discredit someone. Oh, oh, you know, you you can't talk or you can't speak on this topic because you're just an unk, right? You're an elder. When those are terms that again were high praise, you know, that with that came wisdom.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Well, and I also think there's this idea, and especially I see this a lot, like again in the gym community. And I think this has a little bit to do in what I a little bit, I mean, lost it with like the rise of like the red pill community movement, like all of that. If you haven't watched the Manosphere documentary, I can't recommend it, but I can't not recommend it because your head will hurt. But it's interesting to know what people who are the generation like before you and I are truly consuming on the internet. But the idea that a woman after 30 loses her worth is absolutely like it breaks my brain. Because not only am I like the smartest I've been, the hottest I've been, I have the most money I've ever had. Like 25-year-old me didn't have a fully formed frontal lobe, which meant I was easy to control.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

But it also meant that like I wasn't truly me yet. And I I have to wonder is the idea that women lose value as they age because we become harder to manipulate. I think so. Because I'm very much like you can't humble me, you can't tell me shit. Like, if you don't like it, here you can go. But like 25 year old me didn't have that mindset.

SPEAKER_00 21:59

I think so. I I I that that tracks, you know, that's ex yeah. No notes. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

But but I even think that's that that applies to work, right? Like I feel like I was treated, not I want to say treated more delicately, but like I was like a you little you poor little thing when I was in my 20s. And as I come into my own in my 30s, I have become much more of a threat as I've grown in my skill set and grown in my income and grown into like this person that we all kind of know about me. And so I guess I would love to hear how how that has kind of arced for you. Like when you were younger, did you feel like it was a little bit more normal to flex a little? Or do you feel like you've always been asked to shrink? Do you feel like it has become more noticeable as you have, you know, upskilled and become more senior?

SPEAKER_00 22:46

Yeah, you know, it's it's I haven't I have had an interesting path in my career in that I have been in a leadership role the whole time. There's always been some form of leadership. Um, I when I was working in institutions, I received a raise every single year that was on average about 40%. I was given a promotion every single year, but one when I was working in institutions. So I moved really, really quickly. And I was someone who was just always, and I'm saying this confidently, right? I was always really freaking good at what I was doing, right? If I didn't know how to do it, I'm just gonna figure it out. And I was very comfortable with what I didn't know, which also made it easier for me to learn new things and to evolve in my roles. So I was always the first, the youngest, the first person of color, first woman in a particular space, the youngest person in a space. And so I think the way that historically the institutions would reward me is by paying me more and throwing money at me. And even there were moments where I was threatened to leave certain spaces and they immediately would just throw more money at me. And so the it was, you know, and I'm also from the Bronx. I don't know if I had to name that. You're East Coast girly, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:56

I am, as am I in the city on May 19th.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

Okay, let me know. Let me know what's up. You gotta hit me up. I'm from the South Bronx, and you know, I come from a community where for those, I don't know if everyone listening knows where the what's a little bit about the Bronx, but we are known for being vibrant, radiant, you know, for being, you know, the haters would say loud, right? We have a lot of personality, okay? And so I brought all of that energy into the spaces I was in. So you have this mixture of me being really good at what I was at to also having this really bright, radiant, and vibrant personality. And I think that though organizations want to throw money at me, there was especially one in particular that was led by a man, or my boss was a man, which is also important to for context reasons, you know, where I was told, okay, you're amazing. We love you. We want, we want you to keep doing what you're doing. But again, I don't want to make the other women around you not feel like they can do as much. And in this case, it was white women. I want to make sure the other white women around you feel comfortable and not feel like you are the person receiving all the praise. Yeah. I didn't expect, you know, when I've had a boss who was a woman, and I remember when I did receive praise, it was a woman. It was a woman who, I mean, this was a person, someone who paraded me around, who was like, This person is amazing, she's dope, who will go into you know conversations with donors, with leaders, with board members, et cetera. And I was able to like network and build relationships because she put me in all these rooms, knowing that she wanted me to do this not just for the organization's sake, but for my own sake. She said, I know you won't be here forever, but I want you to excel beyond this point. And so she was really good at like platforming me. And you know, that experience also makes you think about, made me think about how

Leadership That Builds People Up

SPEAKER_00 25:40

I want to take care of others when I lead.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

100%. And I also think that that is a really rare leadership skill, is one of the things I fundamentally feel like as a leader is I don't ever assume that someone is coming with me, coming to me to work with me and retire. Like that's just not the world we live in. But my goal is to make sure that I elevate you so that way when you choose to leave, you get to go wherever you want and do whatever it is you want to do.

SPEAKER_02 26:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

But so many leaders get in the habit of talent hoarding because they don't know you're mine. Right. Why do I want you to go somewhere else? And why do I want to be better than me? Because now you're a threat to me. So I even think in lots of leadership roles, they ask their teams to be home because a lot of leaders do not know how to manage people who are smarter, better, more equipped than they are. But that is the goal as a leader to hire people who are better than you.

SPEAKER_00 26:23

Yeah. Well, I think I think there's a real problem in workplaces where folks have confused managing people, which in some ways feels like controlling people, dictating what people can and cannot be or do with leading people. And again, I want to take us from like this difference between the institutional understanding of what leadership is to this, what I would use as this more indigenous way of understanding, to lead that I concept of leading and mentorship were considered like one, right? To lead people is to say, I see your worth, I see your value, I see your magic, and I'm going to clear the path for you to be able to do what you are best at. I'm going to make sure I create the conditions you need to be able to excel. And that's how I lead. Like my leadership, I believe. First of all, I want to find out exactly what it is you are brilliant at. I want to make sure you know what you're brilliant at. I want to make sure to highlight that, to celebrate that. I want to make sure that you are put in places and spaces where you get to highlight that yourself and live in that and be confident about it. So yeah, I think we have to also, I think every single time we see something that's problematic within the workplace, we're going to think about what it looked like before we even had a workplace.

SPEAKER_01 27:37

You know what I mean? Yes. And well, so one of the things that frustrates me so much about people who are I'm going to call, I'm going to say managers because not everyone's a leader. I think A, there's two problems here. One is the idea that we are taught that the only way to grow in workspaces is to become a manager. Not everyone should be a manager, but everyone wants to make more money. I'm not going to pretend that's not a thing. So they're going to take a management role if it gives them more money, even if they hate people, even if they have no passion for this. So that's problem number one. And I truly think the other problem is that the way that it is married to us is through fear, through power, through dominance. And guess what? None of this should feel parental. You are literally just another person with a different title. It doesn't mean you were smarter, better, faster, whatever the thing may be. But there is no reason to lead someone or manage someone through fear, through like true discipline, or through nothing but criticism. But for so many, that is the experience they're having because it feels powerful. When in actuality, for me, I feel the most powerful when my teams are willing to be vulnerable, when they feel safe in me. That makes me feel like I feel something good. Powerful to me is when my team feels like community, not when it feels like they're scared of me on Sunday at 8 p.m.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

Yeah, you know, I think, yeah, it makes me a little bit uh my heart weighs a little bit when I think about how folks really turn to these roles so that they can have power over people as opposed to power with on people. My my heart is a little bit heavy. And you know, I when I think about I'm making the assumption, Madison, that the persons who are in the space watching who are are also in very in many ways aligned with you know what we're saying. And so I think it's important to also name that even when we say we believe in this thing, we still have to question what are the ways in which we're still allowing these harmful things to show up, right? So I always find it fascinating when I talk to when I'm leading, when I'm doing coaching for my community members and we explore the identifyers persons who believe in challenging oppressive norms. And yet when we start to dig deep, we recognize that the ways they have interpreted or understood their own success, this still is aligned with oppressive ways of thinking about success, right? You know, no different than, you know, like you just said, when persons thinking that success means I have to move up in this organization, I have to make more money. And the more people that I lead, that means that I am more successful. And we have to rid ourselves of that. I think also, even persons who have good intentions, it is very possible for persons with good intentions to sit in a room and notice someone who is really good and for a little bit go, ooh, if they're good, does that mean I'm not as good? You know, like, is there really enough for all of us? You know, I have run into people who also have good intentions, who who, you know, say they believe in the things that we're naming right now, and yet as they're entrepreneurs, they they get nervous about collaborating with other people. Should I collaborate? Can I collaborate? Ooh, I have this opportunity and I it won't work for me. Can I pass it on to someone else? Should I, you know, or should I keep it for me? You know, so I think all of us have to, when we're talking about this, we're not just talking about the persons who just on the surface we know for a fact are problematic. I think all of us need to think critically about how we show up, what we're valuing in a particular space, um, and and what we're determining to be leadership. And to go back to even to the toxic humility thing, how much are we truly celebrating the people around us, right? Even to think outside of the work context, if we're thinking about community, because I'm all for community, I believe in community, how are we doing community? We have to question critically, we have to think critically about how we do community and how we build intentional relationships with people, right? So if I'm your community member and I'm saying that, I'm gonna do whatever possible to make sure you succeed and you excel. I'm going to make room for us not just to have a ha ha ha ki he he and have some drinks, you know, at brunch or whatever. Now we don't just do that, but we also sit down and say, yo, let's map out your goals for the year. And let me make sure that I use my talent to make sure that you accomplish these goals. I'm gonna show you what my goals are for this year, and we're gonna make sure that you can use our talents to help me excel at these goals as well. So we also need to think, you know, this applies to just not just the workplace, but also just in our personal lives.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

And I think that's an important call out, right? I don't think that there's ever a day where you're perfect at this, right? I'm not asking people to be perfect or completely rid themselves of the FOMO or the little bit of jealousy or the insecurity. What we're asking is for you to be more self-aware of it. So that way you can coach yourself out of it. You can coach yourself through it. And when you find yourself in the space, you can hold yourself accountable. I think so many of us avoid the idea of accountability because then it says, okay, well, if I admit that I have FOMO over that person's career trajectory, does that mean mine isn't good enough? Yeah. And we're really sold this idea that like you are either good or bad. It's binary, but nothing is that black and white, white. You're just a human who's gonna do really great things and really bad things, and you're someone's gonna love you, someone's gonna hate you, like for the rest of forever. But I think so many people really fear the idea of being self-aware, which again, like sometimes I'm self-help-aware. I'm like, it's too much. I know, I know too many things, I would like to know less. But it allows me to continue to evolve as a human. Like, I hope Madison five years from now is like way cooler, smarter, kinder than Madison today. But that only happens if I'm willing to be aware of my own

FOMO, Phones, And Romanticizing Life

SPEAKER_01 32:50

internal behaviors.

SPEAKER_00 32:52

I appreciate that. So I love that you mentioned the FOMO piece too. Do you remember the last time you experienced a FOMO?

SPEAKER_01 33:00

Literally every day. Every day. So I actually I posted about FOMO last week, and I said I think a lot of us like we are so exposed to lives that my partner says this all the time the internet's not real. I forgot the internet's not real. But you do this thing where you scroll on the internet and suddenly your house doesn't feel good enough or big enough, your car doesn't feel fast enough or cool enough, you don't have enough purses, and you don't have a bargain, you don't have all these things, and it's like a forever fucking marathon. Exhausting, but it's by design because it teaches you to want to be a consumer, and so what it teaches you as well is to make your life consumable to everyone else because your life is a museum instead of an artifact. And for me, I think that's something that I have really realized is like the fungal that I was feeling was actually because I wasn't touching my own life enough. We all build these lives, we do all of these things, but then we do it for everyone else to see that we did it, not for us to actually live in it. Because how many of us, again, I feel like I say this a lot, we go on vacation and like we're taking all the pictures, we're putting them on Instagram, but we're not mentioning that you haven't picked your phone, you haven't like looked around to get off Slack, or you go out with your partner and you you screenshot dinner, but you never look up from your text messages or from TikTok or whatever it is. What is the point of building these big, beautiful lives if the only people actually experiencing it are through the other side of your cell phone and never you? I mean, when we were looking at the Coachella videos, everyone just had their phone out. I was like, anyone actually here is everybody on Snapchat. Everyone you want everyone to know that you were here, you don't care about. And so I think I've had my own like journey with FOMO because I think so many of us are actually craving the intentionality in our own lives through the lens of someone else's, thinking they're doing the same thing, but they're not. They're doing we're all doing the same stuff, and we're thinking that they're doing it differently and they're not.

SPEAKER_00 34:46

Yeah, I feel that you know, I noticed that I am my healthiest when I stay off the interwebs for sure. And I what I did for myself, and this might help folks who are watching, because I know it can be difficult because literally it's designed for us to be glued to it, but I gave myself limits of how much I can go on it during the day or during the week. And that helped a bunch. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do my commenting, I'm gonna make sure I'm like in these streets a little bit, the you know, commenting here and there, talking to people, saying, sharing my love, da-da-da-da. I'm gonna, you know, put my post up, then I have to go. I have to go. I can't be there for too long of a period of time. You know, I one thing I always offer to people, it's really, really important and it really helps with FOMO and seeing you know, other people have these big, beautiful houses or going on vacation. Um, one, you don't know how happy those people really are. That's number one, right? And number two is I really believe in the art of curating our lives, you know, and maybe that's the the artist inside of me, but I really believe our lives is something that we're supposed to curate. And, you know, for some folks, they go, Oh, damn, I don't have, I don't have an hour to go to the gym. I don't have two hours to meditate or whatever it is in my day because I have to do this and this, take care of the kids. But I always offer, like, damn, if you can't go for an hour, do it for 10. You can't go for a walk for half an hour during lunch, take the 10 minutes you have, right? And find those little moments that's still allowed to curate. And, you know, I really believe in romanticizing our lives, right? Like in these 30 minutes that I have, I'm going to, I don't know, like light my incense and dance in my study, you know, and light the candle and you know, put the music on and like, you know, feel really good in myself and maybe put some oils on so I could feel really good. And I think there's this, we're not adorning ourselves enough. We're not like curating our lives enough for us to feel comfortable wanting to be in it, right? You don't need to have a big, beautiful house. You can curate a beautiful corner of your home, no matter the size of it, and it could be a space that makes you feel like you're on vacation or you're, you know, resting, meditating at ease.

SPEAKER_01 36:45

100%. I also think there was this phase of my life that for those of you watching, you know, like I'm a I like nice things, I like a soft life, but I also had to call myself out when I was doing those things or shopping to not feel what I was feeling. I think there are a lot of ways in which we can use social media, we can use dating, we can use drinking, we can use shopping to cure the dopamine and to avoid feeling what we're feeling. And that's not actually the same as romanticizing your life or curating it. It's actually avoidance. And for me, what I actually realized is like when I'm the happiest, it is when I'm like somewhere very beautiful that I've never been before. It's not when I'm like holding a $10,000 bag, which again, like I love a $10,000 bag, I love a bag, but it didn't cure what I was trying to cure. Like I wasn't buying it because I wanted it, I was buying it because I wanted to feel something. And that's not quite the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 37:38

Yeah, listen, the same go is true for picking up a phone, you know. And I I had I hit a point, this was like towards the end of last year, especially, where I started to really pull this is like the data nerd in me, but I was taking data on like when it was that I was picking up my phone and what was I feeling in that moment. And one was one big one was I was trying to create more challenge in my world. That was a big one, which became a surprise to me. So there are moments when if I did have ease, when I felt ease, like I built a life for myself where there is ease, I would try to, you know, just create more complication for myself because, and this is something, you know, that I had to really sit with and explore. Because when I grew up, there was a lot of complication and challenge. I grew up in a household where there was a lot of challenge, right? And I have learned to excel and do well in chaos. And I think in some ways when I felt ease, my nervous system goes, Well, this doesn't feel this doesn't feel normal. This doesn't feel normal. I don't, I don't know what this is. This feels a little too nice. Let's fuck some shit, right? And so, you know, maybe I might scroll a little bit to watch something, then to find, then find something that makes me feel uncomfortable, something that pisses me off, right? To then wait, use time up in a way that isn't productive for myself, when I could just close my eyes and rest or go for a walk or do something healthy. So that was a one thing that I thought was really, really interesting and something I had to learn. So I would offer to folks to track when it is that you are picking up your phone. What are you doing in those moments? And to your point about you know, discovering when it is you feel your best, right? Find something like the example you gave, new locations, new people, new experiences doesn't necessarily have to be in a new country. You can literally go into the nearest city, the next town over. You can where I live, you can go down a block and there's a new experience to be had and new people to meet and new explorations. And so that's another way to like curate and kind of romanticize the lives that we have. We don't need to spend five, 10, 15 racks on a vacation. You can create one right outside, you know. I love I love a little drive to a new coffee shop.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

That's like one of my favorite things. I've also realized so one of the things that I have really done for myself and I try to do with other people is like, I think we get the idea that like you mentioned going to the gym and not having time for it. I think a lot of people hate the gym because we're taught to hate the gym. It should be something that sucks. It should be something that you you don't you endure, you endure the gym. And so it just becomes another like crappy thing to do on people's to-do lists. So it gets moved to the bottom because not only is it a crappy thing on to do list if you don't view it as fun. Like for me, I actually feel like the best version of myself in the gym because I don't do movements I don't like. And you want to know what I still have a fat ass to shell for it. So you can go to the gym and do things. You want to make sure to name that, right? But like I think there's this idea that you have to go and you have to do all the things the influencers are doing, you have to do all the stairmaster, you have to go.

SPEAKER_00 40:30

When I go to the gym, I'm wearing the base clothes I can because it makes me feel the most comfortable, right?

SPEAKER_01 40:34

But wear whatever you want. But also, I think there's this idea that you have to like do all the things that you're seeing on the internet, but I can guarantee you there is a movement you don't like that is a great substitute that hits the exact same muscle group, and you have fun doing it. Like that for me is the best. Like, I have so much fun by myself at the gym, but because I've had to like coach myself out of influencer culture, yeah. Like the people again, the internet is not real. The chance of them actually doing that movement regularly, not super high to begin with. But then you also have to remember like everything is edited. I have literally watched people at the gym do the same movement 10 times to get the right angle in the right shot. Like, go and find movement that you enjoy. And it doesn't have to be the gym, it can be a walk by a lake or the the ocean, whatever it is. Like, I think that is the other thing is feeling forced into doing things you hate. But you don't have to do that. I mean, you have to you have to go to work and I can't help you there. But like when it comes to the other things you do for yourself, you don't have to do what everyone's doing just because they're doing it.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

Because let's talk about that in the context of doing a job you hate. Okay. And listen, I I want to acknowledge a name that not everyone is either ready or can for whatever reason leave in you know, a job that they do not like. So I and and recognizing that I'm speaking as someone who's, you know, nearly a decade out of building her own world, right? But I do think that that is something we also need to explore in question. Like, are how often, how often are we in spaces that we don't feel comfortable in? Whether that be a workplace or a group of friends that you're still friends with because you knew them for five years and you don't know what other friends you should find, and you're afraid to find new friends, or you're dating someone who isn't speaking life into you in the way that you deserve, and you're thinking, damn, well, I'm already six years in, seven years in, two years in, whatever it is, and maybe I can't leave, right? So I think all of this is also bringing me to that question of how what are we need to observe the spaces that we are in that we don't feel alive. I the analogy, so I'm a lucid dreamer, I like control my dreams, and one of the things that I love to do when I'm controlling my dream is I love to fly. I will change the scenery up if I can to create a window, a door to fly out the space. And and I'm naming that because in my worlds when awake, I want to feel like I'm flying at all times. I want to feel like I'm levitating, like I'm literally flying, and I can do that, and I can feel that in spaces when I feel poured into, spaces that make me feel like myself, spaces that, you know, people, there is a shared love, a shared community. And I want to be in those spaces as much as possible, whether it be a new client that I'm working with, a collaboration that I'm doing, a community that I'm joining, a person who I'm sharing coffee with, right? And and the home that I've built with the person that I love, like all of that, you know, curation is also making sure that we get to be more times than not in spaces where we feel alive. Alive.

SPEAKER_01 43:27

And it's such a good call out because if you don't notice it, your body will. I'm a big believer. Audit your life over and over and over and over. Figure out what is serving you. I just had this like, I was like, I had this big aha moment. So a couple of years ago, I lent chocolate on my hair, which like a terrible idea when you have curly hair. Like it's a bad idea. And I kept being like, well, it'll grow back. But I at the time I was dating someone who hated me. I was at a job that I was so resentful of being there that I could feel in my body. My hair wouldn't grow. And I just realized the other day how much my hair has grown working for myself, being with a person who The sun shines on my butt. All of these things that like my body knew. And so my body was like trying to give you the signs. Like when people say your body will tell you when something or someone is not right for you, they're not lying.

SPEAKER_02 44:10

It's not like I looked gray.

SPEAKER_01 44:13

Like if you look at all of my videos from like 2024, I look like a sick Victorian child. Not a Victorian child. Like there is not an ounce of brown in my skin. Um I don't know where it went. I wanted to tan at all. But it was like I just looked not like me.

SPEAKER_00 44:30

Yeah. And listen, it takes sometimes, you know, it takes us to audit our lives, which I think people should do regularly. I do a monthly, a monthly audit, but if you can't do monthly, I say even quarterly is really good. Um, but even having people who are around you are willing to say, listen, sis, are you good? Are you okay? Like we need people to around us to be able um to ask that question. You know, I'm thinking in this moment with you saying the body piece, it's bringing me back to that like feeling we get with like imposter syndrome, which I appreciate the terminology with imposter syndrome. I appreciate, but I think it's overused because I really do believe that feeling that we feel in our gut, in our chest when we walk into spaces is not that we're being, it's not that we feel that we are less, it is that our bodies are telling us this isn't safe, this isn't right, right? Like sometimes that gut feeling is actually, oh, baby, you need to turn around. These people, they're gonna make you work for your worth or they're gonna question your worth, right? So our gut feeling. I like the term I use is like my ancestors are telling me, girl, get the hell out of here. And so I listen, I listen. And I think there's a you know, similar to what you're saying, or on theme, what you're saying about listening to your body and not doing anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, is having a relationship with your body enough that you notice when your body is saying something and you're willing to listen. Yeah. And

Conflict Bravery And Discernment

SPEAKER_00 45:50

speaking of that, I'm thinking about so one of the things I do is help people heal their relationship to conflict, with something I call conflict bravery. It is a practice that helps us embrace conflict as something that can create positive change. And there's a multi-step process that starts with us recognizing where the earliest examples of conflict came from, like what did conflict looked like in your household? And that practice has really helped people to build a better sense of confidence, to build a better relationship with their bodies, to build a better relationship with themselves in a way that they can celebrate themselves and heal from that toxic humility. Because the somatic experience we have of trying something new, of standing up for ourselves, of putting our voice out there, using our voice, et cetera, that somatic experience is similar to the somatic experience we have when we encounter conflict. And so to be able to move through conflict in a way with ease, that healing journey also helps with these other areas.

SPEAKER_01 46:43

Well, I think we're we're taught that conflict is a bad thing, right? Conflict's a scary word. When we're taught that life should be frictionless, I'm not saying life should be frictionless. I actually encourage you to be uncomfortable. I don't encourage you to be unseen.

SPEAKER_02 46:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:57

And I think for me, that is that gut feeling. It's not that I feel less than, it's that I'm about to be in a group of a room with a group of people who do think I'm less than it has nothing to do with my ability to do my work.

SPEAKER_02 47:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:07

And I think that is truly the hard part is getting good at conflict, but not knowing when to say, like, okay, there's no amount of conflict that will solve this space for me. And so how do you how do you help people kind of navigate that? Like knowing where conflict will be beneficial versus saying, you know what, this is no longer productive, and I'm choosing to work.

SPEAKER_00 47:32

And you know, thank you so much for naming that. And the example I'm gonna give, and what this is bringing you back to is it's bringing you back to my DEI journey. Doing DEI work. And we know how challenging, you know, doing DEI work uh can be. And I I I still a lot of my work is involved in DEI, but I always say my work feels more expansive than DEI because it's about relational work and human-centered work than just checking boxes. Um, and there was a time in doing that work many, many years ago where I felt like I had to have the loudest clap back in the room. And I did some good clap back. I said the last, you know, was the one who would be the person to say the last thing in a particular space. And then I had to really think about, you know, where am I using my energy and who am I using my energy on? And when it comes to persons who are resistant to change, that is not a place where I should be giving my energy because my energy should be reserved for myself and my intentional community members. So there's a two-by-two model that we usually explore about thinking about what kind of relationship you have to a person, how much energy and resources you have within a particular moment. So if you have made deposits in the relationship or feels like a trusting relationship where you can trust that the person is capable of change and is willing to change, that being one of the variables, some of the variables. And you also have the energy to engage in that moment. And energy could literally look like energy in the body. It could also be resources like time. And do you have a good space to be able to unpack thoroughly? Um, those two things we in a moment are able to practice assessing and using our discernment. So if it's a, you know, I always say if it's a crusty dusty online who just has a crusty, dusty thing to say, a racist, crusty, dusty thing to say, why would you be using your energy of this person's like use it somewhere else? But if it's someone who you, you know, are living with, maybe it's your partner and you can't even tell them to clean a dishes, that's a problem. That's something that you should, you know, be unpacking and learning to build your capacity to engage in conflict. If it's someone who you're an organizer with, someone you're on a team with, someone who you're a friend with, you know, I always say that the full capacity or the full fidelity of a relationship is not present if conflict bravery is not present in that relationship. If you are not comfortable getting into healthy, thorough conflict, unpacking, difficult, challenging discussions with someone, then you're not living out the full fidelity of that relationship.

SPEAKER_01 49:46

When did you realize the importance of conflict in your own life?

SPEAKER_00 49:51

Ooh, I love this question. So I told you I'm in the South Bronx, right? And you know, South Bronx is a very beautiful and interesting place. And as many people also know, South Bronx has its challenges, right? It's a place where there's a lot of scarcity. And in a place like that, where there's a lot of scarcity, you can see a lot of conflict in ways that is unhealthy. People will hold on to the things that they have very, very tightly. And so I grew up in a place in a space where it was a norm to pop off. It was a norm if someone challenged you that you had to come out a winner. And even if that meant you had to whoop somebody's ass seriously. And then fast forward, I'm in, you know, starting my career in these leadership roles. And obviously, I'm not gonna serve ass whoopings, right? But I'm also in these conflict avoidance spaces where I'm seeing conflict avoidance to the point where people are experiencing physical illness. People are like holding their tongue and tightening their lips and sitting uncomfortable in spaces where they can't speak up and bring up challenges in a space. And I'm also doing work where I have to create social change. So literally work that's gonna impact our world, our communities. And it was in that moment where I go, I can't use the strategies that I had growing up, and I can't use the strategies that are present in this organization. And so I have to find a way to excite people, to ignite change in people and create change in the space. And change is always conflict because it's conflict with the status quo. And so that's that point where I said something else, there has to be something else present. And every tool that I searched about conflict didn't get to the point of like where conflict started in our histories. So conflict bravery doesn't just say how do we navigate conflict, it's also healing our relationships of conflict in the way that it used to be.

SPEAKER_01 51:36

I love that. So

Accomplishment Jar And Finding Atta Online

SPEAKER_01 51:38

to kind of bring it full circle, I think one of the things about being a woman of color, being a woman, being a black woman, who has a personality, who has a lot of confidence in themselves, who doesn't carry, you know, the toxic humility piece. I think for a lot of people that becomes conflict because it becomes uncomfortable. And so I guess my question for you is when you think about why people feel that that is a point of contention rather than a celebration, why do you think that comes out that way?

SPEAKER_00 52:10

Why to why it's a conflict for you to be living in your for other people, your flyness, your dopeness. You know, again, I think, you know, when you're used to spaces, well, one, I think there is I was talking about this recently in the context of queerness, because I am a queer woman, I'm a queer one of color. I talk about this very often. I'm very open about it. And someone had asked the question of like, what happens or why is it that folks are uncomfortable when you're open about your queerness? And I think there's I'm using a queer lens in praxis to even answer the question because I think it's similar to being open about queerness and comfortable with queerness. I think when we stand in our light and we're comfortable being ourselves, our our freedom, our own liberation makes other people go, damn, can I be liberated too when I'm choosing not to be? Like, can I can I be free and also stand in my dopness and my flyness and I'm choosing not to be? So I think it makes people really question themselves. And going back to what you said earlier, I think it also makes people wonder about their capacities. There when when folks have been raised in communities where the norm is competition, or have been working careers and organizations, et cetera, where the norm is competition, they immediately think, damn, if you are standing in your light, that must mean I have less. And already that that's another. And the response is to to dim your light, to make you cut it off, right? To to stop and to do whatever it takes to make you stop shining as brightly.

SPEAKER_01 53:41

So I know we're getting to the end of our time, but the question I wanted to ask you, because I feel like I get this question a lot. So I'd love to hear someone else answer it. If you could give yourself, younger you, and I'm talking like 15, 18, 21, not fully frontal lobed yet, you, some advice about what it means to actually stand in your power confidently, what would those, what would you tell yourself?

SPEAKER_00 54:04

Wow, what would I tell myself to stand confidently? One, I think it's what I would have to tell myself is that there, you're gonna be living in a world, you are living in a world that will tell you your confidence is rooted in the things that you can produce and the things that you can do, especially for institutions, right? Things rooted in numbers, how much do you have, how big is it, you know, the house, the car, the money, the salary, the title, the power, right? But you have to explore, if you are stripped of all of that, who are you at your core? Who are you beyond a title, a salary, the way that you look? Who are you beyond how much money you have in your pocket or your bank account or what your house looks like? When you strip away even the degrees that you have and what you have accomplished, anything that an institution has given you, for you to be able to identify and create identity for yourself outside of any of that, that is what it means to end your light, to say, I know who I am outside of anything an institution is telling me. I know who I am and I love myself thoroughly, all of me, that is standing in your light. Yeah.

unknown 55:12

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 55:13

Okay, so for people listening to this, if they are like, okay, I want to take like just one step forward into being more confident, into owning my powers and the things that I'm really good at. If there's one thing that they could do today, what would that thing be, in your opinion?

SPEAKER_00 55:26

Ooh, I want to do something really, really easy, something that someone can do right now. So something I keep is like an accomplishment jar or things, celebration jar, like at my desk, literally right here. Let me pull it out of here. So it's a jar of all the accomplishments and things that I'm just proud of in this year alone. So in this last quarter. And I would say, even just starting really small and being able to track the things that you have done that you're excited about, that you're happy about, that you're proud of yourself of doing and keeping track of them so that way you can return to them on the days where you don't feel as good. And this practice, this is a practice and will help you practice celebrating yourself and feeling more aligned with that practice in other spaces.

SPEAKER_01 56:04

Okay, there's a lot of things in that jar, and we're in May. So now I have to ask you what is the thing you're most proud of this year?

SPEAKER_00 56:11

Okay, there's a lot that I'm really proud of. Oh my goodness. Okay, so this year I've stepped out and like been doing a lot of in the interwebs things, but in a very healthy way where I'm building relationships with folks, and I've been invited to speak on like seven or eight different podcasts. So I'm really, really proud of that. Of like, and for me, it represents um relationship building, it represents community building. Um, another thing I'm really proud of is sharing stories that are just really personal and not just a professional. So I had the opportunity to share a story on an episode of Stories from the Stage at GBH Studio in Boston, which is really, really fly and really dope. And I'm really proud of that as well.

SPEAKER_01 56:49

Okay, and came right to my area. Didn't even know it. Yes. Well, thank you so much for crashing out with me. As always, I want to want to make sure that we highlight you and where people can find you, more they can work with you. So, could you give us a little like elevator pitch about how people can work with you, who can work with you, and then where they can find you?

SPEAKER_00 57:06

Absolutely. So I work with organizations that are looking to do relational design. So things like staff retreats, team days, strategic planning processes, or DEI work. And you can hit me up at info at altograsiamontilla.com. That's info at altagraciamontilla.com. And you can find me on my website and explore more of my work at altagraciamontilla.com. And I also do leadership coaching, so you can find me in those spaces as well. And on my Instagram and threads at alt i.

SPEAKER_01 57:36

Awesome. And if you are listening to this in the podcast version, you can find all of those links in the big wall of text right below this. But thank you so much for crashing out. This was such a good conversation, probably one of my top three, very much a favorite for me. So very excited to have this live and publish. But thank you so much to anyone watching. Thanks for crashing out with me, and I'll catch it, catch you all next time. Thank you. Bye.