The Secret Hack to Confidence with Heather Lahtinen

221 - Get ready to dive deep into a world where confidence reigns supreme! Join Nicole Begley and Heather Lahtinen as they uncover the secret sauce to building unshakeable confidence in your photography biz. This isn’t just any chat – it’s a journey through the ups and downs of self-trust, topped off with a surprising twist about... chocolate muffins?

What To Listen For:

• Discover why self-trust is key to growing your confidence.
• Learn how focusing on competence leads to increased confidence.
• Uncover the impact of small actions and self-affirmations.
• Nicole’s candid confession about guilt, shame, and... baked goods?
• Flipping the script on self-commitment flops.

This episode is a must for any photographer looking to boost their confidence and take their business to new heights. Remember, it's all about trusting yourself!

Resources From This Episode:

• Hair of the Dog Academy 
• Elevate Coaching Program

JOIN THE PARTY:

• Connect with us on Instagram
• Explore valuable pet photography resources here
• Discover effective pricing and sales strategies for all portrait photographers.
• Ready to grow your business? Elevate helps you do just that.
• Check out our recommended gear and favorite books.

Transcript

Have you ever wished you had more confidence in life? And whether that's in your business for marketing to new clients or asking for a bigger sale or raising your prices? Well, usually confidence is increased when you have repetition and you've been practicing, and then you get confidence, so then you have confidence. But today, on the podcast, we're exploring a secret hack that will help you get more confidence more quickly when you're not able to practice it.

And this could be potentially life changing and also stick around to the end. You're gonna hear me end the podcast, and then we're gonna come back because as soon as we ended it, I had a pretty massive realization and Heather and I decided we needed to come back and talk about it and kind of coach me through this guilt and shame spiral that happened when I walked into my pantry and then remembered that I said I was gonna make chocolate muffins the other day.

So stay tuned. Welcome to the Hair of the Dog podcast. If you are a pet photographer, ready to make more money and start living a life by your design, you've come to the right place. And now your host pet photographer, travel addict, chocolate martini connoisseur, Nicole Begley. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another Hair of the Dog podcast.

I'm your host, Nicole Begley, and we have the mindset ninja, the Thought hacker, Heather, Lotton, and back with us again. And today we are gonna talk about the secret hack to more confidence. Heather, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I love this because how often do you hear from photographers? Oh,

I just need more confidence if I just, Oh my gosh. If I just had all the time. If only Target wasn't out of it. Yeah, right. I mean, every time I go to Target, they're plumb out of confidence. I can't, where is it on the shelf? If somebody would just tell, Cannot find it. I would buy it.

I would pay money for it, but I can't find it. It's always out. That's so funny. Yeah, so I, I mean, I hear like I need to feel more confident in, in my photos, in my photography, in my editing, in my, in my workflow Pricing, in my, yeah, gaining confidence in attracting clients.

We hear that all the time, you guys. We understand. We've been there. Yeah, we've been there. It is like really, really hard, I think, to, to, to feel confident with those things. When you're facing new situations, you haven't, maybe, like, maybe you haven't gotten your first big sale yet, so you're like,

you don't have the proof, even though you know that it's possible you don't have that it's possible for you yet. You don't have that proof yet. So you have yucky thoughts. We just talked a lot about thoughts regularly on this podcast. So yeah. So how do we even start to build up this confidence muscle? Well, this is interesting because I've been teaching it for,

and I'm not exaggerating, 20 years, two decades. And part of what I would teach about confidence is that confidence comes from competence. Like if you feel competent in a skill, you'll automatically have confidence. Like for instance, how confident are you in going to the bathroom? Well, usually pretty confident. Yeah, pretty confident. Except, yeah, you know,

but like, when it's emergency situations, but we don't need to get onto that, onto the, onto the podcast. Yeah. Although we have talked about that. I know. Yeah. That's too much information. Yeah. Okay. But you, you, yeah, because you're competent at it. You, I mean, getting a glass of water,

getting yourself some food. Like this is actually the very same for any pet photographer out there. This is exactly the same really as animal training, is that repetition builds confidence, which then builds confidence. Like the animals get better and better and quicker and quicker at what you're asking them to do at, at knowing what they need to do. So yeah,

this works for all species. For all species. So I've been teaching this for two decades, and I still stand behind that, but I noticed that people still struggled with it. You know, I'd explained it a few different ways. We'd been talk about it, we'd work on our competence in different areas, but it still just was like not, I,

I didn't feel like I was explaining it in a way that like really shifted things forever. I di I hadn't found the hack, the like mindset ninja reframe that all of a sudden would open up confidence for people. And I mistakenly thought, well, they just need competence. They need to just continue to do something. And, and I still believe in that,

by the way. I think you still need to practice your skillset in order to get better, but Yeah, and it does, it does help cement in that confidence and, and helps it go even faster. But it's getting over that first hump of like, where do I even start? I'm not ready for that thing, or I don't have the opportunity to have that big sale yet.

'cause I haven't even gotten my first client yet. So how can I possibly have confidence? 'cause I can't practice it. There Is a dilemma. You absolutely very well said. It is like, well, I haven't done it, so how could I do it to build the confidence that I need? And people would get stuck in this loop. And I recognized it,

but I was having a difficult time coming up with a different way to explain it. And one of my, one of my things is finding ways to break something down in its simplest terms so that people can understand and implement. And, and also for myself, because my brain just works in a really simple way. So I actually uncovered something very recently,

very recently. I taught it in Elevate a couple of weeks ago around confidence. And I really think that this hack, this shift can help you. Just all of a sudden today, like after listening to this episode today, you can decide to have confidence when you understand how I'm gonna break this down. And side note, I'm, I'm certified as a life and business coach.

I'm certified in NLP neurolinguistic programming and CBT cognitive behavioral therapy, which, so if we have some therapists that, listen, I have some therapist clients, they'll sort of recognize what I'm doing here. Are you ready for this? I looked at the word confidence and I broke it down. And I, I love words. I love to understand like what words,

actually, I go to Webster's dictionary on the internet all the time to look up words that I know what they mean, but I just like to look at the definition. So I looked at confidence and I broke it into its components. And I saw to confide, confide to confide in confidence, to confide in one self, to trust oneself is to have confidence.

So to confide into trust, especially in oneself. So when you lack confidence, it essentially means that you don't trust yourself. But what, why is that? Why, why would you not trust yourself? Well, what we tend to say is like, well, I haven't done it before, so, okay. Right. So how do I know if I'm doing it right?

Right. Or, or, or at all. Like, I just don't even know where to start, you know, and getting clients and marketing my business or pricing or whatever. But see, but then you're missing the point because confidence is trusting yourself not to know everything, but to know that you can figure it out to trust oneself, to figure it out.

Like for instance, if you go back to the bathroom analogy, it, you know, you're confident in going to the bathroom because you trust yourself to seek out facilities when you need to. And I'm trusting that they'll be available and hopefully they will be available. Although when I, when we were in Italy and I found out you had to pay to go to the bathroom,

I was thrown all for a loop. But anyway, I trust myself to seek out facilities. So I have confidence. I trust myself in going to the bathroom, not necessarily just because I've done it repeatedly since the age of two. Okay. So what we had looked at previously was like, well, I just need to repeat a skill. I need to learn a skill,

execute it, repeat it. That will build competence, which will lead to confidence again. I still believe that, but what, what about to your point, when you don't have it? Yeah. And how can we short circuit it? How can you or like hack it can, yeah. How can you leverage this limitation? Because it's true. In order to build a skillset,

you need to practice and get the competition. Yeah. That's all true. But it's a limitation because then that means confidence is not going to happen until you're on the other side of it. And I'm suggesting we leverage that limitation by looking at the word differently and by deciding to confide in oneself to trust oneself. I, there is so much, I don't know Nicole about growing this business,

about anything, about anything, but I am very resourceful and I'm a little scrappy. So because of that, I trust myself to figure, you know, do you know that in 2006 when Lightroom was released in beta, it was a brand new program. There was no training, zero, zero did not exist. Nothing like it exists except Apple released Aperture that same year.

There was, there was no option for me, but to figure it out. And I had confidence in my skillset that I was like, I'm just gonna figure this out. I figured it out really, really quickly and immediately turned around and started teaching it. At that time it was in person because we, we didn't have, you know, what we,

Yeah. Internet was very, The resources now Rudimentary. Yeah. But I did, so I started teaching it and people would ask me, how did you learn this? And I'm like, I've, I played with it. I figured it out. But that's because I trusted myself in the ability, in my ability to do so. Because think about it this way,

if I said to myself, I can't learn this, there's no training, and I'm not, I'm not a techie person. If I said that Belief, belief, belief, thought, thought, thought, What I'm doing there is believing more in my limitations, in my leverage. I don't have those thoughts. I actually think I'm a very, I love tech.

I'm a very technical person. So I tell myself that and I tell myself I'm resourceful and that I can figure things out. Oh, and by the way, I have to, there's no other option at this point. So I trust myself and I figured it out. But it had nothing to do with the skillset. I didn't possess the skillset, but I trusted myself to figure it out.

So what if you were one thought away from feeling confident in everything in your business and life, just by learning to trust yourself, what would that look like? Huge. Huge. It would shift everything. So, okay. But, and you know, I don't know how far we wanna go down this rabbit hole on this episode. Maybe we need to extend this to a part two,

because the next thing is people will say, well, I don't trust myself. Well, yeah, yeah. I was gonna, I was gonna ask you, how do you start to trust yourself? 'cause I think we all, I mean, you go back to when you're kids, you definitely trusted yourself. You're like, people would ask you, Hey,

what do you wanna be when you grow up? You're like an astronaut, this or that. You're like, yeah, yeah, you can do that. So at what point in our life did we go from anything as possible to like not believing that we can figure out how to find a client For real? Yeah. It was schooled out of you.

You know, it's not, it's kind of not your fault, but yeah, we were taught to be realistic and you have to learn things Well, and the whole reason that we have school is to help you get ready to work in the factory. Yes. And like, get any sort of creativity out of you, because you just want you to be a good,

like indu industry worker. So there's that. That's the Factory indoctrination system we call schools. Yeah. So it's not your fault, but okay, this, this idea of trust is interesting because the reason you might struggle to trust yourself is because I heard my mentor say this recently. You're the only person that has ever heard all of the lies that you've told yourself about what you're gonna do,

and you don't do it. Wow. Say that one Again. You are the only person that has heard all of the lies that you've told yourself about, oh, I'm gonna start exercising. Oh, I'm gonna save money. Oh, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna build a better relationship. Whatever. You're, you know, you are the only person that knows how,

how often you've lied to yourself and you've not followed through. So of course you don't trust yourself, you never follow through. Yes. So how do you start to build that trust? Well, you, you say you're gonna do things and then you go do the thing. Now, okay, I'm, I'm simplifying this because this is just how my brain works,

because I actually believe it's simple. So I'm not saying, okay, I'm gonna tell myself I'm gonna work out five days a week for an hour, and then I'm gonna go do it, and then that's gonna build trust with myself. No. Yeah. Right. I'm going, This is, I was gonna say, this is like John KO's all it takes as a goal book where he is talking about,

I forget what he calls them, but like simple goals, like basic goals, then middle goals, and then the guaranteed goals. And like the simple ones, he's like, those goals should be, if you told someone that was your goal, they would laugh at you and be like, are you kidding me? Correct. That's a goal. Like,

it's like literally the first step. So in the working out five days a week, it would be, I'm gonna go for a walk today. That's it. Like, not even a mile walk. Like I am literally gonna put in my shoes and step outside the house today. Yes. Well, I'll walk around the house once. That's it. Yeah.

I will at least get onto the sidewalk. And from there you'll probably continue. But like, that's the level of goal setting. So you can start to build trust in yourself. And then you're like, oh, all right, this is good. I'm doing this. I wanna continue. Then you can have that middle goal of like, all right,

I'm gonna commit to three miles a week. So that can be three miles in one day if you procrastinate it all week, or you can spread it out, but it's, you're not totally changing your entire lifestyle around these goals. And then if you do that for a while, then all of a sudden you're like, oh, all right, maybe I do wanna train for that marathon.

And then which final that will never, never. No, that's dumb. Yeah. No, the question becomes, becomes, That's bad example for me. The Question is, how can I build trust with myself in a very simple, easy way with the goal of following through as to build this trust. So it might be, I'm gonna put on my socks today.

Okay, this just stay with me. I'm gonna put on my socks today. And then you put on your socks today and you go, oh, good job, Heather. I trust you. Thank you. And then you say, I'm gonna drink one glass of water today instead of 64 ounces. And you go drink one glass of water and you say,

good job, Nicole, you did it. I trust you. I trust myself. I actually had one of my clients, she said, this was kind of awkward, but she did it. I said, I want you to go find a mirror right now. Look yourself in the eye point to yourself and say, I trust you. Oh my God.

Yeah, Yeah. I trust you That, that it feels like if somebody's watching, you're like, they're gonna think I'm crazy. Yeah. But those kinds of self affirmations, looking yourself in the eye, in the mirror, are actually scientifically proven to be very effective. And you might even get a little emotional. Yeah. It might like pull, like what if you looked yourself in the mirror in the eye and you said,

I love you and I trust you. Like what would, okay. And I know some people are cringing at that. Hey, I get it. Just try it and see what shifts for you. And find small ways to build trust with yourself on purpose and, and just decide that you are the type of person that trust themselves. Because a lot of this was happening at the sublevel.

You know, subconsciously, you're not real realizing you don't trust yourself, but you don't because you've broke, broken your words so many times. So this leads to one of your very important core values, which is building integrity with yourself. I want to build integrity with myself so that I trust me. That is a hundred percent. I think the biggest reason people don't follow through with things is because they have this subconscious distrust of themselves.

And how many times, like that's why workout partners work so well, or accountability buddies, or in the 50 k club in the academy, we have a Monday coworking call that Donna has been leading for, oh my gosh, almost a year now. And it is, it is that kind of stuff because now you have other people involved, so you can't back outta It,

right? Because when it's just you, it's really easy, it's really easy to break that trust and then all of a sudden you're like, yeah, see, I don't trust myself. That's why I don't have con, I just, I just don't trust myself. I'm not gonna follow through. Then here comes the beliefs of I'm a person that can't follow through.

I am not never gonna get this business off the ground. Here come the thought spirals, which lead to what kind of feeling? Oh, feeling like crap. Which leads to what kind of action? Oh, none. Which leads to what kind of result? Oh, a crappy one. It's so clear, isn't it? This, and this all starts,

all of it starts and ends with, I trust myself. Yeah. So you have to take this seriously. And if you have the accountability partners and you're joining these calls and that helps you start to build the trust with yourself, then before long, what you'll find is that you can execute on your own. Without them, you're, you're responsible, you feel good about it,

you hold yourself to integrity. You do what you're going to say, what you say you're going to do. Listen, this doesn't mean, I'm not talking about a hundred percent perfection here. I'm just talking about building a track record where you trust yourself to figure things out and to honor your word. If I say I'm going to watch a training course,

for instance, you and I both love training and a lot of our people do as well. And I, you know, and I dedicate hours to that and I don't do it. Well then I'm eroding the trust. I just want to be on like the positive side of this, where I'm doing more building than eroding. Yeah. And occasionally something might come up that it's like,

oh, I wasn't able to do that. Let me reschedule it now 'cause it's still important to me. Or you can ask yourself, is this still important to me? No, I'm actually gonna use my time here instead. And that's fine. You're allowed to change your mind, but you're not allowed to just allow yourself to continually just not do what you're gonna say you're gonna do and not follow through.

Because just because it's, you know, really that not following through, this goes back to, oh my gosh, I think it's episode one or two. I think it's episode one of procrastination of what is procrastination, really it is us avoiding getting started. 'cause we don't know how, or, or we're scared of the result. Whether that result is,

we don't do it well. So what does that mean about us? Or if we succeed? And then what does that mean? What result is that gonna have? So this is all kind of lumped together. Like It all makes sense, doesn't it? Like You, you're just protecting your ego All the time. All the time. And, and sometimes at your own expense On most of the time You own expense.

Which is so ironic, isn't it? Like, but here's the thing, if you don't trust yourself, which means you don't have confidence, okay? So you don't trust yourself when you're talking to people. You are causing people to doubt you because you doubt yourself. Yes. People are magnetized to me in person because I am passionate about what I do.

I'm just like so excited. I just love everything. I'm like so excited about everything and I believe in my abilities to figure things out. I don't think I'm smarter than anyone. Better, faster, none of that. It is not that I think I know everything. It's that I trust myself. Yeah. You trust yourself and you believe in what you have to offer.

So for all you photographers out there, do you believe the way you offer is important? Do you believe the way you're offering as a service? If you don't believe either of those things, you're never gonna have confidence selling it. You're never gonna have confidence marketing it. Like you need to believe that, which again comes to the beliefs and the thoughts.

Yeah. And here's why. If you don't believe it, how could you trust yourself? Because you know, you would be lying. Right? Right. So like, follow this. If you don't believe in your work or your prices, like it was like secretly you are like, it's in my brain. Nobody knows. Yeah, yeah. Right.

No, exactly. Yeah. You're like, I, I know Nicole said I have to charge this, right? But oh, no one's gonna actually gonna pay this, right? Oh God, I'd have it out here, but I don't actually feel good about it. So if you, if that's true, if you have that belief, and a lot of people do,

and that's okay, we're here to help you with it. If you have that belief, but yet you go out and you say something totally different, your brain knows you're lying and you're guess what? You're eroding your trust and your confidence. You're not building it up. So it starts with that belief. Yeah, I have something to offer. This is worth it.

I love my, okay, well, I mean, we've talked about the belief triad, getting to that point, but also trusting, again, this, I don't want anyone to mishear me. This is not about thinking you are the best at what you do. This is thinking that you are the right person. You are the best person for the person in front of you.

And you trust that you trust that the right inquiries are coming to you, that you're meeting the right people, and you trust yourself. You trust the process. You trust what's happening. That builds all of this confidence. You just like, I mean, and then you're just like oozing it, you know? It's like coming out of your pores and you're attracting people because of this belief,

and then all of a sudden everythings starts working and yeah, it's because you're confident, but not in the way you may have thought. It's because you trust yourself. Yeah. I think the word confident people immediately go too arrogant. Yep. And that's not what we're, Nope. Confidence is just a belief in yourself. So we did a podcast recently,

Heather number two 17, rock Your Financial Goals, which was really about this thing we coined nvs or non-revenue victories, which is basically writing down, keeping track of your wins that are not revenue related. So would having a practice like that help you start to trust yourself? Start to, yeah. Of Confidence, Of course. Because Yeah, Yeah, of course.

Because what you're doing is actually writing evidence in your favor. So if this is difficult for you to just, you know, kind of conceptualize in your brain, get out a sheet of paper, listen to that episode, get out a sheet of paper and write down how you're winning. And then look at that list and own the fact that you created it.

And you look at that list and you're like, I did this. I trust myself. Like literally say it out loud. I did this, I created this. Write down, good job, Heather. Good job, Nicole. I, I actually write down Nvs almost daily now. And I write good job Heather next to it. And I'm just building trust.

Like, look, I executed on this one thing and then this happened and I created that. I trust you, Heather, I trust you. I actually tell myself that sort of in the third person to give it a little bit more legitimacy. I know that sounds weird, but Well, You're, you're, you're basically talking to your subconscious. I don't know if you're talking from your conscious,

I guess your conscious side to your subconscious side side. So you kind of are talking to another person, third sort Of Yes. Sort of in a wacky kind of way. I mean, I'll say, good job, Heather, and then I'll say thank you Heather. And I'll laugh about how ridiculous I sound. It's true. But this, this sounds,

you guys, this sounds so hokey, like affirmation sound hokey. But it, it works because the more you say this to yourself, you start to believe it. Because I guarantee you that 99% of us don't actually trust ourselves. Oh, That's for sure. Yeah. And the this like, good job, like when we do something good, I don't know about you,

but I am often, unless I have something to kind of short circuit, stop me to kind of look at it again and, and recognize the win. I've already moved on to seven other wins that I want to be. Yes. So like doing something like this where it's like, hey, good job. Like you are reinforcing just yourself and what you have done and your subconscious,

and it just, it helps, it just helps you move forward so much faster. Even though it sounds crazy, I invite you to try it on, try it on for a week and, And see what, and, and try it today. Listen, I, I wanna, I want people to try it today. I want you to right now think of something that you said you were going to do today and you actually did it.

And just, you know, say out loud, I trust myself. Like, even if it was you trusted yourself to seek out the facilities, you did not, in fact soil your pants, you made it so you could say, I trust myself. Look, I did that. I tr Yeah. And it's funny and have like bring some levity to it.

This does not need to be like, heavy or serious. This can be really fun. Look for ways to tr like putting on your socks, getting a glass of water. Oh look, I did that. I said I was gonna do it. I did it. I trust myself. Where else can I trust myself? How else can I build trust?

And I would not recommend anybody go like full in, like you said to the marathon level. Yeah, yeah. But just start it with something really a little small. Yep. Yes. Little things you're gonna do today. Like, I, I showered. I trust myself. I trust myself. You guys laugh. This is actually, this is actually true.

Heather knows because especially in the summer, no, winter. Winter, I think winter's worse. Yeah. Because I end up in the summer, I go to the barn, barn stables to go see my horse, not bar in the morning. And so then I come home, I'm super sore day, take a shower. Although it's actually bad in the summer too.

'cause if I don't have anything recording, I'm like, I'm not gonna dry my hair. I just might go to the lake later. I just like let it go up and dry. So it's like out of control. But then if I'm going to the barn the next day and evening, then it's like, well, I'm not gonna shower. So I get home from that.

So anyway, so being camera ready, a real challenge in Nicole's world is what I am saying. So, wow. That was a long roundabout story for me to say, Hey, I showered. Good job. I trust you, You yourself, Work for me. No, that is actually self-care is really important, you know? And, and for me that's like exercising.

I exercise every day and I trust myself because I actually do it. I have incredible discipline in this regard. And it, I don't mean to say that like I'm bragging it, you guys, it has taken me years to get to this Point that this, you've been doing it for a long time. Years. And prior to that, I absolutely did not trust myself because I would never follow through on a workout routine.

But here I am all these years in and I've stuck to it. And yeah, I trust myself like the shower and the exercise. I trust myself to take care of my physical body. Well if you do that, even if you're, even if you're just like, I'm gonna walk around the house once, you would be surprised how that extends to your mind.

I trust myself to Your business. Right? Correct. And to me, the exercise, the showering, all of it, it's always been related to like business growth. Like, I'm gonna exercise every day just to prove to myself that I have discipline and I can do hard things and I can trust myself. And that was a, that was just like a mechanism I latched onto to grow my business.

I made this parallel between the two and it, and it's worked for me. Yeah. And, and, and guess what? My body, my mind and my bank account, they all win. Yeah. Yeah. So can we also bring around, if you guys are listening and to bring it back to business? 'cause you're like, well, whatever,

I already exercise or Yeah. I don't care about exercise, even though it is all related. Can you look at something in your business? What is something small you can do in your business? Is it balancing your QuickBooks? Hey, Good Job, Nicole. I trust myself. Yep. I trust you. What'd you say? I trust you. Good job,

Nicole. I trust you. I do both. I do both. I say, good job, Heather. I trust you. Heather. Yeah, I say that. Yes. Yeah. And I also walk around saying I trust myself. Yes. Okay. Perfect. I love it. So what, what, what have you been putting off? This is our also your other to do from listening to this,

use the, I trust myself. Like go say it. I want you to say it a couple times a day for the next week and just see how that starts to feel. And it's gonna feel funny at first, but seriously, say it out loud and, and what are some little things that you've been maybe procrastinating on your business that you can take the first step?

You don't have to finish it, can you Quick QuickBooks? I have, I have an example. If You open QuickBooks, you don't even have to like it yet, Right? Yeah. So I was talking to one of my clients recently and she, she was like sheepishly telling me that she had not started her email list. Oh. And I said,

okay, you know that that's important right? To market to your people. And she's like, yes, of course. And I said, okay, great. Then I, you know, put that on your list of things to accomplish. Start an email list. And she's like, yeah, I'll have that done by the end of the month. And I said,

false, you'll have it done in the next hour. Be, and here's why. You could go right now to flow desk or MailChimp. Those are two out of many. And you could create a free account and start messing around if you, if you know, if you're a photographer and you don't have an email list. And you know, it's important 'cause we talk about it all the time.

You could right now, before the end of this episode, before Nicole rolls the credits, you could have created a free account on one of these services to just mess around with. And that tiny little thing sends a message to yourself, oh look, I did that. I trust me. And the first step is done. And then the other steps appear.

People wait for all the steps. And it's never, rarely right. Gonna ever happen. Perfect. And even if you think you know all the steps, once you get into it, your steps are gonna change. Yeah. But that's where confidence comes in. Why? Because you trust yourself. Yeah. Do you see, oh gosh. Such an important point.

Do you see why some people struggle to get started though? Is like they, they feel like they need to know and see everything in order to have the confidence to execute. And I'm suggesting that that is completely upside down, that all you need to do is trust yourself to figure it out and then you can be stopped. You just empowered yourself to take all kinds of action in all kinds of different ways in your business.

Just because you're saying, no, I don't, I actually don't know anything. I, but I trust myself. That's what confi to confide in oneself with confide fidelity, with oneself and have integrity. I trust myself. Oh, I can do anything. I love it. I love it. So will you guys please let us know via Instagram, shoot us a dmm,

tag us in the hair of the dog community. If you're in Elevate, let us know. In Elevate community, tell us how you're trusting yourself. What actions are you're doing that you're like, Hmm, this is what I did. 'cause I would love to know. And again, they can be like, Hmm, look, good job Nicole. You put on your shoes.

I trust you. I trust You. I trust you to take care of my feet so I don't step on a bee. That's what I always told my kids when they're little, you better put shoes on. You're gonna get stung by a bee. Trouble. Trouble. Awesome. Is there anything else you wanna mention, Heather, to kind of bring this all home for everybody?

I want every, yes. Like going into the end of the year, going into a new year. Is there anything Yeah. To kind of bring this all home? Yes. I want you to know that no matter how many times you have broken trust with yourself or how dejected you defeated you feel in this moment because you know you've lied to yourself a bazillion times.

That you can always turn it around. That there is hope and that this can and will and does work for you. But do not delay. Don't listen to my voice and wait another freaking minute to decide to start building trustworthy yourself. Do it. Get up right now and find something small that you can say, I trust myself. Don't, don't feel like your past dictates your future just because you have not kept your word in the past.

Okay? So what? Drop it. It doesn't serve you and move forward with this new thought that I can trust myself and I'm gonna find small ways to start building it. I love it. Excellent. Oh my gosh, Heather, thank you again for bringing this to us. I know I'm gonna utilize this because I have done a lot of, I mean,

I think we all have, we, we, it's so easy to break our own trust and just write things off when it's just us, because we're not disappointing anyone other than us. And I don't know why it's okay to continually to disappoint ourselves. So let's stop doing that. Well, and you know, whenever I'm hesitating with anything, I will always ask myself where I'm not trusting myself.

Oh, that's the great question. Yeah. If I'm hesitating and how do I know this? Because it's never, we're never done with this. It's never complete. I talked with my coach like three days ago and she said, where are you not trusting yourself on this? And I was like, holy smokes. There it is again and again. Yeah.

And again and again. So when I find myself procrastinating or hesitating, there's a couple of questions I ask myself, like, how can I gain more clarity? Where does the decision need to be made? And where am I not trusting myself here? And then I just get sort of curious about it. And usually it's just a matter, I might not even know.

I might not be able to like uncover that maybe. But if I don't, I just like decide I'm going to trust myself even if I don't exactly know what it is, because I trust myself to figure it out. And I also trust myself to, to keep me safe and out of harm's way that I'm not gonna do anything, you know, risky or stupid that's going to hurt me or anyone else.

So that's also trust. Yeah. Yeah. So good. So good. All right guys. Let us know how this lands for you and have a wonderful holiday season and all that stuff. And how can you trust yourself as you go through those times as well. So anyway, so good to see you all. We'll see you next week. Bye everybody.

And we're back. You thought you were getting rid of us, but Heather and I, as often we finish these podcast episodes, we hang up, we box for each other, and something crazy just happened and I, we finished this. She went to use the facility so she didn't soil in her pants, as we talked about before. I took the dog out so she didn't soil on my carpet.

And then I walked into my pantry and I was reminded that earlier this week, I said to myself, oh, I'm gonna make some chocolate muffins. We have this detox, anesa.com amazing, like sugar-free website. These muffins taste like legit amazing muffins and there's no sugar, no flour. Really, really good. Anyway. And so I then vox her Heather and I'm like,

all right. So I think in addition to this, we need to change the way that we are saying we're gonna do things because I said, Ooh, I'm gonna make these muffins tonight. And I didn't. And when I thought about that, I then felt shame, because as with most of us, there's a lot of things that I say I'm gonna do that I don't.

And I then choose other things that I kind of feel are more important. But it really wasn't like, I still really want to make the muffins. And there is like an important reason. Like I just grabbed a piece of chocolate where I would've grabbed a muffin that would've been much healthier. So like, it is important for me to make the muffins.

But yeah, I just thought that was really interesting. Yeah, You were, you felt shame because the thought was what I said I was going to do this and I didn't. And I see there's another point where I didn't follow through. It was like, my ego is like, see, you're, you're gonna tell yourself that you trust yourself, but you really don't.

Oh, Yeah. Which by the way, if we expand the thought makes you a fraud. Well, yeah. It's like, well, I was just talking about how important this is and here I am. Here I am, and this can happen so quickly. Excuse me. And at the subconscious level that you don't even realize it's happening. So you walked into the pantry,

there's no muffins. You felt this like, hang, you know this like, ooh of shame. Yeah, because the, the thought was, the surface level thought was, I said I was going to do this and I didn't do it. And then when you extend the thought out, it's like, okay, see, you can't trust yourself. Oh.

And you think you can teach people this? Oh, what kind of loser, fraud, idiot. Or you, I don't think it goes straight to fraud. I think it more than went to, oh man. And Colin was excited to make the, to have the muffins. 'cause he loves them so much more. So it was like, ah,

I chose, oh, here's a thought. I chose my business over my kids again. Oh my gosh. When you think that, when you think that, what do you feel Like, just awful. Like, I'm a terrible parent that, you know, just, just not, not no good emotion Comes from all of this comes from walking into the pantry and seeing that there are no chocolate muffins.

Yes. Okay. And after we're just talking about like, oh, I trust myself. Oh, I said I was gonna do that Tuesday or Wednesday night. Hilarious. How our brains work, isn't it? That all of a sudden this leads to you are a bad parent, you pick your business over your kids, and what kind of mother are you?

And yeah, just spiraled out of control, all of that. If we had not been discussing it, all of that would've happened almost without your knowledge. Yeah, yeah. Oh, and I, yeah. Yeah. Probably like, I would've thought about the muffins again, and I probably would've, would've spiraled to those thoughts, but not at, at a,

at a lower level. But they still would've been there. So the reason we thought it was important to jump back on here and explain this is because a lot of times when I am teaching, introducing a concept or teaching, talking with my one-on-one clients, they have this crazy ability, this skill to use it against themselves. So what happened here was she said she was gonna make muffins.

She didn't make muffins. And then she, her thought was, oh, well, all of the thoughts. But the main thought being, I'm eroding trust with myself. And I, I wanna counter that. May I counter that argument? Because I actually see some flaws in that logic on the surface, if you say you're going to do something and you don't do it,

it might seem really obvious to say, I can't trust myself because there I go again. But I wanna give you another way to look at this. When the situation is nuanced, you have to understand nuances so that you can use this in your favor and not to like utterly destroy yourself with these thoughts. Okay? Right. So when you didn't make the muffins,

you said you were gonna make them. Last night was the, So Wednesday, Wednesday night When you did not make them that evening, why not? Lauren was riding and then she came home and the kids were doing homework together and they were just like happy and doing things. So I just stayed and went back to work. Oh, so you, you picked your kids and your family over the muffins and your work,

you went and did your work, you made a decision. Correct. Is that how you would I Did, I did. You made a decision that was like, no, I'm not gonna make the muffins. Kids are settled. I can hang out with them for a minute and get a few things done. Correct. Yeah. Well, they were hanging out with each other and happy and doing their own homework and happy,

Well, happy kids. Leave it alone, man. Don't touch it. Yeah. So it's like, Oh, I'm just gonna tiptoe back here into my computer. Right. Okay. So, and then you got a few things done. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you gotta stay with me on this one. Yeah. Because by the way,

I always stack the deck in my favor. And I'm always gonna reframe things so that I feel better. This is how I see that situation. I see it as actually building trust for yourself. Because you made a decision in the moment as to what was more important over the muffins that you can tr If you truly trusted yourself at a very deep core level,

then in that situation you can say, no, it's not that I'm breaking my word about baking the muffins, but I am choosing to trust myself in this moment that this task makes more sense. And then it actually did. 'cause I had a deadline I had to finish up. So it So was actually work. So it did. So, so guess what?

You just built trust with yourself. Oh, I have a deadline. I don't need to make the muffins right now. That's definitely on my wishlist. I want to do that. But I am trusting myself, confidence in myself to make this decision in the moment. To not make the muffins, but go take care of my work. And, and then you can use that,

like for you to build trust, not against you. I like that. And I, I think I can also, I'm looking at it, I'm like, I might be more cognizant. 'cause the words we tell ourself really matter. Yes. And I might be cognizant, more cognizant of the words I choose to use for myself. So for instance,

when I get inspired at 11 o'clock on a Tuesday to make some chocolate muffins, when I actually have like calls and things and can't do it. Right. Then I might say to myself, Hmm, I'm still inspired to make muffins. Maybe I'll make some Wednesday night. Yes, maybe. And Then it's not like this guilt of, oh, I said I was going to do this Wednesday night.

It was like, no. I said, if I was still inspired, like maybe I'll make them Wednesday night. I Love that if I, It's not important, Right? Yeah. Obviously it's just like something fun. Yeah. But this is important because what I do not want to see happen is that people listening to this say they're going to do something,

they don't do it. And they think they're breaking trust. That's not necessarily true. It's more nuanced. It's not black and white. I had a similar incident that I happen that happened last week. I had a day planned where I was going to bake cookies. And these need to be baked for various reasons for other people. Like it's not, I'm just not sitting here hoarding cookies.

Okay. So I have Christmas season. You like to gift him cookies? I do. I do. And I give them out. Okay. So I had planned to do this on a Saturday all day. I was super excited about it. I love to do it. My husband fell ill with the flu and was unap unable to help my dad and my son split firewood,

chop down trees, all the things we do. 'cause we have just, Just stop for a minute. You sound like we've just gone back in time. My husband fell ill. We had to chop the firewood. It's true. I know. It's life on the homestead. It just, I felt like I was watching like a hallmark, like, you know,

I love it. 19 Hundreds movie there for a second. Yeah. And the chickens were out and Yeah. I actually love my life for that reason. We got the Measles. Yeah, right. We, we have to gather. We need to someone, But it wasn't invented yet. We have to gather a food. Okay. Sorry. Anyway,

back to your story. I'll be quiet. Yeah. So Craig Was unable to help with the felling of the trees and the splitting of the wood. And I actually love that job. I love working with my hands and physical labor. I think it's just good for your body and your soul. So we're down a man and I, and he was One of the big strong men.

Yeah. That's kind of unfortunate. Yeah. So I decide that I'm gonna not bake the cookies, but help my dad and my son and his friend work the property. Like that's just what you know. So I put on my outdoor work clothes. You and I, some people wouldn't even believe this, how I, I wear muck boots, muck boots and camouflage.

And you wouldn't even recognize me. I'm like a totally different person out in the wilderness. So we're moving trees and doing all this. And it felt great. And I thought to myself, I feel amazing. I've never felt more alive. I did not feel badly that I broke my word with myself that I was not baking cookies because I trust myself in the moment to make the appropriate decision based on the circumstances around me.

So there was no guilt. There was no shame. Yeah. It was like, oh, I got, I've gotta reschedule the cookie baking. Okay. Bummer. You know, but I'll figure that out. And it was all good. So I didn't use it against myself. I was helping, my dad is 79 years old. I mean, he's almost 80 and he's out there moving these trees and doing like,

he needs some help. You know? Good enough. So the cookies took a lesser priority. It wasn't breaking word. It's, I decided I have trust in myself to shift priorities, which is exactly what you did on Wednesday night. Yep. But ins, but instead you thought, well, oh my gosh, I should made these. Right. Yeah.

It Sounds get change Spiral, right? Yeah. You have a choice when you break trust with yourself what it means. And it can be and listen. And sometimes you need to hold your feet to the fire and say, yeah, I said I was going to start my email list and I didn't. Okay. I need to really follow through. Like this requires some really honest self-awareness,

self-assessment. Maybe like you don't, there's no reason to beat yourself up over the cupcakes or me for the cookies when we made decisions. And we trust ourselves to execute. And by the way, the cookies will get baked and so will the muffins and they'll get consumed and everybody will win. So it's like not even the end of the world. So I just want people to like be aware of the need for discernment when this happens.

Yes. Oh my gosh. So good. All right. Thank you. Yeah, My pleasure. That's it. We just wanted to jump back on as Heather worked through that with me. 'cause I, it's just like Voxer and I was having existential strikes crisis. I'm like, oh my god. See, I can't trust myself. I didn't make the muffins.

What Kind of loser am I? Yeah. So helpful. Awesome. All right. Hope you guys have found that helpful. We will see you next week. Merry Christmas, happy holidays. All the things. Thanks for listening to the Hair of the Dog podcast. This was episode number 221. If you wanna check out the show notes for access to any of the resources that we mentioned,

simply go to www.hairofthedogacademy.com/ 2 2 1. Thanks for listening to, to this episode of Hair of the Dog Podcast. If you enjoyed this show, please take a minute to leave a review. And while you're there, don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss our upcoming episodes. One last thing, if you are ready to dive into more resources, head over to our website@www.hair

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