Overcoming imposter syndrome with confidence coach Lucy Cox

Today’s guest is Confidence Coach Lucy Cox 

You can find her here –

Insta: @LucyCoxConfidenceCoach

Website: TheAcadeMe.co.uk

A few things we covered in this episode :

1. Research with the University of Exeter on How does confidence and low self-esteem impact individuals within companies or self-employed people and the business itself
2. The difference between the way men and women experience low self-confidence
3. Feminine and masculine energy
4. My business coach Nicky Wilkes of Seriously Stylish Business
5. Imposter Syndrome is part of a normal, healthy brain
6. Fear
7. Sabbateur assessment
8. The importance of talking about imposter syndrome
9. Confidence is just a feeling
10. Vulnerability
11. The triad
12. Faking it till you make it.
13. The model :
    -What are the facts of the circumstances you are in.
    -what thoughts are you having about that circumstance?
    – What feelings am I getting because of these thoughts?
    – what actions (or inactions) am I taking because I’m feeling that way?
    – What results am I getting?
14. Ta-da list
15. EmmaMT Sabateur report results
16. Your brain’s job is to keep us Safe and happy
17. 3:1 negative bias
18. Imposter syndrome about moving on in your styling career (40 mins in )
19. End of life perspective
20. The 16 Questions personality quiz I did with Tim my husband
21. Faking it till you make it.
22. Karen Haller podcast on colour

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT.

Hello, it’s me, Emma, before you listen to this episode, there’s a few things I need to tell you. One funny one, well, for me, I’d say life changing and that sounds quite, um, a dramatic thing to say, but the more you learn about yourself, The better. You can deal with different situations, and this was a really life-changing episode for me.

I’ve had a couple, there’s two that I can think of that have been the biggest change, changes and transformations in my life. One was Karin Hua. When we talked about her book, the Little Book of Color. She kind of woke me up to all the things that I was doing, why my house was gray. I’ve been on a mission ever since that episode to completely remove the gray from my house because.

Well, you can go and listen to that one if you want to understand why. In fact, maybe I don’t share it in that episode. It might have been a like a, a moment afterwards, but that’s the story for another day. In fact, maybe I should get her on again. Anyway, that was one, and the second is today’s with Lucy Cox.

Now Lucy is a confidence coach, and I had seen her on Instagram, and it was weird because I was thinking about how I was gonna be able to answer the questions that I get from members of inside stylists. When they are struggling with certain aspects of the job and predominantly it’s not feeling you’re good enough, um, or have enough experience to work with a, a really big brand or to do a really big job.

Maybe it’s a big event or a big workshop. Um, it might just be a really big shoot. Maybe it’s a shoot abroad. People quite often come to me and ask questions, and every time, I think this is a confidence thing because I know these people and I know that they’re ready, but it’s no good for me to know they’re ready.

They have to have the confidence and not have that self-doubt to move forward. And that was what I was thinking about when Lucy just kept popping up on Instagram and every time I would think about one specific thing, she would pop up and answer the question, and I was. Fascinated. So I kept watching her and I thought, you know what?

I’m just gonna ask if she would come on. And she very graciously did and shared so much information. But before we, we recorded the podcast, she asked if I would answer, um, some questions on a questionnaire about saboteur. It’s called the saboteur questionnaire, which we talk about in this episode, and it’s the answers from that.

Questionnaire that have really opened up my eyes. I talk about being, um, there’s all these kind of, um, how do I word it? There are things that you, or traits. I think it would be, there are traits that you have and you are given a mark out of 10 and I need to be active all the time. And I always just thought, oh, this is an a, an a, D, h, D thing.

But actually it’s not. And learning that through this conversation has completely changed how I look at things and how I react to things and decisions that I make. And saying no to things a little bit more often. Maybe trying to have a little bit more downtime. Um, anyway, I just wanted to share that because.

It was just, I, I can’t tell you how grateful I am to Lucy for taking the time to talk to us and share about, um, all those sorts of things. All those kind of, how you can’t just say, here’s how to overcome, um, self-doubt and feeling not confident. It’s not one thing we’ll solve it for everybody. So I wanted to, um, Thank Lucy for coming on and sharing how it works, how confidence building works.

I also want to tell her, I’m hoping she will listen to this, but my goodness, I had the worst nightmare you could have during a workshop where all the members of Inside Start, not all, but any of the members of Inside Stars who wanted to watch live watched. So I do workshops on inside stylists. I have myself and the guest on Zoom.

We talk to each other, and then I live stream it to the private Facebook group just for Facebook, um, just for inside stylist members. Um, I completely lost all connection for about five minutes. Now while this was going on, you can imagine Lucy’s being interviewed by me. All of the people are sitting watching.

Neither of us can see who’s there because we’re not watching Facebook. Um, at the end of the conversation, I’ll say, let’s open it up for q and a, and then people can type in the question and I then read them out, and then the guest will answer them well, That didn’t happen. I lost all connectivity and left Lucy on her own for about five minutes.

She didn’t drop a beat. She carried on answering the question. I had told her some of the things I wanted to cover, and she just carried on answering the questions. It was as if I was still there. Phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal response, and as I said to her at the end, if there’s anyone who’s gonna be left in the lurch by me.

And have to carry on. I’m glad it was her because she just, she just carried on and gave so many like really amazing, um, nuggets of information. I just can’t tell you how fabulous it was. So once I did get back, which took five minutes, um, I had to sign in, um, to the zoom call via my phone. So the sound quality changes and it’s a little bit crackly, but bear with because it is definitely worth keeping listening.

Okay. I’m gonna tell you who she is now. Let me give you the intro. So Lucy has been known by many titles over her career marketing manager, business development manager, consultant, women’s enterprise manager, and coach to name, but a few. But now she’s best known as Director of Transformation at the academy.

As a confidence coach Lucy runs workshops and programs that support individuals on a one-to-one basis in small groups. Her personal and professional experience, training and passion for vulnerability and nurture and her talent for inspiring and empowering others to make real lasting change is the reason I invited her to join us today.

I’m very excited to be talking with Lucy Cox. So do you wanna explain what a confidence coach is and what it is you do, how you work? Yeah, absolutely. So in, in your introduction, you, you gave a whole host of other things that I’ve done in, in my previous life, and to some degree they’ve all led to this moment.

So I’ve, I’ve worked as a coach when it comes to business startup for the last 13 years. And what became, I, I, I, I love working with women in business. I mean, that’s my absolute passion. And what became increasingly prevalent towards the end of my, my coaching career was that, It didn’t really matter, but people were coming to me going, what actions do I need to take to get better results?

That’s all they wanna know. How do I get better at marketing so I can sell more? How do I do this so I can do that? And ultimately, it didn’t matter what advice you gave, it doesn’t matter what the actions are, it was what we were. Putting behind those actions. It was, you know, if I say you need to do a social media post, you’ll get two, three women doing it very, very differently because of their belief systems, because of how they felt about themselves, because of their energy, their health.

There’s so many other things that play a part in, in that. And I was becoming far more effective as a coach by dealing with those things than the very specific actions of running a business. Mm-hmm. And that soon became my absolute passion. And I’ve struggled with confidence my entire life. This is sort of, you know, being an accumulation of my own journey, my learning and the work that I’ve been doing with clients over the years.

Um, and we’ve got to this point now where my specialism is very much working with we people in business who confidence is the thing that is underpinning a lot of the issues that they’re having with running their business. And I know you and I have talked at length about actually, you know, How, how do you boost confidence and how do we do this?

And we’re gonna be talking about that a little bit later on. But the, the way that I work with people now is we do something called thought hygiene. We look at what is it that we are thinking that’s generating these feelings that we have, and we look at utilizing that as a way of boosting our confidence.

Um, and. I’m gonna talk at length, if you will. Let me later on about, you know, the, the power of our thoughts and all this sort of thing. But basically, this is what I do. I work with individuals now to really help ’em to understand how their own mindset is, is underpinning their confidence and how that is impacting on their business and their life.

It’s not just business, right? We’re human beings encompassing this whole holistic experience of life. Do people come to you saying, I need help with my business. Or do they say I do, they do. They know already that they need to boost their confidence? Are they aware? Their confidence is the issue. So this is, this is really interesting, especially on today, international Women’s Day.

I find very different approaches on dif from different genders. Women tend to be very open and coming to me and saying, I’m struggling with my confidence. I appreciate is my confidence that’s holding me back. They talk about things like imposter syndrome and self-esteem and, and a very. Uh, quick to open up about past experiences.

It might have been workplace bullying, it might have been childhood experiences, and everything is on the table. And we talk about confidence when I’m working with, with men. Generally speaking, it comes in not with the vulnerable stuff first, but more with the action orientated stuff. Uh, this is what I wanna do, this is how I wanna get there.

I wanna know how to get there. And, and it takes a little bit of while to build that trust. And to build that relationship where they can go, oh, actually, yeah, I am having these sorts of thoughts, which is undermining my confidence. Mm-hmm. That’s very interesting. Hmm. Isn’t it off the back of what you were just saying, you were talking to me before we started, um, this call about your recent research and the gender roles and confidence within that.

Do you wanna, you allowed to share a little bit of that or is it, I can share a little bit. I can share a little bit. Yeah. So we’ve, we’ve been working in partnership with the University of Exter to conduct a piece of research which looks at how does confidence and low self esteem. Team impact individuals within companies or self-employed people, and then consequently the business itself.

So the potential of that business. And we went out to find that. But what we actually found was quite significant differences in how self-confidence or low self-confidence manifests itself in men and women. Statistically, it shows that about 98% of women say that they experience low self-esteem, whereas 85% of men, now I’m not.

Completely sure whether that is a true reflection of the experience or whether women are far more, as I said before, able to articulate that that’s what it is. But when I talk about how it manifests, you can probably see why sometimes men might struggle to identify that’s what it is. So, Women in the workplace.

Generally speaking, when we are feeling, uh, low self-confident, when we’ve got those feelings of imposter syndrome, we tend to be much more concerned with people pleasing. We’re quite perfectionists, so we very, we hunker down on the detail. We’re quite avoidant, we’re very hypervigilant, and we become very aware of what’s going on.

And on the whole we shrink. So we make ourselves smaller until we feel, until we feel confident enough, which is a fallacy by the way. But until we feel confident enough to then go out and do what we wanna do, men tend to show the opposite. So there’s overcompensated behavior. So those behaviors might be controlling behaviors.

It might be confrontational behaviors. Um, and this sort of overconfidence, almost a demonstration of overcom, uh, overconfidence to compensate. So men in that situation get bigger. And it’s so interesting and you can see how, you know, the, the more women are struggling with self-confidence and also women reported having far more, um, Symptoms of low self-confidence than men.

So, you know, they, they, they were listing off all these different things that they experienced emotionally, whereas men only had like three or four that, that they were experiencing. But when you tie all this stuff together, you can really see how that gender pay gap starts to play out. From that little catalyst of confidence in the workplace, you know, but there’s a whole host of other stuff.

When they feel low in self-confidence, they’re shrinking. You can kind of see then why the businesses are gonna be taking some sort of a hit. That’s so interesting. Um, we have some, some guys in, um, that are members, but it is predominantly women. And, um, I’m trying to think if I’ve. Seen that within my industry and I haven’t, but the, if I worked in a magazine still, there’s always women, well, not always, but majority of the magazines I’ve worked on and have interactions I’ve had, have all been women, which is great.

Um, so there’s, the men at the top haven’t felt that, but I’m not saying it doesn’t happen and our. Most of the, and it’s worth. Yeah. And it’s worth caveating. Sorry, I didn’t mean to talk over you then. It, it’s worth caveating this by saying a, this is broad brush, you know, this is, this is a blunt instrument research.

There’s more research that needs to be done. It’s the first piece of research that looks in detail at the behaviors of low self confidence in the workplace. Mm-hmm. But the other thing is, is you know, we are using the terminology men and women in the workplace. It might be more useful to use feminine and masculine energy.

Yes. So actually, you know that, that in more. In organizations where the energy is more masculine, these are the overcompensation behaviors we tend to see in an, in an environment where it’s more feminine, we tend to see these shrinking behaviors. So I think, you know, there’s, there’s still some feeling out as to, you know, how we communicate these statistics.

But from a blunt perspective, this is what we’re beginning to see. Yeah. And that I know that is true, literally true to the industry. I had a business coach until not long ago, and she would often talk about masculine energy and, and she’s like, you need to bring up your feminine energy. And I’m like, no, we’ve got time for that.

Let’s keep going with the masculine. This is fine. There needs to be a ba, men and women, but almost need a balance to have that. Absolutely. So, and mine wasn’t, mine was all skew with, which is fine. Um, so we. I sent out an email asking people to send in questions. I have promised that everything will be completely anonymous because I think people don’t want to share that they’re not feeling confident.

Even though I just wanna put it out there to anyone listening, everyone doesn’t feel confident. At some point. I have emailed from people who’ve been doing this for styling or or whatever industry or whatever part of the interiors industry they’re in. They don’t feel confident whether they’re starting or they’ve been doing it for absolute ages.

So don’t feel like you are the only one. You are certainly not. I get asked a lot of questions by both experienced stylists and new to the industry. Um, so is assistance just kind of going from assistant to styling and a lot of the time they’re basically suffering from imposter syndrome. Can you talk a little bit about imposter?

All your eyes lit up then? Syndrome. How can you, um, confront it? I mean, I think as everybody who comes to me with a question of fear is imposter syndrome. Yeah. And the first thing to say is, yeah, go. My God. Um, the first thing to say is that imposter syndrome is a really under-researched area, first and foremost.

So it, it was, you know, as late as the 1970s where they started really exploring this as a thing, and it was thought that it was only women that. Experienced it and only women of a certain level and pay graves that experienced it. And we’re now beginning to realize, I mean, even as long as I’ve been doing this, the statistics have gone from, ooh, 60 to 70% of people experienced this to now 85.

So we’re beginning to see that this is actually just part of a normal, healthy brain, which renders the question. Why, you know, we, we evolve with all sorts of random things, eyebrows being one of them, but they all, they’ve served a purpose in evolution, right? So why have we evolved with this ability for our brain to say such cruel things to us?

And the, the, the very short answer is we don’t know, but we can have a best guess as to what our brains are trying to do. So the first thing you need to know about your brain is your brain is there to keep you safe, not happy. I’m really sorry to anybody who’s on a quest for finding, for finding perpetual happiness.

Okay. It will be a very long quest because our brains just aren’t wired that way, and the reason is because it’s far more. That as a species, we understand what the poisonous snake looks like compared to the pretty butterfly. So we have on average, about a three to one negativity bias. So for every three negative thoughts, we will think of something positive.

And this is what has kept us safe. And we don’t wanna get rid of this, but we do need to understand why it’s there. Okay? Cause it’s really important that we do stay safe. We don’t wanna become like lemmings, right? Mm-hmm. So there there’s three ideas that are kind of, uh, batting around at the moment as to why we have evolved with this imposter syndrome.

The first of all is around the fact that we are a tribal species and we’ve survived in numbers. We’ve survived as a tribal species. And if you can imagine, if none of us had the ability to doubt ourselves to second guess what other people might be thinking, we’re not in the group. We are just.

Individuals in isolation in that case. Okay? So it’s really important that we are able to keep peace within that group. So our brains, one theory is, is our brains are there to kind of go, oh, you know, I, I don’t wanna rise above everybody else. I don’t want other people to, to suffer at my expense. This isn’t all about me, this is about other people.

And we’ve evolved this thought process to be very hyper aware of what everybody else’s opinion of us might be. The second one is around just basic safety. You know, we are able to look at a situation and say, this is not safe. It’s really primal. And whereas that was great when we were running away from Tigers, we still have the same wiring.

We, you know, our culture, our society has evolved far quicker than our brains have, but our brains are having the same hormonal and emotional reactions than what they would’ve done when we were in those sort of early stage K. So, We need to be able to spot danger and go, this is not safe or shut down mechanisms in place.

I’m gonna slow down. I’m gonna think more. I’m gonna become more introverted. I’m gonna not take that action without overthinking it. And the third one is around being able to preempt and prepare for danger, which is slightly different. So the first thing is being able to go, Ooh, this doesn’t feel right.

This feels dangerous. And the the third one is being able to go, what can I do to keep myself safe? So then it’s a case of, oh, I’m gonna build a weapon, or I’m gonna put a front on this cave, or I’m gonna do that. So without the ability to see the worst case scenario, we wouldn’t have been able to do. All of those things, which seems logical, right?

Seems logical, but you know, this is, this is why our brains are there. But we now find ourselves in a situation where our brains in this three to one ratio are constantly looking for danger. They’re constantly looking for situations where, I don’t, and the dangers are very different now, aren’t they? The dangers are, I don’t wanna be foolish.

I don’t want people to judge me because we’re talking about social safety rather than physical safety. And we, we will feel these things, social safety, emotional safety, financial safety, physical safety. We will get these thoughts coming up in our brain. So I dunno if that I, I warned Emma before we started, I’m prone to going off on a tangent cause I’m so passionate about this stuff.

So I dunno if that’s answered the question. That is what imposter syndrome is. So yes, we’re not running away from Sabertooth Tigers now, how can we kind of make our brains realize that? And cuz really I feel like imposter syndrome is, I’m not good enough. But actually you probably are. You just have to push yourself.

How do you get over that, that kind of old fear? Mm and short answer is there is no, there’s no quick fix, so there’s nothing I can say in the next, you know how many minutes we’ve got left? That’s going to absolutely cure you of imposter syndrome for the rest of your life. One thing I will say is we will each have our own dialogue, and I sent you an assessment link.

Which you’ve done, which was really interesting. But, um, for, for those who who don’t know though, I, I sent Emma a saboteur assessment, and what this does is it just gives you a little bit of an insight into what your strengths are and how you might be self-sabotaging yourself. Now, your top saboteurs that you’ve got in that profile will be one of the indicators of the types of things that your brain is gonna be saying to you.

So that brain might be, They, they’re not gonna accept you unless you’ve achieved this particular thing, unless you’ve got a qualification at this level. You are never gonna be as good as your peers because of that hyper achiever. But other people who might have a pleaser as a top might be going, oh my God, they don’t like me because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Whatever story we’re telling about, um, I’ve said something that’s really pissed them off. And, and that’s what the anxiety is. Mm-hmm. So, so the way that we’re talking to ourselves is gonna be very different, but that imposter experience is very much like, I don’t belong here. I’m not good enough to be here in sight.

I’ve done something wrong. Um, and when it comes to what can we do about that? You know, the first thing is, is being able to tap into our thoughts. Like, let’s listen to what we are saying. Our brains are incredible pieces of machinery, but like a toddler with a Sharpie, we need to give them careful management.

Right. Okay. Let’s. So much potential, but you don’t wanna leave them run wild because of this three to one ratio. So we need to be able to step back and go, what am I thinking that’s making me feel this way? And by checking in with that brand of thoughts and recognizing those patterns in situation and language and all the other things can really, really help us.

First of all to be able, it’s talk about self-awareness, isn’t it? To really understand the nonsense that we’re telling ourselves. Mm-hmm. The other thing, and we, we touched on this, Emma, before we went live, is the fact that. It came about by the conversation going, people don’t want their names associated with the questions that they’re asking because nobody really wants to admit that they’re struggling with their confidence.

And I think that’s one problem that we’ve got in our society is when you think that, you know, Statistics show 85% of people struggle with this stuff. How many of them are actually talking about it? And what that means is, is that those of us who are kind of going, you know, from the inside out going, God, every everybody else is so confident, why am I not confident?

It just fuels this sense of, I don’t belong. I’m not right. There’s something wrong with me. I need to work harder. I need to work later to be able to prove myself. And it’s nonsense because everybody has. This, but we’re just not talking about it. So another thing that we can absolutely do for our fellow human beings is talk about it, is be open about how we’re feeling about this stuff.

Um, do you want some more tips in terms of things you can do? Yeah, absolutely. And you’re happy to share. And now I’m gonna share. I’m more than happy to share. More than happy to share. So, One thing that I want everybody to remember, okay? Confidence is just a feeling. Confidence is just a feeling. It’s no different to anxiety or excitement or, um, courage, you know, whatever it is.

Confidence is just a feeling. You cannot have a feeling without a thought behind it. So your imposter syndrome is your thoughts. That’s your thinking. That’s going, I don’t belong, I’m not safe. And what that’s generating is a. Feeling of low self-confidence or low confidence in a situation. Okay? Mm-hmm. So one of the things that we can do is check in when we get that big feelings check in with what we are thinking.

So I do an exercise with my clients called the Thought Journal, where we’re logging down all of the thoughts that we have in these big emotional moments so that we can go back when we’re in a different state, to be able to look at what those thoughts are. And again, all about self-awareness, but there are several things that can affect the thought process that’s going on in our brain.

Okay, so the first of all is the focus. What is it we are focusing on in that moment that is generating that feeling? If you are, use an example of being pushed out on stage, right? More people are frightened of public speaking, but dying statistically. That’s a really good example, right? And imagine you’re in the wings of a theater and someone shoves you out on stage and there’s a thousand people in front of you.

All right. Now, for some people, their thoughts will go, oh my God, I’ve been waiting for this all year. I’m so excited. What a great opportunity everyone’s going. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t be thinking that I would, and you know, what I’ve gotta say is gonna impact these people? This is gonna look great on my cv.

You know, whatever these thoughts are. Those thoughts are gonna generate the feelings that you’ve got. You’re gonna be feeling more confident, but those feelings are going to then translate into the actions that you take. So what are those actions you’re gonna take? Well, your head’s gonna be up, your shoulders are gonna be back.

You’re gonna be breathing much better. You’re gonna be making eye contact. You’re not gonna be frightened of silence. You’re gonna be really in the room, not in your own head. So the result is you’re gonna have a fantastic speech, a fantastic speech, and people are gonna respond really well to you. Same situation.

If you are shoved out on that stage and those thoughts are, oh my God, my mind’s gone blank. Oh my God, my armpits are sweating. Everyone can see that. I’m terrified, my hands are shaking. And your focus is on the, oh my God. What’s that gonna do for your feelings? For Your feelings are gonna be unconfidence.

They’re gonna be fearful, anxious, all those things. What’s that gonna do for your actions? I’m gonna be shaking. I’m gonna be shut down. I’m gonna not be taking my eyes off my notes. What are the results? You’re gonna have a talk, which isn’t quite as impactful as you would have. So it all stems down from, from our thought.

So what are we focusing on? In that moment that is creating that feeling of low self-confidence or self-esteem, number one. The other thing is, is to watch our language. What is the language that we’re using in our heads, first of all, and then how we’re speaking out loud. That is really, and it kind of plays on the focus, but that our language is so important.

If we are saying to ourselves, I can’t do this. There’s a wall. I can’t get past this. And it’s totally disempowering. If we change that language to how can I do this? We’re still not, we are still not going. I’m amazing. I can take on the world, but we’re asking our brains questions and love questions. They love problem solving.

How can I do this? Suddenly the door opens and it’s empowering. So watching that language that we’re using, the language that we’re. Speaking is hugely impactful because we’ve gotta think it, we’ve gotta do all the mechanics to get it out of here. You know, my volume, my breathing, all the kind of jaw moving everything else, and then we hear it again.

So be very careful about the language you’re speaking out loud, because it’s gonna keep reinforcing that. Negativity. The other thing, I’m giving you a whistle stop tour of like all, all my top 10 and I dunno how many of your, uh, community members have got young children, but if any of them have tried to reason with a toddler having a tantrum, You can’t do it because they’re dysregulated.

They are not in a space where they can hear rational thought. Now, we are no different when we are dysregulated. If we are in that fight or flight state, we need to regulate ourselves. First and foremost before we give ourselves the talk, and we cannot regulate ourselves by beating ourselves over the head with a stick going, you should be better.

Nobody likes you. That’s not where we need to be. What we need to be is back in our body. So anything that is gonna bring you back in your body, going for that walk, taking those deep breaths, doing a little bit of tactile, you know, focusing on how your, your hands feel, or how your clothes feel on your body, tuning into sound.

Anything to do with your senses is brilliant for grounding you. Bringing you out of that fight or flight, and then you can make those decisions about what am I thinking and, and be able to move yourself forward. Did you know the fight or flight response lasts 90 seconds. That’s it. If you are still stressed after 90 seconds, it’s what we call a thought induced stress response.

So you are doing this, you know, you are, you are, you are perpetuating this. Yeah. I, I’ve got so much more, but I know we’re a. We’re, we’re short on time. So, you know, that’s, that’s really interesting. So, um, I, I mentioned just before we started recording that I had a one-to-one call with someone yesterday and they, um, were gonna be in front of an audience and they were quite nervous about it, and they wanted to talk to me because I had done it before they had been to one of my events.

And they were saying, um, oh, you are so confident and you’re so good at it. And I was like, well, I wasn’t to begin with, I had to practice. And I would share that when I started inside stylists, I used to do, um, Facebook Lives. That’s how long ago it was. Facebook lives around press shows and I would be, my hand would be shaking, my voice would be shaking, and I was really nervous.

And I would walk around a press show, climb stairs, but feel like I had to carry on talking. So I’m completely outta breath. Here’s Theum. And then it took a. People don’t mind. If you wait to climb the stairs and breathe, then talk to them and you can just show them. You don’t have to fill in all the spaces.

And this is literally what you just said, is it’s okay to have silence. It’s okay to have quietness. And the other thing I wanted to share was that, um, we talked about this as well. I’ve had this conversation a lot recently. Um, obviously talking to you, I know you’re not gonna be nervous coming on here cuz it’s just you and me talking.

Um, but when I’ve done IG t v lives or I’ve done workshops with people who aren’t used to being on camera, um, and talking in front of an audience, and they would either say they were terrified or tell me afterwards that they were terrified. But what people watching. Have no clue that that’s the case. But then they will compare themselves.

So if someone would compare themselves to me and say, oh, you’re so good. But at the time I wasn’t. I was petrified, but you think I’m good? So you’re comparing yourself to my, what you think is my best. But really I was awful inside. But you, you’re just, it’s that whole, you are comparing. Are worst to people’s best and you just dunno what’s going on.

So, yeah, very interesting. Very, it’s interesting, but then it’s not socially acceptable in the culture we are at the moment to fall apart and be vulnerable. Right? Yeah. We’ve still got this hangover from a very masculine era. Of this suited, booted veneered. We have to behave in a certain way. We’re in business and some of the best talks I’ve ever seen is where people have got up on stage.

I mean, I, I saw one woman once she got up on stage and she was all turned up. She had these big high heel shoes on and she walked up to the lectin. And she took a deep breath and she goes, oh, who am I kidding? This isn’t me. And she kicked off her shoes and she goes, I’m bloody terrified. Wow. But she said, I, I know you’re on my side, so let’s just get this over with.

And the whole audience just warmed up because everybody can relate. Yeah. With all human beings behind this veneer, everybody is human beings, but because it’s not socially acceptable.

To show those more feminine elements to show that emotional side of this. We don’t. And because we don’t see it, we cannot believe anybody else experiences self-doubt the way we do. So therefore it must be real. And this is the other thing, you know, when we experience our feeling, these thoughts are generating these feelings, that feeling is so real.

It’s visceral, you know? And I think when your heart is involved and you are just as involved and, and you’re shaking and everything else, it’s like, how can somebody go? Well, that’s. Not real. That’s just your imagination. That’s just your thoughts. It’s like, no, this is real. And I wouldn’t be reacting to something like this unless there was an absolute danger.

But there is no danger. Yeah, but it’s really hard to separate the two. Yeah, I, um, I’ve got, um, a vision board book and in it it says, show up every day. And when, on those days where I really don’t wanna show up and I’m not feeling great, I do the, the superhero pose. You know when you stand with your hands?

Yeah. Yeah. I got it from Grey’s Anatomy. I stand like this. Imagine flapping in the, okay, just do it. Just don’t think about, just do it. It’s like you’re saying, it’s changing the thought pattern in my head of I’m not in the mood to come on, you are Superman or whatever. Yeah. So, so there, there’s a, there’s a really great model called the triads where they, they look at three different things that change your state.

One is focus, one is language. Uh, you’ve frozen up. I’m gonna keep talking. Just in case they can still hear me. Uh, and the third one is your physiology. It’s your body language. Because actually what happens is, is that when we mimic the body language of being confidence, actually our hormones and our, our chemicals and our body adjust to mimic.

The postures that we are holding. So that power pose, it can make us up to 25% more confident. That’s about 25% more testosterone is going through our body in that moment. So it’s a really, really powerful thing to look at actually. How are we holding ourselves? What is that body language? Um, I am now the host.

Apparently Emma has gone, so I’m just gonna keep talking. And I also know some of the questions that you’ve asked. So one of the things that came through is what? Is there any benefit in faking it till you make it? And it’s a really great question, and I get asked this all the time, and to some degree this, this power pose, this, you know, how do I change my physiology is kind of a way of faking it till you make it.

But I want you to be really careful about the idea of faking it because. Faking, it doesn’t mean that you wanna hide yourself completely from the experience. It’s absolutely normal that you need to feel these things, and it’s absolutely normal that you’re gonna want to hide away, but it’s also really beneficial for you to develop some habits.

And some tools and some systems to just regulate yourself. Feel those emotions, feel how scared you are, and harness those things and be really open and honest with whoever it is that you’re with about how you are feeling. Um, now Emma, I’m assuming is going to be coming back in a minute, but I’m just gonna keep talking because I know this is, this is a topic that, you know, you guys want some really, really practical, uh, tools to be able to take away.

So let me carry on with those tools. Um, one of the things that I ask a lot of my clients, To do is something called the model. Now the model is basically five different areas and if you’ve got a pen and paper handy, you write these things down and you can access this model at any point. So the first point is looking at what the facts of the circumstance you are in.

So whatever that circumstance that you are feeling really unconfident in, just write down the facts. And by facts I mean nothing that is to do with an emotional response or a particular thought that, uh, maybe wouldn’t get held up in a, in a court of law. All right, so what are the facts about that situation?

The next thing is what thoughts are you having about that circumstance? Okay, so what thoughts are you having? And you wanna be really, really honest about what those thoughts are. No one else is gonna read this. So you know, if your thoughts are really mean, write them down as mean. The next one you’re gonna do is, what feelings am I getting because of those thoughts?

Okay. What feelings are those thoughts generating? And then the next one is, what actions am I taking because I’m feeling that way and believe, uh, believe me when I say inaction is also a part of that action box as well. So what actions or inactions am I taking because of those feelings? And the final one is what results am I guessing?

Now the great thing about this, uh, activity is it really raises that awareness of what’s going on in that situation. Okay, this is the circumstance I’m getting, these are the results that I’m getting at the end of it, and this is the process that’s getting to me, uh, getting those results. Then what we can do is flip it around and we can think, well actually.

If I was, you know, if you had a little fairy godmother, what result do you want? In an ideal world, if you could have anything, what result do you want? Okay, Emma’s coming back and then we look at what actions do I just need to take? To be able to get those results. Hi Emma. I’m just carrying on talking.

What actions do we need to take to get those results? And then we ask ourselves what feelings do I need to feel to take those actions? And then what thoughts do I need to think to be able to feel those feelings? And what we’re doing is we’re reverse engineering this whole mindset. To be able to create a thought process that is gonna service for the results that we want.

So hopefully that’s useful. Hi Emma. Welcome

and. It’s supposed cable and under the floor, but it always face it. So I’m on my phone now, so apologies. Oh bless. Coming. Joining the Lucy Cox Show. Yeah. I’m gonna rewind. Watch that in a minute.

Cut on. I cut you. Um, it was really juicy. And then I wanted to jump in and say, you were talking about, um, I can’t remember how you worded it, but I was gonna say, oh, your thought pattern and how you need to change your thought pattern. And I was gonna say, can you fake it till you make it? Can you just, So it’s, it’s interesting you say that cuz I knew that question was coming up, so I kind of, I kind of said that, but No, no, no, no, no.

But, but I, I think that there’s actually more to say. So, so in, in summary, it’s like faking it till you make it actually isn’t a great idea, but it’s not a great idea in as much as don’t fake it to the point where you are. Pretending you don’t feel this way, is that the right way to say it? Um, you, you wanna acknowledge, you wanna acknowledge, it’s like, yeah, I do feel nervous and I do feel anxious and I do feel a bit low confidence and I know where that’s coming from, but I’m gonna reframe it.

That’s slightly different to going la, la, la, la, la. I feel absolutely fine because actually what we are doing is, is we are missing an opportunity to develop that mental fitness and. There’s a great saying that says you can’t teach a dog to stop barking until it’s barking. And we almost wanna embrace these opportunities when our brains are going crazy saying, you know, you are not good.

Because that’s our opportunity to parent ourselves through it. And the more we can actually develop that mental fitness to use that self-awareness, the li, the more likely it’s that DA’s gonna get turned down in the future anyway. But a will caveat that says confidence never. Comes first. Ever, ever, ever.

So I get clients that go, I’ll be confident when I’ll be confident when I get that qualification, when I get that promotion, when my business has got so many thousand followers, I’ll be confident then you won’t. And the reason you won’t is because it’s not the circumstance that creates the confidence, is the thoughts.

So what’s happening is, is the circumstance. Is changing your thoughts. Okay, so you are, you’ve, you’ve set a parameter. You’ve got, oh, if I can get a thousand likes on this social media post, then I know that I’m, I’m worthy. Right. That’s a rule that you’ve told yourself that when you hit those thousand users, a thousand likes, Then you go, oh, isn’t this great?

I’ve arrived. I’ve done this. But it’s so short-lived that you then go, oh, but they’ve got 2000 likes on their post. And you know, it’s not from the inside out, it’s from the outside in which A is disempowering, but also it’s fault because that’s not where confidence comes from. All that situation has done is changed the way you have thought in that moment in time.

And we know it’s not the circumstance because you can have a hundred people in the same circumstance, all behaving very differently and thinking very differently. You might have somebody who goes, oh God, I only got a thousand likes on that social media post. That’s awful. They got 10,000. I’m really crap at this.

And someone else going viral, you know? So it’s all to do with the thoughts that we have, but what we need to do is we need to step outside of our comfort zone and survive. So that we can then show our brains it’s safe. Remember, brains are there to keep us safe and happy. Yeah, but we do need to push outside our comfort zone.

Now, when it comes to imposter syndrome, although the studies have been fairly limited, they’ve, they’ve really struggled to find what are the connecting factors? What are the patterns of these people do experience imposter syndrome. These people don’t, and I can tell you it doesn’t matter. Age, gender, income stuff, job title.

Everybody experiences imposter syndrome. The one sort of defining characteristic of all of them is that you could call them high achievers. Now, you might not put yourself in that category of high achiever, but a high achiever is somebody who just wants to progress. They, you know, maybe they do wanna earn more.

Maybe they do wanna grow a business. Maybe they do wanna have a family. Maybe they do want to, you know, get a bigger house. Whatever that growth is, at some point in growth, you’re gonna go outside of your comfort. Zone. And when you go outside of your comfort zone, your brain is going, this is unfamiliar. I dunno what to do about this.

You need to get back in your box and we shrink back down. Okay? So, but we, we need to step outside of our comfort zone and survive it. So what tools do we need? How can we use those tools to be able to regulate ourselves in that moment? To kind of go no. Actually this is okay. There’s no monsters under the bed, darling.

Come on. We can go outside and, and, and we can, we can do whatever this thing needs to do. Which is why if you do do the public speaking, if you do have to do that pitch in a meeting, it’s perfectly fine to feel this stuff. And I would say, you know, don’t fake it to yourself. By all means, create some strategies for yourself in that minute that you can emotionally regulate.

Take a moment before you go in. Check in with those thoughts. Change your focus. Be prepared to be authentic when you go into that meeting, whatever it is. But be very careful with the whole idea of faking it, because addressing that barking dog in the moment is probably one of the most powerful exercises you can do for the long term.

I, um, I used to be really nervous talking in front of people, and I’m, I, I don’t even think about it now. And it, I think it’s that the more you push outside your comfort zone, like I would, I always say, I literally feel like the blood has run cold through my body. I feel like I. I can feel the blood draining out and I’m suddenly cold in situations where I’m scared or I’ve really screwed up.

I really screwed something up last year, and I just felt like that for days I couldn’t get my head out of it. But when it came to doing things, I, what I’m saying is I used to be scared that I pushed the boundaries, but the more I did it, the less scary it became so that the bigger thing were what I was, were what was scaring me.

So you kind of, you, your confidence grows. The more you push, the more you absolutely. Yourself essentially. So you could push me on any stage. I’m not worried at all,

but from what you’re saying, I’m quite good at being quite vulnerable, which is why I’m quite, I’m not too, too worried about sharing some of the stuff that’s gonna, whatever comes up from the, um, the, the. Quiz I did for you, but, um, I will, um, so earlier I was talking about sharing someone who came to me asking about how to do an event and go talk in front of people.

And I said, well, I don’t do anything without a clipboard. I’m known for my clipboard. I have a list of questions here. I don’t wanna rely on myself remembering them. If I’m doing a discussion, I’m doing a panel next week. I’ve got everything written down so I don’t have to worry about forgetting it. It’s here.

I’ll just say I won’t remember it. So here it is. And if you get stuck, you just say, Oh my goodness. I completely, like you were saying, I’ve completely forgotten what I was gonna say. And just, you can be vulnerable because people like the vulnerability because it makes you less perfect and less able to do what they feel they can’t do.

And it’s like, no, I’m the same as everybody else. I still, I still brick it at certain situations. Just what a lot of people, like you say, people are scared to be in front of an audience or. Whoever get up and speak on a stage that isn’t a fear anymore, but it was, it’s just not now. So it’s just, yeah, horses for courses almost.

You, you do, and, and, but also be kind to yourself, you know? I mean, you, you don’t wanna go from naught to 60 if that’s totally outside of your comfort zone, it’s gotta go not to three. Just push yourself out a little bit and what’s really important in the process of going outside your comfort zone is celebrating when you’ve done it, congratulating yourself.

So, All these feelings that you feel like the actual physiological thing that’s happening is this is release of hormones. You know, there’s this release of stress hormones that happens when you are in fight or flight. That blood draining from your body kind of sensation. What’s actually happening is all the blood is actually going into your vital organs to protect them from a tiger attack.

That’s what’s happening, which is why we go pale, which is why our hands and feet go really cold. Our breathing starts going like this, and we get all these physiological things, but we have these hormones that are released. You know, this adrenaline, this CORs are ready to, to, to fight. But similarly, if we celebrate, if we congratulate ourselves, we release the other hormones, we release the happy hormones, the serotonin, the oxytocin, you know, all of these things that make us feel great.

Now our brains learn from hormones. They will learn if something is painful, if something is stressful or something is pleasurable. And most of the behavior that we do, we’re either seeking pleasure or we’re avoiding pain. So if you wanna be doing more stuff that’s, you know, in a direction that scares you, take little steps, but then celebrate, you know, almost artificially flood your body with those great hormones because you are far more likely to feel confident to just push the boundary a little bit more next time.

You’re rewarding your body. Now I, my clients laugh at me cuz I keep a little pot of chocolate buttons on my desk. Whenever I do something that’s outside my comfort zone, I just pop a little chocolate button. I’m like, brilliant. Ok. So I’m giving myself a little dopamine here. Oh my God. I’d have none left within about 10 minutes.

Like I don’t Massive sweet too. So I’m not a, when it kind of crisps, oh my God, you lose me. I would, I’ve been head down in the bowl. I had to take a borrow, like a nature bot out of the office because I thought, I’ll eat it. It’s just there. Yeah. It’s knowing, it’s there isn’t it? It’s knowing it’s there is the worst possible thing, but, but the reason why you fixate on it is because that food is gonna give you a dopamine hit.

That’s exactly why you can’t stop thinking about it. So, you know, why not attach that dopamine hit to an activity that you want to do that you know is gonna move your business forward? It’s gonna move you forward, move that needle forward in your life. So, but people forget this. And what we end up doing, I, I say to my clients is like, have your to-do list, but also create ADA list.

Like as you do things in the day, write that on a list and then at finish by reading this incredible list of things you’ve achieved. And it could be, you know, I didn’t lose my. Shizzle at the kids this morning, or I got the kids to school on time, or I actually managed to finish off that proposal. It doesn’t matter what it’s, how big or small, write it on the list and then you can celebrate at the end of the day.

But we’re so quick to, you know, we may well have achieved a huge amount in a day, but we don’t focus, there’s that word again. We don’t focus on what we’ve achieved. We focus on all the stuff that’s gonna keep us unsafe. Yeah. We focus on all the risks, all the stuff. I haven’t done all this stuff. I might be judged on.

That’s what we need to shift. Let’s get that dopamine hit for the stuff that we’ve done. That’s, that’s very interesting. I never celebrate anything. I literally go, right, that’s done. What’s next? Never celebrate. I might the Dr. Pepper, which I’m not supposed to drink, so that’s kind of a, a cheeky treat, but yeah.

But I’ll have to drink the whole thing, have half and come back just to say Emma as well. So I hope you don’t mind me sharing what your top saboteur was on your assessment, but you, you came at top as hyper achiever. Now, hyper achiever is the beast that can never be satiated. So it doesn’t matter what you achieved, you’ll get that short-term dopamine hit of I’ve done that, but then it’s like, ooh, but now I don’t have any value unless I achieve the next thing.

So the, the danger that, that you’ve got with a hyper achiever is that, you know, If you are just getting that dopamine hit from that next task, that next task, that next task, it’s quite dry and it, you, you’re never really gonna be associated. So it’s almost looking at a more holistic version of you, like, you know, how am I amazing today?

What have I done today? That’s about me, not the tasks that I’m doing that make me amazing. And that might might help you a little bit more. That’s very interesting. I have D h, D, so I need to be busy all the time, so that higher is literally because I don’t like sitting around doing nothing. I like to be busy.

I like to move on to the next thing because whatever I’m working on now, there’s two things lined up that I’m excited about moving on to to the next. Yeah, but I think celebrating thing is, is a really good point. Really good point. There there, there’s, there’s two there. There’s two separations there though, that the hyper achiever is, my self-worth is tied up in achieving the A D H.

D is, I just need to be busy because I’m hyperactive. Yeah. So they’re, they’re two very different things. One is about self-worth, one is about activity and attention. So it’s making sure that you are more on this side than actually my whole self-worth is tied up in this. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So lots of stylists have asked how to get to the next stage of their career.

They may be feeling stuck or want to go to the next level, but dunno how to, as they feel like they aren’t good enough, how can we, how can we feel more confident in this situation? I’ve kind of said, is this imposter syndrome again? So basically, People will assist interior stylists for a number of years, help out on shoots, do all the loading and unloading, making the tea.

But when it comes to being in front of the camera and being the ones who set the, um, shots up and be the lead stylist, they’re quite, they’re quite nervous to make that jump. How can they do that when they don’t feel ready? Even though, and I’m telling you now, people in the, in the membership, I know a lot of you are ready.

So what, what can they do to kind of take that jump? Okay, so the, the first thing I wanna do is go back to the thoughts and go, what are you telling yourself that you can or can’t do? What’s your focus is, your focuses on, on, I’m gonna screw this up, or is your focus on this is great opportunity, so to, let’s, let’s examine those thoughts.

The second thing is, and again, another exercise I do with my clients is about looking at the, the roles that we play now for every role we play, whether that is. Stylist, whether that is, uh, wife or partner, whether that is, you know, whatever these roles are, we have created a subconscious internal job description of what the perfect version of that is.

Okay? Now, that perfect version that you’ve created in your head right now, you probably don’t know what that is. Okay. But we can do, we can do some work to unpick that, but what is that perfect version? So for those people that are going, Ooh, but I’m not ready to be that stylist, what you are doing is you are measuring yourself against this internal job description.

So you’ve got this perfect view of what a stylist is, who they need to be, how they need to behave, how they need to feel, what expertise they need to have, and it’s worth checking in with what is that? What is that job description that you are holding in your brain? Because is that the only way you can be a successful stylist is to meet all this criteria?

Is it actually possible to have all of these criteria ticked off in order for you to then feel confident? Okay, so you are, you are conditioning your confidence again, as long as I have all these things, then I will be confident. Whereas what we really just need to do is get in front of the camera and do it.

And we need to feel all the feelings. We need to have the sweaty armpits. We need to doubt ourselves. We need to wobble with our words. We need to do all of this stuff. And we need to have people feedback to us and say, God, you were really good. You were really great, and it. It doesn’t matter that that doesn’t match our internal experience of that.

We just need to be in the soup. We just need to be doing it. We need to be learning. We need to know, actually, if I stand this way, I’m more comfortable than that way. We need to know, actually, if I don’t eat before I do this, then I feel more confident. Like whatever the, the crazy rules that you have, you’ll define your own way of doing it.

You will not be able to do that until you are doing it. Yeah, there is no amount of waiting in the wings. Do you go, I’ll be confident when, so I say, check in with your thoughts, check in with what that internal job description is that you are telling yourself. And, and I would just crack on, you know, and it’s so easy to say isn’t, it’s so easy to say when, when it’s like, I don’t feel ready.

I, I need to have all of this stuff, but. Be brave. The, the other thing that can be a really useful perspective is what advice would you give to somebody else within the community who you see as being ready? Yeah. But they’re saying to you, I don’t feel ready. What advice would you give to them now? Maybe write them a letter.

All right. You’re not actually gonna send it because this is for you. Right. But you write that letter. This is genuinely how I feel. This is how I see you. This is why it’s okay to take a risk. This is how you are gonna be safe. It’s okay. And read that. I love that. Mm. I’m gonna put myself out there now and I’m gonna, this is very much pushing myself up, but if you’re insistent and you are nervous, Write it.

The what would I be saying to you? Because I’m your biggest cheerleader. So how would I word it for you? Or does it have to be them? Do they have to do it for themselves? No. What would Emma tell me to do now? She’d say, don’t. Don’t worry about it. Just go and do it, sort of thing. Because I think that if I was an assistant and someone who.

Knows me and knows what I’m doing, has seen my work. Was to say that that would be encouraging. So if I, if I was doing it for myself, I would go think of a stylist who is doing a job that is bigger than I’ve ever done, and they’ve been really successful and I’ve seen their features, um, across loads of different magazines.

And on a big, big billboard, I would say, what would that stylist do? What would that stylist say to me to make me feel more confident that, okay, they did that, I can do that. And then, That’s really strong. I love that. It’s really strong and, and what you’ve also got to realize is that that fight or flight, that imposter esteem, it’s in the moment.

This is us right now trying to keep ourselves safe at all costs. Another tool that can work really well is looking at end of life perspective. So all we’re doing in that moment is we are, how do I keep myself safe in this very, very moment, end of life perspective is asking yourself that question. It’s like 30 years from now.

What is the decision that I, I’m, I’m gonna regret the least, you know, or what, what’s most important in this decision I’ve got to make 30 years from now that I’m gonna thank myself for? And it’s being able to, again, it’s stepping back, it’s being able to parent ourselves and be able to go, do you know what?

I get it. You’re terrified. I understand why you’re terrified. We’ve all been there. They’ve been there. This is the advice you’re given. But 30 years from now, you’re gonna be so grateful that you’ve taken this step outside of your comfort zone. That and just these little, little seeds every now and again, just really help to, to lift you up that, I mean, Tony Robbins love him or hate him.

You know, for some people he’s their jam. But he does this exercise called the Dickens technique, which is this thing, this imposter syndrome, this confidence, this whatever, this bad habit that I’ve got. What has this cost me in my life so far? Yeah. What has this cost me financially in terms of relationships and social circles, in terms of my growth potential?

And, and you sit in that moment, and, and the idea is, is actually, it sounds, sounds really negative, but it’s to experience the pain of that, it’s kind of go, oh my God, you know, I’ve got all these regrets because blah, blah, blah. Then we go, well, what does this cost to me right now? Right now, in this moment, what is this costing me?

And then we go, 20 years from now, if I don’t change, what is this gonna cost me 20 years from now? And it’s a really powerful exercise to reflect on, to go, do you know what, yeah, my, my, my brain is here to keep me safe, not happy. It’s trying to keep me safe in this moment, but I need to step back from that.

And I need to look at, do you know what? I’ve got regrets of why I haven’t taken it in the past. I know I’m gonna have regrets in the future. How do I use that end of life perspective as a tool now? Yeah. Yeah, that’s really re I think also if you’re quite young, you probably don’t think of it cuz you don’t when you’re younger.

So it’s good to, to have that kind of in the back pocket of you will get older and you will have those feelings. As, as you. Yeah. And, and, and you also think that there, there is this magical moment where you get older and it’s just like, no, you, you always feel too young to do this stuff. Always. Um, and it’s like there is this magic.

I, I work with a huge amount of women in their forties because I think you, you just hit this. This. I remember my mother at my age, how am I at this age already? Then there is this sort of this wake up call that just happens and obviously hormonally you’re changing and this’s, you know, you’re kind of working towards this, this incredible change of life that you’ve got coming up, and it’s just this, someone’s shaking you by the shoulders.

Suddenly you’ve got, oh, for God’s sake, okay, right now’s the time to grow up and it isn’t this magical. One day you are just gonna grow up. It’s like it doesn’t happen like that. No it doesn’t Sometimes.

Um, I’ve got just a, a couple more questions. Have you got time to just go very briefly talk about the questionnaire that I filled out and do you ask about that questionnaire? So it’s, it’s, I kind, I call ’em like personality test, but it’s got, it’s got 50 questions. Do you wanna explain it? Yeah, so, so basically I’m a, I’m a positive intelligence coach and it, it’s a, it’s an assessment that I use as part of the positive intelligence system, and it’s called a saboteur assessment, which sounds very negative, but essentially what it gives me as a coach is an idea of what your internal world is like.

So there are nine different saboteurs. And through a course of answering 50 questions, which are really quick, aren’t they? It takes, what, three, four minutes to get through. It’s just multiple choice. It gives you, um, almost like an order that these nine saboteurs come in and it gives you a little number next to each one.

In terms of, you know, the, um, the severity in which you might experience these, impossible, do you feel it was accurate? Majority of it, not all of it. Like I have no fear. Have, um, a fear of risk. I’m quite, I’m okay with risk. Yeah. Um, but I mean, what achieve, what was it? The achievement one was my top one and it was something like nine.

Oh. And it’s like the first bar was just one short of the full bar and then it kind of dot, it goes down the list. Remember what the very bottom one was, but mine didn’t have anything in that. It, it asked you the same question in different ways, so it almost not, but make sure it gets a true representation of Exactly.

Exactly. Yeah. And, and you know, like all this stuff, you know, you are, if you are trying to create. Something that is simple and quick to do, but it can apply to the whole population of the planet. Mm-hmm. There is always gonna be a broad brush element to that, but it, it’s a really good conversation starter to kind of go, oh, isn’t this interesting?

So actually, these are the ways you keep yourself safe, but it also tells me what your strengths are. So actually, you know, a hyper achiever just means you’re an achiever. It just means that actually you are really good at setting goals for yourself. It’s really good for visioning and, and putting yourself forward for things.

And it doesn’t surprise me that you have this confidence that you’re, you know, you’re able to, to step outside your comfort zone. You then had a avoider, which is number two, and a avoider is with incredibly powerful at justifying anything to ourselves. We can justify the good stuff, but oh my goodness, we can navigate our way out of the weeds in a way that nobody else can.

Yeah. Conflict at all. I do not do. I will not like, I don’t lie. I made, made a point of not lying, but I can get around telling the truth in a really interesting, so if you say to, I look fat in this dress, I’ll go, well, it’s a really nice color on you. I, exactly. I just, I, I can’t stand it. I mean, yeah, I’ve been 30 years I think we’ve raised our voices to each other about three times.

We just go quiet and then just poke each other and go. But we don’t. And and you said he had, he had a very similar profile. Yeah, so we did, it’s called 16 questions. I can’t remember. It’s like a personality test along the lines of this, and it’s like an I F B G J sort of thing. And Terry came out exactly the same, it’s kind of like something, something dash, and then a letter.

So we were exactly the same, but the dash letters were different. Right. Fine. Okay. It made me realize how I’m, I’m quite confident, I’m quite outgoing. He’s very shy, he’s very quiet, he’s very sarcastic. He’s super intelligent and the way he talks is very, um, his sarcasm is very funny cuz it’s a link to that.

And I thought, oh my God, that’s really interesting how we don’t do conflict, neither of us do. And, but all rates that we had were very, very true. But what was really interesting is my sister, who is five years younger than me, she’s the youngest child she is. This is how it is. It’s black and white. I’m going to be direct, very quite bullshied, quite stubborn, but in a in a in a controlling not controlling in a confident way And I was like, okay, yeah, that’s her. And then my daughter did it And she came out the same as my sister And I went that’s why she reacts like that, that’s why she does that And that understanding that meant I now know this is not her being a stroppy teenager. This is her limits is her whatever it is.

So the learning, the traits in and it’s really funny because it gives you examples of people, but it gives you from like politicians and famous musicians and actors and actresses right down to characters that are cartoons, like Bebes and Butthead, or it might be anime. She’s really into anime, so she’d be like I’m like, i’m a character, yeah, but when you were talking about how the thoughts that come into our brains, what I was thinking is that okay? so if my top line is achiever, my self saboteur, self sabotage talk will be very different to someone who can do conflict, or is good with risk, or is good with risk, or whether all of them will be different. So it’s like you can’t say this is how to get over self, your, your confidence issue, because we all have different things that trigger us and take our boxes and work for us, and I think that is why it’s so interesting is I think the tests like that are always very interesting.

They’re always fascinating, and I think this is why the whole tell me what actions I need to take to get better results doesn’t work, because you’re dealing with you know individual thumbprints of human beings under the surface.

So it’s really important that, as individuals, we become so acutely self aware, not just of us, but those other people that we come into contact with Now, whether that is children or partners or, you know, colleagues and peers and friends, because it’s so easy to take things personally. I mean, i see this in teams all the time where on one end of the scale, you’ve got a pleaser, for example, which is very sort of empathetic and I want to make sure everybody else has looked after and I’m very self sacrificial And then on the other end of the scale, of controller, that’s very confrontational and that that voice is very big in the room. Now, when these two people are regulative, oh my God, it’s the best partnership because you’ve got a doer and you’ve got somebody who’s very in tune with people. When these two people are dysregulated, you’ve got the controller, who is absolutely overshadowing. I cannot understand.

My partner falls into the controller tendency and you can see when we’re dysregulated because I’ll come back in from a day and I’ll go oh my God, i think I said something and I think I might have annoyed them and that they said this to me and it didn’t feel good but I couldn’t say anything And he’ll, he’ll almost up, rise up and go. You need to tell them. You know it’s like that controller then comes out, So understanding that actually that’s his experience. This is my experience. It takes that heat out, otherwise we’re missing each other. We’re like I don’t understand you and you don’t understand me, where we’re doing this work. We can understand, and I love the fact that your daughter falls into that category especially on international women’s day, it’s like we all want to raise in powers confident women.

Yeah, we just don’t want to pair. That’s the challenge Fabulous. But my goodness, i’ve got two girls. The one that is. she’s absolutely amazing, though she’s hysterical, she’s just a complete character. But once and I’ll tell you there was a we were arguing I think it was during lockdown, and she was running upstairs shouting at me and I was in kitchen shouting at her and my husband went do you both have to have the last word? It’s like we were both going until we got into conflict. But yeah, it’s very interesting. Yeah, but they’re both completely different.

Myself, my husband and my daughter are all introverts, whereas my other daughter is very quiet, is extroverted. No one ever believes me when I say I’m introverted And that’s the thing it’s like I’m. I’m confident, but I’m introverted, like if I do these big panel discussions and these big events. I did a live workshop. It was just a two hour workshop but it was two weeks run up to it And it’s go, go, go, go, go, go go. And then I do the workshop and I walked out of the workshop and by four o’clock on the train I was fast asleep. I couldn’t even string together the next day because I’m actually introverted. But you can be a confident intro, you can be a kind of an introvert, basically.

You can. it’s all about where do you gain energy from? And I think you know you can be extroverted, you can be somebody who’s very confident and outgoing and bubbly, and but actually you you need to recharge on your own. That’s where you get that recharge, whereas for other people it’s like God. I feel so drained because I haven’t seen anybody. This is the most, and they need to be in a crowd to pick up the energy. My sister Exactly.

Well, we have definitely run out of that. I apologize for the terrible Wi-Fi. Lucy, do you want to share where people can find you and get in touch?

Yeah, sure. So I have so much to say on this topic. I could have gone on for another hour and I’m sure everyone’s grateful that we’ve reached the top of the hour, but if you do want to know any more, we’re on LinkedIn. We’re on Instagram. The company is called The Academy. We’re always sharing hints and tips, so do come and follow us. Visit our website as well TheAcademycouk. There’s a little box on there you can click If you want to come and find out about the programs that we offer, or just book a call, like we have an opportunity to book a free call. Come in, come and find out what we do and whether it’s something that we can help you with, whether individual or a team, it doesn’t matter. We’re just here to make a difference, because this stuff matters. This stuff matters, ella.

Brilliant. Thank you. Right, let me just say it’s at Lucy Cox, confidence Coach on Instagram. If anyone wants to go and find Lucy right now, go and watch all your reels, because they’re brilliant. I love your reels. Thank you, lucy, absolute pleasure. If anyone was going to be left on their own during a Zoom call, it needed to be you So well.

And it was so slick. He would have been so proud. He was still going on.

I came back 10 minutes later. I could have gone back a couple weeks. Thanks for listening to the Inside Stylus podcast. You’ll find all the details from today’s show over on the show notes at insidestyluscom. If you enjoy the show, i’d love it if you would head on over to iTunes and rate and review it. It’s the best way to help other people find the show and I’d really appreciate it Until next time. Bye for now.