EP 2 - The Empowerment Formula

Episode 2 walks you through the empowerment formula and how every successful person’s secret mindset hack works⁣! 

Talking points and takeaways:

• Having self awareness is far from being self-conscious. 
• Self-awareness is simply maintaining awareness of our internal dialog and choosing to feel and think like the badass that we are, all while trusting that we are doing everything just right! 
• Taking affirmations to another level with mirror work. Look right into your own eyes and show yourself some love, become your biggest supporter and fan! 
• The Empowerment Formula is all about seeing opportunity instead of blocks. Living at cause vs. effect. Remembering that things are happening for you, not to you. 
• If Madonna would have thought of herself as not smart enough, or selfish, or if she would have been afraid to be seen, we wouldn’t have all her legendary music, be like Madonna! 
• How leaning into the fear and getting out of your comfort zone  builds confidence. 

Soul Rhythm Activation (Homework/Practice):

• Become aware of that internal dialog and ask yourself: would I talk to anyone else like I talk to myself? Chances are the answer is no. 
• Switch the dialog and begin talking to yourself as if you were someone you were coaching knowing she will succeed. 😉
• To be truly at cause you must take action. Do what you say you are going to do! 

Full Episode: Empowerment Formula:

Hello Loves! Today I want to dive deeper into the topic of self-awareness and differentiate between being self-aware and being self-conscious. There is a big part of this that is all about having unwavering trust in yourself, you are perfect just as you are and everything you have done up until this point. you've done for a reason. It's part of your journey and it is what is even the craziest action that you did and thought Oh my gosh, I should have done that differently. There was probably a learning lesson there, and it is up to us to actually take that lesson and move forward and become better and perhaps not do it again, or do it in a different way.  self-awareness by definition is the conscious knowledge of one's own character, feelings, motives, and desires. Last week we talked about being aware of your internal dialogue and how you talk to yourself,  being aware how your actions create your world around you, and how your world reacts to your actions and vice versa. It all boils down to you being your biggest fan, because people are going to come and go. And at the end of the day, you arrived to this world all on your own. It is really up to us to bolster and support ourselves in this pursuit of fulfillment of feeling happy and enjoying this life journey. And so becoming self-aware and choosing to change that inner dialogue is truly a game changer. 

I have a spiritual coach, and recently she was teaching me about mirror work. In the last blog we talked about writing an affirmation on a sticky note, here, we can take it to the next level. When you wake up in the morning, you've read that sticky note, look into your eyes in the mirror, and tell yourself how awesome you are. Tell yourself how ready you are for this next step in your life and have that dialogue with yourself, and then continue to monitor those thoughts as you go about your day then choose to shift. It's going to take some practice, and some time. Just give yourself some grace. For example, if I stub my toe and think “Oh man, Carla, why didn't you see the couch? That's so painful. I'm so stupid.”  which would have been my previous dialogue, but instead is now  “Oh shoot. I was not watching where I was walking.” give myself some love and proceed and then knowing that everything's okay and that I'm not stupid for running into the couch. Already having that internal dialogue, so negative, it's literally bullying yourself to the ground, And 90% of people do this. If you really stop and think, would you ever talk to anyone else the way you talk to yourself. 

Now talking about the difference between the self-awareness and self-conscious, it's not to doubt every move that you're making, because being self-conscious is having low self-esteem and not feeling confident. Perhaps you're in a state right now where you had a really crappy experience and your confidence maybe is not at its highest, but that's okay. Don't be hard on yourself and begin to bolster yourself by boosting your confidence through these affirmations that we're talking about. Then more importantly,  through the actions that you're taking, even the littlest ones from the moment that you wake up in the morning, if you committed to yourself to set an alarm and wake up and go work out or go meditate or whatever it is that fuels your soul in the morning, really follow through with your promises. Because as you're following through with your promises, your confidence will build.

 Self-consciousness by definition is feeling undue awareness of oneself , of one’s appearance, and one’s actions. That is not what we're talking about here. It's so important to really differentiate the two. The biggest difference is that when you have self-awareness, you're just simply aware of what's happening and then you're choosing to shift, and there's a transitional period that you just need to be in. With being self-conscious it's that you're not giving yourself grace and you are already assuming that everything that you're doing is incorrect. The truth is that everything you're doing is perfect right now, and everything's meant to teach you something because everything is happening to you in perfect timing. But we do have a sense of choice in what happens in our life. Yes, there are so many things that we cannot control and that's where it's a thin line between the two. I think there's a really beautiful magic between controlling what we can control and surrendering what we can't. And I'll be honest with you, this is one of the hardest things for me, because if you know me personally, you know, that I love to control everything. And it's been a lesson that I've been working through for, I would say the last two years. So this past year, it's just learning to surrender all the things that I can't control ie:What other people say, what other people do, circumstances that are outside of yourself. 

 Everything that you can control is everything that is within you. So you can control how you react to other people. You can control how you think, and you can control your actions. So let's keep it to becoming aware of how you are doing and then choosing to change it so that it affects your future positively, and it's never going to be perfect because perfect is just procrastination hidden in this beautiful word that people sometimes are proud to say. I used to say Oh, I'm a huge perfectionist. It needs to be perfect. Honestly, I've actually experienced some of that with the launch of the Soul Rhythm Podcast. And I'm choosing to release that control because there are some pieces that are just not going to be perfect. Sometimes it's better to move forward with things as they are because done is sometimes better than perfect. It's really important that you give yourself grace, as you are transforming this inner dialogue. 

After you gain awareness, how do we shift? How do we choose to be better? There's a great formula that I learned through NLP that honestly, I wonder why we didn't learn this in high school or even middle school Because it is so silly, so simple, yet so important to our fulfillment in life and our success as a human being.  This is called the empowerment formula which is that you either live at cause or out of effect and you want to be at cause with your life. Basically, if you are a cause in your life, you are taking action and leaning towards the things that you want. And you're seeing opportunity rather than having excuses in your life. I'll give you an example of someone living at cause and someone living in effect. So if I talk about being at effect and somebody that is full of excuses is always complaining about everything. So example #1... I moved to the US when I was 13 and it was a rough transition. I was starting middle school in Venezuela, and I was taken away from my friends. I moved to the US into a completely new place and I didnt know anybody. I was so heartbroken because, you know, I was in the middle of a very important time in my life. I just decided to completely retreat and be super sad and depressed. So that is actually not true. but that is me being at effect. My family pulled me from my friends, thinking that life sucks. I am going to be depressed because I don't like this new thing that happened to me that is out of my control. 

Well, the truth is, this is actually a really big turning point in my life as this is when I started falling in love with personal development. I was actually really shy when I lived in Venezuela and because I was really shy, I was very self-conscious. I over-thought everything, especially around boys. Oh my gosh. I didn't know how to act. I went to an all-girl school, needless to say I was more in my mind than actually connecting with people most of the time, which honestly is such torture. So I feel it for people that have that mind chatter, that's going at a million miles an hour, and then it's so busy in our heads that it's almost like you can't really put together words because it's just confusing. So once my parents decided to move to the US I thought that was a great opportunity for me to reinvent myself. I was super excited on top of the fact that I was coming to an American school where it was just like the movies. I told myself that I was not going to be the shy girl in school, and I showed up to my first day of school in eighth grade and I walked into the class feeling really big and bold and ready to turn the page on being shy and finally express myself to the world. So I went in, I sat down , and I turned around to  talk to the girl next to me. I don't know what I said. If you ask her, cause she's now one of my best friends. She said that we complimented each other's shoes, but I just said “ Hey, I'm Carla.”  I just introduced myself. I decided to go all out, rip the band-aid, my hands were shaking. I was so nervous. And then it turned out that her and I had the same schedule and we've been friends ever since. What I decided to do there is exactly what I kept doing. Every time that I was around new people. I'm just going to put myself out there, feeling nervous, and continue to do it over and over again. 

Moving into the US was a great opportunity for me to reinvent myself, come out of my mind, feel confident, and not feel judged by people that already knew me fully, and it ended up being the most amazing experience. I ended up being a pretty popular girl in school. I had a really big group of friends and it was exactly what I was dreaming of and what I expected. So if we compare these two stories, when I decided to embrace the opportunity, that is me living at cause, and it's me taking action because it's not only in our minds. After you gain awareness and you choose to change that internal dialogue, that's when we really solidify taking a step into this new belief. So for example, with this one, I could have stayed with, I'm very shy. I'm coming from another country.I could have stayed in this shell of thinking I don't make friends easily versus thinking  I'm going to take this opportunity to make brand new friends, to reintroduce myself as a completely different person that I already was because I had these preconceived notions of being shy. But if you know me now, I'm far from being shy and I just decided to reinvent myself. So deciding to view change as an opportunity and to embrace change is completely out of your control versus complaining about this change and dwelling on it. Then once you embraced the change, take action to fully embrace it. It's not always easy, and it's not going to be like ripping the band-aid. After I talked to that first girl, I thought  Oh yeah, I'm totally an outgoing girl because these are the beliefs that we have in our internal system, in our brains, and our subconscious minds. I want you to imagine them as a big mountain and the stronger the belief, the bigger the mountain. And as we are shifting the internal dialogue, we are weathering away at the mountain until we finally get to the root core. It is who you are. So in this example, my mountain was being a shy girl, because I was always told I was one. It completely controlled my life. Honestly, like I said, I would think more than I would talk and it was torture. You just need to start talking to one person. One person at a time, one talk at a time you weather away at that mountain. So I could prove to myself that the belief of being shy was not true. It was never true. This is the same for anything 

I was doing a workshop a few months ago, and the biggest thing that comes up for women is that we don't feel smart enough, or we don't trust ourselves enough. Or we are so afraid of being seen, or we feel like we will be selfish if we pursue what we want. None of those are true and the way to prove that they are not true is if they are not true all the time then they aren't true at all Then they are not true. For example, we'll say Madonna, she's amazing, and she obviously does not think that she is dumb. She obviously does not question being seen, and she obviously does not think she's selfish because she's done everything that she's done. She's a legend. Right? And so if Madonna had these beliefs,  we would've never had the music that she put out. So basically this all comes down to you honoring who you truly are, weathering at the subconscious untruthful beliefs that you have in your mind because of experiences that you had when you were a little girl or because of what people told you when you were growing up. And then after you honor who you truly are, and then come out from behind the curtains and show the world who you truly are, because otherwise you would be robbing the world of your gifts. You are so special. You are so unique. It's up to you to bolster yourself and build that confidence, to be able to show the world who you are and not be afraid to be seen. 

So to sum it all up. It's so important to really honor those deep desires and those gifts that you have within you, because they are there for a reason. It's not a mistake. You want to make sure that you have self-awareness on your internal dialogue and you want to choose to shift that dialogue and begin to give yourself some love and  bolster yourself, be your biggest fan and understand that this is a process and it's never going to be perfect. 

XX,

Carla Marconi - @carla11marconi  

Holistic Business Coach || Mindset & NLP Expert 

Breathwork & Yoga Facilitator || Hypnotherapist