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What does your brain tell you about you?

On this weeks show, Kathryn speaks with Tiwalola Ogunlesi. Tiwa is a confidence coach specializing in positive psychology and the founder of Confident and Killing it.

Tiwa shares her own limiting beliefs and how she went from insecure to confident and killing it.

Meet Tiwalola Ogunlesi

Tiwalola Ogunlesi, the founder of Confident and Killing It, is a self-love activist, confidence coach and an inspirational speaker. After struggling with low-self esteem throughout her teenage years, she’s now on a mission to transform the lives of women and girls all over the world. Tiwalola founded Confident and Killing It in 2017 as a response to the generation cycle of low self-esteem amongst women and girls. A Dove study shows that only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful and so Tiwa has made it her mission to champion a social movement that inspires women to love and believe in their whole self.

Check out Tiwa’s website, her free monthly wins tracker, podcast, and follow her on Instagram.

In This Podcast

Summary

• What caused Tiwa’s insecurities
• The example her grandmother and mother set for her
• What society teaches women that breeds insecurity and limiting beliefs
• Why she is a self-love activist

What caused Tiwa’s insecurities

Tiwa had amazing female influences in her mother and grandmother, however her confidence took a hit during the pivotal teenage years. While her sister, who was 11 months younger, started growing tall and thin, Tiwa had felt insecure about her curves. She had no idea that there are different body types, and her negative body image started to trickle into other areas of her life. With creativity running in her family, Tiwa was unable to see at the time her own creative talents. She later realized her mind was feeding her lies and came to a better understanding of how to challenge those lies.

The example her grandmother and mother set for her

Tiwa describes her Scottish grandmother as someone who loved the escapism, adventure, and excitement of books. In the 1960s, she was working as a librarian where she met Tiwa’s grandfather who was from Nigeria. Despite vehement opposition from her family and the societal criticism of interracial relationships, they married and moved back to Africa. Tiwa’s grandmother made a name for herself in the community as a fashion designer for the influential women of Nigeria and pioneered new clothing techniques.

Similarly, Tiwa’s mother went to law school at the urging of her grandfather and left after one day. Her mother worked closely with Tiwa’s grandmother to build the fashion business and subsequently created her own children’s fashion line. She initially ran into hardships with obtaining loans, but with persistence her line is now a multi-million dollar business with 20 locations in Nigeria.

What society teaches women that breeds insecurity and limiting beliefs

Society plays a really big role in breeding insecurity for women. Capitalism feeds off women’s insecurities. Brands, big organizations and corporates all benefit from women’s insecurities. The cycle continues and we keep buying things.

Women keep buying things – from makeup to procedures like Botox – to make us feel better, when self worth is really intrinsic and comes from within. The media’s subliminal messaging gets internalized by women and passed down to each generation. It can be stopped in its tracks through self-love and it starts with challenging negative thoughts when they show up.

Why she is a self-love activist

What you believe about yourself is the foundation to every single thing that you do. Your mindset is so important and if you have a self-sabotaging mind, you will stay stuck in life and be in a negative place. If you have a mind that loves, empowers, and encourages you to pursue your heart’s desires, you can pave the way to a life that is meaningful and full of freedom.

Tiwa reminds us that self-love isn’t always about having happy experiences or thoughts constantly, it’s more about an in-depth belief that self-worth does not depend on what anyone else thinks of us. No matter the color of your skin or how much money you have, you matter simply because you exist. What happens in one moment does not need to define an entire lifetime.

To practice more self-love it’s important to know your strengths, because when you know what you’re good at doing, when you love and believe in yourself, you have something to refute negative thoughts that might pop up. 

Because there’s usually so much evidence that you are amazing and caring, loving, and talented, and so little evidence that you have no talent whatsoever. So focus on where the evidence lies. Focus on the truth about who you actually are and challenge the negativity when it comes into your mind. 

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Podcast Transcription

Kathryn:

Welcome to the show Tiwalola. I am so excited to have you talking with me on the Imperfect Thriving podcast all the way from London. 

Tiwalola 

Yay. Thank you so much for having me as well. I’m so glad to be here.

Kathryn:

I cannot wait to dig into your story. So tell me a little bit about your background and how you arrived at the idea for confident and killing it. 

Tiwalola:

Yeah. So I was quite an insecure teenager growing up. I had a really negative mind and it wasn’t until I was about 21 that I started my self-love journey, and I saw how magical and powerful it was to finally believe in yourself and have a mind that empowers you rather than a mind that sabotages you.

So when I was  graduated from university and I was working in a job that I hated. I said, there has to be more to my life than this. I’m being stuck in a job that I hate. So I went on a quest to look for something a bit more purpose-driven. And I decided to volunteer, as a youth leader with teenage girls and I asked them what they wanted to get out of life.

They all wrote it down on a piece of paper. And then as I opened the pieces of paper at home, I began to see a lot of them were saying like, I wish I was more confident. I wish I loved myself more over and over and over again. And I was like, enough is enough. I remember when I was 16 and I didn’t love myself.

And here we are, again, another generation after me telling me the same thing that they don’t love and believe in themselves. And I said, I can’t sit back and watch this happen. I need to do something about it. And so I went on Instagram, I recorded a one minute video on my phone about how important it is to love and believe in yourself.

And I put it out there and, you know, videos led to events led to confident and killing it being born and really just kind of starting a revolution. 

Kathryn:

Well, that is absolutely amazing. And you are so ahead of the curve, really. It took me until my late forties.

I can tell you, it makes all the difference in the world. If I could give everybody one thing, that would be the one thing. Everything becomes magical after that, right? So. I agree. I see that in women of all ages. Not just teams. Right? What do you think leads to that? What do you think leads to so many young women and teens not liking themselves, being super critical of themselves, and not having any confidence or self love? 

Tiwalola:

Yeah. So society plays a really big part in that. Capitalism feeds off women’s insecurities, all the brands, the big organizations, the big corporates, as long as women feel insecure, we keep buying things.

We keep buying things to make us feel better. The lipsticks, the makeup, the hair creams, the, this, the, that the procedures, the Botox, everyone is benefiting. As long as we feel insecure because we keep using external things to help us feel better about ourselves. And the gag is, external things don’t give you worth your worth is intrinsic, and it comes from inside of you.

So realizing that the messages we hear from a really young age are always telling us how we are not enough, and we need this and then we will be enough. And so women begin to internalize those messages as they are not good enough as they are on that begins to affect their sense of confidence and their self worth.

So I think the media has played a really, really big part in this putting out subliminal messages of a woman’s place and where, what, a woman is capable of doing or not. And that’s where a lot of people pick these up from. And then also, so it gets passed down from generation to generation to generation, right?

My grandma. She was a very confident woman, but you know, she would look in the mirror and pretend to give herself a facelift. My mom would see that and then she would look in the mirror and squeeze her thighs. I saw my mom squeezing her thighs and when I grew up on my thighs, looked like my mom’s thighs. So I was like, Oh, if she squeezed her thoughts there must be something wrong with my thighs. 

And you know, if I hadn’t broken that chain, I would then go on and do the same thing with my daughter. This is how it spreads. 

Kathryn:

Yes, I could not agree more. And I don’t know exactly how it is for you and where you grew up, but in the South, in the United States, there’s very much still even how a woman should act.

You’re taught this from a very young age. Women should be sweet. Nice. Pretty. And quiet. Not confident. Outspoken. Natural. So it’s modeled by the women that come before us, for sure. It’s also taught by the women and the men who are bringing us up. What is your experience like with it like that?

Tiwalola:

So I grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, and, Nigeria is one of those countries that really does not support the advancement of women at all. And it has very strict social norms about what women can wear, what they can do. And everything is really about submitting to the man in the household and those kinds of messages. But luckily enough, I grew up in a family where my grandma wasn’t like that.

And my mom wasn’t like. They were very independent women, go-getters. They started their own businesses. My grandma left a really abusive relationship. So I have grown up seeing what it looks like for women to be unstoppable and to go after what they want in life and to create their own lane.

And so I knew that that was possible for me, which is why role models are so important and which is why diversity and visibility representation is so important because we need to see women doing incredible things because then it inspires younger women that they can do the same.

So I’ve been quite lucky in terms of, I haven’t really grown up having any very strict social norms that were limiting me as a girl, but growing up in Nigeria in general, I did see those things happen. 

Kathryn:

So I want to dig into that a little bit more. Your grandmother and mother sound amazing.

What do you think it was about your grandmother, especially two generations before you that she was able to create her own path and break free from what society was expecting. 

Tiwalola:

Oh, wow. I’m glad you asked this because the story about my grandmother is a really incredible story and I don’t really share this story on podcasts. So you’re lucky.

You’re a lucky one. So my grandma, she passed away about five years ago, but she was a Scottish woman. Born and raised in Scotland. And, she came from a very, very strict family. So she was actually living in Oxford, in England working as a librarian. And she always had the sense of adventure and her and curiosity.

She was really into history. So she would read loads of books and just had that kind of like escapism, adventure and excitement. And doing her own thing. So my grandfather, who was a Nigerian man happened to be in Oxford studying. And he was in the library the day my grandmother was in the library.

And so they met in the library and they locked eyes and they kind of fell in love and he was like, come to Nigeria with me. This was back in 1960 something. So, she’s like, Whoa. Okay. And she writes back to her family in Scotland that she’s met a Nigerian man and she wants to move to Nigeria.

And of course, like interracial marriage is not a thing at the time. Like my grandma is a white woman. My grandpa was a black mind. Now to talk about moving to Africa to live with him. And like, you don’t know anyone there and her family were like, if you do that, like literally that’s the end.

And she decided that was what her heart was calling her. So she followed her heart. She moved to Nigeria literally in a town, in the outskirts of Lagos, she started a new life there. Couldn’t speak the language but she made a name for herself and she built an incredible business.

She was a fashion designer. So she, created clothes for like the first lady and loads of influential women in Nigeria on, she introduced a lot of new clothing techniques and tie dye techniques to the women in Lagos. That kind of blood of adventure and pioneering women just kind of runs through my family.

So that’s why I am who I am today. 

Kathryn:

That story just gave me chills. I mean, so amazing. And thank you for sharing that with us because that’s really cool. I love that. So did your mom pretty much follow in her mother’s footsteps? 

Tiwalola:

Yeah my grandpa wanted my mom to be a lawyer and she was, she did one day of law school and she was like, No way.

Yeah. So she decided that to work with my grandma for a while building the fashion business. And then my mom went off to create her own clothing line for children. And now she has about 20 stores all across Nigeria. It’s kind of like a Gap kids, like that’s kind of what has store is like.

And my mom faced a lot of hardship when she was starting a business because the banks wouldn’t give her loans because they were like, you want to loan to a woman, not to talk about a woman who wants to sell children’s clothes. Like no one’s gonna buy children’s clothes. But the funny thing is that was no market for children’s clothes and children need clothes.

So actually she’s now built like a million dollars business from children’s clothes where nobody even thought she was going to sell a thing, she has now created this empire selling children’s clothes. So, seeing women go after what they want build empires be pioneers is something I have constantly grown up seeing.

And like when I would come back from school, I would just sit in my mom’s office and watch her work. When I was about seven, I had this recurring dream where I would go into an elevator and take the lift up to the top floor and I was wearing a suit and a briefcase. And that was at age seven or 10 or something.

So, yeah, I’m so grateful for all the women I come from.

Kathryn:

Y’all can’t see Tiwa but we’re doing this over Zoom and I can just picture you doing that, gone with that briefcase. I bet that was adorable. So what’s the name of your mom’s store so I can look it up?

Tiwalola:

Yeah, it’s called Rough and Tumble. 

Kathryn:

Oh, cute. So you come from from very strong stock. 

Tiwalola:

Yes. 

Kathryn:

Tell me a little bit about, I mean, you’re a self-titled self-love activist. I help clients all the time go through sort of a metamorphosis from self-criticism to self-acceptance and all the way to self-love. Why is self-love the key? Why is it so important to self esteem and self confidence? 

Tiwalola:

Because what you believe about yourself is the foundation to every single thing that you do. Your mindset is so, so important. And so if you have a mind that sabotages you, you will stay stuck in life and be in a negative place. Whereas if you have a mind that loves you and empowers you and encourages you to go off to what your heart truly desires, you will live the life that you really want, and you will live a life of freedom.

So self-love, isn’t just like happy clappy. Hey everyone. I love myself. No, it’s like this in depth belief that you are worthy and your worth does not depend on what anyone else thinks of you, the color of your skin, how much money you have, like you matter simply because you exist. And that in itself is a revolution.

Kathryn:

Yes. That is beautiful. And I work, I work with a lot of women who are a perfectionist, and I think perfectionism oftentimes comes from not enough. I must always do more to prove my worth, not just to others, but mainly myself. I feel like with perfectionism, we are trying to teach ourselves that we are worth it.

And it’s amazing kind of what you were talking about the teens. You were seeing a pattern, right? I want to be more confident. I want to like myself, I see a pattern with women and not just women actually, that come in my office. That what they want most in life when I take them back to their childhood is unconditional love and acceptance.

And when we work through the fact that you don’t have to get that from other people, you can let go of wanting that from everyone else, your father or your mother, whoever it was that you thought didn’t give it to you. Start on that journey to have the unconditional love for yourself. It’s like freedom.

Tiwalola:

Yeah. Absolute game changer. And a lot women internalize that. Like, if I didn’t get love for my parents, it means there must be something wrong with me. At some point in life, we have to let go of those limiting beliefs that we had of ourselves when we were a child and I always say to people what happens in one moment does not need to define your whole lifetime.

Kathryn:

Yeah, it really does and people let it.  I had a moment when I was young, where my dad made a comment and he was a wonderful dad. He was a great dad, but I don’t know exactly what we were talking about to begin with. And that’s when he said something along the lines of, yeah, you’re the smart nerdy one.

And your sister is the popular one who everybody likes. So I doubled down on smart and was scared of everything else. I was negative about myself with everything else. Do you have any idea of what it was for you that led to your insecurities as a teenager? 

Tiwalola:

Oh yes, absolutely. So I have a younger sister who’s 11 months younger than me.

So growing up, we were super close and all of a sudden, when we started becoming teenagers, she was growing super tall and I wasn’t. And she was one of those people who could eat whatever she wanted and not do a single bit of exercise. And I was like the one where, like I was getting curves. My thighs were getting bigger.

I would be eating salads and exercising so much, but I I’m just not a stick thin person. And that was her body shape and my body shape is different. So I didn’t understand that there were different body shapes. I just thought the goal was to be tall, stick thin, thin legs and flat tummy. And that’s it. So I hated my body because it didn’t look like hers.

And I was constantly comparing myself to her and the thing about comparison is that it is such a big drive of negative thoughts, and it feeds into all the other areas of your life. So from feeling like I wasn’t skinny enough, I thought I had no gifts are no talents whatsoever, because again, my mum was creative.

My dad was creative. My sister was creative, my brother’s a music producer. And it was like, Oh, what’s Tiwalola good at. Oh, she’s smart. She gets good grades. And so I just thought I wasn’t creative. I had no special gifts and talents and I used to tell myself, Oh, that story all the time kind of just being a boring person and with nothing special about me.

And now that I look back and I know all the talent and gifts that I have, I’m like, Oh, did I ever think I was not creative enough? How did I ever think that I was not talented. Your mind will often, like it’s a lie, basically. It just is a lie. And you have to be aware of the lies you tell yourself and challenge them.

Kathryn:

Yes, our brains. They’re not always helpful to us and they tell us are not truths, but we hang on to them as if they are true. 

Tiwalola:

Exactly. Yeah. 

Kathryn:

So how do you help young women, older women, all women discover what it is that they are telling themselves and let go of it and bring them closer to self love?

Tiwalola:  

So the first thing I really say is when your negative thoughts come in…first of all, you  have to be aware that your thoughts are sabotaging you. And that was my most recent podcast episode. Is your mind sabotaging you? Because a lot of people just take that negative mind as it is what it is.

That’s just the way my mind is, but actually, no, it’s not. You can change that. So the first thing is to actually wake up to the fact that your mind doesn’t have to stay stuck the way it is, and you can actually program your mind to empower you rather than to criticize you all the time. So that’s the first step.

The second step is when your negative thoughts come into your mind, you have to learn to challenge them. It’s like when all of a sudden we think something bad about ourselves, we just believe it just like that. My mind told me I had no gifts or no talents, and I was just like, Oh, Okay. I guess I have no gifts or no talents, but we need to learn to challenge those limiting beliefs with the truth of who we actually are.

And now this is why it’s so important to know your strengths, because when you know what you’re good at doing, when you love and believe in yourself, you have something to say back to those negative thoughts. 

Because there’s usually so much evidence that you are amazing and caring, loving, and talented, and so little evidence that you have no talent whatsoever.

So focus on where the evidence lies. Focus on the truth about who you actually are and challenge the negativity when it comes into your mind. 

Kathryn:

Yes, it is almost like when we have that one negative thought that we choose to hang on to and define ourselves. Like the lens that we put on the end of the camera, we see everything in the world through that lens, and we sort of let go of all of the good we dismiss it and we just look for confirmation of what we believe is true. 

Tiwalola:

Exactly. And that’s why we all have a negativity bias where somebody will say five nice things to us and one negative thing. And all we will do is focus on that one negative thing. They said I’m through all the nice five things out the window.

When you do that, it makes you only focus on the negative things people have sai about you actually don’t throw all the truth out the window, go searching for the truth. And that was what I did. I was like, Oh, My mind is a battlefield. My positive and negative thoughts are fighting for my attention. Okay.

How do I win this? I need to go learn about the good things about myself. So when the negative thoughts come, I have my positive thoughts, ready to fire something back at it. And that’s why you have to put in that work to figure out what you love about yourself and what is good about you so that you can express that and focused on that instead of the one tiny, negative thing that you don’t like about yourself.

Kathryn:

Yes. So I love the battlefield, the analogy for sure. How did you make that journey. How did you do that? Did you do it on your own? Did someone else help you?

Tiwalola:

Oh no, I definitely got help. So my mom gave me this book “15 Laws of Growth” by John Maxwell. And in that book, he spoke about how growth is intentional and you don’t just wake up one day and you’re the best version of yourself.

Like that is something you actively have to work towards. And, I’m a Christian so, somebody also recommended “Battlefield of the Mind” by Joyce Meyer. And she also talks about even in the Bible, like biblically mentions about how your mind is a battlefield, but you have a spirit of love, of peace, on all the calm mind.

You have the strength to take every negative thought captive. I had never heard that before. So the faith and science were both saying the same thing about yes your mind’s going to be messy, but you have the power of choice to decide what are you gonna focus on. 

And that what for me was my biggest awakening because I just thought, Oh, my mind is my mind does nothing I can do about it, but that’s not true. Your mind is like elastic. You can program it to work for you. It’s more like a computer than just like a block of cement by you’re stuck with for the rest of your life.

Kathryn:

Yes, absolutely. And I love that the combination of faith and science. That’s really great. So do you have any examples or stories of some of the most like compelling self-love transformations you’ve seen with your clients or that you’ve experienced? 

Tiwalola:

Oh, I have loads. So for me I’ve always said like, I want to share my confidence and my joy not to make everyone think, Oh, look at me I’m so perfect. But to help women see that if I can have it, they can have it too. And so after one of my events, somebody wrote in the feedback, like, Tiwa, you’re such a boss, but you made me feel like I’m a boss too. And that for me was just ultimate goals because it’s not just about me feeling like a boss. It’s about my boss-ness making other women feel like they’re a boss as well.

I’ve had so many stories about women who have got in their dream jobs. Who have quit their full time job to run that business who have put themselves up for promotion and they’ve gotten it. Women who have just said, enough is enough. It’s time for me to invest in myself and work on my mind.

I get so many messages about women’s starting things because they have interacted with me. And that is the ultimate goal. 

Kathryn:

Oh, yes, that is amazing. I really love that. And so you make a really good point there when you find self-love, I think people think that that has a lot to do with maybe your relationships, your intimate love relationships, and things like that.

You have to really find yourself and love yourself before you get in another relationship, but it affects every single aspect of your life. I would say, especially your professional life. You don’t go for anything, you don’t take opportunities. You don’t even see opportunities. Until you like yourself.

Tiwalola:

That is something I always used to say because people are like, Oh, they’re not opportunities for women. They’re not opportunities for women. And I don’t think is that there are no opportunities. Opportunities are in abundance. It’s often times that women don’t have the confidence to go after those opportunities because their minds are constantly sabotaging them.

Your thoughts lead to your feelings and your feelings lead to the actions that you take or you don’t take. So if you have a mind that is super negative, it makes you feel anxious and worried and stress and you retreat. Whereas if you have a mind that is positive and empowering, you feel confident in yourself and you go after what you want.

So that’s why it is so important to fix your mind first, because from there, that’s where you can have the dream house and the dream car and the best job on the promotion and the business. But if you do not fix your mind, you can’t have any of those things. 

Kathryn:

Gosh, you are absolutely right, because when you’re in that negative place, you’re focused on everything that you don’t want to happen. You can’t even see that you have a choice about what we want to happen.

I very actively work with them. My clients about recognizing how many little choices they make throughout the day, whether they’re intentional or not intentional, so that they realize that they do have some sort of power within them. 

Tiwalola:

That’s so good. Yeah. I love that. And then also like, the fear of the future and fear in general, a lot of my clients really struggle with that.

And I always say like, it’s the same thing was saying about the power of choice. Don’t go into your future and think of the worst possible outcome. It hasn’t even happened yet. What if I fail…what do people love of me? What if this, what if they judge me? And I’m like, but what if they don’t and they’re like, Oh, I never thought about it.

And I’m like, you focus on the negativity, you get more of that. So don’t focus on what you don’t want, focus on what you do want.

Kathryn:

I absolutely love that. So I have a couple of questions that I like to wrap up with at the end, but I’m wondering if we could just do a quick, fun little lightning round.

Tiwalola:

Yeah. Okay!

Kathryn:

Now I just pulled these out of the air. So some of them, you may say neither then that’s fine. Okay. Lizzo or Alicia Keys. 

Tiwalola:

This is difficult. Lizzo. Lizzo.

Kathryn:

Are you an introvert or an extrovert? 

Tiwalola:

I’m both. I have my days, I have my Tiwa time, where I’m not in the mood to speak to anyone. And then I have like my Beyonce days, so.

Kathryn:

Oh, that’s awesome.

Okay. Is there one in like most embarrassing moment that you have from your past that you can now laugh about?

Tiwalola:

Hm. I don’t think so. You know, I think I’ve kind of blocked it out of my memory. I try not to replay embarrassing moments over and over again in my mind. So I really can’t think of any embarrassing moments on the spot. 

Kathryn:

So you might have already told us this, but a book that has changed your life. 

Tiwalola:

Okay. Can I give you three books?

Okay. So “15 Laws of Growth” by John Maxwell for one, “Code of the Extraordinary Mind” by Vishen Lakhiani. That’s another really good one on mindset. And then, yeah, “Battlefield of the Mind” by Joyce Meyer. 

Kathryn:

Okay, love that three is always better than one. Favorite thing to do on a rainy day. 

Tiwalola:

Be in bed cuddled up with like a little fluffy toy and like a chai latte and watching movies.

Kathryn:

Oh, sounds good. Do you have a favorite movie? 

Tiwalola

Yes, Moana Disney movie, best movie ever created.

Kathryn:

Next place you want to visit in the world. 

Tiwalola: 

Bali, I really want to visit Bali. I think the world is trying to send me there too, because I have spoken to my personal assistant has been to Bali. I spoke to someone else the other day who dreams of going to Bali.

And now you’re the third person. I have to get the Bali. 

Tiwalola:

I have to get to Bali too. 

Kathryn:

Maybe I’ll see you there. Yeah. One positive thing that you will take away from COVID times. 

Tiwalola:

Loads of positives this year has taught me so much about myself, but I think the main thing is you will never lose when you bet on yourself, because I was getting so many cancellation emails when lockdown happened.

We went into a full lockdown here in London, and all my bookings got canceled and I hit rock bottom, but I had to say to myself, this is not what I want my story to be. I want to see growth in my business, I want to see things take off, I want to be able to still impact women and that’s why it’s so important to invest in things that people cannot take away from you.

They can take away your job opportunities. They can take away all sorts of things, but they can’t take away you believing in yourself, they can’t take away your confidence and your creativity. So the real positive thing for me is learning to invest in things that people cannot take away. 

Kathryn:

That’s beautiful. That’s great. I love that. 

Tiwalola:

Thank you. 

Kathryn:

And you have something for our listeners today. 

Tiwalola:

Oh yes. The monthly wins tracker. Absolutely. So this is like my favorite tool to help me celebrate myself on to overcome comparison and imposter syndrome. This is like the best thing. So every single month I go in and I celebrate myself by keeping a track of all my accomplishments.

My small wins and my big wins. It could be from I tidied my room while I read decorated my house to. I scored Google as my first big corporate client, that sort of thing keeping track of your accomplishments is so important because it sends like positive vibes to your brain. And you also get to look to your future with confidence and optimism that if you have done it before you can do it again.

So it’s a really good way to be more confident and to boost your self esteem. Also when you find yourself comparing yourself to other people, go back and look at your accomplishments and realize how far you’ve come. You don’t have to compare yourself to what someone else is doing because you are in your own lane and you’re doing already so many different amazing things.

That is worthy of celebrating and focusing on. 

Kathryn:

That’s great. I will make sure that we include a link to that in your notes, for sure. That’s awesome. Thank you for that. So I like to wrap up every podcast episode by asking my guests, what is one suggestion that you would have for all of us to do today to move closer to our best lives. One imperfect action.

Tiwalola:

Okay so I was reading a lot about positive psychology and I would say, write down three things that went well for you every single day. That is an absolute game changer, especially in the kind of year we’ve all been having. Practicing gratitude is a game changer. So I would say to change your mindset, to keep you positive, and believing, write down three things that went well for you every single day.

Kathryn:

Well, I love that suggestion. I second that motion. I want everyone to go out today and write three things that went well today for you and keep that up tomorrow and the next day and the next. Thank you so much for such a wonderful conversation.

Tiwalola:

This was great. Thank you, Kathryn. 

Kathryn:

Okay. I hope we can work again together the future.

Yes. And until next week I will see everyone back here.