Ep 78 Transcript: Moving Past Imposter Syndrome into Authentic Leadership with Anne Dranitsaris

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Shauna Lynn Simon (00:02)

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and I am really excited about today's guest because she's got a topic that I honestly had never even heard of this before. So we're going to dive into something brand new here. And I think you're really going to love it. I've got with me Anne Dranitsaris. She's a PhD. She's an author, psychotherapist, and a developmental expert, a leadership coach. And she spent over four decades.

Helping people to break free from the self-protective patterns that are keeping them stuck. she talks about, we're going be talking about codependency and how to move beyond that. We're going be talking a lot about imposter syndrome and people pleasing and how to move into your authentic self. And she's actually got a book on all this coming up in just a couple of months as well. So we're going to be diving into a little bit about that. Her new book is called Not Broken, Just Delayed and it reframes codependency as a developmental delay.

rather than a disorder and helps to show readers how the survival strategies that once kept them safe are now holding them back. And I know that you're probably thinking, well, what exactly does all of this mean? Well, let me welcome Anne and we're gonna tell you exactly what it means. So Anne, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me, Shannalyn. I'm really excited about our conversation, especially based on our pre podcast conversation.

I always, it's so funny because I often say to the listeners, know, like we had this pre-conversation because of course we always have a little bit of a pre-recording conversation. And there were moments where I'm like, I should really have just hit record immediately because we had, we covered some things that we're to make sure we bring all that into this conversation so that you guys can get all the benefit as well. But let's start by first explaining.

What do you mean by, so the full title of the book is Not Broken, Just Delayed the hidden history of codependency that still holds us back. What exactly does that mean? Like how is this showing up for entrepreneurs? Help us understand what this reframe of codependency to developmental delay is all about. Well, and it's a really big topic and a really big question that you asked out of the gate here. So if I can just break it down a little bit, there's a difference between

how I have come to see and approach codependency than how historically codependence has come along for the ride 100 years ago when it first came on the scene attached to the medical model of addiction and alcoholism. because of that, we have looked at codependency as something that we have to recover from it. We have to do a 12-step program around it.

you know, only women who are caretakers are codependent. And it was so much fun doing this book because in my research, what I learned was about the same time that codependency was coming on the scene and finally getting a name in the late 1970s, there was this whole other developmental arm of psychology being developed.

where they actually saw that codependent behaviors were a direct result of childhood conditioning, childhood trauma. And that when we see it as a stage of development that we got stuck in, that our brain actually got wired to do this as opposed to this, we can see that we're in charge. We get to say,

All right, these behaviors aren't working for me. It's up to me. I don't have to be a codependent identity for the rest of my life. I don't have to give myself over to a higher power. I can start my work of developing and feeling comfortable, feeling entitled, holding my power, directing my own life and asking for what I want and need, which is a big challenge for women in general.

Because we've been conditioned to not do that for what, thousands and thousands of years. It's generational. It's in our nervous systems. Yeah. even, you know, it shows up subtly sometimes. I know of some incredible girl dads who are very progressive, who are really empowering for the women in their life. And even they find themselves tripping up every now and then and doing something or saying something.

unintentionally that sort of puts us back into that box of, you know, being not being so independent and being reliant. you know, so we were constantly as women trying to say we're powerful and we're independent. And at the same time, there's still this, like you said, there's still this codependency. Now, if someone's listening to this, they might be thinking, well, I'm not relying on alcohol or, you know, we talk about those addiction things, but

The reality is that this is showing up in entrepreneurism and especially in women. And of course, one thing that I also mentioned is that a good part of my audience here is what I affectionately call my accidental CEOs. And I think we're seeing more and more of that in entrepreneurship these days. Like we didn't go to business school. Instead, we followed a passion. There's this need in the world because as women, especially, we want to help everyone.

So they start with this passion, but now they need to monetize it and make money off of it. And there's obviously a lot of barriers where they're getting stuck often and a lot of that is mindset. So I want to kind of understand in terms of entrepreneurship, how are you seeing this codependency showing up? What does this look like? If someone's like, well, listen, I'm not addicted to anything. What are some of the symptoms that they might not realize are actually a sign of codependency? Well, G, just what

Let me rewind here a little bit. I have three things I want to say at the same time. It was a stuck point for a lot of people that when they thought, if my parents aren't alcoholic or they're not drug addicted, I can't possibly be codependent. But if you realize that it's simply a direct result of being, it's like a part of your brain getting frozen in time and having to adapt excessively.

not attending to your own needs, but being present to the needs of others and taking control of meeting the needs of others for one's own psychological safety. So when you look at that, it's like, okay, well now I'm an entrepreneur and ⁓ I have needs. I need someone to take my phone calls and manage my calendar or...

you know, I need to charge a certain amount, but you know, I don't want to offend someone who might not be able to afford me or, and so I go into business as an entrepreneur predisposed to thinking about making it okay for everyone else. And meanwhile, I'm not holding the value of my product or service. And this can be huge in terms of

You know, I remember ⁓ in my first career was as a massage therapist back in the late 1970s. And I got up the courage to raise my price. And my client said to me, one of my clients said to me, geez, I wondered when you were going to come into reality around what you're charging. Because I had no sense. I was so worried about their pocketbook. Right. That I had no sense of my own value.

And I think now I can hear the light bulbs literally clicking on for so many of the women that are listening to this and like raising their hands now and saying like, yeah, that's me. And I can only just imagine how many of you are listening to this right now, just nodding along like, yeah, no, I'm feeling this. So it's actually really interesting. I was speaking with one of my one-on-one clients just a couple of weeks ago and she's in the home staging industry. So her clients are real estate agents. It's predominantly the real estate agents that are paying for her staging services.

So she says to me, says, okay, so if they're listing that house for like $800,000 and they're going to make like X percentage on this and then with that commission, they then need to pay out all these other expenses and everything else. Like I just feel like I can't charge more than this because it's not fair to them. And I'm like, hold on a second. And I've been working with her for some time and we've been working to overcome some of these.

blocks when it comes to her relationship with money. it's something we've spent quite a bit of time on this and she's made incredible progress on it. Every once in while, I just see that light bulb going off. But this was a huge moment for both of us because the way that she framed it, all of a sudden I had this aha moment. I'm like, wait a minute. OK, so you're saying that you're basing your pricing based on what you perceive that they might be making in terms of commission on this sale. So yeah. OK.

We need to eliminate that right now. is not their business model is not your responsibility. They can raise the percentage that they're charging their clients in order to cover the cost of the staging. like, does your are you spend any less time on it because they're making less money? Well, no. Are you bringing less items in? Well, no. Then why would your pricing change? Your price is your price. Your value is your value, regardless of how much money they have.

There are plenty of people who can't afford my services. I had a conversation with a woman just a couple of days ago. She really wants to do the coaching, but frankly, I don't think she can afford it. And she brings this up to me, you know, she's like, and I hear this all the time. Well, I don't know that I can afford it. And the reality is the money's there. I can help you make all that money. But if we have this this barrier block that we're not going to be able to afford it, well, then I don't even want to bother coaching you because chances are you're going to be so focused.

on where your next paycheck is coming from because you're not charging your value, you're not making enough money. I can help you make all that money. But if you are so focused on that, you're not going to get what you need out of the coaching. But the reality is that we are often undercharging for services and we're not getting what we actually need to be getting out of life because we're so concerned about how someone else is going to take it. And frankly for me, if you can't afford my coaching, that's a you problem, not a me problem.

I can help you work with me. I'll make it so you can afford the coaching. But if you're so held back by that, then that's not my problem. And similarly, if your clients can't afford your services, go find new clients. It's really that simple. Sorry, I went off on a little bit of a tangent there. But is that kind of what you needed? It is so critical that ability to hold one's value and really that symptom of co-dependence that I think of others before myself.

It's a driving force because you see what is little known is that our brains and we have two agendas as human beings. And our first agenda is to survive psychologically. And we do that through the process of adaptation and learning whether it's safe or not in our childhood environment to bring our authentic self in. And our authentic self has an agenda to thrive and achieve its potential.

Guess which one is more powerful. If it is set in the neural pathways of the brain in childhood, that the best we can do is survive. We're not making decisions about our business based on, you know, our success and our own value. Like your client, we're doing it based on, you know, what table scraps do I get when somebody else gets their needs met? How do I, how's,

How will I, what do I charge so my business survives, not so it thrives? You see? And that- That's so perfectly framed. I love this. Yeah. And it's not, you see, we go through a period through our teens and our twenties where that codependent period where, you know, I'm independent, but I still need you, mom and dad. And I pushed them away. And then we go into adulthood where we think we're grown up.

But really we haven't separated, we're still seeking approval. And most of us are stuck in this codependency where, I hope everyone likes me and I hope they're not judging me and I hope they don't think badly of me and they don't reject me because I ask too much as an entrepreneur. Or if I ask my assistant to do something and women have a ⁓ whole lot of difficulty that men don't have.

with getting help and support from other women. That's a whole other podcast on that one. But then, you know, we can't just expect that our brains are going to automatically become independent and will feel entitled if we don't get the neural pathways out of where they're stuck. And this is where so many people say,

I can't do that. can't imagine myself doing that. That is so hard. You know, it's it's interesting. A lot of women that I talked to, I think they've had, like you said, they've definitely had experiences that are shaping how they're making decisions today. And they're often having these internal conversations that don't actually exist. So, for example, they're, you know, let's say they need to have a conversation with their client like, well,

I think they're going to say this and then and then they're going to be upset about this and they're anticipating all these challenges before they even get there. They're so afraid of offending someone or, you know, like by charging what they're worth, like, they asked for this, but I need to charge them more. But I feel really bad asking them to charge more or to pay more. But but they just asked you for more services. They just asked you to do more. So, you know, they struggle with that whole setting those boundaries, holding themselves to them.

Because we are just, like you said, we're such people pleasers and I don't even think we realize we're doing it so often. Well, and you bring up a really good point here because it seems so logical that, you know, of course they ask for more services. So of course you're going to charge them more. But at the level that codependent people stuck in this codependency stage, they are not in their logical.

rational brain, they're in their instinctual brain where they're trying to figure out how to survive in their relationship by making everything okay for the other person. Right. And that fear that is survival fear that's driving them belongs in the past, but because you're not conscious of what's driving their behavior, it seems reasonable. And

You know, you notice in your example, what's really interesting when you look at it is they're not having a conversation with the other person. No. They're having a conversation about, yeah. And so I call this the closed relationship system, where the only person you're ever talking to about what's going on with the other person is you. And you're not checking it with them and saying, you know, do you have the budget for this? you know, if I do that.

Do you realize that it's gonna impact my proposal or like just asking simple questions that they don't feel entitled to ask those questions? Okay, so taking money aside from the equation, ⁓ it's showing up in other ways. And I'm sure there's probably some people listening to this and even in my own head of thinking, okay, like where do I draw the line? what's the difference between just being naturally helpful and caring? Because I can also imagine so many people listening to this are

are kind of like me where they're like, well, I'm just, I'm a really kind person. I care about people. like to help people. I am that person who returns my shopping cart, for example. I am that person who, if I see someone who's trying to get something off of a shelf and I'm a little taller than them, I'm just gonna grab it for them, you know? And I mean, part of this also comes from, spent over 20 years ⁓ helping to care for my dad who was living with MS for quite a long time. And we kept him at home for his entire life, which was wonderful.

But I'll admit when he passed away last year, there was a big part of me that I was like, I am a caregiver without the person to care for anymore. Where do I redirect all this energy? And I'll admit that there were probably times where both my mom and I who are both caring for him, we tried to prioritize our own needs wherever possible, but there were times where we knew that we weren't doing that properly. So again, but...

I would look at this and think, I'm his daughter and I love him and I want to do these things. And it's an honor for me to do these things. And all of that is true. But again, where do we draw the line between that naturally helpful caring versus, I'm codependent here. It's when you stop doing that and you seek a romantic partner.

that you have to take care of in the same way. It's that you know you're acting from your pattern, but the way it will get acted out, and this happens a lot in, regardless of the size of the organization, where an employee, a leader asks an employee to do something and is, my God, I'm so overwhelmed, I've got so much on my plate. And the leader will automatically say, don't worry about it, I'll do it.

yes. Without saying, tell me what you have, let's see if we can't re-prioritize what you have. You see? That there's a difference between caring and rescuing and codependents don't know the difference. It's like your example previously where, ⁓ you know, your client is rescuing the real estate agent from some perceived

you know, feeling that they might have if they don't make enough money. Right. When they don't even know that that situation is happening. And that is self-protective. you know, we make up a story that keeps us small and we keep running the story. So I will never ask for anything more than what somebody else wants to give me. Yeah. You know, I actually did an episode not that long ago on, um,

the just enough mindset that so many women have. And that goes back to that survival. Like you said, you just need to survive. You just need to survive. You just need just enough. I don't need much. I just want to stay boutique. I don't really need to grow that big. I don't need to charge that much. I don't need that many clients. All these just enough settling for things because like you were talking about the table scraps, I think that's a great example. So I don't have children myself. I have cats. ⁓

Don't get me wrong, they definitely, they take some things from me. There have been times in my life where I have had some financial challenges and I have to decide between feeding myself and feeding my cats. And let's be real, the cats got food. You know, it's just what we do. And I can remember when my oldest niece was born and we were out for lunch somewhere and she had eaten all of her food. She was a growing girl. She'd eaten all of her food. And I was eating my grilled cheese sandwich or whatever it was. And she was done her stuff. She's eyeing up my sandwich. I'm like, yep, here you go. And I just handed it to her.

And I literally was still hungry, but didn't even occur to me to not give her my sandwich. And this is going back a number of years. This is probably about 12, 13 years ago. And I've seen a lot about parenting since then about like, actually shouldn't do that. You actually shouldn't train your child that they can get your food. But that's how I grew up. My parents gave me their food. Like they would rather not get seconds of something or not even get something in the first place because they were happy as knowing that.

that I was enjoying it. And it's just something that I think we do so naturally sometimes. But yeah, why am I settling for table scraps in my business? Why am I settling for just enough? Not that I am, but again, people that are listening to this. So I think probably now I think we're now probably at the point where so many of the listeners are again nodding along saying, yep, this is me. We need to help them with how do we get out of this now? Like, I'm sure it's not.

Obviously, it's not an instant overnight, boom, you're cured and you can move on. But what are some steps that they can start taking to help to overcome this? Obviously, the first one I'm guessing is just recognizing when they're doing it. Is that like the biggest part? Well, truly. And I like to help people get the word overcome and recover out of their vocabulary and move back to we need to go back to the point where we're stuck in our development, recognizing

The neural pathways in our brain are operating outside of our conscious awareness in the same way that, you know, we don't think about breathing, we just breathe and our brain automatically, and especially our instinctual brain, it simply runs patterns that will help us survive. And our patterns, we've made them seem so logical in the stories and...

Of course, I just care too much and that's why I do all of this without really thinking, but I'm a human being and I have needs and wow, I've developed this ability not to even know what I need. And that's a starting point. It's what are five needs that you have that you might be neglecting? It's a good place to start with awareness.

you know, the other around entitlement. Why is it that you believe that everyone else is more entitled than you are? Why is it that you don't feel it's appropriate to negotiate and that you're the one that takes control by deciding and giving the other person full reign, you see? It's like we're not even seeing that these are controlling behaviors that are meant to keep us safe.

doesn't mean we're control freaks. It simply means our priority is self-protection. It is not self-activation. And as an entrepreneur, we have to get comfortable with our own power. And women, it's like a hot potato. It's like, I have this power and I've got this business and who do I give it to? I'll give it to They can tell me how much to charge.

You see, they can tell me when they're going to deliver this thing that I need right now today. And that we have to build tolerance to our own capacity for making decisions and not worrying so much that we're offensive. Because we're really not that offensive.

OK, there are so many things that I want to dig into everything that you just said there sort of like earlier where you're like, I got like three different things I want to say. So we're going to dive into just that after this quick message. All right, welcome back to the Real Women Real Business podcast. And Anne was just she just dropped a whole lot of truth bombs on us, basically. That has us all, I think, reflecting inward. And if you didn't catch it all, rewind this episode and actually write these down as journal prompts, because I think this would be something that would be really important for you to

journal on not just once but multiple times. So the first thing that you mentioned was talking about, well, what do I need listing five needs that I need? And what I found interesting about that is in my head, as you're saying that I'm thinking, but I can see so many of us still saying I just need as opposed to like, I need this, I just need, I only need and limiting ourselves. So I think

want to make sure that obviously we're not putting that word just or only into that phrasing, but do you find when you have people doing this exercise that their their their needs are small? Is that the right word?

They could be anywhere from quite surprised to I don't have any needs or, you know, it really doesn't matter because I've learned to be so disconnected from what they are. So I pull out my handy dandy Maslow's hierarchy of needs or, you know, in the strivings. food, I've got shelter, yeah. You think that if we are stuck at the level of survival,

we're just there with, you know, I need to survive, I need to belong, they might be the only ones. And your business can be thriving and you can still be sweating, I have to get more clients and I have to make more money and I have to, you know, because the only need that you know how to meet is that need to survive. You don't think, well, I have a steam need, so I need to get out and, you know, buy a new wardrobe or I need to get out and...

I always wanted to do this thing with my hair or my nails or, you know, but I always wanted to learn to paint or garden or, you know, all of the things that we need that would help or even go on a speaking tour for some people. I want to speak in my business community about what I'm doing in my story. But they think that there's something wrong with having

these ego needs because the ego needs feeding too. It's like I want to be recognized. I'm going to show up on your show and look halfway decent and right. I think that kind of leads into the next thing that you were talking about, which was the entitlement. And I love just that framing of it as entitlement because when you start thinking, we kind of have this negative association with the world. do. Yeah. But

When you put it that way of like, well, why are they entitled to something that I'm not entitled to? I mean, when we think about what we deserve and what we should qualify for and are eligible for, why aren't we entitled to the same courtesies, to the same money as others that we're giving to others? And how do we give that to ourselves? So I really like using that word, but reframing it of like, I

am entitled to this. Yeah, it's the Goldilocks story, you see, because in narcissism, your entitlement is inflated. In codependence, your entitlement is deflated. And when you're healthy and operating from your authentic self, is simply you're entitled. You're entitled to ask always, but you have to bear hearing no, you can't have that.

And you're also entitled to say, not? ⁓ If I can't get it that way, I'll get it this way. Negotiate for it. You are always entitled. And that's huge. the negotiation thing. Okay. Let's talk about this for a moment. ⁓ Many, many episodes ago, I had Cheryl P. Pinto on the show and she talked about ⁓ just our relationship with money.

And she recommended a book. It's called Ask For It. And I have recommended this to so many of my clients because it really does reframe things and talks about how women's association with money ⁓ has actually, we are the reason why we are paid less. So when they've done these studies and they identify that men are paid more than women, we can't entirely blame the patriarch saying, well, the man's keeping us down and they just won't offer us more money. And don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that that doesn't exist because it absolutely does.

But what we're feeling to include in that equation is the fact that they did this full study on it of graduates and the jobs that they were getting offered and who was making more money. And the men were making more money not because they were offered more money, but because they asked for more money. I think, again, going back to I don't want to offend anyone for women when someone tells us what their price is. Well, we don't want to. ⁓

devalue them by saying that they're not worth whatever it is that they have set their prices. But negotiation isn't always about telling someone you want a discount. It could be about saying, well, you know, I see the value here, but I wonder if you could add in this other thing to make it a little bit more worthwhile or can we change the scope a little bit? Like it doesn't have to be just this I want a discount on things, but so often someone presents us with this is what it's going to cost. We're like, cool, here's my card. Like it's just a quick transaction.

Whereas men often negotiate and I actually had this conversation with one of my clients recently because most women have probably, especially female entrepreneurs, have probably had the experience of a bully negotiator. And it's usually this the strong man who's basically just demanding that you give them a lower price. That's not negotiation. You're not going to demand things necessarily. There's a negotiation is all about

working together to figure out what a win-win scenario looks like for both of you. So going back to my client with the real estate agent, what she should be doing is presenting her price. If the agent says they can't afford that, okay, let's review what we're doing here and see are there areas we can skip in terms of staging in the house or are there other things that we can scale back to better meet their budget? There are ways to meet a client's budget that doesn't necessarily have to mean I take less profit or I take less money for my valuable services.

But again, as women, because we've had that experience, I think with that aggressive bully type of negotiation tactics, we don't know how to negotiate. And we're so afraid of offending someone by saying that we don't want to pay whatever price it is that they're offering to us. So do you have any tips for navigating some of this? And it's challenging women in general, and I'll generalize this because

You know, the right brain and left brain negotiate in different ways. And because the right brain, as you know, it's more holistic and it concerns itself with both parties, you see. And the difficulty in being a female entrepreneur is that we have difficulty separating ourselves out from the service or product that we're providing. And so if someone's rejecting the price, they're rejecting me as opposed to, you can't afford that. What can you afford?

And so what we decide to do, and this is emotional decision-making, what we decide to do is resolve the conflict that we feel by falling on the sword, meaning we cut ourselves off at the knees and we devalue ourselves. And then it's so easy to blame that strong man, isn't it? Because they're out there pushing and...

We're just not saying, well, I'm prepared to walk away and not have anything if you're going to bully me. And here's something that I often work with with my clients is I give them words because we get stuck in that freeze. The brain just goes freeze. And it's like, what do I say when someone's doing this? And of course, the brain goes into capitulating. I'll just give in and make it okay. It doesn't even say.

I need a moment, right? That getting the words to say so that you can come back into your own so that that doesn't work for me. Nope, that still doesn't work for me. I don't care how loud you get and how much you're pushing, it's still not working for me. Right, right. And I think, you know, it's interesting. I feel like everyone in the world

needs a lesson in negotiation. Like this is a skill that should be taught from a young age. I know for myself, I'm not gonna say that I'm a master at it by any means. And I definitely have learned over the years in my years in entrepreneurship that there are things that I should have been negotiating that I wasn't. I think I've been pretty good. There are definitely things where I didn't always take it at face value. Like I negotiated my warehouse terms and.

various contract terms and pricing and everything else. But there's other times where I'm like, wow, why didn't I negotiate that? Why did I just take that at its value? And I think again, like so much of this comes from our childhood. I was definitely encouraged to negotiate as a child. And I think that's been helpful for me. My parents actually used to always say that I should become a lawyer because I would come up with a really good argument for why I should be allowed to do certain things.

But that's essentially negotiation. Like if you can come up with a reasoning that makes sense and benefits both parties. And when I would come up with this reasoning, like, well, actually, this is better for you because and I would phrase it like that. My parents were like, you really need to be a lawyer or something. You need to be debating. Of course, it's not the direction I went into, but little did I know just how much of this was going to apply to entrepreneurship, of course. Well, and if you see how natural for some people's brains and even women who are more left brain oriented, for example.

They have an easier time of making that separation that's needed where you're not negotiating for your personal value. And the first step in being an effective negotiator is separating out your feelings from what you're trying to negotiate. And for some people that can be almost impossible to do that.

So interesting. I mean, I think it's going to take some time for a lot of us to rewire our brains. Yes, truly. These are learned behaviors. But I think being able to frame it that way and identify it, I think that what you're talking about, about that delayed development as opposed to being a disorder and just looking at like, well, while I was developing as a child, I was learning.

the wrong way to do things and it's time to rewire things so that I can correct course essentially and start making better decisions, advocating for myself more. And I think it's not gonna happen overnight, but taking some of those baby steps and getting some of those little wins, like just try to negotiate something small tomorrow. What's something small that you can negotiate tomorrow that like, and especially if you can do it with someone that you may never see again, you know? ⁓

I'm not sure if you're familiar with the paperclip to the house story. So and I'm going to butcher the story and I do apologize. But essentially, I can't remember the guy's name, but he's quite famous for having traded a paperclip for a house. And essentially, it took him a couple of years to do this. And this was his goal. He started with a paperclip and he negotiated with someone to trade that paperclip for something that they had a value. I think it was like a stapler or something. Again, I'm probably butchering this whole story.

But then he gets from that item to another bigger item and he sort of bartered his way essentially to a house from this paperclip didn't pay a dime, but this is some solid negotiating, right? Yes. So even if it's something as simple as maybe you buy a coffee tomorrow and you ask the next person in line if they'll trade you coffees or something like, you know, something so simple and silly but just or

If I give you my donut, will you give me this? Like just try negotiating something silly that doesn't have any outcome so that you're not so emotionally attached to it, I guess. Well, truly, and when we think about how often we make decisions based on fear and based on our desire for people to like us as though we're already likable.

You see, some people will like us, some people won't. Some people will be upset with what we say, other people won't. And that it's not our job to make everyone happy. Our survival in childhood may have felt like it depended on making our parents happy, but we can't keep living as though that reality still exists. Because if we do, we will get the same thing that we got in our childhood.

And that's the barrier that each and every entrepreneur needs to look at breaking because my business needs to go beyond survival. And in case anyone missed that, it is not your responsibility to make everyone happy. I just really want to make sure that everyone heard that because we have heard this phrase before. But, man, I we need some reminders sometimes just to kind of drill it all home. ⁓ But this is.

You shared a lot today that I think is going to really resonate. Like I said, I think we all want to offer ourselves some grace as we are relearning things and rewiring some of these deeply ingrained responses while still continuing to run your business. There's something to be said for if you're quitting smoking, for example, one of the best things to do is stop going to the places that you would normally smoke, like take yourself out of the situation.

It's difficult when we're still in the business. We're like, I'm still running the business every day. I'm still doing all the things that I'm doing. So we've got to start recognizing those patterns so that we can interrupt them and rewire it. if someone's listening to this and, ⁓ you know, again, we've given, you've given a lot of great tips today, but if there's one thing you really want them to take away from today's episode, what would you say that is? I think the dual agenda.

You see, I always recommend to people think about and ask yourself the question, am I coming from fear or am I coming with a desire to achieve my potential? And they're very different places. It's so automatic. Fear is such a strong driver of our behavior. And when we start asking that question and slowing everything down,

We have time to shift, you know? And yes, that would be easier to say, oh, sure, I can do that, rather than saying, I can't do that. I'm swamped. Just that simple, like you were saying, the simplicity of putting up that little here is my reality. I'm entitled to say no. Yeah. Yeah. My dad used to have a sign at work.

that said, lack of planning does not constitute my emergency. That's wonderful. And so what I think everyone should do is take exactly what you said there. I operating here out of fear? Or how did you phrase it? Am I operating out of fear or? Or moving myself in the direction of my goals or potential. So let's write that down. Put it somewhere where you can find it, whether it's on a

Post-it notes, several Post-it notes, your screen saver, put in a little ⁓ notebook on your computer, wherever, depending on where you're working and how your daily life activities, wherever they take you. But have this as somewhere that you can easily access it so that you can pull up this question and ask it of yourself every time you find yourself in one of these situations making a decision. Because I think that's incredibly powerful. Anne, thank you so much for sharing that. I really appreciate it. This has been

Such an incredible conversation. I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show. Well, and thank you so much for facilitating it. I love that your audience is poised to receive some of this information. Just in closing, one of the things that I really wanted to drive home is how young we are in our evolution and that we all need to be so very patient with ourselves that we are not

born fully developed. That that is something that distinguishes human beings and that yeah, we might have been a little delayed, but let's just jump right back on the path to our potential because we're all evolving. We don't have to give ourselves shit every single day of our lives for not being further along that we need to be more supportive in that regard. I think that's great. It's like the old saying, you

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today. Now, it truly, it would have been great. Sure. If we had learned some of these things from a younger age, but that doesn't prevent us from starting that now. So I think that's beautiful. And so again, the name of your book is Not Broken, Just Delayed the hidden history of codependency that still holds us back. And that is coming out in October of this year, which is 2025. And I I'm excited to check it out because I think it's going, if it's anything like the conversation today.

⁓ I'm sure I'm going to enjoy it. So thank you again, Anne. And thank you for having me. And all right. So all of those resources that we mentioned, of course, will be in the show notes for you. So be sure to check those out. And if what we're saying today has resonated with you, I hope that you will allow us to continue to be a part of your journey every week. Continue to tune in, subscribe where you get your favorite podcast, leave us a review. Those reviews really do help. And of course, the best way to really show your support, not only for this podcast, but for our community.

is to share this episode with someone that you know really needs to hear it. And I'm going to tell you right now that every single one of you knows someone that can benefit from this episode. So please don't keep this a secret and share it with them. And until next time, keep thriving.