Confidence doesn't live in stress and anxiety. This is one of my many favorite quotes from the following interview with Rene Dominguez. As we discuss the topic of unshakable self-confidence. She reminds us that “where attention goes, energy will flow”. And as successful women, she challenges us to reprogram to do” easy”, instead of hard. In describing the hamster wheel of negative self-talk, she illustrates how self-confidence is actually reflection. It's actually your past successes that help you build self-confidence. Not looking forward to something you need to do. Not looking at when I do this or want to accomplish that, but rather looking back Renee dives right into a couple exercises that we can use and easily put into practice right away. So let's go, let’s “step into unshakeable self-confidence”!
Okay. Renee, before diving into our exciting topic of unshakable self-confidence today, please tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and how you got into this work.
● Hi, Darla, thank you so much for having me here on your podcast. I'm so excited. My name is Renee Dominguez, and I am a leadership and transformational facilitator. And I work primarily with women who want to take their success to that next level, whether it's in their career, or it's in their business. And I'm excited. I have a deep passion for this conversation, this topic we're going to be discussing today.
Awesome. So yes, “stepping into unshakable self-confidence”. Let's start with how do you define self-confidence?
● Yes, great question and confidence. Most of us see it as something we need to achieve. We think it's something when I …fill in the blank when I get that degree, when I get that experience, when I get that job, when I get that job title, when I get this many clients when I accomplish x, y, z. But the truth of the matter is that confidence comes from the opposite direction for what you've already achieved. You've already put in the time you put in the reps, but we're so quick to discount them because we're always looking for the future. Oh, I need something else. So for me, Confidence comes on. What have I already done? What have I accomplished? What are those successes, whether they're big, whether they're small, it doesn't matter. They're still mine. And that's where confidence lives.
I love that definition. Having self-confidence being reflected in reflection, not always having to move forward. Oh, that's beautiful. Let's just take a minute and let that soak in.
So then what are some of the obstacles or roadblocks that the women you work with run into when it comes to self Confidence?
● That and that's so great. This is pretty typical of a lot of us, specifically with high performing women, who is what, who I work with, I work with high performing women, high achieving women, who are always crushing it. But they always still feel like I'm not enough. And that's where negative self-talk lives, it lives in that I'm not enough, I need to achieve more, I need to still prove myself. And we go on this hamster wheel of negative self-talk with a belief I'm not enough. But that actually the truth is, that's not true. But we tell ourselves that. So whenever our self negative self-talk comes up, I would love for your readers to get a pen and paper, or your listeners get a pen and paper and write out …. My negative self-talk tells me so for me, my negative self-talk tells me I'm not making enough. My negative self-talk tells me that I'm not doing enough. My negative self-talk tells me that I am playing small. And we want to run through this list of what is our negative self-talk telling us because unconsciously we may not be aware, it's running the show, and happiness to everything we don't need to be doing or want to be doing. Because we're programmed to run away from what we don't know. So if I want to make more money, I'm gonna run away from that because I'm like, I'm scared. What if I fail? So then my negative self-talk tells me what if you fail?
How practical to write those down. And then one thing I call it is “flip the script”, you know, take that negative self-talk and see how you can change those words around to become something positive.
● Exactly. So when you write out this list, because you want to get out of your head, my negative self-talk tells me then we get to flip the script.
Awesome.
● So…my I am worthy of my powerful self taught tells me that's how we can flip the script and that's where confidence comes because we are reflecting back. I am worthy. Have good fortune. I am worthy of abundance. My powerful self-talk tells me, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. I love this, I did this, I do this with my clients. And as always, it's such a game changer for them because it helps them to start thinking differently. Because where our attention goes to energy flow. So if I'm only thinking negatively, as you know, Darla, that's what I'm going to be achieving, right?
Yes, and I just want to stress again,” energy follows intention.” That's like one of the very first things people learn when they start talking about energy is that it does follow intention. So why not write those things down, find out what they are, and then begin to change them into something more positive. Renee, that's a beautiful, beautiful exercise. And I'm going to put you on the spot and say, “Do you have another quick mindset activity that you can share with us?”
● Yes, and I love this one, too. And this is a game changer as well. And we always want to have all these tools in our tool belt to see which ones work for us. We want to try them on. And I love having a morning routine that sets you up for success because you're intentional with what you're doing. You're intentional with where you're putting your energy, and you're intentional on giving yourself that space. And a lot of people might think like how does that relate to self-confidence, Renee? Well, it relates to it, because you're in charge, you're telling your body, you're telling your mind, you're telling your soul, we are important. And we are going to prioritize ourselves over everyone. So instead of getting your phone grabbing your phone, while you're still in bed and scrolling social media, looking at the news, we start to get into that mindset of I'll look at their doing it better or look at the world is not going to allow me to be successful, we start allowing negativity to enter our mindset. So when we can create an intentional morning routine where I'm going to meditate, or I'm going to exercise or I'm going to not look at my phone and TV for the next two hours. I'm going to read. I'm going to journal whatever it is that suits you. You get to choose you get to decide, you get to be intentional on how you want to show up, and your mind and body and soul are going to work together to serve you so that when you do start your day, you're coming from this place of Unshakable Confidence, because you set the tone for how you want to show up for the day, and you did not allow that negativity to come in. So when you're journaling, I am worthy of my powerful self-talk. What I see for myself is you get to create confidence with ease without you thinking, oh, I need to do this activity to create confidence. You're doing it and unconsciously, it's happening for you with ease.
I thoroughly believe in the morning routine, and I call it my non-negotiables.
● Yes.Oh, absolutely.
I work with my clients on that too. And in my upcoming book that's coming out in the fall. I talk about life hacks and non-negotiable life hacks. And there's a huge choice of things our listeners can do in the morning. Like Renee said, that is your foundation to feeling confidence.
● Yes, yes, absolutely. I love the title of your book because it's similar to mine. Mine is “Nine Proven Power Hacks to Live Your Most Successful Life” and in there, it's broken down to nine focal areas in our lives. So I love that, you know, they're getting it from all areas which tells them maybe there's something to this right.
So yours are power hacks and mine are life hacks. Isn't that a synchronicity?
● Yes, yes, I love that. And another thing I would love for your listeners to really grasp onto is that we are high achieving high performing women who are crushing it. We like to make the easy, hard. We know how to do” hard. “We know how to grind; we know how to hustle. We know how to have stress and anxiety. Do we know how to say no to things we want to say yes to? And it's a skill to learn how to lean into the easy, because we think it's easy. It's not right. And so I challenge all your listeners to think of one thing that they can do with ease, and just allow it to be easy. And when they want to make it difficult, do a quick check in, do I need to do this extra activity? Is it going to get me closer? Is it going to fast track me to my goal? Or is it actually going to keep me stuck or have me go backwards, because we need to do pattern disruptions to reprogram and retrain our brain. And that's where confidence comes in. It's the law of attraction. Law of Attraction has the word action inside attraction, we can't just think I'm just going to create a vision board, I'm just going to manifest, we have to take intentional action. And that's where as women, we love to see action in motion. And that's where confidence can come from. It can come from me taking action, and I am seeing momentum. And we want to start doing more things with ease. And this is something I personally work on each and every day, because I know how to do hard. And it's still a challenge for me to do “easy'' because I want to fill in time, my body's used to stress and anxiety. And confidence doesn't live there. Confidence does not live in stress and anxiety. It lives with being intentional, and celebrating, celebrating our successes. If we don't celebrate them, our body doesn't know when we've achieved them. So I love that and I share this with my clients and again, game changer for them, it blows their mind and I love seeing their facial reactions to it. It just always gives me so much excitement and appreciation for what I do to see how it impacts positively to others.
Beautiful, beautiful challenges everyone to do things with “ease and flow” … boy, I'm gonna put that on a post it note and put it on my bathroom mirror!
● yes. And then a lot of it too is our ego. We ignore easy because of our ego, it doesn't recognize it because we've trained our mind to live in the heart. So another self check in is when we want to make it hard. Ask yourself: Is this my ego trying to take over because I'm gonna give her a break?
Yes, yes, I really like that. Without breaking client confidentiality. Can you share a story of transformation with us that you had with a client or two?
● Yeah, so I had a client, well, let's call her Sally to protect her identity. And she was working in an organization that was soul sucking. And it got to a point where she lost all confidence in her skills. She lost confidence in herself. She felt like no one will ever value what I bring to the table. She knew how to hustle. She knew how to work hard. But she also knew how to play under the radar because she was always fearful of getting in trouble. And when she came to me, she's like, I just want to be a director of anything. I don't care, I just want out. And that was her again, unconsciously playing hard, because she didn't know if she might go into a situation that's even worse. So I walked her through slowing it down. I helped her with tapping into what have you already been successful with? What have you already achieved? And when she started listing that it blew her mind, because she couldn't argue with the fact that it was a fact she did accomplish all these things. And then I had her write her future job description. I had her write a dream, as if it could be possible. What would you want to be doing? Who would you want to be surrounding yourself with? How do you want to be feeling and showing up each and every day? And I'm going to tell you Darla, she kick and fought me and resisted me on doing it. She was literally in tears crying. I don't want to do this because she was so fearful of owning her brilliance of stepping into being a confident woman. And she fought me tooth and nail but I just kept loving her. And I kept helping her and walking her through. And I simplified it for her. Let's just not make it a project. Let's just think what would that look like? Where would you want to be? And I really broke it down for her where she was finally able to create that job description. She started networking, because she had confidence in what she's already accomplished. And in those conversations, people, organizations were attracted to her energy to her vision. Within three months, she got that dream job based on her job description that she wrote. They had one, but because she was speaking with so much confidence that they say, we'll take yours instead. And they gave her a job based on what she wanted. And with a salary that doubled what she used to be making. And this job is easier. So she's still struggling, because this job is easy. She's finding ways to make it difficult. So it's always a journey. It's always a process as we grow, we're going to have new levels of obstacles. But that's what you want to support, surround yourself with the support team, who are there to help you and lift you up. And I'd love her success story because she stepped into unshakeable self-confidence. But then she has a new level of confidence she gets to now step into so I love sharing her story and her similar stories from my clients that are just like that, but I really love hers, because she really took ownership. And again, she was kicking and screaming and fighting me along the way. She was crying. She was trying to justify why she couldn't do it. But she trusted me and she trusted the process. And now she is in a position she never in her lifetime thought she would ever achieve.
Oh, I love that example. Renee. Wow. And that refers right back to your definition of self-confidence as being more of a reflection. Yes. Then you went forward from that? Yes. Yeah. Great example. So that brings me into kind of a fun question. What do you consider to be your superpower?
● I love this question. And this is something I've been really honing in on. Like, Renee, what is your superpower? I've been traveling across the world, these last two months, I have been to three different continents. And I reflected again, doing exactly what I talked about reflecting back on what are my successes, what are my superpowers, and I'm gonna say the superpower that really stands out, is being able to listen and feel the energy of the words of the person that what they're saying, and help them find their truth. Their truth could be, what their purpose is, and help them create a strategy with ease. And I've been highly successful, just doing it just like let me test this out is this my superpower, and within 20 minutes of a conversation with somebody else, Darla, within 20 minutes, I'm able to help them hone in on what they truly want. And then give them the next three steps with ease on how to start making it their reality. And I'm going to tell you, that blows people's minds, it blows my mind, because I'm able to do it so easily within 20 minutes. And they're like “ I 'd hate to have spent years and 1000s hundreds of 1000s of dollars on coaches and programs. And you just gave me exactly what I needed and 20 minutes.”
Beautiful and that comes with honing that superpower in like you have.
● Yes, and I do want to stress how important it is to reflect to someone there to help them reflect on their truth. Because we value authenticity.
Yes, yes. So beautiful. When I first met you, you told me one of your favorite quotes was the one that kind of goes…. You are made up of the five people that you spend your most time with. Do you remember that? I do. I do. Well, you expand on that quote for us?
● Yeah, so there's different ways of sameness and we all have five different circles with different people in it. You might have five people at work you spend the most time with at home with your family, different friend groups. So you want to start taking stock on Who am I surrounding myself with? Am I struggling to get to that next level of my success? And you want to take inventory? Well Who am I surrounded myself with? Have they done it? Are they playing small and staying stuck? Am I surrounding myself with people who are energizing me and that are motivated me and are mentoring me? Are they keeping Meet in a place that makes them feel comfortable? Because when we elevate ourselves, we attract a different energy, different people. And the people that you surround yourself with before, may say, Hey, I don't relate to you anymore, you've changed and they're gonna say hurtful things to you to get you back to the role you used to play. And this is where confidence comes in, where you're like, I'm ready for more, I love you. And you, you know, you say this to yourself, you know, you, I love this person, they played a role. And I'm going to allow them to make space for someone else to fill that space in, who's going to help me in my journey for my next level. And that's hard. But we want to always do that. And you maybe want to keep those people around you still, but then create a new circle of people that are going to elevate you, you will always this is what I always work to achieve, I want to be the dumbest person in the room, I traveled, like I said to three different continents within two months, to be the dumbest person in the room. So I can learn. So I can absorb. So I can listen and hear how others are doing what's worked, what has not worked for them, and then take what I need from them to build something on my own with that information. So I can continue to uplevel.
So we always want to take stock. And this is not something that can be easily done. Because we might be fearful, our identity might be tied into these people. So I encourage you to then just ask yourself, is there another circle of five people I could surround myself with who are or who are already doing what I want to do. So I love that quote. And another one that I would love to share really quickly is you can't give yourself the freedom of your future, until you free yourself from the stories of your past. So if you're living in the stories of the past, you could never create the future you deserve.
Yes, yes, I just want to put big exclamation points behind that, Renee. We need to leave the past in the past where it belongs.
● Yes. And then take the lessons you learned along with you. So it wasn't for nothing. And we will always want to move forward and give ourselves that freedom. Give yourself that grace, because you deserve it. You own it, you are on a journey. And it's not about living in fear and failures. It's about learning. And what can I take from this to continue to uplevel myself so that I'm a role model for others so that I'm a mentor for others and I am leading by example. Life is a journey. It's not a destination, a destination is death. So let's enjoy the journey together.
Yes, and like the title of our interview, let's “step into unshakeable self-confidence.” And that's a continuation, it's a process of one level after another.
● Yes, yes, exactly.
Before we conclude…you know, I hesitate to conclude because this has been so wonderful. Would you please tell our interested listeners how they might take the next step with you? Where can they go from here after listening?
● Well, I love that there's several ways I would love for them to connect with me on Instagram as an empowered coach. I'm sure we'll put that in the show notes. And there's different ways to work with me. Everyone's at a different place. And I've definitely had a business where I help others curate and design the life that they want, the business that they want, that they want to create. It's not sign up for this. This is what I do. It's I'm here for you.
I love that where you curate. That's such a beautiful word. And it lets the people know that you're working together.
● Yeah, it's a partnership.
Absolutely. So is there anything else that you're feeling called to make sure that our listeners know before we end this conversation?
● I just finished a PDF. I will send it over to you so that we can share with everybody as well. And it's about how to communicate with unshakable confidence, and this is about communicating. How are you saying things are your words, mirroring what your body language is saying? We focus 100% on the words that we say, but people only hear 7% 55% comes from our body line. So I created a PDF, to give your listeners the tools on how to communicate with confidence so that they are seen as a go to expert that they are being heard, seen and respected. They are seen as the expert in what they're saying. And that's a skill that is not taught in universities. It's not taught in the workplace. It's not taught when we're growing up. And so it's a skill we need to learn. And sometimes we don't know what questions to ask on what we do need to learn. So I created I think it's five or seven pages on exactly how to communicate so that you are communicating with unshakable confidence.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, what a great gift for our listeners. And I appreciate you being with us today. Renee,
● Thank you so much for having me. I love this conversation. Thank you for the space to share this
Transcribed by https://otter.ai