Hi everybody, and welcome back to Resilience Unravelled And with me, Vasavi Kumar, who tells me she's going to hit the beach on Friday. And I'm not jealous at all. Honestly, I'm not jealous at all. I'm jealous. I'm jealous. Vasavi, how are you?
Vasavi:I'm great, Russell. Thank you. Yeah, and thank you for reminding me once again that I'm going to be going to Mexico this Friday. So excited. You're not jealous at all?
Russell:Not at all. Not one little bit.
Vasavi:I've been really wanting to go on this vacation. I'm so happy. I'm excited for Friday.
Russell:And so where in the world are you?
Vasavi:I'm in Austin, Texas right now. I'm originally a New Yorker, born and raised, but I've been here for ten years, almost.
Russell:Austin, Texas. Why go to Austin, Texas?
Vasavi:Before Austin, Texas, I was living in Kansas with my husband. I was married a long time ago and went from New York to Kansas because he had bought a business in Kansas. And then were there for about three years and I was like, we need to leave. And so, Austin was just a straight twelve-hour drive. So, we just drove to Austin.
Russell:Interesting. Great. Well, tell us a bit about yourself.
Vasavi:Well, there's a lot to me, but I would say the things that I think people really need to know is on a professional level, I'm an author. I'm a licensed therapist and coach and now really am focused on not just being an author, talking about the book, but for me, my creative expression, which is through my voiceover work. I love seeing and hosting events. I love really bringing people together and using my brain in creative ways. On a personal front, let's see, what do I want people to know? I've really been focusing a lot on resting, like reminding myself that I'm not a robot and that it's so okay to rest. And the more I really honour my creative side, the more I'm resting and just not having an agenda. And I feel like that's something that I want people to know about me.
Vasavi:Because to know me is to know that I'm an advocate for you going after your dreams and being courageous and taking action and getting whatever you want in life, but at the same time not burning out and hating the process. Life is meant to be created, not consistently reacted to. Right. We want to create the experience that we have in our life, and we can do that when we actually slow down enough to ask ourselves, what do we really want? That's just a little bit about me and how I think.
Russell:Yeah, indeed. And you talk a little bit on the website about understanding the power of resilience. So, talk us through something around that about the developing your bold voice. What does that mean.
Vasavi:In my book? Say it out loud. The focus is really on helping you talk to all the voices in your head, because we all have voices in our head that tell us, don't say this, be like this, don't be like this. And so, I really wanted to offer a what's next? What's next? Once you read my book and you understand how to talk to yourself, then you can be pretty clear on how you speak to others. Because how we speak to others or how we show up with others is really nothing more than a reflection of our relationship with ourselves. So, my book is to help you really with the relationship with yourself and all the different parts of you and the different voices in your head. But once you do that, then what? Well, then after that, you get to refine your voice how you want to speak, what you want to put out into the world.
Vasavi:And that's what your bold voice is. Your bold voice is just really the voice that's you it's a bold move to be yourself in a society where we are told to be like everybody else. And so that's why I call it your bold voice.
Russell:Right, okay, so basically there's the inner voice, and the bold voice is the external voice.
04:19
Vasavi That's exactly right.
Russell:Okay, so can you give me some examples of these inner voices?
Vasavi:I mean, think about if you're about to do something scary, you might have a voice that's like, are you sure you want to do that? Wait, but what about this? Oh my God, have you thought about this? That voice of constantly just like keeping you on your toes. Or you might have a voice where let's say you have been working on yourself talk for a while, and usually you have a little bit of social anxiety before you go into an event. And in the past, you might have had a voice that was like, oh my God, don't go. Oh my God, are these people going to like you? What do you look like? Oh my God, are people going to want to talk to you? Are you going to be by yourself? Who are you going to talk to if you don't know anyone? Let's say you've been working on yourself talk because you read my book.
Vasavi:Your voice might sound something like, you're going to be okay, like, just go in, be yourself. You're amazing. People in your life think you're awesome. You know that? You've been like, you are such a joy to be around. Just walk into that room with a smile on your face. You know how to make friends with people. You might be a little bit more encouraging with yourself. So those voices that we have in our head can range from a fearful voice to a critical voice to a voice that's like, oh, you're nobody. Nobody knows who you are. Nobody cares who you are. Really mean voice. Or my hope is that by reading my book and learning how to talk to yourself, by using these verbal practices and prompts that I give you'll start to be kinder to yourself internally.
Russell:Right? Okay. Makes a lot of sense. Where do these voices come from?
Vasavi:I don't think that we're born with these voices. I think these voices are planted in our head. Right. Because we are empty sponges when we walk in. We are just blank, slates clean sponges when we walk in, when we're born, and we're brought into this world. And so, I believe those, they come from the people around us who are raising us. That can be your biological parents or whoever raised you. And not all the voices in your head are bad. They're probably some hopefully you have some caring voices in your head. Maybe you had a wonderful teacher that really believed in you, and maybe you have a voice of like, you can do it. But let's say in your home, growing up, maybe nobody talked to you, and so you don't really have many voices in your head. Or maybe in your house there was a lot of fighting and a lot of screaming and a lot of verbal reprimanding, and it wasn't very nice all the time.
Vasavi:If people in your life who have treated you unkindly don't actually apologise to you ever or repair, if we don't have resolution, we can often make those voices that were showed to us by the people in our life and make it our own, and they're not. So, the voices in your head don't belong to you.
Russell:Yeah. And that's usually parental voice, isn't it? Or people of authority. So that's quite interesting because obviously there's a lot of people that don't have voices in their head because they can't, for whatever reason. So, they can still have an external voice though, can't they? They don't have the same mechanism to have the internal side, but they can still have a positive way of having their own voice for themselves because that's an external thing. That's a set of choices, I'm guessing. And I'm thinking when I was sort of struck by with what you were talking about, there was a set of positive affirmations. But it sounds to me like it's just it's not just what you say, it's how you're saying it.
Vasavi:Oh, absolutely. Tone of voice is everything, right? I could try to convey a message and say it in five different ways. Let's just say I had some feedback to give you. Okay, I'm just going to use feedback as a great example because a lot of times we're very critical with ourselves, and it's not actually helping us to move forward. Learning how to give feedback and how to say it is really important. So, let's just say, Russell, I wanted to give you some feedback and say, you could have asked me better questions. I don't actually believe this. I think you're asking great questions, but I can say to you, Russell, those questions that you were asking me were awful. They're awful. How does that make you feel? Does it make you feel very good? No matter how much confidence you may have, it still hurts.
Vasavi:Words hurt. The way you say certain things hurt. I could say to you, hey, Russell, I really enjoyed our conversation. Are you open to a little feedback? I could ask you first, are you open to it? And you'll say, yeah, sure. Because you're a hungry learner and you want to learn, right?
Russell:Yeah.
Vasavi:Think about that eager child growing up who was so hungry to learn. But there was like, that one nasty teacher that made that kid feel like you're asking too many questions. Boom. You just killed that kid's curiosity. There goes that kid. So, I could say to you, hey, if you're open to feedback, you'd say, yeah. And I'd say, I really liked a lot of the questions that you asked me, and here's my suggestion. I would go even deeper with your questions. I would try to pull back a layer. Do you see the way I say that to you, Russell? It's like, I'm trying to help you here, right? The tone of voice, I say, the suggestions that I give you, it's not threatening. I'm not trying to make you feel bad about yourself, right? I'm trying to help you. Very different tone of voice. I'm not trying to make you feel bad about yourself.
Vasavi:I'm trying to help you. And people can feel that. You can feel when someone is trying to help you rather than they're out to get you. And so, we need to be that way with ourselves, and we can play.
Russell:With our voice and you're talking about something quite interesting there, because actually, you're a professional voiceover artist, so you know how the instrument works. But a lot of people don't know that do they? They don't know how to get shade, different tonality, light in a rise and fall, all those sorts of different things. So, is that something you need to practice?
Vasavi:Yeah, it's just training. That's why I have a bold voice training program in September. You can go to my website to learn more. But that's really the vibe of my training program, which is playing with your voice, putting some personality into your voice, and then speaking won't be so scary, right? Because you have to play with your voice. You have to enjoy the sound of your voice. I love listening to myself talk. What I mean is, I'm not shy to use my voice, and we need to use our voice. And our bold voice is really not just the voice of truth within ourselves, but it's also the voice that stands up for other people and has something to say and wants to use their voice for a force of good.
Russell:So that's really interesting. So, I'm interested in the way that you're now sort of widening it out from an individual, because there are a lot of marginalised communities out there that don't have a voice. Do you think that's down to the individuals, or do you think that's down well, what do you think it is down to? Because it could be literal, not having a voice or not having a collective voice, perhaps.
Vasavi:I think it's a both. I think as individuals, we have a responsibility to find out how we want to use our voice to stand up for us. Even when it feels like no one is there looking out for us, we have to be the ones to stand up for ourselves. And once we have that strength, we can really do that for other people. Right. So, it's both an individual responsibility and a collective responsibility. But it starts with the individual first. The collective is just made up of individuals. Individuals have to take personal responsibility for their situation no matter what. We can sit there and focus on the collective. Yes, there is a system in place. There are injustices in place. But the end of the day, that can feel really big for one individual. So, I'm suggesting that you focus on the one thing you do have control over, which is you and your thoughts and your beliefs and how you choose to spend your time and how you choose to spend your energy, how you choose to speak to yourself. You have lots of things you do have control over.
Russell :15
Yeah, absolutely.
Vasavi:Right. Your attitude.
Russell:Yeah, well, indeed. And so why a book? Why write one?
Vasavi:Why not write one?
Russell:Well, I imagine you wrote it for a specific purpose.
Vasavi:Well, yeah. I mean, I think it's when you've gone through a lot in life and you have knowledge that you want to share others, you want to put it into a form that people can digest. And so, I really love the process of writing. And so, when I got my book offer my deal to write my book, I said yes, because if you're given an opportunity to share what you've learned to help other people, then you should take it.
Russell:And who's it written for?
Vasavi:It's written for anyone who has voices in their head. And they know that these voices in their head are not their own voices, and they want to be able to really go after the things that they want in life and stop being stopped. Stop being stopped by the voices in their head.
Russell:Right. Okay. So, give me some examples of things I might learn if I buy the book. Other than stopping the voices in my head, what else has it got going for?
Vasavi:You might learn some simple, practical ways for you to really get clear on what you want and what you don't want in your life. Ways to organize your mind, ways to organise the different ideas that you have. This is really about verbal regulation, using your voice to organise your life. When you have so many thoughts and ideas in your head, if you leave them in your head, it can feel really like it's just loud and taking up a lot of space. But I offer simple, even some written exercises that are just very simple to help you dump everything out of your head onto paper and then coupling it with your voice to really solidify it.
Russell:How do you couple it with your voice? That's really interesting. I mean, you say it out loud, for example.
Vasavi:So as I was saying before you kind of cut me off just now, is that you write a list out. I have an exercise in my book where you write out a list of what you don't want in your life and what you do want in your life, and then you say out loud the things that you don't want because you really got to feel it. No more lying to yourself. Here's the thing. When you say it out loud, you cannot lie to yourself anymore if you keep it in your head. You can lie to yourself about the things that you want and the things that you don't want. But once you hear something, you can't unhear it. So that's why I have you say out loud your don't want list, your want list, so you can remember what you said and then act on those things, which is part of the exercises that I lay out in the book.
Russell:Very good. And where do I find it?
Vasavi:You can find it at your favourite bookstore. It's everywhere. Amazon, Barnes and Noble or you can just go to my website and order the book.
Russell:Brilliant. Anything on social media, for people to follow.
Vasavi:Yeah, you can find me on Instagram, and my handle is my name is Vasavi.
Russell:Brilliant. Love it. Thank you very much. I'm going to go and buy myself a copy.
Vasavi:Thank you, Russell.
Russell:No problem at all. It's been a joy to talk to you. So, thank you so much for spending time with us today.
Vasavi:Thank you.
Russell: