Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
Wed, 12 Mar 2025
For Women’s Month, I’m sharing insights from three powerful women; Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tonya Lester, on personal growth, healing, and transformation. The episode explores key themes of building radical self-confidence, overcoming perfectionism, understanding manifestation, and developing self-compassion. It provides listeners with strategies to rewire their mindset, tap into their intuition, and create meaningful change in every area of your life. In This Episode You Will Learn How often to check in if your actions still match your goals. Ways to practice self-compassion and intentionally build resilience and personal power. Manifest with conviction, not just mental calculation. The trap to avoid so you don’t stay stuck. How to build unshakable self-worth. Resources + Links Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/monahan Download the CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning at NetSuite.com/MONAHAN. Want to do more and spend less like Uber, 8x8, and Databricks Mosaic? Take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com/MONAHAN. Get 10% off your first Mitopure order at timeline.com/CONFIDENCE. Get 15% off your first order when you use code CONFIDENCE15 at checkout at jennikayne.com. Call my digital clone at 201-897-2553! Visit heathermonahan.com Sign up for my mailing list: heathermonahan.com/mailing-list/ Overcome Your Villains is Available NOW! Order here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com If you haven't yet, get my first book Confidence Creator Follow Heather on Instagram & LinkedIn
Chapter 1: Who are the featured speakers in this episode?
with three unstoppable women, Lisa Bilyeu, co-founder of Quest Nutrition and Impact Theory, psychotherapist and author, Katherine Morgan Schaffler, and Theta Healing practitioner, Tanya Lester, to bring you the very best of their insights on healing, confidence, and reimagining perfectionism as a source of your power.
You'll learn how to build radical self-confidence, tap into your intuition, and align your body and mind for transformational growth. Together, we'll say goodbye to burnout, gain a whole new perspective on perfectionism, and understand how to heal from the inside out.
This episode is literally handpicked, life-changing strategies and mic drop moments that will rewire your mindset so you can up-level every aspect of your life. Here we go. Come on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my closeup.
The other thing you mentioned that I find really interesting is sunk cost fallacy. And for anyone that doesn't really understand what that means, so often, whether it be in a relationship or in a business, we say, I've got 10 years in on this. I can't, I know I'm not happy.
Chapter 2: What is the sunk cost fallacy and how does it affect decision-making?
I can't walk away now because that's basically saying the last 10 years I was wrong or that it's a waste or there's gotta be, I can't do that now. There's too much invested in this. And sunk cost fallacy is so interesting to me. I've done it in relationships before. I'm four years into this. I can't give up now. It makes absolutely no sense.
every time I've had that internal dialogue with myself, and of course, eventually something will happen or I'll have an epiphany that I do need to make that change. And after I do, I have this moment where I sit down and say, yet again, here I am again, because so many of us have patterns in our life. I stayed too long. And so that's dialogue I'm constantly aware of now.
I don't allow myself to say, just because I was in something for a year or two years, doesn't mean it was too long. You know what? If 10 years ago was the right time. Now is the only time. Pull the trigger.
Chapter 3: How can you align your actions with your goals effectively?
Yeah, it's so true. I go to like, is it still moving me towards your goal? Yes or no. So actually there's two parts. Is it still moving you towards your goal? And is this still fulfilling? Because those things sometimes, right? It's like, well, no, we get a, you know, especially in entrepreneurial world these days, it's like, you know, be on your grind, hustle, hustle, work hard, move forward.
And so the question is, yes, work hard, but are you working smart? And are you working in the right direction? It's like, think of, you know, I love analogies. So just thinking about going in the car and it's like, you want to drive to New York, right? But you actually take the wrong freeway and you keep going and you're just like, But I'm on this freeway now.
It will eventually get me to New York. But do you want it to take 10 times longer? What if you now realize, actually, I don't want to go to New York anyway? We're like having these assessments of, am I still on the right path? Do I still want to go to New York? All these assessments, just because you're one year in, doesn't mean that you shouldn't. In fact, that's when you should.
Chapter 4: What are the steps to build radical self-confidence?
I wish I did that. In eight years, I didn't do that even once. Me and my husband, we play this game called no bullshit. What would it take? And so the no bullshit, what would it take to X, Y, and Z? So let's say your goal is to build a company and you're like, okay, no bullshit. What would it take? It would take me. seven years to make a hundred thousand dollars.
And in that path, I will have to give up on spending Saturdays with my partner and I can no longer get my hair done. Like that's what no bullshit. What would it take me to get to your goal? Actually refine, where are you going? No bullshit. What is it going to take to get you there? And then are you willing to do it? Because that's the thing, right?
Like for you with your C-suite, if you're just like, I want to run this company, Great. Now you've got the goal. You know what you want to do. How do you get that? Okay. Well, I need to fill this position. I need to work my way up the ladder. Okay, great. What skill sets are you going to build to work your way up the ladder?
Now, when you're in the process each year, you need to assess, are you having fun? Is it a life you still want? You have to replay the no bullshit. What would it take? Because now your goal still may be, I want to be to the top, but you know what? I actually really want to have a partner. And I've given up dating for four years. And the truth is, this may not be the life I want anymore.
I want to date. I want to go out there. Okay, so now maybe you've assessed your goal of running the company may not align with your day-to-day. And now you better reassess, does your goal still match the life you want? And I think that to your point of how do you make sure you're not wasting your years is the reassessment of is your goal still your goal?
And are your acts on a day to day filling your heart? Because if it's not, do you actually want to get to your goal in the first place?
I like that idea of revisiting and constantly reevaluating what those goals are and accepting that what was working for you even two years ago just might not be working anymore anymore. And that's okay. I remember just growing up that it was this one path and it was corporate America and that's all I ever thought of. So when I was in it, it was tunnel vision.
I never thought, what is available to me? Is there anything available to me outside of this? And It's so important that we say, we don't have to check the box and go to college and go to corporate America and get this prize. We can actually instead pick our head up and say, what suits me now? Just like that conversation that you had with your husband. And I so appreciate you sharing that.
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Chapter 5: Why is self-compassion more than just being nice to yourself?
You feel like shit because you have to confront the fact that there is no substitute for self-worth and there's no substitute for real connection with other human beings, you know?
So you talk about, thank you for breaking that down, first of all, but you talk about these underlying issues, lacking self-worth, fear, anxiety. How do you guide people away from those things into self-love and self-compassion and allowing and embracing and channeling this into a power instead of a holdback?
Yeah, well, that was what I was most excited to talk about in the book because I think we're getting a lot of that wrong with this, like, just love yourself. We talk about it like a panacea and it's like, you know, someone who's struggling to love themselves hears that and they don't know what that really means.
I mean, I don't even know what that really means when people say, like, just be nice to yourself. It's like, what... give me actionable steps, you know? And I think what we, again, to go back to the emotional illiterate piece is like the self-compassion. And this is what I am so excited to talk about. So I'm so glad you asked me that question.
Self-compassion is not being really nice and sweet and polite to yourself. Self-compassion is a three-step resiliency building skill. And the framework that I use in the Perfectionist Guide to Losing Control is based on research by Dr. Kristen Neff, who was the first person to really research into compassion. She's like, for self-compassion, what Brene Brown is to vulnerability, right? She's like,
the one. And she breaks it down into these three steps. And we don't know what those three steps are. And we don't understand that when you exercise self-compassion that ushers you into a sense of real accountability for your life and real power instead of this like petty control.
I mean, that's the spine of the book is like, we are trading our inherent power for all of this control that doesn't even work and is an illusion in the first place. And it's tantamount to like trying to move a car by getting behind it and pushing it instead of just sitting in the driver's seat and driving it.
But we don't know the difference between control and power or like how to access our power. And one of the best ways to access power is through self-compassion. But we live in a culture which teaches us that self-compassion is kind of like this hippie thing to do. And especially in corporate America, it's not the move, right?
That you need to be hard on yourself and punitive with yourself and bust your ass and do all of this stuff. And that's what's going to get you across the finish line. And the research says the exact opposite. When people are punitive with themselves, they burn out. They don't operate with premium energy. They're not solutions oriented. They have less creativity.
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Chapter 6: What are the three steps of self-compassion according to Dr. Kristen Neff?
Let's just say you had a really bad meeting and you're starting the negative self-talk of like, I can't believe I said that. I can't believe I said that. I am so embarrassed. That was such a blah, blah, blah, all the things. Self-compassion would look like disrupting that. and saying, God, it is really hard to feel this embarrassed. I am in pain. Like this hurts. This is the worst.
And you have to acknowledge that. Whereas I think when people, when we tell people to just be nice to themselves, they have the exact same flustered meeting. And then they're like, it's okay. You're okay. And it like falls flat because we know what the truth feels like. And that's not the truth. You're not okay. Like, and it wasn't an okay meeting. You didn't do a good job. Like,
And that's the truth. And that doesn't have any commentary on who you are, right? It just means you had a bad meeting. It was not your shiniest moment. And so that self-kindness is being able to acknowledge like, God, this is hard. I'm hurting. The second one is common humanity. which is being able to say that we live amongst billions of people and billions of people have lived before us.
And hopefully if we, you know, can switch gears, billions of people will live after us on this world, which is in fire. And someone somewhere is having your exact experience and like, you're not alone in that. And that is part generating connection, part like Get out of the narcissistic mindset that like you are the only one who's ever suffered this much.
And the more you're experiencing something that is taboo in our culture to talk about, the more shame you're going to feel and the more alone you're going to feel. So, for example, sexual molestation, right? We don't talk about that. It's not okay to talk about it, you know, all the things.
So someone who is feeling that is not going to feel a sense of common humanity because it feels so uncommon to them. They're probably thinking nobody in my circle has ever had to experience something like this or if you, you know.
No, it's so common. I want people to know this and it's so common.
It's so common, you know, same with domestic violence, you know, suicide, all of these issues which are so common but are still shamed in our culture and which are still weighed down with stigma. It's like, if you're feeling that stuff, one way to kind of generate common humanity is... Just imagining yourself in a room full of people who are talking about that experience.
And that's why support groups are helpful, for example, because they generate a sense of common humanity of like, oh, I'm not the only one who's X, Y, and Z. And that's why frameworks like AA and things like that, it's a community. It's community. And what community is, is like shared common humanity. And then the last component of self-compassion is mindfulness.
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