February 18, 2025 • 52 mins
Shaté Hayes is a Career and Business Strategist on a mission to help creative professionals everywhere feel a sense of purpose and pride in their careers. She's the founder of Career Steward, were she helps creatives monetize their independent work so they can build fulfilling, well paying careers on their own terms.
In this conversation, Shaté Hayes shares her journey from being a professional dancer to helping creative professionals find purpose and pride in their careers. The discussion delves into the importance of self-love in career development, the struggles creatives face, and the significance of storytelling in building a fulfilling career. Shaté emphasizes the need for self-acceptance, the power of community support, and the various forms of creativity that exist beyond traditional definitions. The conversation concludes with practical tools for self-love and personal growth.
A Few Takeaways:
-Self-love is essential for building a fulfilling career.
-Creatives often struggle with under-earning and self-worth.
-Transitioning careers requires recognizing and valuing past experiences.
-Storytelling is a powerful tool in career development
Connect with Cilia on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/selfexpressedbabe/
Show Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/openlyspoken/
Connect with Shaté: www.lightmycareermatch.com
Watch this episode on Youtube: https://youtu.be/3mS1tNW0DWI
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello, editing Cilia here with just a quick note for you
(00:03):
that the beginning of this episode
had a little bit of technical issues with the sound.
I did my best to cut out the parts that were very wonky,
but there are still a little bit of moments in there.
So please excuse that.
(00:23):
And then we also started recording
and I started recording before Shate got on the call.
And so the conversation just kind of like dives right in.
We just were talking first,
we asked each other about like our New Year's and stuff.
So I cut out a little bit of that in the beginning too
and tried to have it kind of like start in a place
(00:46):
that is relevant for you.
So that's why the episode just kind of starts off.
But I hope you enjoy this.
I really liked spending this time with Shate
and be sure to connect with her.
There are links in the caption.
And yeah, without further ado, let's get into the episode.
Thank you so much for being here.
Welcome to Openly Spoken, the podcast to help you show up,
(01:20):
speak out and be seen in healthy relationships.
On the show, we talk about self-love, sexuality,
relationship tips, including ending the cycle
of toxic relationships and healing
and thriving after heartbreak.
Hi, I'm your host Cilia
and I'm a certified sex, love and relationship coach,
(01:42):
helping ambitious women with a history
of toxic relationships feel deeply connected in healthy love.
These are such important topics that every woman deserves.
So if you could leave this show a rating and a review
on Apple podcasts or Spotify to help more women find this,
it would mean the absolute world to me.
Thank you so much for being here today.
(02:02):
Now let's dive into the show.
Shate Hayes is a career and business strategist
who's on a mission to help creative professionals
everywhere feel a sense of purpose and pride in their careers.
(02:24):
She spent over a decade in her first career
as a professional dancer and choreographer,
helping aspiring dancers build their professional careers.
As an ed tech leader, she led the delivery of career content
and programs to thousands of professionals each year.
Now as a founder of Career Stewart,
Shate helps creatives monetize their independent work
(02:45):
so that they can build fulfilling,
self-paying careers on their own terms.
I think especially in winter time,
it's good to take that pause.
And so like reflect on the year that you had.
And then after the reflection, look to the year ahead
and see what goals you wanna focus on for the year
and all of that.
Speaking of that, that's very aligned with self-love
(03:08):
and the self-love that's required to build the career
that you want and that will fulfill you,
which is what we're gonna talk about today.
I also wanted to let you know that
I'm working on slowly pivoting the podcast.
Like we're still gonna talk about self-love
and relationships, but a big topic is gonna be breakups
(03:30):
and the transformation and kind of like, yeah,
like the transformation that a breakup gives,
like that opportunity.
And I think talking about like self-love
and building the career you love,
like oftentimes, I know I've gone through this before,
going through a breakup makes us revamp our entire life,
(03:51):
including career.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I'm curious as I share that,
like what comes up for you.
So many things.
I'm sort of kind of newly going through
a breakup of my own-ish.
And I don't know that it's something
that I'm ready to talk about just yet
because I'm still processing my thoughts and feelings
(04:13):
and what's happening.
Yeah, for sure.
And I will say that you're right.
Like any, most, I'll say most major life changes
impact our career in some type of way.
We sort of, our priorities shift as we evolve
and we're like, what's important to me now?
How do I wanna live my life?
How do I wanna show up?
That could be becoming a parent, you know,
a breakup, transition in life, getting older.
(04:35):
Like all of those things really do impact
like what you may or may not wanna do for a living.
Yeah, for sure.
Especially when it's a transition
that's kind of like difficult
because then we're looking for like,
what are the things that are gonna fulfill me
and make me happier?
And I feel like career is a very maybe like tangible place
(04:59):
where you can kind of be like,
all right, if I take this step and that step
and like get this degree or that certification
or it's kind of, it feels like it's easier
to like control in a way.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
There's a question that I usually ask people at the end
but I feel like it'd be helpful to start
(05:20):
with this question because of our topic
and that question is what does self-love mean to you?
Are we just going in there?
We're jumping right in?
Yeah.
Okay.
What does self-love mean to me?
It means that I see myself,
it means that I'm giving myself grace,
(05:40):
it means that I'm honoring who I am authentically
and sort of allowing an expression of that authentically.
I think it's also so, so, so much about acceptance.
Like if I love myself, I accept myself.
If I love myself, I honor myself.
If I love myself, right, you insert all of these other
actions that you would do to extend outwardly.
(06:02):
It means that you're doing those things for yourself as well.
Mm-hmm.
And how has your journey with that self-acceptance been?
What has that looked like for you?
Yeah, it's been an interesting one.
I think probably in the past couple of years,
I've come to more self-acceptance than I have had
in my entire life and I think it's because of life
(06:24):
and therapy and a whole bunch of things, spiritual journey.
I can say I've always been really, really great
with throughout my life accepting other people,
loving other people, seeing other people,
and then I've always been the hardest on myself.
I don't know, there's some theories where I grew up
(06:46):
as a dancer and so much of that practice is critique, right?
It's your body, you're looking at yourself all the time,
you're doing this wrong, fix this, do this better,
make this higher, be slimmer, be,
your face needs to be better, go harder.
You're injured, take a beat, do it again, right?
So there's so much of that that is just about criticism
(07:07):
and I think, I don't know if that played a role in me
doing it to myself, right?
Just like, let me fix it before someone else can
and so all of these little nuances,
these things play a role in our relationship
with ourself, quite honestly.
And so we are spent, we spend so much time being taught
about how to be good to other people,
(07:29):
love your neighbors this way, right?
And I don't think, at least not in my life,
I've seen a lot of how to do the same thing
in a relationship with yourself
because that's the most important one.
That's what I've learned.
That's the most important one.
Yeah, and I think I totally agree.
And I think the more we can get closer with ourselves
and make that relationship with ourself
(07:50):
something that's more harmonious,
then that whole external thing of loving others
becomes even better.
Exactly.
Because it comes from this place of overflow.
Yeah, 100% my therapist says,
speaking of that term overflow,
you fill your cup, right?
What's in the cup is for you
and the overflow is for everybody else, so yeah.
(08:12):
Yes, yeah.
Yeah, that saying is so cliche, but it's true.
It's facts.
And we say it for a reason because it is a fact.
Absolutely.
Exactly, yeah.
I was gonna ask you about something that you mentioned
before the relationship with self being the closest.
(08:35):
Oh no, I was gonna reflect actually.
With any art, there is that criticism and that critique,
but I think what's so unique about something like dance
and maybe even like gymnastics
and maybe any type of sport perhaps in general
is that there's that added piece of
(08:56):
it's not just you, it's also like your body.
Exactly, yeah.
And body image and body acceptance
and even like your relationship to food
can be so affected by being in such a competitive place
like that, so in case anyone's listening
who is in that space,
(09:19):
what were some of the things that helped you
have a good relationship with your body
or if there's anything you wanna share about
what that used to look like when you were in dance
versus what that looks like now?
Well, that's a good question.
I would say, I'll just process.
I haven't thought about this in a while.
I remember being young, so I started dancing
(09:41):
very young age, three-ish, right?
And then it became serious, like an actual thing
around 10 or 11, like join this competitive dance studio
and was in the company there and stuff.
I had like 10 and 11 having rehearsals on Friday nights
from like seven to 11 and then weekdays, weekends,
so always there.
(10:01):
It was during that season where I was first sort of exposed
to girls my age caring so much about how they looked
and what they were eating and we're like,
these are kids, right?
And how young they are and because I'm a black female,
I've always had some curves a little bit,
even when I was really thin, my body was thin
(10:23):
and my body just curved differently.
So I remember feedback in ballet classes, for example,
about there are certain lines that you have to achieve
and maybe a little bit of extra, what's it coaching
or pushing or notes probably is a better word
around like what my body should be doing
versus what it wasn't.
(10:43):
I will say I'm fortunate enough that I never felt abused
in that way or maybe I was oblivious.
It's not like dance moms style.
Was that the show, Dance Moms?
Dance Moms was definitely the show.
Were the ladies like screaming at these children?
Yeah, that was not my experience
unless I was just oblivious to it
or unless my mom was just like shielding me from it.
(11:04):
And maybe it wasn't my experience,
maybe I didn't let it get in
because ballet was not ever my favorite, right?
So I was always a rhythmic style person.
So jazz, tap, later in my career was like hip hop house,
like all of these rhythmic things, right?
Where the curves weren't as much of an issue,
but what I will tell you is that it got into the point
(11:25):
where when I look at pictures of myself back then, now,
I'm like, oh, I was tiny,
but I had developed this body dysmorphia
of like always thinking that I'm big
when actually I was like not even close to it, right?
It was just because my curves were different
and I'm a little thicker.
Like I'm stockier, if that makes sense.
(11:47):
I have more muscle mass
and I'm a little bit taller than the average female.
And so that just had, I just, and I'm a little bustier.
So I just always felt big for whatever reason
or thick is how I would say it.
When I look at pictures, I'm like, oh my gosh,
I wasn't even close to being thick.
So I just, to answer your question,
(12:07):
I know I'm going to, I was saying a lot of words.
I remember girls being like not wanting to eat much.
I remember, you know, just like fitting into certain things
and the two pieces and like, you know,
caring what your body looked at such a tiny age
when that really shouldn't matter as much.
And in terms of coping with it, I just,
(12:31):
I guess I just had a healthy enough family environment
to where I just didn't get in.
I didn't, my mom was very supportive.
She was slightly a momager in a like,
let's get this work done.
I'm paying for it.
Like you're going to do it kind of way, but never in a,
if you don't look this kind of way, they're not going to,
you know, she never.
That's good.
I ate what I wanted to eat and I, you know,
(12:51):
had all the pizza and I drank the soda and I had the Twix
and there was never sort of any,
I was allowed to be a child.
And so I didn't have sort of that experience with food,
although I had the dysmorphia, the body dysmorphia.
I didn't have the experience with food
that I know a lot of dancers do.
(13:12):
Yeah, yeah.
And what do you think shifted your,
or when did your body dysmorphia start to shift
and what was the thing that you think helped?
It's a daily, it's an ongoing thing.
I don't, you know, I am now at least aware of it,
but even now I find myself sort of having to affirm my body.
(13:33):
Like, ooh, I love my curves.
I love, you know, I love how I look.
I am, I am, whatever the affirmation is,
it's still a thing for me to be honest,
where I think I'm bigger than I am.
At least now I'm able to celebrate like sizes, dress sizes.
Like, oh, I remember, right?
And I guess my experience is a little skewed also
(13:55):
because, you know, my grandmother is like,
what, they would use this term jokingly
and kind of like cheesily.
Like it was supposed to be endearing.
It wasn't supposed to be mean.
When I was a professional and you know,
there's all this type casting in the professional dance world.
And it's like, okay, if you're,
if we're auditioning for this artist who is, you know,
five, five and a certain weight,
(14:17):
they want the dancers around them to either match that or be,
you know, make them look smaller or make them look bigger.
So there's a lot of casting around size.
And there were so many jobs where, yeah,
there are so many jobs where it's like, okay,
you can't be taller than five, five.
We need, you know, X Latin, X Asian, X Black, X white, right?
(14:38):
So you're sort of, you know,
your competition based on what they've said
they need to cast for.
And I just remember sort of before you even learn
any of the choreography being brought out.
And it's like, okay, everybody just stand on the line.
Like you're too tall, you're too tall, you're too tall.
All my Amazons, they would call us Amazon.
All my Amazons, you kind of think you're gorgeous, but-
How tall are you?
(14:58):
I'm five, six.
Like I'm not even that tall.
I'm taller than you.
Oh my gosh.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
I'm German, so we're huge.
But yeah, this like, all my Amazon,
thank you all so much for coming.
Like you're gorgeous, but you're too tall.
We can't use you.
Wow.
So that also kind of contributed to like this,
(15:21):
like I'm above average something for the typical woman.
It's height, it's weight, it's,
I remember my weight especially being a thing
because I mentioned I'm stockier.
So I know in middle school, when I was hitting puberty,
I started to be like, weigh over 100 pounds, right?
(15:41):
It went from like weighing nothing to like 120.
And it seemed to jump 10 pounds every year.
So by high school, I was like 140.
I specifically remember in college being like 150
and sort of that feeling like that meant something.
Even when I look at the pictures
and I see how tiny of a frame I had,
that number meant something when everyone else was like,
(16:03):
oh, I'm a size two and I weigh 20.
And I'm like, oh, I weighed that in like sixth grade.
So it's just always been a weird thing.
Yeah.
I think it's also hard to escape the body dysmorphia,
whether or not you're in dance, just as a woman in general,
because we're told a lot more than men
(16:25):
what our bodies should look like.
Yeah.
And we receive the messages from like very secretive places.
Like I remember when the Barbie movie came out,
I purposely didn't watch it
because I think Barbie gave me body dysmorphia
when I was a kid.
Just like seeing her very unrealistic proportion.
(16:46):
And it's just everywhere.
It is.
Yeah. Yeah.
I'm sure that it's probably gotten a lot better now
because now there's a lot more,
like versus when we were growing up,
there's a lot more celebration for a variety of sizes.
Yeah, thankfully.
Yeah, 100%.
And I always look at music videos
or award shows with that lens.
(17:06):
Like Lizzo and all of her,
I know she's had some controversy,
but I'll use that as an example.
My goodness.
Like if there were larger women being cast for things,
it was intentional.
Like we are trying to make a statement and we want this,
but it wasn't necessarily the norm.
Or if I look at Beyonce's homecoming,
Coachella performance and the range of sizes
(17:28):
of all those women,
like gorgeous dancers of all different sizes.
I was like, oh yeah, that's powerful.
And that's how honestly it should have always been,
but there was a world where,
that wasn't really necessarily the case always.
Yeah.
So now I'm curious to know what the beginnings
of your business that you have now, career steward,
(17:51):
like where did that,
where did the inspiration for that come out of?
You know, so much of it is rooted
even from my dance career days.
Like I remember intentionally choosing,
like going against this thing that I studied in college
and was like, nope, I'm going to be a performer.
I'm going to move to LA.
I'm going to figure out what that means.
And like doing all the blood, sweat and tears
(18:13):
to figure that out with like no money, no network,
no anything to get, to have this career.
And I remember just feeling like,
oh, everyone should feel this way.
Like I made my dream come true.
Everyone should feel this way.
And it just so happened that I had an opportunity
on a whim in grad school,
I was studying to get a master's in dance
and the department chair comes in five minutes
(18:34):
before class starts and is like,
hey, we have this career course for undergrads.
We need a TA, teaching assistant.
Can you do it?
It starts like now, can you go?
And I was like, sure, I did it.
And fell in love with career development.
Like I was able to tell them all the things
I wish I had known and you know, how to make a living.
(18:56):
Like so much time back then, especially spent
teaching someone how to make art,
how to make a thing, but not how to sustain a living,
making that art.
And so I finally get to talk about-
That's totally missed in art school.
Yes, totally talk about what taxes and savings
and saying no to a job if it's not right for you.
(19:16):
And you're not like just all of these things.
And when I transitioned from my dance career,
I moved into workforce development,
career development in the corporate space.
And then I was like, no, I wanna go back on my own
and like keep doing this with creatives.
And so yeah, here I am with career Stewart,
sort of this fusion of all the parts of me, quite honestly,
(19:38):
in service of helping more people feel a sense of like
pride and purpose and what they do every day for a living.
So then do you work with just creatives in general now
or do you work with dancers?
I work with creatives in general.
There are a larger portion of the folks who are connected
(20:00):
to me and who found me through my days of like writing
about dance stuff.
So dancers are definitely still heavily represented,
but it's all creatives.
And then I also work with nonprofits who are kind of focused
on professional development in some way,
not necessarily in the creative space.
And I kind of help support some of the content
and programming in that way,
(20:21):
but all around the lens of helping someone grow
their body of work.
Okay.
And so in the audience of creatives,
what do you see are some of the most common struggles
with self-love?
To me, I think this is a self-love issue,
is the under earning.
It's the undervaluing what you do.
(20:45):
Being afraid to charge a decent rate for what you do,
being afraid to lose like this fear of like,
sort of I gotta accept whatever is handed to me
in order to make it instead of knowing your worth,
standing in that, being able to trust that
and being okay if someone walks away,
if they don't honor that as well.
(21:06):
That's a huge thing.
I think there's some things that aren't just specific
to creatives or dancers in that,
I'm scared to kind of go out on my own.
What does it look like?
How do I make money?
What about insurance?
Those are common sort of pain points and fears
that folks have when it comes to making a living independently.
Or with a business.
Creatives, I see often, especially dancers,
(21:28):
there's so many roles or jobs where it's like,
like the dance budget is like the last thing they think of.
And so they're like, we're gonna build this great show.
And if they're not represented by an agent or with a union,
like, will you work for exposure only?
Or will you donate a gazillion hours of your time
and I'm gonna pay you a hundred bucks.
(21:48):
So that gets in.
And then if you try to advocate for yourself
or stand up for yourself,
then it's like you're sort of labeled as a problem person.
Instead of just pay people what they're deserved to be paid.
And if you don't have a budget for it,
like reconsider what you're trying to do.
(22:10):
Yeah, I think across the board,
there are a lot of positions where it's like,
just work for, just work for exposure.
One example I can think of is I've gotten a couple
of emails before to make social media posts
about a certain product just for either the exposure
(22:31):
or for a discount on their products.
And I'm like, no, I'm not doing that.
And I'm like, I'm in my mid thirties.
I don't have time to work for free.
Exactly, exactly.
Yeah, you're right.
There are times when it does make sense
if you're just starting out.
Internships are that way.
If there's really a super like legitimate way
(22:52):
to network from the opportunity, that makes sense.
But if you're just out here saying like work for exposure,
there's hardly ever any follow up on that.
Like what does that exactly mean?
Yeah, yeah.
There's no way to really measure what you're getting
out of your investment of the time.
Exactly.
Yeah, the under earning is a huge thing.
I ran a mastermind all of last year for six months.
(23:14):
And it was all for coaches that we were all in the same
like certification together.
And we wanted to work on our money mindset
and under earning came up so much.
And what we found was underneath the under earning
were a couple of things.
One was like, I'm not known enough
and not enough people know about me.
(23:35):
Like I have to be famous and have all these followers
to like that will justify.
The price.
Yeah.
Or they'll be like really underneath all of it.
It's the sense of like not feeling worthy.
Not enoughness.
Of getting paid.
Yeah.
(23:55):
Yeah, not feeling enough.
Yeah, and it's a hard one to work through
because it often like stems from just really deeply rooted
beliefs and sometimes like things from childhood.
So yeah, it's very complex.
Yeah, definitely a mindset thing, which is,
one of the things even when I'm talking through,
(24:17):
this is how you could potentially make a hundred years
a creator, for example, so much of that is mindset.
Like there is no getting there without a mental upgrade
as well.
Yeah.
So what's another struggle with self-love
that you've seen besides the under earning?
(24:38):
From creatives or?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, from creatives.
I would say it's the financial manifestation
is probably what I see the most of.
And maybe another one that's coming up for me is now
like fear around if they can even do the thing
that they wanna do.
So sort of giving themselves permission to do it.
(24:59):
I come across a lot of folks who are like
have a traditional job.
There's so many creatives who,
because society doesn't understand creative economy
and how can you make money with this thing
that you love so much?
And so we've talked ourselves into getting these real jobs
and they could be legitimate reasons.
Maybe you have to take care of family and you got bills
(25:20):
and you need health insurance and all of those things.
And that keeps so many people sort of wishing
they could actually have the life or career that they want
because they're too afraid and they won't be able to cut it.
They won't be enough to actually create the career
or business of their dreams.
And so I would say that's also part self-love.
(25:42):
It's kind of like you have two choices, fear or love.
Most everything is grouped into those two categories
and you can either make a choice towards fear,
you can make a choice towards love, including self-love.
And so a lot of times when people stay stuck
is because they've allowed themselves to sort of
keep making those choices towards fear
versus like betting on yourself,
(26:03):
taking a chance on yourself and getting what you need
so that you can live a life that you're worthy of, right?
Yeah.
So what is something that you help someone
who has that full-time job and has,
I don't know if they have the side hustle yet
(26:24):
or if they have the dream of doing something more creative.
Like what does that journey look like?
It's all about, in my opinion, strategy and planning.
It's just, it's a big math equation, in my opinion.
It is just, okay, this is how much you make now
or how much you want to be making in general
(26:45):
with or without this job.
These are all of the strengths and skillsets you have.
This is the network you have.
Now what's the right combination of strengths, skills,
packaging that in a certain way,
the strategy around pricing it,
and then how much of those do you need to sell
to then make this number over here that we already have?
And so it's making the numbers make sense
(27:07):
and giving folks a very tangible, applicable way
to walk it out so that it doesn't feel so in the clouds
and out of reach and it feels more attainable
when you're able to just break it down in that way.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, and I think that's all people want.
Just like, I'm that way.
So I guess maybe I just attract a lot of people
(27:28):
who are like me, just tell me what to do and I'll do it.
You know, there's not a whole lot of,
yeah, I can sometimes get in my own way
and need someone to talk me off a ledge
and you know, like all of those things.
But for the most part, if you just gave me the steps,
I'll just go do the thing, right?
And so I think some people just need a way
to have like a path that is specific to them,
(27:51):
that makes sense for them, like aligned with who they are
and they feel good walking it out in some kind of way,
minus, you know, some nerves and anxiety.
Mm-hmm, okay.
So the two struggles are feeling unworthy to charge
and then under earning.
And then the second one is kind of that block
(28:13):
between like where they're at and where they want to be
because society really does feed us this like struggling
artist or like starving artist mentality,
which is so ironic because the artists that do
quote unquote make it, they can make a ton of money.
Like you mentioned Lizzo and Beyonce earlier,
(28:34):
like there's no ceiling on how much income
they can make with their art.
That's, I mean, I literally before,
one of my most recent blog posts that I put on our website
is busting the broke or Beyonce myth.
It's like people think either are gonna be homeless
or are gonna be Beyonce.
And those are the only two choices.
And it's like, what about though, it's a spectrum.
What about the middle class of being, you know,
(28:56):
a creative or an entrepreneur or, you know,
some other non-traditional professional?
Like what about all of those options?
And like, why aren't we talking more about those?
Why don't we see those more?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think our social media feeds can be, it's a blame for that
because they just show the most luxurious things.
(29:18):
Yeah.
Usually.
People are selling dreams out here,
which is, you know, how people sell.
I get it.
But the dream can look differently.
For some people.
So, what did you say?
I was gonna say for some people, that's not even the dream.
The dream is like, I just wanna make a living
and be happy, you know, doing what I wanna do.
(29:39):
Yeah.
And I think that's an important self-love piece
is to like really just stop and ask yourself,
what is it that I actually want
instead of striving for something
because you saw somebody else?
Yeah.
On the internet or your neighbor or your friends do,
and like you have FOMO,
and so you wanna do that thing too.
(30:00):
Yeah.
What's important to you that is not about status.
Yeah.
So what is the self-love that is needed
to build the career or...
Yeah.
It's part giving yourself permission.
I think that's the first thing.
Like, okay, there's this life
that I'm holding myself back from,
(30:21):
or maybe I thought was impossible before,
and I now want to see what it looks like to go after it.
So I think that's one part of it.
It is also, so much of it is loving yourself enough
to follow the nudgings that you already have within you,
the intuition, your guidance, right?
So it's not ignoring those things.
It's not dismissing that guidance.
(30:43):
That is actually how you're going to get
to where you wanna be.
And so loving yourself enough to honor that,
loving yourself enough to honor it
when it goes against the grain.
So when it's actually against what's happening
on social media, what's popular,
and what this one guru said you should be doing
to build your business.
If your intuition is guiding you a different way,
will you love yourself enough to go that way and get it?
(31:06):
It is loving yourself enough
to own all the parts of your story.
I can, to use me as an example,
I have been a professional dancer.
I have been in a number of corporate roles,
workforce development space,
and now I'm back on my own as an entrepreneur.
I've worn so many different hats.
It's not been linear.
It's not your traditional, like, you know,
(31:26):
I went to school, got a degree in biology,
went to medical school, now I'm a doctor,
and I've been a doctor for 20 years, right?
It's this wavy, topsy-turvy other experience,
which so many more professionals have that same experience.
How can you own it and then stand in that,
tell the story of that sort of without, you know,
being ashamed of it or, you know, making that be
(31:48):
another reason why you feel not enough, like,
oh, just because I want to do this new thing
and I haven't done it for five years, I'm not worthy.
I don't have enough credibility.
I don't have enough followers.
It's like, no, my experience,
my lived experience actually is enough.
So that's super important as well.
And then I'll say one more,
loving yourself enough to get the support that you need
in whatever way that looks like for you.
(32:10):
It could be a coach, it could be a mentor,
it could be a therapist, it could be a spiritual guide,
it could be your mom, it could be, you know,
like, however you need, whatever you need
to be supported along that journey,
you gotta love yourself enough to do that.
Yeah.
I think on that note,
I think one of the best supports you can get
is finding a peer that is also doing,
(32:33):
like, walking the same path as you,
like, has a similar goal
and then meeting with them regularly.
That for me has, like,
I would not be recording this podcast
and I would not be still running my own business
if I hadn't done that.
And luckily I was doing that
because it was like COVID lockdown when I started.
So I wanted to talk to people.
(32:55):
Yeah, but you make a really good point
with the piece about looking at your lived experience,
especially when you are transitioning into a new career
or maybe you're still new in a career.
I think now it's more and more common
that people are transitioning.
Like, the whole narrative of staying at the same job
(33:18):
for 30 years used to be the norm
and is not really the norm anymore.
And it comes up a lot that people think
they don't know enough yet
when they are five years into a new position
or a new business or something.
Because they're forgetting that what they did before
really did set them up for where they are now.
(33:40):
1000%, it's so relevant.
When I was in the workforce development space,
I worked at organizations that basically took
these boot camps or degrees or whatever.
And a lot of the folks that would attend those
or enroll in those would be looking
for some sort of career shift.
And a lot of them to break into tech for the first time.
Lots of folks with education background trying to do,
(34:01):
maybe coding or data or something like that.
Lots of folks with just like these really interesting careers
that now want a different lifestyle.
And one of the number one questions
that would literally drive me up a wall was like,
do I need to get an internship?
Do I need to start over?
This person who was in their 40s,
do I need to find an internship now
to break into this new field?
(34:22):
And I'd be like, oh my gosh, no you don't.
Don't say that.
Do not look for an internship.
What you need to do is find the through line
between what you've done before,
what skills you're really great at from this program,
what you're interested in, tell that story.
It's relevant.
Open the door from where you are.
Don't try to go all the way back to the end of the line
(34:45):
and work your way up again.
That's one of the quickest way to burn yourself out
or discourage yourself.
Because you're gonna be applying to roles,
you're gonna be overqualified for.
And then it's gonna be this cycle of confirmation bias.
Like see, I knew because I'm not getting any bites.
But it's really so much of this is really about storytelling.
(35:06):
It's like how you're presenting yourself,
what you're telling the world about you
and how you feel about that story
is also how the folks who are hearing it will feel too.
So you really gotta find your story.
That's so important.
So it's something that you help people with as well
is that copywriting aspect of writing their story.
Absolutely.
Like it's the first, one of the first parts of it.
(35:28):
It's like, what's the target?
What are we going after?
And then what's the story?
That's so much of it.
And then the rest of it, you know,
is sort of like strategy around networking
and finding your people, but it's like,
what are we saying about you, who you are?
And in a way that makes you feel excited and proud,
you know?
Yes, I love that.
That's beautiful.
Thank you.
(35:49):
Sounds really fun.
Yeah, I love it.
It's, you know, I'm still being able to,
like I'm able to be creative
in a way that's in service to people now.
Not that performances weren't, you know,
usually it's about, you know,
telling a story in a different way
or a product, selling a product or, you know,
a sales work company, it's like that kind of storytelling.
But to be able to help people tell their own stories
(36:10):
in a way that lights them up is just, it's powerful.
It's not something that I could have.
I'm glad it found me.
I don't think I could have, you know,
made this job up if I knew to, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, because everyone has a story within them.
And if you don't have the skillset to bring that story out,
(36:32):
you can feel like you're stuck.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I think another piece that we brought up earlier
about that starving artist
and people getting like a quote unquote real job.
I think what's also so kind of unfortunate about that
(36:53):
is that creativity is innate in us.
I truly believe every human being is creative
and that we're all meant to create.
And we're just not really exposed
to all these different forms of art
because of the way we live.
Like back when we were living in tribes,
art was a part of our everyday life, you know?
Like making pottery, cave paintings,
(37:15):
or whatever else we were doing, singing, drumming,
all of that stuff.
And that's all been like taken away from us,
from all societies.
And we're kind of given this narrative
that only talented people are created.
Yeah, yeah.
That's so real.
(37:35):
And I think there's an association,
not just talented,
like people think I'm not creative
because I'm not an artist, right?
I'm not making art.
I'm not painting, drawing, taking pictures,
dancing, singing, right?
Acting in a play so then I'm not creative.
When creativity to your point
is literally just about manifesting an idea
(37:55):
and making it come to life in a certain way.
So you can be an accountant
and be a wizard with numbers.
And that's creativity.
You can be super great at organizing a space,
like taking clutter and making it functional.
That's creativity, right?
So everyone, I think,
who was I, I was talking to someone
and we were like, these are like secret creatives
or undercover creatives,
(38:15):
or we were trying to find a word
for people who are actually creative,
but they don't identify as creative.
They think, they're like, oh no, I'm not,
but you actually really are.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's just so many people
who probably aren't necessarily self-identified creatives.
Yeah, for sure.
I think it might be a little scary
to identify as a creative
(38:37):
because a creative is someone who,
like you said earlier, will go against the grain
because you're creating something that doesn't exist.
Exactly.
Or you're taking an idea from here,
idea from there, mashing them together,
adding your own flair.
You're creating something new.
Like you have to be able to be very grounded
(38:59):
in your sharing of that to other people.
Yeah.
Like being creative requires that element of being seen
and that can be very terrifying.
Yeah, lots of folks don't wanna be seen.
I understand that.
I used to try to hide myself.
It's interesting that I was a performer,
but I was sort of like afraid to be seen as myself,
like who I really was.
(39:19):
And so that's definitely a thing.
Yeah.
I totally relate to that.
I was in drama all four years of high school
and did a little bit of it,
like just not in college, but just like for fun.
Yeah.
And I found it was a lot easier to show up on stage
as a character with a script
than it was to do something like this
(39:40):
where I'm talking on a podcast and I'm like myself.
Yeah.
Sometimes art can be something to like,
you are still being creative
and you're kind of hiding in it.
Yeah.
It's interesting, right?
I totally, totally agree.
For me, it was, I could perform
in front of like a million strangers.
Literally like, I don't care how big the crowd is,
(40:03):
how big the stage is, put me on it and I'm good to go.
But when I had to perform in front of people who knew me,
my peers, it was like, I hate it so much,
I don't wanna do it.
Like you can see me, right?
And so, yeah, there's definitely something about me
and there's definitely something about like hiding
even in plain sight, you know?
Yeah, hiding in plain sight.
(40:25):
I also find it, I love singing,
but I find it so much easier to sing in like a group.
Yeah.
And solo singing.
I've done it once,
I've done like a musical improv performance
for a class I took and that was fun.
But don't ask me to sing, just by myself,
but we could sing together.
Exactly, another feeling.
(40:46):
Actually, that's gotten better over time.
Cause I have to sing sometimes
for some like women's circles that I host.
Well, I hope I get to hear one of those one day.
Yeah, yeah, that would be fun.
So is there any other self-love kind of,
like a self-love toolbox or self-love must have
(41:07):
that you think is very powerful
for getting people to build the career that they love?
I'll just use things that have worked for me.
I think journaling is super powerful
in terms of helping you to process
and make sense of what it is that you're feeling.
And yeah, it makes sense of it in interesting ways.
(41:27):
Affirmations are gonna always be one of my favorites
and not even just affirmations in terms of mantras,
but like your self-talk,
like how you're talking to yourself about yourself,
about your life, making sure that that is affirmative.
It's affirming what you want
because you will have what you say
and you will have what you think.
So if you think you can't get it,
if you think that you're not enough,
(41:48):
if you think you're not worth it
and you act accordingly,
your reality is gonna manifest that
and your reality is gonna be that.
And so how can you make all the things you think
and say affirmative of where you're trying to go?
I think that's really important.
And then all the other, I think,
things that I do are sort of tools of self-love
and self-practice of that, therapy, massages,
(42:11):
you know, spiritual practice, my walks in nature,
like all of that helps me to sort of stay grounded
in who I am and my self-view and my self-worth
and how I show up in the world.
Mm-hmm, love that.
How about you?
What are yours?
What's your tool?
I love sound baths.
Mm, okay.
(42:31):
I like going in person is the best,
but there's also a ton on YouTube
and I have a couple of instruments myself.
I like it because you get to just lay down and listen.
And if you're playing the instrument yourself,
you just can't help but be super present with the sound.
I just bought a book that's like a whole guide
(42:52):
to sound healing because I would love to facilitate
sound baths in the future after almost like 10 years
of being obsessed with going to them myself.
Yeah, that sounds like a natural progression.
Also, by the way, I hope you never say
that you're not a creative because I just heard
in the past like two minutes that you were in plays,
(43:13):
that you sing and you play instruments.
And so you've got like a triple threat situation
going on over here.
Oh, thank you.
For me, my creativity has definitely shifted
over the years and that's been like a hard thing to accept.
For example, I like to joke that I was born
with a crayon in my left hand
(43:35):
because I was drawing all throughout my childhood,
all throughout teenage hood.
But then when I was in an illustration class in school,
I studied fashion design.
That was when drawing became homework.
So it was no longer fun.
And then as I've gotten older,
because it's been like over 10 years
(43:56):
since I've been in college,
I've realized that my art was my form of self therapy
when I was a kid because I came
from a dysfunctional household.
And the art was like what I needed to feel whole
and to feel safe and to process emotions
and to express myself.
Because that was the page and the crayon
(44:19):
and then later the charcoals, the paints,
like all the medium.
That was my safe space to express.
And now the way I am creative has nothing to do with drawing.
But it's still there.
I think it's important.
Yeah, it's still there.
I think it's important to know that your creativity
might shift over the years
(44:39):
and it probably will shift over the years.
Yeah, that's good, yeah.
So I'm curious to know how you went from,
because we talked about wanting in the past to kind of hide
and how creativity requires that element of being seen.
I'd love to know what has helped you feel comfortable
(45:01):
in being seen.
I've gone through some sort of like radical awakening
in the past year or two, unprompted.
It was not intentional.
It was just kind of, I don't know if I had gone
through enough therapy sessions and faced enough of,
things that maybe I was not facing to like,
I wouldn't even say that it was overnight.
(45:23):
It was like this gradual sort of,
okay, I'm not hiding anymore kind of thing.
And quite honestly, it really all goes back to
self-acceptance and self-love.
I was so afraid to be judged and criticized
and abandoned quite honestly.
If you disagree with me even,
and there's a chance that you might leave,
(45:43):
then that's how my people pleasing shows up, right?
Perfectionism even is a symptom of that.
And so when I became okay with me,
anchoring in me, accepting me,
who I am is good enough, is worthy enough.
I don't have to do another thing,
get another accomplishment to be more lovable
(46:03):
or more enough than I am in this moment.
When I started to really sit in that and own that
and accept that, then what other people thought
started to matter less to me.
And that allowed me to sort of be seen more authentically,
to stop hiding because I was okay
with what I was sharing then.
For whatever reason, the hiding was some sort of like,
(46:24):
actually don't feel quite,
there's some anxiety about who this person is
and why am I so different?
Why do I think this way?
Why am I, why do I not fit the mold in a certain way?
Why do I always have to be different, right?
I cared so much about being othered
and just was always trying to just like fit in.
And so at certain point it was like,
you're probably just not meant to fit in in these ways.
(46:46):
Maybe you should just use that.
So it was really just a journey of me
accepting me and who I am.
And that really allowed me to then start to show up.
That's so interesting because what I am hearing is like,
and I completely went through this journey myself as well,
(47:07):
that there's this, before we have the self acceptance,
there's this desire for acceptance outside of us
before we have given that to ourselves.
Yeah.
But once we give it to ourselves,
we no longer need it from outside of us.
Exactly, yeah.
And like you said, what other people thought mattered less.
Mm-hmm, yeah.
Yeah, there was this podcast host,
(47:30):
and I think this is her whole premise, her whole mantra,
but when she signed off the show, she said,
and don't forget to love yourself so much
that love from other people is just icing on the cake
or something like that, it's a bonus.
And I was like, I love that so much.
It's like, that's the vibe, that's exactly it.
Like you gotta love yourself so much.
Like yes, I think it's nuanced.
(47:53):
Like I'm gonna always want love from my family,
my mom, my dad, my brother, right?
Like that's gonna always matter to me.
But generally speaking, I gotta love myself so much
that acceptance, validation from other places
is not really as important.
Yeah, yeah.
I feel like that can kind of tie into that piece
(48:14):
about one of the support things you mentioned
was like asking for help.
Yeah.
And I feel like maybe when we are
in these self-development spaces that are telling us,
love yourself so much that love from other people
are just icing on the cake
or the opinions of others don't matter,
I wonder if that also feeds into it
(48:36):
being hard to ask for help.
I don't know,
because I think asking for help is a form of self-love.
It's showing that you don't have to do it at all.
I think it's something else.
I'm not a therapist,
but I'm just using what I know about myself
and what I've learned about myself in therapy,
the whole perfectionism or codependency specifically,
where you feel like you gotta solve everybody else's problems.
(48:58):
And let me tell you, my number one strength,
according to Strength Finders, is strategy.
So problem solving is literally the thing,
like my number one strength.
And so I don't even notice that I'm doing it sometimes.
I hear a thing and I'm like, oh, why don't you, right?
I have to stop myself
from trying to make that problem
something that I need to solve.
(49:20):
And so I think not asking for help
is actually more of a defense mechanism
or a trauma response, in my opinion.
Yeah, interesting.
Yeah, I'm not a therapist either,
but I love reading about psychology and all that stuff
and have been through a lot of therapy myself.
Yeah, yeah.
(49:41):
Yeah.
Okay, so I already asked you one question
that I asked people at the end,
but there is another question that I ask everyone
and it's what is your favorite part about being a woman?
I love everything about being a woman.
I love our strength and our ability
(50:03):
to sort of be nurturing.
And I guess a man can also have these qualities
or these attributes.
So I don't wanna say it's exclusive to women,
but strength, resilience, nurturing.
Yeah, I love my hair, I love my curves.
I love, yeah, just being able to be present in this world
(50:23):
in this body and this configuration the way that I love.
So yeah, there's something about it.
Even I feel like women get to the best dance parts too.
There's just something about us and our nails
and I love jewelry and I love, yeah, I just love all of that.
Yeah, it's interesting how some of that though
(50:46):
is just like our society.
Men can grow their nails long and paint them
if they want to. That's true, that's true.
But in our society, we're told that that's for girls only.
Yeah, it's very interesting.
Yeah, I was trying not to get into sort of like
gender constructs and roles and things like that,
but you know.
Yeah, it's hard not to.
Yeah, it really is.
(51:07):
Because I've lived my whole life this way and actually,
you know, like that's what I love about, you know, me.
One of the things I love about being a woman, so yeah.
You didn't have to cough, I did.
I was just thinking that.
I coughed for you.
Thank you, because I was like, please I'll cough.
The whole conversation.
So for people who are tuned in,
(51:28):
where can they connect with you?
Where can they find you?
And we've sprinkled talking about your work
a little bit through this conversation,
but feel free to share more.
Yeah, I mean, if you're someone who's like
just trying to figure it out, maybe let's say
you're one of the folks that wants to own your story,
like what, love yourself so much
that now you're owning your story.
I've got a really cool tool called
(51:49):
the Multi Hyphenate Manifesto,
which really like helps you put down on paper,
like what are my strengths?
Who am I?
How can I get to the through line of that story?
And then you can find all the other ways
to tap into me from there.
But it's at lightmycareermatch.com.
And yeah, you can find my LinkedIn and careersteward.co,
but I would say lightmycareermatch
is probably the best place to go to get started.
(52:12):
Cool.
And I'll be sure to include those links
in the show notes or the caption.
Awesome.
Yay.
Thank you so much, Shate.
This was great.
Thanks for having me.
I love this.
Thank you.
Hello, editing Cilia here with just a quick note for you
(00:03):
that the beginning of this episode
had a little bit of technical issues with the sound.
I did my best to cut out the parts that were very wonky,
but there are still a little bit of moments in there.
So please excuse that.
(00:23):
And then we also started recording
and I started recording before Shate got on the call.
And so the conversation just kind of like dives right in.
We just were talking first,
we asked each other about like our New Year's and stuff.
So I cut out a little bit of that in the beginning too
and tried to have it kind of like start in a place
(00:46):
that is relevant for you.
So that's why the episode just kind of starts off.
But I hope you enjoy this.
I really liked spending this time with Shate
and be sure to connect with her.
There are links in the caption.
And yeah, without further ado, let's get into the episode.
Thank you so much for being here.
Welcome to Openly Spoken, the podcast to help you show up,
(01:20):
speak out and be seen in healthy relationships.
On the show, we talk about self-love, sexuality,
relationship tips, including ending the cycle
of toxic relationships and healing
and thriving after heartbreak.
Hi, I'm your host Cilia
and I'm a certified sex, love and relationship coach,
(01:42):
helping ambitious women with a history
of toxic relationships feel deeply connected in healthy love.
These are such important topics that every woman deserves.
So if you could leave this show a rating and a review
on Apple podcasts or Spotify to help more women find this,
it would mean the absolute world to me.
Thank you so much for being here today.
(02:02):
Now let's dive into the show.
Shate Hayes is a career and business strategist
who's on a mission to help creative professionals
everywhere feel a sense of purpose and pride in their careers.
(02:24):
She spent over a decade in her first career
as a professional dancer and choreographer,
helping aspiring dancers build their professional careers.
As an ed tech leader, she led the delivery of career content
and programs to thousands of professionals each year.
Now as a founder of Career Stewart,
Shate helps creatives monetize their independent work
(02:45):
so that they can build fulfilling,
self-paying careers on their own terms.
I think especially in winter time,
it's good to take that pause.
And so like reflect on the year that you had.
And then after the reflection, look to the year ahead
and see what goals you wanna focus on for the year
and all of that.
Speaking of that, that's very aligned with self-love
(03:08):
and the self-love that's required to build the career
that you want and that will fulfill you,
which is what we're gonna talk about today.
I also wanted to let you know that
I'm working on slowly pivoting the podcast.
Like we're still gonna talk about self-love
and relationships, but a big topic is gonna be breakups
(03:30):
and the transformation and kind of like, yeah,
like the transformation that a breakup gives,
like that opportunity.
And I think talking about like self-love
and building the career you love,
like oftentimes, I know I've gone through this before,
going through a breakup makes us revamp our entire life,
(03:51):
including career.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I'm curious as I share that,
like what comes up for you.
So many things.
I'm sort of kind of newly going through
a breakup of my own-ish.
And I don't know that it's something
that I'm ready to talk about just yet
because I'm still processing my thoughts and feelings
(04:13):
and what's happening.
Yeah, for sure.
And I will say that you're right.
Like any, most, I'll say most major life changes
impact our career in some type of way.
We sort of, our priorities shift as we evolve
and we're like, what's important to me now?
How do I wanna live my life?
How do I wanna show up?
That could be becoming a parent, you know,
a breakup, transition in life, getting older.
(04:35):
Like all of those things really do impact
like what you may or may not wanna do for a living.
Yeah, for sure.
Especially when it's a transition
that's kind of like difficult
because then we're looking for like,
what are the things that are gonna fulfill me
and make me happier?
And I feel like career is a very maybe like tangible place
(04:59):
where you can kind of be like,
all right, if I take this step and that step
and like get this degree or that certification
or it's kind of, it feels like it's easier
to like control in a way.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
There's a question that I usually ask people at the end
but I feel like it'd be helpful to start
(05:20):
with this question because of our topic
and that question is what does self-love mean to you?
Are we just going in there?
We're jumping right in?
Yeah.
Okay.
What does self-love mean to me?
It means that I see myself,
it means that I'm giving myself grace,
(05:40):
it means that I'm honoring who I am authentically
and sort of allowing an expression of that authentically.
I think it's also so, so, so much about acceptance.
Like if I love myself, I accept myself.
If I love myself, I honor myself.
If I love myself, right, you insert all of these other
actions that you would do to extend outwardly.
(06:02):
It means that you're doing those things for yourself as well.
Mm-hmm.
And how has your journey with that self-acceptance been?
What has that looked like for you?
Yeah, it's been an interesting one.
I think probably in the past couple of years,
I've come to more self-acceptance than I have had
in my entire life and I think it's because of life
(06:24):
and therapy and a whole bunch of things, spiritual journey.
I can say I've always been really, really great
with throughout my life accepting other people,
loving other people, seeing other people,
and then I've always been the hardest on myself.
I don't know, there's some theories where I grew up
(06:46):
as a dancer and so much of that practice is critique, right?
It's your body, you're looking at yourself all the time,
you're doing this wrong, fix this, do this better,
make this higher, be slimmer, be,
your face needs to be better, go harder.
You're injured, take a beat, do it again, right?
So there's so much of that that is just about criticism
(07:07):
and I think, I don't know if that played a role in me
doing it to myself, right?
Just like, let me fix it before someone else can
and so all of these little nuances,
these things play a role in our relationship
with ourself, quite honestly.
And so we are spent, we spend so much time being taught
about how to be good to other people,
(07:29):
love your neighbors this way, right?
And I don't think, at least not in my life,
I've seen a lot of how to do the same thing
in a relationship with yourself
because that's the most important one.
That's what I've learned.
That's the most important one.
Yeah, and I think I totally agree.
And I think the more we can get closer with ourselves
and make that relationship with ourself
(07:50):
something that's more harmonious,
then that whole external thing of loving others
becomes even better.
Exactly.
Because it comes from this place of overflow.
Yeah, 100% my therapist says,
speaking of that term overflow,
you fill your cup, right?
What's in the cup is for you
and the overflow is for everybody else, so yeah.
(08:12):
Yes, yeah.
Yeah, that saying is so cliche, but it's true.
It's facts.
And we say it for a reason because it is a fact.
Absolutely.
Exactly, yeah.
I was gonna ask you about something that you mentioned
before the relationship with self being the closest.
(08:35):
Oh no, I was gonna reflect actually.
With any art, there is that criticism and that critique,
but I think what's so unique about something like dance
and maybe even like gymnastics
and maybe any type of sport perhaps in general
is that there's that added piece of
(08:56):
it's not just you, it's also like your body.
Exactly, yeah.
And body image and body acceptance
and even like your relationship to food
can be so affected by being in such a competitive place
like that, so in case anyone's listening
who is in that space,
(09:19):
what were some of the things that helped you
have a good relationship with your body
or if there's anything you wanna share about
what that used to look like when you were in dance
versus what that looks like now?
Well, that's a good question.
I would say, I'll just process.
I haven't thought about this in a while.
I remember being young, so I started dancing
(09:41):
very young age, three-ish, right?
And then it became serious, like an actual thing
around 10 or 11, like join this competitive dance studio
and was in the company there and stuff.
I had like 10 and 11 having rehearsals on Friday nights
from like seven to 11 and then weekdays, weekends,
so always there.
(10:01):
It was during that season where I was first sort of exposed
to girls my age caring so much about how they looked
and what they were eating and we're like,
these are kids, right?
And how young they are and because I'm a black female,
I've always had some curves a little bit,
even when I was really thin, my body was thin
(10:23):
and my body just curved differently.
So I remember feedback in ballet classes, for example,
about there are certain lines that you have to achieve
and maybe a little bit of extra, what's it coaching
or pushing or notes probably is a better word
around like what my body should be doing
versus what it wasn't.
(10:43):
I will say I'm fortunate enough that I never felt abused
in that way or maybe I was oblivious.
It's not like dance moms style.
Was that the show, Dance Moms?
Dance Moms was definitely the show.
Were the ladies like screaming at these children?
Yeah, that was not my experience
unless I was just oblivious to it
or unless my mom was just like shielding me from it.
(11:04):
And maybe it wasn't my experience,
maybe I didn't let it get in
because ballet was not ever my favorite, right?
So I was always a rhythmic style person.
So jazz, tap, later in my career was like hip hop house,
like all of these rhythmic things, right?
Where the curves weren't as much of an issue,
but what I will tell you is that it got into the point
(11:25):
where when I look at pictures of myself back then, now,
I'm like, oh, I was tiny,
but I had developed this body dysmorphia
of like always thinking that I'm big
when actually I was like not even close to it, right?
It was just because my curves were different
and I'm a little thicker.
Like I'm stockier, if that makes sense.
(11:47):
I have more muscle mass
and I'm a little bit taller than the average female.
And so that just had, I just, and I'm a little bustier.
So I just always felt big for whatever reason
or thick is how I would say it.
When I look at pictures, I'm like, oh my gosh,
I wasn't even close to being thick.
So I just, to answer your question,
(12:07):
I know I'm going to, I was saying a lot of words.
I remember girls being like not wanting to eat much.
I remember, you know, just like fitting into certain things
and the two pieces and like, you know,
caring what your body looked at such a tiny age
when that really shouldn't matter as much.
And in terms of coping with it, I just,
(12:31):
I guess I just had a healthy enough family environment
to where I just didn't get in.
I didn't, my mom was very supportive.
She was slightly a momager in a like,
let's get this work done.
I'm paying for it.
Like you're going to do it kind of way, but never in a,
if you don't look this kind of way, they're not going to,
you know, she never.
That's good.
I ate what I wanted to eat and I, you know,
(12:51):
had all the pizza and I drank the soda and I had the Twix
and there was never sort of any,
I was allowed to be a child.
And so I didn't have sort of that experience with food,
although I had the dysmorphia, the body dysmorphia.
I didn't have the experience with food
that I know a lot of dancers do.
(13:12):
Yeah, yeah.
And what do you think shifted your,
or when did your body dysmorphia start to shift
and what was the thing that you think helped?
It's a daily, it's an ongoing thing.
I don't, you know, I am now at least aware of it,
but even now I find myself sort of having to affirm my body.
(13:33):
Like, ooh, I love my curves.
I love, you know, I love how I look.
I am, I am, whatever the affirmation is,
it's still a thing for me to be honest,
where I think I'm bigger than I am.
At least now I'm able to celebrate like sizes, dress sizes.
Like, oh, I remember, right?
And I guess my experience is a little skewed also
(13:55):
because, you know, my grandmother is like,
what, they would use this term jokingly
and kind of like cheesily.
Like it was supposed to be endearing.
It wasn't supposed to be mean.
When I was a professional and you know,
there's all this type casting in the professional dance world.
And it's like, okay, if you're,
if we're auditioning for this artist who is, you know,
five, five and a certain weight,
(14:17):
they want the dancers around them to either match that or be,
you know, make them look smaller or make them look bigger.
So there's a lot of casting around size.
And there were so many jobs where, yeah,
there are so many jobs where it's like, okay,
you can't be taller than five, five.
We need, you know, X Latin, X Asian, X Black, X white, right?
(14:38):
So you're sort of, you know,
your competition based on what they've said
they need to cast for.
And I just remember sort of before you even learn
any of the choreography being brought out.
And it's like, okay, everybody just stand on the line.
Like you're too tall, you're too tall, you're too tall.
All my Amazons, they would call us Amazon.
All my Amazons, you kind of think you're gorgeous, but-
How tall are you?
(14:58):
I'm five, six.
Like I'm not even that tall.
I'm taller than you.
Oh my gosh.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
I'm German, so we're huge.
But yeah, this like, all my Amazon,
thank you all so much for coming.
Like you're gorgeous, but you're too tall.
We can't use you.
Wow.
So that also kind of contributed to like this,
(15:21):
like I'm above average something for the typical woman.
It's height, it's weight, it's,
I remember my weight especially being a thing
because I mentioned I'm stockier.
So I know in middle school, when I was hitting puberty,
I started to be like, weigh over 100 pounds, right?
(15:41):
It went from like weighing nothing to like 120.
And it seemed to jump 10 pounds every year.
So by high school, I was like 140.
I specifically remember in college being like 150
and sort of that feeling like that meant something.
Even when I look at the pictures
and I see how tiny of a frame I had,
that number meant something when everyone else was like,
(16:03):
oh, I'm a size two and I weigh 20.
And I'm like, oh, I weighed that in like sixth grade.
So it's just always been a weird thing.
Yeah.
I think it's also hard to escape the body dysmorphia,
whether or not you're in dance, just as a woman in general,
because we're told a lot more than men
(16:25):
what our bodies should look like.
Yeah.
And we receive the messages from like very secretive places.
Like I remember when the Barbie movie came out,
I purposely didn't watch it
because I think Barbie gave me body dysmorphia
when I was a kid.
Just like seeing her very unrealistic proportion.
(16:46):
And it's just everywhere.
It is.
Yeah. Yeah.
I'm sure that it's probably gotten a lot better now
because now there's a lot more,
like versus when we were growing up,
there's a lot more celebration for a variety of sizes.
Yeah, thankfully.
Yeah, 100%.
And I always look at music videos
or award shows with that lens.
(17:06):
Like Lizzo and all of her,
I know she's had some controversy,
but I'll use that as an example.
My goodness.
Like if there were larger women being cast for things,
it was intentional.
Like we are trying to make a statement and we want this,
but it wasn't necessarily the norm.
Or if I look at Beyonce's homecoming,
Coachella performance and the range of sizes
(17:28):
of all those women,
like gorgeous dancers of all different sizes.
I was like, oh yeah, that's powerful.
And that's how honestly it should have always been,
but there was a world where,
that wasn't really necessarily the case always.
Yeah.
So now I'm curious to know what the beginnings
of your business that you have now, career steward,
(17:51):
like where did that,
where did the inspiration for that come out of?
You know, so much of it is rooted
even from my dance career days.
Like I remember intentionally choosing,
like going against this thing that I studied in college
and was like, nope, I'm going to be a performer.
I'm going to move to LA.
I'm going to figure out what that means.
And like doing all the blood, sweat and tears
(18:13):
to figure that out with like no money, no network,
no anything to get, to have this career.
And I remember just feeling like,
oh, everyone should feel this way.
Like I made my dream come true.
Everyone should feel this way.
And it just so happened that I had an opportunity
on a whim in grad school,
I was studying to get a master's in dance
and the department chair comes in five minutes
(18:34):
before class starts and is like,
hey, we have this career course for undergrads.
We need a TA, teaching assistant.
Can you do it?
It starts like now, can you go?
And I was like, sure, I did it.
And fell in love with career development.
Like I was able to tell them all the things
I wish I had known and you know, how to make a living.
(18:56):
Like so much time back then, especially spent
teaching someone how to make art,
how to make a thing, but not how to sustain a living,
making that art.
And so I finally get to talk about-
That's totally missed in art school.
Yes, totally talk about what taxes and savings
and saying no to a job if it's not right for you.
(19:16):
And you're not like just all of these things.
And when I transitioned from my dance career,
I moved into workforce development,
career development in the corporate space.
And then I was like, no, I wanna go back on my own
and like keep doing this with creatives.
And so yeah, here I am with career Stewart,
sort of this fusion of all the parts of me, quite honestly,
(19:38):
in service of helping more people feel a sense of like
pride and purpose and what they do every day for a living.
So then do you work with just creatives in general now
or do you work with dancers?
I work with creatives in general.
There are a larger portion of the folks who are connected
(20:00):
to me and who found me through my days of like writing
about dance stuff.
So dancers are definitely still heavily represented,
but it's all creatives.
And then I also work with nonprofits who are kind of focused
on professional development in some way,
not necessarily in the creative space.
And I kind of help support some of the content
and programming in that way,
(20:21):
but all around the lens of helping someone grow
their body of work.
Okay.
And so in the audience of creatives,
what do you see are some of the most common struggles
with self-love?
To me, I think this is a self-love issue,
is the under earning.
It's the undervaluing what you do.
(20:45):
Being afraid to charge a decent rate for what you do,
being afraid to lose like this fear of like,
sort of I gotta accept whatever is handed to me
in order to make it instead of knowing your worth,
standing in that, being able to trust that
and being okay if someone walks away,
if they don't honor that as well.
(21:06):
That's a huge thing.
I think there's some things that aren't just specific
to creatives or dancers in that,
I'm scared to kind of go out on my own.
What does it look like?
How do I make money?
What about insurance?
Those are common sort of pain points and fears
that folks have when it comes to making a living independently.
Or with a business.
Creatives, I see often, especially dancers,
(21:28):
there's so many roles or jobs where it's like,
like the dance budget is like the last thing they think of.
And so they're like, we're gonna build this great show.
And if they're not represented by an agent or with a union,
like, will you work for exposure only?
Or will you donate a gazillion hours of your time
and I'm gonna pay you a hundred bucks.
(21:48):
So that gets in.
And then if you try to advocate for yourself
or stand up for yourself,
then it's like you're sort of labeled as a problem person.
Instead of just pay people what they're deserved to be paid.
And if you don't have a budget for it,
like reconsider what you're trying to do.
(22:10):
Yeah, I think across the board,
there are a lot of positions where it's like,
just work for, just work for exposure.
One example I can think of is I've gotten a couple
of emails before to make social media posts
about a certain product just for either the exposure
(22:31):
or for a discount on their products.
And I'm like, no, I'm not doing that.
And I'm like, I'm in my mid thirties.
I don't have time to work for free.
Exactly, exactly.
Yeah, you're right.
There are times when it does make sense
if you're just starting out.
Internships are that way.
If there's really a super like legitimate way
(22:52):
to network from the opportunity, that makes sense.
But if you're just out here saying like work for exposure,
there's hardly ever any follow up on that.
Like what does that exactly mean?
Yeah, yeah.
There's no way to really measure what you're getting
out of your investment of the time.
Exactly.
Yeah, the under earning is a huge thing.
I ran a mastermind all of last year for six months.
(23:14):
And it was all for coaches that we were all in the same
like certification together.
And we wanted to work on our money mindset
and under earning came up so much.
And what we found was underneath the under earning
were a couple of things.
One was like, I'm not known enough
and not enough people know about me.
(23:35):
Like I have to be famous and have all these followers
to like that will justify.
The price.
Yeah.
Or they'll be like really underneath all of it.
It's the sense of like not feeling worthy.
Not enoughness.
Of getting paid.
Yeah.
(23:55):
Yeah, not feeling enough.
Yeah, and it's a hard one to work through
because it often like stems from just really deeply rooted
beliefs and sometimes like things from childhood.
So yeah, it's very complex.
Yeah, definitely a mindset thing, which is,
one of the things even when I'm talking through,
(24:17):
this is how you could potentially make a hundred years
a creator, for example, so much of that is mindset.
Like there is no getting there without a mental upgrade
as well.
Yeah.
So what's another struggle with self-love
that you've seen besides the under earning?
(24:38):
From creatives or?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, from creatives.
I would say it's the financial manifestation
is probably what I see the most of.
And maybe another one that's coming up for me is now
like fear around if they can even do the thing
that they wanna do.
So sort of giving themselves permission to do it.
(24:59):
I come across a lot of folks who are like
have a traditional job.
There's so many creatives who,
because society doesn't understand creative economy
and how can you make money with this thing
that you love so much?
And so we've talked ourselves into getting these real jobs
and they could be legitimate reasons.
Maybe you have to take care of family and you got bills
(25:20):
and you need health insurance and all of those things.
And that keeps so many people sort of wishing
they could actually have the life or career that they want
because they're too afraid and they won't be able to cut it.
They won't be enough to actually create the career
or business of their dreams.
And so I would say that's also part self-love.
(25:42):
It's kind of like you have two choices, fear or love.
Most everything is grouped into those two categories
and you can either make a choice towards fear,
you can make a choice towards love, including self-love.
And so a lot of times when people stay stuck
is because they've allowed themselves to sort of
keep making those choices towards fear
versus like betting on yourself,
(26:03):
taking a chance on yourself and getting what you need
so that you can live a life that you're worthy of, right?
Yeah.
So what is something that you help someone
who has that full-time job and has,
I don't know if they have the side hustle yet
(26:24):
or if they have the dream of doing something more creative.
Like what does that journey look like?
It's all about, in my opinion, strategy and planning.
It's just, it's a big math equation, in my opinion.
It is just, okay, this is how much you make now
or how much you want to be making in general
(26:45):
with or without this job.
These are all of the strengths and skillsets you have.
This is the network you have.
Now what's the right combination of strengths, skills,
packaging that in a certain way,
the strategy around pricing it,
and then how much of those do you need to sell
to then make this number over here that we already have?
And so it's making the numbers make sense
(27:07):
and giving folks a very tangible, applicable way
to walk it out so that it doesn't feel so in the clouds
and out of reach and it feels more attainable
when you're able to just break it down in that way.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, and I think that's all people want.
Just like, I'm that way.
So I guess maybe I just attract a lot of people
(27:28):
who are like me, just tell me what to do and I'll do it.
You know, there's not a whole lot of,
yeah, I can sometimes get in my own way
and need someone to talk me off a ledge
and you know, like all of those things.
But for the most part, if you just gave me the steps,
I'll just go do the thing, right?
And so I think some people just need a way
to have like a path that is specific to them,
(27:51):
that makes sense for them, like aligned with who they are
and they feel good walking it out in some kind of way,
minus, you know, some nerves and anxiety.
Mm-hmm, okay.
So the two struggles are feeling unworthy to charge
and then under earning.
And then the second one is kind of that block
(28:13):
between like where they're at and where they want to be
because society really does feed us this like struggling
artist or like starving artist mentality,
which is so ironic because the artists that do
quote unquote make it, they can make a ton of money.
Like you mentioned Lizzo and Beyonce earlier,
(28:34):
like there's no ceiling on how much income
they can make with their art.
That's, I mean, I literally before,
one of my most recent blog posts that I put on our website
is busting the broke or Beyonce myth.
It's like people think either are gonna be homeless
or are gonna be Beyonce.
And those are the only two choices.
And it's like, what about though, it's a spectrum.
What about the middle class of being, you know,
(28:56):
a creative or an entrepreneur or, you know,
some other non-traditional professional?
Like what about all of those options?
And like, why aren't we talking more about those?
Why don't we see those more?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think our social media feeds can be, it's a blame for that
because they just show the most luxurious things.
(29:18):
Yeah.
Usually.
People are selling dreams out here,
which is, you know, how people sell.
I get it.
But the dream can look differently.
For some people.
So, what did you say?
I was gonna say for some people, that's not even the dream.
The dream is like, I just wanna make a living
and be happy, you know, doing what I wanna do.
(29:39):
Yeah.
And I think that's an important self-love piece
is to like really just stop and ask yourself,
what is it that I actually want
instead of striving for something
because you saw somebody else?
Yeah.
On the internet or your neighbor or your friends do,
and like you have FOMO,
and so you wanna do that thing too.
(30:00):
Yeah.
What's important to you that is not about status.
Yeah.
So what is the self-love that is needed
to build the career or...
Yeah.
It's part giving yourself permission.
I think that's the first thing.
Like, okay, there's this life
that I'm holding myself back from,
(30:21):
or maybe I thought was impossible before,
and I now want to see what it looks like to go after it.
So I think that's one part of it.
It is also, so much of it is loving yourself enough
to follow the nudgings that you already have within you,
the intuition, your guidance, right?
So it's not ignoring those things.
It's not dismissing that guidance.
(30:43):
That is actually how you're going to get
to where you wanna be.
And so loving yourself enough to honor that,
loving yourself enough to honor it
when it goes against the grain.
So when it's actually against what's happening
on social media, what's popular,
and what this one guru said you should be doing
to build your business.
If your intuition is guiding you a different way,
will you love yourself enough to go that way and get it?
(31:06):
It is loving yourself enough
to own all the parts of your story.
I can, to use me as an example,
I have been a professional dancer.
I have been in a number of corporate roles,
workforce development space,
and now I'm back on my own as an entrepreneur.
I've worn so many different hats.
It's not been linear.
It's not your traditional, like, you know,
(31:26):
I went to school, got a degree in biology,
went to medical school, now I'm a doctor,
and I've been a doctor for 20 years, right?
It's this wavy, topsy-turvy other experience,
which so many more professionals have that same experience.
How can you own it and then stand in that,
tell the story of that sort of without, you know,
being ashamed of it or, you know, making that be
(31:48):
another reason why you feel not enough, like,
oh, just because I want to do this new thing
and I haven't done it for five years, I'm not worthy.
I don't have enough credibility.
I don't have enough followers.
It's like, no, my experience,
my lived experience actually is enough.
So that's super important as well.
And then I'll say one more,
loving yourself enough to get the support that you need
in whatever way that looks like for you.
(32:10):
It could be a coach, it could be a mentor,
it could be a therapist, it could be a spiritual guide,
it could be your mom, it could be, you know,
like, however you need, whatever you need
to be supported along that journey,
you gotta love yourself enough to do that.
Yeah.
I think on that note,
I think one of the best supports you can get
is finding a peer that is also doing,
(32:33):
like, walking the same path as you,
like, has a similar goal
and then meeting with them regularly.
That for me has, like,
I would not be recording this podcast
and I would not be still running my own business
if I hadn't done that.
And luckily I was doing that
because it was like COVID lockdown when I started.
So I wanted to talk to people.
(32:55):
Yeah, but you make a really good point
with the piece about looking at your lived experience,
especially when you are transitioning into a new career
or maybe you're still new in a career.
I think now it's more and more common
that people are transitioning.
Like, the whole narrative of staying at the same job
(33:18):
for 30 years used to be the norm
and is not really the norm anymore.
And it comes up a lot that people think
they don't know enough yet
when they are five years into a new position
or a new business or something.
Because they're forgetting that what they did before
really did set them up for where they are now.
(33:40):
1000%, it's so relevant.
When I was in the workforce development space,
I worked at organizations that basically took
these boot camps or degrees or whatever.
And a lot of the folks that would attend those
or enroll in those would be looking
for some sort of career shift.
And a lot of them to break into tech for the first time.
Lots of folks with education background trying to do,
(34:01):
maybe coding or data or something like that.
Lots of folks with just like these really interesting careers
that now want a different lifestyle.
And one of the number one questions
that would literally drive me up a wall was like,
do I need to get an internship?
Do I need to start over?
This person who was in their 40s,
do I need to find an internship now
to break into this new field?
(34:22):
And I'd be like, oh my gosh, no you don't.
Don't say that.
Do not look for an internship.
What you need to do is find the through line
between what you've done before,
what skills you're really great at from this program,
what you're interested in, tell that story.
It's relevant.
Open the door from where you are.
Don't try to go all the way back to the end of the line
(34:45):
and work your way up again.
That's one of the quickest way to burn yourself out
or discourage yourself.
Because you're gonna be applying to roles,
you're gonna be overqualified for.
And then it's gonna be this cycle of confirmation bias.
Like see, I knew because I'm not getting any bites.
But it's really so much of this is really about storytelling.
(35:06):
It's like how you're presenting yourself,
what you're telling the world about you
and how you feel about that story
is also how the folks who are hearing it will feel too.
So you really gotta find your story.
That's so important.
So it's something that you help people with as well
is that copywriting aspect of writing their story.
Absolutely.
Like it's the first, one of the first parts of it.
(35:28):
It's like, what's the target?
What are we going after?
And then what's the story?
That's so much of it.
And then the rest of it, you know,
is sort of like strategy around networking
and finding your people, but it's like,
what are we saying about you, who you are?
And in a way that makes you feel excited and proud,
you know?
Yes, I love that.
That's beautiful.
Thank you.
(35:49):
Sounds really fun.
Yeah, I love it.
It's, you know, I'm still being able to,
like I'm able to be creative
in a way that's in service to people now.
Not that performances weren't, you know,
usually it's about, you know,
telling a story in a different way
or a product, selling a product or, you know,
a sales work company, it's like that kind of storytelling.
But to be able to help people tell their own stories
(36:10):
in a way that lights them up is just, it's powerful.
It's not something that I could have.
I'm glad it found me.
I don't think I could have, you know,
made this job up if I knew to, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, because everyone has a story within them.
And if you don't have the skillset to bring that story out,
(36:32):
you can feel like you're stuck.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I think another piece that we brought up earlier
about that starving artist
and people getting like a quote unquote real job.
I think what's also so kind of unfortunate about that
(36:53):
is that creativity is innate in us.
I truly believe every human being is creative
and that we're all meant to create.
And we're just not really exposed
to all these different forms of art
because of the way we live.
Like back when we were living in tribes,
art was a part of our everyday life, you know?
Like making pottery, cave paintings,
(37:15):
or whatever else we were doing, singing, drumming,
all of that stuff.
And that's all been like taken away from us,
from all societies.
And we're kind of given this narrative
that only talented people are created.
Yeah, yeah.
That's so real.
(37:35):
And I think there's an association,
not just talented,
like people think I'm not creative
because I'm not an artist, right?
I'm not making art.
I'm not painting, drawing, taking pictures,
dancing, singing, right?
Acting in a play so then I'm not creative.
When creativity to your point
is literally just about manifesting an idea
(37:55):
and making it come to life in a certain way.
So you can be an accountant
and be a wizard with numbers.
And that's creativity.
You can be super great at organizing a space,
like taking clutter and making it functional.
That's creativity, right?
So everyone, I think,
who was I, I was talking to someone
and we were like, these are like secret creatives
or undercover creatives,
(38:15):
or we were trying to find a word
for people who are actually creative,
but they don't identify as creative.
They think, they're like, oh no, I'm not,
but you actually really are.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's just so many people
who probably aren't necessarily self-identified creatives.
Yeah, for sure.
I think it might be a little scary
to identify as a creative
(38:37):
because a creative is someone who,
like you said earlier, will go against the grain
because you're creating something that doesn't exist.
Exactly.
Or you're taking an idea from here,
idea from there, mashing them together,
adding your own flair.
You're creating something new.
Like you have to be able to be very grounded
(38:59):
in your sharing of that to other people.
Yeah.
Like being creative requires that element of being seen
and that can be very terrifying.
Yeah, lots of folks don't wanna be seen.
I understand that.
I used to try to hide myself.
It's interesting that I was a performer,
but I was sort of like afraid to be seen as myself,
like who I really was.
(39:19):
And so that's definitely a thing.
Yeah.
I totally relate to that.
I was in drama all four years of high school
and did a little bit of it,
like just not in college, but just like for fun.
Yeah.
And I found it was a lot easier to show up on stage
as a character with a script
than it was to do something like this
(39:40):
where I'm talking on a podcast and I'm like myself.
Yeah.
Sometimes art can be something to like,
you are still being creative
and you're kind of hiding in it.
Yeah.
It's interesting, right?
I totally, totally agree.
For me, it was, I could perform
in front of like a million strangers.
Literally like, I don't care how big the crowd is,
(40:03):
how big the stage is, put me on it and I'm good to go.
But when I had to perform in front of people who knew me,
my peers, it was like, I hate it so much,
I don't wanna do it.
Like you can see me, right?
And so, yeah, there's definitely something about me
and there's definitely something about like hiding
even in plain sight, you know?
Yeah, hiding in plain sight.
(40:25):
I also find it, I love singing,
but I find it so much easier to sing in like a group.
Yeah.
And solo singing.
I've done it once,
I've done like a musical improv performance
for a class I took and that was fun.
But don't ask me to sing, just by myself,
but we could sing together.
Exactly, another feeling.
(40:46):
Actually, that's gotten better over time.
Cause I have to sing sometimes
for some like women's circles that I host.
Well, I hope I get to hear one of those one day.
Yeah, yeah, that would be fun.
So is there any other self-love kind of,
like a self-love toolbox or self-love must have
(41:07):
that you think is very powerful
for getting people to build the career that they love?
I'll just use things that have worked for me.
I think journaling is super powerful
in terms of helping you to process
and make sense of what it is that you're feeling.
And yeah, it makes sense of it in interesting ways.
(41:27):
Affirmations are gonna always be one of my favorites
and not even just affirmations in terms of mantras,
but like your self-talk,
like how you're talking to yourself about yourself,
about your life, making sure that that is affirmative.
It's affirming what you want
because you will have what you say
and you will have what you think.
So if you think you can't get it,
if you think that you're not enough,
(41:48):
if you think you're not worth it
and you act accordingly,
your reality is gonna manifest that
and your reality is gonna be that.
And so how can you make all the things you think
and say affirmative of where you're trying to go?
I think that's really important.
And then all the other, I think,
things that I do are sort of tools of self-love
and self-practice of that, therapy, massages,
(42:11):
you know, spiritual practice, my walks in nature,
like all of that helps me to sort of stay grounded
in who I am and my self-view and my self-worth
and how I show up in the world.
Mm-hmm, love that.
How about you?
What are yours?
What's your tool?
I love sound baths.
Mm, okay.
(42:31):
I like going in person is the best,
but there's also a ton on YouTube
and I have a couple of instruments myself.
I like it because you get to just lay down and listen.
And if you're playing the instrument yourself,
you just can't help but be super present with the sound.
I just bought a book that's like a whole guide
(42:52):
to sound healing because I would love to facilitate
sound baths in the future after almost like 10 years
of being obsessed with going to them myself.
Yeah, that sounds like a natural progression.
Also, by the way, I hope you never say
that you're not a creative because I just heard
in the past like two minutes that you were in plays,
(43:13):
that you sing and you play instruments.
And so you've got like a triple threat situation
going on over here.
Oh, thank you.
For me, my creativity has definitely shifted
over the years and that's been like a hard thing to accept.
For example, I like to joke that I was born
with a crayon in my left hand
(43:35):
because I was drawing all throughout my childhood,
all throughout teenage hood.
But then when I was in an illustration class in school,
I studied fashion design.
That was when drawing became homework.
So it was no longer fun.
And then as I've gotten older,
because it's been like over 10 years
(43:56):
since I've been in college,
I've realized that my art was my form of self therapy
when I was a kid because I came
from a dysfunctional household.
And the art was like what I needed to feel whole
and to feel safe and to process emotions
and to express myself.
Because that was the page and the crayon
(44:19):
and then later the charcoals, the paints,
like all the medium.
That was my safe space to express.
And now the way I am creative has nothing to do with drawing.
But it's still there.
I think it's important.
Yeah, it's still there.
I think it's important to know that your creativity
might shift over the years
(44:39):
and it probably will shift over the years.
Yeah, that's good, yeah.
So I'm curious to know how you went from,
because we talked about wanting in the past to kind of hide
and how creativity requires that element of being seen.
I'd love to know what has helped you feel comfortable
(45:01):
in being seen.
I've gone through some sort of like radical awakening
in the past year or two, unprompted.
It was not intentional.
It was just kind of, I don't know if I had gone
through enough therapy sessions and faced enough of,
things that maybe I was not facing to like,
I wouldn't even say that it was overnight.
(45:23):
It was like this gradual sort of,
okay, I'm not hiding anymore kind of thing.
And quite honestly, it really all goes back to
self-acceptance and self-love.
I was so afraid to be judged and criticized
and abandoned quite honestly.
If you disagree with me even,
and there's a chance that you might leave,
(45:43):
then that's how my people pleasing shows up, right?
Perfectionism even is a symptom of that.
And so when I became okay with me,
anchoring in me, accepting me,
who I am is good enough, is worthy enough.
I don't have to do another thing,
get another accomplishment to be more lovable
(46:03):
or more enough than I am in this moment.
When I started to really sit in that and own that
and accept that, then what other people thought
started to matter less to me.
And that allowed me to sort of be seen more authentically,
to stop hiding because I was okay
with what I was sharing then.
For whatever reason, the hiding was some sort of like,
(46:24):
actually don't feel quite,
there's some anxiety about who this person is
and why am I so different?
Why do I think this way?
Why am I, why do I not fit the mold in a certain way?
Why do I always have to be different, right?
I cared so much about being othered
and just was always trying to just like fit in.
And so at certain point it was like,
you're probably just not meant to fit in in these ways.
(46:46):
Maybe you should just use that.
So it was really just a journey of me
accepting me and who I am.
And that really allowed me to then start to show up.
That's so interesting because what I am hearing is like,
and I completely went through this journey myself as well,
(47:07):
that there's this, before we have the self acceptance,
there's this desire for acceptance outside of us
before we have given that to ourselves.
Yeah.
But once we give it to ourselves,
we no longer need it from outside of us.
Exactly, yeah.
And like you said, what other people thought mattered less.
Mm-hmm, yeah.
Yeah, there was this podcast host,
(47:30):
and I think this is her whole premise, her whole mantra,
but when she signed off the show, she said,
and don't forget to love yourself so much
that love from other people is just icing on the cake
or something like that, it's a bonus.
And I was like, I love that so much.
It's like, that's the vibe, that's exactly it.
Like you gotta love yourself so much.
Like yes, I think it's nuanced.
(47:53):
Like I'm gonna always want love from my family,
my mom, my dad, my brother, right?
Like that's gonna always matter to me.
But generally speaking, I gotta love myself so much
that acceptance, validation from other places
is not really as important.
Yeah, yeah.
I feel like that can kind of tie into that piece
(48:14):
about one of the support things you mentioned
was like asking for help.
Yeah.
And I feel like maybe when we are
in these self-development spaces that are telling us,
love yourself so much that love from other people
are just icing on the cake
or the opinions of others don't matter,
I wonder if that also feeds into it
(48:36):
being hard to ask for help.
I don't know,
because I think asking for help is a form of self-love.
It's showing that you don't have to do it at all.
I think it's something else.
I'm not a therapist,
but I'm just using what I know about myself
and what I've learned about myself in therapy,
the whole perfectionism or codependency specifically,
where you feel like you gotta solve everybody else's problems.
(48:58):
And let me tell you, my number one strength,
according to Strength Finders, is strategy.
So problem solving is literally the thing,
like my number one strength.
And so I don't even notice that I'm doing it sometimes.
I hear a thing and I'm like, oh, why don't you, right?
I have to stop myself
from trying to make that problem
something that I need to solve.
(49:20):
And so I think not asking for help
is actually more of a defense mechanism
or a trauma response, in my opinion.
Yeah, interesting.
Yeah, I'm not a therapist either,
but I love reading about psychology and all that stuff
and have been through a lot of therapy myself.
Yeah, yeah.
(49:41):
Yeah.
Okay, so I already asked you one question
that I asked people at the end,
but there is another question that I ask everyone
and it's what is your favorite part about being a woman?
I love everything about being a woman.
I love our strength and our ability
(50:03):
to sort of be nurturing.
And I guess a man can also have these qualities
or these attributes.
So I don't wanna say it's exclusive to women,
but strength, resilience, nurturing.
Yeah, I love my hair, I love my curves.
I love, yeah, just being able to be present in this world
(50:23):
in this body and this configuration the way that I love.
So yeah, there's something about it.
Even I feel like women get to the best dance parts too.
There's just something about us and our nails
and I love jewelry and I love, yeah, I just love all of that.
Yeah, it's interesting how some of that though
(50:46):
is just like our society.
Men can grow their nails long and paint them
if they want to. That's true, that's true.
But in our society, we're told that that's for girls only.
Yeah, it's very interesting.
Yeah, I was trying not to get into sort of like
gender constructs and roles and things like that,
but you know.
Yeah, it's hard not to.
Yeah, it really is.
(51:07):
Because I've lived my whole life this way and actually,
you know, like that's what I love about, you know, me.
One of the things I love about being a woman, so yeah.
You didn't have to cough, I did.
I was just thinking that.
I coughed for you.
Thank you, because I was like, please I'll cough.
The whole conversation.
So for people who are tuned in,
(51:28):
where can they connect with you?
Where can they find you?
And we've sprinkled talking about your work
a little bit through this conversation,
but feel free to share more.
Yeah, I mean, if you're someone who's like
just trying to figure it out, maybe let's say
you're one of the folks that wants to own your story,
like what, love yourself so much
that now you're owning your story.
I've got a really cool tool called
(51:49):
the Multi Hyphenate Manifesto,
which really like helps you put down on paper,
like what are my strengths?
Who am I?
How can I get to the through line of that story?
And then you can find all the other ways
to tap into me from there.
But it's at lightmycareermatch.com.
And yeah, you can find my LinkedIn and careersteward.co,
but I would say lightmycareermatch
is probably the best place to go to get started.
(52:12):
Cool.
And I'll be sure to include those links
in the show notes or the caption.
Awesome.
Yay.
Thank you so much, Shate.
This was great.
Thanks for having me.
I love this.
Thank you.
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