October 4, 2024 • 29 mins
Stephanie Olson, CEO and founder of the Set Me Free Project, discusses resilience in life and leadership, emphasizing its importance in overcoming challenges. She shares her personal journey, including her work in preventing human trafficking and her experiences as a survivor of sexual and domestic violence. Stephanie highlights the significance of identifying and utilizing strengths, acknowledging weaknesses, and prioritizing tasks. She stresses the importance of celebrating successes and maintaining a positive mindset. Stephanie encourages women to embrace their flaws and view them as opportunities for growth, urging self-empowerment and resilience in the face of adversity.
Everyone has resilience, but what does that mean, and how do we use it in life and leadership? Join Stephanie Olson, an expert in resiliency and trauma, every week as she talks to other experts living lives of resilience. Stephanie also shares her own stories of addictions, disordered eating, domestic and sexual violence, abandonment, and trauma, and shares the everyday struggles and joys of everyday life. As a wife, mom, and CEO she gives commentaries and, sometimes, a few rants to shed light on what makes a person resilient. So, if you have experienced adversity in life in any way and want to learn how to better lead your family, your workplace, and, well, your life, this podcast is for you!
https://setmefreeproject.net
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Episode Transcript
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Stephanie Olson (00:00):
Welcome to resilience in life and
leadership with your host,Stephanie Olson, CEO speaker,
author and sexual violence andaddiction expert, we're glad
you're here. I am StephanieOlson, and I am so glad to be
here with you empowering womenin industry. 2024 it's very
(00:24):
exciting. I am just going topretend I am here with a
fabulous group of women, becauseI know I am, even though I am by
myself, here with my dogssomewhere, but I know you're
here with me. And so we aregoing to be talking about some
great stuff. We're going to betalking about resilience and
resilience in life, resilienceand leadership, because when we
(00:48):
are working in whatever industrythat is, we need resilience in
everything we do, and so that'swhat we're going to be
discussing today. So if I wereto ask you the question, what
kind of pain do you want in yourlife? What would you say now,
I'm guessing most of you rightnow are thinking, I actually
(01:14):
want no pain in my lifewhatsoever. And you know what?
That's exactly what I would say,too. I buy that I do not want
pain at all. But what if I wereto ask you a different question?
And that is, what are youwilling to struggle for? What
(01:37):
are you willing to struggle forif I were to ask you that
question, what are you willingto struggle for now, my guess is
that we would probably saysomething very different if I
were to ask you, what are youwilling to struggle for us, as
opposed to what kind of pain doyou want in Your Life? And the
(02:00):
reality is we are willing tostruggle for a lot of things. I
know for me personally, I am amom of three adult children. I'm
willing to struggle for them.
I'm a wife of an extremelysupportive spouse, willing to
struggle for him. I'm a mom of afurry dog. Sure, I will struggle
(02:23):
for that baby, but there's a lotof other things too. I'm the CEO
and founder of a nonprofit. I'mwilling to struggle for that and
the hard work and the people weserve and the things in my life
that matter. And I'm guessing,if I were to be able to ask you
all of those things, you wouldsay the same exact thing, maybe
(02:47):
not exactly what I'm saying, butyou'd say things that you're
willing to struggle for thatmeans something to you. And
that's what it's all about,that's resilience, whether we're
talking about resilience in ourlife or in our industries that
we work in, that there arethings that that make a
difference in our lives, thereare things that help us do
(03:11):
better. But when we're talkingabout resilience, and I think
resilience is an extremelyimportant word, I've heard
people say things like, Well, Idon't like to be called
resilient, because that impliesthat I'm already arrived, when,
in fact, I think just theopposite. When I think of the
(03:33):
term resilience, I think itmeans getting knocked down and
getting right back up, and maybetaking two steps forward and
then two steps back. That'sThat's what I think when I think
about resilience, and if wecould look at our own lives, we
(03:55):
know absolutely that that's whatit's all about. I run a
nonprofit that we do preventioneducation on human trafficking.
It's called the set me freeproject, and I had no intention
of starting a nonprofit anddoing this work, and I had
(04:17):
personally been working in thearea of of women in sexual and
domestic violence and addictionand things like that. I am
personally a survivor of ofsexual and domestic violence,
and so that was on my heart.
Women were on my heart. It wassomething I wanted to do. But
when I started to see some ofthe things that were not being
(04:39):
done in the counter traffickingmovement, one of my coworkers
said, let's help women who havebeen trafficked, really having
no idea what that meant at all.
And so we started to do someresearch, and what we found is
it looked very different thanwhat we thought. Right? And in
that moment, we realized therewas this huge gap that was not
(05:03):
being filled in the area ofcounter trafficking, and so we
decided to fill that gap. We nowhave a curriculum today from
kindergarten through 12th gradefor youth and curriculum for
adults of every facet of of thethe every industry, because
every industry sees it,community members, parents as
(05:27):
well, and we do trainings, butthat was never my intention. My
intention was to continue tospeak and to continue to work
with women in these areas and dowhat I was doing, but I knew
nothing at the time about humantrafficking, nor frankly, in all
honesty, did I really want toknow anything about human
(05:51):
trafficking, but that is exactlywhat I ended up doing. I had
been working with youth in thearea of healthy relationships
and speaking to them. And aftertalking to a couple of
educators, I thought, Gosh, thisis so needed that the targets of
trafficking, and I'm not goingto go into that in detail, but
(06:12):
those are relationshipbuildings, and those targets are
youth, and they don't knowthey're being targeted. And as I
said, I'm a mom of adultchildren. At the time, my kids
were in in public school, and Ithought, if they don't know that
they are targets, I don't knowthat they are targets, there is
something missing. So we steppedin to fill that gap. Well, that
(06:35):
wasn't as easy as we thought itwas going to be. In fact, we
came up with a ton ofresistance. And frankly, if I
had known how difficult it wasgoing to be, I wouldn't have
(06:55):
taken the next step. Butfortunately, I didn't, and we
built this nonprofit from tiny,tiny to a national organization
that is serving youth, that isserving people who are serving
youth, and just amazing stuffthat is going on. But that
(07:20):
didn't happen overnight, and itwasn't easy. And in fact, when I
think about how many times Ijust wanted to throw in the
towel and quit, but I didn't,and that's what resilience is.
Resilience is getting knockeddown, and it's getting right
(07:41):
back up and doing it over andover and over again. I think one
of the key things in resilienceis, as women, we are pretty hard
on ourselves. I know personallyI struggle with, I'm my own
worst critic. I struggle withthings like imposter syndrome.
(08:06):
And I think, you know, here I ama CEO of a nonprofit, and
frankly, what am I doing in thisrole? Because often I think I
have no idea what I'm doing now.
When I sit back and I reallylook at myself and I look at
what I've accomplished and who Iam as a strong and independent
(08:29):
woman, and in the workplace, Ican step back and say, okay,
you've done you've done a goodjob, but most of the time,
that's not how I view myself.
Most of the time I think, okay,I need to get through this, or
I'm not even viewing myself. Andso that's where sometimes the
struggle comes in. I think aboutimposter syndrome a lot,
because, let's face it, so manyof us have it, and I don't think
(08:54):
we ever get to the other sidewhere we're just like, No, I am
100% in charge of who I am, andI'm constantly doing it right.
Yay. Me. That's not me anyway,if it's you, more power to you.
But for me, I struggle. I willnever forget I was speaking to a
(09:19):
group. I do a lot of conferencespeaking, and I travel. And I
was speaking to a group onimposter syndrome, and it was in
Atlantic City, and I was reallyexcited to speak to this group,
a group of leaders, emergingleaders, leaders who have been
in their positions for a longtime. And I rolled up to
(09:42):
Caesar's Palace, where theconference was right by, and I
got to the front desk, and theysaid, You know what, we've
upgraded you. No reason I didnothing. Maybe smiled and I got
upgraded. Well,I. Walk up to these double
doors. Now, let me tell you, Icannot remember the last time I
(10:06):
have walked up to double doorsin a hotel. Actually, that was
it so. And as I opened thesedouble doors, I walk into this
foyer that overlooks this hugeliving room with windows all
over. I go into the bedroombecause I want to see what that
(10:29):
looks like, and it's gorgeous,but that was not the piece de
resistance. Okay? I took Frenchfor five minutes in high school.
Actually, I took it for fouryears, and I know nothing, but I
walk into the bathroom nowthat's where it was at in the
bathroom was a shower with asteam room and a Jacuzzi. That's
(10:52):
where I wanted to spend all ofmy time. I go downstairs. I
decided I'm going to treatmyself today, and I walk into
Hell's Kitchen, Gordon Ramsay'srestaurant, and I eat amazing
food, and I'm thinking, I'mliving the life. I don't know
who's life, but I'm livingsomebody's life. And the next
(11:14):
day, I walk into the conferenceroom and I'm thinking, I don't
know if anyone's going to showup here. I'm talking about
imposter syndrome, and I'mstarting to think through all
these things and feeling likethat. So I go to the bathroom,
get ready for my conference, andI come back, and the room is
packed. In fact, it was sopacked that there were people
(11:36):
standing in the back, sitting inthe back, sitting in the front,
all wanting to know aboutimposter syndrome, because you
know what? We all experience it,but when we understand what
resilience is, that it's notbeing perfect, it's not
(11:58):
arriving, it's not being Yes, Ihave done it all, and I am good.
I've overcome. I'm on the otherside. It is about getting up
again and again and again andkeep on keeping on. That's what
that's what resilience is. Andwe do that in every aspect of
our lives. And I want to showyou a couple of things, because
(12:22):
I think a lot of it is how weare, our character as women, and
our mindset. How do we thinkabout things? I was I was
traveling once, and I do travela lot. I'm on airplanes a lot.
I'm driving a lot, but this onetime, I was headed off to
(12:43):
somewhere in a plane, and I hadto park my car. So I park in the
first cheap lot that I can findso that I can park for a couple
of days. And I realized that thecheap lot that I'm used to
parking in was actually nolonger there. So I drive next to
(13:04):
the next cheap lot, and I pullin and there's a woman standing
at the kiosk with a huge file.
Now I don't think I mentionedit's 430 in the morning. Kind of
know if people smile at 430 inthe morning? I know I don't, but
(13:26):
this woman had a huge smile onher face, and she I pulled in,
and she looked at me and said,Have you ever been here before?
And I said, No. And she said,prepare to be amazed. Prepare to
be amazed. It's 430 in themorning. I'm in a cheap parking
lot, but you know what I wasbecause she told me that I was
(13:50):
going to be that's mindset. Itis all mindset and how we think
about things, how we're lookingat things, how we feel about
ourselves, how we're talking toourselves. So I want to share a
few things here with you,because it's all about our
character and integrity, how welook at life with resilience.
(14:14):
It's going to encompass all ofthis stuff. So how do you have
resilience in your life, in yourworkplace. How do you have
resilience in everything you do?
Well, I think one of the mainthings is identifying your
strengths, knowing what thingsthat you have that are your true
(14:35):
strengths, and go after those.
Utilize those you want 80% ofyour time to be done in your
strengths. It's important thatwe are learning to use those and
(14:56):
really develop those and. Whatcatapults us to the next level,
but we also have to acknowledgeour weaknesses. I mean, we all
have them, and we can't get awayfrom them right now. The idea is
we don't want to use ourweaknesses more than we use our
(15:16):
strengths, but we do have toacknowledge these are weaknesses
of mine, and so maybe thesearen't things that I should be
doing over and over again, andthat goes down to prioritizing
tasks and responsibilities anddelegating appropriately. What
(15:37):
are the key things we need to doand we need to get done and do
those first, and then, what arethe things that we shouldn't be
doing at all? I think we shouldall have business coaches. And
one day, my business coach and Iwere talking about prioritizing
tasks and getting things done,and I said, I am struggling to
(15:58):
get this simple task done. Itwas something that I had done
many times before. It wassomething that was easy to do.
It was time consuming, but itwas easy to do. But this day
that I sat down to do it, I justcouldn't get it done. I couldn't
process it in my brain. Icouldn't make it work. It was
(16:21):
the most interesting thing. AndI was telling my business coach
this, and he said, Stephanie,this is not something you should
even be doing. This is somethingsomebody else should be doing,
and that is exactly why you'renot getting it done. It's not
your task. It's not yourresponsibility, I think often,
(16:44):
especially as women, as leaders,as people who are go getters, we
have a tendency to do thingsthat we're not supposed to do
because we're good at it, or wemight get it done faster, but
(17:05):
sometimes we need to let thosethings go and delegate those
things, and we need tocommunicate clearly. We need to
make sure that everybody aroundus knows what we need them to
accomplish and what we're goingto accomplish, we need to
communicate other people's rolesand our roles so that people
(17:28):
understand what that is allabout. And we need to focus on
continually growing. I thinksome of the most successful
people are the people who arelifelong learners. And if we are
willing to continue to grow andcontinue to learn, that is where
(17:49):
we continue to develop. That'swhere our growth continues. And
finally,it is so important that we
celebrate successes. Now I wantto talk about this for a second,
because I recently was speakingto a group of primarily women.
There were some men there, butthey were doing a staff
(18:10):
celebration, or staffappreciation, and there was this
group of leaders, and I talkedabout celebrating successes, and
one of the women there said, butisn't that prideful? I mean, if
we celebrate our success, isn'tthat prideful? Aren't we? Aren't
we supposed to be humble? Well,yes, humility is a great thing.
(18:32):
Humility is important tocontinue to grow, too. But I
don't think celebratingsuccesses is prideful. I think
pride is when we focus andcenter everything around
ourselves, whether it's great,whether it's negative, but it's
all about us. But to say, Hey, Iaccomplished this, and I am
(18:56):
proud of this, and I just wantyou to know that is a positive
thing. When you fall down andyou get back up and you're doing
a great job. Celebrate that.
That is a huge success. When youget a promotion, celebrate that.
(19:18):
It's a massive success. You sellto a big client, or you get a
huge project done, celebrate it.
Those are things that help youmove forward. And when you do
fall down, and you rememberthose successes, those come back
to mind, and you think you knowwhat I did, that once I can do
(19:41):
it again. I think that's whatresilience is all about. Now I
want to tell you a little storyas we close, there was a woman
who had two jars, and these jarswere. Beautiful One, however,
was much more beautiful than theother, and every day, this woman
(20:04):
walked into the village carryingthese two jars with her. All of
the time now she would walk intothe village, and she would fill
these jars with water, and shewould walk back home, and every
(20:25):
day, she did this routineconsistently. Now one of the
jars had a huge flaw on oneside, and there was just a crack
down down the middle. And whenthe old woman would fill that
jar with water, well, that jar,she would just drip water all
(20:47):
the way back to the village, andshe felt really bad. She felt
like she wasn't completing thework that she needed to do. And
every once in a while, she'dlook at the jar on the other
side, and she'd say, this jar isso perfect. It's beautiful. It
has no flaws, and and it doesits job. When we go into the
(21:13):
village, it it fills up withwater, and they come back and,
oh, I wish I could be like thatjar. And so one day, the woman
looked at the jar with the flawand said, What's wrong? You just
don't look happy. And the jarlooked up at her and said, Now,
if your jar ever starts talkingto you, that's a whole other
(21:36):
issue we need to deal with. Butthis jar looked up at her and
said, You know, I don't feelgood about myself. I've got this
huge flaw that drips water allover the place. I'm not good at
what I do. You fill me up withwater and i i Come back, but I'm
dripping water all over theplace, and I don't bring enough
(21:59):
water back that I should be andso the woman said, You know what
tomorrow, when we walk into thevillage, I want you to look
down. I want you to take a lookunderneath you and tell me what
you see after we get water whenwe walk back. And so the very
next day, the woman takes thetwo jars and walks into the
(22:22):
village and fills up the waterand then walks back and the jar
with the flaw looked down andnoticed all of these beautiful
flowers underneath, and she sawbeauty and green and colors. And
then she looked over at the jar,and there was just dirt
(22:45):
underneath that jar. And we whenthey got back home, she said,
what was that? Underneath methere were these beautiful
flowers, and underneath theother jar, there weren't any and
the old woman said, I knew thatyou had a crack. I knew there
was a flaw, and because of that,I sprinkled seeds on the path
(23:09):
that you were going to dripwater on. And so, because of
your flaw, and because the waterwas dripping. You grew beauty.
You grew flowers, and they grewinto beautiful things that are
fragrant and lovely. You thinkthat crack is a flaw. You're
(23:33):
embarrassed by it. You don'tthink you're doing the job that
you think you should be but inreality, that flaw is bringing
beauty to the world, and I wantyou to know that too, that we
often take our worst and compareour worst to other people's
(23:58):
best. We do that in person, wedo that on social media. We do
that all over the place. Butit's important to remember that
what you see as flaws are thingsthat can help develop and grow
another person. I told youearlier that I am a survivor of
(24:22):
sexual and domestic violence,and that was a flaw or a crack
in my life that I carried foryears, there was so much shame
and and feelings ofunworthiness. But you know
today, that flaw is somethingthat I have been able to use to
(24:48):
truly see change in people'slives through a nonprofit,
through the speaking of. I doall of my flaws. I have used to
empower women and men and youthin so many different areas and
(25:09):
in a way that I would have neverbelieved that I would have been
able to to use that in apositive way. But we all have
those things. We all have flaws.
We all have areas that we thinkare not good enough. But you
(25:29):
know the truth is that you areyou are good enough, you're
amazing, and you need to tellyourself that. What do you tell
yourself when you fall down, doyou tell yourself, I can do
this. I can get back up. What isthat self talk? What are those
things you say to yourself? Iremember when my middle child
(25:55):
was a little dancer, we weregetting ready for a recital, and
I was never good at doing hair.
I was never good at doingmakeup. I hated it, but I did it
because that's what you do. Andone day, I was putting makeup on
my little girl at the time, shewas probably five years old, and
(26:18):
she did not want makeup done,and it was hard to sit there for
a long time. And during our timeof putting makeup on, she looked
up at me and said, Mommy, Am Ibeautiful yet? Well, just about
to react with a No, not quiteyet, because I'm not done with
(26:38):
your makeup. Fortunately, Istopped myself and said, Honey,
this makeup is not what makesyou beautiful. You are beautiful
right now, and you are beautifulbefore we put a drop of makeup
on. You are beautiful. And I'mso glad I caught myself, because
(27:00):
what would I have been tellingher if I said not yet? Well, we
need to do that with ourselvestoo. We need to catch ourselves.
Because I have a feeling, ifyou're anything like me, and
that imposter syndrome flares upand you fall down and you're not
feeling quite resilient, yet youmight tell yourself, gosh, you
(27:22):
can't get this done. Wow, you ifyou were only smarter? Why are
you in this role? If you wereonly better at what you were
doing? But instead, we need tospeak those words of truth,
words of life, words ofencouragement and empower
ourselves.
(27:44):
You are smart enough, you arecapable, you are brilliant, you
are good at this job, and youare empowered to do incredible
work. I want to close with thisresilience is something in each
and every one of us, and we allhave it, and we all need it,
(28:08):
because it is never, always aneasy ride. There are going to be
things that knock you down.
There are going to be thingsthat you think this almost took
me out, that you are resilient,and resilience is just getting
back up when you're knockeddown. Resilience is taking two
steps forward and three stepsback and four steps forward
(28:31):
again. Resilience is continuingto do what you need to do to get
it accomplished, and not justget it done, but do it with
excellence, because that's whoyou are. I am so glad that I had
this time with you, and I wantyou to know that you can reach
(28:53):
out to me at any time, if youwant to get a hold of me through
Stephanie Olson speaking andhave me speak at an event or
empower your team. Please checkme out at Stephanie olson.com or
use this QR code. Or if you wantto learn more about human
trafficking in your communityand how you can prevent it, how
(29:15):
you can be a community leader inpreventing human trafficking
through your business, reach outat set me free project.net, or
check out this QR code. I am soglad I had this time with you,
and I want you to know that youare resilient and you are worth
it. Thank you so much forspending time with me and I will
(29:40):
see you next time. Go. Beempowered. Thank you. Thanks for
tuning in. We hope you enjoyedit. Please share freely. You.
Welcome to resilience in life and
leadership with your host,Stephanie Olson, CEO speaker,
author and sexual violence andaddiction expert, we're glad
you're here. I am StephanieOlson, and I am so glad to be
here with you empowering womenin industry. 2024 it's very
(00:24):
exciting. I am just going topretend I am here with a
fabulous group of women, becauseI know I am, even though I am by
myself, here with my dogssomewhere, but I know you're
here with me. And so we aregoing to be talking about some
great stuff. We're going to betalking about resilience and
resilience in life, resilienceand leadership, because when we
(00:48):
are working in whatever industrythat is, we need resilience in
everything we do, and so that'swhat we're going to be
discussing today. So if I wereto ask you the question, what
kind of pain do you want in yourlife? What would you say now,
I'm guessing most of you rightnow are thinking, I actually
(01:14):
want no pain in my lifewhatsoever. And you know what?
That's exactly what I would say,too. I buy that I do not want
pain at all. But what if I wereto ask you a different question?
And that is, what are youwilling to struggle for? What
(01:37):
are you willing to struggle forif I were to ask you that
question, what are you willingto struggle for now, my guess is
that we would probably saysomething very different if I
were to ask you, what are youwilling to struggle for us, as
opposed to what kind of pain doyou want in Your Life? And the
(02:00):
reality is we are willing tostruggle for a lot of things. I
know for me personally, I am amom of three adult children. I'm
willing to struggle for them.
I'm a wife of an extremelysupportive spouse, willing to
struggle for him. I'm a mom of afurry dog. Sure, I will struggle
(02:23):
for that baby, but there's a lotof other things too. I'm the CEO
and founder of a nonprofit. I'mwilling to struggle for that and
the hard work and the people weserve and the things in my life
that matter. And I'm guessing,if I were to be able to ask you
all of those things, you wouldsay the same exact thing, maybe
(02:47):
not exactly what I'm saying, butyou'd say things that you're
willing to struggle for thatmeans something to you. And
that's what it's all about,that's resilience, whether we're
talking about resilience in ourlife or in our industries that
we work in, that there arethings that that make a
difference in our lives, thereare things that help us do
(03:11):
better. But when we're talkingabout resilience, and I think
resilience is an extremelyimportant word, I've heard
people say things like, Well, Idon't like to be called
resilient, because that impliesthat I'm already arrived, when,
in fact, I think just theopposite. When I think of the
(03:33):
term resilience, I think itmeans getting knocked down and
getting right back up, and maybetaking two steps forward and
then two steps back. That'sThat's what I think when I think
about resilience, and if wecould look at our own lives, we
(03:55):
know absolutely that that's whatit's all about. I run a
nonprofit that we do preventioneducation on human trafficking.
It's called the set me freeproject, and I had no intention
of starting a nonprofit anddoing this work, and I had
(04:17):
personally been working in thearea of of women in sexual and
domestic violence and addictionand things like that. I am
personally a survivor of ofsexual and domestic violence,
and so that was on my heart.
Women were on my heart. It wassomething I wanted to do. But
when I started to see some ofthe things that were not being
(04:39):
done in the counter traffickingmovement, one of my coworkers
said, let's help women who havebeen trafficked, really having
no idea what that meant at all.
And so we started to do someresearch, and what we found is
it looked very different thanwhat we thought. Right? And in
that moment, we realized therewas this huge gap that was not
(05:03):
being filled in the area ofcounter trafficking, and so we
decided to fill that gap. We nowhave a curriculum today from
kindergarten through 12th gradefor youth and curriculum for
adults of every facet of of thethe every industry, because
every industry sees it,community members, parents as
(05:27):
well, and we do trainings, butthat was never my intention. My
intention was to continue tospeak and to continue to work
with women in these areas and dowhat I was doing, but I knew
nothing at the time about humantrafficking, nor frankly, in all
honesty, did I really want toknow anything about human
(05:51):
trafficking, but that is exactlywhat I ended up doing. I had
been working with youth in thearea of healthy relationships
and speaking to them. And aftertalking to a couple of
educators, I thought, Gosh, thisis so needed that the targets of
trafficking, and I'm not goingto go into that in detail, but
(06:12):
those are relationshipbuildings, and those targets are
youth, and they don't knowthey're being targeted. And as I
said, I'm a mom of adultchildren. At the time, my kids
were in in public school, and Ithought, if they don't know that
they are targets, I don't knowthat they are targets, there is
something missing. So we steppedin to fill that gap. Well, that
(06:35):
wasn't as easy as we thought itwas going to be. In fact, we
came up with a ton ofresistance. And frankly, if I
had known how difficult it wasgoing to be, I wouldn't have
(06:55):
taken the next step. Butfortunately, I didn't, and we
built this nonprofit from tiny,tiny to a national organization
that is serving youth, that isserving people who are serving
youth, and just amazing stuffthat is going on. But that
(07:20):
didn't happen overnight, and itwasn't easy. And in fact, when I
think about how many times Ijust wanted to throw in the
towel and quit, but I didn't,and that's what resilience is.
Resilience is getting knockeddown, and it's getting right
(07:41):
back up and doing it over andover and over again. I think one
of the key things in resilienceis, as women, we are pretty hard
on ourselves. I know personallyI struggle with, I'm my own
worst critic. I struggle withthings like imposter syndrome.
(08:06):
And I think, you know, here I ama CEO of a nonprofit, and
frankly, what am I doing in thisrole? Because often I think I
have no idea what I'm doing now.
When I sit back and I reallylook at myself and I look at
what I've accomplished and who Iam as a strong and independent
(08:29):
woman, and in the workplace, Ican step back and say, okay,
you've done you've done a goodjob, but most of the time,
that's not how I view myself.
Most of the time I think, okay,I need to get through this, or
I'm not even viewing myself. Andso that's where sometimes the
struggle comes in. I think aboutimposter syndrome a lot,
because, let's face it, so manyof us have it, and I don't think
(08:54):
we ever get to the other sidewhere we're just like, No, I am
100% in charge of who I am, andI'm constantly doing it right.
Yay. Me. That's not me anyway,if it's you, more power to you.
But for me, I struggle. I willnever forget I was speaking to a
(09:19):
group. I do a lot of conferencespeaking, and I travel. And I
was speaking to a group onimposter syndrome, and it was in
Atlantic City, and I was reallyexcited to speak to this group,
a group of leaders, emergingleaders, leaders who have been
in their positions for a longtime. And I rolled up to
(09:42):
Caesar's Palace, where theconference was right by, and I
got to the front desk, and theysaid, You know what, we've
upgraded you. No reason I didnothing. Maybe smiled and I got
upgraded. Well,I. Walk up to these double
doors. Now, let me tell you, Icannot remember the last time I
(10:06):
have walked up to double doorsin a hotel. Actually, that was
it so. And as I opened thesedouble doors, I walk into this
foyer that overlooks this hugeliving room with windows all
over. I go into the bedroombecause I want to see what that
(10:29):
looks like, and it's gorgeous,but that was not the piece de
resistance. Okay? I took Frenchfor five minutes in high school.
Actually, I took it for fouryears, and I know nothing, but I
walk into the bathroom nowthat's where it was at in the
bathroom was a shower with asteam room and a Jacuzzi. That's
(10:52):
where I wanted to spend all ofmy time. I go downstairs. I
decided I'm going to treatmyself today, and I walk into
Hell's Kitchen, Gordon Ramsay'srestaurant, and I eat amazing
food, and I'm thinking, I'mliving the life. I don't know
who's life, but I'm livingsomebody's life. And the next
(11:14):
day, I walk into the conferenceroom and I'm thinking, I don't
know if anyone's going to showup here. I'm talking about
imposter syndrome, and I'mstarting to think through all
these things and feeling likethat. So I go to the bathroom,
get ready for my conference, andI come back, and the room is
packed. In fact, it was sopacked that there were people
(11:36):
standing in the back, sitting inthe back, sitting in the front,
all wanting to know aboutimposter syndrome, because you
know what? We all experience it,but when we understand what
resilience is, that it's notbeing perfect, it's not
(11:58):
arriving, it's not being Yes, Ihave done it all, and I am good.
I've overcome. I'm on the otherside. It is about getting up
again and again and again andkeep on keeping on. That's what
that's what resilience is. Andwe do that in every aspect of
our lives. And I want to showyou a couple of things, because
(12:22):
I think a lot of it is how weare, our character as women, and
our mindset. How do we thinkabout things? I was I was
traveling once, and I do travela lot. I'm on airplanes a lot.
I'm driving a lot, but this onetime, I was headed off to
(12:43):
somewhere in a plane, and I hadto park my car. So I park in the
first cheap lot that I can findso that I can park for a couple
of days. And I realized that thecheap lot that I'm used to
parking in was actually nolonger there. So I drive next to
(13:04):
the next cheap lot, and I pullin and there's a woman standing
at the kiosk with a huge file.
Now I don't think I mentionedit's 430 in the morning. Kind of
know if people smile at 430 inthe morning? I know I don't, but
(13:26):
this woman had a huge smile onher face, and she I pulled in,
and she looked at me and said,Have you ever been here before?
And I said, No. And she said,prepare to be amazed. Prepare to
be amazed. It's 430 in themorning. I'm in a cheap parking
lot, but you know what I wasbecause she told me that I was
(13:50):
going to be that's mindset. Itis all mindset and how we think
about things, how we're lookingat things, how we feel about
ourselves, how we're talking toourselves. So I want to share a
few things here with you,because it's all about our
character and integrity, how welook at life with resilience.
(14:14):
It's going to encompass all ofthis stuff. So how do you have
resilience in your life, in yourworkplace. How do you have
resilience in everything you do?
Well, I think one of the mainthings is identifying your
strengths, knowing what thingsthat you have that are your true
(14:35):
strengths, and go after those.
Utilize those you want 80% ofyour time to be done in your
strengths. It's important thatwe are learning to use those and
(14:56):
really develop those and. Whatcatapults us to the next level,
but we also have to acknowledgeour weaknesses. I mean, we all
have them, and we can't get awayfrom them right now. The idea is
we don't want to use ourweaknesses more than we use our
(15:16):
strengths, but we do have toacknowledge these are weaknesses
of mine, and so maybe thesearen't things that I should be
doing over and over again, andthat goes down to prioritizing
tasks and responsibilities anddelegating appropriately. What
(15:37):
are the key things we need to doand we need to get done and do
those first, and then, what arethe things that we shouldn't be
doing at all? I think we shouldall have business coaches. And
one day, my business coach and Iwere talking about prioritizing
tasks and getting things done,and I said, I am struggling to
(15:58):
get this simple task done. Itwas something that I had done
many times before. It wassomething that was easy to do.
It was time consuming, but itwas easy to do. But this day
that I sat down to do it, I justcouldn't get it done. I couldn't
process it in my brain. Icouldn't make it work. It was
(16:21):
the most interesting thing. AndI was telling my business coach
this, and he said, Stephanie,this is not something you should
even be doing. This is somethingsomebody else should be doing,
and that is exactly why you'renot getting it done. It's not
your task. It's not yourresponsibility, I think often,
(16:44):
especially as women, as leaders,as people who are go getters, we
have a tendency to do thingsthat we're not supposed to do
because we're good at it, or wemight get it done faster, but
(17:05):
sometimes we need to let thosethings go and delegate those
things, and we need tocommunicate clearly. We need to
make sure that everybody aroundus knows what we need them to
accomplish and what we're goingto accomplish, we need to
communicate other people's rolesand our roles so that people
(17:28):
understand what that is allabout. And we need to focus on
continually growing. I thinksome of the most successful
people are the people who arelifelong learners. And if we are
willing to continue to grow andcontinue to learn, that is where
(17:49):
we continue to develop. That'swhere our growth continues. And
finally,it is so important that we
celebrate successes. Now I wantto talk about this for a second,
because I recently was speakingto a group of primarily women.
There were some men there, butthey were doing a staff
(18:10):
celebration, or staffappreciation, and there was this
group of leaders, and I talkedabout celebrating successes, and
one of the women there said, butisn't that prideful? I mean, if
we celebrate our success, isn'tthat prideful? Aren't we? Aren't
we supposed to be humble? Well,yes, humility is a great thing.
(18:32):
Humility is important tocontinue to grow, too. But I
don't think celebratingsuccesses is prideful. I think
pride is when we focus andcenter everything around
ourselves, whether it's great,whether it's negative, but it's
all about us. But to say, Hey, Iaccomplished this, and I am
(18:56):
proud of this, and I just wantyou to know that is a positive
thing. When you fall down andyou get back up and you're doing
a great job. Celebrate that.
That is a huge success. When youget a promotion, celebrate that.
(19:18):
It's a massive success. You sellto a big client, or you get a
huge project done, celebrate it.
Those are things that help youmove forward. And when you do
fall down, and you rememberthose successes, those come back
to mind, and you think you knowwhat I did, that once I can do
(19:41):
it again. I think that's whatresilience is all about. Now I
want to tell you a little storyas we close, there was a woman
who had two jars, and these jarswere. Beautiful One, however,
was much more beautiful than theother, and every day, this woman
(20:04):
walked into the village carryingthese two jars with her. All of
the time now she would walk intothe village, and she would fill
these jars with water, and shewould walk back home, and every
(20:25):
day, she did this routineconsistently. Now one of the
jars had a huge flaw on oneside, and there was just a crack
down down the middle. And whenthe old woman would fill that
jar with water, well, that jar,she would just drip water all
(20:47):
the way back to the village, andshe felt really bad. She felt
like she wasn't completing thework that she needed to do. And
every once in a while, she'dlook at the jar on the other
side, and she'd say, this jar isso perfect. It's beautiful. It
has no flaws, and and it doesits job. When we go into the
(21:13):
village, it it fills up withwater, and they come back and,
oh, I wish I could be like thatjar. And so one day, the woman
looked at the jar with the flawand said, What's wrong? You just
don't look happy. And the jarlooked up at her and said, Now,
if your jar ever starts talkingto you, that's a whole other
(21:36):
issue we need to deal with. Butthis jar looked up at her and
said, You know, I don't feelgood about myself. I've got this
huge flaw that drips water allover the place. I'm not good at
what I do. You fill me up withwater and i i Come back, but I'm
dripping water all over theplace, and I don't bring enough
(21:59):
water back that I should be andso the woman said, You know what
tomorrow, when we walk into thevillage, I want you to look
down. I want you to take a lookunderneath you and tell me what
you see after we get water whenwe walk back. And so the very
next day, the woman takes thetwo jars and walks into the
(22:22):
village and fills up the waterand then walks back and the jar
with the flaw looked down andnoticed all of these beautiful
flowers underneath, and she sawbeauty and green and colors. And
then she looked over at the jar,and there was just dirt
(22:45):
underneath that jar. And we whenthey got back home, she said,
what was that? Underneath methere were these beautiful
flowers, and underneath theother jar, there weren't any and
the old woman said, I knew thatyou had a crack. I knew there
was a flaw, and because of that,I sprinkled seeds on the path
(23:09):
that you were going to dripwater on. And so, because of
your flaw, and because the waterwas dripping. You grew beauty.
You grew flowers, and they grewinto beautiful things that are
fragrant and lovely. You thinkthat crack is a flaw. You're
(23:33):
embarrassed by it. You don'tthink you're doing the job that
you think you should be but inreality, that flaw is bringing
beauty to the world, and I wantyou to know that too, that we
often take our worst and compareour worst to other people's
(23:58):
best. We do that in person, wedo that on social media. We do
that all over the place. Butit's important to remember that
what you see as flaws are thingsthat can help develop and grow
another person. I told youearlier that I am a survivor of
(24:22):
sexual and domestic violence,and that was a flaw or a crack
in my life that I carried foryears, there was so much shame
and and feelings ofunworthiness. But you know
today, that flaw is somethingthat I have been able to use to
(24:48):
truly see change in people'slives through a nonprofit,
through the speaking of. I doall of my flaws. I have used to
empower women and men and youthin so many different areas and
(25:09):
in a way that I would have neverbelieved that I would have been
able to to use that in apositive way. But we all have
those things. We all have flaws.
We all have areas that we thinkare not good enough. But you
(25:29):
know the truth is that you areyou are good enough, you're
amazing, and you need to tellyourself that. What do you tell
yourself when you fall down, doyou tell yourself, I can do
this. I can get back up. What isthat self talk? What are those
things you say to yourself? Iremember when my middle child
(25:55):
was a little dancer, we weregetting ready for a recital, and
I was never good at doing hair.
I was never good at doingmakeup. I hated it, but I did it
because that's what you do. Andone day, I was putting makeup on
my little girl at the time, shewas probably five years old, and
(26:18):
she did not want makeup done,and it was hard to sit there for
a long time. And during our timeof putting makeup on, she looked
up at me and said, Mommy, Am Ibeautiful yet? Well, just about
to react with a No, not quiteyet, because I'm not done with
(26:38):
your makeup. Fortunately, Istopped myself and said, Honey,
this makeup is not what makesyou beautiful. You are beautiful
right now, and you are beautifulbefore we put a drop of makeup
on. You are beautiful. And I'mso glad I caught myself, because
(27:00):
what would I have been tellingher if I said not yet? Well, we
need to do that with ourselvestoo. We need to catch ourselves.
Because I have a feeling, ifyou're anything like me, and
that imposter syndrome flares upand you fall down and you're not
feeling quite resilient, yet youmight tell yourself, gosh, you
(27:22):
can't get this done. Wow, you ifyou were only smarter? Why are
you in this role? If you wereonly better at what you were
doing? But instead, we need tospeak those words of truth,
words of life, words ofencouragement and empower
ourselves.
(27:44):
You are smart enough, you arecapable, you are brilliant, you
are good at this job, and youare empowered to do incredible
work. I want to close with thisresilience is something in each
and every one of us, and we allhave it, and we all need it,
(28:08):
because it is never, always aneasy ride. There are going to be
things that knock you down.
There are going to be thingsthat you think this almost took
me out, that you are resilient,and resilience is just getting
back up when you're knockeddown. Resilience is taking two
steps forward and three stepsback and four steps forward
(28:31):
again. Resilience is continuingto do what you need to do to get
it accomplished, and not justget it done, but do it with
excellence, because that's whoyou are. I am so glad that I had
this time with you, and I wantyou to know that you can reach
(28:53):
out to me at any time, if youwant to get a hold of me through
Stephanie Olson speaking andhave me speak at an event or
empower your team. Please checkme out at Stephanie olson.com or
use this QR code. Or if you wantto learn more about human
trafficking in your communityand how you can prevent it, how
(29:15):
you can be a community leader inpreventing human trafficking
through your business, reach outat set me free project.net, or
check out this QR code. I am soglad I had this time with you,
and I want you to know that youare resilient and you are worth
it. Thank you so much forspending time with me and I will
(29:40):
see you next time. Go. Beempowered. Thank you. Thanks for
tuning in. We hope you enjoyedit. Please share freely. You.
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