83. Having the Audacity to Believe in Yourself

Vanessa 00:00
Welcome to coaching for Latina leaders, the only podcast dedicated to the advancement of Latinas at every level of life with your host, Dr. Vanessa Calderon, a Latina with over 20 years of leadership experience, Harvard grad physician and mother of two.

Hello, sweet friends, I want to remind you that in mid January, this podcast is going to have an awesome new name, the Empowered brain. So you can come to the same place for your weekly dose of learning and inspiration, and you'll still get me but with a fresh feel a new name, and the content is going to be so much better.

Alright, my darlings, enjoy this week's podcast, or law, my friends, welcome back to the podcast. Today we are talking about having the audacity to believe in yourself. And this episode was inspired by a very recent retreat that I put on, if you've been listening to the last few episodes, you've heard me talk about it because it was awesome, super impactful. And I learned so much about human nature and the way the brain works and things. And you know, I'm a student of human nature and a student of the brain. So a lot of what I saw was so fascinating to me. So this is one of the things that I kept hearing. And the and here's the thing, first of all, this retreat was for these high achieving physicians, and so and their spouses, and most of them were married to people that were also working, and other careers that were keeping them really busy.

So there were leaders in the room, and therapists and all these other things. And so what I'm hearing from these people, when we talk about, you know, creating the life that they want was alright, I can't do that yet, because or I don't have the relationship I want, because I'm not spending enough time with my kids, because, and a lot of it was these excuses that for me, I was like, hold on a second. Wait a second, I'm in this room with these smart, capable, ambitious high achievers, who know how to get things done.

But something is still standing in the way of them creating the life that they want. And the more I heard the things that were coming out of their mouths, the more I realized that the one thing that was the common denominator for everyone was that they did not believe the life they wanted was possible for them. That's it, they didn't believe the life they wanted was possible for them. So what I want to ask you is if you were to think about what kind of life do I want, whether it's, you know, like, what kind of relationship do I want? Or what kind of like fitness goals do I want to achieve? Or what kind of goals do I want to achieve with my career? Think about that for yourself. And when you ask yourself, Why am I not doing that yet? I want you to just be honest with what comes up for you. And what I want to challenge you is to think, is it possible? Is it possible that you are not living the life that you want, because you maybe don't believe that, that life is possible for you are the excuses that are coming up for you coming up for you, because underneath all of that is the underlying limiting belief that that life is not possible for you.
Now, listen, if it doesn't come natural for you to believe in yourself, I am not at all surprised. Because it didn't come natural for a lot of us. And most of us were raised in households or in societies that gave us limiting beliefs. If you are a woman, you were probably raised with the belief that you shouldn't say something, you shouldn't dress like that. You shouldn't do your hair that way. Be careful. Don't say that. You don't want to be judged. That was a big one for me when I was growing up. God bless my grandmother's who I love so much. But one of my grandmother's was raised in a house where she had to be really careful about what she said so that she wouldn't be judged. So what did she pass on to me at a really young age?

Then cuidado Nausicaa says, so be careful. Don't say that you don't want other people to judge you. So of course, I started policing the things that I would say. And I started being careful about how I dressed and wanted to do my hair in a certain way. Because of course, those were the beliefs that I was raised with. And a lot of us were raised with. That's impossible. Why would you think that you have to come up with a goal that's much more reasonable or rational. And so a lot of our dreams continued to get smaller and smaller because we had these limiting beliefs around us that the life we want until it wasn't possible. And even if you didn't straight up hear these things said to you, you likely saw it from example.

Think about how many other people around you, you saw dampening their goals or their ambitions, or their own beliefs, and dimming their own lights giving up on their dreams. As life went on, because they stopped believing in themselves, they stopped believing that that life they wanted was possible. Okay, so when you think about it for yourself right now, when you think about truly believing in the life you want, and thinking that it's possible, how does that feel for you? Does that feel outrageous? Does it feel outrageous? And if it does good, it should feel outrageous? Because it is outrageous for some of us to believe that the life we want as possible. It's totally outrageous. Like, what the heck, who am I to believe this? But here is the thing. Who are you not to believe this? This is the thing I want us to talk about today? Who are you not to believe this? Why wouldn't you have the audacity to believe that what you want as possible? Their account countless examples in life in society in our history of women and men who grew up with adversity, adversity similar to what you grew up with? Or what I grew up with an even worse. And that didn't stop them.

Why? Because they had the audacity to believe in themselves. They had the audacity to believe in the thoughts that they had or the dreams that they had and never give up. Let me give you some examples. Thomas Edison, we all know Thomas Edison, right? He invented the light bulb. But guess what, Thomas Edison failed anywhere between 1010 1000 times before he invented the light bulb. Imagine that. Imagine what it would be like to fail 10,000 times and still get up and say I am not done. I'm going to keep going because I believe in myself. Walt Disney. Did you know that Walt Disney was fired from his first job as a newspaper editor? Because he was told that he wasn't creative enough and he didn't have enough imagination? Can you imagine what life would have been like if you would have been like, Oh, shucks, I guess I'm not creative enough. I don't have enough imagination. I should go try to do something else. And maybe instead of being a creator, I can go do something else. What would life be like if we didn't have Disney, or the first self made female millionaire? How many of you know that the first self made female millionaire? Madam CJ Walker was born to slaves.

Vanessa 07:55
That's right. She was a black woman whose parents had been slaves born in 1867. You can imagine the adversity, the racial, the gender systems of oppression that she had to overcome. And she had to continue to believe in herself continue to believe in her dreams. She had to have the audacity to believe that a young black girl born to parents who had been slaves could go on to become the first self made female millionaire. And there are so many other examples of people like this. So many other examples of famous people that you could Google and people that are not even that famous that you could Google that have gone on to do amazing things, who have overcome adversity, because they had outrageous dreams and the audacity to believe in themselves.

A shout out really quick to my mom, who is incredible, who I interviewed way back in episode 29, who again, was an immigrant, born single mom raised by her single mom, incredible story, who was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer malignant, spread out through her bones, and went on to live and decide that her life is too short. And she didn't want to keep living a life of excuses. And went on to become the first female immigrant mayor of Irvine, California, and is now doing amazing things and Arvon. Go and listen to episode 29. If you want to hear that story, it's a great inspirational story. Okay, so listen, we all have these things that come up for us in life and we have a choice. We can either use them as an excuse and say, Man, maybe that stuff isn't meant for me. Or we can continue to choose to be outrageous.

We can continue to choose to believe in ourselves and have the audacity to believe that what we want is possible So I grew up with pretty like, I'd say, a good handful of childhood trauma, pretty shitload of childhood trauma. I was lower middle class. For a lot of our lives, we were just above the poverty line. And for a few years of our life, we dipped below the poverty line, I was raised primarily by my single mom, who is a total badass, go back and listen to episode 29, again, to listen to her story. But here's the thing, the thing is that because my parents were trying to do their best working so hard, they weren't really around for us. And life, for a lot of my childhood felt lonely. And I remember when I was in third grade, I was, you know, a student in inner city La going to an inner city, la public school. And one of the assignments we had in school was to write a book. So we had to write a story and illustrate it. And then at the end, we had to write this little short about the author section. So a few sentences to to share a little bit about us.

And my teacher had said, talk about what you like to do and what you want to do when you grow up. So here I am, this little third grader, eight years old, daughter of immigrants who like pet, my parents didn't graduate college, my dad only went to the eighth grade. And I went up to the teacher, and I asked her, How do you spell doctor? And she stopped what she was doing. And she looked at me and she said, Doctor, I'm like, Yeah, doctor, and she said, Well, that's a really good word. And she spelled it out to me. And I went back, and I put that, in my, my little biography about the author section, that when I grow up, I'm going to be a doctor. What in the world? Where did that come from? I don't have any doctors in my family.

I didn't have health insurance growing up, I'd never been to the doctor, why did I have the audacity to believe that I could be a doctor? I mean, I still look back. And that story is like implanted in my brain as a core memory because I remember the look on her face on my teachers face when she looked at me. And at first, I thought I had said something wrong. Like, should I not ask how to spell doctor? But that wasn't the look, the look was like, Hell, yes, you should want to be a doctor. So thank you, third grade teacher for believing in me. And you know, that that memory could have gone one of two ways. But I'm choosing to believe that she looked at me because she was like, Hell, yes. Yes, you should, you should try.

And you should believe that you can become a doctor. So here I am, you know, I had the audacity to believe that the life that I wanted was possible. That may little immigrant Makossa, you know, eight year old me could become a physician. And now that, you know, little me, child of immigrants, could create financial independence that I could also become a self made millionaire, that I could also give back to my community that I could also be in service, that I could start this business, even though I'm a physician, even though I'm a mother of two kids, even though I was a physician later. Yeah, I had a lot I wanted to do. I had a lot on my plate. But even though I had the audacity to believe that I could still give more, that I could still do more, not because I felt like I had to not because I felt like what I wasn't what I was doing wasn't enough.

But because I wanted to, because I had the desire to continue to create and give more to this world, and be in service and be an example, to other fantastic, amazing women out there, that the life that they want is possible for them to. So I want to ask you right now, if you were to ask yourself, if I had the audacity to believe that what I wanted was possible. What kind of life would I create for myself? What would that life look like? answer that question for yourself. What would that life look like for you? And I want to say this, that the only thing standing in the way between who you are right now, and that life that you're envisioning are your thoughts. It's you against you in this world. That's it, it's you against you. It's your core self, your beautiful inner sage, your inner divine against your thinking brain that offers you a ton of bullshit every day to try to hold you back. So again, if you had the audacity to believe that the life you wanted was possible, what would that life look like for you? And what small steps can you start taking to A day or this week, to start making that a reality. And when your brain offers you some bullshit to tell you that that's not possible to tell you that those times you failed or to get or evidence that you should quit. What I want to say is, what if that's not true? What if that's not true? What if the only truth? Is that the life that you wanted as possible?

Okay, my friends, I'll leave you with that. And listen, if you want help creating that life, creating those possibilities for yourself, reach out to me, I want to help you. Check out my program, The Life and Leadership accelerator where I teach you how to do all of these things, how to question your brain, how to self coach yourself, how to get on that path to create the life you want. Because I am not an anomaly anomaly. I am not a unicorn. I had childhood trauma, I had some bullshit come up for me in life, and that still comes up for me. The difference is, I don't choose to live in that I don't choose to believe that. I choose to believe the life that I want as possible. And I choose to sync my thoughts on purpose and create my life intentionally every day, and I want that for you. Because it's possible for you to okay my friends, go check out Vanessa Calderon md.com backslash join, check out my program The Life and Leadership accelerator where I work with you weekly to help you create this life that you want. As always, my friends hasta la proxima.

Vanessa 16:40
Hey, if you love what you're learning, then you've got to check out my free Ultimate Guide to stop people pleasing, where I teach you a simple five step process to stop saying yes. When you really want to say No, you'll be so glad that you did. There's a link to the guide in the show notes. I'll see you next time.