Ep. 40 Unlocking Your Potential: Confronting Self-Doubt to Ignite Personal Growth

Have you ever stood on the brink of change, your heart racing with excitement and fear? I'm Smilie Filomenos Rodriguez, your Latina Life Empowerment Coach and social worker, and I've been there, too. In our latest episode, we peel back the layers of self-doubt and limiting beliefs that so many women, especially Latinas, grapple with daily. Through a tapestry of personal narratives and hands-on advice, I guide you through self-discovery and self-love, addressing the widespread fears of the unknown, change, failure, and rejection. Our conversation isn't just about identifying these fears; it's about understanding their roots in our self-perceptions and learning to dance with them on our journey to empowerment.

This episode is a heartfelt embrace, a reminder that the road to success is often paved with the same love and determination that characterizes motherhood. I draw inspiring parallels between nurturing a child and our ambitions, illustrating that love for our goals can drive us to overcome any challenge. We talk about moving past the sting of previous failures, transforming them into stepping stones for future victories. It's time to surround yourself with positive energy, embrace consistent self-improvement with grace, and approach each day with the enthusiasm that sparks actual change. Join me, and let's ignite the fires of action to turn your dreams into reality. You got this! 

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only and should not substitute for therapy. We recommend you seek help from a trained professional for your specific situation.

Q&A: What are Your Thoughts on This Episode? Please message us at contact@smilieempowerment.com

Are you a leader dedicated to achieving success or a professional driven to boost your leadership skills, establish effective teams, and improve your personal and professional development? Look no further! Smile Empowerment coaching offers comprehensive and personalized guidance that caters to your needs, whether individual or executive coaching or team-building sessions.

To book a free 30-minute consultation, please contact us at contact@smilieempowerment.com. During this meeting, we'll discuss your goals and create a tailored plan to ensure your success. Together, we can make a difference and embrace a journey towards your ultimate potential!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hola Boschica. Welcome to the Smiley Empowerment Podcast. This is where we celebrate the strength, resilience and determination of Latina women and all women who are constantly on the go, pushing through challenges and achieving their goals. I like to call these women Boschica, like me. If you're a busy woman ready to be uplifted, inspired, empowered to take charge of your healing journey and be a Boschica, you've come to the right place. We can all agree, life can be hectic and overwhelming, but anything is possible with the right mindset, attitude, tools and support. Let me introduce myself. My name is Smiley Filomenos Rodriguez and I am a Latina Life Empowerment Coach and a social worker. I started this podcast because I know what feeling alone and overwhelmed with past wounds and challenges feel like. I want to help you with self-discovery, self-love and self-empowerment so you can grow and thrive. Do you sometimes feel alone? De siento sola? Well, you're not alone. No está sola. You have me, your coach, smiley.

Speaker 1: 1:20

In each episode, I'll share personal stories of resilience, healing tips, practical advice, strategies for managing your time and priorities for improving your relationship with yourself and others, and insights on cultivating a positive and fulfilling joyful life. So grab your earbuds and tea or coffee, take a deep breath and get ready to be inspired and encouraged. Let's begin this journey together and empower each other to become the best versions of our lives. Let's get started. You got this. Welcome back, mi Vos, chica, welcome back. We are just about to end January 2024. I can't believe. Where has the time gone? I want to ask you this what beliefs about yourself have been holding you back, what beliefs about yourself may be holding you back from reaching your full potential, and how can you really challenge it and shape it and reshape it? Now? Let's have a moment of truth. Let's have a moment of truth. What are you afraid about? What are you fearful? What are your beliefs about yourself, and how has self-doubt impacted your personal growth? We all have a personal growth journey, whether we like it or not, and there are many steps to getting what we want to achieve. When we are born, we are not born with all of this knowledge right. We have to learn how to walk. We had to learn how to speak. We had to learn right. It's all about learning. But as we get older and older, we start believing these negative beliefs about ourselves, we start believing what other people think about us and we focus and hone in on our fear, the fear of the uncertain, the fear of the unknown.

Speaker 1: 3:40

So I challenge you today to really look at I know you possibly already did your goals settings right, or at least you have them written down, or at least you have them, or you have them projected in your mind as to what you want to do for this new year. Right, you might be continuing a project from last year to this year, or you might be doing something completely new, but you may find yourself right now already jumping ship and saying you know what, forget it. I'm not smart enough. You know what, Forget it. Maybe next year, you know what, forget it. I don't have what it takes to do this, and I understand that. But I want to challenge you, if not now, when? And it's not about a pressure or not a pressure, it's about you really being truthful with yourself and I want you to really examine what do you believe about yourself? What do you truly believe about yourself? Do you believe that you cannot do it? And why you believe that you cannot do it? Is it past failures? Is it the discomfort of what you need to feel to get to X, y and Z? Success doesn't come without pain. Success does not come without uncomfortability. Success does not come without failure. You know I share with you a lot of my vulnerability, because I think it's important to share that, because in my vulnerability, in my mistakes, in the things that I've done in life that possibly I could have done differently, when I share it with you, I know that many of you can relate I possibly can spare you a little bit of your mistakes, maybe making mistakes. I should say, even though you need to make mistakes. You have to make mistakes because that's where you're going to learn and maximize and grow the most.

Speaker 1: 5:54

When we were babies and our parents are caretaker, right, put us on the floor and we started crawling right and then, all of a sudden, we started taking those first steps and guess what? Every single one of us failed over and over. We fall, we kept falling and falling and you know what? We kept getting up. I don't know how many of you are parents or aunties, deetee's right. Or you have a friend who has a baby and you've been around them and you see how they fall and we're more scared because we're like, oh my God, don't care. The baby now falls, giggles, gets back up right. If they hurt themselves, they may cry if they feel pain, but for the most part then they go right ahead and do it again and tumble. But we as adults and it's normal we don't want to feel pain, we don't like to feel discomfort and we feel very afraid.

Speaker 1: 6:48

But I wanna challenge you today to think about where you're at right now and think about the dream that you have for yourself, the goal for this year that you set out to do, and think about what is stopping you from taking the steps to move forward. And many of us is the fear of change and the fear some of us the fear of failure, the fear of being rejected. But that goes deeper into what we believe about ourselves. You may believe that you're not worthy of happiness and success. You may believe that you only are capable of reaching one level of success and not a higher level. The imposter syndrome kicks in. Who do you think you are thinking that now you can become an entrepreneur? Who do you think you are that you think you're gonna learn how to drive right? So I want you to challenge your own beliefs about yourself. But it's important to face them. It's important for you to make a list or, at most, start thinking about. Okay, what am I afraid of? Why I haven't made this move? And I think, more importantly than anything else and this is something that I recently discovered by attending a personal development session or a personal development event online with a very prominent, famous coach and he talked about energy Energy is everything.

Speaker 1: 8:22

Without energy, we can't live right, everything, everything is energy. Once energy is gone completely, then everything stops. Everything ceases. To be able to move forward and create, we need energy. Now, there's different levels of energy, and what I am learning more about is my own energy level. And when we are at our highest energy level right, mentally, physically, just our energy is on. Go, remember how it feels. You feel on top of the world. You feel like you could do anything. You feel like nothing's impossible for me. I can do it. That's also with our mindset, too. We need the mindset. That's why we have to work on unlearning these negative beliefs and limited beliefs that we have about ourselves. Whether it was taught to us, we were labeled, we threw trial and failure, we disappointed ourselves, whatever it is, we have to work on unlearning those beliefs that don't empower us but disempower us, and many are paralyzed by the limited beliefs that we have.

Speaker 1: 9:30

But before that. Even so, we have to assess our energy level. Are you waking up every day low energy? And that could be you're not feeling well. That could be your health is not at its best. It could be you are feeling depressed. It could be that you're in the middle of grieving and your energy level itself, your body, is not energized. It could be that you haven't been eating well. It could be a mixture of things. Some of us have to go to the doctor. We find out we're anemic, right, there's some deficiencies and vitamins and we're like no wonder.

Speaker 1: 10:07

My mind is like I wanna do so much but my body doesn't right. My physical stamina doesn't equate what I really wanna do in my mind. And also that low energy it's hard to create from low energy. And just recently I started learning this about myself because through many years and in my former jobs that I've had in a former nine to five right Cause now I'm full force entrepreneur and going and making the changes that I need to make. I'm examining more that the energy level right. Where is my energy level at?

Speaker 1: 10:47

And it's important for us to assess that because if you have low level energy, it's so hard for you humanly possible for you to achieve the kind of things that you want to do, because guess what your goals? What you want, takes work. There's mental energy, the physical right, the focus, the brain being very focused. So where is your brain health at, where is your level of energy? And I want you to pay attention to that. If you're not getting enough sleep, regulate your sleep, because these are the things, your energy, with your mindset, you will have major breakthrough.

Speaker 1: 11:33

But if you're low energy and also you are living in self doubt, paralyzed there and in fear, then every single year you will go through the same thing of like I didn't do what I was set out to do, or I didn't do exactly what I wanted to do, or even a version of it, because sometimes we want to do, we want to accomplish something, and it ends up being fulfilled in a different way, and that's okay, right. So we gotta get out of the right, the perfect being everything perfect. But I challenge you today to think about what do you believe about yourself and to also take an inventory of your level of energy, because I can motivate you, I can inspire you. Hopefully others in your life, right, can inspire you. You can hire coaches. You can also be in therapy, right. You can have a whole team of people supporting and helping you.

Speaker 1: 12:39

However, if your own energy level is not up to par, right, and if you are dwelling in your limited beliefs, not that you're never gonna have thoughts that are negative, because studies have shown, and they show it right I think I don't know if it's like 78% or 80% of our thoughts are negative and they come automatic. Sometimes, many times, we don't even realize it right, because our brain is developed to protect us right In survival mode. So, when you start seeing yourself that you are moving forward, but you're moving through the fear, right. You're moving through uncertainty, right. That takes a lot of energy right From your being to function, right To get up early and do what you need to do.

Speaker 1: 13:30

If you're working in your nine to five and then you're working on your dream of doing this business, right that eventually, in a few years, you will do completely, but you're doing it a little bit at a time. You need energy and focus. If you're starting out in a new career or you're shifting career or you're starting at a new job but you find yourself like scared to move forward and then you find yourself lacking energy because you're not eating properly, you're not realizing if you have deficiencies, right, vitamin deficiencies in your body. You haven't gone to the doctor in a long time Because you're afraid of going to the doctor, right, all of these things when we do not assess them for ourselves and jump right in and get into the action of doing right.

Speaker 1: 14:25

Getting into the action of doing and I speak this from experience, because I have done things in my life where I have not taken care of my body properly, my health properly, and I've paid the price many times, right. But you know what's fascinating that I fall. I get right back up and then, as I am obtaining knowledge which is great reading, attending personal development workshops on different themes of life it could be on health and energy, on how to do goal setting, on business entrepreneurship right, on how to build products and services that are for what your niche is. I'm speaking to many different people right now, as you're listening to me. You may be developing your own business, right, but I share that it's not easy. The road ahead it's not easy.

Speaker 1: 15:23

Making the decision is important. Okay, I'm deciding to do X, y and Z, and at first you could be very excited. Remember when you first set that goal or two for this 2024? You were excited, pumped up. You're like, yes, this is it. I started fresh, forget about last year, I'm going to do it.

Speaker 1: 15:45

But midway January, now, towards the end, where are you at in your plan of action? And you have time. So it's not about oh, I don't have time, I'm running out of time. It's not about that. It's about what do you need to do to move, to get that momentum again, to get into the habit of working through what you decided that you're going to do.

Speaker 1: 16:13

But that takes time, consistent effort, consistently you showing up and I have to say, I myself, as I'm working, my entrepreneurship and developing products and services and doing different things. There's things that are how can I explain to you? There are things within your goals and within my goal that I'm trying to achieve. Not trying to achieve that I am doing that is not fun. There's certain things that I love. Right, I love teaching the masterclass live on Instagram. That I do it at 7 PM Eastern time, for the most part every Thursday. Right, been doing it for more than two years. I love it. However, I have to prepare for that. I have to get organized. Guess what Getting organized is not something that is so fun, as much as it is teaching it right. I do love to do the research. That is very interesting to me. However, it's not all fun in the process of doing what I love to do.

Speaker 1: 17:14

So you may say, oh, I want the end game, I already want to make the money, I already want to be successful, whether it's famous success, I want to be already with so many clients, or I already want to be in that job and I already want to be promoted and I see myself getting to management position or being the new director, whatever it is. That that's the end result, right? It's great to visualize it because it keeps us focused on the prize. However, in the middle we have a lot of work to be done, and that's where you can't be. That's where you can't really drop the ball on yourself, but that's where our negative thoughts increase, our dragons in our head, as many people use that term. You have to slay the dragon, right.

Speaker 1: 18:03

You have to really come into battle with your own limitations, with your own self-doubt, with your own fears, and you have to dominate that, one negative thought at a time, and you have to become the observer, and that's something I've learned more and more that instead of being in it oh, smiley, you can't do that. No, I have to observe and be like oh, that's the thought that came in, okay, that's just the thought. That's not my thought. I know what I have to do, I'm going to do it. And also, it's okay to review from the past your successes, because you didn't get here without success.

Speaker 1: 18:44

Just by being born. You're born a winner, right. Sperm in the egg, right and boom, you're the winner, right. So we're born winners. Then you had to learn to speak, walk. You had to learn all of that. You were born naked. You wasn't born with anything, right, you start acquiring things, and through experience and failure right.

Speaker 1: 19:09

But the older we get, the more scary it gets right, because you may feel that you have to lose more. And you're also you have your consciousness so aware, you're so aware of the things that could go wrong. The brain, especially, is like alerting you oh no, if you take that route, oh my God, you're going to risk so much. But we have to take risks and guess what? We take risks every day, whether you acknowledge it or not, crossing the street right when we get on an airplane, we are totally dependent on the pilot. Whatever it's a risk. Things can happen, can go wrong. Right, there's many things in life that we do that are risky, right. Life itself. Right, nothing's guaranteed.

Speaker 1: 19:54

However, where are you in the game of life? How are you playing this out for yourself? So, I know that you want what you want. I know that I haven't met you directly, but I can feel you. I know that there are things that you do desire in your heart, and we're talking about your heart's desires, right, what are the things that you, or what do you want to feel? What is the meaning behind your why? Right, why do you want to change careers? Why do you want to learn how to drive? Why do you want to go back to school and learn cosmetology? Or you want to get a certification in IT? Why do you want that? Many people are like you know what I want to get better. I want to provide for my family. What's your compelling reason? And, yes, it's connected to you, but it's much more connected. Also, I can add to a compelling reason Many people have families. You may have your family and you're like I wanna be a role model for my kids of what it's success like and success is not easy. Success is messy and full of many things that go wrong, but it's so sweet when you get there right.

Speaker 1: 21:23

I remember when I was pregnant of my son and I was so I was so sick, meaning I was nauseous, but I'm talking about to the point where even water I couldn't hold it. It would come up, and I also was over two days, about two days and a half, in labor and it was just so brutal. But how sweet it was. When I, when he was born and I and I heard his first cry, I was like wow. I remember one of the nurses that asked me would you do it again now that you went through all of this, because I also had to have emergency surgery after I pushed for two hours and a half and I told her without even thinking, yes, and I had. During my pregnancy I also had a pinched nerve. So I it was excruciating to get up from chairs or sit long or stand long. I had a pinched nerve as the baby was growing, as my son was growing inside of me and so much right.

Speaker 1: 22:28

So when you look at my trajectory of nine months to have him for me, in my individual experience. It was brutal and many other people have had other experiences and there's so much more right that we could talk about that creating life and bringing life to the world. It's not. It's so risky. We're risking our lives right as women, but it's but the price right what we do has no price. Becoming a mother right, becoming a parent it's priceless. However, in the trajectory of what I, when I look back at what I went through, it was brutal, it was hard, it was scary. You know, I got very sick, I got proclamcia. I got very, very sick at giving birth and it was very scary, painful, exhausting. But then I gave birth to my son, which I would do it all over again and 10 times worse.

Speaker 1: 23:29

So, if we look at our dreams as something, we're giving birth because we're so in love with what we want to achieve, with what the goal is, with what our dream is, if we're in love with it, then what wouldn't we do to get it? But we have to fight our own negative beliefs, our self-doubt, and that's why I implore you to do what you can to learn more about yourself. What is stopping you? That's why I started this episode with what beliefs about yourself may be holding you back from reaching your full potential, and then how can you challenge and reshape them? And that's why I'm challenging you to really look within, if not now, when you don't have all the answers, but it's okay.

Speaker 1: 24:21

I've heard in different lectures and different personal development classes they're saying the place where we have the most failed dreams is in the planning stage. It's in the oh, I'll do it when I have everything ready. I'll do it when I get ready. I'm not ready yet. I'm not ready yet. Sometimes we're never ready.

Speaker 1: 24:40

I remember when I was gonna give birth to my son, I wasn't ready. What I mean by ready is like when I know what happened in the house and I look back now. I was never ready for that. It's just like I got pregnant. Now, of course, you get some type of preparation, of knowledge of this is what's gonna happen, step by step. However, for that moment and then things can change I didn't know that for two hours and a half after almost two days in labor, and I was completely ready to push I didn't know that it was gonna get complicated Right. So you may have all the steps outlined for you and textbook like okay, this is what happens. You have it narrowed down. This is what's gonna happen next. It was gonna happen next.

Speaker 1: 25:25

But guess what? Life throws your curveball. And then you're like, oh, wow, and you then put your air and you got to do it. And then, if you don't, then what is it that you're risking? What are you forfeiting for yourself? The joy that you could feel, the happiness, the satisfaction, the change in you, the next level for you Right.

Speaker 1: 25:44

Some of us stay in the same level, stagnant, and then we are miserable, bitter, have poor relationships, feel sorry for ourselves. We constantly complain about what's not going wrong. Then you're envious about others that are moving forward, that are achieving, and you're like, oh, wow, and you're envious about that, but you need to work on yourself. So I only say this to say that you are the most important tool that there is. There's no greater and more powerful tool than yourself. From the moment you were born to the moments you took your first step, you did that Right. Mom and daddy and grandma could try to guard you that you didn't fall Right, but you still felt, oh, that you don't get hurt. You still got hurt right. A little scratch here, a little scratch there. So we are going through life in a way that is suitable to you as an individual. Meaning, if you guard yourself too much, that's you. You're guarding yourself too much. You don't want to feel the pain, that's you. You don't want to feel the pain.

Speaker 1: 26:54

However, there's some of us that are saying you know what Curvage doesn't look pretty. Curvage is me. Doing it, even though I'm afraid getting hit, falling betrayals, still doing it, moving forward. That's the courage that I have. I keep trying to smile. I like to say take courage with a smile right, because life is hard, it throws us down. Left curves come in the unexpected. Life throws you things sometimes and you're like, oh, wow, but let's not dwell in it, let's look at what do we need, what do we need to learn there?

Speaker 1: 27:29

And a lot of the pain that we are still dwelling on or we are still reliving that story is because we haven't learned yet the lesson that it had for us and we're continuing to revisit and revisit and revisit the pain and what they did to us and what didn't go right, or revisit how much we failed, how much we never do what we say we promise. I'm such an idiot I don't know what to do, and these are things that we tell ourselves Nonetheless, what other people may label us, and you know the lack of their belief, but it's not important about what they lack belief for us, because what's important is what we believe. So then we can take action, despite whatever anybody else believes about you and about what you can achieve or not. So I hope that this was helpful. Get yourself straight with your beliefs. Get yourself to unlearn those negative beliefs that you have about yourself. Get around people that are high energy, that they also are like-minded and want to move forward as well, because then you all can lean on each other in the sense of getting momentum with each other and accountability with each other Right.

Speaker 1: 28:47

Get into showing up for yourself consistently. Get your health straight, your energy level to the place where it's higher or higher level of energy, so you can operate from there and create and be able to have the bandwidth to sustain the failures, the things that don't go right. Right the ups and downs. You have to be okay with your energy, sleeping well, eating well. Go to the doctor, check if you have all your you're not deficient in anything, because that also will weigh in on how much you can do and achieve Okay.

Speaker 1: 29:23

So I hope that this was helpful. Keep taking care of yourself it's so important as well as taking care of others, and with that I mean be kind to one another, be supportive of one another. I hope that this episode helped you. We are going in into February. At the time of this recording, it's now January 29, 2024. And you can listen to this as many times as you want throughout the year, because sometimes we need a reminder. Right, we need a reminder. We have to get out of our limited beliefs. We have to go and push ourselves. This is your coach, smiley, signing out. Remember to take care of yourself and of each other, pesitos.