Hello everyone. This is Tonya Dawn Recla, your Super Power Expert. I have with me a delightful woman today, Jacqui Letran, is a multi-award-winning author, international speaker, nurse practitioner. But what we’re going to talk with today has to do with the fact that she’s the founder of Teen Confidence Academy and Healing Minds. So what I love about this is obviously the dialog about inspiring our young people is near and dear to my ear. But I really want to talk today about teaching teens how to be more confident. I think there’s a wealth of information and work to be done in that area and Jacqui just happens to be somebody who’s perfect for that. So in addition to all of that, she’s also passionate and committed to guiding her clients in terms of achieving success, whether it be academics, personal, professional lives. She does this through sessions and workshops and keynotes and all kinds of fun stuff. So she is a delight. So if you’ll join me please in welcoming Jacqui to the show. Welcome, Jacqui.
Thank you so much for having me here today. I’m so excited to be here talking to you about superpowers.
Yay. Well, thank you for coming on the show. We’re excited to have you. So speaking of superpowers, what are your superpowers?
Well, if I sit here and list out all of my superpowers, we might be here for quite a long time.
I love it.
We are all born with these amazing superpowers that we don’t realize.
Because I truly do believe that we are all born with these amazing superpowers that we don’t recognize and because we don’t recognize them, we don’t know how to tap into them consistently. But the two superpowers that I have that I tap in all the time that I love so much is the first one is fun. I bring fun to everything that I do. That is a necessity for me. With working with clients and just being around other people in social settings, we need that. We forget to have fun as we get older. The more fun you can infuse into your life, the happier you are. So that’s the first superpower that I love, love, love. The other one is I can see people’s inner superpowers before they can. So because I can see it so quickly and so readily, I can help pull it out of them if they want to.
Perfect. That is an important superpower. I see a lot of people awakening to that and it’s kind of the concept of I’m willing to see you in your greatness even when you can. A lot of times, I share with my clients, I will hold that vision of you until you’re willing to believe it for yourself. I think we’re facing a world where that will quickly and consistently affirm the opposite. It’s easy to get caught up in what’s wrong and what’s wrong with me and what’s wrong with somebody else and what’s wrong with the world and all these other things, that’s a running theme through some of the dialogs that we hear. So that’s out there. That one’s easy. But to be able to sit back and go, “You know what, I choose to see the miraculous,” or, “I choose to see the superpowers,” or, “I choose to see the magic,” I think is a very powerful stance to take and then be willing to hold that mirror for others I think is such a beautiful gift to the world.
Yeah, I do too. I like the idea what you said too. It just holds that mirror, rather than pushing it on them, right? Because even though the superpower is there, they might not be ready to fully embrace it. If you push too hard too fast, they’re going to reject it. They’re going to reject the beauty that’s within them but if you just hold it up and they get to see a glimpse of it here and here, they become more and more attracted to it. They want more and more like that and when they’re ready, they’ll step into it and they fully own it and it is such a beautiful thing to watch.
Well, I think to the modeling of it as well, I find it that that’s one of the hardest things for people, it’s like they have these gifts and they have these abilities but are they willing to really step into modeling that and requires being willing to go against the grain. Being willing to go against what perhaps we are seeing modeled elsewhere and do something different and say, “I’m going to choose to present this to the world and that’s scary. Even as you’re helping others kind of step into it, you’re like, it’s all these layers that we’re peeling back off, well now I’m going to do a podcast or now I’m going to do like Facebook live and now I’m going to do it and it always feels like no matter how confident you are in your abilities, there’s this next layer of showing up and showing up more and more and more fully that it causes a little bit of dislike, “Am I really going to do this? We might die and I don’t know, well, people don’t like it.” It doesn’t seem to matter how many times we do that, there are more levels of that.
So one lesson I learned a few years ago that’s been so helpful for me with that is to recognize, excuse me, to recognize when I’m doing something different, whatever that might look like, is to be kind to myself and to recognize, “You know what, I’m a beginner at this thing. I have expertise in all of these other areas. I’m so good at these things but this new phase in my life, I’m a beginner and it’s okay for me to not to know what to do. It’s okay for me to stumble. It’s okay for me to learn and that has helped me grow so much faster because when I look at those things that people typically label as failures, I just look at it as another opportunity for me to go, Okay, well, that did not work.”
Beautiful. I love that insight. I find I went to similar space to where it was … I tell my clients, this is … You’re never going to get back this moment where you’re seeing this new aspect of yourself for the first time. It’s like the last first kiss concept or courting a new piece of yourself and it’s like enjoy it. Because as we go through this more and more often, those phases get much shorter. So our courtship with this new piece of ourselves, even if it feels a little bit like trying on new shoes, it’s like, you’ve done it before and you have the awareness of how to do it but it still feels different and it feels a little bit intimidating at times when you’ve just perfected all these other things. But it’s such a magical moment of discovery. So I really encourage people to have this amazing love affair with that piece and honor it and allow it to come forward in a cool way as opposed to comparing it to these other relationships you have with other aspects of yourself of … That you’re kind of an old hat at.
I think that as we remove more and more of the tumultuousness out of our existence, those moments of even the slightest trepidation are priceless. They’re precious moments of like, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to do this thing,” and I think that at least for my journey, I really grew to appreciate them.
Last year I did a 100 day happiness challenge.
I love that you call it a courtship with yourself. That is so beautiful. It’s a really fun way to look at it. Because when you’re just courting yourself a little bit, you’re just having fun, right? You’re putting your best foot forward but you’re having fun and I think that’s what really matters. The other thing that you mentioned too that I think is really important for me recognizes, again, that I’m a beginner. Sometimes when I do things and I put it out there for the world to see, to consume, to judge and I’m in the back cringing a little bit because I’m like, “I’m such a newbie and it’s going to show.” But I get this lovely message from somebody that says, “Oh my gosh. I needed to hear what you had to say. Thank you.”
Yeah. Yeah. If you allow the affirmations will come. The confirmation that you’re on the right track will come. I think mixed in with all of that is the willingness to do it for you too. To say, “I want to expand into this area. I trust that once we get to a certain aspect of our growth that our expansion is beneficial to others,” and it always is. Every time we step in a new wholeness, a new layer of wholeness with ourselves, it is absolutely a benefit to others and trusting in that process so you can really kind of relinquish the need for it to be perfect. Or I know a lot of people, they’ll put something out there and they’re like, “Wait.” Like if they only get two likes or nobody shares it, it’s like it’s so anticlimactic and that will sometimes drive people to quit.
It’s like, no, no, no, no. Like a lot of this stuff, you have to remember is forever. That’s one of the reasons I love podcasting is it’s forever. We get to milk that and promote it and all these things for so long over time. There’s accumulative impact. So it doesn’t have to be that single moment in time and if nobody watched it, it’s over. We’re not in the era of TV anymore. So reframing it to know that it’s out there and it starts to develop its own life and its own energy and it grows and grows and grows from that place as long as you stay in that higher frequency with it, it can continue to have a solid impact.
I love that. I love that. I’ve been guilty of deleting things after it’s been on for two hours with one like. So I definitely love it. I’ve definitely been there. But at the same time, just like that comment I made earlier about the thank you is maybe last year, I did a 100-day challenge, a 100-day happiness challengewhere every single day I’m posting something that I’m happy about and grateful for. Most of my posts get a lot of engagement and some didn’t. But even the people who I thought did not get my message, they’ll tell me privately another time. They just don’t … Just because they saw it, it doesn’t mean they’re going to put it out there for the world to see.
Exactly.
I know who you’re touching.
I tell people there’s always someone watching. There’s always someone watching. Is it safe to be more fully who I am? Whether it’s children, whether it’s teens, whether it’s your Facebook community, whatever it might be, you never know. To me, it’s like those of us who choose to do this work and choose to awaken and choose to kind of journey in that regard, I feel like we have a responsibility to continually show more and more fully who we are because we’re saying that we believe this. If we don’t do it, then we’re actually doing more harm than if we never stepped out in the first place to do it. So I use that as my own fuel to keep pushing me and pushing me to show more and more expansively as who I am and a lot of it was easy for me because I had Neva by my side as a constant reminder of that, if there is somebody watching.
Like it was very obvious, as I know it’s a little bit more abstract for some people who don’t have that. But it is there, the second you step into that space and it like that today we’re talking about this concept of teaching teens how to be more confident, they are growing up and coming of age in this world where it’s like a Petri dish. They’re like in a fishbowl the time. That’s a little different than a lot of us. What are you finding in regard to the, maybe the additional challenges, or just different challenges for them growing up in that kind of an environment?
I think for teen nowadays, they grow up feeling like they’re constantly under a microscope, right? That’s something that you and I probably didn’t have to go through. We might have felt that way from time to time but it’s not 24/7. I mean, they don’t really have an off time. Everything is on social media. Everything is so connected that they just never have that moment to just breathe and figure out who they are and discover themselves. So I think they are definitely … They have more challenges than we did but at the same time, they also have a lot more resources too so you just got to figure out that fine balance of how can I use this as media that’s out there that’s so pervasive in a way that’s going to be beneficial for me.
I think that’s a really powerful statement. I think it’s important to recognize too that there are two sides to that coin like you just gave voice to. Because it’s easy to sit back and go, “Oh my gosh, I can’t even imagine.” I’ve often said, “I am so grateful I came of age prior to Facebook.” But there are so many benefits too. I see that a lot of Neva’s work as well. We’re going to take a quick break. We’ve been talking with Jacqui Letran about teaching teens how to be more confident. When we come back, I really want to get into how you develop this concept for the Teen Confidence Academy and all the good work that you do in the world. Before we run to break through, where can people go to find out more about you?
So the easiest way to get a hold of me is on my website and that is JacquiLetran.com. On there is you have all of my social media links and other ways to get in contact with me.
Awesome. Very cool. We’re going to take a break so stick with us. When we come back, we’ll be talking more about teaching teens how to be more confident. We’ll be right back.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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