Are you on the journey of fulfilling your purpose? Do you want to shatter self-doubt and conflicts that hinder your path? In this episode of Wisdom of Ages, host Ayn Cates Sullivan and guest Vicki Znavor revolve their conversation around ways to overcome conflict, deal with criticism and face fear. Vicki is the author of the book Authenticity Reawakened; it contains strategies to build leadership and know your values and purpose in life. Tune in and join Ayn and Vicki to hear more about understanding fear, the 100 Ways to Authenticity, and what it means to be genuine at work.
Ayn Cates Sullivan:
Welcome friends and mystical travelers. This is Ayn Cates Sullivan, host of Wisdom of the Ages, where we invite the sacred into modern-day reality. Each week I offer stories and interviews and spiritual monologues to inspire, heal, and uplift the soul. You can listen to many more episodes on superpowerexperts.com/wisdom-of-the-ages/. If you love books, you can also go to infinitelightpublishing.com.
What a great day to ponder the path, or sometimes the many paths that lead us to discover our unfolding destiny and how we fulfill our life purpose and mission. My guest today is Vicki Znavor. Let me just tell you a little bit about her. She’s a top human resources executive with more than 30 years of experience in Chicago’s leading companies, who started her career with only a high school diploma and a bit of enthusiasm.
I think this is important right now as we think about it. We seem to have had this club where you get enough degrees. I’m definitely guilty of it, I have two masters and a Ph.D. But you feel like you’re part of this club, but then when I think of my grandfather, he actually had a sixth-grade education and was really super successful. So, I mean, I think there are many, many approaches to success, and I hope this is something that we’re going to get into in the show.
Vicki has written a non-fiction book called Authenticity Reawakened. When I looked on Amazon, it had at least 23 five-star reviews, so clearly it’s helping people. It’s a really good guide, a self-help guide, so I’m going to recommend it. The book is for people who are defining their core values, understanding their life stories, and why life stories matter. Also, if you’re interested in discovering your life purpose and mission, particularly in relation to business.
I wanted to begin here with a quote by Steve Jobs from chapter one. It’s sort of how the book begins in Authenticity Reawakened, and it goes like this. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your inner voice, and most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and your intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become and everything else is secondary.”
So, Vicki, I know you have quite a lot to say about that quote, so I’m just going to start there as a welcome to Wisdom of the Ages.
Vicki Znavor:
Thank you so much, Ayn. It’s a pleasure to join you. I love your podcast and what you’ve done, but I love that you started with that first Steve Jobs quote, because as I go further a few lines down in the book, I say that if I were speaking to the people that I love most, those are the words I would say, except I probably would never use the word dogma.
Ayn Cates Sullivan:
Yeah, no, I’m curious about that. So I know dogma can be a stumbling block, so…
Vicki Znavor:
Right.
Ayn Cates Sullivan:
Yeah. So, why would you say that? Because I know you’re all about being a light to others. I mean, do we have to break free of dogma to reawaken your authenticity?
Vicki Znavor:
Well, for sure. I’ve always used words that almost anyone can quickly understand the meaning of, because I feel like when you do that, you have a deeper, more instant connection. So that’s why, again, it’s an important concept for sure, but I probably wouldn’t use it. But yes, we have to break through as well, we have to break through a lot of things in order to get back to who we truly are.
You’ve spoken about that in the past as well, is that everyone is really already self-actualized, but culture conditioning and people telling us who we are or who we should be in our lives and in our careers, we start to mold and bend, until at some point in some cases we may not even recognize the person that we’ve become, because we’ve been very good at all of that molding and bending as we went along.
Ayn Cates Sullivan:
Mm-hmm, then it might be fun to kick out that pattern and see who’s really there.
Vicki Znavor:
That’s exactly right, well said. That’s exactly what my book tries to help the reader accomplish.
Ayn Cates Sullivan:
Yeah, it’s really great. There are three exercises in here that I’m going to really recommend to all listeners, they’re super. So, let’s take this ad break and where can people find you?
Vicki Znavor:
At vickiznavor.com.
Ayn Cates Sullivan:
Okay, when we come back from this short break, we’re going to speak with Vicki about her book, Authenticity Reawakened: The Path to OWNING Your Life’s Story and Fulfilling Your Purpose. Stay tuned, 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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