Hello, everyone. Welcome to Your SuperPowered Mind. I’m your host, Kristin Maxwell, and, in this show, we explore the process of transformation and give you tools and strategies you can use to transform your own life.
Today, we’re going to be talking to Wendy Perrotti about what is the key to personal growth and professional development. Wendy Perrotti is a coach, speaker and trainer and also a thought leader in metacognition and communication strategy. Her coaching approach hones in on the relationships between thought, language and action as the linchpin to our professional success and sense of personal fulfillment. She’s the co-founder of The Energy Initiative, a neuroscience-based executive coaching and leadership development firm, and she’s also the founder of Live Big, a professional coaching company that works with women on enhancing personal performance and increasing bottom line results.
Wendy, welcome to Your SuperPowered Mind.Â
Thank you. I’m really excited to be here.
Yes, I’m so excited to talk to you. You seem like a wealth of the type of knowledge that I love about change and brain development and all of that.
What we believe is really what manifests in our lives, what opportunities we see and what we can control.
Yeah, we definitely love the same stuff.
We do. We do, so my first question is always going to be what super power did you discover as the result of mastering your mind?
For me, it was really, really early on in my life, although I don’t know that I realized it at the time, and it’s that belief opens and closes every single door for us. What we believe is really what manifests in our lives, what opportunities we see and what we can control.Â
Wow. How did you come to understand that or learn that because that’s a pretty big, big understanding?Â
Yeah. I was a very terrified child, terrified of absolutely everything on earth, and I have a mom who is just bigger than life, completely not terrified, someone who gobbles up life, and so she decided that something needed to be done with me. My parents did not have a lot of money, but they went over the top to find this private nursery school, and 40 years ago, 40, almost 50 years ago, people didn’t do that, send their kids to a private nursery school that they couldn’t afford, but she really felt that something needed to be done with this terrified little kid
I remember a lot about those few years that I was there, most of it being alone and being afraid and being timid and holding back, but the biggest thing that I remember was this nursery school graduation of which I was incredibly proud. I had a new dress, and they lined us up on this folding chairs, and we had made these little mortars with tassels to wear, so it felt like an official graduation, and my parents and grandparents were in the audience, and it just felt like this really big deal to me.
They started by handing out these American flags to all the boys, because it’s the ’70s, so the boys went first, and then they hand to each of the girls these incredibly fantastic crepe paper flowers. They were on dowels that were like two feet long. They were bigger than my head, really cool thing, and they missed me. They just skipped over me, and I didn’t get one, and I could feel the lump in my throat and the terror and, of course, I was sad that I didn’t get this flower that everybody else got that was incredible and wonderful, but what I was more afraid of was that someone would notice, that someone would feel sorry for me, that my parents would be embarrassed, that my grandparents… that I would be noticed, and it would be a humiliation, and so I remember sitting there and thinking, “It’s okay, Wendy. It’s okay. Don’t cry.”Â
They had given us these little diplomas with our class picture also. I did get one of those, and I opened it up and I said, “You have this wonderful picture of your class, and you have this diploma, and you have there your mom and dad, and look how proud they are, and they don’t notice you don’t have a flower, and you’re okay, and you’re okay,” and I was. I was okay and, at that moment, I learned that what I thought, what I focused my attention on became the truth as long as I believed it. I believed I was okay, and I actually was okay.
Side note, I eventually got the flower, and it was fantastic, but for the rest of my life, I knew with my heart and soul that I could be okay by being grateful for what I really valued and cared about. By changing what I thought about a situation, I could be okay, and it really worked well for me for about 40 years or so, that superpower, and I still have it. I still have this super power. They don’t go away, and it became a super power and a coping strategy, Kristin.Â
To be more than okay, you need to struggle.
Even though I was okay, by the time I hit 40 or so, I realized something else. I was only okay. I never pushed past that fear of being seen, of being humiliated. I could be okay, but, beyond okay, I had some other beliefs that I didn’t recognize yet. I have these beliefs that, to be more than okay, you had to earn it. To be more than okay, you need to struggle. To be more than okay, something external from me needed to recognize me or rescue me or bless me or give me permission or invite me in, and I think that was the pivot point of my life in my early 40’s, making that realization that I had these other beliefs that had stopped me from living all in, that had stopped me from getting the brass ring, so to speak.
There’s a lot that you just talked about right there that I would love to pick apart. One of the things that you said is that what you focused on, what you focused your attention on could be the truth so long as you believed it, so what about situations where people are not… How do you get yourself to believe something? Wouldn’t it be like..Â
A fake-it-till-you-make-it thing?Â
Yeah. Right. Yeah, so what’s the difference between faking it till you make it and then really finding a belief that you can hold on to that makes things okay? Then we’ll go to the thriving beyond that, but I just, just this first initial step.
Yeah, that’s a really important component and something that I’ve worked so deeply on with myself and with my clients. You don’t need to believe 100%. I mean, we know enough about the way the brain works, that it’s constantly seeking evidence, constantly growing based on belief, and that belief only needs to be the belief that the possibility exists. You simply need to believe that the possibility exists that you could be okay or the possibility exists that there is love for you out there or the possibility exists that you can succeed and that material wealth is yours for the taking, and there’s nothing dirty or slimy about that. You simply need to believe that the possibility exists and, on that, then all of those tools that we can employ about how to shift our thinking to strengthen the belief begin to take hold.Â
I love that because I’ve often, I often say that we don’t believe what we see, we see what we believe, and so if we become aware of just even a sliver of maybe it is possible that I will succeed in this, we can then start to actively collect evidence for that belief instead of the belief we’ve been always collecting evidence for, which is that, oh, my gosh, this is never going to work.Â
Exactly. It sets everything else in motion and it cracks open new doors.
It does, and the thing for somebody who has been stuck in their head for decades like I was, at first I was like, “That’s crazy.” You can’t just change your thoughts and your beliefs and, yet, when, and I want to get into. We’ll have to take a break, but I want to get into what is the focus and how do you start to change those beliefs really, but it’s incredible. It’s possible.
We are going to have to take a break. Can you let the listeners know where they can learn more about your work?
Sure, always can go to my website. It’s my name, www.wendyperrotti.com, or I’m on Facebook and Instagram, again, under my name, Wendy Perrotti, so friend me or follow me, and I’d love to hook up with all of you.Â
Great. Thank you. We are talking to Wendy Perrotti about what is the key to personal growth and professional development, and we’ll be back in a few moments.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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