Shaping Abundance Through the Lens of Life's Challenges

Faced with the heavy cloak of perfectionism and the specter of failure, I found myself at a crossroads. Reflecting upon the stoic women of my family, their strength against adversity became the beacon that led me to address the internal barriers restraining my growth. Today's heart-to-heart on 'I'm Growing' delves into these very fears—the kind that creeps up on us when we're on the cusp of action, threatening to derail our ambitions and authenticity. Together, we sift through the personal stories and lessons that have shaped my journey, and I invite you to consider how the shadows of fear and embarrassment might be clouding your own path to fulfillment.

This episode peels back the layers of our apprehensions, urging a transformative shift in how we perceive failure and success. Imagine a world where every setback is a stepping stone, where each 'no' is merely a 'not yet.' We navigate through this mindset, discussing how resilience and embracing our authentic selves pave the road to a life rich with abundance and prosperity. By redefining what it means to fail and succeed, we can begin to attract the wealth of opportunities that resonate with our true selves. So settle in, grab a cup, and let's unravel these insights—for in the authenticity of our struggles lies the seed of our greatest growth.

Enter a world of fear, resilience, and generational trauma in "The Devil That Haunts Me". Follow Isabella and Julitza as they confront their demons in a tale of suspense, mystery, and the supernatural.

Explore the first seven chapters here

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Oh we could, we could fly. Welcome to this new season of the have a Cup of Johani podcast. So I want to title this new season that I'm embarking on with I'm Growing, so this is going to be the season of growth and that's what I'm going to share with you throughout the season. So I thank you for coming over here and sitting with me and I hope you enjoy. Hello everyone, and welcome to our third episode of April, where we are talking about all those things lessons learned, of the things that, now that I'm looking back, I can see were things that I was doing that were holding me back from growth, and we talked about minimizing myself. On the first one, we talked about defensiveness, kind of throwing away the message because of the messenger. On the second episode, on this episode we are going to talk about and this should have been my first one, because I think this was the genesis of this theme is when I had this conversation, which I completely forgot, and just now I was like well, let me listen to my recordings, because I record myself whenever I don't have time to write and I record my thoughts on books that I'm reading at the moment, and if you look at my blog. You will see that I have reading logs in there and sometimes I transcribe those into blog posts and sometimes I just leave the recording and publish that with the blog posts about the book that I'm reading or a book that I've read. But I also record those thoughts that just stay inside my head, revolving, revolving, revolving, just going around that circle, until I am so tired of thinking about it. Process it, either through journaling or through recording my thought, as you're going to hear here, and doing something with that. You're here and doing something with that, right, because once I process it, it's this piece of information that I am using to have some introspection about in general learning or personal learning, or kind of career learning or leadership learning kind of career learning or leadership learning any one of those buckets where me myself, my identity, is in those buckets. So any one of those buckets could be what I pour, this piece of information that I have just processed. Hopefully that makes sense to y'all. But on this third episode of April, we are going to talk about fear of failure and that's why I'm saying like this should have been the first one, but hey, should have, could have, would have too late for that. Now you're going to get to hear it as the third episode of April and we all going to learn and we all going to enjoy it, and then y'all going to put some things in the comments and we're going to continue on the conversation. Are you ready? You know you are. Let's go All right.

Speaker 1: 3:36

So, as I stated, this is a bit of a two part and I haven't finished listening to the whole recording that I did. So I may need to do some editing in this episode, hopefully not too much. I don't know what I put in here. I just know that this may be a little convoluted, because I know I talk about from the bit that I was able to listen to before I jumped in the shower. That was that the fear of failure due to embarrassment and fear of failure period. So those two things are I talked about in here, but let's listen. So something.

Speaker 1: 4:19

I started thinking about something, because this is a conversation that I had yesterday at work and this conversation has stayed with me throughout the night. You see that that whole revolving thing. So if you hear that background, I believe that this was like that one week that it was just raining nonstop, and that is that people hold their own selves back because of embarrassment of what others may say about them when they fail. And I see this as like perceived obstacles that are not necessarily real obstacles that sometimes we hold on to as reasoning for not doing something that we need to do in order to achieve our goals right or do something great with our lives or serve within our purpose in life. All right, so there it is. That's one of the nuggets that I throw in there. I'm rambling quite a bit there towards the end, but the embarrassment of it all right. So let me explain a little bit why I feel that this conversation stayed so much with me to the point where I'm talking about it now, and I recorded this back in March and that is because I came from a household of women that were so burdened with what other people would say about them and about the family that they held back quite a lot, not just on exercising their potential but, unfortunately, being themselves so growing up, my grandma raised me since I was born to nine or 10 years old, and then my mom took it from there.

Speaker 1: 6:32

Once I came to the United States, there was like a lapse in there when I bounced from household to household until I got to my mom, like at the age of 11. And then, but then I left at the age of 16, right, I went on to do my own thing, so I didn't get to spend that much time with my mom, as it is. But something that I noticed on both of these matriarchs was how burdened they were by ¿Qué es lo que va a decir la gente? What will people say? And this was something that was repeated throughout my childhood over and over and over, in various ways, in various languages, using whatever slangs was there at the moment. But it all boiled down to the embarrassment of judgment.

Speaker 1: 7:27

And growing up, you know when you, when you were a kid, right, you think like you're going to be so different than your parents. Like, and that was me. I was. No, I was no different. I grew up and I was like you know what I'm not going to be like my mom. I said that over and over and over. I was like, oh my God, this lady is embarrassed of her own shadow. I was like what is going on? This is horrible. I was like I can't be like that. But thankfully I did, stuck it out with that promise to myself. But I think I had a heads up. I had a bit of a blessing with the way that I was born, and y'all know, right, because it's something that I talk about almost in every single episode that I'm here talking and that is that I was born different. So how can I say this? So it's like coming out of the house, right, it's embarrassing per se. I look different, I will always look different. I've looked different since I was born and I will look different all the way till I die.

Speaker 1: 8:40

So when I came to that realization at a very young age when I say nine or 10, when I got out of my grandma's house, it was like this epiphany of sorts of either trigger warning here, right, um, so be careful, or lower down your tone if you're around children. But I was like either I unalive myself or I stay inside the house and never come out. You know, that was kind of like this, this epiphany that I had. I remember one day it's just like I just had enough and and I was like, well, I'm not going to unalive myself. You know, that was like I pushed that away and I was like and I'm too, I come from a poor family.

Speaker 1: 9:26

You know, I'm poor, I can't. I don't have the luxury of being a hermit. You know that I can't like in that movie where Sandra Bullock gets everything delivered to her home. God, I wish I had that kind of money that I can do that. But I didn't and I'm not going to use my money for that now. So no, but for me I didn't have the luxury of feeling embarrassed, because then that would have left me at a big disadvantage Either I'm not here in this world or I just don't come out of the house and I never get to experience the world. So because of that, I just took that out of my plate. I didn't give myself that option to feel embarrassment based off of other people's opinions of me and how I look. So that's why I call it a blessing the way that I was born, call it a blessing the way that I was born looking different, right, with a lazy eye crooked on the line, and I can see how that benefited me.

Speaker 1: 10:37

Now, back then, right, I hated it. I hated the world. I hated everybody in it. It was a horrible thing and I always felt so disadvantaged and always asked why? Why I will have these like long conversations with God and I'll be so mad at him or her and I would just have these shouting matches in my shower in my bathroom about it. But then this epiphany came to me and I was like you know what it is, what it is, joanne? So you either don't live it or you grab life by the balls per se and you go on and live it, you know, and make everybody else kick rocks. I chose the latter.

Speaker 1: 11:14

So when I am around my family members that still live in this kind of like, what will people think about me? It angers me quite a lot because I look at them. I look at the physical advantage that they have of being able to move around in the world and not be deemed different, to be able to be just like everyone else, just by being themselves, right, who they are. And I see them being embarrassed or being afraid of judgment as a burden, an obstacle that they put on themselves, and I don't see a good reason for that. And that's what angers me, because I see how much more like these matriarchs growing up could have been if only they would have let go of that.

Speaker 1: 12:29

But as I say that now and as I mature in life, I can see that particularly my grandma. She did what she could with the knowledge, the education and how society was when she was alive, when she was growing up. I don't think for her. I don't think there was much more she could have done. I think for the better part of my grandma's life the lady La Doña she was surviving and she was trying to. She was surviving and she was trying to ensure that her children survive as well in this world, and she went about it and did it the best way that she could.

Speaker 1: 13:12

However, that was, and I really can't judge that, and I can't really judge my mom either as well, because we all have our lives and our choices that we make. Our lives and our choices that we make, and it is what it is. And we're the only ones that can answer our creator later on as to why we made those choices or as to why we didn't make certain choices. But it irks me when I see other people holding themselves back while still understanding that, at the end of the day, they're the only ones with the power to change themselves. But let's continue and listen to what I have to say.

Speaker 1: 13:56

It's sad because I see that more and more and more. The more that I talk with people. The more that I work with people, I see untapped potential because of that, because of just that fear of failure. And I think if we stop looking at failure as this big, no-no, big embarrassing moment, that you will never get over it, and then just see it as I tried something, it didn't work. Now I know better, let me do something, let me tweak it, let me do something better, fall forward right, do something else, so that way I can keep pushing and moving towards this goal that I have.

Speaker 1: 14:42

So I think, if we reframe our thought and we get rid of these perceived obstacles that we put on in front of ourselves, I think we can get after the things that we want to get after, because then that won't be holding you back, that won't be there to have you live in fear, have you move in fear. And I, oh God, it's just I get so passionate about this because it bothers me so much, because it just it precludes somebody from being their authentic self, it keeps them from doing the things that they want to do. And here's the thing, right, wait, wait. Before I get really deep into it, let me just address what I said here with the fear of failure. If you're listening to this and we all do I don't even think this is something that, just because I'm talking about it here, that I have overcome and I'm like, super perfect at it.

Speaker 1: 15:47

It's just because of the way that I was born and how I experienced life and how I had to survive through life, I gained certain traits and attributes and skills that not a lot of people have, and and one of those happens to be my, my tolerance level for embarrassment. So I don't, I don't get it Like it takes a lot for me to get embarrassed right A very yeah To the point where, like, I'm very loud, obnoxious and just like you know, um, yeah, a little bit on the on the on culture side, and I really don't care what people think, but, um, but it's because of the way that that I grew up, that I experienced life, that that's why I'm that way, and I understand that not a lot of people are like that. Particularly if you come from a household where image is very important. You're going to have a lot of those obstacles.

Speaker 1: 16:54

But I do believe that reframing failure so that way we can see it as just an experiment. Just an experiment, right, that we tried a certain way, but it didn't work. And now we're one step closer to discovering the solution, you see. So, because I think some of us look at failure as if that is it, that is the answer to us not reaching whatever goal it was on the other side of that try, right, and some of us look at failure as if that's it, that's the one answer, that is the no, and that means that we cannot do this, we cannot accomplish this, that's it, we're done. But if we look at failure not as a no but I hate to sound cheesy but as a not yet, or if we look at failure as a try, like I said before, that's particularly how I look at it I'm like, okay, this didn't work this way, didn't work this way. That means that I can cross that method out and I get to be creative again and then utilize another method to achieve that. So that's how I look at when something does not work in the moment.

Speaker 1: 18:21

And I also no, me aferro. I'm not I don't know how to say that in English, but I'm not like aggressively attached to wins per se. I'm more attached to continuous small improvements, and that also helps me to not take setbacks or quote, unquote failures too harshly, because I look at, I look really hard at identifying the positives in there. What did I learn? You know, that's what I take away and what is the small improvement that I gained from that try? That's usually what I try to hold on to. Now I am my worst critic, right? So I mean, like I said, I'm not perfect. Sometimes I'm very harsh to myself because I want to, like, do something extremely perfect, and we're going to talk about that because that has to do with procrastination. That will be on the next episode. So I don't want to get too deep into that rabbit hole. But let's continue to listen.

Speaker 1: 19:35

You live in your authentic self and you do the things that you want to do, right, you can help but attract wealth, abundance and prosperity into your life because of the energy that you're exuding. You see what I'm saying. So it's not going to be overnight. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's not going to be overnight and you may need to have a job and do things that you don't want to do, so that way you can have the practical aspect of your life taken care of. But when you embody your authentic self-futuristic, you are going to attract good things. I mean.

Speaker 1: 20:05

There's just no ifs or buts about this, and the only way to embody your authentic self is to let go of the fear of what others will think. Wow, hey, past Joa is very wise people. What the fuck? I'm listening to this. I'm like man. Who's this lady? Okay, you know, I want her as my coach now. Oh my God, hey, so, wow, no, this is this. Listen everyone. So I'm a little flabbergasted right now.

Speaker 1: 22:59

So to reach abundance, one must be our own authentic self. To be our own authentic self, one must be able to let go of the fear of what others think and the fear of failure. Wow, I backtracked all of that. This is coming from someone. I'm Latina and this is big in my family. What will others say? See, there you go In my family.

Speaker 1: 23:39

It was how I was raised. My mom is heavily like this. She, she, just. This is her entire mindset, and I remember thinking as a young person how I didn't want to be, that when I grew up I would look at I forgot I had said this and and I remember always making a point in my mind to not be that way. And for someone who looks different. I have said it plenty of times and if you see me in person, that's the first thing you will notice about me. I have a lazy eye, so it's like I was born different.

Speaker 1: 24:15

So for me to embody my authentic self didn't come as easily as it does for most people who doesn't have an external uniqueness to their physical appearance, right. So, but I did it and that's why I'm like, if I can do it like a lot of people can as well, if not all but I'm not going to make that general blanket statement, because there's more nuance to to this right and to each um, each and everyone's lives. But yeah, you know, and and I just and don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm not fearful, I feel fear, I just don't focus on it, I just push it aside and I have this little thing that I I tell myself it is like so what or whatever. You know that that's like my mantra now so what, whatever? You know, just just do it, you know, and this, and those are the things that I repeat over and over to kind of like let go of that fear and get rid of my hesitancy when it comes to being my authentic self or going after things that I want to get after. Wow, you see, oh, my goodness, all right, thank you, pastjoa. That is very insightful.

Speaker 1: 25:42

I'm still not done. There's still a little bit. So I got to see what do I say to end this recording. But I just wanted to say a little bit more about that. It's not that I don't feel fear, I do, I just don't focus on it. I do, I just don't focus on it because I'm not like in purview, right, I'm not. I haven't taken this vaccine where it's like the virus of embarrassment doesn't touch me. The virus of fear doesn't touch me at all. It does. It's just I've learned to push it away and I've learned not to focus on it, but I'm still fearful. I still get butterflies whenever I have to talk, especially to a big crowd. I still get butterflies whenever I am going through a test, whether it is a scholarly test or whether it is a physical endurance test, fitness test, whatever it is, I still get the butterflies in my stomach. I still am fearful of not performing to the rate of where I see myself right, because, once again, I'm like my own worst critic and I always want to do like the very best and things that I do, so I tend to be kind of hard on myself on that, but I don't focus on it, I breathe that out so that way I can perform.

Speaker 1: 27:10

But let's see what Past Joy is saying. I encourage everyone to do the same. See what comes out of it. Just try it. Try it, put it, put it into play for like a week or two and see what happens and just tell yourself so what. You know, let's see, let's do it. You know, all right Bye. That was such an enthusiastic bye, huh, I know, I know, I know all right bye. But yeah, I mean, I'm gonna go ahead and caveat with um past joy and say try it, try it, uh, make, create your own mantra, or whether you want to use the ones that I gave you here to try them out.

Speaker 1: 28:01

Or, until you find your own, go ahead and do it. Tell yourself so what and go ahead and do it. What's the worst? That it can happen? Or just do it or fuck it. You know that's usually what I do at what you accomplish when you just try and try, without the fear of what will happen or embarrassment or judgment of others.

Speaker 1: 28:31

And I think the more that you do that, the more that you execute, the more that you action certain things and you become more apt at looking inward and concentrating on yourself, on your own actions, on your own body, on being present in your body, the easier it will be to ignore others. And oh, by the way, I mean there is some social media TikToks and I think it may be some research out there where it says that we, as human beings, think that we are being watched and judged by others when in fact that doesn't happen as often as we think it does. So, while you think like somebody is looking at you and judging you harshly more often than not, they really are not. That's more your fear of embarrassment, that's more of you thinking that that is happening, you see. So, more often than not, you thinking that somebody is looking at you and judging you is not happening. So why are you doing that to yourself? Don't do that to yourself. Just go ahead, use one of the mantras, make up your own and go ahead and take this first step forward and action that task, get after that goal. Just do that first step and say so what? And see what happens.

Speaker 1: 30:05

All right, so this was Joa with have a Cup of Johnny podcast, a podcast that talks about lessons learned. Embarrassing, sometimes sad and tragic, but all around a fun, good experience, and I love to share these things with you. So if you find this helpful, please share the podcast, rate it, leave a comment or email me. My email is joa at haveacupofjoanicom. That is joa at haveacupofjoanicom. I will see you on the next episode where we're talking about the big monster of procrastination. See you then, bye. Thank you so much for listening. I want to hear from you. Leave me a comment, do a rating, if you can, on the podcast, share it with somebody you love, but, most importantly, come back. See you next time. Bye.