Prepare to transform your perspective on self-worth and inclusion as we welcome back the exceptional Catherine Nacord, a luminary in the HR industry and an international speaker. Catherine opens up about her journey toward self-worth, fueled by foundational principles instilled by her parents. She reveals how these early lessons shaped her professional life and explores the transformative power of breaking the ego mechanism with curiosity. By integrating insights from neuroscience and neuropsychology, Catherine highlights the profound impact of curiosity and mindfulness on self-care and empathy.
Discover how embracing natural work methods can boost productivity, creativity, and overall well-being. Catherine passionately discusses the importance of fostering inclusive environments that allow individuals to thrive authentically. We'll share practical techniques for incorporating curiosity and mindfulness into daily routines, and the role of defining personal missions in achieving professional success. Catherine's personal experiences with neurodiversity, including bipolar disorder and OCD, demonstrate how these conditions can bring unique strengths. Join us for a compelling conversation on leveraging empathy and curiosity to elevate self-esteem and professional growth.
Listeners highly appreciate our podcast for its insightful and uplifting content. They praise our skilled and engaging host who fosters meaningful conversations. Our diverse topics and thoughtful approach resonate with a wide range of audiences, leaving them feeling empowered and connected.
Prepare to transform your perspective on self-worth and inclusion as we welcome back the exceptional Catherine Nacord, a luminary in the HR industry and an international speaker. Catherine opens up about her journey toward self-worth, fueled by foundational principles instilled by her parents. She reveals how these early lessons shaped her professional life and explores the transformative power of breaking the ego mechanism with curiosity. By integrating insights from neuroscience and neuropsychology, Catherine highlights the profound impact of curiosity and mindfulness on self-care and empathy.
Discover how embracing natural work methods can boost productivity, creativity, and overall well-being. Catherine passionately discusses the importance of fostering inclusive environments that allow individuals to thrive authentically. We'll share practical techniques for incorporating curiosity and mindfulness into daily routines, and the role of defining personal missions in achieving professional success. Catherine's personal experiences with neurodiversity, including bipolar disorder and OCD, demonstrate how these conditions can bring unique strengths. Join us for a compelling conversation on leveraging empathy and curiosity to elevate self-esteem and professional growth.
Listeners highly appreciate our podcast for its insightful and uplifting content. They praise our skilled and engaging host who fosters meaningful conversations. Our diverse topics and thoughtful approach resonate with a wide range of audiences, leaving them feeling empowered and connected.
Hello and welcome, dear listeners, to Healthy Babes, your go to life podcast, where it's a group podcast, I would say where we dive deep into the diverse topics with the help of expert guests who share their knowledge and the insights and each episodes we bring you engaging discussions that inspire, educate and empower. So tune in and let's explore the new waves of the thought together, because today we'll be talking about elevating the self-worth and harnessing the meditation and curiosity to transform the self-care and the empathy. So today with us we have one of my lovely guests from so we done the recording earlier also and it was really, really lovely talking to her. So yes, I'm talking about Catherine Nacord. So welcome to the show again, catherine.
Speaker 2:
Thank you so very much for having me back. I'm excited to be with you I really am and this is going to be a great topic and one that is very near and dear to me exactly, exactly lovely.
Speaker 1:
So. So, uh, dear listeners, like I'd quickly love to introduce you all with Catherine. So Catherine is a powerhouse in the HR industry and an international speaker, definitely so. From her early days, like playing the HR as a child, to founding the Titan Management and the new divorce, her journey has been nothing sort of remarkable. So, living with the multiple physical and the neurodiversities, she is a champion for integrity, inclusion and innovation in the workplace, lovely to discuss with and definitely we are thrilled to have here, catherine, to have you here.
Speaker 2:
Thank you, yeah, and I really do, and I love that you highlighted that I talked about, and I stress the importance of specifying that I'm not successful in spite of my disabilities. I'm successful with them. I don't get to take them off and leave them somewhere or drag them around behind me. They're just part of me and actually some of those things make me better and make me stronger, so even just by their own nature. So it's really interesting once you start studying all of these types of things and and definitely always integrity first. That's one that's uncompromisable and I think that that's what. That's a value that everybody, especially in business, should share that's really lovely, great.
Speaker 1:
So, katherine, to start with, I mean, uh, you with your diverse background and the experiences, how have you cultivated a sense of self-worth in your professional journey?
Speaker 2:
So I was kind of born with a sense of self-worth. My mom always teases me about that. She's like you came out confident. You were just like hey, world, here I am, deal with it. And I just kind of always had that ingrained in. My parents actually really cultivated that. They always treated me as a person with my own autonomy and my own mind and my own needs, even from the time I was a teeny, tiny child. They would treat me as my own human and that really impacted me.
Speaker 2:
So then when I got to the world of business, I just carried all of that with me, right. I was like okay, well, clearly, you know, I have a sense of value and I would bring it out. But I also always believed in proving that, and so that was a really big piece. And that's the piece of advice that I can impart on other people. You can't help who your parents are, you can't help and you just are who you are. Um, but the part that I can really teach to other people is the importance of to yourself being able to prove your worth. And so whatever you value, whatever you hold dear, whatever mark success for you, show it and prove it.
Speaker 2:
You know like so for me, one of the things I love the most is hiring right. So I always tracked, you know, my time to hire candidate satisfaction, these types of things, and when I was excelling in those things I was like well, to me I succeed right, but also my sense of integrity and my sense of um personal worth. So I've had situations in which when in my younger career I got fired and I consider those successes because I upheld my integrity, and so you know. So, for instance, one time I was fired because I refused to discriminate in hiring. That actually happened to me, that's a true story and I'm proud of that Because to me, I upheld my success. So I think, to answer your question, when you carry a sense of, or for me, when I have, for me to have a sense of self-worth, I need to be upholding my values, my missions and my expectations. It's not about everybody else, it's about my expectations.
Speaker 2:
That's how I function, at least.
Speaker 1:
That's very, very true and thanks for sharing this. So, also, like, you talk about breaking the ego ego mechanism to respond with the curiosity, so if you can share, like, if you can briefly explain, like how this has impacted your self-care and the empathy it's really made an astronomical difference.
Speaker 2:
So I started out on this journey because I saw so many people that were averse to change and that, even when presented with new and better information and proof of this information, they would still just argue beyond all reason, right, and kind of an exaggerated form we all see on social media every single day, right, like people that just argue beyond all reason about nonsense. And so I thought why, why is this happening? What's going on? And also this is part of my journey and understanding, uh, unconscious bias, and why we have these things, and so I really started diving into neuroscience and neuropsychology. I got several certifications, I read every bit of research I could find, and what I eventually uh, came to and and mapped out was that the path to this was to break our internal biological ego mechanism, which is basically just a defense mechanism in our brain, because our brain needs to be correct. That equals safe to the brain, and it is programmed to keep us safe, right and uh. So when, when something is contradictory to what we know, believe, hold true, our brain will automatically send us into fight or flight. Typically, fight is the response and it throws up defenses so that it will protect itself right? No, I'm right because. No, I'm right because and even if the reasons don't actually make sense, and then from that response it also builds biases. So when we're not allowing new information, we now only read our information is correct because even though our conscious brain knows that we are not the center of the universe, right? Like if you ask literally anybody, they're going to tell you no, I'm not the center of the universe, I know that, right, but their primitive brain doesn't know that. Our unconscious brain thinks that we are the center of the universe, that everything is about us, and so we have to learn to conquer that. And so the trick to that is to move the process from the primitive brain, the unconscious brain, into the conscious brain and then to respond with curiosity and intellect rather than instinct. And so we move into this situation in which we're talking to one another, we're communicating and we're building that empathy because we're actually able to learn from one another instead of our brain shutting the information down.
Speaker 2:
So, for instance, in my personal relationship I'm just going to use that as an example with my partner, right? So with my husband, every relationship, there are times you just really, really hate the other person, right? You're just looking at them like why you this difficult? I don't understand. But what I've come to realize is is that often we're responding based on us and where we are, what we're thinking, what we're feeling, what we, how we would process, and we make assumptions, you know. So we assume that this person said this because that's what we would, you know, and that this is what they meant, because that's what we would mean, right? Or we assume that we understand why they think or say this because of other things they've done.
Speaker 2:
But when we ask and we respond in curiosity, all of a sudden you get this whole new perspective and through practicing this and actually teaching my brain to default to this, it's created a very different pathway where I just don't get aggravated with the people in my life anymore, because I'm able to relate and understand them and communicate with them in a much more effective way and I understand them on a deeper level so I can meet their needs better, and then I can better communicate my own needs and they can better meet mine, and everything is healthier, healthier and happier exactly, exactly so also it's.
Speaker 1:
It's a bit out from the curiosity part. So, uh, what according to you? I mean, how does expanding the humanity and the inclusion in the workplace contribute to a deeper sense of self-worth among the employees?
Speaker 2:
So that's a really good question. This is something I very much live in. As you know, this is a huge part of my work.
Speaker 2:
Right is creating what I call universal workplace design, which is an old IT and architectural concept, and then also specifically, uh in, specifically in de and I, and what's interesting is human beings. So I'd like to think of maslow's hierarchy. So maslow's hierarchy is an old psych, uh, psychology concept, and maslow was um, you know, he, he designed this whole pyramid that took people up their needs right. So you start with, at the very base of the pyramid, the foundation is physiological needs, like we need to eat, we need to sleep, we need water, we need air right. And then you move up to psychological needs and safety, you know. So I need to feel safe, I need to feel secure, my psychological wellness needs to be intact, right. Then you move up to love, and belonging is the next need, right, and you need to feel included and well. And then you move to self esteem and then you eventually move to what he called self actualization. That can also be. You know higher thinking. You know, however, maximum potential, whatever you want to call it, and as you move through the pyramid, you get healthier and your body chemicals work better and you're able to function at a much higher level.
Speaker 2:
And it's been proven time and again through multiple studies that when people are allowed to work in ways that are natural to them. So Hewlett Packard actually did a study on this. Psychology Today has published studies on this. You can look at the National Institute of Health National Library of Medicine.
Speaker 2:
When people are allowed to work in ways that are natural, and when they feel supported and safe, they can move up that pyramid, and that's how they get to the maximum potential. And so inclusion is taking them from that base of the pyramid up to the top of the pyramid, and that's what it's all about. So it's not just the warm and fuzzy, there's a practical element to it as well, and it raises their self-esteem. It puts them in a place to be creative, and when they're not having to worry about surviving which is what the bottom rungs of the pyramid are all about they can just do the cool stuff right. And that's where humanity gets elevated, that's where everybody becomes healthier, that's where profits go up, that's where innovation goes up. So it's fully embraced. It fully inclusion fully embraces health, wellness, productivity and empathy all in one beautiful little bundle.
Speaker 1:
Wow, that's lovely, great. So here also thing I mean, when we are talking about this, that expanding the humanity, with the inclusions also like how do you? I mean, how do I put this thing, I'm like, uh, into the daily routine? How do you put this curiosity and the mindfulness thing in, uh, to enhance the self-care?
Speaker 2:
into, into self-care, like on a daily basis like that kind of thing, yeah, um, so I.
Speaker 2:
So I actually said first I taught myself how to recognize the, the, the triggers. You know that that I was, that my brain was doing the ego response to all that. Learn to respond in curiosity and I still. Now it's not, it's no longer daily. I started with it daily, now it's more a weekly aspect. I actually do things to intentionally trigger that response, remember how it feels, and then to actively respond in curiosity to things that infuriate me, that just set me off, and to respond in healthier, more productive ways. So I actually practice this, I actually exercise in it and I don't allow myself to engage negatively or to have those anger responses. I watch my chemicals, I bring it down and, by the way, when you learn to do this, you actually feel the body chemicals change, you feel that adrenaline go away, you feel that oxytocin release and you're just like, ah, this is so much better, right. So I still do that on a regular basis.
Speaker 2:
I also practice grounding exercises, which just kind of recenter your brain, recenter your nervous system. So when you start to get you angsty or anxiety or stress of any kind, if you stop and do like a two-minute grounding exercise and just you know, plant your feet, breathe in, breathe out. Focus on the things that you have, like I have food, I have clean air, I have water to drink, I am okay, I can survive, it's okay, you know, and just kind of bring your nervous system back to a calm state. You could go back up that pyramid. Because what happens is when you get stressed, your body starts going, sliding right back down that pyramid and then we're in panic, fight or flight and it's, it's no bueno. And that's when you get health conditions, anxiety, um, rashes, all kinds of crazy, you know, heart conditions, all kinds of things happen from that.
Speaker 2:
So, taking that time to to ground and breathe, and so every day, whenever I start to feel those types of things happen, I just okay, we're all right, here's the thing. I also wake up every morning and kind of go through the plan of the day, the basic. That's how, what I need. I'm a type A personality. I need to be like super organized. So I go through my plan and I process it and I think in my brain like if something goes wrong, what are my solutions? I think through those solutions and then off we go. It literally takes, I'd say, anywhere from about one to two actual minutes to do that and it just helps to decompress my brain wow, lovely.
Speaker 1:
So what advice would you uh give to someone who are actually struggling to find their self-worth in the high-pressure professional environment?
Speaker 2:
Remember to focus, first of all, create your missions. Whatever your missions are and you gave mine at the beginning of the show Minor integrity, inclusion, innovation Every single thing I do has to come back to those three things, or at least two of them, right? So everything that I do that uplifts those gives me a sense of self-worth. I'm living up to my mission. These are my missions. I'm accomplishing my missions, right? And? And don't make them things that are dependent on other humans, right, so it doesn't.
Speaker 2:
So nothing about, like, um, I want a marriage to last for 30 years? Well, ok, you can do your part. You can say I want to be a good partner, right, that's a thing. But you don't want to rely on the other human Right. Or you don't want to say, like I, even things like you don't want to say things like I want to get 30 sales this week because that could be dependent on other factors.
Speaker 2:
So everything should be internal. These should be things that are about your ethics, your integrity, your goals, right? So I want to innovate hr innovation, right, and? And I and different aspects, and I believe in inclusion and spreading that worldwide. There's that, and then I believe in doing everything with integrity. So that's how I come up with it.
Speaker 2:
So, so, establish your three missions, bring everything back to those, everything. Because when you do, and you constantly uphold your missions, and you can look back at the day and say this is how I lived my three missions today, I did it, goal accomplished, perfect. The rest of it fades away, right, and the rest of it will line up too right, like when you're doing that, when you're taking care of the stuff that is important to you and that aligns with the work that you're doing because my missions align with the work that I do right, they set me up for success You'll find that you just automatically start thriving more and more in your work and it's, it's absolutely, absolutely incredible. And then you can have that other uh, then you can have the sense of pride of being successful to other people too, which is really cool. But for the self-worth, your three vision or your two to three visions, whatever it is, that's, that's my advice?
Speaker 1:
yeah, lovely, great. So, uh, how has your experience with the neurodiversity influenced your perspective on the self-worth and empathy in both the personal and the professional settings?
Speaker 2:
That's a good question. So my neurodiversity is just to share with everybody is that I have bipolar one, I have obsessive compulsive disorder and I have misophonia, which basically means that certain sounds actually interrupt my neuro processes and make me malfunction, and then I also have a seizure disorder that creates medical neurodiversity. So I have four. I have four neurodiversities and I would say that they give me empathy from the standpoint of being able to understand that everybody has different crazy things that happen with them and that everybody processes differently. And honestly, that's the main thing I take away from it is that everybody processes differently and we need to honor that right. Every single human processes completely differently and it's not reasonable to expect someone else to process the way that we do not even our own child or our own partner or our own mother or father. Right, everybody is different, even my own sister and I. We are 10 years apart and we are wildly different humans. We process very differently. We're extremely close, extremely bonded to one another, but we process entirely differently and we receive information differently. We communicate information very differently, and so we have to give grace.
Speaker 2:
That's one of the biggest lessons I took was how we process, and it's helped me thrive, because neurodiversity inherently has benefits as well as the disability.
Speaker 2:
It's both, and Johns Hopkins has done study again, national Institute of Health and all that have all these studies about this, and so, while I may get stuck in loops, sometimes due to my OCD, and have to do things in a compulsive manner, which can be a bit much, and I have to do everything in even numbers, that's just all there is to it.
Speaker 2:
It does. It does also give me the extreme organization and the recognition of patterns which has helped me to be extremely successful, right, and so you have to. I've also learned to honor the things about myself that can also be complicated, and I try to teach others to do that as well, because that's something that we don't really talk about a lot in our, our society. But all the things that are complicated and difficult about us also give us a strength somewhere right, and so finding that and honoring that and focusing on that aspect can really bring things around. That's another thing, by the way, that, not just in business, but also in your personal life, I would encourage people to do, not just for yourself, but for others.
Speaker 1:
Sure, very, very true, yeah. So what final advice?
Speaker 2:
would you give to the listeners on using curiosity to transform their self-care and the empathy Really? Just start by practicing it and if you want to learn how, reach out to me. I do teach classes. I also just wrote a book where one of the chapters is on how to do this. You can find it on Amazon.
Speaker 2:
But just learn to recognize the biological response and look at things that aggravate you. Here's the basic tips Look at things that aggravate you, right, and you'll notice where you feel it and your body is typically around the nape of your neck, somewhere shoulders, neck, somewhere around there and learn to recognize that and that when that happens, that means that you need to respond in curiosity. And when you teach your brain that, just even over a few minutes, and then practice it, it will actually start to change. Your actual responses will change, your synapses will change and then your automatic behavior moves into the conscious realm and you can actually have more mind mastery. So actually practice that and learn it and then do it at least a couple times a week for a while. Eventually it'll become more of a pattern you can move to about once a week, but even then, just still keep it sharp because it's going to exponentially change your professional life, your personal life and your internal self-esteem and sense of worth. Because when you're able to better communicate, you feel more confident. When you're able to better receive information, you have more information with which to make better decisions and you feel more confident.
Speaker 2:
So doing this will absolutely elevate your life in ways you never imagined. I never thought when I started down this path that I would find something that changed my life so drastically, but it has, and in all the right ways. So learn to break that ego mechanism and respond in curiosity and practice it with your loved ones. Give them some grace. Folks Like we we put so much onto our loved ones that we don't need to, and we. There are so many misunderstandings every day, and you can prevent that and you can strengthen those relationships by just learning to be curious and not to assume.
Speaker 1:
Understood, understood and also we'll quickly, I think, take one question. And also we'll quickly take one question. So we got it from one of our listeners here. So Lotus is saying like when society is moving towards addiction to the dopamine, dopamine hits. So how does one go against that?
Speaker 2:
man hit. So how does uh one go against that? So I want to make sure I got the question right. So when society is moving towards, um, addictive actions, just even things like social media and all of that, like, how do you, how do you get away with that, how do you, how do you back off from that? And that's a really good question, because dopamine and adrenaline are highly addictive chemicals. We actually become addicted to our unhealthy responses. It's really bad.
Speaker 1:
That's actually how you get drug addiction actually actually gives us that, uh, adrenaline rush inside us that, yeah, it does yeah it does.
Speaker 2:
It's very similar to what, uh, some of these uh dangerous, uh narcotics do. So, um, I think that one of the best things that you can do, number one, is program your body to receive oxytocin and serotonin, which are the calmer, healthier so dopamine and adrenaline will again get your heart pumping to a high level, cause anxiety, cause neuropathway disruption, twitching all kinds of unhealthy, negative things, right? So, even though it's addictive, you get hooked to that fight or flight. But what's really cool is that oxytocin is also addictive, and so, if you, but in a nice, happy way, you're basically addicted to being healthy. So taking the time to connect and to do things that release the correct chemicals will really make a difference. So, instead of getting on social media and scrolling which I'm not saying don't ever do it, you absolutely should that helps keep you in touch with the world. Absolutely recommend it, but making sure that it's a more positive experience, right, and not digging into the dirt. So, instead of, when you see something that makes you angry, just diving into it, don't do that, don't allow that kind of response. Instead, step back, respond in curiosity, and then what I do is I turn off my notifications. I don't even know what people say back to me right, I just that's not my thing. And then I just go on and do something that I know will release the oxytocin and get those healthy chemicals back. Because as much as we try to get our algorithm right and only see the stuff we want to see, we'll sometimes get the negative bs all right too. So that's how I deal with it. And then I also do things to actively release the oxytocin throughout the day. I pet my kitty cats. I love my kitty cats. There's one sitting right over here. I'm actually kind of surprised she hasn't made an appearance. Um, I pet them, I go on walks, I do my grounding exercises, I listen to music.
Speaker 2:
I do different things. I eat foods that I know release those happy chemicals in my brain, especially on bad days. Right, there's just certain foods that remind me of home or that make me think of a happy memory, or that just tastes really good, right, and so anything like that that will release the right chemicals. And also eating right does help. By the way, I know that sounds like a really weird plug to throw in here, but it's true, eating right will get help. You get the right chemicals going in your brains. But, um, but that's what I recommend is do your best to avoid it. Right, and only look at the stuff that makes you happy and healthy. But then, when you do see the nonsense, respond in curiosity. If you want to engage, a little bit cool, but engage only in curiosity, so consciously stopping those responses, eventually shut it off and go do things that actively release the oxytocin, remind your body we want to be healthy because otherwise it's going to start defaulting to those bad habits right away and that that's, that's, that's really a great thing.
Speaker 1:
And also, uh, which I also believe, the same like uh, uh, social media is. So there is definitely the pros and cons side of there, definitely, um. So, uh, like we should, we should avoid spending much time on, on uh, those those things, and uh, which I also believe, and like uh, things which uh tells us that because of this thing only you are not doing, you are not uh getting highlighted, or you are not uh going ahead, or you are not doing so where this not, or you are not going ahead or you are not doing so where this not, or you are getting diminuted. I believe we should avoid those things from our life.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely Watch anything. Avoid things that have ads, because the whole point of ads is to make you feel like you're failing, so that you'll buy their product, like you aren't dressed well enough, you aren't successful enough, you don't smell good enough, you don't like whatever it is is right. And so just avoiding that hooey and just you know, just just dismissing it um, that's, that's another big, that's another big thing but consciously engaging that part of your brain and being like, no, that's not it, that's not the thing. And here's why. Right, yeah, yeah, talk to yourself about how great you are, seriously. And oh, and here's another one folks have your cheerleaders in your life and talk to them regularly. Call those people that every single time they talk to you, they tell you how great you are.
Speaker 2:
Have those people, it can be your mom, it could be your friend, it could be a colleague, partner, sibling, whoever, but have those people and talk to them all the time exactly it makes the more we say good about ourselves, the more we say, the good we are.
Speaker 1:
Definitely that uh resonance, that uh that hits into our body, which is connected with the universe, definitely. And here also, before we move. I would love to mention this as an example. So we all know Mr Shah Rukh Khan, right? So in Bollywood movies we call him the King Khan, we call him the King of Bollywood. So basically, in one interview he was mentioning, so the interviewer was asking him like so, shah Rukh, you always say I'm the King Khan, I am the King of Bollywood. So how do you? I I mean, why do you say that? So it's a great uh response, uh, from uh mr shahrukh khan was. Uh he mentioned, like, if I do not say that I am the uh king khan or I am because he is definitely so, so if he's saying like, if I do not say I am the King Khan, then no one will believe. So if you believe in yourself, definitely people will believe in you and you. That is the motivation. So that's, that's really a great yeah that's a great example.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's a really good example.
Speaker 1:
Yeah exactly no. And then thanks to uh lotus link for uh uh raising this thing, because it's it really, it really matters and uh yeah, yeah that's a.
Speaker 2:
That's a great question. Yeah, good, yeah, good job to the listener. That was a.
Speaker 1:
That was a really insightful question great, lovely, so great, so, um, uh. But this uh, thank you everyone for tuning in this episode of healthy waves, where we explored the profound impact of meditation, uh, or rather, I would say the curiosity of the self-worth, self-care, empathy with our amazing guest katherine. So we hope that our insights have inspired you to embrace these practices in your own life, or your own daily life, to continue your journey towards the greater well-being, and always remember that elevating the self-worth is a continuous process and that can transform not only your life but how you care for those around you, so that that uh definitely matters. So, whether it's uh through uh uh calmness, or whether through a meditation embracing your unique diversities or responding uh with the curiosity, you have the tools to create more uh compassionate and fulfilling life so if you have enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to Healthy Waves and leave us a review and share it with your friends, family or someone who actually need this episode.
Speaker 1:
So stay tuned for more expert discussions and inspiring stories on our upcoming episodes and until next time, keep riding the healthy wave. So thank you so much.
