Transcript
00:00:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’m Joanna Lindenbaum, a coach, ritualist, and all-around transformation nerd who is obsessed with helping clients go deep to create more change and results with their clients.
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I created the Coaching Revolution Podcast to share with you coaching skills, tips, and advice, as well as a deeper understanding of human behavior and of yourself.
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so that you can do even better client work and group work, grow your business organically, and know that you’re making a real difference in the world.
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This is about creating a revolution in the transformational industry so that more practitioners feel amazing about what they do, and so that more of our clients experience life-changing shifts.
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Let’s get started.
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Welcome back to the Coaching Revolution Podcast.
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This is Joanna Lindenbaum, and I am so happy that you’re here with me today.
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Thank you for making the time.
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And real quick, before we dive into today’s episode, I wanted to let you know that twice in the month of February, I am going to be holding a very special and free masterclass.
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It’s called How to Help Your Clients Off of the Wheel of Self-Sabotage.
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And it is 90 minutes of pure gold content and also deep inner experience for you.
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So if you have clients who are getting in a stuck of pattern of not taking action, or if you have clients who get stuck in a pattern of holding themselves back, or they just do things that kind of don’t make sense, that end up working against them, even though your clients know better,
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this masterclass is for you.
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I’m going to be teaching a coaching framework so that you can understand the human behavior behind self-sabotage, how it works in cycles, and then how and where to break those cycles.
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It’s also really helpful if you know that you tend to self-sabotage as well.
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So I’ll drop
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a link for the masterclass in the show notes, and I really hope that you join us.
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Now, today’s episode is on a really important topic, and I’ll say it’s a very personal and tender topic as well.
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It’s one that I’ve struggled with myself over the years, numerous times,
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And it’s something that I’ve supported a lot of my clients with over the years.
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It’s a topic that really isn’t talked about very much because I don’t think that most people really know how to approach this.
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And the topic that I’m talking about is how to be visible in your marketing when you don’t really love either how you look or how your voice sounds
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or in my case, both.
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So I think it goes without saying that it’s really important to have photos of us and sometimes videos of ourselves in our marketing, especially in today’s environment.
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It’s important to have photos and videos so that people can get to know us.
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so that they can get to know what we look like, so that they can get to know how we speak and how we sound, so they can hear us.
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Because when people see us and hear us, they get a better sense of our energy.
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And this really matters when it comes to sales, when it comes to bringing people into our offerings.
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It matters because when the people that we are meant to impact can see us and hear us, it activates the know, like, and trust factor.
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And all three of those things, knowing us, liking us, and trusting us, are huge.
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And I think trust is the biggest.
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Trust is a key component to a prospect deciding whether to buy from us, work from us, join a program, or even whether to simply show up for a free preview class.
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Because even showing up for a free preview class, that is somebody deciding to invest their time and energy into something that we have to offer.
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They need to trust us.
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People often need to feel like, oh, I relate to this person, or she feels like my kind of person, or I like her vibe, or I trust her energy in order to be willing to invest time, money, and energy into us.
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And let me say, if you know me, you know this.
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I am a word person.
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I like my written words.
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And so it kind of hurts to say we also need to be sharing photos, videos, audio, because I don’t like it all the time.
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I sometimes find it inconvenient and I find it hard.
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But
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It’s also really hard for people to be able to get to know us more deeply, again, to know, like, and trust us from our copy alone.
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So if you’ve been holding back from having photos of yourself on your website or on your sales pages or on your opt-in pages or on your social media, or if you’ve been holding back from video in certain places where you’re messaging, where you’re marketing, I really want to encourage you to consider being a little more visible in these ways.
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And I want to say this too.
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You don’t have to go overboard.
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It can be balanced.
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In other words…
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You don’t have to go hog wild with a bazillion pictures and videos.
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Now, I know that there are a lot of social media influencers and coaches out there where their whole brand is basically their face or their really chiseled bodies.
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And their brand is very centered on their appearance.
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They’ve got tons of glossy photos,
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where they are in fabulous and premium locations that are supposed to show their wealth.
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And they’ve got lots of videos of themselves with a ton of makeup on or their hair very coiffed or wearing very fancy clothing.
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And so much of the marketing and the branding is very centered on how they look and their beauty.
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And oftentimes their youth
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or a projection of themselves as stress-free and living their best lives, and also sometimes maybe with a tinge of sexiness.
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Now, I am not– I want to be clear– I am not judging any of that at all.
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That is absolutely what is right for some people and some brands.
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And that being said, I also know that’s not for me.
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And if it’s not for you, again, that’s OK.
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So even if we kind of put aside for a moment my stuff around how I look or how I sound, which I’ll get to in a few minutes,
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It’s just really not my style to center my marketing on my face and my appearance.
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I don’t want a million photos of myself everywhere.
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Like I said, I really like my written words.
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I have so many words.
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And that is okay.
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It’s okay to be balanced with this.
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It’s okay if every single post isn’t a picture of you.
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It’s okay if your homepage doesn’t have five photos of your face.
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There are so many ways to be visible.
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Also, it doesn’t have to be an Instagram reel.
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I don’t even really know how to do Instagram.
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And my business is still surviving.
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You know, it could be a few photos on your website.
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It could be a podcast like this where people get to hear your voice.
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It could be an occasional short video.
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You get to choose the forms of visibility that feel right for you.
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And I also want to say this.
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Being visible doesn’t mean that you have to perform.
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It doesn’t mean turning yourself into a brand or putting on a persona.
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For me, visibility is about allowing myself to be seen as I actually am, and not as some polished version that I think culture tells me I’m supposed to be.
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So all that being said, though, we do still have to come back to the know, like, and trust factor.
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Even if you’re not plastering pictures of yourself all over the place, you do have to make yourself visible, not just your ideas, not just your words, but your face and your voice sometimes.
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Again, it’s part of what’s often needed for people to be willing to take the next steps with you.
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That’s really just the reality of marketing in 2026.
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And honestly, it’s been like that for a while now.
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I wish it wasn’t so, but it is what it is.
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I don’t like the hassle.
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I’m not someone who takes a lot of selfies of myself to begin with.
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All the things.
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But the other reason why
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I wish this wasn’t so.
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I wish we didn’t have to put out photos and videos.
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And this is where we get into the heart of today’s episode, is because I haven’t always loved how I look.
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And I haven’t always loved how I sound.
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And I’ve worked on it a lot over the years, and I’ve moved forward on it a lot.
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There’s been a lot of transformation for me on this.
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But the truth is that there are still vestiges of this for me.
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There are still times that I don’t like how I look or how I sound.
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I’m
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I haven’t always wanted to post photos or videos of myself because of this.
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Because I don’t want to be judged for how I look or how I sound.
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I don’t want people to be critical of those things.
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And there’s so much that I could share around my own experiences with this.
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I mean, I could write a book just on this topic.
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But for today’s episode, I want to share just enough so that I can normalize all of this for you, so that I can let you know you’re not alone if this is something that you struggle with as well in your own way.
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And then in today’s episode, I’m also going to be sharing different ways forward with this.
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So if
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being visible because of how you feel about your appearance or how you sound is something that you struggle with, I’m going to be giving you some tips for this.
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So ever since I can remember, I have been internally critical in one way or another about my physical appearance.
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When I was much younger, it was often about the shape of my body.
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And at different times in my life, it’s been about my face or about my hair, or just in general, I’m not pretty enough, or I’m not beautiful enough, or I look strange.
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Now, while some of that comes from my family of origin,
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Of course, a lot of it also comes from cultural messaging, especially for women, around what beauty is supposed to look like, what a beautiful woman is supposed to look like.
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And we all also know that the roots of so much of this cultural messaging are fueled by advanced capitalism.
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In other words,
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if we don’t feel great about the way that we look, then we’re going to buy more products to try and look better, right?
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This is the whole point of the messaging.
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And over the years, I’ve had to do a lot of internal work around undoing those cultural messages, the ones that tell me that how I look isn’t okay.
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So I’ve had the stuff from my family of origin.
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I have the cultural messaging, which we all have.
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But then I’ve had some other things that have contributed to how I feel about my appearance.
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So some of you may know that in my late 20s, I woke up one day, I was living on the Upper East Side in New York City, and I woke up one day and
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Half of my face was sagging.
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And after much confusion, I went to the doctor.
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I figured out that I had Bell’s palsy.
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And for quite a number of months, the left side of my face was completely uneven and mismatched with the right side of my face.
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And it’s been a long time since the Bell’s palsy.
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And even though my face has, I don’t know, I’d say 99% recovered since then, I will say that sometimes the Bell’s palsy still shows up subtly.
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And you can see that the left side of my face is uneven compared to the right side of my face.
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This shows up especially in videos and sometimes in pictures of me.
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I know something about the speed of videos.
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You can see the Bell’s palsy, the vestiges of it a little bit more, or especially if I’m tired on a particular day, right?
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So this is something about my appearance that has bothered me for a long time.
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And not so much anymore these days, but it still comes up.
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And what I will say is also that these days, when I’m feeling not so confident about how I look, it often has to do with my relationship with my appearance as I’m getting older.
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I’m 50.
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I’m getting older.
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I haven’t had…
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any of the processes like work done or anything like that.
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So I’m getting wrinkles.
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I definitely have gray hairs.
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And I sometimes look tired, even when I’m not feeling tired at all.
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I remember.
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in my early 40s thinking, I must be really tired today because I look really tired.
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But then somewhere in my mid 40s, I figured out like, nope, that’s not tired.
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It’s just how I look now.
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So of course, the relationship with aging, I think especially for women also has to do with culture, right?
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And culture, not honoring or valuing
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older women, older women being invisible in culture.
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We’re considered past our prime.
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You know, we’re not held up as images of beauty.
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And of course, I try not to fall into any of those traps.
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I think I do pretty well at it a lot of the time, but it can be tempting sometimes.
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And I do fall into those traps sometimes.
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So all of this is to say that I’ve done a lot of inner work around my appearance all through the years, through many decades.
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And there are many, many parts of me that feel beautiful, that know I’m attractive, that know I look OK, whatever even all of that means.
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And I also know that my essence and my radiance is what comes through most powerfully, right, more powerfully than any of the features on my face or what my body looks like.
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But I’ll be honest, at the same time, there are still parts of me that worry, what will people think when they see me?
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So both exist.
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Both exist inside of me, the parts that feel beautiful and the parts that don’t really always love how I look.
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So if this is you as well, please, know that it’s normal.
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Please know that there’s nothing wrong with you.
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And please know that it doesn’t mean that you haven’t done enough work or you’re not evolved enough.
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if you’ve got some stuff around your appearance.
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Because again, we’re all fighting cultural messaging here, and it’s so pervasive.
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It’s so much, right?
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It takes a lot of work.
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Now, I’ve got a little bit of a double whammy, because not only do I sometimes have stuff come up around how I look, but I also have some stuff around the sound of my voice.
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So I grew up in a household with two immigrants as parents from two different places.
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There were a lot of accents in my household, a lot of languages, a lot of accents.
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And my speaking voice and the intonations I use and the rhythm of my speaking and the way that I enunciate certain words
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it all got shaped by those varying accents and languages that I grew up with.
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And then in addition to that, I’m kind of a slow talker.
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So when you put all of these things together, I don’t know, I think I kind of have a strange way of speaking.
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And, you know, I don’t only think it’s what I think,
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A couple decades ago, someone approached me and said, oh, you have so many smart things to say.
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You have so much wisdom, but maybe you want to work on your voice a little bit.
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So anyway, I also do know that there are people that love the sound of my voice and the rhythm of it.
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I know both exist.
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There are people that don’t love the sound of my voice.
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And I’ve had so many clients and students tell me they love the way that I speak.
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So years ago, about 10.
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years ago, this kind of feeling of, my voice is not that great.
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All of this got reinforced in a really painful way.
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So the short story is that about 10 years ago, I led
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an online workshop.
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And this was before the days of Zoom, by the way.
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This was on a phone line, on a bridge line.
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So nobody could see me.
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They could only hear the sound of my voice.
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This is real old school.
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So about 10 years ago, I led an online workshop.
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It had hundreds of people that attended.
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And the content that I was sharing in this workshop, where people could just only hear me, not see me, it was pretty edgy.
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And we went pretty deep.
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And anyway, I finished the workshop.
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It was the end of my day.
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And
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I was driving in the evening to my daughter’s preschool at the time.
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I was on the board at the preschool and we had a meeting.
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And this was back in the days where I still had e-mail on my phone.
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I haven’t had e-mail or social media on my phone.
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for a long time now because it’s distracting, it wastes a lot of time.
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That’s a topic for another podcast episode.
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But anyway, I had e-mail on my phone at the time and I parked at my daughter’s.
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preschool and I was sitting in my car in the parking lot and I checked my e-mail because in that workshop earlier in the day, I had made an invitation into one of my programs.
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I wanted to see updated sales, et cetera.
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And I see in my inbox, there is an e-mail that my team forwarded to me that got sent to our info line.
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And I read the e-mail, and it was from someone who I didn’t know, but who had attended the workshop.
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And it went on and on and on, not critiquing the content of the workshop, but attacking the sound of my voice.
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She wrote in 10 different ways about how annoying my voice was, how she could barely stand it, how upsetting it was to her.
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And here’s the kicker.
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She included inside of this e-mail that she was a voice coach.
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So anyway, I’m reading this e-mail in the parking lot.
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of the preschool before the board meeting.
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And it sent my entire nervous system into a berserk state.
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I mean, I just, I felt like I was having, heart palpitations.
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I was feeling dizzy.
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I just felt
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so attacked and so ashamed and just so upset and critical of myself.
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I tried to get myself together.
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I went into the board meeting.
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I lasted about 5 minutes before I just burst out crying inside of the board meeting.
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And I just had to run out of there.
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I had to leave.
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I drove home crying hysterically, and it took me a full day to recover.
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I mean, I took it hard.
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So anyway, all of this, again, is to say I’ve got stuff.
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I’ve got stuff around the sound of my voice.
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I know what it’s like to be criticized for the sound of my voice.
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And if you have stuff to
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Here’s what I want to tell you.
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It’s okay.
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It’s okay.
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And even if you don’t love how you look or how you sound, you can still make yourself visible.
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Again, I’m sharing all of this to normalize it for you.
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to let you know you’re not alone, there’s nothing wrong with you, and also to encourage you to make yourself visible anyway, if you are able to.
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Because again, even with all of this, being visible, sharing some photos, sharing videos, et cetera, it really does make a difference for your marketing.
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So then the question becomes how?
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How do you make your image and your voice visible, even if you’ve got stuff around it?
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I’m gonna share a couple of, I don’t know, I guess the right word is tips, a couple of things that have really, really helped me and my clients that I’ve supported with this.
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So first and foremost, the first thing is inner work, always inner work.
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the inner work around your fears and your limiting beliefs and the fears of rejection and criticism.
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So I personally am continually doing inner work around undoing patriarchal and advanced capitalist beliefs, around
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undoing the fears and ideas embedded from my family of origin, undoing the messages that say I have to look polished or perfect or young, undoing the messages inside of me that says textured hair isn’t as beautiful as smooth hair, right?
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All the things.
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Undoing the internal messages that say I need to sound a certain way or else people won’t like me.
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I kind of feel like the inner work is never really done, right?
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So this isn’t about getting it all done before you can be visible.
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It’s, but it is about continuing to come back to the work and come back to the inner work.
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This is one of the reasons why inside of sacred depths, we take so much time to learn techniques and somatic techniques like the befriend your fear technique or the rewiring unhelpful belief techniques or looking at resistance archetypes, et cetera, et cetera.
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It’s so key to so much.
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So that’s number one, do your inner work.
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And the second thing that can really help with all of this is remembering the spotlight effect.
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So the spotlight effect basically goes like this.
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We notice ourselves way more than anyone else does.
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And that’s because everybody else is mostly focused on themselves and worrying about their own flaws or worrying about what other people think of them.
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They’re so focused on that, they really don’t have that much time, energy, space left over to focus on us and the details of us.
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So I’m probably
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the only person or one of the few people who notice the remnants of the Bell’s palsy on my face, unless I point it out.
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And even if other people do notice it on me, they don’t care.
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They don’t nearly care as much as I do at all, right?
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So I want you to remember the spotlight effect and whatever…
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little criticisms you might have around your appearance or your body or your voice, it’s sticking out to you way more than it sticks out to anyone else.
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It probably looks totally normal to everyone else.
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Okay.
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The third piece to remember that I think can really help
00:31:27 Joanna Lindenbaum
when it comes to being visible, even if we don’t love how we look or sound, is to poke holes in what I call the myth of perfection, right?
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The myth of perfection is the idea that somehow we all think we have to be perfect and look perfect.
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And of course, again, all of this goes back to this cultural messaging that just helps us buy more things.
00:31:57 Joanna Lindenbaum
right?
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But wait, remember, you don’t have to be perfect.
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That’s not what’s going to sell.
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So I’m messy.
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My hair is wild.
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I don’t really know how to put on makeup.
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I am definitely rough around the edges.
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I am so not perfect looking in any way.
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But all of those imperfections, I have a feeling that that’s what so many of my clients, that’s one of the things that so many of my clients love about me.
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I don’t think my clients and my future clients are looking for perfect and glossy in me.
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And in fact, my roughness around the edges, my imperfections, it’s a value add
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for my clients and for the people in my community.
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Maybe it is for you as you’ve been listening to this episode or to this podcast, right?
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Because when you see that I’m messy, when you see that I’m not perfect, it hopefully helps you accept more of your own imperfections, your own roughness around the edges.
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So
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It’s really more than OK to not be perfect.
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Perfection is– I don’t think perfection is what helps fuel a business.
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Humanity is what fuels a business.
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And also, it helps you be a better practitioner.
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OK, the next tip or piece
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that I want to share around this lovingly is there are going to be some haters.
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I wish I could pinky promise you that there’s going to be nobody out there that judges how you look or how you sound or what you talk about or whatever it is.
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I wish, I wish I could tell you that, but I can’t.
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That would be a lie.
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They’re gonna be haters and that’s part of visibility.
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And my, I don’t know, my recommendation to you, I know it’s easier than it sounds,
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But my recommendation to you is to, you know, excuse my language, but to kind of say F it to the haters, like to know that they’re going to be there sometimes and that you’re stronger than that.
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So, you know, I told you the story about my voice and that e-mail and I got through it, right?
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I’m still here.
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My business is super strong.
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I’ve survived.
00:35:10 Joanna Lindenbaum
I could share another story a number of years ago because I don’t like doing video for all of the reasons we’ve been talking about.
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But I was like, I really, I want to push myself.
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I want to do a video.
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I had just been working out.
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I was in workout clothes.
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I wasn’t wearing makeup.
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I was a little sweaty.
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And I just said, that’s it.
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I’m not going to get dressed up.
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I’m going to just make the video like this, a little sweaty.
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And I made a video.
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I forget what the topic was, but it went deep.
00:35:41 Joanna Lindenbaum
I posted it on social media.
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So many people loved it.
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They got so much value from it.
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They commented on the video.
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But there was one person, a hater,
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who in the comments, she went off about my workout clothing.
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I guess I was showing a little bit of cleavage.
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I hadn’t even realized.
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It wasn’t too much.
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It was just like, you know, a tank top with a sports bra underneath.
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But she just said I was unprofessional and this and that and the other thing.
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And
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there were so many comments on that video that were so positive, that were so appreciative of the video and of what I was sharing.
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And of course, that one comment, the one that was critical, it stung.
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And I did feel some shame, but I’ll tell you just for a moment, just for a moment, because after a moment, I remembered, you know what?
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I’m not for everyone.
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And that is a good thing.
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We’re not supposed to be for everyone.
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So we can survive criticism.
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We can survive haters.
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It’s not going to take down our business.
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So the fifth tip that
00:37:13 Joanna Lindenbaum
can really help you make yourself be more visible, even if you don’t like how you look or sound, is to remember your why.
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W-H-Y is to remember your why.
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Why are you posting this picture?
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Why are you posting this video?
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Why are you sharing the sound of your voice and your marketing?
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So it is really helpful to me to remember that I’m not making myself visible in order to get validation.
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And I’m not making myself visible just for visibility’s sake.
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And I’m not making myself visible because I need accolades around how I look or how I sound.
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No.
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I am doing it.
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I am making myself visible.
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I am being courageous and showing my face and sharing the sound of my voice so that the people I’m meant to help can find me and trust me and say yes, so that I can help them, so that I can make impact.
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in their lives so that I can fulfill my sacred mission.
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This is so much bigger than how I look and so much bigger than how I sound, and it is compelling enough for me to be willing to share myself.
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So instead of asking yourself, do I look good or bad, or do I sound good or bad?
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which by the way, both of those are such binaries.
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They don’t leave space, right, for real life.
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But instead, here’s what I ask myself.
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When people see a picture of me or watch a video of me, what do I want people to feel about me?
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What do I want them to sense about my energy?
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What do
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I want them to understand about who I am and my values and what I’m about.
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And even more importantly, how do I want them to feel in my presence?
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What do I want my visual presence or my oral presence
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to inspire inside of them.
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Whatever those answers are for you, forget about the outer details of your face or how you sound, and instead infuse those energies into your smile, into your facial expression,
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into your body language, into your voice.
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That’s what’s most important at the end of the day.
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I know for me, whether someone sees me or hears me, what I want is for them to feel a sense of safety, for them to feel a warm welcome, like they belong.
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They
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matter.
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I want them to feel self-acceptance or love, and I want them to feel inspired.
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That’s what matters.
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That’s what compels me to share photos and videos, even when I don’t love how I look.
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And I think just the last piece for today’s episode that’s important to say is that I don’t wait until I feel fully confident.
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If I waited until I felt fully, fully, fully, fully confident in how I look or how I sound, then I’d still be waiting.
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I would not do the things.
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A lot of the time, the confidence comes after you show up, not before.
00:42:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
Okay, my friend, I hope that you got exactly what you needed from today’s episode.
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And if you take nothing else from today’s episode, I hope that you take this.
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You don’t need to be more polished.
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You don’t need to be more attractive, whatever that means.
00:42:28 Joanna Lindenbaum
You don’t need to sound different.
00:42:30 Joanna Lindenbaum
You don’t need to be more anything in order to be worthy of being seen.
00:42:39 Joanna Lindenbaum
You are already worthy.
00:42:44 Joanna Lindenbaum
So as always, I would love to hear from you if this episode resonated.
00:42:51 Joanna Lindenbaum
Let me know what it sparked for you.
00:42:53 Joanna Lindenbaum
Let me know what ideas and feelings came up.
00:42:57 Joanna Lindenbaum
I really, really want to hear.
00:42:59 Joanna Lindenbaum
I always will write back, read everything personally and write back personally.
00:43:07 Joanna Lindenbaum
I also want to remind you that we are moving firmly into
00:43:13 Joanna Lindenbaum
Sacred Depths season.
00:43:16 Joanna Lindenbaum
So if you have been interested in the Sacred Depths Transformational Practitioner training, the doors for the April 2026 cohort are now open.
00:43:29 Joanna Lindenbaum
There’s special pricing.
00:43:31 Joanna Lindenbaum
This is the training for you if you want to go deep in your client work and also to do deep inner work for yourself.
00:43:43 Joanna Lindenbaum
And then again, as I mentioned earlier, if you want to get a taste of all of that, please join me this month for the how to help your clients off the wheel of self-sabotage masterclass.
00:43:59 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’ll share both of those things in the show notes.
00:44:04 Joanna Lindenbaum
And as always, please share this episode with anyone who you think it will
00:44:13 Joanna Lindenbaum
be supportive of, and let others know about this podcast.
00:44:17 Joanna Lindenbaum
You’re my best way of getting the word out.
