Where are you going with your vision? I am going great places. We are reaching out and trying to
find more people. We're moving kind of in more into the corporate space and my passion and my
vision is to try to reach people that like executives, everybody male and female, but you
know more of a passion for women in the corporate space and trying to help them take advantage of
the business environment to learn how to set healthy boundaries there because it's somehow a
little bit less onerous at work at times because it's not a personal relationship and so you can
kind of wait in a little bit better and get much more functional and reach your apex better at work
setting healthy boundaries and then you can do it at home as well and kind of weaves back and forth.
So that's really exciting. That is very exciting. Let me ask you one thing. I don't think we discussed
this last time and if we did I apologize. Why women in that space? Why just women?
Because especially in the c-suite you know you see fortunately you're seeing more women there and
being as directors and as CEOs, VPs, but what happens is that sometimes women are raised in a
environment where they are educated and encouraged to be people pleasers, to put other people's needs
in front of their own and to identify themselves based on other people's expectations and to kind
of be perfectionistic. Brene Brown talked about the please perform perfect, the tap dance, you know
pleasing everyone, being perfect, performing for everybody and all those these things in very small
measures can be very adaptable. When you're in the corporate space you've got to be able as a woman
to stand your ground, to do it appropriately because some women when they're just learning
boundaries they go overboard. They're just stomping around saying no no no I don't want to do that.
That's not appropriate and that doesn't work well in a corporate environment. So you want to be able
to educate women so they can stand authoritatively in their own space to feel comfortable and secure
in their own opinions to be able to communicate those in a team possibly of men who might view
them as passive, milk toast, less than and they have to be able to number one acknowledge that
anyone is entitled to their own opinion that's okay but then to know who they are to feel very
secure and and safe and strong in their own opinion and viewpoint and how to communicate that
in a very diplomatic and respectful way and not back down. Now that's a very powerful vision Dana.
I had the opportunity to meet Lemoore. She's from Israel and she comes and goes to United States
once I don't think if you I don't know if you have met her or not. Lemoore Bergstrom if I'm saying
her last name correctly. She is doing very something similar to what you are doing.
On the other hand what she her vision is I think she's you are much closer to your vision than she
is to her vision I want to say. You have you're to come farther along but her vision is to see
more women in the C-suite. She is a coder I think in by design and I'd love to make an introduction
between you two. I don't know we could take you guys but I'll send an email and make an introduction
for you guys. That's great networking and getting to know other other people in the space so that
we can lift each other up and collaborate and that's fantastic. Exactly yeah that's my hope for
that. Hopefully you guys make it a women situation for both of you. Yes absolutely. Awesome well
Dana the next question and thank you thank you for being open to meeting Lemoore. The next question
for you is would you like to share some more stories about your vision? Well you know
as I'm a psychotherapist and I've noticed over the years that I tend to do what I've always done
even when I was a child is I tend to stick up for people who are being bullied. I remember I had a
story back when I was in junior high and there was a girl that went to the church that I went to and
she was very very quiet and very passive and didn't really feel very good about herself and because
of that she got bullied quite a bit and I remember back in the day that I just I would stand beside
her and if there was someone that was saying something to her I would just like look at them
like you know you better back down. I'd save a place for her at the table it it felt like I was
saving a place for her at the table at the cafeteria because she didn't have anywhere to sit. She would
sit by herself so I'd always been kind of a champion of the underdog and I noticed as I started
going through as a psychotherapist and I would see people and they would come in and I was noticing
more and more and more of their issues were boundary related and I started feeling more and more
strongly about wanting to to to help them champion themselves to be able to go out and to be able to
stand in their interpersonal relationships at home with their family members which frequently are the
hardest relationships to set boundaries if we're being brutally honest. Also with with friends at
times because friends can kind of those friendships can make themselves known as being maybe not
actually friendships and then also at work for for people to be able to understand when they get the
tools then they can be so much stronger and they can have these the hard conversations. It just it
makes my heart just so warm to to envision people that I've trained and I hear them say this when
my patients will come back and they'll say Dana I was in such and such situation with somebody the
other day and I heard your voice in my head. I hear your voice in my head telling me you know you've
got a right to your opinion and you have the right to say no and someone else's expectations. They
have a right to them but I have a right to my own expectations as well and so when I see these things
and I see these boundary ideas and tenants playing out in people's lives and I see them pulling up
and becoming stronger and not being victimized by manipulators and narcissists or just general
people around them who they don't feel like they can stand up to. It is just it's an amazing an
amazing feeling and that is my my passion and my vision to be able to train people to be able to
do that. It's just it's just amazing. Your the bully experience that you were trying to protect
was that when you were in your high school? That was I was in junior high
and she just she stood there. She would didn't she didn't feel like she could say anything.
She would just look down at the grass. We were outside and she just stood there. Her shoulders
were all hunched down and she just looked down at the grass and these people were saying things to
her that were not nice and I did not appreciate that. That is being on both sides of this equation
where I've been a kind of a bully and I've been bullied I can understand and how
it's very weird and awkward. People are trying to please each other in a way and you don't even
realize it and as a kid you don't know what you're doing and I can it can cause detriment to someone's
life. Absolutely well and you you got a great point in that think about being bullied or feeling like
you are a bully in the work environment because see you know we are all we're grown up we're all
grown up bodies but many people are walking around in grown up bodies but in inside they're still
behaving very much like a child and so we get on on the work environment and see setting boundaries
not only gives the one who's being bullied it gives them an opportunity to stand in their own
strength without being obnoxious right without being overpowering without becoming a bully
of their own right we that's not okay so it lifts up the person who's being bullied and the
boundaries also helps the one who's maybe functioning as a bully and they don't really
realize it once they start understanding about boundaries then they can non-judgmentally just
observe their own behavior and understand that they're maybe behaving in a way that's not helpful
to the work environment and how it's impacting those around them and then they can slowly kind
of non-judgmentally step down a little bit when they understand their impact and it's just it's
wonderful that way it helps both people no matter which direction they're coming from
you're absolutely correct i want to play a game about this okay what tips do you have for employees
but i want to do in a situation where supposedly i'm the one who's being bullied
um maybe my boss is a bully maybe my supervisor is a bully in a way where they're continuously
nagging me about doing stuff right or something of that sort in a healthy environment how would i
deal with it okay when you're applying boundaries the first thing you need to recognize is what
belongs to you and what does not so i like to use the yard analogy so you think about your
yard what's in your yard are your thoughts feelings and actions what is on the other side of the fence
in your neighbor's yard which does not belong to you are your neighbors which could be anyone that
you're in a relationship with could be your boss could be your co-worker in their yard
are their thoughts feelings and actions which you are not responsible for so when you're looking at
this scenario you look at your feelings and and your thoughts no matter what you're doing
you're not responsible for your feelings and and your thoughts knowing you have a right to these
and if you cannot let them go let's say it's happening repetitively and you're just really
bothered by it these come in form of intrusive thoughts so then you have the responsibility to
yourself and quite frankly to your boss and to the office as a whole to approach your boss who's
being a bully and when you're practicing healthy boundaries you know that however he let's say he
however he responds it might make you uncomfortable but it does not belong to you it is not your job
to manage his emotions it's not your job to make sure that he doesn't get upset those are his
feelings on the other side of the fence so when you acknowledge these things it gives you the ability
to diplomatically and respectfully approach your boss and say can we please have a brief conversation
there was we had a discussion the other day that really bothered me i would just like to share with
you my thoughts on it and so when you're going into that scenario when you know number one you have a
right to your thoughts and feelings if you can't let them go then you have a responsibility to
communicate them in a respectful way because your behavior belongs to you and also when like i said
we are not owning how the boss is going to respond and so if he responds if he starts yelling and
screaming and carrying on we can simply watch him as if you would watch a neighbor in their
in their yard on the other side of the fence and you just watch them okay that's those aren't your
feelings you're not responsible for those you didn't cause those you can't control them you
can't cure them they don't belong to you technically his feelings are in his brain just saying so when
you do that then you can have your conversation then he knows how you feel then you can and you
and you repeat that and then you kind of go back because a lot of these problems in the workplace
happen repeatedly because we're too scared to tell the person how we feel we're terrified they're
going to come screaming at us they're going to yell at us call us names cuss and carry on
we're so scared of that that we just we just keep it all to ourselves they they can't read our mind
they don't know how we feel so it's our responsibility to communicate it if we can't let that go
yeah that is very powerful dana um what would you say uh in this scenario if someone's someone is
afraid maybe for they might get fired or they might and they don't they don't know if they want
to feed all those things that they don't want to confront someone about it how would they get out
of that situation well and i want to i like the that you use the word confront because a lot of
people assume that setting boundaries and practicing healthy boundaries involves being
confrontational and it absolutely does not as a matter of fact the most peaceful calm people i
know are the ones that are very clear about what belongs to them and what does not so when we
understand that we can approach someone very calmly and you'd be surprised or maybe not
how often when we approach someone very peacefully and very calmly we keep our we keep our tone down
we slow down the volume and we slow down the tempo of our speech the other person their body
calms down as well like as i'm talking to you right now i'm bringing my volume down i'm slowing
the tempo of my speech down do you feel the change in your body as i'm changing your body
as i'm changing how i talk when we approach people like that it's very difficult for them
to come back in a very angry defensive stance because your voice modulation has impacted their
body to relax it down thank you for being here today i'm really happy that you tuned in to vision
pros live i'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move
forward this is going to get more and more fun we'll have more and more engagement as well we'll
invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time and attention
have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a vision pro yourself