Tell me about your vision.
My vision is that we all stop trying to fit the mold of who we should be and just embrace
who we are.
Can you tell me more about that?
I think it sounds really simple, right?
Just be who you are.
But we're inundated.
Everywhere we look, this is what you should be.
So say you're a parent.
This is how you should parent.
Look on social media, there's people ready to tear you down for anything.
If you're a businesswoman or a businessman, everywhere you look, this is what success
should look like.
This is what it looks like to be a professional.
If you are a scientist, this is what you should be doing.
And everywhere we look, and even in our relationships, this is what a healthy relationship should
look like.
We're just inundated with these ideas of this is how you need to behave and this is what
you need to look like.
This is what you need to earn.
And if we don't meet those standards, we feel like we're failing and it can make us feel
really ashamed of who we are.
You know, we're told, for example, let's take masculinity and femininity or feminine.
And we're told, okay, say you are a successful man.
This is how you should behave.
You should hide your emotions.
You shouldn't feel this.
So when you do, it makes you feel like you're not good enough or you're not a real man.
And it's the same.
You should be delicate and feminine if you're a woman.
So we really need to try and break away from those standards that society really holds
against us and just embrace what feels natural to us.
And how did you get onto this path?
I think what you shared is very valuable.
I agree, like if you go against your natural self, like if someone as a man is more nurturing
and caring for the ones, I mean, I don't think it's a bad quality to have anyway.
So how did you get onto this path and talking about this?
Like, where does this come from?
Well, I became a professor very young and I had this idea of how I should behave.
I was really struggling to find who I am as a professional, especially being a young woman.
I knew when I would be on stage, there would be kind of eyes like, does she really belong
here?
So I had a look at everything around me and what everybody was telling me.
What I really learned was, well, if I'm going to be a strong independent woman, I need to
appear cold.
I need to be stoic.
I really need to be able to stand my ground against the men.
And in my head and from the society perspective, it was being cold because if you're warm,
that's a weakness.
So I took on that characteristic and I took it on as a professor, as a speaker, as a leader.
And what I found was I thought that it was working for me.
I thought, okay, well, people will respect me because this is what authority looks like.
And actually what I found was people couldn't relate to me.
My young students, they would go to me for support.
And one of my students said, well, you know, I just, I don't know how to talk to you because
you just wouldn't understand.
And I could see her pain.
And I did absolutely understand, but I wasn't an inviting presence.
I wasn't a warm presence because I had tried to appear very stoic and cold.
And I just realized that the reason that I became a professor and joined education was
to make a difference, was to empower and to create passion.
And me holding this perspective of I need to appear one way was actually hindering my
ability to help my students.
So I kind of learned to let that perception go and just say, you know, I'm just going
to be me.
I'm just going to let the warmth come out and let the weakness or what I perceive as
weakness show.
And actually it was the complete opposite.
It just started connecting to me differently because it just felt more authentic.
I'm going to ask you one question based on what you just told me.
It's going to be a little harder.
So this notion and or the idea that you had and you had that you needed to be firm and
stand your ground so that where did that come from in your mind?
Well, I think a lot of the time it comes from imposter syndrome.
And we don't feel like we meet the criteria to be able to do that job.
And we think, well, I'm not good enough for this.
So because me as myself isn't good enough, I need to kind of create a persona that I
can use to shield myself with so that people can look at the persona and be like, oh, she
actually knows what she's doing.
So it largely comes from an air of insecurity.
And it's something that we all experience when we go into something new.
You know, this was I was just I hadn't even finished my Ph.D. when I was a professor.
I was doing it at the same time.
I was very young and I wasn't experienced in that field.
And that's a really normal thing.
Any time we go into a new field, we always have that period.
But it makes us feel like everybody around us knows what they're doing and we don't.
So when you feel that, even though it's such a common thing, it feels like you're alone
with it.
It feels really isolating.
So often we don't say to people, hey, I'm struggling a little bit with knowing what
I'm doing.
So we kind of try and take that on ourselves.
And sometimes we do what I did and take a maladaptive approach of how can I create a
fake persona to shield me from my own feelings of imposter syndrome?
That makes sense.
Thank you for sharing that.
Thank you for being open about it.
What would you say, Abby, is why or what you do?
What gets you out of bed and talk about this to people every day?
I love seeing passion grow in other people.
So my motto for everything I do is making science accessible.
And I've always been someone that's loved psychology.
It's my favorite thing in the world.
I know I'm biased, but I just I think it's the most exciting subject.
I think it's the most important subject because we deal with people with everything we do.
And I went into education because I had a pretty difficult upbringing and background.
And when everything else was falling apart, the only thing that really kept me going was
psychology.
I found that I was good at studying.
I found that I was really good at this subject and it kind of became my lifeline.
So for me, it was something I held on to and then I just fell in love with it.
So as I moved through education, my why became giving that to other people.
So being a professor, my favorite thing would be to see a student who didn't understand
something and didn't think they liked it.
Then you see this spark in them when they start to get it and start to enjoy it.
And you see that passion start to kind of burn a little bit.
And then when I moved out of academia and went into the private sector, I realized that
there's so many people out there that don't think science is fun and don't think that
they would ever be able to do science and don't think that they'll ever be able to
obtain that kind of knowledge because it's almost day kept and it's not always promoted
in an accessible way.
The language isn't always understandable to someone without a certain level of education.
So that's where my motto of making science accessible came in.
And I wanted to take that science and give it to people that didn't think that science
was fun.
And it's been such a rewarding thing going into different fields and seeing people that
were like, I never had an interest in this.
And now I really do.
And it's that little spark of passion that I see that gets me up.
That's awesome.
Wow.
Thank you for sharing that.
One more question for you for today's segment.
How did you get started on this path?
Like, what was the first things you ended up doing and then where you are today?
So it's probably not the expected one.
When I was 16, I was kicked out of college.
I had failed all of my subjects.
I was kicked out of my home, kicked out of my mom's house, kicked out of my dad's house.
I was suffering with a drug addiction.
It was a really difficult time in my life.
And I had gone back to the college that had kicked me out and had asked if I do both years
in one, can I stay?
So if I redo the year, but I redo the year following because they didn't want me to stay
for an extra time.
They didn't want to deal with me for longer.
So I said, if I do them all in one, can I stay?
And my psychology teacher let me back in and she gave me a chance where everybody else
didn't believe in me and told me I couldn't and I didn't really have a stable home to
go back to.
It was my psychology teacher that said, you know what, you can do this.
And that was when I started, I said to her, okay, well, I'll write you an essay every
week.
And I did.
And I went from failing to getting almost perfect marks when I found out how, what worked
for me.
And it was that, that was where I became interested in psychology because I realized this is the
first thing I'm really good at.
And it was helping me understand my own behavior.
And it just gave me, like I said, that lifeline, something that maybe everything else is falling
apart, but this one part of my life, maybe I could be really good at this.
And then I just ran with it and I never looked back.
That's amazing.
Give me a little background.
You said you were in college at 16.
Yes.
Where were you at then?
College for me is I think the U.S. you call it high school.
Okay.
So at the age of 15 and 16 and 17, I was in the UK college, which is A1 and A2.
Okay.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
That high school years.
Yeah.
Okay.
That makes sense.
I just want to clarify that.
I'm like, oh, you're very.
Yeah, I always do that.
Yeah.
There's still some U.S. UK terms that I get messed up with.
Yeah.
That's very encouraging from your teacher.
Yeah.
She was there to help you out.
So when you were doing all that, what challenges were you facing when you actually started
doing it?
I'm like, oh my gosh, it's easier or harder.
What were you thinking during those times?
Well, there's a lot of self-doubt that comes in, especially when you don't have a stable
family home, because obviously your mother would be someone that you go to to reassure
you.
And my mother was not that person for me.
So I for a long time, I didn't have any self-belief.
And all we really need sometimes is just one person to believe in us.
And I had removed myself from my friend groups because, like I said, I had been dealing with
some issues with drugs and alcohol.
So I needed to remove myself from those groups.
So I was really isolated and alone.
So it was that one person that finally believed in me that made all the difference.
Because before that, when you don't have self-belief, also having everyone around you telling you,
you can't do it too, is a really difficult thing.
And her name was Miss Moon.
And when she said, you can do this, it was like she lit this fire in me because finally
it kind of lit that fire of maybe I can.
And then it turned everything because instead of me listening to everybody else saying,
I can't do it and letting that be my self-perspective, because I had that one person saying, you
can, it flipped everything and I said, you know what?
Ignore everyone else.
I'm going to prove them all wrong instead of falling into that self-category too.
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.