In this episode with Mariel Witmond, we talk about people pleasing.
Something I personally struggled with a lot, growing up and building my business in the
very beginning. And I've also seen how many of us women are struggling to overcome people
pleasing and how much it stands in the way of true empowerment. We have had so much conditioning
to be a good girl and serve and ensure others feel good way before our own needs and desires.
Yet to truly be empowered, to succeed, to make a real difference in the world,
and to truly be authentic, we can't please everyone. Neither can we put people pleasing
above our own value and what we can create. Letting go of people pleasing pieces some people off,
naturally. But it also allows us to rise and truly create value. Mariel with Mond is a
transformational guide with diverse heritage. She is a yoga and meditation teacher,
breath work facilitator, certified health coach and life coach based in Ibiza. And a lot of her work
involves somatic methods of reconnection and empowerment. Mariel has become an expert in
tackling perfectionism and people pleasing, giving women the tools to navigate transitional moments
and bring them back to their innate embodied wisdom. She shares the deep wisdom of Mayan cosmology
together with more modern forms of self-development, guiding others from ego to soul through embodied
knowledge. For us women, it is possible to have it all and embody our truth and power in all areas of life.
Feminine Bow podcast is your guide to reconnecting with your feminine essence, reclaiming your power
and rising into your fullest potential. I'm your host, Mariel Grinina, co-founder of Feel,
the feminine embodiment platform. And here on this podcast, I interview our expert community
and our members and we together share transformative tools, intimate conversations
and embodiment practices, bringing you a wealth of wisdom and practical tools to support your journey.
Follow this podcast for your weekly inspiration and if you'd like to go deeper into your
embodiment journey and the awakening of your sexual energy, check out our online membership
linked in this podcast description. And when it comes to people pleasing, it's usually a loss of
sense of self, right? We feel highly depleted, we feel burnt out, we feel resentful, we feel
taken advantage of, and most of all we feel disconnected from our truth. So when we look at
women in particular and feminine energy, we're disconnected from our intuition, we're disconnected
from our bodies, we're disconnected from just that deep sense of self. And so it can feel like
the worst of things to kind of hit those bottom moments, but I actually think these moments of
transition, these moments that allow us to truly connect with who we are are the greatest gifts
that we could ever have. I've been a life coach and a yoga teacher for a decade now,
both of which happened around the same time. And it was shortly after I left about 11 years
in the entertainment industry, I used to represent models. And then when I left that, I worked in
casting. And by the time I was 31, I was overseeing a company across Europe and South Africa, I was
completely burnt out and dissatisfied and unhappy with life. And, you know, it's that moment that
kind of shakes your foundation and asks you like, are you on the right path? I knew in the core of
my being that what I was doing wasn't what I wanted. And it took a lot of courage to leave that. And
eventually I did something I should have done when I went into university, which was spend some time
exploring my options. And I never really had that opportunity. So I spent about two years kind of
jumping from job to job from study to study trying to figure out what it was that I wanted to do.
But within that period, I also trained as a yoga teacher and eventually as a life coach. And since
then, my people pleasing, you would think it would have been at a height in the university years now
kind of looking back, I mean, even as a teacher, I wanted everybody to like me. I really, if I found
it really hard to find my voice, I found it really difficult to cater my classes to something that
was authentic to me as opposed to wanting it to be for everybody. So I was like, I'm going to cater to
men and to women and to all ages. And I mean, it was a tricky initiation because obviously you can't
please everyone. And the more that your focus is on pleasing others, then you really lose the
creativity of what it is that you do. So over time, I started to attract certain personality types
and I think this happens often with coaches or therapists that, you know, the most important
thing really is the relationship between us. And so a lot of times you'll find that the people that
are drawn to you are drawn to you because of your experience and what you've overcome. And I was
naturally working with women in particular who struggled with people pleasing perfectionism
over achieving this sort of need to be needed and to perform. And it wasn't until, and this will sound
quite crazy given that it's been 10 years, but it really wasn't until the last couple of years
that I decided to focus exclusively on women. And a lot of that has to do with my relationship with
my mother and also with me sort of rekindling my ancestral roots. So my mother is Mexican and
growing up we had a very difficult relationship. And the relationship changed when I left to
university, but it became more of a friendship. And yoga became something that we did together to kind
of heal our past. But because I had spent so much of my formative years struggling with my
relationship with my mom, it really disconnected me from Mexico and from my heritage and from those
roots. And so in the last couple of years, I wanted to focus for me personally in my healing journey
on healing sort of that lineage and the relationship of women in my family and why we
were so heavily in our masculine and why I mean, my grandmother worked so hard on my mother's side,
built one of the biggest schools in Mexico was like a powerhouse of a woman. But I had the
worst relationship with her and there was no vulnerability and there was no sort of real love
and softness and it just lacked so much. And I can see how that impacted my mother and then
consequently my relationship with my mom. So over the last couple of years, my focus has been very
much on women and these disconnections that we have, I mean, ultimately it starts with the
connection to ourselves when we are able to come back to ourselves, I find that we're able to come
back to each other because everything starts with us, everything that we experienced externally
is a projection of what is happening with us internally in the moment that we pause and look
at what's going on. I mean, we can break patterns, we can sort of rewrite these ancestral narratives
that get handed down to us generation after generation and I think people pleasing is a huge one.
If you have parents that were people pleasers, the likelihood of you being a people pleasers incredibly high,
but not only that, I think we're all so vulnerable in our youth that emotionally unstable
caregivers or feelings like you have to tiptoe around your parents or that love might be conditional,
this whole notion of good girl, bad girl, it really plays into this need to please because we
we rely so heavily on our parents or our caregivers growing up and it creates this
this foundation of in order for me to survive, in order for me to receive love, I need to do what
I need to do what other people want and that's where the initial betrayal begins.
You started with your beautiful personal story and thank you for sharing it. I'm wondering if you
would share, given all of your experience, personal and working with women, how people pleasing is
shaping in childhood, like how would people learn to be such good girls, would being a good girl means?
So I'll give personal examples both me with my parents but also now me with my daughter,
which has been a huge sort of mirror into a lot of the work that I do.
I have incredible parents. My parents have given me every opportunity, love, I've never wanted for
anything, but that doesn't change the fact that growing up I had a father who would get very
angry or who grew up with a very English cultural conditioning of children or to be seen and not
heard and all of these sort of things. So what I felt as a child was that I didn't want to upset him
and that I couldn't have a voice, especially as a child and especially with that whole idea of
children should be seen and not heard. So I would stay quiet whereas with my mom she would go silent.
My mom's sort of response to overwhelm or to anger to whatever she was experiencing was to give the
silent treatment, which made me feel like I didn't exist. So I would do anything in my power not to
be in those situations where I felt like she was going to give me the cold shoulder and so these
are almost like two polar extremes of the spectrum, but as a child caught in the middle that doesn't
want to rattle or upset either side, then you do everything you can. So with my father it was very
much about performing, it was about achieving. It's like how can I get his attention so that he's
proud of me and with my mother it was really just how do I keep her happy because I don't want to be
invisible to her. I want to remain present and it's hard because let me tell you as a parent
you can try to do everything right and there's chances are that you'll still get things wrong
and I'm a big believer that we choose our parents and that we're on the paths that we're on for
reasons that you know where it's our journey, it's our learning here on this planet and this life,
but I look at my daughter and she is very eager to please and it's a huge conundrum for me because
I see this beautiful girl who's just really desperate for validation and just really wants to be seen
and wants to be perceived as good and it's been a lot of work for me to help her have boundaries
and to honor when she says no. I mean prime example I'll have my two kids trying to play with my
daughter's toys and my daughter will say no I don't want my brother to have these toys
and my instinct is to be like be a good girl just share your toys give it to your brother
and I have to have a moment of actually no you're right these are your toys and you do have a right
to say no. I want you to be aware of the consequences because if your brother's playing with his toys
and you want to play with his toys he can do the same thing right he could say no to you but I want
there to be that sense of you don't always have to bend over backwards in order to be considered
good and what is good right I think it's you know it's that understanding of bad behavior doesn't
make you a bad person and I think one of the worst things that we can get caught into is this whole
spiral of shame the that we are bad people not that we've done bad things but this sort of binary
black and white good girl bad girl really makes you feel like you are a bad girl as opposed to
having done a bad thing and so it shames us and that shame makes us want to please makes us want
to do whatever we can to make sure that we are no longer seen in a negative light. Well about
parents it is so true right we can have the most amazing parents and we'll still have struggles that
we find in ourselves in childhood and we can also have harder upbringings and you know doing this work
I feel like it's important to highlight as you say you you've had amazing childhood right
but still there are certain things to work on and I feel like they're gifts really like receiving
these kind of experiences so that we're then able to work on them and grow and then hopefully also
share these gifts and learnings with others so so powerful. Thank you and thank you for sharing
how you grow your daughter I must say it reminded me of my own childhood like just my mom would always
tell me to share and I definitely had to work through my nice girl problem for quite a while
especially as I'm becoming a bigger and bigger business woman and I must say that I notice how
strongly this concept of a nice girl stands in the way of a true success of getting anything done
of getting anything big out there so it's impossible to please everyone and then if we want to please
everyone we literally can't make any positive impact in the world and that's why I feel like
this conversation is so important especially on this nice girl idea. So I love that you use the
word nice because there's a difference no but no I'm actually I'm really glad that you did because
there is I remember hearing this not too long ago and it's really stuck with me there's a very big
difference between nice and kind. Nice always has a desire to be perceived as nice nice often has
the expectation of a return nice it is often something somewhat superficial like the the
smile that you plaster on your face when you tell everyone that you're fine right but that's nice for
me kind on the other hand has no expectation for a return has no desire to be perceived in any way
it is simply from the generosity of your heart that you behave in a certain way so nice is very
much the people pleaser nice is this need to be sacrificing yourself for the needs of others but
because you want some kind of return whether it's that you're perceived as a good person whether
it's that you become people's go-to because you're their yes person whatever it might be but nice
comes with consequences because we are often uh disappointed when our expectations aren't met
we often feel resentment when people don't treat us in the same way we often communicate through
passive aggressiveness because we don't know how to communicate in healthy ways so we don't want to
come across as the bad guy but then the way that we feel has us you know hot and cold essentially
so i love that you use the word nice because i think that's the easiest way to describe the
difference between authenticity and people pleasing and and to your point you know professionally
you cannot be a people pleaser and be creative because creativity requires authenticity and
authenticity is the conviction that not everyone is going to like you but you like you right so
you're going to do it your way you're going to share it your way and you're going to feel
comfortable and confident in the knowledge that it's not for everyone but the right people for
you will find you and that's huge exactly you know this i i have said nice girl instead of good girl
because i've been looking into this concept for some time and i've been speaking with a few women
about it and i've been understanding how deep it is in them to be this nice they always say this
word nice right and i feel like i kind of really don't like this word if someone tells me oh this
looks nice you go and nice it feels like they're not really saying the truth even they just want to
say something kind but it's that's i feel like this word nice is really has this kind of connotation
totally even even to say like oh yeah that's nice like it's kind of like yeah like not real
it doesn't feel like right like a real compliment right exactly we kind of understand how nice girl
turns up out there right i'm wondering like how common is that in your view how often do people
come to you with this kind of issue or how common do you feel it is in the world these days
i think it's incredibly common i think it's difficult because as women we're navigating
a history that not so long ago you know didn't give us many rights and and portrayed us and
i mean even go back to the 50s and 60s with the advertisements of you know woman at home cooking
and cleaning and you know in high heels and with a smile and doing it all and she's doing it perfectly
and the thing that i've come across the most in the 10 years that i've been working in what i do
is there's three common things that i find impact women and it's the need to do it all the need to
do it perfectly and the need to do it alone and i think historically you know we've been battling
to overcome our role in society and the way that women are perceived and and you know
you know nowadays i think we've gone in the opposite direction and that's why everyone is so
heavily in their masculine because we felt like we needed to be more manly in order to
play a role in the in the world as it is today but it's left us a little bit confused i think and so
for women i mean you even look at it in a professional sense in terms of pay right i think
quite often women i mean women do get paid less than men but quite often it's because of our
people pleasing tendencies there's this feeling that we should be grateful for the job that we have
that we should there's a lot of guilt guilt is one of the biggest emotions that i deal with when
i work with people around people pleasing and i actually think guilt is an alarm bell that should
always highlight that it's a form of manipulation to get you to do what other people want you to do
so i mean the question of like how many people i mean i wouldn't statistically be able to say but
i would say a great majority are probably people pleasers because we historically come from this
whole world of wanting us to be nice girls or good girls or you know be seen and not heard and
we haven't had a voice until very recently and when we do have a voice that often gets used
against us we're shamed you know one of the best ways that i heard it used was that we've been
shamed out of all of our appetites right our appetite for food our appetite for sex our
appetite for pleasure our appetite for knowledge it's always been used against us as women there's
a lot to overcome there and i think because we're coming at it on the lower hand i i think
there's just this feeling that in order to be accepted in order to be a part of the game and
whatever game that might be it we need to focus on others and i've got to be honest i think to be a
woman in this modern world is really confusing because we're juggling a lot of different things
where we're trying to step up in a very man centered world you know even when you look at
how we behave you know men work on circadian rhythms our menstrual cycle like we're moon based
and we our energy our hormones everything is just very different but none of that's been taken into
account until extremely recently medical studies haven't been done on women until recently it was
always take birth control pill like the birth control pill will fix everything for a woman
there's a lot a lot to unpack around what it is to be a woman so i think people pleasing
is kind of like the the easy solution it's like all right if i if i want to receive love if i want
to feel worthy if i want to feel like i matter then maybe i need to be needed right so let me try to
try to please and let me put a smile on and let me make it seem like i'm this happy perfect woman
yeah what i would really invite everyone who is listening to do now is just to digest these words
and just to understand it's okay to be confused right and as you say so many people struggle with
these concepts of really just wanting to be accepted and therefore trying to be nice so it is so
normal to feel this way but what's also really amazing is that it's definitely possible to change
with the right direction and the right tools and the deep connection to yourself because the truth
is inside i want to reflect back with with my family i guess because when you were explaining this
story around women just trying to be good trying to do it all and trying to be also perfect and
hardworking and the image of my mother came through to me of course also grandmothers like oh my god
those women how hard they worked but the funny thing about the story of my mother my mom has been
she's she got into this really good marriage very early on in her life at 23 and my father
has given her everything she never had to work hard she didn't have to earn her own money and
my dad will always provide all she needs for her so i've been growing up looking at this perfect
kind of relationship but what was confusing and what she's only changing now 30 years into the
marriage was her real desperate need to work hard and work all the time despite her having this
really beautiful life where she could just actually relax and perhaps focus her energy on more creativity
and things that she would create for the world she had to work hard cleaning the house 24-7
cooking 24-7 coming up with more work activities my dad would always tell her look like a real
doctor when you go to work as a medical doctor you spend more money on your gas to get to work and
back then they pay you so technically i pay for you to work because doctors get paid really really
low money so her whole life she had this idea that she had to work hard despite having the
conditions not to do so and how it was reflecting on the relationship in the family and the dynamic
is that my dad was very very confused and frustrated because here he is working so hard
to provide to create a perfect life and his wife still can't relax and give him the softness
that he's craving and as a child i would always see that i would notice it and see that maybe that's
why i grew up a bit like oh i'm not going to work as hard as my mom um years later now it's
she stopped doing her medical work she read a few spiritual books and become very inspired
started leaning more into the feminine especially as i do this work for the recent five years
and she started just learning about movement relaxation astrology and they're still together
with my father and she became a completely different person and only now after 30 years
of in this marriage she's given him what he always wanted after that she started to work
giving him what he always wanted after she gave up on the hard work and allowed herself to still
be a nice girl but to actually relax and ease into it and see what else happens and with that she
gave the biggest value to the family and to her loved husband yeah it's interesting they're just
listening to you it's something that i think is quite common and and i'd be curious with your mom
is the sense that i get is almost this need to prove ourselves yeah right this this working
so hard and and it's you know brenie brown would talk about it as the need to please perform and
perfect yeah and it it really pushes us and it drives us into overdoing and that's where we lose
the balance and and where i think it's become really tricky because again we're navigating a
world where we're finally allowed to pursue the things that we want to pursue and with that comes
a great amount of passion like i can imagine your mom was probably working that hard to a certain
degree because she loved it i would hope for or that she was very passionate about it if she didn't
need to do it but at the same time if you know when we work in relation to others then it's about
compromise right and how do we meet each other halfway and and when you mention confusion
for those that are listening because i think you know as we talk through these things it's very
natural to be confused but i would say confusion is a fabulous thing because the moment you're
confused you're probably starting to get curious right like why am i confused like what is the right
answer and i think as women we need to be curious about everything i mean not even just women i think
the whole world like there's so much false information etc but the more that we can be curious the
more we can start to break down a lot of these walls a lot of these conditioning a lot of how
we feel we can come back into the body because again the more that we lean into the masculine the
more we're in our heads and you can't think your way into feeling you really have to be in the body
so that's where i think finding this balance between passion and softness right between drives
determination this like this motivation i feel it in the work that i do and i'm often
being told like mariel you need to slow down you need to slow down and i do think we can have drive
and be soft at the same time it's funny you say that you didn't want to follow in your mom's footsteps
but to me you look like someone that's working really hard on something that they love to do right
and that's a beautiful thing because you're really trying to empower women but there is
sort of like a pattern right and we we do get handed down these behaviors and if we're lucky
enough to kind of look at them and say all right i love that i have drive and that i have vision and
that i have determination but i also know how much the softness mattered especially in relationship
men want to be able to give and a big thing about feminine essence is our ability to receive
we don't have to do it alone we don't have to do it all it's our ability to open up and say
i'm willing to get help and i'm willing to be supported yeah yeah beautiful you've mentioned
already the key right to reconnection to the truth which is the body stop thinking so much
and really connecting to the feeling and here just to finalizing the story that you've reflected so
beautifully on that's exactly what happened with my mom i mean she's been overworking mostly of
course she loved being a doctor but she'd had a lot of guilt that she she carried from soviet union
upbringing because of they had to work hard they they had like certain measurements of how hard
you work and then certain rewards etc it was a bit crazy without getting into detail what brought
her deeper and back to kind of this deep life satisfaction that she's living now and is so
inspiring was the practice of yoga and vedic traditions so she got into understanding more
the vedic traditions and the yoga and then she started going deeper into also sexual energy work
going with me to some events etc and that's where she started really really connecting back to this
ah i can just really receive and do what i truly love she still works hard but now as an astrologist
from pleasure not pressure and that's amazing and with that i actually would love you to deep
dive into these solutions how would you usually tell people to start this path of reconnection
to themselves and the truth i mean look it's there's no one size fits all and the wonderful thing
is that there's so many different things out there so again use that curiosity and start to explore
what are the things that call to you would you like to work one-on-one with someone do you feel
called to work in a group environment what are the areas that call to you is it more somatic
based things i mean practices like yoga or or whatever it might be working with a coach working
with a therapist it's curiosity i think it's all about exploring your options and seeing what resonates
and it always takes that one step for new doors to open sort of the definition of insanity doing
the same thing over and over and expecting different results like you really need to change it up
and i'd encourage yeah as much exploration and and curiosity as you can and be willing to invest
in yourself i think people pleasers have a very hard time prioritizing their own well-being because
there's always somebody else that matters more or money that can be spent on somebody else but
in the analogy of of airplanes in an emergency you got to put your own mask on first you're not
serving anyone if you're passed out and i love the saying you know we give from the overflow of
our cup not what's in the cup what's in the cup is ours so really focus on filling your cup to the
point of overflow so that you can then provide for those around you if you are resonating with this
episode and you are ready to take your embodiment journey to the next level i invite you to join
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mentioned a lot of paths that are mostly connected to more of an embodied way and quite often when
we have conversations about personal development and i hear these questions of like well what exactly
does this mean how can you embody this feeling what does this mean to just practice your way
you know and i'm wondering how what does this all mean to work on yourself and invest in yourself
yeah so i mean from an embodied standpoint and i was right there with you guys i was like what
does that even mean but embodied means to be in your body and there are a lot of things about
being in our body and understanding the way that the body communicates so the mind communicates
through thought our body communicates through emotions and to embody is to understand your
nervous system and your body's sense of safety so anytime that something happens your body will
instantly tell you whether it feels right or wrong right if you're triggered there's usually a wound
there's all of this fascinating information that lives within our physical body but if we don't
know how to get into our body what does it feel like where does it feel like i mean when i feel
triggered i get it instantly in my chest and my chest it almost feels like i'm finding it hard to
breathe and i protect my heart so i'll hunch over a little bit and i'll cross my legs and i'll cross
my arms and that's kind of how i'll be engaging in that situation and if i can understand that then i
can start to separate myself a little bit and be like oh wow something's happened here that has either
crossed a boundary or made me feel less than we all have core wounds these wounds from childhood
that tell us we're not good enough we're not worthy if we can identify what those core wounds are
and how they feel physiologically in the body so how our nervous system responds to them
in the exact same way that they did when we were little then we can work on creating safety in the
body so that when we feel triggered we can actually look at it and say this isn't mine i'm not this
little child that was relying on somebody else to come and save me i can actually be that person
for myself and i can teach myself to calm down whether it's through taking deep breaths whether
it's through awareness like oh wow i feel really triggered right now what do i need where do i feel
it where am i constricted can i move in a way to loosen things up can i shake to release what really
isn't mine but i'm just holding on to it because of a narrative because our brain and our body
they don't work on their like independently they work together so the mind will think a thought
and the body will respond to it physiologically and so if we can start to unpack the stories that
happen in our mind and the way that our body responds to them we can actually start to create new
ways of living that actually feel much easier right like in my mind the opposite of the way i
feel when i'm triggered is i feel like i can breathe when i do work with clients i always find it's
kind of a three-step process the first one is understanding so if you're at the beginning
of your journey then it's it's about doing exactly what you're doing listening to this podcast trying
to understand more we got to learn right we got to become aware because we can't change what we
don't know but once you know it's like all right what do i do with this how do i change it how do
i you start to integrate it how does this relate to my personal experience how does it relate to
my life how can i deconstruct what happened in my life again connect with those core wounds
understand what my triggers are understand how my body responds when these things happen how i feel
and then it's the embodiment right so understand integrate and embody it's like okay how do i bring
these into my body how do i bring myself back into my body yeah i want to bring it down to
break it down into pieces actually let's have an example say i am having my nice girl moment
that i'm feeling my nice girl present very very much and it happens during a
an important business meeting i feel like that's where for me it's the hardest and say there is this
there is this opportunity in front of me where i could ask for a good amount of money and attention
exposure whatever whatever is important and a good girl inside of me would say oh maybe somebody
else could receive this are you sure you need this the most can you give the space so that other
people can also take it and also how can you ask for that it's like are you sure you you deserve it
are you sure it's okay to ask maybe you can just wait until these people maybe just offer it to you
but if they don't offer to you it's okay it's okay while the strong women in me would be like
i am doing something typically important and i need to make it work and i'm here the super power here
that's going to make a difference but that super power woman is like kind of for the background
because my nice girl is just taking the main seat right now how could i change it in the moment
most likely through embodiment and switch back into my power woman voice
so i you know i love this scenario i would say that it's really important to understand
what a hell yes and a hell no feels like in your body yeah right like if if you're like what does it
feel like if i were to give to you you don't even have to ask for it if i were to say here's half a
million pounds for your business feel to launch it like what does that feel like to be to receive
to be given to be to be seen to be acknowledged how does it feel in the body and that's your hell
yes right like uh yeah for me again like that ability to breathe is my yes and then what is your no
so you're in a meeting and you have to ask for something but you're feeling really insecure
and you don't know like do you feel small do you feel closed off is it hard to breathe and don't
confuse fear with excitement because they feel the same way so sometimes we have to get quite
quite careful with the emotions that we're feeling i actually think fear is a very good indicator of
what you should be doing as long as it's not life or death so get into your body and understand
like what feels like a no someone's taking advantage of you that's a big one for me right
they're taking advantage of you they want to pay you less or they said they were going to pay you
so much and they're underselling or whatever it might what does that feel like in your body
and the more familiar you can get with the sensations of a yes and a no then you can look
at this scenario where you're having a nice girl moment and you can say what's my body feeling
right now am i betraying myself am i having a no moment but my guilt and my people pleasing
is sort of coercing me to come across as a nice person right versus if you were to walk in there
ask for what you want and you actually got it yeah and that's the embodiment right it's understanding
what your hell yes and your hell no's are because you might even be the one responsible for your
hell no and that's the tricky part because we self sacrifice we betray ourselves and I often tell
clients i'm like in these scenarios ask yourself in what way am i betraying myself right now
because you're definitely betraying yourself if you're in this big meeting and you're being given
this amazing opportunity and you're giving it away it reminds me of that mary and williamson
quote and I always mention it it's like you're not doing anyone any favors by playing small
yeah so in those moments where you're feeling like a nice girl connect with your body and say
am i nicer am i kind because there's a big difference there and in this moment you're
like and in this moment what do I want and then go for it feel the fear and do it anyways that's
how we gain confidence absolutely I love that I must say really embodying your hell yes and
connecting to it to me at this stage after so much practice it already feels just so
pleasurable I'm like wow I hope people just learn it in school absolutely I wish I wish
and I mean it's so important on so many levels especially as we look at like child safety people
need to know their hell knows and their hell yeses and what they feel like and to feel confident
enough to speak them yeah especially children I mean as a mother probably I would love you to share
if there are any ways you teach your little daughter to feel these things I definitely wasn't taught any
of that as a child and I can now as doing this work I'm like oh my god this has to be taught to
like five years old so that they don't get into trouble as as often we try to have very open and
honest conversations I think it's all it's also really important all of these regular self-regulation
tools breath work aroma therapy I mean everything is applicable to children too teaching them how
to take a deep breath how to be with their feelings how to try to communicate what's going on telling
them that they're not bad but maybe something they did was bad and then how do we work with that
and that it's okay to say no right no is a good like you have a right to say it but let's talk
about the consequences and let's talk about what this means it's not easy I I get it wrong often
and I usually in hindsight I'm like oh that was the right way to upset it but I do think for
for parents that are listening at all of this be curious be conscious be intentional when we have
intent it means that we're taking control of our lives and as a parent I think that's a huge thing
with your children be intentional really try to get involved try to understand try to see it from
their point of view also best inner child work in the world having a child like because you're
literally looking at yourself in front of you and you can feel everything it's really changed the
way that I look at my upbringing and what it felt like to be a little girl who felt misunderstood
or who didn't feel seen or who was desperate for attention and I became a pleaser because that's
that's how I got attention and it's now the process of like unpacking that and learning a more
authentic way of being so pleaser is really the opposite of authentic which has quite a big statement
and I feel like not really understood by many people and that's what I really want to take away
from this episode as most people do want to be authentic right most people want to be in their
full truth and power and this concept can be the one that can be so deeply addressed and then really
transform the entire life of people definitely especially if you're a creative creativity
requires authenticity and the moment that you're doing something for the sake of pleasing it's no
longer yours which means you're no longer being creative right you're just mimicking as a yoga
teacher I teach creative sequencing and every time I thought of like oh I want everyone to like this
I was like the moment I think that way I'm not teaching from my heart I'm not teaching the way
I want to teach and it's no longer authentic yeah and that's the the only way really to
to be successful is to become okay with some people no liking you there's no one in the world
who is like everyone and being okay with with the notion that those aren't your people yeah right
they're not your people but there are people for you and those are the ones you want to find
don't waste your time on people that aren't for you yeah would you like to share some words of
wisdom for people who would like to recognize patterns in themselves and who want to get on a
path of healing or on the path of growth especially those who struggle with just trying to be nice
and lacking authenticity or wanting to be more authentic and powerful I would say don't be
afraid of the messy middle you know kind of going back to what we talked about at the beginning like
the Saturn returns or the midlife crisis or whatever it is that has you coming to this moment of
things need to be different the way that I am isn't working for me or the life that I'm living isn't
working for me get excited about that because these moments of transition I think are what life is
all about it's that void the great unknown that we're so terrified of the moment we give ourselves
the courage to step into that great unknown that's where the depth is and I mean depth of living
depth of understanding depth of existence like you want to be in the depth even though it feels
scary and you don't know what's going to happen and you don't know how your life might change like
allow yourself or even tell yourself this is a really exciting time to explore and to do things
that we should be allowed to do when we're young yeah feeling feeling really good and the unknown
is to me it's like it's a key to happy life that's how it is all the time we can't control anything
really and just it's an art of becoming so so grateful and so comfortable even if you just
have no idea what's going to happen next and stay curious yeah yeah it's all about trust my favorite
quote that I came across recently was the opposite of uncertainty isn't certainty it's trust oh and
that's because control is a fallacy there's no such thing as certainty certainty doesn't exist and if
it did exist there'd be no faith there'd be no mysticism and so the only thing that we have to
counter this whole notion of life being so uncertain is trust beautiful I would love to share more
about your work as a listeners would you like to tell us a bit more about your retreats and all your
offering yeah yes uh so started doing my sisterhood rising retreats here in Ibiza uh Ibiza is my hometown
it is one of the most magical places in the world I am surrounded by just incredible powerful
women and just the bonds of sisterhood are so authentic here I've I've really never experienced
anything quite like it and so to be able to collaborate with some of these powerhouses on
the island and also to share the magic of Ibiza I've got two retreats coming up that are specific
to sisterhood rising in 2025 ones in May once in October I'm also co-facilitating two retreats next
year one's going to be in June and the other one I think is in September so plenty of opportunities
to come to this magic island and yeah the sisterhood rising in particular is a is a deep dive
into who we are and who we're not and all of the things that we confuse around feminine energy
and most importantly the the sacred bonds of sisterhood just how powerful we are when we come
together I also have a group coaching course and I do it twice a year so the next cohort will be
launching in January and I feel like the combination between this group coaching and then the retreats
are just next level because the group coaching gives you a lot of those initial stages I was
talking about of understanding I bring a lot of science neuroscience heavy knowledge based
information into this course we get together on six calls and it's it's just such a sacred container
and the groups are always unbelievable and then if you have the opportunity to come on retreat
meet each other it's just the most wonderful thing in the world so plenty of opportunities to work
together I also do one-on-one coaching and I teach yoga so I have a yoga app and if you're ever an
Ibiza please let me know because I do teach here as well. Amazing people can find so many
different ways of evolving right and growing and you offer all this diversity of options because
I can say from my experience like at certain stages in my life I could only do in person stuff
and that would be the most supportive and at certain stages in my life the online containers
were the most powerful and it's so amazing that these days people can find ways at work
and I really encourage more people to get into this past because it's just so so good and transforms
the entire life.
And that's it for today I hope this episode has left you feeling inspired empowered and more
connected to your truth. If you enjoyed this episode please take a moment to subscribe to the
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I'm your host Maria Greenina.