Welcome to Milestone Moments, the show where we explore the journeys that lead to success.
I'm Sheila Slick, your host and founder of Five Milestones. In every episode, we will bring you
insights from the minds of entrepreneurs, leaders, and experts who will share not just their expertise
but the milestone moments that have reshaped their journeys and led to significant achievements.
So if you're looking for motivation, you're in the right place. Subscribe now and discover the
milestones that mark the path to success.
Welcome to another episode of Milestone Moments in Business and Leadership. I'm Sheila Slick,
your host, and today my guest is Allison Bowen. She is a positive intelligence coach who helps
people analog their potential by mastering the mental habits that lead to greater clarity,
focus, and success. Welcome to the show, Allison. Hi, Sheila. It's great to be here. Thanks for
having me on. Well, thank you so much for joining me on another episode. I was fascinated after the
first one that we had had earlier on, and I wanted to re-invite you to talk more about
understanding the power of our self-identity and share our stories and then learn about how those
sabotagers get in the way. Yep, absolutely. Getting in the way, it's a great way to talk,
to frame it. I love that we're continuing the conversation because when it comes to
personal development and the power of our brain and our identity and our mindset, I can just,
it's my favorite topic. So let's get into it. All right. Well, from my perspective,
your identity is a foundation upon which everything else is built, right? Like the house
and the household crumble if you don't have a solid foundation. And your self-identity is something
that makes you who you are based on your past experiences, including childhood, which comes
up in those exams and our beliefs, our values. And I believe that we have the power to change
that self-identity and reevaluate it every year to make sure that we're living our best life.
We absolutely do, Sheila. I agree with you 100%, 1000%. We can change our self-identity.
The first step, and this is a tip for listeners and making those changes, is to begin to recognize
and become aware of what is the current identity that I have, because so much of that is automatic.
If you've never thought about it before, it just is either something that's been given to you by
your family, by a community, by your traits, by your talents. You know, someone who is a talented
songwriter and musician, I live outside of Nashville so that I'm surrounded by that community.
Is that their true identity? Is that their true essence? Or is that just an aspect of their
identity? So deepening our awareness of what our current belief system is about who we are. And
that can be affected by also not only our childhood, our experiences, the work that we've chosen to do,
but also by the stage of life that we're in. You and I share a stage of life right now where
we are both empty nesters. And so we, I don't know about you, but for many, many years,
my identity was focused around my family. My role is a stay-at-home wife and stay-at-home mother.
I homeschooled our children. I mean, that was my total identity, almost to my own detriment. So I
had to, you know, when you start to look, you find beautiful things, but sometimes you think
you also find things that need to be worked on. What about you?
I agree. And we have a lot in common. That's why I want to continue having you on the episode. I
love sharing insights with others because you never know one of the listeners could get a key takeaway
out of our conversation. I think that, yes, you know, when you shift in life, sometimes change is
unexpected. Sometimes it's planned. And with it comes that growth, that, you know, self-identity,
reevaluate not who I was or who I am, but most importantly, who do I want to become moving
forward? And I think that happens in different stages of our life. And I think our self-identity
also has to do with the different roles, you know, that we've played because you begin as a daughter,
then a student, then a wife. I've been business owner, mentor, mother, and the list can go on.
Now I didn't homeschool, but I got out of my comfort zone when I was 36 and I had my three
children. We were living overseas and that's when the mobile application came out. We didn't have
these cell phones when I was in college or even when I started my second business. Be careful.
We're dating ourselves right now. Yes, we both lived in a time where there were not cell phones,
believe it or not. And then when they came out, they were like flip-flops, right? They
weren't like the intelligent. Big! Like some of them were like these huge things you held up to
your head. So at that time I was running a jewelry company. We had four stores and it was my mother,
my grandmother, and I worked with my two mentors. That was probably the most rewarding ten years of
my life. But when that little gadget came out and I kept staring at it like, what is it?
I ended up reevaluating what am I doing? How are my children going to learn? This is like the future.
And then I got like this little voice in my head saying it's ever too late to learn. So I was 36
and I started looking for a way to learn how to code. And I thought I'm going to build one
of those apps. But you know what that motivator was? Was the role I was in. That role that I
played at that moment as mother first was let me make sure that my children understand this gadget
and most importantly how to program it. Because at that moment I had a future vision. I thought even
living overseas, these kids need to learn how to do that. What came next wasn't planned, right? It
wasn't even part of the vision. But my third company ended up being a mobile application
development company. We did 31 and they all began with educational apps.
That's incredible. Of meeting powerful women who have gone out into the world and created something
that didn't exist before. That's amazing. But I don't know that that's me today because I don't
have a lot of the apps up there. The passion for education stayed. But it was that role at that
moment that led me to that opportunity. And reflecting, I'm feeling this way. What can I
change? I remember the first time I made a choice like that. And it was back when I was a teen mom.
And when my daughter and I were navigating life and I was a single mom working full time,
I had a hunger for more. I wanted success in my life. And to me at the time, I thought success
meant getting a degree. So I enrolled in college part-time because part-time meant I qualified for
financial aid. So there I was, a full-time single mom, full-time employee, and a part-time college
student. Well, as you can imagine, I was not able to be successful at all three of those things at
one time. So I saw something had to go. Something had to shift. And because getting a degree was
attainable in a shorter amount of time, I decided, and of course, being a mother was
my forever assignment, the job had to go. So I actually made the decision. And this is long
before welfare reform came along because I don't think it would be possible today. But I quit my
job with the intention of going on welfare, leveraging the welfare benefits I could receive
as a single young mother so that I could get my college degree. And oh my gosh, that was,
it was a very difficult decision because I had a lot of pride in being a full-time employee.
And I felt very shameful to go on public assistance, but I had a goal in mind. And I reached that goal.
And I got off from welfare eventually. I got off from section A. I got off from food stamps. So,
you know, I was able to leverage that opportunity for a short, you know, four years in order to
achieve my goal. But that was the first time that I, I myself recognized something has to change here
in order for me to, to move forward. And I learned so much through those years.
Now as also it was by choice. Sometimes you're faced in that same situation because of external
forces in my situation, my company was thriving. I was like in the peak of my life
when something happened out of my control.
How did it affect your business Sheila?
Well, the good part of the business was that because it was in technology,
it was very remote. Kind of what happened in COVID, right? If you fast forward, COVID was
shocking to a lot of people and it was just like, this should be the norm. But that challenge,
whenever you're faced with it, whether it's because of choice or chance, there's always that
challenge of letting go of those old identities. And it's to give yourself room for
growth in that next version of yourself. So I agree with you with that self-awareness,
right? Start where you're at, acknowledge what you're going through before you're able to set an
intention to move forward. And I'll share just some of the questions that I go through every year.
And normally I do it around my birthday. I don't know why around my birthday. I just feel that
that's a moment to do like my own personal, I call it my personal self-awareness.
My personal, I call it my personal business plan because I've been an entrepreneur so long that
it's got all the sections. Like it's a business plan. This is me.
But for you, Sheila, right? Sounds to me like I call it my personal vision and you call it
your personal business plan, but it sounds very similar.
Well, it goes beyond the vision. It's got financials as well.
Oh, mine has financials in it too.
Oh, I like that.
Because it's like our GPS, right, Sheila? Like if we got in our car and we just started driving,
I know at least for me here in Nashville, growing up on a farm in Vermont in a very small
rural community, when I came to Nashville, I didn't know how to get anywhere.
So in order to know where I need to go in order to get to a certain destination,
I have to know where I'm going and my vision.
So that means I have to know the streets to turn onto, whether I take a right or a left.
Those are very specific things. And if I don't create the map of where I want to go,
I'm going to end up somewhere. It might not be where I would like to be intentionally though.
So you do it on your birthday. I love that. That's your birthing your next step.
It has something to do with the birthday. And I always ask myself, well, what values
are guiding my life today? Because our values change. And once again, it goes into the roles
that you're playing. And then how do I want to show up in front of the world? That's my outer,
not my introspection, which according to your report, I didn't do enough. And that's how I was
like, Alison, I think that here I do. I really do. Well, I have to say, Sheila,
because you are an entrepreneur, because you're someone who's dedicated to learning and personal
development already, when you come into my world, you're already a little more advanced than some
people who maybe have never heard of this stuff. So this might be brand new to a listener listening
to it right now. So then I also ask, what am I passionate about? What legacy do I want to leave?
And that's important because people think, oh, you know, legacy is like my eulogy. No legacy,
you're living it today, right? What you're doing today, the actions today is actually the legacy
you are building tomorrow. And then lastly, what fear, this is where I come to terms with it,
right? What limiting beliefs are holding me back from becoming that version of myself,
at least for the next year. So that helps guide me. Those are such great questions. Those are
wonderful questions. And what I love about what you just shared, Sheila, is it really speaks to
how whatever it is that you're calling your document, whether it's a personal vision or a
personal, what did you call it? An expense plan. Next personal business plan, next steps plan.
It's a living document. So you don't write it once and not edit it. It is something that you're going
to kind of, it's in development, just like we all are. We're all in development. We're all growing.
There is no part of existence that doesn't contain an element of growth. So if you look around in
nature, you can see the evidence of that. And we are just another part of the whole created
universe. So we are growing too and growing with intentionality and with a dream of who our future
self is, is so powerful. And in my world now, it's so comforting to know that I can do that and I can
surround myself with a tribe of people that will support me in that. So.
Well, to wrap today's episode up, let's leave the listeners with one exercise they can do today to
practice self-reflection. What do you recommend?
Oh, what I recommend is to learn about how to develop curiosity just in general and, you know,
become curious about your own self-identity and become curious about how what we've talked to,
what we've talked about here today might serve you and might help you in your journey of personal
development and growth. I love your question, Sheila. I can't talk those questions that she
asks herself every day on her birthday. In the positive intelligence world, we call it a
childlike perspective because you know how children, it's like when you're on the, well, I'm still like
this, to be honest. I'm going to confess. If I'm on a beach, it's hard for me to get, it's hard to
get me to look up because I am looking at all the amazing shells and all the sand. And that's the
kind of curiosity that we want to have about our own selves. So taking time to do that periodically
and then just kind of watch what happens because I will tell you that there are so many thoughts.
We think over 8,000 thoughts in a day. It actually might be more. I'll have to get that number.
And we just don't recognize all of those thoughts. And so we might actually get some criticism about
where we are. We might be like, I'm not where I want to be. You know, we might recognize something.
So just be curious and be gentle with yourself in that journey. Well, thank you all for tuning in
today to another episode of milestone moments in business and leadership and stay tuned because
this conversation doesn't end here with Alicid. No, we're going to continue this. This is wonderful,
Sheila. Thank you so much for having me and just keep on being curious people and
you'll be amazed at what transpires in your life.