028 - Owning Who You Are
For a big part of my life and even to this day, I have been a yes person; always willing to help people in whatever capacity they need me. However the energy behind my actions today is much more centered and genuine than it was before.
Before it was more about pleasing others and wanting the world to have a favorable view of me. Now it’s all about who I truly am. I had to reflect on myself in order to realign my beliefs and let go of some commitments that I had unconsciously made about why I was helping others. In short, I had to own myself and my actions in order to find purpose, meaning, balance and fulfillment.
Today’s walk is about owning who you are, and my walking partner understands this all too well. Liz Brunner has committed herself to reinvention and to something I call a re-deepening process allowing her to move closer to the center of who she is.
In This Episode
(04:43) – Making the connection between commitments and beliefs.
(12:50) – Feeling, listening, and exploring your inner voice.
(15:48) – On being authentic and letting go in order to succeed.
(18:52) – Managing expectations with purpose and passion.
(22:45) – Holding on to the family beliefs.
(26:30) – Evaluating the risk between where you are and the unknown
(42:50) – How to rewrite your own narratives.
(47:41) – On making the crucial decision of seeking help.
(50:52) – Owning all of who we are when seeking help.
(57:34) – Recreating, re-inventing, and re-deepening.
Notable Quotes
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“Very often, I would be one of the first ones to say yes to jump in and help out a friend or a colleague. However, ultimately, I recognized that most of my yeses stemmed from a combination of people pleasing or wanting others to have a favorable view of me. It wasn’t as genuine as true service because I wasn’t being honest with myself as to where my yeses were actually stemming from. And that led to a deeper exploration of my needs; my need to be liked or recognized; my need to avoid conflict or rejection or judgment, and so on. It opened up an opportunity for me to get to know myself better; to release some of those blocks and some of those old commitments that I had unconsciously made about why I was helping others. I still have that commitment to service. It truly is a part of who I am, but the energy behind it now is so much more genuine. It’s congruent and it’s centered because the way that I serve is much more aligned with who I really am and not based on the expectations of others or my need of their approval.”
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“A lot of people think vulnerability and authenticity is ‘oh you just wear your heart on your sleeve, and you share everything with everybody.’ No! You share your stories with people who have earned the right to hear them. That’s vulnerability. Authenticity is there is never a question about your actions and your behavior. They are in sync. That’s being authentic. And I think it’s really important that people, particularly when you are in this position of saying, maybe I should do something else, what am I going to do, how do I figure it out; you do have to be that authentic and that vulnerable with the people who have earned the right to hear your stories and people you trust. And that’s not easy.”
Our Guest
Liz Brunner is the CEO and founder of Brunner Communications and the bestselling author of Dare to Own You. She leverages more than 30 years of media and communication experience and expertise to support individuals and organizations in building meaningful reputations and powerful brand identities. She is also the host of Live Your Best Life Podcast, where she shares success stories of recreation, reinvention, and re-deepening.
Resources & Links
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Luke (00:00:01):
Welcome to On This Walk, a show about the winding journey of life in all its realness. I'm Luke Iorio. Please join me and my brilliant heart-centered guests each week, as we look to navigate this journey more consciously and authentically. Uncovering how to tap back into that sense of connection with self, with soul and with something bigger than ourselves. Now let's go on this walk.
Hello there everyone, and welcome once again to On This Walk. You know, in various ways we've heard about making a commitment to ourselves, to our goals, to our dreams. But I wanna drop in a little deeper than the usual, maybe self-help, platitudes and cheerleading. Commitment to truly being yourself, to building a life that authentically reflects who you are. This really requires not just having commitment to that, to that vision, but looking at your commitments. Meaning, what are the beliefs, the attitudes, the behaviors, the blind spots, the assumptions, even the identity that you've committed yourself to up until now? We're a bundle of these commitments, most of which have been made unconsciously, as we have tried to navigate life with its pressures, its responsibilities, the uncertainty, the ambiguity of it all. We don't realize just how many of our commitments are wired into us based on our upbringing, our schooling, our family history, our communities, and the societal influences that are prevalent as we grow and develop into adulthood.
This is why we need to make this a much more conscious process filled with honesty and transparency, a willingness to question ourselves, and not from a place of doubting, but from a place of uncovering that which is deepest and truest within us. I can say that this has been a big part of my own journey, meaning reexamining those inner commitments alongside those outer commitments, and learning to be more and more honest with myself. Not always easy, about those commitments, and what were they and why had I made them. For example, very often I would be one of the first ones to say yes to jump in and help out a friend or a colleague. However, ultimately, I recognize that most of my yeses stemmed from a combination of people pleasing or wanting others to have a favorable view of me. It wasn't as genuine as true service because I wasn't being honest with myself as to where my yeses were actually stemming from.
And that led to a deeper exploration of my needs, my need to be liked or recognized, my need to avoid conflict, or rejection or judgment and so on. It opened up an opportunity for me to get to know myself better, to release some of those blocks and some of those old commitments that I had unconsciously made about why I was helping others. I still have that commitment to service. It truly, it's a part of who I am, but the energy behind it now is so much more genuine. It's congruent, and it's centered because the way that I serve is much more aligned with who I really am and not based on the expectations of others or my need of their approval. I share this all not only for context, but because today's walk is truly about owning who you are, which means owning what those commitments have been, and owning what those new commitments are going to be, so that we can then own that process of sharing ourselves with the world from that authentic place.
And my walking partner for today hasn't simply committed herself to reinvention. Sure, that's part of it, but I'd like to view it this way. You see, it's that she has been committed to what I would call a re-deepening process, meaning to continually committing to moving closer and closer to the center of who she is. So let me introduce Liz Brunner. Liz Brunner is the CEO and founder of Brunner Communications, and the bestselling author of Dare to Own You. Liz leverages more than 30 years of median communications experience and expertise to support individuals and organizations in building meaningful reputations and powerful brand identities. She's also the host of the Live Your Best Life Podcast with Liz Brunner, where she shares stories of recreation and reinvention, and honestly, a lot of re-deepening in that as well. And in 2020, she also created the Brunner Academy of Online Learning to provide access to high quality speaker training. She's been a reporter, she's been an anchor on the number one rated newscast in Boston, and she's had the honor to interview prominent figures for athletes, from athletes to world leaders like Barack Obama. And she's here to walk with us today. If you're new to the show, do me a favor, make sure you hit that subscribe button. And now let's go on this walk with Liz Brunner and geting to own yourself. Liz, thank you so much for being here.
Liz (00:04:20):
Oh, thank you so much, Luke, for having me on this show and for that lovely introduction. I greatly appreciate it, and I can relate to so much of what you just said.
Luke (00:04:30):
So excellent. Let's just start there with, with hearing the way that I framed commitments with hearing a little bit of the way that I positioned it even so of what I shared. What is it that that just started to come up for you? What's alive for you in hearing all of that?
Liz (00:04:43):
When you were making that connection, if you will, in using the word commitment, what came to me as I was listening to you, it really is about beliefs, whether you call them commitments or beliefs. And sometimes we have wonderful beliefs that support us and move us forward in our lives. And then there are other beliefs that are limiting beliefs, which people may be familiar with that terminology, which those limiting beliefs truly hold us back. And sometimes they're conscious, we know what they are, and other times they're very unconscious and we don't really begin to understand where they're coming from until something hits us in the face and went, no, wait a minute. What's happening here? Why am I feeling this way? Why do I believe this? Why am I committed to that person as opposed to this person of who I want to be, who I believe I am to be on the surface? So, and sometimes they intersect. And it's very interesting to me that you used that word commitment, because I'm not heard it used in that way, but I do think it's a, a very similar process of beliefs in who you are, where all those came from, and how do you wanna move through them? Do you wanna change them? Do they still feel like you as you move through the world?
Luke (00:05:56):
I appreciate what you did, you know, that sentiment of do they still feel like you, because you know, exactly as you just pointed out, I am intentionally using commitment in a slightly different way because we don't realize just how committed we become to our beliefs, to our identity, the way that we are seen in the world, or want to be perceived in the world. Right. And when we bring it back to this idea of, are these commitments still us or do they really represent the truth of who it is that we are, or at least who it is that we are now, because maybe we've evolved, there's, you know, there's certainly change within our lives. And so I'm curious a little bit about that journey for you because you've, you've, I've, as I said, it's, it's this combination of kind of reinventing, but also deepening as you've gone on your journey and, you know, you've now stepped into this position, meaning you've got your own business, you are helping organizations and individuals in these, these wonderful ways. But I know that that journey of jumping into entrepreneurship was not necessarily an easy one. That was definitely a big shift for you. And so I'm just kinda curious.
Liz (00:06:57):
I never wanted to do it.
Luke (00:07:00):
You were like, no, please, no. And so I'm, I'm curious about, you know, some of that evolution of those commitments for you and how you started to identify these commitments, these beliefs, are not the same anymore and I need new ones. Tell me a little bit about that journey.
Liz (00:07:18):
Well, I think it kind of begins in childhood from the standpoint, that music was always a very big part of my life, my parents' life. And I mean, from the time I was knee high, Luke, I was singing in the church choir. I was up in front of people performing and music and particularly singing was always a part of my life. I was in a high school show choir. I was also in an opera company in high school. And I took serious singing lessons and I never ever considered doing anything else other than singing. So I went to college to Lawrence University's conservatory of music, for music, to become a singer. And, and ultimately I became a high school music teacher. Never considered doing anything else, although I think in the back of the mind now, in hindsight, I might have wanted to have done something else, which I ultimately ended up doing.
But, so I taught high school music for a few years and I sang semi-professionally. And while I enjoyed all of that, I still felt like there was something more I was supposed to do. And so after a couple of years of teaching, I thought, okay, organically there's something that's calling to me. I had no idea what it was, Luke. Absolutely no idea. But to your point about that word commitment, it was like, okay, that's what Liz is supposed to do. It's not like somebody said, this is what you should do, but I, that's just what I did. Never really gave it another thought. But after those couple of years of teaching, I thought, okay, there's something that I need to be doing. So I left teaching, didn't have a job, worked in retail ultimately to pay the bills. And then I had done one television commercial when I was Miss Illinois in 1979, which I share that with you because I performed for my talent.
No surprise there. But that experience paid for all of my college education. So I'm very grateful for that experience. And then it gave me the idea of, well, maybe I could do something in television. I'd always loved watching television. I found it fascinating that, you know, these world events were coming into our home. And so I was very brave and reached out to two television stations that were in the community that I was living in, which was Champaign Illinois at the time. And I went on informational interviews. I'd never heard of such a thing, but I had been reading this book about informational interviews. I thought, well, okay, I'll fast forward now a little bit. But after six months of conversation with the CBS affiliate, a position was created for me, never existed. And it was basically, I was the community relations liaison. Doesn't that sound impressive?
Luke (00:09:56):
It's a great title.
Liz (00:09:57):
Yeah. And basically it was to be the coordinator of the speakers bureau, meaning anytime any one of our on-air talent needed to be asked to speak somewhere, I coordinated that then public service announcements and I started writing them. Had no idea how to do that. And they kept asking me to do more and more. And ultimately I was on the air during my own little talk show and also doing the weather and best training you could ever have for live TV, by the way, is during the weather, no trip. But the beauty of that experience was that whatever they asked me to do, I always said yes. And I had no clue whether I could do it. In fact, I'd go home and, and I'd say, what the heck did I just say yes to? But I'm a firm believer that just because you've never done something doesn't mean you can't. You just have to try.
And I very much was in that exploration of, okay, this old singing persona, I was still singing, even though I was in working in retail, but is this really who I am and where I wanna go? And people are like, you have such a wonderful voice, you should be singing. Well, I enjoyed it, but is that what I really wanted to do for the rest of my life? Probably not. So now I end up having a career in television, three television stations, 28 years, 20 of them in Boston at the ABC station. And so, talk about an amazing career. I won a lot of awards for various stories that I did. I was very proud of that work. And some people will say, well, how in the world did you go from teaching to being on tv? I say, it's all storytelling. I was singing stories, now I'm speaking stories. So there is a theme there, believe it or not.
Luke (00:11:37):
Absolutely.
Liz (00:11:39):
But then again, fast forward to going to your business,
Luke (00:11:41):
Aside from the, the wonder of going from a high school music teacher to, to telling students and then being a, an anchored in the position you were is phenomenal. But it felt like, as you were describing, it was almost like you were listening to something that just kept kind of calling and pulling you deeper onto your path. So you said yes, but where, like, do you remember where that came from? That ability or that awareness to say, let me continue to follow this thread and see where it goes. I will put in there that I also, it's funny, you were, you then said, I was exploring. Cause I literally had written that down because that's what it felt like. It was, it felt like you weren't gonna overcommit yourself, but you were gonna give yourself enough space to see, to explore. So I'm just kinda curious about what you were listening to and how, because there's so many, you know, there's so many people that are listening in that have what they feel as that kind of deeper thread or a little bit of a calling, but they don't necessarily wanna acknowledge it. It's maybe too scary or it's too uncertain. So I'm just wondering if you could speak to some of your experience, especially kind of remembering back then of what you were tapping into to follow that thread.
Liz (00:12:50):
It comes down to being able to really listen to that inner voice. And I know you've talked a lot about that on your own show. Because is this my inner voice? Is this fear? Is this ego? Where is this coming from? Is this real? Sometimes you don't know, but sometimes it's very persistent and it continues to lead you. And I was exploring, I didn't know if I could be on television. I mean, I thought maybe I could, I didn't know. I mean, I even remember going into the sound booth the very first time and like, how do I do this? How do, how, how do I speak? How do I be an anchor? You know, you try, you try to be an anchor. And I write this story in my book, Dare to Own You, when one of the first consultants that I worked with, it was like, Liz, just be yourself. And I, but I am.
It wasn't until, you know, 28 years in that I'm like, yeah, whatever. Okay. I am now just Liz. Coming back to those limiting beliefs of what the expectation is, of what an expectation is of an anchor and how you're supposed to look and how you're supposed to dress and how you're supposed to sound and all of that. I had to find my way through all of that. And so listening to that voice, but it was not easy. I'm not gonna lie. It was not easy, Luke. And it's darn scary at times when you go through that process. But again, I come back to, I didn't know if I could do it or not. I had some belief in myself, some courage in myself, some confidence from somewhere that I had to really tap into. And sometimes that confidence was a little shaky. But I filed and I listened.
Luke (00:14:28):
So what I also hear in that is that when you begin to sense into and feel and hear that inner voice, this is a process. It doesn't mean like the first time you hear the inner voice, it doesn't mean go quit and change everything about your life overnight. It means like, let's take a step. Let's, let's, let's acknowledge it. Let's take a couple of steps, let's explore a bit. And if you do that over time, you'll develop a very, very different relationship with those messages as they come up. And you'll know, is this coming up from a place of fear? Is this coming up from a place of needing to prove myself? Or is this coming up from a place that feels deeper, that feels more congruent and authentic to who I am? And it sounds like you did that. The other piece, before we get to the entrepreneurship, it also sounded like, I love the, I love the example of, you know, working with a consultant and you, you sit down, it's like, I'm an anchor now. And I love that. And I love the visual, you know, the, the sound and the visual of it that we get here on video. Because if you do, then fast forward the decades later, I'm curious what you felt fall away from the way you approached that role. Right? Towards the end of it, you were so much more who you are naturally, Liz. So what had to fall away over those, over that journey?
Liz (00:15:46):
Preconceived ideas, limiting beliefs, fears. You have to let go of that. Let go of the expectation of what you think somebody is expecting of you. That's very hard to do. It really is. And you also, I think, and I mean I'm saying this now in this place of where I am today versus when I was there. But in looking back, it was giving myself permission to become more of who I am and own who I am. I'm still in that process. And I believe that as long as we continue to grow and learn, we continue to own more of who we are. And when we do that, Luke, that's who we truly are, being authentic. That's where we're truly living our best life. But it's really hard to do sometimes because it does mean letting go of expectations, other people's expectations more often than not. But sometimes our own as well.
So in hindsight I can say, yes, now I can see the pieces begin to slowly fall away. It's not an overnight process. And it is about giving yourself permission on so many levels to first of all listen to that inner voice, then give yourself permission to slowly take the steps to move towards owning who you are. I do all kinds of work with people, but there is a lane of work that I do when I'm helping people figure out their next chapters. And I say, you don't have to do this all at once. And I'm such a firm believer, Luke, that no matter how successful you are, no matter how happy you are in your career, no matter how much money you're making, I believe in this day and age, we all need to be thinking, hmm, what else might I consider doing? Doesn't mean that you're gonna shift immediately, but what it does mean is you begin to explore. Because we're hopefully growing older, being healthier despite COVID, but we all have an opportunity then to move more towards our purpose and our passion, our authenticity in owning who we are and being of service in the world. But it takes layers to get there. For some people maybe it happens faster than others. It didn't happen quickly for me.
Luke (00:18:03):
It's part of the journey. And I love the highlight there because it's, you presented something in there that was also a wonderful juxtaposition where we're talking about how do we step more into that purpose, that passion that is deeply who we are and then what we're aligned with. And I wanna use, cause you referenced this, but I'm gonna use the actual quote that I pulled from the book was, "I was a prisoner locked inside unconscious expectation." Absolutely fabulous. Because you mentioned expectations a moment ago. And, and it wrapped up with a lot of other explanation because that sort of, when we commit ourselves to expectations that we have of ourselves or others have of us, we're making, it's a commitment, but we're also binding ourselves. We're becoming a prisoner of what's getting constructed. And very often now, the purpose and the passion it's being followed is not ours. Or at least it's not our conscious purpose and passion.
Liz (00:18:53):
And it's not conscious. And I wanna share the backstory a little bit on that because how I got to that was, there's a section in the book which has a chapter, portion of the chapter of my genealogy and my family history. And I'm very proud of that. But at that time when I was writing it, I'm putting this down and you know, I'm, I'm typing away and I'm feeling very frustrated because I'm like, why do I feel so compelled to share this history? Who is going to care? And I got up from my computer and I live in Boston, so I love to walk the Charles River, and I'm walking towards the river and I'm, I start crying and I'm literally saying to the universe, why do I need to put this in the book? Because I really didn't know. I was like, who's going to care?
And what came to me, Luke, in that moment was I suddenly realized that there was this unconscious expectation. I was this prisoner of this unconscious expectation that I didn't even know existed. And it's not as if someone in my family said, oh, you need to be go, go be a doctor, or you need to be a minister, or you need to do X. Never did that ever come up. But when people read the book and they hear about some of my lineage and my family, I didn't realize the weight of that lineage until that moment. And that's why I felt like I needed to put it in the book because I know I am not the only one that has those feelings. Whether it's, you need to go and take over the family business, you need to be a lawyer because I was, you need to go to this school because that's where I went to school. And whether those are consciously expressed out loud or whether they're subtly expressed and they sink in unconsciously, we all grow up with these expectations. And sometimes, yeah, great, I'm gonna do that. That feels like me. And other times they don't.
Luke (00:20:54):
There's a piece that you just brought up there with those expectations of lineage and how it doesn't need to be an intentional act or something that the parents say, the grandparents say, or the culture directly says to us. But we feel the weight of those expectations as you described, and why we, we go through this so consciously. And what I'm feeling like the weight of, and what you just described is at times we will adopt the beliefs, the commitments of generations past unconsciously, because we believe that it will keep us in relationship or in connection or in honor of them because it's, it's like the way that we bind ourselves and that's really, really relevant to what's going on in the world right now, because there are so many of those passed along commitments and beliefs that we don't even realize we're carrying forward that are from a generation that is yesteryear.
And so it's, it's just so vitally important what you're bringing up and, and to, to you saying you weren't sure why you included in the book, you absolutely. This is why because it, it is such a, a vital acknowledgement of what gets passed down to us and what gets conditioned in us, whether we recognize it or not. And we do need to do the work of really understanding what is it that I have picked up and I am carrying forward. Am I consciously choosing that and questioning yourself and being really honest in that questioning of is this truly what I believe or am I holding this belief? Am I holding this commitment? Because I believe that it keeps me connected and I don't want to reject my parents. I don't wanna reject this part of my family. And yet, it's okay, you can still love them and have your unique beliefs and evolve from that place as well.
Liz (00:22:44):
I agree.
Luke (00:22:44):
Just curious if there's anything you want to add to that.
Liz (00:22:46):
Well, the only other thing that, that is resonating in this moment of time, and I've, I've spoken about this before. I don't think that the pandemic happening in 2020 is a coincidence. Think about this for a moment. 2020, pre-pandemic. What did we think about? Oh, 2020. I'm in the eye doctor's office. I'm looking at that chart on the wall with the biggie and I'm supposed to come down to the line that's has, shows that I have 2020 vision. Okay?
Now suddenly in 2020, we're all forced inside with family or not with family, whatever the case may be. We're not working anymore. The world is in chaos. And we suddenly now have an opportunity. And a lot of people did this, they started looking at their own lives. And they started looking at, well, is this really who I am? Am I living up to what my own expectations are? Or is this what I wanna be? Is this my purpose? Is this my passion? Is this the relationship I want? Is this the house I want? Is this the job I want? People begin questioning themselves and starting to try to have that 2020 vision of their life. And when you all layer on top of that, all the social issues that arose in 2020, I mean, there was a lot that was layered into 2020. So I don't think it was a coincidence that the pandemic happened in that year.
Luke (00:24:16):
I agree very much with a lot of this. I don't believe it was whether we wanna call it coincidence or just a miracle that it happened the way that it did despite obviously all of the horror that comes with what we went through. Right. But the, the other side of that, of what it did also do in terms of so many people beginning to turn back and look at their lives differently, to turn inward and decide, is this really where I want to be? Is this how I want to relate to the world? And then having the world reflect so much back at us from the social and racial injustice issues that were coming up. Political strife, economic strife. I mean, so many different things are adding in. We couldn't look away. And that's, you know, we, we spend so much of our lives with easy access to distract ourselves. We can turn in so many directions.
Liz (00:25:06):
Happens all the time.
Luke (00:25:07):
All the time. It's so easy. Right. We're walking around with little distraction devices in our pocket. And we couldn't, yeah. We couldn't do it. We couldn't not see what was unfolding. And we circle back on this because it's not only a unique moment in time that we've just been through, but if we do use this as, is that moment of looking at our commitments to really turn inward and make those, those conscious choices of, is this where I want to be? Is this the path that I want to be on? And how do I develop that inner sense, that relationship with inner voice so that I can keep steering back? And so we've just been through this extraordinary time that allows us to do that. What I did wanna come back to as well, cause I think this also paints part of this picture is you are at this point in your career where you're on your A game, right?
You've got the number one show, you're the anchor of that show. You're doing all the things that you have worked for. You've, you got it, right? I did the thing, I achieved the thing. And then the, the next thought is, hey, maybe I leave all of this and go do my own thing and start all over again. So talk a little bit about, because there's so many people right now that are also thinking of these types of transitions and wherever they are, you know, knowing, should I potentially risk where I'm at for what I don't know is a really, really terrifying change.
Liz (00:26:30):
It is terrifying.
Luke (00:26:31):
How did you go through that?
Liz (00:26:32):
Well, the industry was changing dramatically the last couple of years that I was there. And I was just thinking to myself, gosh, you know, is this, is this where I should be? Is this what I should be doing? I don't know. And because I did so many big exclusive stories, they took a lot of time. And it's funny because I was just having a conversation with another woman who used to be a CNN reporter, and she left and she was saying, I left because I wanted to have more good news stories, you know, I said, I understand, I understand. But I really was beginning to think and it took me two years, okay? This was not an overnight decision. It was two years of me talking to people quietly and confidentially and saying to them, what does somebody like me do when you think you might wanna do something else?
And some of them would say, well, I see you read the news every now and then and I'm like, trust me. It's more than just reading the news. But what I had to learn was I had to translate what my skillset was into language that they understood. Because the corporate world and the TV world have two different languages. Breaking news for me might be crisis management in the corporate world or being a project manager in the corporate world might be being a producer, a reporter in television. And by being able to kind of help them see what my skillset was, at the same time me figuring out what my skillset was, we know more than we think we know. And particularly for women, we struggle because it's like, well, I don't have this credential, or I don't have this I dotted or this T crossed before we go and do something else.
Was I petrified? Absolutely, yes. And I had kind of narrowed it down to three different lanes. I thought, okay, maybe I could be some executive director of a non-profit. I could be some communications expert for a corporation, although I didn't know who, or I could launch my business and I could teach people about storytelling, about presentation skills, about leadership, about presence, about networking. Oh yes, media training too. And when I shared this three-lane concept with one of my mentors, and I had a lot of folks that I confidently talked to. He said to me, Liz, you're well known. You're well respected. You have credibility. That is value. Why would you give that value to somebody else? Launch your business if in six months or nine months, you don't like it, you don't have clients, you can always go do something else. Luke, in that moment, a kaleidoscope went click. And I knew that's what I had to do. Again, I was listening to myself, I was petrified. But I said to myself, if fear was the only thing standing in my way, that was not a good enough reason. I literally left and launched my business about six weeks later, never have I looked back. And now we're looking at nine years.
Luke (00:29:41):
What would you do if you had no fear? It's basically the same question as what would you do if you absolutely knew you'd be successful, meaning that you couldn't fail? This can help you start to hone in on where that passion lies, where that purpose surfaces from within you. But we will at some point have to actually face that fear. It doesn't just go away. Why? Because there's no guarantees. You don't get to know how everything's going to turn out until you actually pour yourself into that specific circumstance and then see how it does in fact turn out. And I can promise you, if you don't pour all of yourself into it, and the outcome will be far less than it would be at your best. Or you may just end up creating the very thing that you feared because you didn't go all in.
The root fear of so much of this is simply the fear of uncertainty. Now that can bring up a whole host of other fears or doubts, not believing in ourselves and the dreaded, am I enough? Meaning, am I good enough? Am I smart enough? Am I educated enough? Am I old enough? Am I young enough? Am I deserving? Am I worthy? And so on. Also, in the face of uncertainty, not only do we risk having those self-doubt surface, we also fear the unfavorable outcomes. And I don't just mean the material outcomes, but we fear failing. We fear being rejected, being embarrassed, not being accepted or valued. We conjure up these possible worst case scenarios and then we fixate on what will it mean to our lives if we do in fact hit the worst case scenario. How will others look at me? Will they still love me?
Will they respect me? Heck, will they even just like me anymore? What might I lose in this process if I don't succeed? Maybe I'm just better off staying the same. Isn't that good enough? Well, is it good enough? Even though I, you feel you know that there is something inside of you that wants to be explored because you could be and do so much more. What might it be like for you to answer that call of what's deep in your heart, deep in your soul that says you've got more than this? You've got more to give. You've got more to be. I wrote an article a few years ago actually called The Five Faces of Fear. You can find it on my website or just go to onthiswalk.com and look for words to look for the blog. And you'll find it in the, in the post there.
And that may help you identify, which is that face of fear, the different ways the uncertainty can appear for you. So you know exactly how is it presenting so you can recognize it inside of your life. Anyhow, all of this surfaced for me when I realized I was burnt out and that everything I had worked for to become a, an entrepreneur, a successful one, to lead a company with a meaningful mission. It no longer felt aligned for me. I had success and I was really contemplating, I couldn't believe that I was contemplating walking away from something that felt so completely good in my life for something that I had no idea of what was going to happen. I didn't know where I was going. I had no clue as to what would be next. Could I really possibly walk away from what I know, something that had the success, the familiarity, the comfort zone to it, to explore?
I don't even know what that fear kept me in place, albeit in different capacities and roles for years after. I should have already left and gone and found that new path I hung on. I clung to what had been, and I clung to a future, the future that it was supposed to lead to, even though that future vision was no longer true for me. Fear, regardless of what I had already accomplished, snuck back in and it built a home in my head and body. Even after I opened up to new options and was fortunate in how I was able to even transition out of that business, I still had fear coming up. It came up around launching this very podcast. Those are just two examples of countless other stories and examples I could share with you about how fear has held me back at times in my life.
So how do we face it? How did I face it? When we need to turn towards it, fear, when we try to mask it, when we try to avoid it or distract ourselves from it, when we try to keep ourselves busy, this actually allows the fear to become stuck, to become solid within us. We're solidifying that fear by our actions and the story that says, it's too much for me to overcome. It's too much for me to face. Instead of just facing it, we run from it. We create conflict, or we try to control other areas of our lives just to prove that we're in control of something. But it's just a game. It's a game we play. It's a distraction. We don't wanna feel helpless or helpless or powerless for even a moment. And yet it's just a feeling. It's a feeling that is meant to run its course through us and then begin to move forward from there.
So instead of feeling it, we hide from that. We hide from that feeling that that somehow by avoiding it, that's what's gonna keep us safe. When in fact, when we turn and simply allow ourselves to feel what's there and then realize we're gonna be okay, that's when safety returns. It returns knowing that we can handle it, it returns knowing that the imagined scenarios were worse than what was actually real. It returns knowing that this too and can pass it returns, knowing that we still have breath in our lungs and can be present in our lives once again. This then allows us a clearing, a new space where some level of aliveness, that vitality, even if it's small, re-enters, and it presents us with a choice about what's the next best step that we can take. And if we use that step to step into our vulnerability, to own what it is that we have feared, we can begin to unravel its grip on us and realize that we have a choice.
Many choices, in fact, give us the ability to change our relationship to what we were fearing. It allows us to envision new possibilities and it asks us how we want to commit and then take action even if that action is just one step at a time. I'll give you a quick example about this podcast. I knew I wanted to be completely open and share not just my highlights and polished stories and successes. I wanted to share my real journey with you. I wanted to talk about the times that I have been scared, that have been anxious, when I have felt like I've gotten crosswise with my soul and my own integrity. When I feel and have felt lack and unworthy in my life. I wanted to share all of that because all too often we hide these parts of ourselves and that blocks our healing.
We're meant to have these conversations and we're meant to have them together. So I wanted to share all of that with you. And it's terrifying to think about inviting others who I don't even know into that part of my life. And so I hesitated, I felt the fear of what was coming up for me and what all this, these stories and this energy and these fears and worries and doubts were about. But then I also turned to a group of friends and colleagues and started talking to them about what was going on, what was I going through? What did I fear? What was I anxious about? Where was I stuck? And bit by bit, by opening up and by being vulnerable, I found that the grip, the fear had was beginning to release. And instead, the person that I wanted to be was stepping forward more and more.
It allowed my commitment to have that part of my being step forward to become even more resolute, committing to stepping every day closer to my higher self. And the truth, the truth was that what I really feared, I feared judgment. I feared being misunderstood. I feared, maybe embarrassing myself. I feared not being light all those, even more than fearing failure. Because if I failed I could just simply turn tail and and walk away pretend it didn't happen or hide from it. But the other fears, this was about how others' opinions of me would change. And when I was really true to myself and honest with what was going on. But I feared was that question of would my belief in myself change? Would that falter and what would that lead to? But by opening up, by looking straight at it, by expressing myself, by letting myself be witnessed in that vulnerability, I didn't shrink into the smaller parts of who I am, the wounded child that still wanted approval or acceptance or constant affirmation, that didn't take over.
I allowed myself to then be accountable to my higher self, to be seen that way and to be held to that level of standard in my life. And so here we are. It's not to say that I don't feel fear. It's not to say that it doesn't come up. Of course it does. But I will keep turning towards it. I will allow myself to feel it, and I will look for the space that occurs, that enters after I've done so. So turn towards your fear. Allow yourself to feel what's there to look at it openly, honestly, and vulnerably. Get support from those can truly help and hold space for you. Make a decision as to when it's been enough and how will you move forward, make a commitment and lean into it. Lean into that support that can hold you accountable to your higher self and take action even if it's just the next best step at any given time. So with that, now let's join Liz, let's get into this conversation that as she moved past those fears, how was it that she was able to find the skills, the talents, the gifts that she really possessed and used them to create a business in life that she fell in love with?
What I also recognize in, you know, us being able to step back and really truly look at what skillset we have, how does that translate to whether it be the next job or whether it be the next career or opening up our own business or what have you, is to me, I would even describe it as looking beneath the skills. Meaning that, right, if we're inside of an industry, we may describe them a very particular way, but you know, to, as you said, you know, breaking news might be risk management, right? And so there's very specific understanding. Understanding of the way things move, qualities that are being exhibited, and the way that you show up, ways of understanding the situation and being able to work within that situation. We can label those skills however we want to based on the industry that we're talking about. But look below and you'll start to realize what's more core to who you are. The way you show up, the qualities that are there and the talents that are then associated with those, those qualities. Then you can put in whatever context you want.
Liz (00:40:14):
Well, the impetus for my book was a quote from my grandmother, Dr. Dorothy Dunning Chacko, which is no knowledge is ever wasted in the good Lord sight. It was the last half of that. But no knowledge is ever wasted. And even as I look at myself, it's like if we can step back and look at all of the experiences we've had good and bad, professionally, personally, what are the dots and patterns can we see? What dots can be connected? What themes and patterns run through our lives like rivers? And when you are able to put yourself in that witness position, Luke, now you can begin to see those patterns and you can see that you have the knowledge, you have more skills, you know, more than you think you know, it doesn't matter what you wanna call that skill, but you know more than you think you know.
And to trust that, that's the hard part, is trusting that, even when I started my business, I thought, okay, I know how to do this, now how do I go about teaching other people everything that I know, all the experience that I had, all the expertise that I know I can bring to the table. And it just began to flow out of me. And I knew more than I thought I knew. Even with my very first couple of clients, I'm like, wow, where'd that idea come from? I'm like, of course you know how to do this right?
Luke (00:41:39):
So what, what you just exhibited as well though in, in that process is I know that you talk about changing your own story, right? It's one of the, the most important things, right? Is to be able to recognize your story and recognizing you're the one who controls it. And so what you just described is that as you started to look back, you were able to pick up the through lines. You were able to pick up, you know, those patterns and behaviors and talents and skills and all that, that you were able to do over the course of your career. And then you were able to take those pieces and say, wait a minute, there's another narrative here that I can really start to weave, that I can start to put together. And I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more of, of how we rewrite our narrative, right? You've got this, this whole background in storytelling and we don't realize just how much of our, our stories are sort of being written for us and that we are writing unconsciously. And now we need to bring that back up consciously so that we can write the narrative of where it is that we wish to go. And so I was wondering if you could speak, you know, further into, into how is it that we begin to rewrite our own narratives?
Liz (00:42:43):
First of all, we are the writers, directors, and producers of our own life. Think about that for a moment. We're the writers, directors, and producers of our own life. We get to decide, more often than not, if we give ourselves permission to decide. But when I'm working with people, I mean, I really begin to try and assess and pull back the curtain, if you will, of okay, tell me about these experiences. Tell me about these experiences. There's a woman that I've been working with now for a couple of years who's up for a major, major position as chairman of the board for a very prominent company. And when we first began working together, trying to help her discover what her story was of how she became to have this leadership style that she has and it all coming back to, she's from Ukraine, her grandparents were from Ukraine, and how they taught folk dancing and how they took in all kinds of people and made them feel welcome.
And she saw the leadership within them. And now how is that translated through her entire life, through her entire career. And being able to put that story together was amazing. I had another client who was asked to speak at his alma mater about how he became a CPA and now he's a witness for the government in certain situations. And he, I said, let's hear what your story is. And he started talking and telling me, and I was like, well I did this and then I did that and then I did this. And then I said, stop, time out. What did you wanna be when you grew up? He said, well, I wanted to be a police officer. He said, okay, what kinds of things do you do in your spare time? Umpire for major league baseball. I said, whoa, now right away what I saw and heard was right and wrong are important to him. Two plus two, always equals four. Statistics never lie.
And so we began to craft his story, his career journey, if you will, from that lens. So again, to your point of it's about really stepping back and looking at all these things that you've done, good and bad experiences, what are the themes that kind of repeat themselves their through lines, is the word that you used. And when you examine that, I think you begin to get closer to more of who you are and where you should go if you're thinking of making any kind of a change. Does that make sense?
Luke (00:45:09):
Yeah, it absolutely makes sense. It does. And what I also heard in there was to really understand the intention behind the commitments you've made. So if you're gonna go into statistics, if you're gonna go into this path, if you're gonna choose to be an umpire, if you're thinking about being a police officer, it's recognizing, well, what was the intention behind that? And then you were able to highlight, okay, so there's a sense of justice, there's a sense of right and wrong. There's a morality or an ethics that's being applied to, to this individual that's part of their story. And so when we can understand if we're committing ourselves to, you know, what we believe of, of being able to adjudicate something, we begin to really look at, okay, what is that sense of justice? How do we look at things? Who really are we in relation to this? And so I, that's the ongoing part of this, this re-storying of who it is that we are, this recommitting of who it is that we are is consistently look for the energy, the intention, the need, the drivers, the values that are being exhibited underneath the detail of the story. And that's gonna keep taking you deeper to this, this rewrite process.
Liz (00:46:11):
But that's also something that's very hard to do. And what I mean by that is it's not necessarily hard, it's that you have to be willing to go deeper. You have to be willing to step back and again, put yourself in that witness position and look at your life from the outside as well as from the inside. But that's very challenging for people because it's scary. It might mean challenging those commitments, those limiting beliefs, those expectations. And so again, don't do it necessarily overnight, just take the time and begin the process. Life is a journey. Begin the process step by step by step by step. Get help if you need to, work with a coach, work with a therapist, whatever it's going to take.
Luke (00:47:00):
Yeah. In your book of Dare to Own You is around that importance of asking for help. And I bring this up because it's funny. It's, it's one of those things that seems so straightforward. It seems so obvious. It's stuff I've talked about and shared about, but we don't do it. We, we try to be the hero. We try to be the heroin we try, it's like we believe that we're supposed to do all of this ourselves. You don't, you don't have to do this. That's a heck, that's literally the purpose of this show, is to show you, you don't, we're walking together here. And so I'm curious a little bit of, of even for you, of what started the shift for you to be able to ask for help because I, I know what started the shift for me, but I'm curious for, for you what it looked like.
Liz (00:47:43):
Well, I'll use the example of when those two years that I talked about when I was quietly, confidentially talking to people about what does somebody like me do? I mean, what do you think my skillset is? What could, where should I look and what things could I, could I do, could I consider? What I had to do in that moment, and I talk about this in the book, is I had to take down that veil of secrecy that people might have this perception of Liz is so confident, she's this main award-winning news anchor. I had to show them vulnerability. I had to be honest, I had to share with them that I was scared. And I remember I shared with one person, I said, I don't, I've never ever wanted to own my own business. I never thought I was smart enough to run my own business. I don't know if I'd be good at running my own business. And he said to me, Liz, you're smart. You'll figure it out. Wow. But I had to be willing to go to that level of authenticity and vulnerability. And there's a difference between those two, in my opinion. A lot of people think vulnerability is, and authenticity is, oh, you just, you know, put your, wear your heart on your sleeve and you share everything with everybody. No. You share your stories with the people who have earned the right to hear them. That's vulnerability. Authenticity is, there's never a question about your actions and your behavior. They are in sync. That's being authentic. And I think it's really important that people, particularly when you're in this position of saying, maybe I should do something else. What am I going to do? How do I figure it out? You do have to be that authentic and that vulnerable with the people who've earned the right to hear your stories and people you trust. And that's not easy.
Luke (00:49:35):
And it, to this point of, of asking for help is that when you can turn to somebody who can create that container so that you feel safe, you feel the trust that's involved, it allows you to let down that veil of secrecy, I read that in the book and love that phrase because there's this recognition that if you wanna own who you are, you have to own all of who you are. It's not like I only get to own the parts that I wanna show to the world. It is exactly what you just described. It's, no, I needed to own the fact, I was terrified, I was scared. I had no idea what I was doing. I had to own the fact I was really confused and uncertain. I didn't know the direction. I needed to, you know, and we need to own all of who we are.
And when we do that, we, we show up so differently. And what most people I think are starting to recognize is the more we pull down that veil of secrecy within those more trusted settings, it's like coming home again. It's like this sense of, oh, I actually like, you feel the weight just start to come off your shoulders. Because we spend so much time posturing and, and trying to make sure we're putting on the good face or you know, no, we're fine. We're fine. I'm good, I'm good. Right. And we let that go and people turn towards us. They don't view it as weakness.
Liz (00:50:53):
Correct. But that's a very hard thing to do. And it does take courage. It does take confidence. It does take a willingness to really take off that persona sometimes and say, you know what, I'm just Liz. And I've always prided myself on that and that, you know, I'd go to the grocery store with no makeup on my hair and a ponytail. You know, it's like, I'm, I'm just Liz. I'm like, just like everybody else. I mean, you may see my job because I'm on TV every night, but I'm just Liz. It's always funny to me. And thankfully people still recognize me. They're like, aren't you Liz Brunner? And I'm like, yes, I haven't seen you on TV in a while. Well, it's because it's been nine years. You know, they'll say to me, you know, I used to go to bed with you. I used to wake up with you. I'm like, okay, that's a little too much information. But you know, the fact that, that people remember, I'm grateful for that. And perhaps the best compliment that I ever, ever got about being authentic on the air and just being Liz was, someone said to me once, I know you have to deliver bad news sometimes, but somehow coming from you, it makes me feel like everything's gonna be okay. Wow. Very powerful.
Luke (00:52:09):
I'm curious when you hear that reflected back to you Right. That somehow I feel it's all gonna be okay, hearing from you this way, what do you believe you were connecting into for yourself?
Liz (00:52:24):
Hmm. I think I was tapping into who I am on the inside. Just that authenticity of just being Liz and connecting with people on a human level. And I truly believe Luke, that what made me a really good reporter. And what makes me a really good coach is that I am a very good student of human nature. And what I mean by that is when you only have moments with an interviewee or a few minutes and you really have to get connected to that person almost immediately and get their trust to share their story with you in a very short amount of time, you have to be a good student of human nature. You have to know how to connect with that individual right away so that they feel comfortable opening up to you and sharing their story. Because sometimes people say, well, I'm not gonna talk about X.
I'm like, okay, they end up talking about X. Okay. And so the same thing happens when I'm working with clients as their coach in that I have to find a way immediately, how am I gonna connect with this person? Because person A and person B might have two totally different personalities and person A, I might be able to say, you can't do it this way, you need to do it this way. Person B I might say, here's a better suggestion and let's try this. So immediately I have to connect, how am I going to connect with this person so that they're gonna be willing to try what I'm suggesting they do in order to move the dial on their goals. So it's about finding a way to connect with people. And I think that's one of the things that people noticed in me being on the air. They felt they connected to me and still why people will say, hi Liz, how are you? They still feel connected to me in some way, even though I'm not on TV anymore. Not in that way anyway.
Luke (00:54:27):
I'd even suggest that in finding ways of connecting to the audience, to clients to, to those that you've sat with, even though the style may vary based on the person that you're with, it's coming from a place of centered self. Right? Because when we are centered on self, we can move around, right? We can change styles, we can move approaches, we can make those adjustments. And yet there is still this centered nature of who it is that we are that's showing up, which is that authenticity piece that you described. There's still a congruency even though the circumstances may look different.
Liz (00:55:00):
And I wanna just jump in on something for a moment because I don't want people to be confused. When you say centered on self, that's not selfishly centered.
Luke (00:55:09):
Exactly. Yeah.
Liz (00:55:10):
It's being centered in who you are and owning that piece of yourself and allowing that to come forward and allowing that to connect with someone on a human level. We all wanna connect. I mean, boy did we learn that over the last few years, how important connection is. And I think one of the things that I also, someone recently said to me was, I feel seen and heard by you. And I was so touched by that sort of revelation on their part because that made me feel like I am listening to them, I am seeing them for who they are, and I'm still here. They can be me, they can be themselves with me. And that's, as you know in the coaching process, somebody has to peel away those layers in order to make those changes, to change those habits, to move the dial closer to who they are.
Luke (00:56:04):
Yeah. So as I bring everybody back around for a moment, and Liz, I'd love to just see whatever kind of final wisdom you would like to add onto this is the commitment to really, you know, commitment and, and daring to own you as, as Liz, your book gives, it is really around this commitment to finding that place that is the centered self within you and being, we've talked about that openness, that honesty, the vulnerability that it takes to sit with yourself and peel away those layers to get help whenever you need it in that process from trusted advisors, friends, coaches, mentors, et cetera. And that allows you to continue on this deepening journey. Because when we get to that deeper place, when we feel like we have that centered self within us and it's actually emergent and we create from that place, we end up getting a life that resembles who we authentically are.
But if we start creating outside of ourselves, which is unfortunately how we pretty much begin life, then we end up getting a lot of the expectations of others muddled in with who we actually are. And so the journey, Liz, that you've highlighted so well, you've written about so well, you talk about so well at this point, is this dare to own you. But it's really, as I said before, I don't see it so much as reinvention. Reinvention. I see it as a deepening. And I appreciate just that, that journey that you are sharing with everybody right now.
Liz (00:57:32):
But you call it deepening and I call it recreating because I feel like it's always all within us. It's not like reinvention, like you just do a complete 180. I think we more often than not deepen and recreate who we are and we just expand who we are. My vision at this stage of my life is to teach, motivate and inspire people to live their best life, whatever that means to them. And I think it's fascinating to me that I've come back to being a teacher. I started out as a teacher and back now as a teacher, as a coach. But I've always been a teacher, I guess in some respects. And the other thing that's in my book too, Dare to Own You, is that the end of every chapter is a section that I call time to reflect. And I truly believe that if people give themselves that time to reflect and answer those questions and things that I pose in the book to people to think about and spend some time with those, don't gloss over them. There is transformations possible. And Jack Canfield, who I'm so appreciative, who wrote the foreword for my book, he talks about that this book is transformational, and if you allow it to be. And Forbes also calls it a teaching memoir. And I thought that was the best description anybody could have given about my book. Because it is a memoir, it is personal, it's personal, it's about the obstacles I've overcome, but it's also an opportunity for other people when reading it to learn. And so if I can fulfill that teaching piece of things, whether it's in my book, whether it's my online learning platform, where there's my own podcast, or whether it's with my clients, I really feel like I am living my purpose right now of teaching, hopefully motivating and inspiring people to live their best life, whatever that means for them.
Luke (00:59:18):
Liz, I wanna thank you so much for being here on this walk, for everybody tuning in. I also wanna mention that I have also now been on Liz's podcast. So I strongly encourage you to, to check out Live Your Best Life Podcast with Liz Brunner. Look up for that episode so you can see the, the two different sides of this conversation, which is kind of fun. But once again, Liz, I wanna, I wanna thank you for being here on this walk.
Liz (00:59:40):
Well, I am so honored to have been included on your show and be with you on this walk because I know we both philosophically believe we're all on the walk, on this journey and let's work on it together, support one another, and live our best life.
Luke (00:59:56):
Thank you, Liz.
Thank you for joining me for this episode of On This Walk. Before signing off, please subscribe to the show and don't miss a single episode. Also, please rate and review us. This helps me greatly in getting the word out about this show. And remember, this is just the start of our conversation. To keep it going, ask questions, add your own thoughts, join the ongoing conversation by just heading over to onthiswalk.com and click on Community in the upper right hand corner. It's free to join. Until we go on this walk again, I'm Luke Iorio. Be well.