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Warning: Before proceeding with this blog post, I do want to put a trigger warning because this episode discusses sensitive topics so please proceed with caution.
If you have ever experienced any trauma, you know it completely changes you and your mental health. Your mental health can spiral down a dark path from things like depression, anxiety, PTSD, or even form coping mechanisms to help you deal with the pain or emotions. However, once you allow yourself to face those emotions and find out who you truly are under all of that trauma, you can begin to gain peace, confidence, and power with your story. Your journey will bring forth your purpose so that you can take center stage in your life.
Our guest on the podcast today is Confidence Coach Janelle Anderson. She helps women own their expertise, monetize their message, and attract more clients. With her powerful confidence-building formula, women conquer the impostor within and speak up with confidence and clarity to stand out in the marketplace. Janelle’s signature course focuses on messaging and speaking with confidence. Her new book, Take Center Stage: Be the Star of Your Own Story, was released in January 2022.
In this episode, Janelle and I dive into:
- Her trauma and how it led her to become a confidence coach for women
- Finding your purpose along your winding path of life
- How to deal with imposter syndrome as a business owner
- The power that your thoughts and words hold that impact your mind
- …and much more
Experiencing Personal Trauma and Becoming a Confidence Coach for Women
As a kid, Janelle was pretty introverted. She had a big family and was one of eight kids. It was a running joke that she would talk to the wall because no one in her family seemed to want to listen to her. This scenario of being tuned out became the imposter story that she told herself as a child. Although it was just that she had a quiet voice, and everyone in her family was noisy. In school, she wasn’t the type to raise her hand, and it got worse as she went into college.
On one particular night, Janelle and her roommate decided to go out. She remembers playing foosball with some guys that they had just met, but she doesn’t remember anything else from that night. She woke up in her bed with a guy on top of her, and then she blacked out until she woke up that morning. She realized that she had been raped and drugged, but that wasn’t the thought that initially occurred to her then. She had thought it was something that she must have done for this to happen, and that was how she lost her virginity. She was raised a Catholic girl and wanted to save herself for marriage. On top of all that had happened, she felt a sense of shame for having lost her virginity that way. She felt like a piece of trash and like she no longer mattered, which led her to chase after relationships that weren’t good for her.
Things got worse at the age of 23 when her boyfriend decided that Janelle should use her beauty to make money. They had been on their way to California but were in Vegas when her boyfriend decided to traffic her. She didn’t know she was being trafficked at the time because nobody talked about those things. Instead, she felt even more worthless as a woman for what she was doing to keep her boyfriend. This continued for three years. She felt trapped until one night when they were both arguing. He got physically violent with her in a chokehold until he realized what he was doing, and he ran out of the apartment. In a desperate attempt, Janelle called her mother for help. Her parents didn’t know how she was living, but her mom immediately invited her to consider the fact that Jesus might just be calling her to come home and have peace. She was desperate for that peace, so she prayed with her mother and began to feel a sense of peace and strength that hadn’t been there before. She no longer felt like she was under her boyfriend’s control, so she moved back to Virginia completely shut down. She stowed away all of her emotions and past experiences and didn’t tell anyone for the next thirty years.
Janelle came to a point where she wasn’t happy in her 50s. So much time had passed since all of her trauma happened. She had hit a wall and knew that she needed to do something about that wall if she wanted to fulfill her purpose. She went through a period of counseling, unpacked all of her trauma, processed it, let her emotions out, and began to discover her confidence finally. She began to look at her younger self with compassion and began to embrace her story and her gifts. She landed upon coaching and desired to start her very own business to help other women. At 61, she started her business as a trained and certified coach. She felt like she was coming out onto the center stage of her own life for the first time. Along with coaching, she has just published her book Take Center Stage: Be The Star Of Your Own Story, which also has her story. The once traumatized woman is a confident coach for women, speaker, and author.
Finding Your Purpose Along the Winding Journey of Your Life
When it comes to finding your purpose, Janelle says that your journey develops who you are and your purpose in life. Your purpose unravels as you go along your path in life. So many people want to know their purpose right now or that they don’t feel like they have one, but the truth is that you do have a purpose. It doesn’t happen overnight, so don’t try to rush through your journey. Instead, look for the everyday treasures in the here and now. It can be challenging at times with the trials you are going through, but that is where your genius will begin to shine, and you will discover who you are because diamonds form after immense pressure and heat.
Janelle is glad that she faced her past and its impact on her because it helped her find peace, freedom, and power. She resisted it for the longest time, but once she said yes to the process of opening up about her past, she realized it wasn’t as hard as she thought it would be. It has brought her to a fantastic place in her life, and she wouldn’t have gotten there if it wasn’t for opening those doors and receiving help. Shame gets its power by hiding, and when you bring things out into the light, shame just melts away.
How to Deal With Imposter Syndrome as a Business Owner
Loads of research have been done on imposter syndrome, and it has been found that women suffer from it more than men do. Some women who suffer from it are even thriving, have moved up in their careers, and have leadership positions or successful businesses. It is internal suffering because they don’t feel successful or whatever it is on the inside. It has to do with how you see yourself, but it has nothing to do with your outward achievements.
One of the most powerful exercises Janelle has found that her clients do often is to look at their accomplishments. Women don’t even realize that they don’t look at their accomplishments. You breeze right past them or diminish them. You may even make excuses for why you have the achievements you have. With her clients, Janelle has them stop what they are doing and does what she calls ‘mark the moment.’ No matter how big or small your achievements are, you should celebrate them if it is something that you are proud of. Janelle also has her clients write down their accomplishments throughout their lives and make a long list. Think about what enabled you to achieve those things and dive deep into your inner strengths and natural abilities, which sometimes you may even take for granted, allowing you to achieve your goals. Once you begin to look at your achievements, it is also important to connect those to your unique design of who you are. A part of imposter syndrome is that you don’t feel worthy, and you divide your achievements away from who you really are. It can be a real confidence booster to unpack all of these things about yourself and combine them with your achievements.
Another thing that Janelle has her clients do is to look at themselves in the mirror and tell themselves that they are proud of their achievements, new or old, and name it. In general, many women are afraid this will make them seem braggy or boastful, but you are just stating facts about what you have done. Everyone has talents, gifts, and strengths, so it isn’t boasting. Boasting is when you say that you are better than someone or other people. You are owning the facts about yourself and standing up for yourself. You are just standing in this place of ownership when you can own all your accomplishments and marry them with who you are. What you have to offer is valuable, just like everyone else. This has been a really effective way to deal with imposter syndrome for Janelle and her clients.
The Power In Your Thoughts and Words and How It Impacts Your Mind
Do you tell yourself that you can’t do something? When you tell yourself these things, whatever they may be, your physical brain starts to go along with what your mind is telling it. It will even begin to produce hormones, neuropathways, and other things to match what you are saying to yourself. Many people don’t realize how much power their minds, thoughts, and words have. You have to be aware of what you are saying and take steps to change that or reframe that thought. What would be a better thought to have that will take you in the right direction?
Janelle caught herself saying that she couldn’t do something when she visited her daughter one time. Her daughter is into many different things like paddleboarding, aerial silks, acrobatics with silk, etc. She wanted her mom to do a beginner’s lesson because she wouldn’t take no for an answer, so Janelle did paddleboarding, aerial silks, and rock climbing. It was something new and scary for her, but saying yes to these things helped her change her thoughts and words. You keep yourself from so many opportunities when you say that you can’t do something, so reframing your thoughts into something positive or in the right direction becomes helpful in creating those new thoughts and words.
The Star Process of Coming Out On Center Stage as Your True Self
The star process that Janelle used herself and with her clients came about after she started planning her book that is out now called Take Center Stage: Be the Star of Your Own Story. She began looking over 30 years of journals that she wrote. There were conversations with God in them, showing her things like scriptures, pictures, or other things that would pop into her head. Over the years, these journals filled up with all sorts of wisdom, and these things started to come true that she had written down years before in those journals about the phases that she went through to become who she is today.
The star process is an acronym that represents the four stages that she went through.
S – Stirring your soul awake
T – Tell the truth to yourself
A – Accept and activate your true purposeful self
R – Release the river of your unlimited potential
She woke up in her 50s and realized that she had been on autopilot for most of her life. The S in the process came about when she asked herself questions about who she was and what she was doing. Sitting with those things, she began to say yes to herself, which was a big part of stirring up her soul from saying no for so long in all areas of her life. The T part of the process is where your trauma and the stories you told yourself resurface, and you begin to dismantle those beliefs about yourself after stirring things up. You can discover your strengths, your values, and forgive. Once you do that, you activate A of the process, where a more confident person emerges. You begin to accept yourself, love yourself, and see the true you. You will start to take action on things you didn’t take action on before, leading you to your passion and purpose. Once these doors begin to open for you, the R stage of the process starts. It naturally happens where you have flow, ease, and the power to impact or make a difference. You are a force to be reckoned with. Walking in who you truly are creates that force that lets you experience freedom, a sense of peace, and have that grounded confidence that you are the star of your own story.
Janelle gave so much wisdom on this topic of trauma, overcoming it, and truly finding out who you are so that you can be the star of your own story. She shared her story, the trauma she has faced, and how that led her down a path to become a confidence coach for women, how you find your purpose through the twist and turns of life, how to deal with imposter syndrome as a business owner, the power that your thoughts and words have, their impact on your mental health, and the STAR process that helped her to come out and show up at the star of her own story.
Are there any traumas you have experienced in your life that are still holding you back from being on the center stage in your life?
a breakdown of this episode
[1:34] The journey and trauma that Janelle faced led her to become a confidence coach for women
[10:39] Finding your purpose in life down the winding road of life
[19:10] Dealing with imposter syndrome as a business owner
[29:09] Your thoughts, the words you use, and how they impact your physical brain
[34:57] Janelle’s book and the star process that she went through in her journey now helps other women, too
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