[00:00] Dr. Heather Penny: You have the clarity within you. You just gotta pull over so that you can identify the bracelets and really decide which ones you wanna keep on, which ones you need to take off. Which ones are preventing you from getting on your tire swings, and which ones are preventing you from spending time on the stars.

[00:15] Dr. Heather Penny: Because if you don’t do that, you’ll lose your sense of self.

[00:19] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Welcome to another episode of Success Through Failure. The show for successful people and for those who want to become successful, the only show that reveals the true nature of success. This is your host, Jim Harsher Jr. And today I bring you Dr. Heather Penny. Dr. Penny is a leadership coach and a trusted advisor to individuals and organizations. Her philosophy is guided by this. Sees philosophy, it’s clarity, confidence, and courage. And she goes into each of those in our conversation here. So much of what she talks about aligns with my philosophy, and I think you’re gonna find a lot of value in what she shares here.

[00:59] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: She has a PhD in human services. She’s experienced globally as a coach. She’s has a, an MA in educational leadership. And so she has a great background in research and she’s been at this a long time and brings so much wisdom. To our conversation today and, you know, we talk about the productive pause, but she has a version of that as, direct cousin of the productive pause.

[01:22] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: So I think you’re really gonna enjoy this. If you enjoy the Success or failure podcast, you’re really gonna enjoy this conversation with Dr. Heather Penny, if you haven’t already, make sure you subscribe to this podcast and be sure to follow me on social media. I’m engaging with folks over there. I’d love to engage, just my listeners, love to get feedback from you on these episodes and, and interact with you on social media.

[01:41] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: So I look forward to seeing you over there. And if you know somebody who loves this stuff, who loves to listen to podcasts, let ’em know about the Success Through Failure podcast. You can text them, you can email them, you can share the link on social media, whatever it is. But that is the number one way that podcasts grow.

[01:57] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: So thank you in advance for that. All right, let’s get into my conversation with Dr. Heather Penny. Why do you think so many people struggle to live the life that they want?

[02:08] Dr. Heather Penny: Well, man, we could just spend a hour on that one question, Jim, but I’m gonna try and gonna give you the nutshell as much as I possibly can.

[02:18] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: I spend a lot of hours in my coaching on it, and I know you do also.

[02:22] Dr. Heather Penny: I do. Oh, I do. Which is why I wrote the book, the Life that You’re Made for, because I wanted to help people stream. What are all the things that are blocking us? But I would say the number one area is distraction. We live in such a busy, fast paced world that if you’re anything like me, I have to keep running lists just on my desk.

[02:44] Dr. Heather Penny: I’m stationary in one place sitting here, and even I can’t remember what was I gonna do? What was I gonna do? What was I gonna do Now, think about all the decisions we have to make from the moment we open our eyes to the moment we lie. We’re just trying to manage our worlds that we’re living in Now.

[03:00] Dr. Heather Penny: Think about long-term, how are we looking at the path that we’re on? It’s so easy to just start taking all of these rabbit trails everywhere. So it requires this ability to have a short-term awareness and a long-term awareness. And it’s difficult to hold that. It’s difficult to hold that in the world that we.

[03:20] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: So how do you find clarity? We talk about this life that we want to live. A lot of people don’t even have a real definition of what it is. How do you find the clarity to define your goals? Define your aspirations? I mean, how do you go about that?

[03:35] Dr. Heather Penny: Well, my answer’s probably gonna be fairly unusual because in the work that I’ve done and the research I’ve done, and even my own personal life, typically we want like five good tips to get it to increase our.

[03:48] Dr. Heather Penny: And we think that if we follow a formula for it, we’re gonna increase our clarity. I’m gonna give you the opposite. I think in order to get our clarity, we have to slow down. We have to start creating pockets and patterns of rest. And I wrote about this in my book. I didn’t realize how much we needed this until I went and spoke, and it was, it was about 250 people in the room.

[04:15] Dr. Heather Penny: And so it was one of. Settings where it’s a little awkward if someone raises your hand because the group is fairly large and I’m talking about the need for rest. And when we rest, we g, we gain clarity. I literally got interrupted my keynote with this woman raising her hand saying, what do you mean by rest?

[04:32] Dr. Heather Penny: And I was so shocked by first of all, getting interrupted. The second of all, I’m like, dang, she’s courageous. And third of all, I’m like, well, I’m gonna answer. And I realized, We don’t even know what that means to rest. We think eight hours of sleep, we’ve finally crossed that threshold. So when I talk about rest, I use the term restorative rest, and that’s really a holistic rest, mind, body, heart, spirit.

[04:55] Dr. Heather Penny: When we do that, our whole clarity begins to increase, but it feels counterintuitive. If you’re feeling confused in your world and your life and you’re running fast and hard, what’s the t. Run faster and harder, make more lists, do more, strive more. So I work with so many high achievers and amazing people and leaders.

[05:17] Dr. Heather Penny: I literally have to say, let’s pull over. Let’s rest a little bit. And I promise you have the clarity within you. How do we start pulling it out and how do we create patterns around. That recognize when our clarity’s going down so that we can do something about putting our clarity up. I

[05:35] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: come from a wrestling background and in our world we are notorious for thinking, okay, if it’s not working, just do more of it.

[05:45] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Like if I’m not winning, just train more, wrestle more, lift more, do more, more, more. And wrestlers, college wrestlers especially are, are, are notoriously overtrained, especially, you know, 20 some years ago when, 25 years ago when I was wrestl. Even more so, and I know that a lot of the people listening right now are, are wired the same way, right?

[06:04] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: They’re listening to a personal development podcast and they’re thinking like, how do I get more, how do I get better? How do I add more to my plate and get better, better, better? and it’s like sometimes we have to step back. And Heather, we have this concept that we talk about in my coaching community called the Productive Pause.

[06:16] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And for the listen, long time listener, you can say it with me. The definition of a productive pause is it’s a short period of focused reflect. Around specific questions that leads to clarity of action and peace of mind. And it sounds very related to what you’re talking about with this, this restorative rest where it’s not doing, it’s not doing the thing, it’s restorative rest.

[06:41] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: So can you give us some examples and this is a different concept from productive pause, but I think there, there are def definitely cousins, but what would be some examples of restorative?

[06:50] Dr. Heather Penny: We’re saying the same thing, Jim, you’re right on. I, I’ve just got a little bit more strategic about it because I had to, because people were raising their hands saying, what do you mean by rest?

[06:58] Dr. Heather Penny: And I’m like, I didn’t realize I had to explain it. So the fastest and the easiest way to do it and I use is an allegory. And that as we use a story, it helps us understand it. It’s this idea of this little girl who loves playing on her tire swing. She loves running outside and being free, and she gets given a.

[07:16] Dr. Heather Penny: And she loves this bracelet. It’s beautiful, it’s wonderful. She wears it. But over the course of her life, she gets more and more bracelets. She gets so many bracelets that they’re all the way up to her shoulders and she can no longer go jump on her tire swing. She can no longer spend time under the stars.

[07:29] Dr. Heather Penny: Two of the things she loves doing, I can’t tell you how many clients resonate with that, and I do keynotes on this and people come to me afterwards. They’re not super interested in my huge log book. They want to know where that bracelet allegory is. And so they’re like, I get the story. Where’s, where’s your picture Book head?

[07:48] Dr. Heather Penny: And so I say, yeah, you can get all of it on Amazon. But the allegory is helps people, particularly if they’re fast paced, to slow down long enough to say, hang on, I’ve got all these bracelets on what I’m doing. And once I work with clients, they literally will get on the line with me and say, I need help with my bracelets.

[08:07] Dr. Heather Penny: And I’m like, okay, we know what that means. You’re getting help with your bracelets so that you go find your tire swing again and you go find under time under the stars. So I use the tire swing in stars as a, as a metaphor for tire swing is an active rest. It’s going out for a run on a nature hike. Being able to sit down with paints or colors or whatever it is you do to get your restorative mind, body, heart, soul back into that space again.

[08:33] Dr. Heather Penny: Time under the stars is a contemplative. It might be journaling. It might literally be lying under the stars of relaxing that night with a cup of tea or a glass of wine. Whatever it is that you need to be able to sort of relax. It’s this space that you’re starting to give yourself this permission to ask more clarifying questions.

[08:50] Dr. Heather Penny: So we’re saying a lot of the same things when you talk about that pause. I’m just getting a little bit more strategic of saying you get to pause in a really fun way, your tire swing that gives you back your energy. You get to pause with time under the stars contemplative. What they both do to you. When you come back from those spaces, and if you actually create a strategic plan for how to keep those spaces in your life on a daily basis, a weekly basis, a monthly basis, and an annual basis, you create this potential for your clarity to continue to rise.

[09:21] Dr. Heather Penny: What’s even cooler is you begin to recognize, Wait a minute, I’m a person of clarity and I don’t have, feel like I have much clarity. Oh, I know what to do. I’m gonna go jump on my tire swing and I’m gonna go spend time under the stars. You begin to feel empowered to know what you need in order to get that clarity up.

[09:36] Dr. Heather Penny: I think that’s what’s most exciting. Most people don’t realize that they have the power within themselves to increase their clarity or to sabotage it.

[09:44] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Is it also about taking off some of the bracelets saying no or not yet? Not now. Or not yet. Like taking some things off of your plate. Because I think sometimes if we’re trying to be more, that means to a lot of people thinking we have to do more and add thing more things to our plate.

[09:59] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: But is there a part where we say no?

[10:02] Dr. Heather Penny: Oh, oh my goodness. Yes, because this is where, you know, again, I work with all these high achievers. I’m just thinking of a executive I was working with this week, and typically this is the metaphor that I use. It’s almost like when they come to me, they’re opening their car door, they’re yelling, get in, get in.

[10:17] Dr. Heather Penny: Hurry up, Heather, get in. And I’m like, wait a minute. They want me to keep up with their speed and their pace of life. Most of now who’ve come to me or they’ve read my books, or they’ve read my message or listened to me, they already know what I’m gonna. So typically now because my voice has gotten out there, people are coming to me because they’re saying, wait a minute, I get to actually pull over the car and rest a minute, and I get to rethink what I’m doing and I get to actually pull out a map and think about where I’m gonna go.

[10:43] Dr. Heather Penny: I don’t have to just stay in motion. It’s such a counterintuitive message. And then to help them learn how they get to do that is so powerful. But then when they do that, you talk about the clarity. All of a sudden they’re looking down at their arms going, well, I don’t really want this job and why did I volunteer for this?

[11:01] Dr. Heather Penny: And wait a minute, I’ve got four kids. Those are bracelets and I wanna keep them on. I don’t wanna ignore them. If I do this, it’s gonna cost me from looking at those in invest in those four kids. Wait a minute, I’ve committed to a spouse over here. This is costing. For the vows that I said to this individual, it begins to be this whole new awareness where I’m basically saying, yeah, you have the clarity within you.

[11:24] Dr. Heather Penny: You just gotta pull over so that you can identify the bracelets and really decide which ones you wanna keep on, which ones you need to take off. Which ones are preventing you from getting on your tire swings, and which ones are preventing you from spending time on the stars. Because if you don’t do that, you’ll lose your sense of.

[11:40] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Quick interruption. Hey, if you like what you’re hearing, be sure to get the notes, quotes, and links in the action plan from this episode. Just go to jimharshawjr.com/action. That’s jimharshawjr.com/action to get your free copy of the action plan. Now back to the show. You also talk about confidence.

[12:00] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Why is confidence such a critical component of personal growth and and how do we develop more of it?

[12:06] Dr. Heather Penny: Yeah. I’ll give you the quick snapshot of it. Clarity is that idea of resting. It’s connected to resting and pulling over and it’s, you’ll hear me talk about the three Cs in my book and I wrote it like a manual, so you feel like you have your own coach in your corner.

[12:16] Dr. Heather Penny: But as we get your clarity, the next stage really is really looking at your confidence. And that has to all do with what you’re. So, and I’ll give you an example of that. I was working with a president of a company and she was talking to me about how she was moving into the space and talking with this her team.

[12:35] Dr. Heather Penny: And she said something like, so I said it like three times, but they didn’t hear me, but that’s okay. And then she kept talking with me and I backtracked and I said, wait a minute. You’re the senior officer in the room and you just said it’s okay that they don’t hear you. That is your belief system and that’s connected to your confidence.

[12:55] Dr. Heather Penny: So what I help people do is identify the beliefs they’re having and we identify ’em as false beliefs because they’re limiting us. And then I help ’em replace it with a true belief. So in this case, the false belief was, I can talk and it’s okay. People don’t listen to me. The true belief is, no, I’m the leader in the room.

[13:10] Dr. Heather Penny: I need to be listened to. And it’s not a power struggle. It’s not a power move. It’s your presence that you’re bringing into the room. But because she was bringing in that belief system, it was happening. So sure enough, she corrected her belief system. She went into the room and she brought that belief system in there and that presence, and it started happening again.

[13:26] Dr. Heather Penny: They were talking over here and not listening to her. She stopped and paused and we talked to the coaching like, this is what you’re gonna say. She did all that. She said, hang on, I need to say this once and I need you all to hear me. She said it once and they all perked up and heard her because it ca, her leadership voice was attached now to her true belief versus her false.

[13:43] Dr. Heather Penny: Does that make

[13:44] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: sense? Yeah. And for the listener, this kind of epiphany, this kind of breakthrough, it doesn’t just happen, you know, listening to a podcast is great, it’s helpful. This kind of growth happens when you’re working with a coach and I have a coach and I work with her for a lot of hours every month.

[14:01] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And it’s just a valuable experience for me cuz it helps me step back, evaluate, answer the hard questions, like that’s where this kind of growth comes from. And so you mentioned the three Cs. The first one is clarity, the second one is confidence, and the third one is courage. What are we talking about here?

[14:20] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: We’re not talking about skydiving or fighting a lion. What, what are we, what are we talking about? Courage.

[14:24] Dr. Heather Penny: So once we get the clarity and the confidence, that third space of courage is all about action. So remember, clarity’s about rest. Confidence is about your belief system. Courage is all about taking.

[14:36] Dr. Heather Penny: And I’ve worked with individuals and I do private coaching and professional coaching with, corporate leaders and everything else. So it could be the, the stay-at-home parent who’s struggling through their belief system. They still need clarity on that, they need confidence on that. But the courage piece is about taking action.

[14:52] Dr. Heather Penny: It doesn’t matter if you’re running a company or whether you’re running your home. You have to be able to have the courage to take the action steps that you need based on the clarity you got and the confidence you. So usually then how I wrap up the conversation is, well, you’ve got your clarity, you’ve got your confidence.

[15:10] Dr. Heather Penny: Now courage is all about taking the action steps. Where do you wanna move forward? Every one of us knows what action steps we need to take. We know it. All I need to do is the coach is ask the question, and then I gently hold accountability in that space that says That’s right. And I do leak it to, you’ve mentioned skydiving.

[15:28] Dr. Heather Penny: It’s funny you say that. I actually leak it to skydiving in my book cause I. What I’ve seen people do is it’s like they get in the plane, they get all ready, and they got their clarity, they got their confidence and they get up in the plane, they prepared for it, they got their parachute all, they’re ready to go, but the plane just keeps circling the drop shoot and they don’t jump and the plane lands.

[15:48] Dr. Heather Penny: It’s not enough just to have clarity and confidence. That courage is to actually set the action steps to move forward. And it could be as simple as, I’m gonna go have that conversation, or I’m going to implement what we talked about in this coaching call or. I need to journal on this and reflect on it.

[16:03] Dr. Heather Penny: The action step can be a variety of different things. It’s not as concrete as it needs to be. Sometimes it’s, I need to reflect on this and then come back the conversation on this. Whatever it is, you have the clarity within you to say, I know where I need to take action. I just give you the courtesy of asking you so that you can bring it forward and actually engage that courage.

[16:24] Dr. Heather Penny: And again, this is where I get. You’re being empowered as, as the person and the individual to go grab that life that you’re made for. You now know how to cultivate your clarity. You know how to increase your confidence and you know how to engage your courage. That to me is very exciting cuz many of us live as a victim and thinking, well, I have the clarity that I have, but that’s about it.

[16:44] Dr. Heather Penny: This is the only confidence I have and I’m kind of stuck with it. It could be low, it could be high, depending on whatever season of life I’m going. Or my courage can ebb and flow, but I don’t really have a lot of control of it. What I get excited about saying is, no, now you know how to do it. You know, actually how to do clarity, confidence, courage, and the three of them combined really create this forward momentum in your life so that you can get on the life path that you actually are made

[17:05] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: for.

[17:06] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Do you have any examples of people who really implemented the three C living principles in their life and they’ve, they’ve seen significant positive change that you could share with? Oh

[17:15] Dr. Heather Penny: my goodness. Yeah. I’ve got so many examples. I got a ton of my books, but one that’s, it’s really coming to mind to me now is she was coming to me, she was a special ed teacher and she had hired me privately to work with her and she came to me.

[17:29] Dr. Heather Penny: Typically, when people come to me as they do with Hugh shirt, Jim, the life isn’t going rainbows and unicorns. They’re feeling a bit of like, something’s off I, some things I know and some things I. It has to do all with their clarity, their confidence, and courage. So I stay in it with her and basically she was showing up at work day after day saying, I don’t really like this job.

[17:49] Dr. Heather Penny: But when we got to the confidence piece, she felt guilty that she didn’t like the job of working with kids. So her false belief was, I, I should like this job. The true belief is, I gotta be honest with myself, this isn’t the job I made. But she felt too guilty because she felt for the kids. It was an empathetic thing that I was dealing with.

[18:09] Dr. Heather Penny: And so as I listened to her, I said, okay, well if you could do anything you wanted to do, what would you like to do? She said, I want to do environmental work. So once she got her clarity and her confidence, I said, well, now what do you wanna do? And she’s like, I wanna go back to school and get my master’s in environmental science.

[18:24] Dr. Heather Penny: And I said, awesome. And then as I continued to work with her, it was so powerful to watch what she did in order to find her tire swinging. Star time just to solidify it. So I would talk with her. I said, well, what are you gonna do to get your clarity? She goes, I think I’m gonna go to an alpaca farm with a bunch of nuns and learn how to knit.

[18:43] Dr. Heather Penny: I go, what I love hearing about people’s tire swings once I ask the question, it’s like so unique.

[18:51] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: It’s different for

[18:52] Dr. Heather Penny: everyone. Yeah, yeah. How many of us are really asking it? And then how many of us, many of us are slowing down to ask our. So now I don’t work with her anymore and I don’t need to work with her anymore because she now knows the questions to ask herself.

[19:06] Dr. Heather Penny: Huh. I need some more clarity on it. Last I heard she had resigned from her position was, doing urban gardens in a, urban city and developing this whole environmental curriculum for students. So she’d taken her love for teaching and educat. Had gotten, got more training with it and was doing urban work with urban gardens planning.

[19:27] Dr. Heather Penny: I just thought that is so powerful. And then how she found her tire singing and swing and star time to affirm that with her was just really

[19:34] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: powerful. You’re talking about something called mind chatter. What is mind chatter and how do we. How do we reduce

[19:40] Dr. Heather Penny: it? Well, the more creative you are and the more intelligent you are, so this should be affirming.

[19:45] Dr. Heather Penny: If you guys have a lot of mind chatter out there, it’s probably cuz you’re super smart and you’re super creative. So let that be an affirmation to you because the more mind chatter we have inside of us, it’s things that distract us, that pull at us, or even fiddle with our confidence in ways that keep us.

[20:04] Dr. Heather Penny: So it becomes a discipline to understand what you’re saying inside yourself, and that’s why spending time under the stars and spending time in your tire swing allow you to pull away and actually hear. Heather, what are you saying to yourself? What is it that you’re really saying to yourself and what is it that you’re saying to yourself that is helping you, and what is it you’re saying to yourself that is hurting you?

[20:26] Dr. Heather Penny: Typically, the average human, most of our vibe chatter is fairly. And I think that’s why I like to talk about it. Cause I like to normalize it. I go, we’re all there. Myself included. I mean, I wrote the book for me, it was my mind chatter that was stopping me when I was 15 years ago saying, I don’t think I can leave corporate America to start my own company.

[20:45] Dr. Heather Penny: I’m not sure I can, I have the skillset for, I’m not sure if I can do it. I don’t know if I know what I’m doing. Well, of course I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve never done that before. You know. But shifting that, listening to that mind chatter, and then hearing the false beliefs that were starting to try and keep me back.

[20:59] Dr. Heather Penny: Grabbing hold those false beliefs, rejecting ’em, I kind of throw ’em out. And then grabbing onto a true belief. What we’re seeing with neuroscience and is this term called neuroplasticity, and my research is just reading about this idea of how we shift our mind thought pattern is so powerful. But if we don’t hear the mind shattered side us, we can’t shift the my thought pattern.

[21:20] Dr. Heather Penny: So mind chatter is like all the conversations and the monologues and the dialogues we’re having with ourselves, we’re having this conversation that’s constantly, As we pull away and rest, we could hear what that conversation is and that mind chatter is, and then we can do something about it. One of the basic exercises I give my clients is, okay, listen to your mind chatter.

[21:40] Dr. Heather Penny: Start writing down all the beliefs that typically most of ’em will have pages and pages of the false beliefs. And I said, okay, we got ’em all. And the more creative you are, the more talented you are, the more that list is gonna be. I said, now let’s reach for a true belief. Here’s the exciting news. It usually only takes one true belief to counteract the false.

[21:59] Dr. Heather Penny: So for me, when I was writing down all my false beliefs, I don’t know if I have the resources for it. I don’t know if it a skill set for it. What if nobody hires me? I mean, these are all these false beliefs. They’re trying to keep me back and I had pages of them and then I wrote one true belief and I realized what true belief would counteract all this.

[22:15] Dr. Heather Penny: And it was, I am being led and guided and I just felt that’s my true belief when I just go, Ugh. You can feel that exhale come out of you. You can feel. Okay, I got this. So every time that I would think about any of those false beliefs in that mind chatter started happening, I had a true belief I’d grab onto.

[22:33] Dr. Heather Penny: And neuroscience is showing us five minutes a day for 30 days changes the neurons in our brains. It changes like the whole neuro pathway in us. And the research that I’ll reference that is Dr. Carolyn leaf switch on your brain. She does a lot of research on neuroscience and just mind

[22:49] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: thought pattern for the listener.

[22:51] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: I want you to know that none of this works. Not one ounce of it unless you do it. Like you can hear it and you can go, oh, that sounds great. I want to do that. I wanna see these improvements. It doesn’t work unless you do it. It doesn’t work unless you hit the pause button, reflect like Dr. Penny said, you write this stuff down, empty your brain.

[23:13] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Take that mind chatter that is deep in the unconscious parts of your brain and bring it out to the real world. Shine some light on it, evaluate it, whether it’s through your own journaling or ideally with a coach or even a counselor or a, the. Get this stuff out of your head because it’s holding you back.

[23:27] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And if you don’t do anything about it’s going to continue to hold you back, period. Full stop. Why do you think people are so afraid of failure, Heather? I mean, this is something that holds us all back, but why? Why are we so afraid of failure?

[23:44] Dr. Heather Penny: Well, cause we all have a story of where it ended so badly and the the uncomfortable emotions of humiliation reject.

[23:52] Dr. Heather Penny: Being mocked, ridiculed, we develop a belief then that says I’ll never do that again. To avoid that pain and that vulnerability, I will never do that again. And we wanna pull the other direction. And honestly, when I work with people and I work with some of their failure stories, I’m working around their belief system, makes me think of someone who was really scared of public speaking and I.

[24:20] Dr. Heather Penny: Help me understand your fear around it. Well, of course she had this epic fail as a public speaker, and I said, what happened? And she couldn’t remember what to say and she froze up and then everyone kind of stared at her and they started laughing. Well, then I was like, well, how old were you? I mean, we’re talking like a 12 year old story that it impacted her and she’s in her fifties.

[24:40] Dr. Heather Penny: And that’s, some of those young stories are some of the hardest because. It’s so traumatizing just as a kid and then no one helped us navigate it. And I love that you’re doing this for your four kids. You mentioned this right before it got on, but if we have no context for fails, some of these stories were carrying on into adulthood.

[24:59] Dr. Heather Penny: And that’s where I’m saying we get to repair ourselves in that. And that’s for the young spaces. But I also, in the adult stages, no one helped us navigate it. You might have been a 35 year old and you got up to keynote speak and then it really went bad. That still is humiliating and hard and we walk away going, I’ll never do that.

[25:15] Dr. Heather Penny: And I’ll use myself as example, probably about 25 years ago, and I started doing some speaking. I got up, oh my gosh, it was epic, fail epic, and I didn’t know what happened and I was so disoriented and I could feel that pull of humiliation and oh my goodness. No one will ever ask me to speak again. Maybe I’m not a speaker.

[25:37] Dr. Heather Penny: What was I thinking? You’re such a fool. Why would you think that you could get up and speak? These are all these awful mind chatters starting to come at me, right? And after that, mind chatter, the false beliefs start coming in. I’ll never speak again. I’m not made to speak. What did I have to do? And this is where I encourage people, go find someone.

[25:55] Dr. Heather Penny: Go find a trusted friend, a trusted advisor. Hire a coach, a counselor, whatever you need to do. To help you combat that mind chatter, because this is what takes people out. They stop doing what it is that they’re made to do because of one fail or because of a young memory. I’m so glad that I was like, I know the research on this.

[26:17] Dr. Heather Penny: I’m gonna go find my peeps, and I went and found my peeps. I hired them, I pulled them in, I grabbed them, my friends, anyone in my circle, and I said, help me understand this. Well, after I got over the humiliation of that and the rejection of it, I. It was a powerful learning experience. It wasn’t my audience was the number one take away.

[26:36] Dr. Heather Penny: I, I didn’t know how to vet an audience, so I, I had just gone and spoken to someone that didn’t connect to my message and so I took it personal. The second thing is I literally just learned better speaking skillset that I didn’t have. And when I look at that back that now, I’m like, can you imagine, and this is fast forward now, where I’ve done, you know, hundreds of speaking venues and everything else, and I am made to.

[26:59] Dr. Heather Penny: That could have taken me out if I let it. And that’s where I love to meet people saying, don’t let these fails take you out. It’s something here to teach you. Let’s get the lesson we need to learn. So when you get the lesson, you can have that clarity, that confidence and courage to do what you need to do.

[27:14] Dr. Heather Penny: And this doesn’t become this elephant in the room or this sensitive hotspot that you never wanna revisit again, and it creates a pathway that you’re not made

[27:22] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: to. For the listener. Again, you have to reflect on this and understand like, okay, this is not something that I just know logically and it’s okay for others.

[27:31] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And that’s usually the mindset we take. It’s like, yeah, success through failure. I get it. The concept’s great and you get better through failure. But then when you fail or you are facing something where you could fail, it’s like, ah, well maybe that’s a good idea for these other people, but not so much me.

[27:45] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: I’m just gonna, you know, lower my goals, settle for less. Or, you know, I failed actually, I truly am not good at that thing, so I better not do it. But no, actually, when you fail, you actually got, just like your, your story just now, Heather, like you actually got better at the thing. You actually learn something from it, and after you do the thing and you fail, you are actually now.

[28:04] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Wise and educated and experienced at that thing, and now you’ve, you’ve just leveled up because of the failure, not despite of it, but because of it. So, for the listener who maybe has just recently experienced some kind of failure or significant failure and there, maybe they’re struggling to move forward right now in this moment, what do they do?

[28:22] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Any, any thoughts, any things that they can do right now to help them move forward?

[28:27] Dr. Heather Penny: Yeah, I, I always say take care of the heart and take care of the head. You get to have, The heart piece is dealing with vulnerability, shame, fear, insecurity, humiliation, rejection. Good heavens. I can keep going, Jim, because we don’t like failure.

[28:44] Dr. Heather Penny: So I just wanna normalize and I wanna say go give yourself a big hug. Sit down, love on yourself. Let yourself feel those hard, uncomfortable emotions and take ’em to safe people. You know, my hubby is the one I run to. I’m like, oh my gosh. I have to tell you my epic fail. He’s the one that will help me hug myself.

[29:05] Dr. Heather Penny: I have a couple other close friends in my l my life that I’m like, I just need to tell you how awful I feel. They help hug me. This happened to me, oh my gosh. Last month. I have too many fail stories, Jim, but I accidentally sent a voice memo to my whole team versus it should have gone to one person and it had some sensitive content in it.

[29:25] Dr. Heather Penny: Yeah. All of us have done this at some point. I’ve heard the horror stories. I kind of was like, oh, I’ve never done that. Oh my gosh, I’ve done that and I could feel the shame spiral. And I’m trying to think, what did I say? What did I say? And I’m like, I said that. Oh my gosh. I said that, I said that. And my BP called me going head, do you know what happened?

[29:43] Dr. Heather Penny: Did you realize? I’m like, no. I, I, I, I didn’t realize anything that happened. So she’s trying to tell me. And then what she did was so beautiful to me. She just stayed in it with me and said, it’s okay. Stay in it. It’s okay. It wasn’t that bad. You can say this. You can say that. And she helped me pull out that shame spiral.

[30:02] Dr. Heather Penny: That’s the heart space. And I had to, as a company owner, I had to deal with it. In that moment, the head space is okay. Once I dealt with the shame, it’s okay, we all make mistakes. I’m parenting myself through it. I’m coaching myself through whatever term you wanna use. It’s what I would say to my kids, what it say to my clients, right?

[30:21] Dr. Heather Penny: I’m doing that to myself. She’s doing that with me, and then I’m, my head space is, okay, what’s the right thing to. Do not avoid this, Heather. Just don’t avoid it. As much as I wanted to run into my bed and hide it in the covers and never come out, I picked up the phone and called the person I had offended and I just said, I’m here to call and I’m here to own this, and I’m here to apologize.

[30:42] Dr. Heather Penny: But more importantly, I’m here to explain why I said what I said, because I owe that to you and this was not the way I wanna do hear the information. But moving forward, here’s the information that is important for you to hear. What happened from that Jim? It’s a best case scenario where we became closer for that as a team.

[31:01] Dr. Heather Penny: The working relationships came much tighter, and what happened to is the level of productivity that I needed to get results from. It did go up. It raised, so I wouldn’t call this a huge epic fail. I would say it was a super uncomfortable, it was terrible for me to go through. I wouldn’t wish on anybody, but how I used that for my advantage and for everyone’s personal growth and their.

[31:25] Dr. Heather Penny: That’s what counts and letting go of that shame space, that’s the heart piece. You gotta care for that immediately. Then the headspace can take over and can help you do what you need to do and stay fully present to that moment. Apologize where you need to, but say your truth where you need to as well.

[31:41] That’s

[31:41] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: a great success through failure story. Heather, thank you for sharing. For the listeners who. Embracing this idea of three Cs, clarity, confidence, courage. What’s an action item? Something that they can do in the next 24 or 48 hours to start really embracing this and living out the three Cs. Honestly,

[32:02] Dr. Heather Penny: I’d say get my book, you know, get on Amazon and get my book and within seconds you can listen to it in the audio.

[32:09] Dr. Heather Penny: So if you really wanna do that, start there. You’ll hear my voice. I read the book. I wrote it in a way that says, you can do this, and I’m here with you. And here’s six chapters on clarity, six chapters on confidence, six chapters on courage. I wrote it like a manual, so that would be my first recommendation.

[32:27] Dr. Heather Penny: My second recommendation outside of purchasing any amount of resources would be believe that you can do this yourself. Like I said, many of us live as a victim of our own lives. My number one message I wanna give everyone is this sense of you have the clarity within you have the confidence within, you have the courage within, you have it’s all within you.

[32:51] Dr. Heather Penny: We just gotta figure out how to slow down and access it. So if you want to just stop and drop right now, if you’re listening to this podcast, just push pause and ask yourself, what is resume with me in this talk? What is it that I am getting my clarity on? Right? You can stop and do that right now for yourself.

[33:11] Dr. Heather Penny: Then you can move right into, okay, what’s my belief around this? So it’s my confidence around this. Identify your false belief and true belief. Then you can move right into your courage. What action step do I want to take? I can now do clarity, confidence, courage within seconds. I’m doing it all the time.

[33:26] Dr. Heather Penny: So I wanna encourage you all that. You can do that. Just press pause, and you can do this within a minute. You’ll get your clarity, you’ll get your confidence, you’ll get. You know, what’s your confidence? Your beliefs are, you know what beliefs are holding you back. Say it out loud. Then have the courage to replace it with a true belief.

[33:43] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Heather, excellent advice, excellent wisdom. For the listeners who want to find you, follow you, buy your books, et cetera, where do they do that?

[33:50] Dr. Heather Penny: Best place to do is just start on my website, heather penny.com. I give out tons of free resource. I’ve got a podcast, Jim, I want you on Mic podcast. We’ll talk about that after the show.

[34:04] Dr. Heather Penny: I’ve got a podcast. I’ve got a weekly blog just to give you all sorts of free resources, and I’ve got tons of articles that I’m writing. It’s all on my web, so all of that is on my website. That’s free. I also have an e-course that’s coming out in the next couple months. I’m reading, writing my fourth book now called Grace Space, and that’ll be available in a couple months.

[34:24] Dr. Heather Penny: If you sign up for my email blog, you’ll get all the latest information of where I’m speaking, where I’m teaching at the latest coaching, services that I’m offering, how you can be involved with that. And if you want any kind of level of connection with me, you can just start with my website and I’ll keep you abreast of all that in my weekly emails.

[34:42] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Excellent. Heather, thank you so much for making time to come on the show.

[34:46] Dr. Heather Penny: Thanks for having me, Jim. It’s been fun. Likewise.

[34:51] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Thanks for listening. If you want to apply these principles into your life, let’s talk. You can see the limited spaces that are open on my calendar jimharshawjr.com/apply, where you can sign up for a free one-time coaching call directly with me.

[35:06] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And don’t forget to grab your action plan. Just go to jimharshawjr.com/action. And lastly, iTunes tends to suggest podcasts with more ratings and reviews more. You would totally make my day if you give me a rating and review. Those go a long way in helping me grow the podcast audience. Just open up your podcast app.

[35:27] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: If you have an iPhone, do a search for success through failure, select it, and then scroll the whole way to the bottom where you can leave the podcast a rating and review. Now, I hope this isn’t just another podcast episode for you. I hope you take action on what you learned here today. Good luck and thanks for listening.

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