00:02

Welcome to choose cells radio. I am so beyond excited for today’s interview. And if you have ever struggled with feeling like no matter what you do, it’s not enough or looking maybe looking like you have it all together on the outside, but on the inside feeling like you have no idea what you’re doing or you’re not happy with where you are or you’re struggling with confidence. Today’s interview is going to be transformational for you. And so my guest today is Nicole Khalil, she’s the author of validation is for parking, which is the best book title ever. she transitioned from being a fortune 100 C suite executive to become a speaker, the host of this is woman’s work podcast and the incredible author of this book. She’s also known as the confidence Sherpa, which I love, and she’s helped 1000s of women reclaim their confidence so they can live authentically, both personally and professionally. Nicole, welcome to she sells radio, we are so so glad to have you.

01:03

I am so happy to be here. Thank you. That was a fun intro. When somebody says transformational I’m like, oh, man, I hope I can live up to that.

01:13

Well, that’s always like when I have incredible guests like you on the show where your background is so broad, and you’ve done so many things. It’s like, how do I condense it. So we have the time to actually get into the interview right and let women learn from you and listen to you. But you know, I have to tell you, so I’ve been reading your book. And I’ll just for those who are watching on YouTube validation is for parking, I’ve been reading it. And as I read your backstory, I’m like, This is me, like this was my story, I can relate so much. And so I know that our listeners, many of them will probably be able to relate as well. So if someone is not yet familiar with kind of your personal backstory, and what led you to write this book, can you just share, like the high level journey that you went through that got you here?

01:55

Yeah, absolutely. So I started the book with this moment, or I’m standing in this massive conference room after the announcement of my promotion to Chief Development Officer, cio C suite at a fortune 100 finance company, very male dominated industry. And basically, from the outside looking in, I look the part of the successful, independent, confident woman on the rise racking up professional successes. And I had somebody leaned over in that moment, say, I wish I had your confidence. And everything inside me like broke, I just, I mean, I kept it together, because that’s what my whole life was, at that point is how it looked from the outside looking in. But on the inside, I was very lonely. I had an above average spending problem to go with my above average income. I was questioning why I’d gotten this promotion, if I could do the new job would people respect me as a leader, I, you know, had dated every wrong guy back to back to back. I mean, it just was a mess. I Excuse me, I compare it to an ideal house from the outside. But when you walk in, it’s down to the studs, the frickin heat won’t work. You know, the there’s potential fire Damn, I it was just one of those situations where everything looks good from the outside looking in and didn’t feel at all that way on the inside. I can still really relate. Yeah, in that really dark moment I became it became clear to me that I didn’t know what confidence was. But I was certain I didn’t have any of it. And it became a personal quest to figure out how to get more confidence. I mean, I was surrounded by people telling me to be confident, but nobody told me how to become like I’m a how to person give me some step by steps. And then once I started figuring it out for myself, as so many of us do, I wanted to share what I was learning. Because in beginning to work with more and more women, I began to recognize that I was not the only person feeling this way that everybody else was as confused as I was about what confidence is and how you build it. And so became the my pain became my purpose, as is the case for so many of us. So that’s what led me to get the information and test things out in my life. And then and then want to put it in book format so

04:19

other people could do the same. Yeah, well, you know, when I think about the women in our community, and certainly, you know, many of them are in our coaching programs that I know them and I work with them intimately. I don’t know all of our listeners, but I’m just guessing because they’re in the community, they can probably very much relate where it’s like none of us has a problem with working hard. None of us has a problem with doing the masculine hustle and grind. That’s what we’ve been taught in terms of success and how to achieve our results. And I think for most women we reach a point even though it may look different, but it’s a similar point where you’re kind of looking around and you’re like, is this all there is right and I love being analogy of the house that you shared, I could completely relate that you had a similar moment. In my 20s, you talk about this thing in the book called The confidence con, I would love if you could share what that is for our listeners. Yeah, so

05:13

I obviously a little bit of a play on words, the confidence con, right. But ultimately, what I’m talking about is these mixed and false messages we’re all getting everywhere we look about what confidence is and how you build it. So the messages we receive mostly tell us that confidence is something that we can buy, or that is related to achieving something or some sort of result. So I call it this false equation, it goes like this, if x happens, or if I get x, then I’ll feel confident. And it has us believing that our confidence is somewhere out there, like something or someone is holding on to it. And it’s like some weird game of Where’s Waldo where we have to both find them, and get them to give it to us. And it just doesn’t work, you know, if, if x happens, or if I get x, and I’ll feel confident, we’ve all experienced this, what happens when we get x and x can be a promotion, a certain level of income, a particular client, certain number on the scale, fitting into a certain size, getting a certain compliment, or certain form of validation. Having perfectly behaved children, I mean, you fill in the blank, right, we all have this x, that we think if we get there, then we’ll feel confident. What ultimately ends up happening is we get x we feel happy temporarily, like we’re excited for a period of time or for a moment. And then we need more of x. So for me, it was promotions, if I get this promotion, then I’ll feel confident I’d get the promotion, I’d feel happy temporarily. And then it was like Oh, but if I get that next one, then I’ll really know. Right? Or, you know, think about it as followers on social media. If I get 50,000 followers, and I feel confident, you get 50, and then all of a sudden, it’s 100. And so you end up becoming addicted to x. And that is the exact opposite of what confidence is, or how you build it. And so it’s confusing, because, you know, we get those messages and advertising on social media, in our professional lives, that it you know, it is going to come to us by some external thing. And it can be really confusing. Oh, my

07:29

gosh, absolutely. Absolutely. And so is that why that’s why it’s never enough, right? That’s what I hear you say, That’s why no matter what, because it’s still external. Right? still seeking it external. That’s

07:40

why it looks good to other people, but it doesn’t feel good. to That’s how, for me, it’s the best, it’s the most obvious way I know, if I’ve fallen into the confidence con, it’s that it looks good from the outside or that, you know, I’ve checked a box, but the the emotion and the feeling and the happiness and the trust and all the things that are supposed to come along with it. They don’t.

08:07

Gosh, you know, it’s you talk about this in the book, too, is the kind of the misconception that I think, especially for us as women, we have this belief that I’ll be confident when I’m perfect in this area. And it was so interesting, as I was reading that the other day, you know, I could even see, I feel like I’ve grown a ton in this area, I’ve kind of I’ve done a lot of shifting from outer focus into doing the inner work. But even I could see how in some of the things I do now, where as the CEO of my company, and you can no doubt probably relate to this, where it’s like there’s these things that need to happen every day, every week, every month for the company to run. And I’ll notice that like if they haven’t all been done, and some are more important than others. But if they haven’t all been done there can still kind of be that like, that feeling of oh my gosh, like, Am I okay, like until it’s perfect until it’s every box is checked. I can’t rest. And that’s not like is that kind of what we’re talking about here too. It’s just interesting.

09:08

I mean, perfection takes on so many forms, and so many aspects of our lives. And no matter what perfection is always only ever going to be the enemy of confidence. So there’s no, you don’t arrive to confidence via the perfectionism highway. Let’s just say it like that. And yes, I can I have and we’ll experience everything that you just talked about. I call myself a recovering perfectionist. And the reason I say that is because when I get really busy or when things get really tough, I have a tendency to still default to these old perfectionist tendencies. So you know, as you might imagine, launching a book is massively overwhelming and way harder than I thought it was going to be. And I can’t tell you how often now that I look back, I defaulted. Have that perfectionist tendency to the all the boxes needed to be checked, all the i’s needed to be dotted, all the T’s needed to be crossed and everything like, I, it’s amazing how quickly it happens and, and now recognizing that when I do that, I can look at it and go, Oh my gosh, I care more about how it looks than how it is. I think if I can control everything, then everything will be okay. And then if confidence is about trust, which is what I would submit to you in the book, that confidence is when we trust ourselves firmly and boldly. We have the opportunity to trust in those gray areas and not default to being a control freak or not default to everything needed to look a certain way or not default to everything needed to be perfect, can be real challenging.

10:52

You know, so when I, cuz you said so much there that was really important. I think one of the biggest things that like I just want to sit and kind of like marinate, and as you said, Perfection is the enemy of confidence. I think that’s what you said. Yeah. Yeah. Which is really, really powerful to think about. But you said something else there that I wanted to talk about in this interview, which is you talked about trusting yourself is the kind of the key to confidence. And I smiled when I opened up the book and read that because that’s like when I think about the core message of what I aim to impart with this podcast and with my clients that it is that literally that line, trust yourself. That’s to me, though, the key to it? Well, is what does that look like in real life? Like, I’m really curious, because you just gave such a great example of with the podcast. And thank you for sharing that too, because it’s so helpful for someone to hear. Okay, like she wrote the book, and she still hasn’t come up? Yeah. Oh, yeah. If I could just check. It’s almost like this false sense of safety, right? If I can check these boxes and cross the t’s and dot the i’s, then I’ll be okay. But it’s still surface level. But then the core like, where our confidence really comes from is trusting ourselves. Can you give some examples of what that looks like in real life? And how, like, what the difference would be for someone? Yeah, so

12:12

I’ll frame it in, in book launch, since I just brought that up. And by the way, I don’t think that it looks any one way for all of us all the time, right? Like, however it feels and looks like for you to trust yourself is good. And I would argue that it’s most impactful during the hard times, it’s easy to trust ourselves, when everything is going according to plan when we’re getting the results when we’re winning, right. It’s when things are hard or chaotic or overwhelming. Or we’re getting those mixed messages where it can be much more challenging, and therefore much more rewarding to choose to trust ourselves. So I’ll give you the example. You know, book launch was very hard for me. And so a few things that I kept going back to as far as trusting myself first, trusting that I was meant to write this book, trusting that is the very best book that I could write, at this time in my life giving, given my experience the information available to me what I’ve tested out and what I know, trusting that yes, as I grow and evolve, I’m probably going to be like, Oh, I wish I would have wrote that. Or hey, you know, this might be something else or I, I could write better now, that’s just part of life. But I know I trusted that I did the best I could in this space, trusting that my book isn’t for everyone, and that it will reach the right people at the right time that need and want this message. And that there are some people who aren’t going to like it. And that’s okay. I’m trusting that I will be okay. And I’ll still know that I was supposed to write this book, even in the face of one star reviews or no reviews. Trusting that I did the right thing, regardless of the result is it relates to sales, or obviously I have goals, but I really had to hold on to that trust of I did the best I could. And good enough was good enough. And I was meant to do this. I know that somewhere deep down. And all the other stuff is learning opportunity, growth opportunity. One door open so others are closer so others can open. Who knows there’s so many things that could happen from here. But I had to hold on in the face of all of the other stuff to that trust. No matter what’s going on around me. I

14:39

think we I’m curious to get your perspective. I’ll share kind of how I look at it. I want to hear if you have a different perspective or not. My personal belief is we come into the world trusting ourselves. Yeah. And over time that’s eroded. What do you think happens? Like how does that start to happen maybe specifically to women’s journey

14:59

and So glad you said that because I agree completely. And it’s really hard to find like factual evidence of that, because we can’t talk to babies about whether or not they trust themselves. But I firmly believe it’s not whether or not you have confidence. It’s whether or not you’re connected to it. Right? So I think that we all have a trust inner knowing an inner voice that lives inside of us. And it’s just how much and how well, are we listening? How connected are we? And so to your question, why are we getting separated from our trust, what’s chipping away at it, what’s doing damage, and there’s so many things. And I’m going to say that there are definitely things that are happening to all of us, but those of us that identify as, as women, we have different experiences and their nuances as to what’s separating us. And so a few things. Number one, we as young girls are socialized to believe that, you know, we should be pleasing to others, we should be polite, and careful, and kind and sweet, and nurturing, and all of those things, nothing wrong with any of those things. But anytime we want or feel anything that’s different. Oftentimes, we’re made to feel wrong. So you know, if I come into the house dirty, after a rough and tumbling out in the backyard, I might get treated differently than if a young boy does that. And then somehow I get the message, that I did something wrong, and we lose trust in ourselves. society, social media, advertising tells us over and over and over again, that our value is in being pleasing to others, right, and how we look how we can take care of how we can support. And anytime we don’t do that, we it’s the shoulds. And the should it’s, I would also submit to we’re not allowed the full spectrum of our emotions, nobody of any gender is that’s one of the problems with gender, gender stereotypes, is it limits our available emotion. So men often aren’t allowed the soft emotions like sadness, empathy. And I say soft, even though I know they’re very powerful emotions. But we as women aren’t allowed those harder emotions, like anger or frustration. And so when we demonstrate those, again, we often get sent the message that it’s wrong. And it’s hard to trust yourself, if you are feeling something authentically, but then are being told that it’s wrong, and then you stuff it down. It severs it, it damages a little bit of the trust that we have in ourselves, we’re saying that our authentic feelings don’t have value, or they don’t matter or that they aren’t. Right, right. And I, there’s so many things I could go on for days. But there’s a lot. And we see this. If you look at it from a research research perspective, somewhere between ages seven and nine, we see the separation of confidence between young girls and young boys. And it just gets further and further apart and the teenage years and the 20s 30s. It’s not until we’re in our 50s, where we come back together. And then in our 60s, women actually have more confidence than their male counterparts. And I think part of that is because as it men approach retirement in their 60s, so much of their identity, so much of their trust in themselves, is aligned with career, their identity is so wrapped up in what they do. And so that actually, it can be a really challenging time. So the evidence is supporting this fact that as we get into our working years, and I know so many of your listeners are in sales or entrepreneurs. The reality is, this is not universally true. But generally women are entering these working years and these business building years and these entrepreneurial years with less confidence than their male counterparts. And the last thing I want to say is that, you know, there are sales tactics, but nothing sells more than confidence. People trust people who trust themselves. So I would again,

19:25

say that again, that what you just said is so important. Yeah, yeah.

19:29

People trust people who trust themselves. Right. The evidence shows us to again, this is research based. If given the choice to follow two leaders, people always choose the more confident leader, even over the more competent leader. Which, by the way, I don’t think it should be that way. We should definitely trust the most competent person in the room. Right? But the reality is people trust people who trust themselves. And so we as women, We have a tendency to over rotate on competence, right? If I if I just have enough experience, if I just have enough knowledge, if I just have enough degrees or research or whatever, then I’ll, I’ll be able to do it. Yeah. The reality is people make decisions follow people based on confidence over competence, even though I don’t agree that that should be how it is. It just is how it is.

20:25

Yeah. Gosh, that’s, it’s so fascinating. And what you said about for women, we don’t typically start to kind of come back to that confidence and skills until our 50s. That’s a big gap. Huge. That’s a big gap. You know, and I think about on my own, just kind of reflecting on my own journey, as you said that it was like, it was probably a, you know, I’m certain I’m still like growing in confidence and growing on that journey. But there’s probably a good 1520 year gap, right? No, I really didn’t trust myself, and just all the different manifestations of that from very similar to your story, unhealthy relationships, eating disorder, unhealthy habits, like all of that, obviously, someone if they want to, like really see the path and the journey back to confidence through trusting themselves, they need to buy the book and read it. Well, we’ll tell them where to where to get the book in a moment. But what are what can we start to do if we’re noticed, if someone is listening, and they’re like, I realized I truly have been seeking validation in all areas outside of myself, I don’t even maybe know what it would look like to trust myself. Yeah. How do we start to go back to reconnect with ourselves in that way?

21:39

Yeah, so I give five confidence builders in the book. And those are action, action builds confidence, one foot in front of the other towards what matters, you know, we can’t think hope our fingers and toes are across our way into trusting ourselves. The Act are, and I don’t mean act as like, fake it till you make it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean, just getting into action, doing something towards what matters. Failure, which is surprising for a lot of us, but getting messy, making mistakes, failing, having fears facing your doubts, all of those things serve to build our confidence. So that’s why perfectionism is really chipping away at it, it doesn’t allow any space for those things. Giving yourself grace, the way we talk to ourselves matters. There’s a meme that says you spend the bulk of your life inside of your own mind, you might as well make it a nice place to be. And I love that. And that’s what we’re talking about here. Like, talk to yourself the way you would someone you love. Such a huge confidence builder.

22:44

The fourth one actually pause just super quick on that one before we go into the fourth? Because I think that one, that one was transformational for me. And it’s still an area where I noticed there’s so much room for improvement. What how do we start to we just kind of listened to our thoughts we write down like how do we start to get aware of how we’re talking to ourselves and shift that because that to me, that one is really really I mean, they’re all important. Just in my own lived experience. That one made a huge difference in terms of results.

23:13

Yeah, I started joke about this, we gotta give ourselves Grace about giving ourselves grace, like the reality is, we have spent however many years thinking the way that we do and our brain goes mostly to the negative, right. And we’ve talked to ourselves the way that we’ve talked to ourselves up to this point. So to think that any one exercise is going to change it in a day or in a week. Yeah, we got to give ourselves grace as we’re giving ourselves grace. There are lots of ways to do this, of course, mantras and affirmations. I have just this when a negative thought comes up in my head or what I call it head trash. When that kicks up, for me, I just say Gentle, gentle, gentle and I just say it over and over as a reminder to be gentle with myself in the same way I would my best friend or my spouse or my daughter, and then you know, I can kind of figure out how I want to navigate out in the book I give a three step process. The first is to name it. To call it what it is, this is my inner critic or this isn’t a negative thought or this is head trash. The reason I think that’s so important is because we interact with our negative thoughts as if they’re truth as if they’re fact based and they’re not. If it’s Think about it like this, if you wouldn’t say what you’re saying yourself to someone you love than it is head trash, your inner knowing or your you know, inner voice may challenge you it may tell you things you don’t necessarily want to hear but always do it in a loving way. In the same way you would somebody you love right? And so if it’s mean i If Perfection is the enemy of contract confidence, then head trash is the bully Have confidence. And so if, yeah, if you’re saying mean things to yourself, just call it what it is name it, that’s head trash, or that’s my inner critic. Yeah. Um, the second thing you want to do is what I call sorted, it’s decide what you want to do with it. Is this something that can be recycled or brought back for some other purpose? Is this something that can be composted? Can it be used for your growth and development? Or is this just straight trash that needs to be thrown away, never to be seen or thought of again. And then the third step is to replace it. Replace what you’re telling yourself with something you would actually say to somebody that you love. And again, you know, this can be a challenge, this could be something you maybe don’t really want to hear. But if it’s coming from a place of love, you can replace it with something more kind more productive, more empowered than what you were telling yourself in the first place.

25:59

That’s a helpful distinction. That’s such a helpful distinction. But what I hear you say is, look for the tone of how it’s coming across. Yes. And that helps you decipher Is this really my hire my highest and best thought and highest and best self communicating to me? Or is this the head trash? So yeah, thanks for pausing on that one. So I think that one is like we could we could have a whole separate interview about that one, right. But

26:22

oh, my gosh, yeah. And it is running rampant in our brains all the time, especially as women, I know, men experienced this just not quite at that highest level that we as women are, and not in so many aspects of our life.

26:38

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I agree. I agree. So you were you were in the middle of Sure. You just hear the third and then the two.

26:45

So the fourth confidence builder is choosing confidence. And I know that sounds like a little like, Wait, what the distinction I want to make here is that confidence is a choice, not just a feeling. A lot of us think confidence is either something we feel, or we don’t feel or some thing you know, we’re born with are born without or like, Hey, I woke up feeling confident this morning, or I didn’t. And the reality is, confidence is a choice, because confidence is trusting yourself, you can choose to do that literally anytime you want. Now, the opportunity here is to recognize that we are doing this far more frequently in our lives. And we’re giving ourselves credit for Think about if you had a really crappy meeting with a potential client or something like that, and you have a next meeting on your calendar, most of us figure out how to dust ourselves off and get back into action and show up as our best self at the next meeting. This is an unconscious way of choosing confidence. Or if you have children, and you had a crap day, and you’re going to pick them up at school, what do we do, somehow we show up as the better version, the best version of ourselves. And so we are doing this, the opportunity is to be aware that we’re doing it and to choose to do it more and to continue to practice it. And to choose confidence in the great thing about it is the feeling will catch up eventually. So I mentioned earlier, this, fake it till you make it not a big fan of that expression anymore. I say choose it until you become it. Choose confidence, second by second moment by moment, day by day, until the feeling arrives. And then the fifth confidence builder is is all the things that you can do to build internal trust. So I would just invite you to think about how you build trust with people in your life. How do you build a trust with the people use you do trust? And how do they build it with you, and then turn that inward. So I’ll give some examples that are pretty universal. But I think this might be a little bit different for each of us. Keeping our commitments is a great way to build trust, we have a tendency to keep the commitments we make to other people at a much higher level than the ones that we keep for ourselves. And as it relates to building your own trust in yourself, I would submit to you that the commitments you make to yourself are even more important. So whatever that is, if you commit to yourself to eat healthy or to exercise, or to take time for self care, or to get a full night’s sleep or to chase that dream or take that risk, you got it deliver on it because anytime we don’t keep our commitments as is true with anybody in life, when they don’t can we chip away at our trust? Now? This is not about perfection. Nobody keeps 100% of their commitments 100% of the time, but we must we must do a better job and not over committing can be really helpful here too.

29:42

Oh my Yeah, which probably ties in with the perfectionism piece as well. Right so getting really clear on what’s actually important. Oh my life yeah. Oh, this is Oh my gosh, Nicole, I love your message. Like I said when we kicked off the intro like I just I cannot encourage you enough that everyone go and and get the book validation is for parking. And I just I, it’s not many books these days that I read, I’m like, Oh my gosh, this is 100% my life. I mean, there’s obviously details that are different, but so relate, I so relate to your journey I so appreciate how you’re helping all of us understand what’s really at the core of, of the insecurities that we may face or the lack of competence and how to shift that. So two final questions. One, Where can someone go to connect with you and to get the book and I’ll pull it

30:35

up? Yeah. I mean, that looks like thank you. Yeah, the best place is my website, Nicole coyle.com. I always say if you want to follow me professionally, go to LinkedIn at Nicole Coyle. If you want to follow me with cursing.

30:50

First thing in the bucket. It’s great. I love it. It is a little salty.

30:54

person isn’t your jam that I would say either don’t read it or go for the message and don’t hate the messenger. But yeah, of course, as is true for all of us, there’s so many ways to find me today, but Amazon has the book, Barnes and Noble all that all the places, right? Yeah.

31:15

Yeah. And it’s a fun read too. So I Yeah, it’s fun. It’s empowering. It’s enlightening. And then, you know, final question. So you have a daughter, right? And how will help your daughter? No, she just turned nine, nine? What is the number one message that you aim to impart to her every day?

31:35

Oh, gosh. So you know, there’s so many things. And I always am thinking about it from the lens of wanting to raise a confident girl and a confident young woman and a confident professional, right. Like, I think as parents, we think about every possible thing. I would if I had to narrow it down to one, the one thing I wanted her to know is that she does not need to do anything to earn my love. That is given freely. And without any caveat or whatever. I think you might have gotten this in the book, I had this idea that I needed to prove myself that I needed to be good enough, or perfect enough or look a certain way in order to be worthy of love. And so I’m trying really hard to send the message in every way I can, that she does not need to perform or achieve or anything. Love is just there. And so one of the tactics I do is instead of asking how much does mommy love, you are saying I love you to the moon back. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I just wanted to reframe it. I asked, When does mommy love you? And the response is all the time. And then we play with it. What about when mommy’s working? Yes, she loves me that and what about when I’m traveling? Yes. What about when I’m frustrated? Yes. Because the answer is always yes. When does mommy love you all the time, like every second of every day without fail. And so I just I’m trying to hammer that message in that when we love people in that way. Nothing needs to be performed or proved or achieved or any of that. So hopefully she doesn’t feel the need the need to do that at such a high level. Or at least how I did.

33:27

Yeah, no, that’s That’s so good. That’s so good. And that actually gave me a different way of thinking about how I talked to my son. So thank you for that. That’s my that’s beautiful. Nicole, thank you so much for this time for your work for what you’re putting out into the world. It’s it really, really is important and it’s impacting tons of lives. So thank you so much again for your time today. Thank you

33:51

for having me. I appreciate it. I wish everybody had that like a little encourager, right when you hear something like that it makes all the difference. So thank you.

33:59

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And to you my listener go connect with Nicole get her book validation is for parking, I promise you you will be so glad that you did. Thank you as always for tuning in to she sells radio and I’ll see you on our next episode. Bye for now.