23. Dominate the voice of doubt
A fantastic dose of motivation! Kate Maree O'Brien, the founder of Australasia's largest women's leadership and empowerment event, shares her experiences with crippling anxiety and implores us to switch on our inner leader and step into the life we really want.
Transcript
Sally: Do you ever doubt yourself? Not feel ready to go after what you really want? Or see the amazing things other people are doing and think, 'Oh, that'll never be me.' Yes, I have these thoughts. Listen in. By the end of this podcast, you're going to dominate that voice of doubt.
I'm Sally Prosser. You're listening to That Voice Podcast. No matter who you are or what you do, your voice matters and unless you've sworn a lifetime vow of silence, this is the podcast for you.
My guest today is the amazing Kate Maree O'Brien. She's all about empowering women to crack open their capacity, own their flavor, and my favorite turn of phrase - strap on a big one and do your thing. Kate's a Leadership Coach and creator of Australasia's largest women's leadership and empowerment event. You may have heard of it, it's called SHE. Kate's coming to us from beautiful Bali. Welcome to That Voice Podcast.
Kate: Oh, thank you so much for having me here. It's a pleasure.
Sally: Great to have you. So Kate Maree O'Brien. The very first question is always the same on this podcast. Could you do your job if you lost your voice?
Kate: No, not really. Not really. I would have to get very creative and I'd have to do it through writing format, but using my voice is every part of what I'm up to.
Sally: So what are the main reasons people come to you to work with you?
Kate: People come to work with me because they want to have a breakthrough in how they're showing up in their world and get a breakthrough in results. And I call it leadership, but when I say leadership, a lot of times people would think of executive type leadership. The leadership that I'm speaking of is the everyday person who switches on the inner leadership and basically they become the person who's gonna alter the trajectory of where they are hitting in their life.
Sally: Yeah, I like that 'turning on the inner leadership' because I think there are a lot of people who think that just because they're not a leader in their title, therefore they're not a leader.
Kate: Yes, when I first heard the word leadership in relation to myself, I virtually had an allergic reaction. I was like 'there is now way I'm a leader' because I had an idea in my head of what I thought leaders were and I had to recreate what the conversation around leadership is for me as a person and develop intentionally a new relationship with the context of being a leader so that then I could step into it for myself because here's what I see leadership affects - leadership is the key thing that's had us transform our marriage. If leadership wasn't present within our marriage, our marriage would be the marriage it used to be. It would not be the great marriage that we have now. Leadership had to be present for us to change our marriage. Leadership has to be present for me to move my companies forward. Leadership had to be present to get to where I am as a woman today, right? So none of this is to do with anything executive. And also I've worked in executive positions, but the leadership that I'm speaking of is when we're talking about leadership, it's the thing that will alter our future.
Sally: Yeah Kate I love that. So do you find that that inner leadership that you're trying to turn is closely related to confidence?
Kate: A hundred percent a hundred percent but I also think that we don't start off confident that the confidence only comes the more we require ourselves to step into our leadership - even though we are shit scared. As you are listening to this podcast, whoever you are listening to this podcast, you know that next step of what you know that you would actually really want to step into. For me, cause I've had a lot of self doubt, even more so of just self doubt. I've had a lot of anxiety in my life, a lot of even social anxiety where I really, not just second-guessed myself, but felt crippled with the level of intensity of it all. I've done so much work on myself over the last 15 years, 15 years in, I'm an NLP trainer. I've done all sorts like I've done every fricking modality on me. Guess what? Drum roll please. I still feel self doubt. The thing is that the self doubt doesn't go away. The thing that has made the most use to me is I finally stopped trying to get rid of it. I don't care if I'm doubting myself. I don't care if I feel scared before I step on stage or before I get on some kind of training that's perhaps a little bit new to me because I realize that us as humans, we're always going to feel some level of fear or self-doubt before we take that next leap.
That's just part of what happens and so therefore - congratulations, if you're feeling that that means that you're about to step into your next arena. It's called growth, so it gets to become something that we go, 'yeah, look at me. I'm proud of myself cause I'm doing it anyway even though I feel scared.' Instead of, 'Oh my God, this fear means something about me as a person and my capacity. Because the issue was is that when we listen to the story of fear, we start making extra stories on top of that and we start making extra stories on top of that that say, 'Oh, because I'm feeling afraid. It means that I'm not ready. It means that I'm not good enough' and all of this stuff and it's not the fear that takes us off the court. It's the stories we tell ourselves about the fear.
Sally: Oh Kate. Amazing. Like such an important message. The comparison trap is part of this as well. And I guess I've, this said to me a little bit as well is 'Sally or you know Kate, you're so confident all the time. How do you just do that?' And so it's really important as you say, to say that it's not like that all the time.
Kate: Yup. Amen.
Sally: Take us through what it was like at the lowest of the low for you.
Kate: Oh Lord, the lowest of the low. I was so crippled with social anxiety. I couldn't hardly talk to people. I remember standing in the supermarket one day at the line at the checkout just to buy chewing gum and I was second-guessing my thought to buy this chewing gum because of the impact it was having. Just standing there knowing that in about two minutes time I'm going to have to talk to that woman on the other side.
I was virtually like verging on a panic attack cause I knew I had to talk to someone and then I would, you know, I got through it, got home and I lived in a garage. I lived in an old shed -, like I didn't even live in a house, close the door and I had this big bolt that I would just like lock this big garage door with. And then finally I was kind of safe from the world and from human beings and I would just, you know, go under the covers and just stay there for as long as what I could. It was, it was really bad. I had a drug addiction and I had an eating disorder. I had anorexia. I was not in a good way and back then I actually, like the way in which life occurred to me, Sally, is that I had ruined my life. It occurred to me like there was nothing else beyond this. I couldn't see anything beyond this.
And so, the only reason why I say that is I know we can feel trapped at points in our life and you know, I'm hoping that most people listening to this aren't to that extreme what I just described. But that's cool. If you're further along than what I was, you're further along than what I was. You can really get anywhere and I want anyone to listen to this, to hear that you can get anywhere from here. I'm pretty sure that it's a Wayne Dyer quote. It's certainly not mine, but it's the truth. But it only happens through deciding and knowing that there is possibility. There's something beyond this. Knowing that, and this is apart from me, Sally, the switch that flicked within myself was I'd hit rock bottom one night. I got so low that I was kind of facing my own death. And what came up for me in that moment was the thought in my head. 'I could have done something different.' And then I heard my dad's voice and my dad's voice said to me, my head, 'Kate, you could do anything with your life' and the pit in my stomach was like, 'fuck, I could have done anything and this is what I'm doing.' So in that moment, I chose, followed up with by prayer to help me get through the night. But I decided in that moment that I was going to do whatever it took to turn my life around and I was going to make sure that these experiences that I went through weren't just racked up to some shitty life experiences. I wanted to make some meaning out of it.
Sally: And you've certainly done that.
Kate: Thank you. And so the years after that, incrementally getting my life back on track, what I came to realize kind of more and more and more and deeper and deeper and deeper was that 'shit, those things that I went through, that actually wasn't a mistake.' Like, they weren't a mistake the reason that I have the experiences I've had has given me a unique perspective and that like knowing, and I remember one day like it just clicked like. 'Oh, I'm not a mistake. Oh, these experiences weren't a mistake. Woohoo! I'm here for something.'
Sally: Oh, what a breakthrough.
And what I find interesting with anxiety is when you're going through a panic attack or that moment that you described buying the chewing gum is you physically feel like you can't talk. How did your physical voice feel like through that time?
Kate: Non-existent.
Sally: And then on the flip side, once you got through it, did you feel like you could finally be heard?
Kate: Yeah, over time for sure. Over time. And I think the difference that made the difference for me is that over time what I realized is that none of it's about me anyway. When I was held back by the self doubt, I was always up in my head thinking about my own thinking versus being out here with the people that I'm speaking with. And that was the real difference over time. So you know, for example, now when I go to step onto a stage, the thing that I get present to is the people.
So yes, I've done all my preparation work, but a couple of hours beforehand what I'm getting present to. I know a lot of people centre themselves, I guess I do in a way, but what I'm present to is who is in the room? Who are the human beings? Who are the mums, the women, the sisters that are sitting in the audience and what are they experiencing? What are they going through that they're not talking about, that they feel scared about? So when I'm stepping up on stage, after I do that, I'm not stepping up on stage to do a good performance to get some brownie points so that people like me. When I am, and I have done it before, when I stepped on stage to deliver the best performance to get a standing ovation so that people like me, I'm constipated within myself because my focus is on me and delivering the best performance.
The only way I can describe it as I'm constipated. However, in reverse, if I am connected to the mum in the room, Sally down the back, Rachel up the front Pania over on the left. I step up on stage and I want to say what they need to hear and that gives me all of the freedom in the world to dance in the conversation that's required and to feel into what's required, which yes, even though I've got my preparation there, I can follow the energy and the narrative, the narrative that's showing up in the audience and the audience;s mind as I'm speaking.
Sally: Yeah, I love that. One of my favorite Ted Talks is 'The Art of Being Yourself' by Caroline McHugh and she's got a quote in there that says 'you're not the center of attention. The audience is the center of yours.'.
And so it's exactly what you're saying. As soon as you make the attention be out, it can be a great way to prepare. But speaking of preparing, what other things do you do? Like do you do any voice warm=-ups or drink anything in particular before you speak?
Kate: A ton of water, but that's about it. No I don't do voice warm-ups or anything. I move a lot. I tend to pace a little bit. That's what I find. I can't sit before a talk I'll stand and I'll kind of just pace a little bit and kind of get into my body. The thing that I ask myself in my head is - I ask two questions. I ask if there's anything that's within my system that I'm holding onto that I need to give up. And it may usually be along the lines of 'I need to give up trying to make this perfect' because sometimes that will creep in at some point. So I'm intentionally going to go, 'look, I'm just going to give up trying to make this perfect and I'm choosing that I can go wherever I need to go.' The second thing is who are they to me? Unless I consciously create that, then they're just going to be a sea of faces. Who they are to me is they are mothers and sisters. They are women who are living lives and they've got all sorts of stuff going on. They've been successful in some areas, but they are hurting perhaps in some other areas. And we know that because it's the nature of humans. And so that's what I'm speaking to. I'm speaking to the women who are amazing, but also they've got stuff going on. And then the second question is who am I to them? And I consciously create that. And then that's the key thing that I've done for years and it's one of the differences that makes a difference to me.
Sally: I love that.
So Kate, you've invented I guess is a good word for it - the SHE conference. Tell us a little bit about SHE and when the next one's coming up.
Kate: Yeah, absolutely. So SHE is Australasia's largest women's leadership and empowerment event and we've already spoken in this conversation what leadership is and isn't in this context. So it is a three day experience where women can come along to and over the three days the things that were I suppose in your way that have held you back as blocks. Usually the stuff that's been in your blind spot that you haven't been able to exit. That stuff shifts. Time and time again women say at the end of it - 'holy shit. That was like nothing I've ever experienced before.' And also we get the top celebrity speakers on our stages. The cool thing is like you know for example, Lorna Jane, she's created a $500 million company. Guess what she said to me up in the green room before she took the stage? She said, 'Kate, I feel nervous.' She's a business BEAST, this woman, and she was nervous because she'd been watching my Instagram and she saw the energy of the room. Oh my God it's basically like a, it's throbbing and she was like 'far out. It's like so intense in there' and I was like 'yeh it's so exciting' and she's like, 'I'm so nervous.'.
And then our next celebrity speaker, who was also a singer, singer / songwriter and speaker, massively famous, talked about how she was so nervous. This is Karise Eden by the way - the winner of The Voice. Now. She has got an amazing voice. She shared at SHE on stage that she thought that her voice was absolutely the worst voice cause it was too raspy. She didn't realize that it was the thing that she was rejecting about herself was the very thing that made her special.
Sally: Oh you hear that time and time again, don't you?
Kate: Yeah, exactly. And you know, that's for everyone. Often the thing that we're rejecting about ourselves is our unique superpower. I used to reject about myself that I'm a little bit rough around the edges. I'm articulate, but I'm also a little bit grungy. I thought that I had to polish those edge, no that's been part of my superpower. So, you know, on stage at SHE we had all of these extraordinary successful financially, fame wise, all sorts of things, women come along and they talk the truth.
Sally: Yeah, I love that. And it's on the Gold Coast, isn't it?
Kate: It's on the Gold Coast. Yes. And it'll be November this coming year.
Sally: Fantastic. For people who might not be able to get to the Gold Coast or might not want to wait that long or want to just get more of you. How can they work with you?
Kate: Absolutely. You can contact me through any of my socials at @katemareeobrien, Instagram and Facebook, but also can I give a like a training, a free training? Is that okay Sally?
Sally: Please do. That would be fantastic.
Kate: Cool, so there's a recording of the full training that I did at SHE on day two in 2019 and it's really freaking good if even if I do say so myself and you can have it for free by going to katemareeobrien.com/training.
Sally: Fantastic. Isn't that wonderful? I'll be logging onto that myself. Kate, thank you so much for chatting to That Voice Podcast.
Kate: Thanks so much for having me, Sally.
Sally: Wow. How are you feeling after that? Kate is such a powerhouse.
Now I have some exciting news I'd like to share with you. I have just opened the doors to my Six Week Voice Makeover. It's 100% online. So whereever you're listening from, you can sign up. And over the six weeks I'll share with you heaps of strategies to improve your speaking anywhere you use your voice. So from one person over coffee to a thousand people at a conference. And what I'd love you to do now is head to www.sallyprosser.com.au and right there on the homepage you'll see a button that leads you to all the info. I would love to have you onboard.
Now next week I'm getting back to good old-fashioned voice and presentation training to share with you my top tips for avoiding and dealing with stage fright.
Thanks for listening to That Voice Podcast. All the eps and full transcripts are at www.thatvoicepodcast.com.