Nancy Levin Interview Transcript
Nancy Rush:
Welcome, Nancy. I'm so excited and glad to have you here. Thank you for being here. Let me introduce you to everybody by reading your bio.
Nancy is a certified master coach, podcast host, and best-selling author of several transformative books. Fantastic, by the way—I enjoyed all of them. Formerly the event director at Hay House for over a decade, she is now the founder of Levin Life Coach Academy. Through her signature coaching, training, and certification programs, Nancy empowers both aspiring and established coaches to build sustainable, purpose-driven businesses that change lives, including their own. I really love that last part. I think that's so amazing.
So welcome. I want to dive into our amazing topic, which is talking about the boundaries that are the bridge between self-worth and net worth. Can you kind of unpack that and get us rolling?
Nancy Levin:
Yes, and thanks so much for having me here. So the way I talk about boundaries is that they are our limits. Our boundaries are limits around what we will or will not do, will or will not tolerate, and will or will not accept. And boundaries are ultimately very personal, and my boundaries are between me and me, even if they involve other people.
So a little bit of the twist here for me on boundaries is that if my boundaries are being crossed, I'm the one crossing them. So it's no one else's responsibility to uphold my boundaries or even honor or respect them. It's mine.
And so the intersection here around self-worth and net worth and boundaries is that in order to be able to set and hold the boundaries—the non-negotiable limits that are most important for me and that are going to support me in making myself a priority—I need to have a strong sense of self-worth.
Now, there is a very strong connection between self-worth and net worth as well because we tend to get into that zero-sum thinking around both of these things, especially around the net worth. If someone else has, I go without, or if I have, someone else goes without. And so we also want to be looking at the ways that we are holding our beliefs around our sense of self in terms of our enoughness. So if I believe I'm not enough—self-worth, lack thereof—I also believe there isn't enough net worth.
And so we need to be able to begin unpacking that connection, and boundaries become the... I like to think of boundaries as the scaffolding that support us in really centering ourselves in our own sense of self-worth so we're no longer attaching our sense of worth and value to what we do, what we achieve, what we produce. So we're no longer chasing all the gold stars and looking for the external validation and approval. And instead, we really learn how to give it to ourselves.
Nancy Rush:
That's such a beautiful concept. And I'm really, really glad that you're talking about it, because I see it so often where people are looking for that external validation to prove to themselves that they have value, that they have meaning and purpose. And it's so amazing when we can reverse that and actually look within to validate ourselves. And then it becomes all that other stuff just sort of becomes noise, you know?
And I also see that for business owners, I often see that boundaries are something that they struggle with. Do you see this too in your practice?
Nancy Levin:
I do very much. So I work primarily with coaches and entrepreneurs. And there is a sense of, you know, in the hustle culture of "I need to be available 24/7" or "I need to say yes to everyone and everything." And so boundaries really support us in differentiating our yeses and our nos and being able to really establish, instead of moving into that knee-jerk yes out of fear, that we get to take a pause, we get to consider ourselves instead of only everyone else and really determine: Is this something that is essential for me to say yes to?
And then the other piece in terms of the way that I see us cross our own boundaries in our businesses is that we are constantly having our antenna outward. So we're talking about this validation, and we think that our own sense of worth and value is going to come from outside—that someone or something is going to have us feel worthy. And the truth is, it's the opposite. It's an inside job. So in order to feel worthy, I need to cultivate that within. And then I will magnetize toward me the people, the relationships, the circumstances and situations that reinforce that because our beliefs are magnetic.
Nancy Rush:
Very much so. I totally agree with that. And I think too that we do live in a culture in particular that's like constantly go, go, go. And so I often see people who dismiss this concept because they're like, "I'm too busy. I don't have enough time." But even if they are creating the financial success that they're looking for, there are—at least in my opinion—there are often other areas where they're not happy. They don't feel fulfilled.
In other words, they're not leading the most prosperous, abundant life, and not just in context of money, but in context of love and enjoyment and fulfillment and all of that. So I'm curious, what would you say to somebody who's that type of person that's like, "I just have too much on my plate. There's no way I could even possibly sit here and go within and have self-reflection"?
Nancy Levin:
Yeah, I mean, part of this is that staying busy is an avoidant strategy. And it's how we don't have to deal or feel. And yet, if we want the most fulfilling and meaningful and purposeful existence, we do have to be willing to look within and to cultivate a relationship with ourselves first and foremost. You know, this is our longest relationship we will ever have in our life. It's the one that I'll have with myself.
And if I bypass self-connection, it's going to have an impact on the way I connect with others. So I will hit a ceiling of being able to be of impact in the world if I'm unwilling to really go within. This is why when you were sharing my bio and that last line that says about transforming lives, including their own—this is really so important to me that especially as coaches and helping professionals that we do our own inner work first instead of bypassing our own inner work because we so desperately want to help others. And the truth is we will never be of support and use to others to the degree we want to be until we have done that amount of work on ourselves.
Nancy Rush:
I was just laughing to myself because I just had this conversation with a client a couple of days ago and she was running around taking care of everybody else around her and completely putting her needs aside. And she's like, "I'm just so tired." I'm like, "Well, of course you're tired. There's no boundary there for you to hold any space for yourself. Of course you're tired."
Nancy Levin:
And that's the thing. So if I get all my sense of worth and value from what I do for you, what I achieve and produce in the world, there is no strong calling to connect with myself. So we really need to untangle this idea that my sense of worth and value is earned and proven when in fact it is inherent.
And when I can connect with my own sense of inner worth, when I can really root down into that, I'm no longer pulled and called to constantly be doing everything for everyone else. I'm no longer driven to be a people pleaser, a peacekeeper, a conflict avoider, someone who doesn't rock the boat. Because when I'm in that element—the people pleasing, all of that—really what's happening is I have completely lost sense of any authenticity because all I'm doing is I'm in a loop in my head thinking: "What do I need to do or say to make everything be okay?"
And I'm nowhere near the present moment and I'm nowhere near my truth. I'm operating from the antenna being outward. "What do they think? What do they need? What do they want? What do they feel?" And so the invitation here really is to turn inward. "What do I think? What do I need? What do I want? What do I feel?"
And I will just sort of lace this in here because it's the number one question I'm asked when I start talking about this is, "Well, isn't that selfish?"
Nancy Rush:
I was just going to bring that up.
Nancy Levin:
And I will be the first person to say it is time to reclaim selfish. We have disowned selfish to such a degree that we have put selfless on a pedestal and selfless—right there in the word—less self. And so it's not the either/or of selfish or selfless. It's the both. And there is a time and a place to be selfish and we do need to prioritize our own desires. We need to come at life from the perspective of: Am I willing to give myself permission to consider my own needs at least as much as I'm considering the needs of others? That needs to be the baseline. At least as much.
Then am I willing to give myself permission to consider my needs even more than I'm considering the needs of others? And then what I like to say is the real boundary ninja move is: Am I willing to give myself permission to consider my needs first before I consider the needs of others? And nowhere in here did I say don't consider the needs of others. But we're so used to putting ourselves on the back burner, and we need to bring ourselves to the table.
Nancy Rush:
I think this is so fantastic what you're talking about. In my work, I call it healthy selfishness, which is this idea that truly, if we're being in service to others, if we're not prioritizing ourselves and taking care of ourselves, we actually are diminishing our ability to be in service to others. And so that cultivating that healthy selfishness—in my mind, the other thing too that I thought was interesting as you were talking about it is that when we have that outward antenna, we're constantly looking for other people's opinions of us and validation and all of that.
To me, that's very material, meaning that it is—it's like here today, gone tomorrow. So you're constantly... but when you cultivate it from within, then you come into this coherence, this resonance, that it's like you become your own North Star, which is giving you the true guidance that you need to really be who you are authentically in the world. And that's one of my primary things that when I work with my clients is I want to see them trust their inner guidance, to trust themselves, to not constantly be at the mercy of whatever somebody else thinks about them, because that's just not fun.
Nancy Levin:
Yeah, it's very precarious to hitch our worthiness to someone else's wagon and realize that everything we're seeking externally needs to be resolved internally first. We're not actually ever going to be satisfied from something coming from the outside because if I don't have that sense of self-worth internally, I will be chasing it externally and yet it will never stick because it won't have anything to map to.
Nancy Rush:
That makes sense to me because I also see that people who—they think they're always looking externally. So if the business isn't creating quite the level of success that they want or they don't feel fulfilled in their life in some way, they start looking externally. "Well, what can I do differently? What's the different coach I can work with? What's the next best, latest, greatest?" right? And the truth is that we're being asked to come within and to really have that journey with ourselves and to really step into that self-awareness and self-knowledge.
I also think that most of us or many of us, especially in the service industry, we're being called into higher levels of leadership, higher levels of mission with our businesses and greater impact in terms of our work and what we're doing. And we can't get there if we don't have mastery here, I think.
Nancy Levin:
It's very true. And so, you know, part of that really comes down to: Am I willing to be with all parts of myself? You know, so whether it's Internal Family Systems or shadow work or whichever—however we want to frame it—really looking at what are the parts of me that I have disowned and rejected and projected out onto others and how can I reclaim them because the truth is that there is unharnessed power available to me that I have been shying away from.
And so when I do shadow work with clients and when I'm training in my program, we're really looking at these parts of us that we don't want to be and don't think we are, as well as the parts of us that we would like to be and think we're not. It's all of it. And what are the ways in which we can dive in there and retrieve them so that we can tap into this unharnessed power and let it serve us instead of sabotage us?
Nancy Rush:
Right, because all of us embody different patterns from different experiences in our life and sometimes we're oblivious to the patterns that we're embodying. But when we do this self-reflection—to your point, the shadow work, the Internal Family Systems, whatever system works the best—then we get access to a whole new understanding of ourselves as a person.
But I love what you said about this idea that we really have to have the courage to step into being—we do embrace all of these different aspects of ourselves because the truth of the matter is that we're human beings having an experience in this particular incarnation. But the truth of the matter is that we are all those things that we try to reject, meaning that if I was to consider somebody else to be a manipulator, I would never be a manipulator. But we are. Do you know what I'm saying?
Nancy Levin:
Yes. I mean, that's right. That's reclaiming the qualities. And I like to sort of talk about this in terms of the moon, because we look at the moon in the sky and the moon—we know it's always whole, no matter how much of it we see or we don't see. We see a sliver, a half moon, a full moon. And it is throughout the month, it is concealing parts of itself and revealing parts of itself. And we do the exact same thing. We conceal parts of ourselves and we reveal parts of ourselves, but we're always whole.
And so the awareness is really, I am every single quality I see in anyone else. So I am manipulative. I am mean. I am lazy. I am needy. I am greedy. I am all the things. And I'm also brilliant and I'm creative and I'm captivating and I'm intelligent and I'm all of those things too. And when we look at it from that angle, it's like a smorgasbord. At any moment, we can call upon any part of ourselves to support us.
Nancy Rush:
And I think too that particularly when we have fragmented these parts of ourselves, we've shoved them in a little box at the corner of the room, so to speak. But when we reclaim them, the very thing that we're avoiding—let's just use the manipulator example. If we're not wanting to claim that we are manipulators, it actually, in my mind, it increases it, right? Whereas when we reclaim it, then there's like a healing, if you will, because we're no longer resisting it. And so then we come into greater resonance and it allows us to—we can let go of that.
I think it's an undercurrent of fear that drives it, which is, "Oh, I don't want to be like that person." And when we claim it, then all of a sudden it loses its power over us. Do you think that's accurate, the way I describe that?
Nancy Levin:
I do. I mean, really, what I like to think about it is that we are covered in electrical outlets. And when we reclaim a part of ourselves that we had previously disowned and rejected, it's like we put in one of those little plastic protector pieces so that a baby can't put their finger in a socket. And then once I can reclaim a quality, I have compassion for the quality, which is a big piece. And then if I have compassion for the quality in myself, I can have compassion for it in others. And I will no longer be triggered and activated by that quality in others. And I'll no longer draw people toward me who express that quality because I no longer need the mirror to reflect back to me parts of myself that I've disowned.
Nancy Rush:
That's really lovely that you brought that up because that's so true. You know, everything that we're in resistance about, we're just attracting more of it continually over and over again. And I too, I've been on this journey for a long time too, of reclaiming these different aspects of myself and really coming into true authenticity.
And what I found is along the way that while there might have been some resistance because there was some fear around it or took some extra courage and that sort of thing, there was a relief that came right on the heels of all of that, which is like, "Oh, I can actually be who I really am without fear of being—someone else could have whatever perception they have of me and it doesn't matter anymore." And so for that, then it brought an even greater joy, which to me, that's like the ultimate is enjoying the life that we're living, right?
Nancy Levin:
Yeah, because you know, first, we're no longer packaging ourselves to be palatable to everyone around us. And so a whole slew of energy returns to us that had been used to sort of uphold an image or a persona we were projecting to the world. And then the other thing is that—and this is really important—when we are operating from the place of fearing external judgment or criticism, you know what? "What are they all going to think?" The truth is we're already judging and criticizing ourselves. And so it's about getting in right relationship with me around my own internal criticism and judgment because once I'm in right relationship with me, once I'm in alignment and in acceptance and self-forgiveness and self-trust, anything coming from the outside has no Velcro to stick to on me.
Nancy Rush:
That's incredibly true. I remember when you said that we no longer package ourselves to be consumable by other people. There was a meme I saw years ago that was from your first book, Worthy, and that particular statement has stuck with me all these years, just because it's so completely true that when we stop packaging ourselves to be consumable by others, we step into true freedom, I think.
Nancy Levin:
Yeah, it is true. And so, you know, even bringing it back to boundaries here. To me, that's why I believe that, you know, setting boundaries set us free, because if I know what is most important to me and if I have my non-negotiables, I'm able to look at boundaries from a place of expansion instead of contraction or restriction. I can look at boundaries as the way that I am carefully choosing and consciously curating the contents of my own life. And so I'm the determiner of my worth and value. I'm the one who has the say on what I'm doing or not doing, what I'm choosing, what I'm not choosing.
I have something that I've coined called the transformation equation. And this is: change equals vision plus choice plus action.
Nancy Rush:
Oh, I love that.
Nancy Levin:
If we want to make a change, we need to have a clear vision of where we're going. And we need to actually allow ourselves to feel the embodiment of that vision. That vision becomes the gauge by which we make our choices and take our actions. Because every choice we make, every action we take only does one of two things: serves our vision or sabotages our vision. And so the important thing here is to be conscious—conscious choice, conscious action—instead of going into that place. Just like the staying busy is an avoidance strategy. We unconsciously sabotage our vision every single day by making unconscious choices that take us away from what we say we want.
Nancy Rush:
So to that point, where do we start? Because this, you and I both know, this is a like decades-long, lifelong journey, right? So where do people start? A, coming into that conscious awareness of what it is that they're actually doing to self-sabotage and what are the—they could tap into Internal Family Systems or they could tap into shadow work or any other of the different modalities that do that. But it feels like there's something tangible here that you could offer to help people kind of either A, get started on the journey or go even deeper with it.
Nancy Levin:
Yeah, I mean one—and this is a shadow work piece around looking at our shadow commitments. Whenever we don't have what we say we want, whenever there's a discrepancy or a disconnect between what I say I want and what I'm actually experiencing, it is rooted in an old, outdated shadow commitment that we made when we were young. A commitment we made, a promise we kept with ourselves and made to ourselves to keep ourselves safe as children. And that very commitment sabotages us as we get older.
So if we look at, I say I want to have more impact in the world. What I'm experiencing is not doing everything it takes. Then we get to look at, well, what am I actually most committed to? I'm committed to something other than having that impact. I'm committed to hiding. I'm committed to invisibility. I'm committed to silence. I'm committed to staying small. And then we can look at: staying small, silence, invisibility, hiding—those kept me safe when I was a kid. Those kept me out of punishment. Those kept me out of trouble. I committed to those things for a very good reason, but now I'm bumping up against them.
And so now I need to make sure that what I'm most committed to is aligned with what I most want. So if I want to have greater impact in the world, I need to be able to shift my commitment to visibility, let's say. And again, this isn't magic or this isn't simple. I then have to back that up with action. What is the action I'm willing to take to cultivate visibility that will move me closer to the impact that I want to have?
Nancy Rush:
What's coming to mind as you're talking about this is I had a mentor say this to me once. She's like, "What are you 100% all in for?" Like really, truly, when you look at your life, because we do, as human beings, we do say, "Oh, I want this or I want that." But are we really 100% committed all in? And I think often for many of us, that's not the case that we want it. We desire it, but we're not really willing to do what it takes to get there. That combined with, like you said, these coping mechanisms that we generated when we were much younger because we didn't have the emotional maturity or the experience. Exactly. And we're still embodying those same coping mechanisms decades later, and they truly don't serve any longer.
And so for me, it feels like there has to be this union between the perspective of: What are old things that I'm still embodying that no longer serve? And am I really truly all in? Because if I am, I will do what it takes to get there, right?
Nancy Levin:
Yeah, and that's why uncovering these hidden commitments is so vital because all of this was happening unconsciously when we were young. You know, the beliefs that get embedded, the commitments, all from the place of, I didn't have the awareness or the capacity as a young child to process what was happening in an adult way. So I, in turn, made everything mean something about me. And so I drew conclusions about myself and I doubled down on the coping mechanisms and the survival strategies that would keep me in good graces. We all do this, every single one of us on some level to some capacity do this. And until we're willing to go and look within, all of this is driving the bus. Every part of this is running the show. So that to me is the greatest reason why doing our own inner work is so essential.
Nancy Rush:
You bring to mind that movie, and I'm going to blank on the name of it, but it was the one that had all the different characters, like there was anger...
Nancy Levin:
Inside Out.
Nancy Rush:
Inside Out. It makes me think of Inside Out, which just does such a beautiful job of illustrating this, where you have joy running amok trying to fix everything and anger is stewing in the corner. And so bringing this union together and allowing them to be who they really are in unity—it's so much more of a pleasurable experience to begin with. But I love that movie for what it demonstrates to us is that we do do that. We do fragment ourselves and allow things to just kind of run amok in the background and then we look at kind of our external world and go, "Why am I not happy?" "Why can't I not even remember what brings me joy?" which I think is such a sad state for people, right?
Nancy Levin:
Well, that's a whole other piece. Just like we have these beliefs that we bury and these commitments that get buried, we also have desires that we bury. And for me personally, and for anyone else watching, if you doubled down on having no needs and being indispensable and being self-sufficient, there's a whole element of deprivation that is also running the show and it's self-imposed deprivation.
Nancy Rush:
Where does that come from? Because that's an interesting point that you're making. Because you're right. I do see that a lot with myself, but I see it with my clients too. So I'm curious what the origin of that is.
Nancy Levin:
Yeah. I mean, I can say that, you know, I will always root that back to the beliefs, the shadow beliefs that got embedded. So for me, I was born into a family where my older brother was severely ill and it became very apparent to me at a very early age that his needs were more important than mine. Better I have no needs. And so from a very early age, I adopted this belief that it's not safe to have needs or that my independence was my superpower.
And so from there, extrapolating out into I have no needs. And then what happens when I go out into the world? Because the truth is we all have needs. We all have needs. And so that comes back to the owning of all the parts. I'm needy and I'm self-sufficient. I'm both. But then there was, for me, an almost righteous restriction that happened, a righteous restriction around self-deprivation. I don't need. It wasn't even that I have no needs. It went even further to I don't need that. And then somehow getting an undercurrent of fuel from that instead of actually allowing myself to open up into having and receiving and experiencing the fullness that life has to offer.
Nancy Rush:
It's a fantastic point. And I always see it too with people who have adopted this behavior pattern of not asking for what it is that they need. Or it could be as simple as like, "What do you want for dinner tonight?" "Oh, I don't care. You pick."
Nancy Levin:
My son and I were just having this argument last night. Because he's like, "Mom, I have picked the movies for the last three nights. You need to pick." And I thought, "Oh, you're right. I've been deflecting this." And so self-awareness, thank you. And so immediately I was like, "Okay, let me choose" because I don't choose. I don't embody that behavior any longer, except when I fall asleep at the wheel and then somebody wakes me up.
Nancy Rush:
That's really awesome. And so the thing is, one point that I did want to draw out a little bit is that, you know, we talked a little bit about how it takes courage to come into this process, to practice this self-awareness and self-reflection. But I think sometimes too that people avoid it because they don't want to feel discomfort. And so how can somebody reconcile with that? Because honestly, this is an amazing journey. The rewards are so awesome, but it's bumpy along the way sometimes, right?
Nancy Levin:
Yeah, I mean, here's the thing. The quicker that we can get comfortable with our discomfort, the better we're going to be. And discomfort isn't going to kill us. And what happens is the recovery time gets quicker. And what I end up teaching myself is I can sit in discomfort and it's going to pass. And it might even be that tomorrow at this time, I'm not going to feel this as acutely as I feel it now. And I'm going to just be with myself in my discomfort. I'm going to journal. I'm going to meditate. I'm going to go for a walk. I'm going to put on a piece of music. But I'm going to let myself be in my discomfort instead of trying to get out of it and overriding it. Because the more often that I try to get out of it and override it, the longer I'm prolonging my own healing. I'm prolonging my own growth. So I really recommend learning how to sit with your own discomfort because otherwise you are abandoning yourself in the process. You are keeping yourself at arm's distance. You're disconnected from yourself. And life is a whole lot more meaningful when you're actually living in self-connection.
Nancy Rush:
Yeah, because that experience of being in avoidance—which is like, "I don't want to feel the discomfort, so I'm going to avoid it," or "I'm going to self-soothe in some unhealthy ways." But in Internal Family Systems, it talks about how really what you're doing is you're coming in as a sovereign being and you are fully being, taking responsibility for yourself and parenting yourself, literally.
Nancy Levin:
That's right. And just like, you know, for everyone that's had kids or will have kids, I mean, there is that process where they go through acute discomfort and you comfort them as the parent and then they move through it. And the faster you can get them from point A to point B... and so for ourselves I totally see that I've experienced it with myself too whereas when I allow myself to just be in the discomfort it can pass so much more quickly and instead of iterating for days I'm iterating for maybe minutes or maybe a few hours it's not like long extended, which is misery in its own self in that way too.
Nancy Levin:
Right, and so what this also has us move toward is we're so afraid of someone else feeling disappointed or angry that we—and this is a way we cross our own boundaries again—we cross our own boundaries by believing that it's our responsibility to manage their response to our truth. And in fact, the more I avoid any external conflict, the more internal conflict I'm creating. And there's a flavor of internal conflict that we tend to choose because we're used to it. And we can stomach it, whereas we can't stomach someone else being upset.
Nancy Rush:
So in other words, it's like you creating these coping mechanisms to avoid somebody being disappointed. I mean, it all loops back to external validation. And so I can see how it's so easy to fall into that trap because, to your earlier point, when we grow up, often we do want to please our parents. We're raised in more of a punitive way, which is "this is good, this is bad." And often we want to avoid being put in a "this is bad" category. I know I certainly did, but it sticks with you for years and years and years, until you finally become consciously aware that that exists.
Nancy Levin:
Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, choosing to first come into what is the truth nesting inside of me that I have not given voice to? I mean, I really think that is the initial—that's the initial invitation to get quiet enough to really listen to the truth that has been whispering and might even be screaming by now that I have been using all my avoidance strategies of busyness or work or exercise or food or drugs or whatever. What if I stop all of that? And what if I actually listen to the truth and then begin from there?
Nancy Rush:
Yes, because it's almost like I think first you have to give yourself permission to feel those raw feelings because I know that in my work too, I often see people who are either deflecting or avoiding it because they're afraid they're going to stay stuck there for so long versus like getting it up and getting it out and allowing it to move through. And the other part of that though, is that when we go inward and we become quiet, it's like all of a sudden for me, it just feels very expansive. It's like, "Oh, I'm really listening to what it is that my heart is telling me that I've been avoiding all of this time" and then coming into that realization and then from there consciously choosing what do I want to do with this information, right?
Nancy Levin:
Yeah, I mean and that's the thing because we're far more stuck when we don't acknowledge our own truth. We stay stuck when we don't tell the truth to ourselves. We create chaos.
Nancy Rush:
Yes, there is a—I won't call it a theory, but there is a theory out there that essentially says that for somebody that says, "Oh my gosh, I'm experiencing all this drama in my life. I don't want any more drama." It's like, but they are unconsciously creating more drama because they've become addicted to the emotion. Even though it's a toxic emotion, they're addicted to it because it stimulates the hormones, the endorphins and all of that, right? And so they'll perpetuate it unconsciously.
Nancy Levin:
Well, that's—I mean, very much like when I was talking before about the shadow commitments, you can have a commitment to drama. You can have a commitment to chaos. You can have a commitment and you keep serving that commitment because you're not conscious of it. And so then that shift can happen once you get conscious, once you bring it into awareness. "Oh, I'm going to actually shift to my commitment to calm or shift my commitment to ease." And that is going to be supportive of how I want to be in the world.
Nancy Rush:
And so this brings up an interesting point for me is that really—in my mind I call it mental mastery—which is really like making the commitment but then sticking to it. So as an example, my dad has been ill and I've had to take care of him and so there's been drama around all of that and I had to literally like mentally come from the perspective of like "I am 100% choosing to not engage in the drama of everything that's happening" and I've had to bring myself back to that point multiple times because I found myself tipping into it unconsciously and then I'm like "Wait a minute, wait a minute, here I go again." It's like no. So can you just speak a little bit about the mental mastery because the monkey brain really goes crazy, right?
Nancy Levin:
Yeah, I mean it's not a one and done. It's a constant—it's a constant choosing and re-choosing and coming back to self first and foremost and knowing that really what it comes down to is there are consequences to setting a boundary and not setting a boundary both ways. So the boundary around "I'm not going to engage in drama"—that's a boundary. I'm not going to engage in drama. And it doesn't mean that I set it and then magic, it's upheld. I need to uphold it in every moment. I need to return to the choice I'm making to consciously not engage in that way.
Nancy Rush:
And I would add to that, that it is a conscious, like bringing yourself back, but at the same time, not tipping into self-judgment about the fact that you went back into the pattern. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like, it's a grace to bring kindness to ourselves in that. And for me, what helped many years ago was this concept of course correcting instead of like—you know what I'm saying? Making micro adjustments rather than, you know, wholesale, like going right into like, "Well, I completely messed up and here I am embroiled in this new drama and it's going to take me eons to figure this out. And in the meantime, I'm angry and resentful and unhappy." And it's like, "No, no, no. It's like, okay, you're engaged. Step back to the commitment to the boundary. Hold it again." And then rather than going into self-judgment about it, just say "This is a course correction." That's what it's like flowing through life rather than having it be like these big boulders that get put into our path.
Nancy Levin:
Yeah. I mean, the truth is movement is going to create momentum. We need to take action. It doesn't need to be the quote unquote "right" action. And we can always course correct. We can always begin again. And the inner critic will be there. The inner cheerleader will be there. We have a choice of who we're going to listen to.
Nancy Rush:
I like the inner cheerleader. I'm going to have to use that one because I like that a lot better than the inner critic. That's awesome. And here's what I'll also...
Nancy Levin:
Well, I'll just also say the inner critic, you know, the inner critic for me has gotten far quieter, the more I'm willing to listen to my truth. The inner critic doesn't need to—doesn't really need much acknowledgment anymore because I'm not avoiding myself. And so I think that the inner critic, you know, calibrates. The inner critic can calibrate.
Nancy Rush:
I completely agree with that because I have found over the years that it's just gotten easier when the inner critic shows up. It's like, "Oh, there you are. Okay. You need to go get in the passenger seat because you're not driving the car."
Nancy Levin:
<Laugh>
Nancy Rush:
Well, this has been fantastic. Thank you for such a wonderful conversation. I would love if you would talk about your free gift.
Nancy Levin:
Sure. So this is a workbook I've created. It's free. It's called "Rewrite the Story Keeping You Stuck." It really is for anyone who is recognizing that you're stuck in a story. You're stuck in a story around imposter syndrome or stuck in an old belief pattern or the old commitments like we were talking about. And one of the things that I find is that there is—as going back to what we were talking about, about how important it is to do our inner work as coaches, as entrepreneurs, as leaders in any profession that we're in—it's really going to be more important than ever to show up really in the awareness of the fullness of who we are. And so that's really what this workbook helps you do.
Nancy Rush:
I think that's awesome. I love that. And what a wonderful tool to give people too. And I will say too that I think that as people discover more about themselves, they will actually tap into hidden talents and abilities that they may not even acknowledge that they had. So that's a beautiful part of that.
Nancy Levin:
Yes, I agree. I agree.
Nancy Rush:
Well, we're going to be doing a free gift too. So we're going to be doing a two to three hour guided immersion into anchoring into the seven core pillars of a soul-aligned and purpose-driven business, which is a topic near and dear to my heart. And so we're going to be exploring different facets of that through those couple of hours. And then from there, we'll be inviting people in for a one-on-one strategy session to really look at: Are they aligned in both personally, but also professionally, and are they creating the success, the fulfillment that they want in their businesses? And so helping them to identify the blind spot. So that's what we're going to be focusing on for our free gift.
At any rate, well Nancy, thank you so much. I so appreciate you and I can't wait to share you with everybody else. I know they're going to love this conversation.
Nancy Levin:
Thank you, Nancy. You're welcome.
