PODCAST Episode 020

Published 28 January 2026

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TRANSCRIPT

Intro:

[00:00:00] People pleasing, hides the actual advantage you have. You are here to give something that people don't know they want until they experience it as a culture creator or change maker. Your recognition comes when you turn up the volume on your specific, unique point of view. Holding back from fully leading from that point of view means you waste so much energy and compromise the impact that your work could be having.

Validation as a strategy might have worked before or maybe never did, but where you are going. It's about having the guts to go to new unvalidated places on your terms and bringing people with you. This is not a normal [00:01:00] career ladder, but that's exactly why you wanted it, and valorize is the skill to blaze that trail.

I'm Louisa Shaeri. Join me every week when I'll be talking about how to make the uniquely transformative point of view at the core of your boldest work viable. Visible and valorized.

I'm following on from the last episode talking about three things that must transform for your transformative work to work. The second one being you. I think this gets underestimated, the sole level, depth of reckoning with your own self-worth. That happens [00:02:00] when you have designed a livelihood, a vocation around a point of view, a perspective, a vision.

A desire and building that as a real thing in the world that other people also recognize as this holds immense value. Taking the impetus that led you to want to do this work in the first place and pushing it into the fabric of material reality, co-creating this gets to exist and who I am. Also get to exist, the depth of confrontation that that creates with everything that told you no, everything that suggests that's not possible and still choosing it.

This gets underestimated. The internal transformation that [00:03:00] you undergo in offering, it gets underestimated and I want to talk to it today. Because if you aren't across it, if you don't know that this is part of the path, it can be very easy to mistake the invitation to you to transform, that your work is inviting you into as something is going wrong, it's not feeling right, or good, or it's not working.

Therefore, I will need to compromise the vision or my values. Or I will need to lower my ambition. I will need to compromise my energy, my wellbeing, or I will need to compromise my self integrity. I'll need to be someone else. I need to be different from who I am. And that expectation is an adaptation to systems that didn't see you.

Environments that didn't pull your gifts [00:04:00] out of you, that didn't welcome what you bring as recognized by the community, by the collective, by people around you as wanted and as value. There may have been environments where certain aspects of your personality, your skillset, your strengths were rewarded and other aspects of you were not.

And when you are creating work that comes from inside you and who you are and the perspective that you earned, that you've lived, that you've honed, you may not have realized the unconscious. Decision you made to create a vehicle for your own self-expression and your own values, your own vision, and your own self integrity.

And so that vehicle, as in your work, is now inviting you to actually be that. And so it flushes to the surface, it confronts you with any [00:05:00] adaptive assumptions, protective patterns. Ak your belief system that is in contradiction with that being possible and real. And so the working belief system. Is for this to work, I will need to compromise when, what needs to transform in you is to replace that with a belief system that is for this to work.

It will work because I'm not compromising my vision, I'm not compromising my values, my energy, my wellbeing, and my self integrity. And so everything that is compelling to you about your dream work and where you want to take this work and the vision you have for it is now asking you to transform. Be someone who can pull that into tangible material form.

And so there may be [00:06:00] a way that you want to feel when you're working and how your day-to-day feels and the types of standards and boundaries for how you work and who you get to work with. There may be an ambition you have for the income level that would both sustain and fulfill you and the life that you want to lead, but also what would sustain and enable the vision to be realized?

It might be the point of view, the perspective, the angle. The paradigm that your work is offering, being recognized for that, that having ripple effects in the world. It may be the recognition in you that you have something significant and unique and rare to give. You have a perspective, you have an orientation that if you realized it, it would change lives.

It would do things that are beneficial to our shared existence. Knowing that you can't leave this earth without contributing, that there may be a version of [00:07:00] you that you want to be expressing as you're doing this work, a freedom that you're moving towards. And so everything that your work transforms in the world is simultaneously confronting you with the ways in which the world has worked in you and the ways in which systems that you've interacted with, beliefs, ideas, ideologies, structures, that material will be activated so that you can be the person who stewards your work into the world.

Who becomes the example of it? Who becomes the advocate for it? Any self-doubt, any idea that you aren't someone who gets to do this? Any ways that you've been identified or positioned or stereotyped, any times that you have met your own needs and met your own desires through compromise, through fitting in, through not fully being all of who you are, through not fully saying yes to what you want.

There is a [00:08:00] fractal unfolding the mirroring of what is in you and what is out in the world. It's you being a co-creator of both the same stuff that you've lived through that revealed to you that you have something to give that could transform it in the world. It has to work in and on you as you do that work, and mostly it's allowing yourself to experience.

The ease, the things working and the head fuck. There is, oh, it is working because I'm not compromising my vision. I'm not compromising what I value. I'm not compromising myself. My integrity, my energy, my wellbeing is why it works. And this is deeply confronting. What I'm not saying is that you go from zero.

To a hundred and your vision is complete and you build the entire thing in one go. There [00:09:00] are phases, so you have to start with what is the minimum functioning version of this, and then it evolves. And it evolves. There's a difference between that and it's not going to work. So I need to do some version that will be more palatable, that people will like, that will make people buy or that will make people work with me.

Any belief that you hold that contradicts. The transformation that your work is for both, for you and in the world will come up for review, for being changed. And when you know this is a big part of the work, then you understand how important it is to constrain your focus and the scope of your work to the very specific one micro arena of change or culture shift that your work is for.

Something that I see happens to us sensitive, idealistic types is [00:10:00] wanting to change all of it, wanting to live an idealized existence in which there is no compromising of values, and you can be in a purity of integrity. And it's too big a leap. It's too wider a scope for one micro ecosystem that is your work and your environment and who you are to take on.

And so you have to know what specific micro arena of change that you are working on and let that be the space that is transforming and let there be compromise. Let there be a lack of purity elsewhere. While you focus on this one piece, trusting that for someone else, the other pieces, there are other people who are also working on the other pieces.

It takes all of us, but it cannot be all of us trying to do all of it all at once. And when you constrain that [00:11:00] focus and you're working on on one specific transformation in the world that you are offering a solution or a point of view or a body of work towards, and one way that you are receiving. As a result of creating that work, then the internal work on the belief systems to match up with that also is constrained and more effective.

This prevents you from being overwhelmed and it prevents you from feeling like the ideal that you are imagining is really far off in the distance. Like, which piece of it are you working on? And therefore you get to choose the piece that you feel like you have the most fulfillment from. Because it's the thing that you want to give to the most.

It's the thing that you believe in the most. It's the thing that you are rewarded for because you know, and you can feel, you can sense, and you have the feedback that there is something that you contribute. [00:12:00] And so what is your work responsible for? What are you desiring to work on? What compels you enough that you could dedicate a huge portion of your life to this?

What does your work valorize and determine holds value for you to work on and you to receive for? And then you can get really specific about is it working or is it not? And if it's not working, a big piece of this is the changes that you are being invited to undergo in your own beliefs about what is possible for you, how much agency you have that you get to work on that piece that you would derive most fulfillment from.

That it gets to be something that for you is easeful, that seems obvious, that is flowing out of you, and that you get to receive accordingly. And it doesn't have to cost you your [00:13:00] life force. It doesn't have to cost you in ways that don't replenish you. And when you hone in on that thing and you build your livelihood around it, and you have a model and a value system that makes sense.

Your experience of doing that work is. An overflow. It is what people call abundance. It is the sense that, well, because I'm working on this thing, it's feeding me just in the doing. It's nourishing me, it's making me feel alive just in doing the work, and I'm also receiving on top. It's that peace that is deeply confronting.

It's that peace that feels like, oh, do I get to have that? I must be doing something selfish or greedy for that to be happening for me, and this has been my experience, right? There have been times when I've reached a new level of a sense of [00:14:00] agency or a sense of skill, or a sense of ease or a financial level, and the beliefs in me that contradict that, that contradict that this gets to feel this good.

Comes at me like a slap down, like who do you think you are? Get back in your place. But it can also happen in more subtle ways where you are not even realizing and noticing that you are negating the choice that you already have. Last year I was working with someone on something in the back end of my business and I wanted to invite them into a culture of working together where.

They felt well resourced to do the work that they most loved doing in the way they best worked. And I wanted to extend that trust to them and they fed back to me afterwards how generative of the work that felt, how good it felt, but also how it revealed to [00:15:00] them the ways that they weren't giving themselves the same permission in their own.

Business structure to do it their way and to do it in a way that was feeling good as opposed to what they felt they should be doing or what was correct. And so there are subtle ways that you might be making assumptions about what is required of you. That are based on past experiences of what was required of you, but that actually don't apply when you've started your own business and the way that that gives you a freedom to design it your way, there may be compromises that you think you have to do in order to get people to pay you to work with you to see the value of what you're doing.

And so the fact that you get to build it your way is really [00:16:00] confronting of any time that you didn't. Your belief system lives in your body, right? It's the predictive, adaptive assumption about what will happen, and it's your systems most reliable. Reality, and it's always looking to predict and confirm that reality as true so that you are not having to spend resources, attention, energy, and so on, or rewire your thinking to adapt to something new.

It's like looking for what is the known expected reality. And in doing so, your belief system is always looking to confirm itself. And so when you are exercising a greater level of choice, ease, agency, self-expression, ambition, [00:17:00] commitment to a vision than what you're used to, your belief system is going to offer you thoughts about what's going to go wrong, why this isn't possible for you.

Why it's a bad idea, and if things don't go to plan, if you experience failures, disappointments, rejections, all of which is a standard aspect of putting your own work into the world, it's very easy to then interpret those as proof that you don't get to do this. This won't work for you. This is impossible.

Who do you think you are? Or whatever the predominant beliefs are, whatever the predominant idea of yourself is. So the internal change that you undergo to bring your belief system and your sense of self, your identity, and your capacity and your skill into congruence with where you want to take your work, and the degree to which that work is recognized and sought [00:18:00] after and valued.

It's such a huge piece of it and it's why it's so powerful to work with someone who can hold that belief for you to be in an environment where you are affirming that identity, where you are experiencing someone else's energy, who has that capacity to feel what's involved and move through it and, and be the other side, and who can show you the skill.

This is why whenever I'm trying to create a new. Level in my work, I will work with someone. I will get coach, I will join a program. I will put myself in an environment where that desire is reflected and the path is laid out, and the energy and the, and the example is available, and I'm in close proximity to someone who's already done it because it speeds up this process and it makes the path clear.

This is why I [00:19:00] created. Flair House. Flair House is the three month experience that people can work with me on their work and claiming the value of unique and unprecedented and transformative value that they are offering and receiving accordingly and inside Flair House this internal. Transformation is represented by three of six skill sets that I work with people on, and I want to talk you through those three internal skill sets because it offers you a map for that transformation that happens internally in you.

So there are three internally focused skill sets. The first one is show up, the second is Dream Up. The third is Power Up. Show Up is focused on taking action. Specifically actions that are a yes to your desires and show up is really about your internal resources, your [00:20:00] attention, your energy, your focus, and what you're doing, what you're working on.

Directing them intentionally towards your desire in congruence with what you're valuing, what you're desiring, what you're dreaming of, and being able to do that at every new level because at every new level. You are confronted with low belief for what you're trying to make happen. And so this is the skillset of being able to continue to take action even when you have low belief, even when you don't know it's gonna work.

If this is possible, how you're going to do it, and your circumstances don't yet reflect your desires, and therefore your belief system is not adapted to that being true and real and possible for you. This means being able to take action through. Failure through disappointment, through rejection, through judgment, being able to lead yourself to move yourself and not do so with force.[00:21:00]

Not do so through pushing, creating burnout, but instead being able to sustain action in order to begin to build belief for the new level that you're taking your work.

Internally focused skill is dream up, claiming the dream as something that you are taking seriously and committing to, and then turning it into a plan so that you know what actions you're taking. But the purpose of the plan is not to guarantee that it's going to work, but rather to flush to the surface and reveal the gap.

When you commit, you are confronted with all your reasons why not all your current belief systems and the identity that you, the story of who you are and what's possible for you and your own capacity [00:22:00] limit in terms of. What experience of challenge, discomfort, the unknowns and the risk involved that you are not yet accustomed to handling, and also the skill that you're lacking.

And so the point of the plan is it brings all of the stuff to the surface so that you actually find out what you need to work on, which is those internal. Transformations. And then the third skill is to actually close that gap. To close the gap in your belief system, your sense of self, your capacity, and your skill.

And how you do that is by becoming aware of and transforming your relationship to challenge. Life offers challenge. Life offers difficulty when you are leading on your own work and putting it out into the world. What you are doing is choosing [00:23:00] to take on challenge, to take on risk, to move into unknowns, and to grow on purpose.

Your relationship to challenge might be that you tend to get overwhelmed. You tend to shut down or disconnect. It might be that you tend to over activate overwork. Overcompensate, get tired and wired. So power up is you transforming your relationship to challenge, to the challenge of growing your agency, to create your work on your terms, to impact someone, transform someone else's experience, transform our shared reality to determine what holds value and hold that as a commitment that you are making ahead of that being validated.

In order to be the example to be in your leadership. And so this means [00:24:00] learning how to regulate through those challenges. It means knowing how to not read them as something has gone wrong. Earlier this week I took vitamin D, like a oral spray, vitamin D supplement at night, and a big dose more than I've been taking.

And that evening and the next morning. I had an extreme drop in my mood, one that took me to a place that felt similar to depression I had as a teenager, and so I have a history of depression as a teenager, and so those paths are there. It's very available to me to go there if I want to. And. Because of this skillset and my ability to not be derailed by an extreme emotional experience, I was able to hold myself through figuring out why this sudden dip and to [00:25:00] trace it back to the common factor because I'd done this again a week before.

As, oh, when I take that vitamin D, this knocks my system out of whack. So it's like that your experience of running your own thing will confront you with emotions, challenges that. We'll challenge your capacity to be able to feel them and ride the waves of challenge. And this is not just negative experiences, this is also things going really well for you.

Reaching a new level of success, reaching a new level of visibility that will be positive experiences that are dysregulating and are uncomfortable, that you will try to reject that your system will push away because they're new, because they're unknown, and they therefore. To your system represent risk and challenge.

So being able to regulate yourself through the emotional and capacity challenges [00:26:00] of running your own thing is such a vital skillset because then you can size up any challenge, any desire, and trust yourself and know. That you are able to move through whatever is required to make it happen. Not through disconnecting, not through getting overwhelmed, not through overactivated overworking, but in connection, in self-regulation, hand in hand with yourself, being on your own side, being your own best friend and handling it.

And this is what means you don't get stuck. These three skill sets are not one and done. There are always new levels of all of these, but when you have the map and you begin to know what these feel like internally and you have those coordinates within yourself, then you know how to work with yourself and you know how you best work.

My dad loves, or volunteering or volunteering is [00:27:00] like a sport where you. Run around often in the woods or somewhere rural, and you have a map and there are points, places on the map that you have to go to and punch a card and you have to do them in order. And if you've ever watched orienteering, it's sort of bizarre because it's not a linear race, and so you never know who's winning.

People are running their own race, and quite often there'll be people doing different courses, different maps on the same terrain, and so it's a bit like that when you know your own coordinates, you have your own internal map, you can run your own race. You are not using anybody else's work as a reference point for how well you are doing.

You are focused on what is the next challenge I'm facing? What is the next action I'm taking? What is the next piece of my plan? And these three skill sets, when you are able to take action, when you are [00:28:00] able to convert the dream into a plan, and the plan is one that you use to flush to the surface what is changing in you, and you can actively, consciously work on that, you become unstoppable.

You become unstoppable and you are oriented to a foundation that can sustain and withstand you. Then expanding your focus externally onto the next three skill sets, which are more about what transforms. For the people who encounter your work, which I'll talk about in the next [00:29:00] episode.