PODCAST Episode 008
Published 29 October 2025

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TRANSCRIPT

Intro

[00:00:00] If you are someone with cognitively distinct sense-making, sometimes known as being autistic or AuDHD, and you do culture creating, change making, world making work, then typical career ladders, market fit, and industry norms. We'll always devalue. What is transformative or unprecedented about your work for the value of your work to be seen.

You first have to see the value of it despite having interacted with systems that didn't see you. This calls you into an emancipated relationship to your own resources, your energy, your time, your focus, your unique insights and gifts, your relationships and your sense of self. Where the future impact of your work dictates the terms and your desired standard for how resourced you feel in doing that [00:01:00] work in your way is what makes that impact possible.

Hi, I'm Louisa Shaeri, and I'm on a mission to help you see the value of what you have to offer so that you can make your work recognised, sought after, and highly valued in the world. I call this valorize. This is the underlying methodology used by visionaries, artists, facilitators, culture workers, creatives, change makers, people who successfully realised unprecedented culture shifting work while being well resourced.

In this podcast, I am showing you what it takes, how this journey feels, some of the common pitfalls along the way. And how you can move past them so that you can replicate this road less traveled, and our world gets to be transformed by your work.

[00:02:00]

Courageous, contagious conviction. This is the name I give to the state that I want to invite you to learn to create in yourself around the value that you have to offer, that you bring, and in the episodes just before this one, I spoke to belief in yourself that you are someone that can create value and also in your people, that there are people out there that also will recognize that value.

You don't need the whole world. You don't need billions of people to see it. You just need a thousand true fans. [00:03:00] Or if you're doing something that's much more intimate than being a creator of some kind, you probably even need less than that. You need your people to see it, to experience it. And so in this episode, I want to speak to.

How important it is that you know that what you bring, that what you offer and how you best offer it, is highly valuable. I'm gonna add a caveat if you actually offer it.

So I'm assuming that you have started and begun. You are doing work that you have chosen to do that is valuable to you to offer it. That is something that you are excited about, that you love doing. That is you recognizing something about an insight that you have, a way that you see a certain problem, a creativity, a cognitively or [00:04:00] culturally unique or distinct place that you operate from.

The unique point of view that you bring or the thing that you get excited about. Or maybe you've experienced yourself that was transformative for you, and you are an evangelist for that possibility for other people, right? There's something that you chose to do and what can happen when we set out on our own thing, if our own thing is also.

Drawn on who we are or what we bring that is unique, that is challenging to our past, challenging to who we thought we had to be challenging to the status quo of how an industry operates or is just transformative in some way Then. What can happen is because you're not following a proven path for you, there is a higher degree of self doubt, right?

It's hard enough starting out and offering your own thing, but when that thing is unique, when it is distinctive, when there [00:05:00] is like a flavor or an angle that you bring to it, a paradigm shift that it represents, then there can be this added increased amount of self-doubt. Especially if you're someone who holds identities, they experience inequity in the workplace or in society generally, and have given you a higher level of expectation that you are not just gonna be like, uh, embraced.

You don't have that same entitlement. So there's something that can happen, which is looking for proof, looking for permission outside of you. In order to try and solve the feeling of self-doubt of so-called imposter syndrome and looking around you and thinking other people seem so confident, they seem so convicted, what is it that they're doing that's giving them that feeling?

Maybe I need to do it the same way as them. Maybe I need to copy that, mimic that, replicate it, [00:06:00] and um, I'm gonna get the same results. That mean that I can feel confident, right? That I don't have the self-doubt. Or it's that you've done really well in a particular system, in a particular workplace, a particular environment, but it cost you, it cost you parts of you.

It cost you some integrity. It cost you some ethical stress. You didn't fully believe in what you were doing and the prospect of you now doing the thing that you believe in and it working and you. Fully getting to pursue it is like a type of freedom and a type of things going well for you. That would be new.

That would be like a higher level of a quality of life that you are not used to, and that is challenging your current belief system, your body-based belief system about what is predictably, reliably normal for you. And [00:07:00] that in, in of itself feels. Really uncomfortable, right? So it's not just self-doubt, it's also the discomfort of claiming things that you are not sure if you are allowed to, right?

That haven't been historically okay for you, that have not felt available to you until now, and that triggers a feeling that you are going to be told off that someone's gonna come and like tell you no, that there's going to be some kind of social consequence that is negative. So that is easy to misinterpret as a reason not to go forward as a signal that something is wrong and that you can't trust and rely on the feeling, the sense in you that what you have to offer, the impact that you could have in the world with your work, with your insights, with the creativity you bring, with the perspective you have.

The feeling that that is, [00:08:00] um, like maybe not reliably, something to trust to move forward into, right? There's some other signal that you need first, some other external thing to give you a thumbs up to give you permission in order for you to, to go full tilt into doing it when actually it's. It's part of it, and it's not only part of it.

It's not only like the cost, part of the cost of going and doing your own thing. It's also proof of how valuable it is, and this is a mind fuck, right? Doing the thing that I'm. I have the least proof on, or that, uh, I don't have social buckets of social approval and safety and feelings of entitlement to do and to make work, uh, that doing that is more valuable.

When really it is, and you kind of know it is on some level because that's why you're doing that work. That's why you're going in that direction. That's why you're choosing you. [00:09:00] That's why you're saying, mm. No, actually I do have something to bring. I do have something to offer. The whole point of it is doing it my way.

The whole point of it is I have something different, something unique, something that is challenging. The status quo. There's, there's a way that I want to do it. There's a way that makes it accessible for me. There's a way that allows me to access that value in me and offer it. But there is a wavering back and forth.

It's like, okay, okay. I believe in it. I put one foot forward, and then these fears and doubts are also there and make me hold back a little bit. And so I am, I'm going forward and I'm also holding back, and there's a whole lot of energy that is being used up in that pattern, right? Because it's two opposing forces canceling each other out.

It's like, I'm gonna start, oh, but I'm, I'm not gonna finish. I'm gonna put [00:10:00] myself out there. Oh, no, no, no. That's too scary. I'm gonna retract, I'm gonna say that this is the thing I want, but then I'm gonna do it in a way that sort of makes it more palatable. What can happen is you find yourself not sure if what you offer and how you offer it, how you best work, what your work is about is good enough.

You find yourself undercharging thinking that, oh, well, it's not good enough, so I'm gonna have to convince people. And how I convince them is by undercharging, by making it a bargain deal. Or by overgiving, right? Oh, it's not enough. So I need to give more. I need to bend more. I need to like over deliver to a point of exhaustion.

I need to obsess over it. I need to work longer hours, or I need to perfect it work and work and work to perfect the work before anyone gets to see it. Or it can have you accepting terms that [00:11:00] don't really work for you, but you've lowered your standards. You've lowered your boundaries in order to try and get someone to see the value that you aren't seeing in that moment.

And so what ends up happening is the work that you most wanna do, that you have risk to pursue, you end up not feeling good inside it. And that's really frustrating. Like it sucks when you've said, oh, this is what I wanna do, and then how you're going about it means that you end up replicating the same overwhelms, the same unaligned ways of working that you had in previous work, right?

That was the whole reason why you left that work. Or maybe you find yourself like arguing in your head with the idea that other people won't see the value arguing with peers or people in your industry. Who are doing well or their way of doing it, or arguing in your head with your clients or [00:12:00] collaborators trying to justify your work.

So all of that sucks and it feels like shit. And what you really want is, well, number one, high boundaries and standards. So you have the energy to do the work and to work in ways that actually work for you. You want to be. Well paid. You want to work on terms that make that make sense, that make your work sustainable, and you want to see yourself building the value of it in the world.

You don't want it to feel like, oh, it's just a fantasy. It's not actually gonna work. You want it to work. And so I wanna give you something really practical to make that possible, that kickstarts the engine of courageous, contagious conviction. That means you can get past all of those self-doubts. You can have it be there, but it's not in the driving seat in charge, messing with the way that you're working, messing with your head.

I wanna give you something that means that you [00:13:00] are doing things in a way that reconfirm to you, that create more evidence to you, to yourself that this what I can offer and how I best offer it is highly valuable. Before I get into it, I wanna tell you a quick story. So, years ago, practicing as an artist in the visual art world, the common way of presenting artwork amongst my peers at the time was to have a website that was, I dunno, it'd be white background.

And on the left there'd be a list of a long list. A long list of the names of different artworks or projects or exhibitions, and. Then you would click on those and it would open on the right hand side, you know, images and descriptions of some of the projects. On the left. There'd also be a link to a bio, like a biography and a cv.

Right. And the biography would be, for some reason there was a fashion to try and [00:14:00] make the biography sound. Really clever. So reading philosophy was a thing, a fashion, and showing that you had really complicated ideas and that you were really well read and really clever academically was something that, that you should be putting in your biography.

Right? So there'd be a, a very brief sentence about. Who you are and where you're based, maybe the forms that you work in. And then a long description about the ideas that would be all about demonstrating the cleverness, right? And then there'd be a cv, which you would try and fill up with as many possible shows and things that you could.

And yeah, you'd have this website with this long list of things that you'd made. So it was all very geared towards. Look how productive I am. Look how much stuff I've created and look how clever I am. And no one actually liked doing it this way. We all just thought that's how [00:15:00] you're supposed to do it. And I remember really confronting this with myself and feeling like.

I don't wanna do it that way. And looking across at different industries, different creative industries, and the very different approaches that they had, which were much more about the, the creative itself. So I ended up doing it differently. I decided that my work is immersive. At the time, I was making exhibitions that were made of light and sound and that.

So you'd go in and you'd be in this world. You'd be in this environment that was effective. I wanted my website to be a taste of that. I wanted my website to be like, as immersive as possible so that you, you enter it and you are almost inside the work. So I ended up making a website that was like full width images and no lists, no cv, no bio really, and, and really foregrounding what the work might feel like and what the ideas were [00:16:00] as you might experience them.

And lo and behold, people liked it. My peers started doing similar websites. There were things that became more possible when it wasn't about proving credentializing, seeming clever, seeming productive, but was like, oh no, this is just, this is it. Have a taste. And so the thing I wanna take from that, and what I want to say is a way to think about where your own focus goes.

It's very easy to get caught up in trying to justify explain about your work, about why it matters, to argue with the industry that you are in, to make an enemy of the status quo. Think that you need to explain why your work matters, to make up for the gap in your own belief that other people are gonna see it.

And all of that is just [00:17:00] another slightly icky form of convincing. And so what makes low belief in these three beliefs irrelevant is if your focus is on the actual, eventual big, bold, long-term vision for the impact of your work. You immersing yourself in that possibility, you being in a state of service to it, not thinking about it, not explaining it, not trying to convince other people, but really being about it.

When you are in service to that eventual possibility, when that is where your focus goes, then the doubts that you might have can take a backseat. So you can be nervous, you can be full of self-doubt, you can be unsure, but when you internally are connected to like, fuck, imagine if I did that. [00:18:00] Imagine if my work was able to impact someone in that way.

Imagine the ripple effects of that beyond me. Imagine what would change in their life because of my work. Imagine the shifts that I could create in the culture and the way people relate to each other in the way that things are done. When you are connected in your body, in your emotions, in your state, to that, there's like a connecting thread from what is seeded in you, what you have to offer, and the reason to offer it.

The thing that it is in service to the why it matters beyond you. That becomes like a, a thread that pulls you to it, but also gives you a perspective on your current situation, your current moment, your current working day. Right now, that means you can discern what actually matters. Your focus comes out of who won't see it, who doesn't believe in it, who you'd need to convince that [00:19:00] person five years ago who was rude to you, the family member who doesn't get it.

Your head comes out of all that bullshit and into the impact of it. And so the value of what you have to offer and how you best offer it, that means that you can access that value in you the best way, the most sustainable way, the most accessible way for you, the value in it. Like imagine like a, like an acorn or a like a seed, that that is a seed that could grow into a tree.

What you have to offer is like that. So the value of it is not just what you can currently create. It's also the eventual tree, the eventual ecosystem of that work, the eventual world that you are building with it. So the value in what you have to offer is not just what you can immediately offer, it's the potency of what could be if you pursue it.[00:20:00]

So I was talking about doing an immersive website that was less about, you know, trying to prove something and more about giving people a taste. You have to do that to yourself. You have to give yourself a taste of what could be a taste of like, but imagine if I grew that, like this ginormous oak tree and there were birds landing on the branches and there were like worms and insects and bees and all sorts of creatures that were benefiting from it.

That were also feeding it, that were also nourishing it, that it was this whole world, like you have to immerse yourself in the possibility of that ginormous tree that is an ecosystem interacting with all kinds of beneficial side effects. That is not just a tree, it's a tree in a forest.

But another way, 10 years from [00:21:00] now, five years from now, three years from now, three months from now, there is someone who's going to experience your work and benefit from it in a way that really helps them or that does things for them. So you connected to that when that's your perspective. On your current moment, you are not going to use what so and so has to say.

Or like some negative comment or some imagined comment in your own head as a reason not to give it. So the number one way to build courageous, contagious conviction is to be connected to why your work matters long term. Big vision. What's the eventual impact? Why do it? What are you being in service to?

That means that you can't accept terms that don't work. That means you can't be undercharging. You can't be overgiving rinsing yourself for the now, but taking away from that future, you can't be an indecision when you are connected to [00:22:00] that. Something about that will pull you through into the next step.

And so there's a different relationship that you then have with your own resources. Me. Managing my energy, managing my attention, managing my time, managing what's precious, that I have limited resources for matters beyond me. Me not hiding, not concealing. What's distinct and specific and unique about my work because of what my work is for.

When you do this, you have a discernment for what is helping you get to towards it and what isn't. What thinking supports that and what doesn't, what terms work and what don't, and you charging adequately, you doing things in a way that's the most accessible and works best for you. Have a reason that is not just about so, so-called selfish [00:23:00] reasons, right?

That isn't about consumption or what you're trying to get. It becomes about what you're giving to. And so there are six different areas of your work where this philosophy, this approach can be applied that stack into you having momentum, you seeing the consequence of this way of working super quickly.

Rather than just explain them to you, I actually wanna invite you to experience this, walk my talk, and invite you into an immersive experience working with me to reorient into a new relationship with your own resources that is based on the full value of what you have to offer, and then going and being that offering it boldly with conviction because you're connected to a reason beyond you.

So I wanna invite you to culture creator, change Maker. This is starting today. I'm doing an hour a day for five [00:24:00] days, a few days this week, a few days next week. And if you can't make all of the calls, you can register anyway and you'll get the, and what I'm gonna be doing is taking you through six different areas of your work and helping you see where you might be getting in your own way.

In terms of you knowing the value that you have to offer. We're only gonna actually do the first five because the sixth one is just a, a natural product of the first five. But also you need those first five in order to make it make sense. So we're gonna do the first five. The first one is your own actions.

How are you showing up to your own dreams, aspirations, work? Are you boundaried? Are you. Congruent with the value of it. Are you starting not finishing? Are you finding yourself stuck or in free states? Are you letting the self-doubt take over? So the first one is action. The second one is your dreams. It can be harder to dream [00:25:00] big when you've experienced discouragement for the things that you most care about.

So we're looking at your dreams. How aligned and congruent are your dreams with what you are here to offer? Number three, we're gonna look at your energy. You need energy. We think energy is something that you have to manage. Like it's a cup that gets emptied, and then you need recovery time and we'll have to wait for it to get filled up.

But really the energy that you have for your work comes down to how boundaried are you and how congruent are the structures of your life around you. To support you being connected and giving to the things that actually energize you, that fulfill you, that means something to you. Fourth one is value, and this is specifically your offer, the way that you offer it, knowing that the value of that.

And then the fifth one is people. We're really gonna look at [00:26:00] what we talked about in the last episode, like you believing that people want what you have to offer and how transformative that is. So I wanna invite you to experience this for free. Come and join me. If you open the link in the show notes, you can register and if you can make the live cause I encourage you to come show up, bring the actual things that you're struggling with, and then let's move through them.

Like this work works no matter where you're starting, and I've seen it for so many people how to kickstart them, getting back on track with the work that they're here to do, and doing it in a way that actually makes the dream sustainable. I don't want you languishing the actual value that you have to offer behind bullshit, like market fit, culture fit industry norms, or the idea that you are not good enough or you're too much.

Or you are not right for it or that you can't, so I wanna invite you to join me for Culture [00:27:00] Creator, change Maker. We're gonna go through these five areas and I'm gonna show you how. How does it work? How do you build the conviction in what you have to offer? Build the value of it, claim it. And set yourself up on the right terms, the right approach, the right thinking, so that you can step into that cultural leadership.

You can be someone who is making the change that you are here to make, to have the influence that your work is here to have, to be the fully expressed you doing that work, being well-resourced, being recognized, not feeling isolated in it, feeling seen, and disproving the doubt. Open the link in the show notes.

Make sure you register. If you are listening to this and we've already begun, you can still register and you'll get the replays and you can catch up. Alright, I'll see you [00:28:00] inside.