From Uncertainty to Radical Confidence – With Lisa Bilyeu

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

On this episode of The resetter podcast, I bring you Lisa Bilyeu. Now a little bit about Lisa, she is the founder and host of a podcast called Women of impact. And this podcast is all about empowering women. She has so many phenomenal conversations there, I highly recommend a you subscribe to our podcast or go find her on on YouTube, she does put it out on YouTube. But the other thing I want you to know about her is not only is she a badass businesswoman who was the co founder of Quest Nutrition, but she has come from a very difficult upbringing, turned her mindset around and created an extraordinary life for herself. And she wrote a book called Radical confidence. And that is the topic I wanted to talk with her about is how do we create confidence in ourselves in a world that has is filled with so much uncertainty. And especially, I’m just going to be really transparent and honest here. I feel like as women, there are so many places that we show up feeling unconfident, whether it’s in our marriage, whether it’s in our relationships, whether whether it’s in the workplace, and Lisa has really become the master of stepping into her own brilliance. And bringing that brilliant with that brilliance comes this insane confidence, you can feel it in her presence. And it was so fun because we did this interview in her studio. And we just were instantly instantly kindred souls. And what I wanted to pull out of her for you all is, what do we need to do? What do we need to look at? How do we go from a place of feeling uncertain, into a place of feeling incredibly certain. And she had some really important steps about everything from creating a mission statement for your life to learning how to build certainty, because certainty may not be something that you just wake up every morning with, or is actually a lifestyle, to building certainty, to what do we do in those moments when maybe we had certainty. And all of a sudden, we start to doubt ourselves, this is going to be one of those episodes that you’re going to want to come back to on the days that life seemed to got to have gotten the best of you. This is going to be the episode you listen to before you go in and ask for a raise at work or one of those episodes that you refer back to when life just knocked you down. There are so many nuggets in this episode. And it actually i Even though I interviewed her, I know this will be a go to episode for me, because there was so much wisdom that just poured out of her. So I am so excited to share this with you think of this as beginning a conversation on certainty and confidence for you. Please check out her podcast and know that you are so much more powerful than the world may be giving you credit for you are so much more powerful than perhaps people told you at at your younger years. And Lisa is going to show you exactly why. Get ready to step into your power with Lisa bill you enjoy. Welcome to the resetter podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself. Again, if you have a passion for learning, if you’re looking to be in control of your health and take your power back. This is the podcast for you. Okay, so I want to say welcome to my podcast. But here we are in your studio on my platform. And I’m just so excited to have you and to be having this discussion. I’m

Lisa Bilyeu  

so excited to be here in your studio. Seriously being on your show. I’m so excited. Yeah,

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

thank you. And I think the topic of what we’re going to unpack over the next hour is not only critically important for women, but we’ve never talked about it on the resetter podcast and I feel like for women confidence and saying you don’t feel confident in your life is like that cultural hushed moment like we’re too it’s like a sign of weakness to say we don’t feel confident, it’s even difficult for us to admit it to our own brain. So can we start off with the huge question that I have, which is why are women feeling so unconfident? Oh,

Lisa Bilyeu  

I think it stems from at least I can speak for myself and from childhood from what I was taught what I was taught to believe. So when you’re, you know, eight years old and you get a Man, pat you on the head and says little girl should should be seen and not heard. Yeah. Makes you think, oh, so I have to be silent when you’re told that you’re going to be a mother and a stay at home wife, and that’s going to be your destiny? And what if you don’t want that you’re like, Oh, what’s that? What’s wrong with me. And so it’s the belief system, I think that we have, and then our actions then dictate that. So as you get into adulthood, now, you haven’t taken those chances, because you’re supposed to be seen and not heard. You haven’t been bold, because people have shunned you or told you to be quiet. And so then you act in accordance, because you want to fit in and in fitting in, in the temporary moment you feel good, you feel good about fitting in to the crowd, or the the everyone around you. And so stepping out of that means you have to be bold, and no one wants to be left out and wants to be put aside or ostracized. And so you start to be molded into maybe a person that you wish you actually could break out of that shell, but you don’t know how. And so I think that that’s really where it stems from. So

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

when I hear that, you know, where my brain goes is like, Okay, well, then if we’re going to change confidence for women, we need to start with the girls, we need to start with the younger. And we need to start with even how adults speak to younger children and girls specifically. So it because because to what you just said, I bet so many women are like, Yep, that was me. Now, I grew up in the 70s, where there was so many politically incorrect things going on here in LA, in the 70s. I mean, it was it’s, it was girls do this, boys do this, you know, girls can’t do this. There was I was raised by a mom who was grew up in the 50s, which was a very kind of Puritan time of life. So those of us that are 50 and beyond, were coming from that childhood. So if we look at why so many women are feeling unconfident, and and somebody listening to this, here’s what you just said and said, Yep, that was me. That was my childhood. But now I’m 50. Now I’m 60. And I have to figure out 100, how to unwind that. How do we help that woman? How do we when we realize that with the messaging we’ve been given, fucked our brain up? In our self image? How do we begin to unwind it?

Lisa Bilyeu   

I think it starts with, what is it that you want confidence in? Because confidence isn’t an end goal, right? It’s like how much you talk about health. It’s like, well, what if you’re really hungry? It’s like, you know, you’re gonna act out of alignment with who you want to be. But you still act out of alignment. So when it comes to confidence, instead of worrying about I want to be confident, what does that even mean? That what are you going to focus on? What’s that thing? What is that Northstar that you’re trying to get to? Because confidence actually ends up being the byproduct of taking action? Oh, so if you say, for instance, I want I was just telling you this before I went to a doctor, they told me that I had PCOS. And then she looks at my chart, she’s like, Oh, you don’t want kids? Oh, you’re fine, then. Now once upon a time, I would have just stay silent. Mm hmm. I would have taken that doctor’s advice as fat and I wouldn’t have said anything. But what I realized was what I wanted confidence in, is to take my health seriously, I wanted to own my own outcome of where I was going with my health. And so once I realized, in order to do that, I had to stand up for myself, I had to speak up when something didn’t sound good. Now I, I know where I’m trying to get to. And in over time, when I do these stepping stones, the next time the doctor says something doesn’t quite align or dismisses you, Lisa, or the doctor, you know, isn’t taking you seriously, what are you going to say? Yeah, what are you going to say the next time and once you learn that, once you practice it, over time, you become competent. Once you become competent, the confidence then comes, but what I was saying about the the hangry thing is, sometimes you don’t feel confident. And so even when you practice it, even when you have all the skill sets and the tools, there are going to be moments that you don’t feel it and it’s okay. Because that will ebb and flow that will depend on your hormones or depend on how you show up and what your goal is and how you’re trying to get there. And so I think the first thing is identify what you’re trying to get confidence in.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

And you know, what I just heard in that is confidence is congruency with yourself. Yes. So, did you end up speaking up to that doctor? Yeah.

Lisa Bilyeu  

I said, I said, I’m sorry. But just because I don’t don’t want children doesn’t mean that my body doesn’t matter. Yep. And so I just got up and I walked out and I then tried to find another doctor. Like I just had to then find that next step because if I didn’t have the confidence to do that, right, I wouldn’t have then I would have been like, okay, I guess my body doesn’t matter there. Right. So

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

again, I that was a jam and I want to make sure nobody loses what you just said. Every single time we are in a situation that we feel like we are either being gaslit or marginalized or not treated right and we don’t stand up for ourselves in that moment, we are weakening our confidence in ourselves. Is that what I just? Absolutely.

Lisa Bilyeu  

And so then it becomes What steps are you going to take on that path to the confidence? Okay, so the next time the doctor goes to gaslight me, what am I going to say? Because when you don’t feel confident, it’s easy to just stand up for yourself. But when you’re in it, you don’t know how to stand up for yourself. So I am such a, like an advocate for like having scripts in certain situations, because my emotions can take over. Well, I could feel badly about myself. And then I could feel the shame I give a well, maybe the doctor doesn’t know more than me. Like know, in those moments when I’m about to go to a doctor, if they gaslight me, what am I going to say? And then that teaches you okay, what am I going to say the next time? What am I going to do? And so I’m very action oriented. But I write, I try to write my action steps before I get into the situation. Because again, when you don’t feel confident, just telling someone to be confident in speaking up won’t help. Yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

And you know, what I’m thinking in that is, especially with the holidays coming up, and so many people get thrown into their family units, and there’s all that kind of chaos is if you can, what what I’m hearing you say is no the situation you’re going into, if you know where you’re going to be gaslit or marginalized, have a plan before you get in there. So that you can finally stand up for yourself. And when you do, I’m also wondering, is when you come when you come out of that there needs to be an honoring of yourself as well, as well of like, Hey, I finally stood up to that situation, I finally stood up to that family member or that doctor or that person, and then realizing that that standing up for yourself added to your confidence 1,000%.

Lisa Bilyeu  

And so what I would do in that family situation, I would just replay past experiences. So I was like, Okay, I’m going to dinner, I know, my dad’s gonna say x, y and z, I know my mom or whoever. And you just write it as a script. And you like what happened the last time that you felt like you had to be shut down, that someone stepped on you that you were dismissed. Okay, why is that script out? Now, what next to it, what you would say and do differently? Because there’s going to be so many nuances to the people that you talk to and how they respond. And then you have to be okay with them not upset, not then re saying what you think they’re gonna say, right? Because often what you got to pay something out in your head, you’re like, Alright, I’m gonna stand up for myself, and then someone throws you a curveball, and you’re like, Oh, God, I don’t know what to do. So I will have an action plan. So it’s like, okay, if my mom says this, I’m gonna say this to her. If she then repeats it, I’m going to repeat this. And if she doesn’t do that, I’m going to get up and, you know, very kindly dismiss myself from the table like, actually. And if that even means, and I don’t advocate for lying Monday, I don’t write but the second it comes to my health, and my mindset, I actually would if I had to, so the situation, let’s say, people are being cruel to you at dinner, or they’re picking up oh, look at you being all healthy over there. Right. And it just, it upsets you however you respond. What am I going to do in that situation? Lisa, if you don’t have words, to defend yourself? And maybe I don’t want to create animosity at Christmas? Yeah. Okay. So if if it starts to escalate, Lisa, what are you going to do, I may say, my plan is, I’m going to say, Oh, my God, I’ve got a really upset stomach, I’m so sorry, I have to excuse myself, or I just have to repeat whatever that excuse is, that has to get you out of that room, if that’s what you have to do to preserve your mindset to preserve that confidence that you’re trying to build, do it. That brings

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

up a really interesting thought, which is the environment that we put ourselves in is going to dictate our confidence. And if we put ourselves in toxic environments, and whether it is the family Christmas dinner, or a work environment, and we can continue to go in there and not stand up for ourselves, then we continue to weaken our own confidence. So the environment is massively important is what I heard. Yeah,

Lisa Bilyeu  

the environment and then who you are around. who’s around you, I should say, because if you’re let’s say with you know, like, if it was me new, right, and we were out and glitter both of me and you think very similarly about food, about health, about how light you know, lifestyle mindset. So now imagine it’s mean you and then there’s one other person there that doesn’t have a positive mindset. I think mean you would be able to sound super freakin strong and our abilities. Yeah, I know. I would be able to. We

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

thought we’d walk away we would see Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Lisa Bilyeu  

But now imagine I’m, I’m the only person with a growth mindset that wants to do better and take my health seriously and build my confidence. And now I go to see my family because your family especially brings you back to your childhood. They still see some of the youngest child so you can imagine that like our little Lisa, what does she know? Oh, so much. And so in that environment, I may have to dress differently. And what I mean is what are the clothes that I can wear to give me the confidence to walk into that room with my family? I I may need to use different vocabulary. Because in, if I say to my dad, Dad, I wish you had a growth mindset, because then you would understand what that was a growth mindset. So I’d have to adopt a different vocabulary to use to them versus somebody else that I’m working with that maybe has a growth mindset or knows what I do for a living. So everything is a context. Who you around, where are you? And how do you respond typically, in those environments, to not beat yourself up over? Right? Because I definitely with my family, I regress into being the younger child.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Oh, yeah, me too. How many kids in your family?

Lisa Bilyeu  

I’ve got two older siblings. My dad remarried and had two other children, but I’m still seen as like the little Yachty.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Yeah, it’s so interesting. I’m so I’m the youngest two. And it is when we all get together, it’s like everybody goes back into their roles. That it’s so everybody in the family, I’m like, Okay, wait, my parents are in their 80s. My sister is two years older than me. It’s like, what? How are we back in this situation? So it really that is really a thing. It’s quite, it’s quite interesting. How are everybody plays the part, it’s like a movie you’re walking back into. So Okay, talk to me about body confidence. Because so many women that are listening to this podcast, women that read fast like a girl and trying to trying the different strategies there, what I see is that there’s just, we have such a lack of confidence when it comes to our body. And it’s works both ways. It’s the woman who cannot lose weight. She’s tried every single diet, and it’s the woman who is extremely thin, and everybody and is trying to gain weight, and nobody understands her. It doesn’t matter where we are, it seems like body confidence and being a woman do not are not going hand in hand,

Lisa Bilyeu  

who God This sounds like this is such a big question. And important to talk about really important. So I was brought up with a mom that was borderline anorexic. When I was in my teenage years, she swung hard the other way and became morbidly obese. So just want to give context what I was saw growing up, and the relationship between a person and a woman and food. Yeah, I also was teased for my looks, but I was very skinny. So I was praised for my body. And then I got to 16 and developed. And then all of a sudden, I had the same people that saying, oh my god, you’re so lucky, you’re skinny, then we’ll turn around, Oh, you better be careful, you’re putting on way. And growing up with a grandmother who feeds you a lot, right? Great Grandmother, Greek Orthodox. Every time you go, they like, Oh, why don’t you eat? And why are you eating? And then how are you going to find a man if you don’t eat. And then as soon as you start getting better, like how you’re going to find a man if you’re fat. And they would say those words. I don’t use them that but that’s how they were to your face. Mindy. Wow. So just to give context of them. Not a surprise, I had body dysmorphia issues, I would look in the mirror. And I would always criticize myself. And what I realized was, is that that mindset of dismissing your body of not recognizing your body of not appreciating your body led to very bad health outcomes. And that was because I cut out fat, I cut out carbs, I was like, I would need to be as skinny as possible because that’s how I’m going to get accepted. Now what I found in my own life, is once I started to focus on other things other than my body, my mindset, my business acumen, my how to be a beautiful wife had been amazing sister, all of these other things started to them pivar where I was focusing on my mind or on my body. And then it allowed me to feel good in other areas. Once I started to feel good in other areas, like building a business, like being an amazing wife, I started to lessen the focus of my

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

body. And oh my gosh, that’s I call that going in the side door. You go in through to health from a different direction. So again, that was a truth that I want to make sure nobody misses, you found confidence and other areas of your life that you were able to bring back to your

Lisa Bilyeu  

boss. Because once I started to realize, oh, I can build a business and actually bring value to people I can create a protein bar than actually saves lives. Like I had an anorexic woman that reached out to us the early days of Quest Nutrition. And she said You saved my life, because I never thought I would be okay with calories. And you’ve read in the spa has now made me agree with calories and I’ve been able to gain some weight. So when you really see things like that, where you can actually impact somebody from doing business, right? I was like, Well, how can I say here and just be disgusted with my own body when I can actually achieve things that help people. Right. So it’s refocusing the way refocus on where your attention goes. And my worst time in my life where I had uttered Body Dysmorphia was when I didn’t have anything else in my life. I didn’t have what we grab us. I didn’t have that word back then. But every day I didn’t have a purpose. So every day I woke up. I went on the scale, because my purpose was how much weight can I lose? how skinny can I get? Yeah. And then how long? Yeah, how long can I run on the treadmill for? That was where I was getting my, my joy, or my sadness, or my frustration, or my drive was all from how much do I weigh? How much can I lose on the run on a treadmill? And then how much little food can I eat? And so having these things as the distraction to the unhappiness that was my life became a big wake up call once I started with quest, and I realized, Oh, my Wait, was a total distraction to how miserable I actually was by being a stay at home wife. Now I don’t judge people for being a stay at home wife. I

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

know it’s Roadable. Yeah,

Lisa Bilyeu  

I just it wasn’t for me. I didn’t want it. I didn’t ask for it. And I didn’t speak up to say that I was unhappy. Yeah. And so every time you have unhappiness or something in your life, we distract ourselves with what I call the squirrels. Like the squirrels like the dog rose Chase the Squirrel. Yeah. So it’s like it’s a distraction. So I found that my distractions, from my profound unhappiness of being a stay at home wife was my weight, was looking at myself in the mirror was criticizing my body because it gave me a purpose to get up in the morning. Yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

So okay, I want to unpack purpose for a second, please. Because when the women’s many of the women listening to this are like in their late 40s, early 50s. And their purpose has dramatically shifted, that is an age group where kids have grown up, maybe some women are going back into careers. And I hear this a lot in my friend group, I hear it in our membership group, where it’s like, they don’t know what their purpose is. And it’s kind of a big thing to figure out your purpose. Like you don’t just sit down one day. And my purpose is, how do you go about finding a purpose that lights you up so much, that now you’re focused on that? And health just becomes part of a daily activity, but you’re not so focused on your body? And you’re and the way you just explained? Yeah, such

Lisa Bilyeu  

a great question. And I think it comes from you have to try a bunch of class well, on this path, you have to try a bunch of shit. Yeah, like, you just have to try a bunch. Because if you don’t know what your purpose is, then you haven’t encountered something that drives you so much. That pulls, you pulls at your heartstrings. Yeah. And if you don’t already know, it means you haven’t tried the vast amount of things to then figure it out. So in my life, once I started to realize, oh, I figured out shipping for this protein bar, but it was helping people save lives. Oh, that was really good. But you couldn’t have told me ahead of time that making a protein bar would actually be part of my purpose. So we had to, you have to try things. And then you just take inventory. So try 10 things. So you can sit there and go, What are the things I’ve always been interested to do? Travel, start a business? A volunteer, right? Like just write a list? And then every day every day, or once a week? Or once a month? Try it? Yep. And so how do you feel when you tried it?

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

And then the night you got I’m almost thinking you could like rate yourself? Like, yeah, I’m zero to 10? Like I tried this, and did it light me up? Yes. And you’re looking for like the thing that you did that just lit you up? Is that a 10? Is that a one? Where is it? Try a bunch of different things, and you’re gonna hit one that’s close to a 10.

Lisa Bilyeu  

Exactly. So once you found that, what I then call is that becomes like part of your mission, right? purpose and mission kind of go together. So that becomes your mission. But now how do you actually look at a mission? And then I like to think in business terms execute on that mission. And so for me, it was I realized there’s a, what’s it called a method to figure out your mission. So it’s your who, your what and your why. Yep. If you can figure out those three things that align with the thing that you just tried, that you really love. Now, you can go all in and you can start working on your purpose. Yeah, so the who, what the why, for me, it was to create content, because I went to film school. I love content creation. So that’s my what? The Who, it’s 14 year old girls. Why? Because I felt badly about myself when I was 14. So now, I’ve come up with a mission statement because I think everyone should have a mission statement for themselves. Like we do business for yourself. Do you mind sharing your No, not at all, is to create content that impacts 14 year old girls so they can build confidence because I never had any.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Oh, that was so good and succinct

Lisa Bilyeu  

that I can repeat it at any point. Because when I feel badly about myself when I don’t have the confidence when my hormones are all over the place, when I feel like crap, when I’ve interacted with somebody that’s made me feel badly about myself. What do I go back to my frickin Northstar? I have to be so clear on my Northstar. And so now, if you start succeeding, or if you start doing really well on your mission, you may have other opportunities. But sometimes other people have that problem. I don’t know which way to go. There’s so many amazing things to do. I don’t know which way to choose. If you have a mission statement, you know exactly where, you know how, if it’s not content, if it’s not going to help 14 year old girls, and if it doesn’t align with my why I’m not going to do it.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

That is, you know, I have all the goal setting and all the business classes I’ve taken over the years, I’ve never thought of a personal mission statement. I have my company mission statement. But I’ve never thought of like just my mission statement for me. And you know, in your mission statement, if I break it apart a bit. And because again, I want I don’t want people to miss the power of the subtleties of some of the things you’re saying is the service aspect. And so your your your mission is built around serving somebody you used to be I heard this recently, like, the greatest joy will come when you go and help the person that you used to be like, Oh my gosh, that that lights me up. But I think what happens to us in life, and I think this is where it we weaken confidence. Now I’m now after chatting with you, is that we think it’s going to be the car, we think it’s going to be the house, we think it’s going to be the job title, the salary amount, we think it’s going to be all of that. And then we get those things. And we still feel really crummy inside. But if your Northstar is I want to serve a certain person or I want to serve serve humanity. Now, not only do you have supernatural energy, but you have supernatural confidence. Yeah,

Lisa Bilyeu  

I love that. That’s so cool. It was actually I think the Mother Teresa quote, they said not everybody will fight for the masses, but everyone will fight for the one who’s the one that you wake up to fight fighting for every day, I wake up every day fighting for the 14 year old Lisa, when we were doing quest, I was fighting for my overweight mother that couldn’t find happiness in food and in you know, being able to enjoy her life. So because you’re always going to face adversity, no matter what you try. Yep. And so in those moments of adversity, who do you Who are you going to think about, right? Because for me, for instance, with quest, I didn’t have the confidence. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was my husband was already a seasoned entrepreneur, his two business partners were already seasoned entrepreneurs. And here I was just I’d been a housewife. For eight years, I had zero business experience. So I’m showing up everyday very insecure. There was so many moments where I had to face myself, I had to face my insecurities. I had to face the things, my emotions that I didn’t feel good enough. But what got me through was reminding myself, okay, Lisa, right now, you can stop. It’s very valid. You can stop because you don’t know. Or you can fight for your mum.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

See, it’s funny, you know, I do this. And I never realized what I did did until I’m listening to you. Now I had a patient and I write about her in every single book. Her name was Lani. And she showed up in my office at 40 years old and she had just been given a breast cancer diagnosis. And no symptoms went into her routine mammogram came out with a diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer. Three months after, you know, being told that she was having a mastectomy. She was in chemo, she was radiation. And ironically, she said she shows up in my office waiting room there for me to help her daughter who has asthma. She’s literally showed up because she wanted nutrition and detox advice for her daughter that had asthma. And I’m looking at her and I’m thinking, Okay, wait, are totally bald. And I’m like, But wait, what’s going on with you? So long story short, what ended up happening is they gave her three months to live. And we worked on her lifestyle. And she turned it into 11 years. 11 years, and she is my fuel because and this she died about seven years ago. She is my fuel because what I’m trying to help is the woman who doesn’t get breast cancer, the woman who’s who’s so she doesn’t get that disease. So I really love this idea that you’re either helping somebody that really tugged at your heart or you’re helping a past version of yourself that suffered. And then I forecast that and I’m think what would that be like if every woman on the planet was showing up with this service heart trying to give in that way? What would happen to a woman’s a woman’s confidence as as a culture, what would happen to our confidence?

Lisa Bilyeu  

I think we would all have the confidence because and also we wouldn’t feel like if we didn’t have the confidence that it dictated who we were as a person. Because again, I think that if you don’t have the confidence and error you think I’m not as good as Mindy, look how good she is, you know, and now you’re diminishing yourself. That’s going to be detrimental to how you show up the next day. But if you don’t necessarily seek confidence, but you seek trying to improve, you seek trying to help that one person that maybe you’ve got in your mind, the confidence, like I said earlier becomes a byproduct of everything that you’ve just done. But for me, because I don’t prioritize confidence as the end goal, I protest the goal itself, I then happen to have the confidence as a result. But in those moments where I have the insecurity, where I don’t feel good about myself, where I’m like, Oh, my God, I’m sitting in this boardroom, and here are these amazing guys who have been in business for so long. At least you feel terrible about yourself. Okay, what’s my priority? Okay, Lisa, just call yourself on it. You don’t feel good. But you want to save your mom? Which one’s more important? Yes. Let’s actually call myself on it when they like which one’s more important? Yep. feeling insecure, and staying there, or helping my mom when I am that bleeding with myself, whether you call it ego, insecurity, whatever, when I’m that blatant? I go, never, ever, ever, does my ego ever come first over my mission, because I just put it that blatantly. And then I move forward, even though I have the insecurity. And then as a result, I have the confidence.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

That’s amazing. I’ve done a little similar trick in my brain, when I get negativity or criticism thrown at me. If it’s enough, my I’ve trained my brain to go, oh, just you wait, wait till I show you what I really capable of doing. You don’t that you know it from being on social media, you’re gonna get all kinds of crazy things sent your way. And when when there’s days that a lot of craziness comes, I always just look and I go, just you wait, wait to see what I can accomplish. And it’s a beautiful way to pull yourself out of that, like, self deprecating moment that can come when criticism whether you’re seeing it on socials, or you’re seeing at work, or maybe a spouse is telling you, it’s a beautiful way to have like a mantra that kind of pulls you in a different direction. So talk a little bit, I think one of the things that I see with women that I’m that, that. And I would say if I’m really transparent, I might even wrestle with, which is I don’t want to be too confident that somebody thinks I’m cocky. And I also don’t want to be too confident that I might make somebody else feel less confident. How do we rectify those situations? Because I think as women we think I don’t think men think like that

Lisa Bilyeu  

personally. No, not at all. I love this question. I’ve really, as you know, as I’ve said, I’ve really been working on my confidence and just like how do I really go towards my goals, and feel good about myself as a result. And I’m really proud of how far I’ve come really proud. And a few years ago, I went on a trip with another female friend. And it was our first trip that we’ve been on. And I show up and we’re like, Oh, what do you want to do? And I’m fed up with just being like, Oh, I don’t know, what do you want to do? Like, just absolutely say what you want to do? And then find a beautiful medium. And so like if we if we went on vacation, you said you wanted to do something like, oh, no, I’m not really in the mood. You know, what, why don’t you go do it. I’ll go do my thing. And we’ll just meet up. And in that interaction over time, like, on the second day, she like, got triggered. And I didn’t realize it and she turned to me. And she’s like, you’re really intimidating. And I was like, what? I was shocked. And I was like, What do you mean? She’s like, well, you just say what you want. And you know if I feel like I have to do it. And I was like, Oh no, I and so I was like let’s talk about it. Me saying what I want doesn’t mean that I’m diminishing what you want me saying what I want, is hoping to give you the power to then say what you want, so that we can then either come to a compromise, or we just go our separate ways. And then we join each other at the in the evening. Wow. But I don’t want to diminish me saying what I want to make you comfortable? Yes. So let’s talk about it. Maybe I’m using language that’s triggering you what’s the language that I’m using? And so I’m just very open, especially when it’s with a friend to just discuss them. Like let’s put it all on the table. Like why am I triggering you? What have I said, and then maybe I need to look at how my language that I use and maybe I was being arrogant in this moment. Okay, well, next time I’m going to do better. Yeah, I’m not perfect. Yeah. And so I try to go in to be confident with myself not diminish another one because I think that’s where the cockiness comes where people feel like you’re trying to you’re diminishing them in order to get confident, right? But I’m not I’m just trying to be myself. In my own confidence. I’m trying to be respectful for the other person, and then accept that. Absolutely. Your confidence may trigger somebody else. And that isn’t on you. But what is on you is to assess whether their assessment of you is correct or not.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Do you know I had a situation recently I was in in a PISA with a bunch of women for a menopause retreat. I was hosting or leading and I beat Yeah, I know. Right. Thank you. It was really Be nice. And anyways, I there was this group of women, they were so beautiful and every every woman in there was massively successful. And it was so collaborative and wonderful. And one day this woman came up to me, we were doing all these hikes. And she said, I have to be really transparent with you. And she was like, I didn’t like you. When when we first got here two days ago, I didn’t like you. And I was like, I’ve never had a woman come up to me and say that so boldly. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, thank you. Like, can you tell me why? Like when she goes, No, it has nothing to do with you. I just realized that when you shared your mission for women, it triggered in me that I wasn’t doing enough. And so I projected that onto you, as it was something I didn’t like about you. But when I sat with it for 24 hours, I realized it was actually more to do with me. And I just want to say thank you to you, because me not liking you two days ago actually helped me understand what I needed to work on and how I could improve. And I was like, That is the most beautiful interaction with another woman that I’ve ever had in just full transparency. But when we look culturally, at how women interact together, we don’t interact like that. We do exactly what you said, where we, we hold stuff to ourselves, and then maybe we’ll go bitch about it with other women will be like, Oh my God, you remember last night when we were out. And so and so said such and such. So we don’t even go right to the person and try to address it. And we don’t seem to have a self awareness that when something bothers us, that is our button that was pushed, just like this beautiful woman that came to me, and said it was my her button. And then I felt so bonded to that woman by the time we left because of her vulnerability to do that. So when we’re looking at these at our female friendships, and how we show up, is there a way that we can support each other So collectively, we can start to raise each other’s confidence.

Lisa Bilyeu  

I think the truth is, while I love to want to change other people, they have to want it for themselves. You know, and so if they want it, and they have a growth mindset, then you can talk through things. But I think you have to be willing and open to see that and hear the message and then work inwards about what is the thing that’s triggering you. And so because I was close friends with this girl that I went on a trip with, and she knew who I was, I was able to just be very honest and say, Look, if it was me, let’s look at that. What language did I use? But I’m I will never, and this is part of my own growth. I won’t apologize if I don’t actually mean it. Now, if I’ve hurt my friend’s feelings, yeah, that wasn’t intentional at all. So if I hurt your feelings, I’m sorry, your feelings were hurt. Let’s actually talk through this. So I think it’s important to know if they’re willing to or not, first of all, and then if they are great than where they are, you know, know that everybody’s gonna have Yeah, everyone’s gonna have like, different levels, that they’re on their growth. And so if you had met me, eight years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to say this. I may have been triggered by you, because you’re very confident, you know, you’re very loud. And I love it. You know, very loud, but that made me like, maybe go inwards? Yeah. Because it’s like, oh, she’s very confident now. Why? Because as when I was younger, I was bullied by girls, not by boys.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Me too. A lot of and let’s stop on this because this is too important. A lot of women were bullied by other women. I don’t understand. We go to that 14 year old girl you’re trying to help. Why do we do that? And and and if we’re not aware of it, we continue it through our adult life. And one of my major messages to women has been, we need to collaborate not compete. And yet, I don’t know if we know what that looks like. Many women don’t know what that looks like.

Lisa Bilyeu  

Yeah, I didn’t know what that looks like. And for the longest time I had great. I had one very close female friend. And we were both teased. So we kind of like bonded together over being bullied at school. Yeah. Trauma bonded. Yeah. And, and then a lot of my friends were boys, because they didn’t have that same behavior. They weren’t really backstabbing me, like, you know, a lot of girls. It’s backstabbing, I thought someone was my friend. And you know, she had this whole setup where her and the popular boy in school that I fancied he came up to me one day, and he’s like, we had a school trip. And I was about 11 years old. And he was like, we’re going on this trip and there’s a dance, I want you to be my first dance. And I was like, Oh my god. This is like, he can’t believe that he wants me and it was all a setup. We get there and I walk in and he’s dancing with. The girl was supposed to be my friend and she’s the popular girl. And I found out after there was all a setup, they just want to embarrass me. So that story, I’m 44 years old. So imagine I 11 That story how much that stuck with me. So I had the idea that women want to be trusted, that women are only willing to step on you to get ahead. And when I turned probably in my 20s, I was like, but I love women right now you too, right? And I was so I was like, you know, I just need to be me. And if women reject you, Lisa, then you have to be okay with being rejected. And so that allowed me to say, What would? How do I show up to have the friends that I really want? Right? And that then becomes, you know, you, you end up calling the friends that are like you? That’s right, so you end up surrounded? Yeah, you do attract him. But I think it takes the boldness to just say, I’m going to be me. And what does me look like me looks like being the person that calls friends homies. Me looks like being the person that when I’ve met you for the first time, I’m gonna come in for a big hug. And if you don’t want to hug him, you turn your nose up, then you’re not my peeps.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Oh, we got you talking about you’re thinking about hugs, by the way. You can’t come back from a hug. There’s no like, you can’t be like pull your hand back like you’re in. So you’re either going all the way. And you could call it a pat. But yes, so true. I love that. What do you think it means to be a good friend to another woman? Who

Lisa Bilyeu

I think that’s a great question, to not judge them to be available when they need you. But I think that I with my friends, as always, I have language rolled around that, because I run a business. I’m very, very busy. But all of my friends know that if they need me, text me the word. It’s important. I will drop everything. If I got a text right now, as I’m sitting with you. And one of my friends text me Hey, Lisa, do you have a sec? It’s important. I feel like I’m so sorry, I gotta go. So having language that, that my friends can reach me whenever they need to. And then absolute transparency. And so that means, for instance, one of my closest friends, that friend that I told you that trauma bond friend, she asked me to be a godmother

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

to her child. Wow, that’s a big response. Yeah, that’s huge.

Lisa Bilyeu  

And I told her daughter, and I said, this is such an honor. But let me tell you who I am. And let’s make sure that you know what you’re getting into. I’m not the person that calls all the time. I’m not the person, I forget people’s birthdays. I just laid out like, I know, You’ve known me for 25 years, but as a godmother, my personality, my character isn’t going to change. And that doesn’t mean that I don’t love you. That doesn’t mean that I’m not going to drop everything if you need me. Yes. And she turned around, she’s like, of course, I know who you are. I don’t expect you too, you know, and even now, I forget their birthdays. But I don’t feel guilty. Why? Because she knew what she was getting. She knows that I’m not the type of person that shows my love by making sure that I call you on your birthday. I show you how much I love you by the willingness to absolutely drop everything. If you need me that if you literally need to call me and you want five hours on a call, because you need someone to talk to you. I’m there. If your son actually needs his godmother, I’m there I’m getting on the next frickin plane. Yeah, but um, won’t remember a birthday. Right? So just like laying it all out and the type of person that you are, and then you end up attracted. Also, the last thing I will say is I’m not the person that needs to talk to you every two minutes, or needs you to contact me for three months. Now, if I text you, and I’m like, Hey, me just thinking about you. You do not have to text me back. I do not want you to feel guilty. Why? Because we women have so much guilt. Carry that I don’t want that. So I’m not gonna make my friend feel guilty. So I’ve Mel Robbins, I love Mel so much. And I’m just like, I’ll text her. And she was like, I’m so sorry, Lisa haven’t text you back, like, never apologized. And I will text her once a month. And just like just thinking of you love you. That’s,

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

you know, the apologizing is a really interesting thing that we do as women. And as I’ve, I’m just gonna say, as I’ve gotten wiser, and have made better choices of the women that I’m close to, every single one of them say to me all the time because I even I will slip into it and be like, Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t call you. I’m so sorry. And they’re like, stop, stop. You don’t need to be sorry. And I realized I have such I have such a core group of women right now that say that to me. And I’m like, Oh, thank you for reminding me. I have to unwind that habit. We do that as women all the time. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. And the second thing we do a lot is when somebody gives us a compliment. we dismiss it. Like, oh, you know, like when somebody says Oh, you look really good today. You’re like, oh, this whole thing I can just, you know, I just happen to throw or like we totally dismiss it. So what does it look like? Especially on the compliment front, especially when we’re looking at confidence not cocky. If somebody comes up to you and says, You look amazing today. What would be like a really authentically confident response. I know it probably be different for everybody. But if we don’t want to dismiss it, how can we own it and let it soak it?

Lisa Bilyeu  

I love this question. Thank you so much. That’s all you do. And it has to be a habit, right? We all know when you talk about like health habits, and you know, just like automatically going for the snacks. It’s like how it’s a habit. So give yourself grace, that you have a habit right now. So what do you have to do to change that habit, you have to have an alternative solution that when it comes up, you have to you know, you’d have to like practice. So I would say, as simple as thank you so much. So kind of you Yeah. And then to be honest, I love giving compliments back. So yeah, so I would just like give a compliment back. But the, the apologizing thing. So the compliments a I think it’s just simple as next time someone compliments you. I literally challenge everyone listening right now or watching. That’s your response. Thank you so much agree. And then the apologizing thing, the thing that I think is really doing damage to us is that we often will apologize when it comes to self care.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Taking time for ourselves, Goose talk more about that. So

Lisa Bilyeu  

I my health just to give people who may not know for the last seven years, I’ve been really battling with massive gut issues. About seven years ago now, it felt like my gut erupted. I can go into the story of why but it just it did. And I was completely depleted. I was 20 pounds lighter than I am now my hair was falling out, my nails were brittle. And I didn’t have self esteem. I didn’t have what I thought was confidence. I didn’t have the energy. And so I had to start prioritizing my health. But I had the mindset of oh, you your health the last thing yourself, because the last thing, Lisa, serve everybody else, build quest, be there for your husband be a great daughter. But don’t don’t take time for yourself. So once I had hit rock bottom, I realized I had to start prioritizing. And so that meant I had to put things in place that allowed me to prioritize it. So first of all, it was I’d like to go to bed at nine o’clock. And so if someone’s having a party, and it’s obviously not their birthday, because I will try and go to someone’s birthday, but even then, if I felt depleted, the main immediate thing we would do is like I’m so sorry, I can’t come right. But what’s that actually doing to our psyche? It’s telling your body and it’s telling yourself that somebody else is prioritizing, oh sorry, somebody else’s priority over your self care, just by apologizing. That’s where you’re training yourself to think. Okay, so what would you say? I would say, I really hope you have a wonderful time, I’m not going to be able to come. But I really hope you have a wonderful time.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

So this is exactly what I’m trying to get everybody to do all the women to do in the nurturer phase, like we talked about on your podcast is that I believe in these moments. And that was just an example of like, where you weren’t feeling good. And you were prioritizing your health. But what if we created a culture where women did this the week before their period? And again, it was like, Oh, I’m this is why I call it the nurturer phase. I was like I had this vision of like women going not tonight, I’m in the nurture phase, and all other women would know. And what that would mean is she was nurturing herself. And instead, what do we again, what do we do as women when we’re like, Oh, do you want to come out to out with us tonight? And you’re like, No, I don’t want to go out. Then all of a sudden, women are like, yeah, come

Lisa Bilyeu

You should. But

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

like you when you actually break it down, that it perhaps it’s self care for that person, and maybe they’re doing something so important for their emotional and physical health, it’s going to make them and you know, an even better human a couple of days later, like, you start looking at it completely different 1,000%.

Lisa Bilyeu

And I love having that language around it. Yeah. But I think also it’s about putting the boundaries. Yeah. And so where are you letting people step on your self care? Because it is your responsibility to take care of yourself. That’s right. And so for me, I realized, oh, okay, I stopped drawing. So I love drawing, I

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

saw your drawing. Gorgeous. Thank

Lisa Bilyeu  

you. So I love doing it. I stopped for 10 years because I was building a business and I was showing off everybody else from except for myself. So in my repairing of my God, I started to look at what all this self care things that I love doing that I stopped doing. And then how do I start implementing it into my lifestyle and then creating boundaries around it? So I decided, every Saturday morning and every Sunday morning, I’m going to draw. Now the problem is, I’m sure you have it in today’s society, you get taxes, you get coins you get and then you get to habit formation or picking up your phone. Yeah. So I said, Okay, I’m just going to switch my phone off. Now what I did is I told the people around me, I said to my team, to my family, to my mom to my dad to my brothers, my sisters. I said just so you know, from now on, my friend is going to be off Saturday and Sundays. So you won’t be able to reach me. And then of course you get an elbow What if we need to what I was like okay, let’s, let’s walk through these scenarios. Yeah, you live in England. If you need me emergency, it’s gonna take me like 24 hours to get there. So I can’t, like get there immediately. Second of all, call Tom Wright text, Tom. And then as I start to tell my team, you’re not gonna be able to reach me on the weekends peep, people starting up HIPAA, what if there’s an emergency and we don’t have Tom’s number? If you don’t have Tom’s number, then you’re not close enough to me to warrant me disturbing my self care time. Tell I’ve practiced that line. Yes, yes. Because I didn’t have the confidence to say so I wrote that down. What are you going to say, Lisa, the next time someone says this, okay, I’m gonna sell say this. And I just repeated it. And I repeated it. And I repeated it to the point where now, people respect us so much, because I wasn’t wavering. My phone was off. And I wasn’t wavering. So what ended up happening was because I wasn’t wavering on it. People now respect it. And now if I take someone on a Saturday, they’ll be like, Lisa, what the hell are you doing? Why aren’t you drawing?

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Oh, my gosh, I love that. What do you think that self care piece, I want to unpack that for a moment because women don’t give themselves enough self care. And I’ll tell you, I just went to Europe for three weeks. And knowing that I was every day it was working every day, I was in interviews, speaking at conferences. I mean, it was a full on three week experience. And so going into it, I was like, I gotta be mentally unhealthy, really balanced. I’m not going into three weeks already depleted. So I amped up my self care. And one at the end of one week, I was like, Yeah, I think I did 15 hours of self care this week. And when I calculated that up, I was like, wow, like, I’m really proud of myself. Like I prioritized 15 hours of self care this week. Look at that. And it made me feel almost as good knowing that I committed to myself that many hours in a week than the actual action of doing it. Yes. Again, what we do as women, is we put everybody else’s needs first. And we, we don’t prioritize self care, we don’t take care of ourselves, oftentimes, because we think if everybody else is happy, I’ll be happy. And we don’t realize that year by year by year, confidence is starting to go down or health is starting to go down. And life takes a dramatic change that way. Talk to me about self care, like and you, you know, you might have a bigger vision than what I have on that. But is that a necessary ingredient? 2,000% 1,000%.

Lisa Bilyeu 

Because going back to the silly example I gave the other day earlier was you get hangry just if you don’t eat. So now imagine you don’t take care of your body. You don’t take take care of your mind. Yep. How are you going to show up every day? Yeah, of course, you’re gonna be grumpy, depleted, tired, annoyed, triggered, unhappy. Like there’s just so many things that lead to it. So because I had my health had crashed. I realized for months and months a month. I don’t feel good about myself. I don’t feel like I’m a great wife. I don’t eat I can’t even cuddle because my gut was so inflamed, can stand up for five minutes at a time. And so when I had the mission, and I couldn’t execute in my mission, I was like, Oh, well, you can’t serve your mom, or the 14 year old girl and you Lisa, if you can’t stand up for longer than five minutes. Yeah, so step one, how do you take care of yourself enough so you can stand up for five minutes at a time? Yeah. And I realized that I’m very I’ve trained myself to be good at building a business and reaching goals. So what if I looked at this as a goal? What would it take for me to reach that? Okay, it will take for me to spend two hours a week doing X y&z Okay, great. What do those two hours look like? Do you split them up? 30 minutes every day? Do you do two hours all at once? Do you put it in your schedule? Do you top like I just because I naturally like what you were saying, we want to take care of everybody else. I naturally want to take care of everybody else. But I realized it didn’t help. It didn’t serve me because now I couldn’t take care of people because I couldn’t stand up. So how do we actually implement it as a strategy into my life? What does that look like? What am I going to do in those 30 minute increments? What am I going to do in those two hours and then telling the people around you to then actually be able to do it? So I go to okay, what are the things that I’m struggling with? Is it my hormones? Is it you know, my mindset, okay, well, if it’s my mindset, how do I take a deep breath? Do I listen, I tried meditation, I frickin hated it. I hated. Everyone was like, You need to meditate. And I then felt badly about myself because I couldn’t meditate. Because I felt because I wasn’t doing it like a good job. And so it’s like, okay, Lisa, you know what, what is the thing you love? Everyone’s telling you to do meditation, but if you don’t enjoy it, try something else. Yes. So what am I going to try that I feel good about every day. Okay, you know what I hate running on a treadmill, but we try lifting weights. Oh, I love lifting weights, right. And so now you self care, you try a bunch of things, you schedule it out, and then you show up for yourself. And that becomes that repetitive loop that you said you were going to do something, you then did it, and then you feel better. And that helps build your confidence. That that’s like a strategic way of doing it. But the last thing I’ll say is, you have to remind yourself of why you’re doing it. Yeah. And I interviewed someone could listen, because she loves me. I love the nickels. And she gave the analogy because I’m such a visual person. So I want everyone to picture we always talk about like, we feel like we’re on empty, right? We’ve just given to other people. And now we’re on empty. So think of an empty cup. How can you actually keep feeding yourself on an empty cup? You can’t. But what if you kept pouring into your cup, and you put into your cup so much that there was an overflow, that overflow goes into the saucer. And now you feed people from the saucer, not from your cup. Love

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

that. That that is brilliant. What I heard in the last thing you said was that the reason the ways that you have succeeded in business, you’ve used those strategies, and applied them to succeeding as a human in not only your health, which I know you’re continually working on, but your confidence and who you are and your self awareness that you had a strategy. Just like you had a business strategy and a formula there, you just brought it into your own personal life

Lisa Bilyeu  

yet, because I acknowledge who I am naturally, who I am naturally is someone that can get emotional, that can be driven by other people’s wants, I want to make other people happy. So like, I’m naturally driven towards that, what how was it worked for me? Right? You know, and again, I just call myself and it’s like, well, how does that work for you? Not very well, right? Okay, well, if it hasn’t worked for you very well, how do you change? How do you pivot? And once you really identify what that goal is, yeah, how you get to there, then all of my natural inclinations are actually overridden by my goals and my desires. And then my, you know, as a result, myself, Kenya,

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

and again, I just want to point out, like, what women do is like, we have a, we have a plan for the family, we have a plan for our careers. And then we put ourselves last and we don’t have a plan for ourselves. And then that starts to suffer. And then our confidence suffers there. And then that bleeds into our relationships and into our, you know, into our careers. And we don’t realize that we forgot to create a plan of, of not just confidence for ourself, but self care and focus and a mission statement. And all of that matters. They’re not just fun little things that actually if you do it right, you’ll actually amplify the confidence in all areas.

Lisa Bilyeu  

1,000%. Yeah. So like sleep. If you want to show up confident, get sleep, if you want to show up confident eat well, yeah. Because let me tell you, I can do if I did three days, let’s say around Thanksgiving, where I’ve eaten really bad food. I’ve woken up really lay I’ve gone to bed lay I don’t work out by the fourth day. I feel terrible. Yeah, I don’t feel confident. I don’t feel like I can go and crush it. Yeah. So once I realized, oh, all of this matters. Yeah, if I want to build my confidence, it isn’t just about doing the things we spoke about earlier. Right? We’re like showing up. It’s how do you show up? Right? Look at all the things that you’re doing in your life? And then how do you optimize all of those things to the best of your ability, so that you can then build your confidence along the way,

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

so good. Speak to the woman who is maybe it had confidence and competence was taken away. And I see this a lot and 54 and I see it a lot in my time in life, where you know, a woman was a great mom, and the kids grew up, or a woman had an amazing marriage. And then they got divorced, or you know, menopause, a woman was in great shape. And now she’s put on weight. And it feels like these life changes kind of swipe us like Sideswipe us. And before we know it, all of a sudden, we’re lacking confidence in an area that we actually used to have confidence in. Is there a way to crawl yourself out of a hole when that happens? Or when a dramatic shift in life sometimes is gonna happen with like the loss of a loved one, or just rocks our world? And now we’re trying to start over again? Yeah,

Lisa Bilyeu  

God. Such a beautiful question. I think number one is you have to give yourself grace. I always start there with anything I do. Because I’m always naturally going to beat myself up over

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

what is giving yourself Grace look like I just I just Oh, please. Yeah,

Lisa Bilyeu  

yeah. So let’s say it you’ve just exited a toxic relationship. And you feel really just depleted. You maybe have seen the signs but you ignored them. And so now you’re beating yourself up over the phone. How did I get forward? How did I not speak up earlier? Like you’re just beating yourself up and you just need to say to yourself, be where you are right now. Feel the feels. It’s okay. If you want to feel the shame feel The shame if you want to feel the guilt, feel the guilt. Don’t shame yourself for feeling the shame. Don’t shame yourself for feeling the guilt. Just be in that moment and say I’m human. I’m just like everybody else. Yep. I’ve gone through something shitty. Yeah. And it’s okay to be right here right now on my knees. It’s okay. Beautiful. But don’t frickin stay there. Yes. Give yourself a time. Like I actually will give myself the how long? How long. Lisa? Do you feel like you need to sit right now? And listen to see the Celine Dion and cry.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Like, wait, where? Do you put sad music God when you’re not feeling good? And here’s

Lisa Bilyeu  

the thing I do for temporary time. That’s why I want to ask yes. But there’s that timeline between it’s now helping you? Or it’s keeping you stuck. Right? Which is why give myself the timeline. So it’s like put on the sad music cry. Yep. So it all depends on what’s happened. Okay. So if it’s something that I’ve been in a relationship for four years, Well, shit, only giving yourself a date isn’t going to be enough. Yeah. But if it’s like, I just had this argument with somebody and they made me feel shitty about myself. Okay, Lisa, to be honest, we can get over it. Like, oh, just like in that moment. So again, it’s like, how much? How much grace? Do I give myself? What am I doing myself during that period of grace? And then what am I going to do to get back up? So having almost like an action plan to get back up? So I’ll just say, Okay, right now, you know what, like, my dog dying. It was heartbreaking. I don’t have children. He was 17 and a half years old. And it wrecked me. And it was right when I was launching my book. And I just said, You know what, Lisa, you cannot crush your book. You cannot, you know, help women feel confident when you’re heartbroken right now? Yeah. So I just cancelled all the interviews I’d booked for my book. Well, I just cancelled them for that week. And I said, You know what, I know myself, I need a week. I need a week to eat whatever the hell I like to not work out if I don’t want to, to cry, to not take any meetings to just bawl ugly cries. And then after that week, what are you going to do, Lisa? Okay. After that week on the Monday, I’m going to get up and I’m going to work out why because I know I love to work out. I’m going to get up. And I’m going to take that first meeting, just one meeting in that first day. And then the second day, I’m going to take two meetings, and I’m going to, you know, work out hard, like what is the action plan that allows you then to go back into it. But it all starts with giving yourself the time and the grace to feel the feels. And then staying true that once that time is up, you then do shift out of it.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Wow. Wow. I love that. Because I grew up in what I call the lemonade family.

Lisa Bilyeu  

Oh, what’s that?

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

They are, if you saw my my parents are in there, my dad’s 87 My mom’s 84. And they are like when anything bad happens. They’re like, Oh, that was horrible. But look at all this good that came out of there. And so there was never room to feel sadness, there was never room because anything horrible that happened to you had a positive spin, which is a beautiful, I mean, a lot of people didn’t grow up in that family. So I call them the lemonade family. So it was like everything was just turned into lemonade. But I can tell you where I sit now. And just so many life changes that have happened to me in the last couple years. There has been grief, there has been sadness, there has been moments even in how amazing fast like a girl has done and, and the message getting out there, where I’m just a dope. I feel like I want to sit in bed and do nothing. And so I’ve been learning to give myself permission to do that. But what’s interesting is people around me are like, what’s going on with you? What’s wrong, like there used to lemonade version of Mindy, and they’re not used to sad version where I’m like, and taking being more introverted. They’re used to extroverted Mindy. So if you’re in that moment, is there a way to express it to those people around you that this is actually really good. I need to go here. I’ll be back in a week. I’ll be back and maybe you just say it exactly like that. But how do we when we start to embrace that, that grace, we need to give each other or give ourselves and give time? How do we tell everybody else to back off while I’m giving myself grace?

Lisa Bilyeu  

I love this. I think it depends on how who it is and how close you are to them. So for instance, if it was one of my sisters, my best friend, so if it’s my sister, she just knows how I like like to when I am sad. I don’t like to talk to people. Yeah, she loves to like what she said, the first thing she wants is for you to call her. So it’s about communication. It’s about the people around you. How do you communicate of how you’re going to add when x y&z happens. And so for my husband when I’m angry, like I don’t want to cuddle and so he just knows okay when she’s angry, don’t cuddle her. Yeah, okay, you No. So like having that communication and then saying, This is what I need from you, yeah, when this happens, I will say this word to you. And when I say this word to you, I need you to do this. Yeah. And so whatever word you want, like you create a word that’s meaningful to you, and then you have this vocabulary, because when you’re sad, it’s hard to be like, Oh, I’m just not feeling gray. Right? You don’t want us

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

then we excuse we make excuses for not really feeling like, I want us to own our feelings. So Okay, keep going, Oh, you

Lisa Bilyeu  

witness people that’s close to you, you can have that communication. But I’m not going to pretend that everyone’s going to respect to all get it if you don’t have a growth mindset. So sometimes I’m like, just don’t answer the phone. Yeah, like if I’m in that moment where I’m sad. And I know that this person isn’t going to get me right now. I’m just going to not answer the phone. Yeah. And if it’s someone at work, that maybe I have to show up, I don’t think they need to know. Right? So almost having that like, oh, do I have to put on a face? Or to be honest, I’ll say, I’m not feeling I’m feeling a bit under the way, right. If I have to say that, in order to protect my space, so that I can show up next time, because I’m not comfortable being honest with this person. For whatever reason, again, I don’t advocate lying. But sometimes you have to do to protect yourself. Yeah. And so in that moment, if I have like multiple business meetings, and I’m really, I’m crushed to my core, and I don’t have any words to express it. I’m just like, I don’t feel great. And you just go. And I just know. And again, like, I don’t think everyone has to know the truth. But if you can possibly express it, I think it’s great. But you’re not going to feel great in that moment. And what you don’t want to do is dismiss the feeling and be open. I can’t show up sad. So I’m just going to pretend that I’m not sad. And now you’ve dismissed it altogether. Because that will come around, it will come around. Do

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

you think when you’re not giving yourself grace and honoring those moments that you have to grieve or go into the sadness or grow into the sorrow whatever is going to if you don’t take that, that it actually longterm will wreck? Yeah,

Lisa Bilyeu  

I do think so. I think it will eventually show up in other ways that then you’re not going to be able to build that true confidence because there’s going to be a part of you. That’s almost keeping it a secret. Yeah. And you know, like, or is it like the biggest lies? We can tell the lies we tell ourselves? Yeah. And so if you’re telling, it doesn’t matter? No, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Yeah. How will you be confident, if you’re dismissing yourself and telling yourself that this thing that really happened to you that does matter? And you’d be telling yourself, it doesn’t?

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

So you’re actually telling yourself that you’re to yourself that you do not matter? I think that exactly, I think that’s what you do. That’s, that’s crazy, again, coming from the lemonade family that just like everything that bad, I dust myself off, and I go, and I realizing in the last couple of years, as I’ve really sat in some troubling thoughts and moments that I pop out a bit eventually, but that I’m it doesn’t stick on me and I don’t keep carrying it forward.

Lisa Bilyeu  

Yeah. And what’s interesting is when you say the lemonade family, I think a lot of us women also, and maybe not even just women, but gratitude. Let’s talk about gratitude and toxic gratitude. Oh, please, what’s toxic gratitude is that you use it to dismiss how you feel. So in that moment, where let’s say you’re really sad, and something really bad has happened, you’re like, well, it doesn’t matter. Because look, all this amazing thing that’s happening. Yes. So when I was a stay at home wife for eight years, I was profoundly unhappy. And every time that voice in my head that were saying, Lisa, you’re not happy, you need to speak up, you need to tell your husband, you’re not happy. I would use gratitude to distract myself and be like, but but I have a husband that loves me, you have a roof over my head. So for eight years, I was dismissing my unhappy as dismissing myself and my happiness, because I was using gratitude as a way to smother it. Okay, so. So what I had to realize that I was doing is gratitude can be beautiful, when you want to see the beauty in life. But gratitude can also become toxic because it’s holding you back from the thing that you actually want to achieve or from happiness because you’re using it to dismiss it. So again, it’s like saying my mom Oh, my God, my dog just just died. But least you have a family that love you. Yes. Yeah. That’s, I’m grateful for my family. Yes. But now I’m dismissing the fact that I’m truly freaking sad over the fact that my dog has passed away. And so I can’t feel the sadness. If I’m trying to distract distract myself with gratitude in other areas of my life. I think it can become really toxic in holding you back from being honest about how you’re actually feeling. So

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

good and toxic gratitude is is rampid. I was just I was actually just talking with my assistant today about a really deep experience I’ve had in my life which was a near death experience. i Long story short, but I swam into a port, a pilot Portuguese man of war about 17 years ago in Cabo San Lucas. And they wrapped all around me. There was about 10 of them. I went into anaphylactic shock. Yeah, I went down the tunnel, I had the life review, I saw the white light, and I came back. And when I came back, I was my brain was trying to make sense of what had happened. And at the time, my kids were in like, first grade, and preschool. So they were little. So I came back and I was like, Oh, my God, they almost lost their mother. Like there was a lot going on. But I was actually really depressed when I came back. And people looked at me crazy. They’re like you, you’re alive. How could you be depressed? And I, it took me a long time. It actually took me till the last couple years to unpack what I was feeling. But the fact that people were dismissing me saying, but you’re alive, how could you be depressed? You’re here. And what I wanted to say was, that was such a traumatic experience, my human brain doesn’t even begin to know how to process it. And I just need time, and I need acknowledgement. And I need people to understand I need to go into healing. But instead, everybody around dismissed it. And and then you start thinking, you’re crazy. Because you’re like, of course, I’m alive. How could anything be more? How can you be more grateful than that? So I even think in how you’re talking is that we as women need to also honor when we our friends or our family are going into those dark moments, and realize that that is necessary for their healing. Would you agree? Yeah.

Lisa Bilyeu  

So why were you depressed if you don’t mind and Perla a little? Yeah, no, it’s

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

really interesting story. It’s so funny, because I was just talking to my assistant about this. And I was saying that I came back a different person. And what, yeah, I came back, a person that was scared that anything could go wrong. And because I was just swimming in the water, snorkeling, and swam into a pilot patch, Portuguese man war, and my brain translated that into if you are not prepared, if you are not careful, if you don’t overthink every single situation, you could die. And so I came home, a hyperactive over, you know, overly hyper vigilant brain trying to make sure that no crises ever happened. And I’ve been doing that for 17 years. And in the last to last year, this last year, specifically, I’ve worked on that through therapy and breath work and psychedelics, a lot of different ways of just unpacking that. Because it was and people around me were like, literally, like, pat me on the back of it like you’re alive. You’re good, you’re good. And I felt so marginalized.

Lisa Bilyeu  

Now imagine something like that happens when you’re like six years old, your entire life? You live with, with that idea?

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Yes, yes. You sound like you’re speaking from experience. Oh,

Lisa Bilyeu  

no, I was just I not No, not really. I was just thinking about how you know if, like, just any trauma that you experience when you’re younger? Yeah. I just think if you don’t address it, and, you know, you don’t want to cry, Oh, you don’t want to cry like a baby. Right? You know, actually, in fact, as you were saying, I was like, what, if you think I’m speaking from experience as a what’s my subconscious trying to tell me? Oh, and so the first thing actually, that came to mind. In fact, here we go, is it’s funny how you pull things out, you don’t realize you’re talking. When I was four years old, I got salmonella poisoning. And they didn’t know what it was back then. And so they rushed me to hospital. And I was put in this glass cubicle at the age of four. And the only thing that was allowed in quarantine, and the only thing that was allowed was a metal bed. Wow. Because they didn’t know anything that so I remember very vividly this glass room with this metal bed. And next to me, because it was glass. It was a boy. And he was probably 10 years old. And he was and we could see each other from the glass. And they’re trying to feed me medicine and I remember crying. And the nurse telling me Don’t cry. Look at that. Boy, he’s being a good boy. Now, what’s that teaching me?

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

That you’re you’re not worthy of crying? Yeah, that motion? Yeah, that

Lisa Bilyeu  

if I’m in pain, you can’t cry. Right? Right. So now at the age of six, I learn that and then I lead that into my child or into my adulthood and then you know, if you don’t address those things, yes,

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

yes. And you know, where I take that thought is one of the things I’ve been saying is around women over 40 is as our brains are changing and adapting to the neurochemical loss that we’re experiencing, we walk into our doctor’s office and the doctor says Oh, you’re depressed. Here’s an antidepressant. And to me just that physical act, even if it is done with good intentions, that physical act is saying, I have something that will, will shut you up. Basically, I have a pill that’s going to make it all go away. But if you actually crawl inside the body, what the body is saying is, there’s something here to be healed. There’s a neurochemical change that’s going on inside of you. Let’s get curious about it. We talked about that word curious yesterday, like, how do we get curious about what’s going on so we can get to the root cause and fix it. But every time we’re given a pill we’re given, it’s really basically like a muscle to shut us up. And to not feel Yeah,

Lisa Bilyeu  

that curious thing I absolutely love. And I think that that can come to so much of our growth and our health, you know, fixing, fixing our health. And I think it was me being curious with my own gut health, because I was looking at doctors to speak smells literally going to doctor, to your point, I was like, I was saying, Give me a pill. What can I take to fix me? And I was going to all these different types of doctors and nothing was fixing me. And so my curiosity told me Okay, Lisa, you’re looking at how can how can you try and fix yourself? You’re looking outside of yourself. You’re looking at all these doctors trying to fix but what are you actually doing? You’re giving your power away? You’re waiting for someone else to fix you. Yes. So how can I actually fix myself? Yeah. Oh, number one, listen to my body. Yeah, it wasn’t even listening. Yes, I was just listening to the doctors and not to my, to my own, you know, body and what it was trying to scream at me. Yeah. And so being curious, wondering that, how do you you know, what would that look like? And it’s like, Oh, listen to my body would mean taking an inventory. So it literally took out a food diary. And for I don’t know how long maybe I think it was like three months. I wrote down every single thing I ate, what time I ate, what my bowel movement was, if I had a bowel movement that day, how I slept, how I felt. And I just started taking, to your point, the curiosity of like, what is this teaching me? And I started to see a pattern in that curiosity in that pattern that I was taking inventory of how I was feeling every day. And I realized every time we had to shoot, I would have massive stomach cramps. Okay, what does that mean? Okay, maybe anxiety. All right, what happens if you eat after the shoe, and not before the shoe. And so now my curiosity gave me an action plan to then take ownership over my health. And then what I realized was, oh, I and I talk about this in my book. It’s all my fault. And I say that in the most compassionate way possible. People can use the word, responsibility, but I like the word fault. Now when I said it’s my fault. I mean, how did I actually get here in the first place? What did I have such bad stomach issues? And instead of looking outwards, what did I do? What were the actions that I took? So the doctors will give me antibiotics? I so first of all, sorry, I should say, first of all, growing up with a mother was borderline anorexia, I thought I’d need to eat as little as possible. So I wasn’t having fat, I wasn’t having carbs. Okay, that was then triggering me getting sick because 70% of the immune systems carried in your gut. So I was getting sick. I was going to doctors, doctors were giving me antibiotics, when they were giving me antibiotics. One one time, the doctor was like, You know what, I probably shouldn’t give you this money. Not once that I asked why? I didn’t go do my own research. I just went, Oh, okay. If he keeps giving it to me, I’m gonna keep taking it. I didn’t take the ownership. I didn’t ask Google. What does antibiotics do to your gut? Yeah, I, I didn’t ask What does reducing your calories do to you. And finally, the doctor didn’t force the pill down my throat. Right. I decided to take it myself right. Now once I flipped it. And I said it was all my fault. That word for triggered me enough to take action. That action triggered me to take inventory. That inventory made me realize it was my behavior with food, it was my relationship to food, and then and then my behavior to the gym, working out weighing myself and all of that. Curious, starting from the curiosity. And addressing that it was my responsibility allowed me to then finally heal myself and Mike

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

drop. And what I hear in that is, how do you feel about yourself for taking yourself through that? Yes,

Lisa Bilyeu  

I feel freaking amazing. I now have confidence in my health that I didn’t have that

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

strain. So if you had just taken the pill, but what most people do is take the pill, they’re like pray, okay, hopefully, the pill is gonna work. And then the pill doesn’t work. They go back and they’re like, that didn’t work. Give me another pill. And they keep doing that over and over again. But what I just heard and what you said is when you take ownership, I love it’s it you know, the fault idea because when it’s your fault, you can actually now actually do something about it and everything you went through. Now when you’re well you’re like, I did, yeah, it’s like, only you can do it. Yeah, you can. Nobody gets credit for that. And

Lisa Bilyeu  

someone listening to this right now. should be proud of themselves for being brave enough to click on a video or an audio, to then listen to it to then try and learn from it to then take action. So it becomes these small, little incremental steps that then build your confidence. Right? Step one, they listen to this interview. That’s frickin amazing. Before you do anything else, give yourself a down pat on the back, that you said, you want to take your health seriously, you wanted to build your confidence and who you are, then what you’re going to do next. And then that stepping stone that stepping stone becomes literally the building blocks that end up building your house.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

So good, so good. Again, what do we like now? Like, three, four hours chatting with each other? And I’m like, I’m so much more I want to say. So before I ask you my final question, where do people find you? i By the way, I know where I like to consume you. I like to consume you on Instagram. It’s you know why I like to consume you on Instagram, is because when you’re just kind of go, go scrolling through and then boom, there’s Lisa with some bold statement. And so many times I see that bold statement. I’m like, That’s so right. I need that today. You’re so good at those bold statements to turn the thought. But anyways, go

Lisa Bilyeu  

to Instagram. Yeah, at least a venue. And then even on my Instagram and my YouTube channel. I really do focus on every time I post does it help someone build their confidence. And so I have a mantra in my head post, one post, mantra and I forgotten mantra. One Post building your confidence one step at a time. And then my YouTube is build your confidence, one badass guest at a time. And so everything I’m very intentional, again, going back to the fact that I can get distracted, I can, you know, run away with my emotions and so very much very conscious of how I build that confidence one day, and then who do I shoot, you know, put in front like interviewing you for my show was empowered to me. And so I want to show up and building my own confidence day by day. And then how do I allow that as a pebble in the ocean that creates the ripples that eventually creates the tsunami? Ah,

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

oh, god. Okay, last question you want to ask everybody is what’s your superpower? Ah,

Lisa Bilyeu  

I think it is the ability to get back up every time I fought. Oh,

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

do you have a word was that resilience? What will we call that? That awesome well, now gallery you know, gotta come out with something like that. And I think everybody needs badass, right? Every woman for sure. Yeah,

Lisa Bilyeu

I think everyone needs to be their own superhero stop. What I love to say is don’t wait to be saved. Save yourself.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

I just love that so good. Well, I not only do I love you as a human, not only do I love talking to you, but I am so inspired by how you show up and and and your focus and your intention not only for the world, but for yourself. Like it’s just we need more leases in the world. It’s just been so fun to get to know you. So thank you so much.

Lisa Bilyeu  

And I’ve got a bedroom made for you. So you’re gonna stay the night and we’re just gonna hang out for four hours.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Slumber Party. I thought we could create something like really long ago. Oh my god, that would be if it was my while you go to bed at night and my slumber party looks about the same. It’s like oh, we might be like eating something great at eight and then when

Lisa Bilyeu 

I finish at six after enlightenment.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

We go there we go. Oh my god. So good. Appreciate you. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining me in today’s episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we’d love to know about it. So please leave us a review. Share it with your friends and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.