202. Releasing toxic positivity and negative self-talk with Katie Horwitch
Struggling with self-doubt or negative self-talk? This week's episode is a game-changer! Lily's got Katie Horwitch as her guest, and they're diving deep into how inner dialogue shapes our lives. Katie's not just any guest—she's a rockstar author, speaker, and self-talk activist with over a decade of experience flipping the script on negative self-talk.
In this episode, you'll get the lowdown on how to recognize and shift negative thoughts and discover the hidden issues behind them. Katie's the founder of WANT: Women Against Negative Talk and the voice behind The WANTcast. Plus, her debut book, "WANT YOUR SELF: Shift Your Self-Talk and Unearth The Strength in Who You Were All Along," is out now and ready to inspire.
Don't miss out—tune in and start transforming your inner dialogue to reshape your life!
We get into:
How our self-talk shapes our view of ourselves and the world.
Recognizing when self-talk negatively impacts your life and how to change it.
Building the skill to confidently accept your answers when facing tough questions about what you truly want.
Figuring out the underlying beliefs behind your self-talk, such as "I’m not allowed to want this"—what’s driving that thought?
Exploring, understanding, and shifting not just your self-talk, but your whole self.
Hot-take: "Be as fully you wherever you go. That’s how you learn, grow, and become the truest version of yourself."
Links:
Katie’s website
Katie’s book: WANT YOUR SELF: Shift Your Self-Talk and Unearth The Strength In Who You Were All Along
Lily on Katie’s podcast: 178: Revamp Your DATING LIFE + FIND LOVE For Real with Lily Womble of Date Brazen
Show transcript:
[00:00:00] Lily: Hey, I'm Lily Womble, former top matchmaker and founder of Date Brazen. After setting up hundreds, I realized that with coaching, women could match themselves better than anyone else ever could. With my unconventional feminist approach, I've helped women around the world build courageous and self trust filled love lives.
[00:00:20] And now I'm here to support you. Get ready because I'm about to show you the exact steps you need to attract a soul quenching partnership and feel amazing about yourself along the way. This is the Date Brazen Podcast. Hello, gorgeous friends. Welcome to another episode of the Date Brazen podcast. Today is going to be juicy.
[00:00:39] I can tell you right now. I have Katie Horwich here and she is a nationally recognized author, speaker, mindset coach, and self talk activist who has spent over a decade working to shift the cultural self talk paradigm. She's spoken across the country about self confidence, living fearlessly, and shifting the stories and [00:01:00] habits that shape our negative self talk patterns.
[00:01:02] Katie is the founder of the multimedia platform, Want Women Against Negative Talk, and the host of the Wantcast, the Women Against Negative Talk podcast, which gives you tips, tools, motivation, and inspiration. To shift your negative self talk patterns. She has been featured in all sorts of media that you may have seen in BC South by Southwest, The Cut and her book, Want Yourself?
[00:01:27] Shift Your Self Talk and Unearth the Strength in Who You Were All Along was released October, 2023 with Sounds True and is available wherever books are sold. So, hey, Katie. Hey, Lily. So glad we're here talking. Long time no see. Long time no see. Behind the scenes, I recorded an episode for the Want cast that comes out around my pub day today, and now we're doing this today for the Date Bryson podcast.
[00:01:53] Katie: I was saying before we started recording, I feel like it's such a treat that we get to hang out [00:02:00] virtually all day. I loved our conversation and I feel like there's just so much So much overlap in us as people, but in just the subject matter that we talk
[00:02:10] Lily: about.
[00:02:10] Katie: So I'm so honored
[00:02:11] Lily: to be here. I'm so excited to get into it because I know that what so many people listening are struggling with is the struggle with the voice inside their head and the self talk that is happening and alluring toxic positivity that they're maybe indulging in sometimes, or the alluring, very like, harsh self talk that people get into to like push themselves forward, right?
[00:02:37] So like, so many people are struggling with this and I'm excited to get into it. I first want to know what has been your experience shifting your self talk pattern and how has it changed your life? Like, what was your origin to this book? Oh my gosh, how has it changed my life? How much time do we have?
[00:02:56] Big questions on the Date Brazen [00:03:00] podcast.
[00:03:01] Katie: I mean, the way that I talk about shifting your self talk is that it's not this, like, nice to have, sort of hobbyist, self help y type subject. It's a need to have, shifting our self talk. Affects not only us, but the world that we are consistently co creating around us because self talk informs the way that we view ourselves, how we walk through the world, and it's like a language.
[00:03:29] It's a language that we become fluent in. And how do you become fluent in a language, any language you practice on the inside and you practice on the outside. So when we're practicing this language on the outside, And that's affecting other people's self talk, whether they label it good, bad, positive or negative.
[00:03:49] I define self talk as just the story that you're telling yourself 24 7 about who you are and how you walk through the world. It's not good or bad. It's it's information. But when [00:04:00] people are learning to view their self talk through a certain lens, and then they're carrying that forward into the world and forms our relationship with our dynamics, with control, our interpersonal relationships.
[00:04:13] So when I think about my own self talk shifting journey, how has it changed? What has it changed? The answer is, is everything. And I think that the misconception around shifting your self talk is that You stop being so mean to yourself, as many of us would say that we stopped doing this. So then we can do that.
[00:04:37] It's sort of like an, if then before, after picture, but it's not about stopping it, it's about shifting it. So what's really cool is that having done this work now, actually closer to two decades, my negative self talk as you would call it, hasn't stopped. It's not that I don't have those feelings of, Self doubt or [00:05:00] fear or checking myself or feeling uncomfortable, but my turnaround time and sort of my bounce back rate is.
[00:05:08] Quicker and quicker. And quicker and quicker because it's become habit.
[00:05:13] Lily: Yeah. Well, the resiliency that you've built is just different after practicing. Just like an athlete practices, let's pick a sport. Any sport, I'm drawing a blank, but it's about to be the summer Olympics and swimming, like you gotta get in the pool and practice, and then the bounce back and the resiliency and the like, or even like thinking about.
[00:05:33] Serena Williams and tennis and like how you get back and practice and build the resiliency after hard moments or what have you. Like, I love your analogy of it's a language. Building kinder self talk is like practicing a language inside and outside. So good. Totally. I'm curious about when you realized self talk was a problem.
[00:05:55] For you and how you recognize that, what it sounded like and [00:06:00] how did you start to shift it for yourself? Like, let's talk like beginning of that journey.
[00:06:04] Katie: Yeah, I think that the beginning of the journey and the realization that it was something that had affected my life. in a negative way were two very far apart.
[00:06:18] So I describe in, in the book, I describe sort of my first self talk memory, my self talk origin story, if you will. This is one of my first memories. In my life, period. I was in preschool, and as we spoke about earlier, um, a baby of the 80s, child of the 90s, steeped in 90s pop culture, and just like many four year old girls, In 1991, I was obsessed with all things Ariel, all things The Little Mermaid.
[00:06:55] I was also an artist. I drew, I was drawing [00:07:00] faces and settings before my classmates had realized that crayons are like not for eating, you know? And my teachers recognize this. And so one day when I was in preschool. That week, the theme was like, it was the under the sea week. So, you know, we were doing all of the different songs around the ocean.
[00:07:20] We were learning about sea creatures. And do you remember growing up, whether it was in preschool or elementary school, do you remember like the classroom cork board where your homework would go or artwork? So we had a cork board that was going to display our art for that ocean week, that under the sea week.
[00:07:41] And we were going to. Make a finger painted sort of crowd sourced ocean as three and four year olds. My teachers asked if I would want to draw sort of the adornment for the cork board and draw Ariel, [00:08:00] Sebastian and Flounder and all of her friends to put around this ocean that we were making as a class.
[00:08:06] And for me as a four year old, I was like, Oh my God, did I just get a residency at, at the loo. It was my, it was my moment. I felt like, I mean, you have teachers, so authority figures who you look up to and respect, asking you to do and spearhead this massive project that everybody is going to see, that you've You know, as a four year old carry so much weight gave me the butcher paper and all of the crayons and markers.
[00:08:37] And I drew Ariel and Sebastian and flounder and some seahorses for good measure. And they whisked it away.
[00:08:44] Lily: Yeah.
[00:08:44] Katie: And the day came when they unveiled the cork board with our ocean. And I remember looking at it and looking Up because I was teeny, teeny, tiny and seeing this huge, basically [00:09:00] mural of the ocean with my artwork sort of signifying that, hey, this is this is the ocean.
[00:09:08] And I was so taken. I was so taken with not only that. I was Chosen to do this incredibly important task, but that if it hadn't been for my creatures, the seaweed that the teachers had made out of tissue paper and put on the side, if it hadn't been for all of these different separate things, it might've looked like a mishmash, but I was like, wow, together is really.
[00:09:35] All creates an ocean and I was transfixed and in that moment I heard, Katie, we're leaving. Get back in line. And what had happened is that the class had started to file out the door to go out to the playground and I hadn't noticed because I was in my mind. I was so wrapped up in what I had done [00:10:00] and admiring my own work and being so full of myself that I had risked getting left behind.
[00:10:09] Lily: Hmm.
[00:10:10] Katie: I had not followed the rules. I had made my teacher very, very angry
[00:10:15] Lily: and full of yourself. You said that for the people listening, you said that in quotes, so keep going.
[00:10:20] Katie: Yeah. So I, in that moment, this was just a micro micro moment. I talk about this all of the time, that the stories that we tell often aren't built in these huge, loud moments.
[00:10:32] They're built in these micro moments that maybe we don't even realize are sinking into our head and our heart and our norms. I started to tell myself my first self talk story of I need to create, create, create, use my talents for other people, but never for myself. If I stop and smell the proverbial roses in my own garden, I will be [00:11:00] scolded.
[00:11:00] I will be bad as someone who was very much into following the rules. I will be breaking the rules. Bad things will happen if I stop to have outward confidence in myself and to admire my own potential. And that was reinforced throughout my childhood and, um, early adulthood by everything from conversations that I would overhear between the adults in my lives to magazines that I would read, or let's be honest, steal from my mom's magazine stash to TV shows that I watched, that confidence is synonymous, especially with women.
[00:11:46] It's synonymous with narcissism or vanity to be full of yourself is a bad thing that you need to stay in line that you need to do what you're told [00:12:00] and you need to be the best because that's how you're praised and that's what your value is to the world. But don't you ever recognize it?
[00:12:11] Lily: I'm wondering how you as an adult started coming into this work and obviously you've excavated your past to see where this story sort of seeded.
[00:12:25] And I think that's such a powerful exercise for everyone. Anyone to look back and be like, Oh, wow, this didn't just crop up out of nowhere. Like it's been planted intended to this story for many, many years. When did you, as an adult start realizing like, I got to shift this?
[00:12:40] Katie: Yeah, that's when I started to realize the second part of your question of when I realized it, it was a problem going through life with that point of view.
[00:12:50] Through my childhood teens, I always had a lot of confidence. Yeah. But the lens through which I viewed that confidence, it kept [00:13:00] getting scratchier, more blurry. So I felt almost shame for having this confidence thing at which confidence, if you look it up in the dictionary, is just trust. The literal definition of confidence is trust.
[00:13:15] So I felt shame and guilt for having this thing that felt so culturally unacceptable. But for some reason, I was like, This feels such like such a core of who I am. I'm not willing to let it go. And so I had this push and pull going on. And when I got to college, that sort of came to a head and led to me that and and multiple factors led to me developing a whole host of eating disorders, body related disorders, brain disorders.
[00:13:45] podcast. Anybody who's been through an eating disorder or a body related disorder knows that it's not about the food you eat. And it's very rarely about your body. It's about everything else that's going on underneath. [00:14:00] But, and this was the early 2000s. And if you remember the conversation in the early 2000s that we were having around mental health in general, eating disorders in particular.
[00:14:15] It was a very, very narrow conversation. It was like, you have an eating disorder. If you are doing these specific things and you look this specific way, and here are these basically two definitions for what you could be going through. And so there wasn't this robust support out there. And so I was told many times that I was Just being crazy, or I had to get my shit together and there weren't places for me to, to really go.
[00:14:46] And, but I knew that there was something going on with me because actually my voice teacher called me out on it. I was a musical theater major. I was in a voice lesson one day and she was like, and talk about a metaphor here. [00:15:00] She was like, Katie, I don't know what you're doing, but you have to get a handle on it because it's starting to affect your voice.
[00:15:08] And for me, my voice singing voice, that was the one thing that was like all mine that no one could take away. And for her to say the position that you're putting yourself in. is affecting you being able to move forward in your career and keep this thing that is so precious to you. That really shook me.
[00:15:36] And so I was like, okay, I need to figure out what's going on. Cause I'm not seeing resources around me. And this was in the early days of, I don't think Googling even existed. I think it was, um, ask Jeeves. It's in the early days of, do you remember Jeeves?
[00:15:53] Lily: Yeah. A hundred percent.
[00:15:55] Katie: So it was in the days of the Ask Jeeves ing, maybe [00:16:00] Yahoo Bing ing, I don't know.
[00:16:02] And I found one website made by one doctor. It was made on like Geocities or something, like an old school blogging platform. And it was this doctor that was talking about something called orthorexia, which is basically an unhealthy. Focus on health taken to an extreme. And I was like, well, this sounds the most similar to what I'm going through, but every other place that I was looking and I was trying to find more information about this thing, I just wasn't, I think I even, I might've written to like the contact form on that website and like, thank you, the person for putting it out there.
[00:16:40] But I was like, all right, well, I need to figure out how I got here because if I want to move forward. And even be able to figure out, like, what type of support I need to move forward to know where I've been. And so I started to pay extra [00:17:00] close attention to the conversations and things in the instances.
[00:17:04] That made me feel triggered into that, like, hyper control eating disorder state. And what I realized is that the language that I had learned throughout my entire life at that time was this language of what I call casual negativity. I define casual negativity as the self talk that we use, the negative self talk that we use.
[00:17:34] As casually as saying, The walls are white. The sky is blue. I hate my body.
[00:17:42] Lily: Yeah.
[00:17:42] Katie: I'm so silly. Yeah. I'm not talented enough. And I had internalized that so much in these micro moments throughout my life that, of course, when I got into a situation where I felt like I was out of my element, out of control, extremely, extremely [00:18:00] lonely, this was the habit and this was sort of the safety net that was there for me in my moments of struggle.
[00:18:12] And so what happened is that reinforced. The behaviors that were. More harmful instead of helpful. And I thought that is so interesting as I'm paying more and more attention. This shit is everywhere. It's everywhere. And of course this is what happened because this is the air that I have been breathing.
[00:18:35] And so I, I remember I, I saw, I was on vacation with my family and I saw a commercial and it was one of the very first like body acceptance, like love the skin you're in type commercials, which we. Take for granted now as far as media goes and that messaging, but it was revolutionary. And, you know, 2007, I saw that commercial and I thought this is amazing.
[00:18:58] This is [00:19:00] revolutionary. I didn't even know that we could say these things. Love your body. You're amazing. You're wonderful. But what happens if you can't look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that you're amazing. You love yourself. You're wonderful because I can't do that. So where are the tips and tools and resources?
[00:19:18] For people like me who can't just plaster a pretty phrase over a negative one. And in that moment, I was like, I'm going to start, I called it an awareness platform at the time. I'm going to start an awareness platform. And it's going to give people tips, tools, motivation, inspiration, shift their self talk.
[00:19:34] And it's going to be called want women against negative talk. Like this all came to me in like a boom, boom, boom, boom, boom moment. Yeah, but what's interesting, Lily, is that I thought of the idea, but because it was what I needed so much in that moment, it actually sort of fizzled out and went to the back burner of my brain for many years after that first, like, [00:20:00] initial spark of idea.
[00:20:02] Because I needed to go through my own journey and I needed to do my own work through that time. It was like seven years before I relaunched the platform. And in that time, I just became absolutely obsessed with why is it that so many of us say that we want to be kinder to ourselves. And we're talking self aware people who logically think they should be able to do this.
[00:20:31] But why do so many people say that they want to, but can't why is it so hard to do what has gotten us here? And how can we move forward in ways that are sustainable and. Allow space for our own humanity. Yeah,
[00:20:45] Lily: I think that it's really important to acknowledge how deeply woven it all is. Like you're talking about, like the, the casual negativity, the casual, you know, that, that moment in that you talk about [00:21:00] how negative.
[00:21:01] Chatter and talk is connective in the book. Like it's how, you know, in Mean Girls, when the, not the musical, the original, when they're standing in the mirror and they're like, Oh my God, I hate this. I hate that. And then, and Katie is expected to have something to say. It's like a point of connect, self hatred is a point of connection for people, which you point out in your book.
[00:21:21] I'm curious about this concept of loosening the grip. that you talk about in the book that like, okay, so we can identify the casual cruelty that we are inflicting upon ourselves and others when we say things like, I hate this about myself, right? Or, um, so silly, like even that might feel innocuous to some, but really is this moment, like talking, the way you talk to yourself matters to how you look at the world and how you move through it.
[00:21:47] So once you identify like, okay, I am acknowledging that I'm talking to myself in ways that I don't want to continue. What then, and how does loosening the grip fit in?
[00:21:59] Katie: [00:22:00] Yeah. In the, the chapter in the book that you're talking about with loosening the grip, I talk about being a stage four clinger.
[00:22:08] Lily: I love that.
[00:22:08] And I too, I'm a clingy. I have been a clingy clinger.
[00:22:14] Katie: Yeah. Are you a, um, like a physical touch type person? Yes. Yes. Yes.
[00:22:19] Lily: Yeah, me too. Yeah,
[00:22:20] Katie: me too. And also I have never clung to anything tighter than my own perceptions of myself and my own stories myself, which I think is, it can be a great thing, right?
[00:22:37] Because if we have this strong sense of self that can help us move forward in the world in a way that is super authentic, where we can start to get in trouble is when we have Such a rigid view of who we are that we're. Not only maybe not open to changing, but as we inevitably do [00:23:00] shift and change and morph, and I'm talking about all of the iterations of shifting and changing and morphing our bodies, our interests, our friend group, the types of people that we're attracted to our, you know, career paths that can feel really jarring because we're like, I don't know that person yet.
[00:23:19] Lily: I don't know who that is. And so, And if I don't reject myself first, then I'm not going to be safe.
[00:23:26] Katie: Totally. Totally. So I might as well like not go towards that because I don't have the base of trust in that person yet. But what I love to talk about is When you shift your self talk, you can't start with the talk.
[00:23:46] A lot of people will start with the talk part, but that can create issues for multiple reasons. Number one, there are some people who do not experience their self talk in words. Like [00:24:00] they don't have an inner monologue. I saw a
[00:24:02] Lily: video about this recently. Maybe you posted it and I looked at your story, that there are people.
[00:24:08] In the population who, no, I, I hear words in my brain, uh, but I didn't think about the other human beings. Some of them literally do not have that diet. Let's not have their brain works. It was blew my mind.
[00:24:24] Katie: Yeah, there's an, it's like a good percentage of people, something like I'm forgetting the stat right now, but something like 25 percent of people that They experience their self-talk and visuals, so other sensory experiences.
[00:24:37] So I have a friend who says that they experience self-talk, like a, like a movie playing out in their mind. Or I was doing an interview with someone and they said that they are self-talk comes out in these more like obtuse feelings, like somatic feelings of, or ah, or things like that that aren't. [00:25:00] An inner monologue like you or I.
[00:25:02] So if you are starting the shifting yourself, talk journey with the talk part, it's not even going to resonate with people who are those people or maybe experience a whole wide breadth of ways that their self talk shows up. Because sometimes I am a visual person. So if you are saying, okay, replace these words with these words, that's not really going to change much because words weren't the beginning anyway.
[00:25:29] So in order to shift your self talk in a real lasting way, you have to get underneath what's going on and get to the base of what's going on. All of that, which is the self part of self talk. And so when it comes to loosening the grip, if you are, you know, like you are, I am on a stage for a clinger on whether it's other people or your identity, shifting the self part.
[00:25:57] Creates that solid base [00:26:00] of who you are and what you stand for, no matter where you go, which allows you to live a more fluid and flexible life because you are, you are, you are you, wherever you go versus I thought that this, that these words or this label or this thing is what I was. And now I'm going to completely shift that hell no, when you get to the base of that self trust and how do you build trust with other people or with yourself, like you learn that you can trust the truth of what's going on here.
[00:26:42] So when you get to the core of like, Oh, why do I respond to the way that I respond? What are the things that are my makes? What are my breaks? What are my priorities? What do I do in order to not do other things? When you start to [00:27:00] get to this deep, deep, deep base of what you could call finding yourself, which is not like some excursion out there, it's a dig in here.
[00:27:10] It allows you to, I'm from someone who's not watching right now. I'm clenching my fists. It allows you to literally add more ease, loosen the grip, make your life a little bit more malleable based on what is unfolding for you
[00:27:30] Lily: in the moment. I think the concept of getting down to self is really powerful and I love the questions that you were posing.
[00:27:37] I do think that a lot of listeners might be struggling with even the permission. to give themselves to ask their questions and let their answers be enough. A lot of self doubt comes up around, you know, I, I work in essence based preferences, which is like how you know what you want. And we ask a lot of questions very similar to [00:28:00] this.
[00:28:00] And the question that most people have after doing this exercise is, do I really get to want that? Is that okay? Is that too much? Oh, I don't know if it's that eek feeling of like, I don't know. So how do you build the skill of allowing your own answers? When you're asking these questions, like what would you say?
[00:28:18] Katie: That is a great question. I think allowing your own answers is maybe like even a couple steps down the line in this process, which I think is where a lot of us get tripped up as we want to be able to make the shifts or have the acceptance, like right off the bat, that's really hard, especially if you are.
[00:28:43] Probably as the majority of your listeners are, you're a fully formed adults. There's gotta be a recognition there that you have multiple decades worth. You have a lifetime worth of habits that you've built. [00:29:00] So of course, of course, it's going to be hard. Of course, it's going to feel uncomfortable. Of course, you're going to doubt it, but it's not because anything is going wrong or that you're doing it wrong.
[00:29:13] It's just that you haven't done this before to go back to our, our sports analogy. You can't just say, all right, I'm going to play in the super bowl. Now you've got to like, I don't know, learn how to throw a ball and learn how to play on a team. And these things will be hard. You need to learn how to efficiently recover from injuries.
[00:29:35] This is difficult, difficult stuff that you start to hone over time. Like a habit. Like a practice, and I think that so many of us have equated discomfort with. A bad thing. This feels bad. And so it must be bad, which is a really good impulse to have in certain scenarios. It's like it's kept [00:30:00] humanity alive for multiple millennia.
[00:30:04] And also we've got to recognize like what is actually going on underneath. So for example, if the self talk is This is too hard. Or am I allowed to want this thing? Figuring out what the information is underneath your self talk, which is so similar to like what you talk about when you talk about your preferences of like, okay, I want someone who's kind.
[00:30:31] Well, what does kind right? Yeah, this is if I'm saying, um, I'm not good enough for this. Or am I allowed? I don't think I'm allowed to want this because that's what really people are saying, right? When they say, am I allowed to want this thing you're saying? I don't think I'm allowed to want this. What's the information under there is the information that there's Maybe some sort of past wound that hasn't been addressed.
[00:30:57] Is it that you want to feel [00:31:00] safe? Is it that you saw this modeled by someone else in your life that was actually not you and you saw negative repercussions for that? And so you don't even go close to that because you saw bad news bears over there. So like getting down to the granular information. If self talk isn't inherently good or bad, it's information.
[00:31:24] It's the lens we cast over it. That's kind of like the very, very, very first step is just noticing the information that is underneath all of these things. You don't have to do anything about it yet. Doing something about it is That's later. Yeah. But you can't shift what you don't know exists. Yeah.
[00:31:44] Lily: So good.
[00:31:44] I think that this like, what are you really asking? You ask, am I allowed to want this? You're really saying like, I'm not allowed to want that. So what is that about? Where does that come from? I think that's so good and so powerful. So once you've got the awareness, [00:32:00] then what?
[00:32:02] Katie: Yeah. Okay. So now we're going to get into like full self talk geek out territory.
[00:32:07] Lily: Great. Great.
[00:32:08] Katie: So we're shifting the self first, not the talk because the talk is symptomatic. The self is at the root of the cause. You don't just pop a pseudophed or That's
[00:32:18] Lily: why toxic positivity doesn't work. Yeah.
[00:32:21] Katie: Yeah. Exactly. Like you don't just take the cough lozenges if you have a chronic, it has a long duration, like You go and see why you can't stop coughing in your day to day life.
[00:32:33] So you know that that's a thing and you know, okay, cool. As I'm coughing, you need a sense of self. I need a sense of self. Okay, cool. And now I am going to find myself that's like digging underneath and saying, Okay, what am I going to unearth as like the truthiest truth? Of who I am, I'm going to look at the emotional DNA [00:33:00] of what's made me me the different actions and reactions that I've soaked in from the world from generations past from people around me, stories that I've been told from generations above me, like your story with your mother that you tell in the book about enoughness and too muchness.
[00:33:21] And you start to sift and sort and figure out. All right, well, who actually am I? What is the core of myself? How do I perceive me? What do I think about that perception? And how am I bringing that person out into the world? And who would I want to be? And I think that that can be a tricky conversation for people who have been told to, like, let go of other people's things and separate themselves.
[00:33:52] Like, whose is this? Really? It can be a very helpful question. If we know what to do in the steps after,
[00:33:59] Lily: [00:34:00] because we're
[00:34:01] Katie: humans, we're influenceable beings. This is Part of what makes humans amazing. We're meant to be influenced by each other. So just because something has been told to you in the past doesn't mean you can just say like, okay, cool.
[00:34:17] That's fine. That's my parents stuff, or that's something that I read once, like you've been influenced by it and it's affected the fabric of your being. So sort of figuring out what actually makes me, me, beyond. The lens that I've casted over all of this information, that's actually, it's complicated and nuanced work, but that's kind of the easy part when you think about what it actually takes to shift your self talk out in the world, it means you need to, like, be that self that you found out in the world, and that's where [00:35:00] people, myself included, usually get tripped up because It's really scary to be yourself.
[00:35:08] It's really scary to take the person who's in your head, the you, you know, you're meant to be, and then actually be that person super scary can feel very risky. And then also how do you stay yourself? How do you stay yourself when other people's opinions come in, when life keeps lifing, that's actually the hardest part for many people.
[00:35:36] The other stuff is complicated. It's uncomfortable. It's going to bring up a lot. And it's important. However, it's one thing to say, I know that I'm this person. It's another thing to be that person out loud. And so the goal is to take who you are in your head and who you are in the world. And instead of making it a Venn diagram, make it a full circle.[00:36:00]
[00:36:00] Lily: Well, can you give an example from your life of like realizing? This is who I want to be, like realizing yourself and then being that person in the world of like, what obstacles did you face in integrating?
[00:36:14] Katie: Ooh, well, I can give you a recent example from my book launch. I did a cabaret for my book launch.
[00:36:24] And for anybody who does not know what a cabaret is, because I realized in putting on the cabaret, when I told people I was doing cabaret, they were like, so you're doing like, like a burlesque. And I was like, No, they think of the musical cabaret. I'm like, no, I'm not. I'm not taking off any clothes. I am not doing any sort of like sexy dancing anywhere.
[00:36:46] A cabaret is basically like, in my case, it was a one woman show where I told stories. I sang and I did that over the course of, you know, 60, 70 minutes. Like I said, I come from a musical theater [00:37:00] background. I have not done that professionally for like a decade. And I remember having this idea during COVID during 2020, because I started to sing just for like, the joy of it with a friend who has a piano and is, you know, in the industry and was like, I'm lonely.
[00:37:22] Let's sing. And so we became our own little like singing piano playing pod. And I remember we would joke about a post COVID cabaret. And for me, I felt like, Oh, I don't know. That just doesn't feel right. But then I thought I could do a book launch cabaret and I did not have the book deal yet, but I was like, if I Get to that place, which I believe in myself, and I believe I will.
[00:37:47] So when I get to that place. That would be really cool to do a book launch cap Ray turns out, got the agent, got the book to deal. Book was coming out. I was in sort of that [00:38:00] point in time where I had, I thought this is something that I really want to do, but I haven't told anybody yet so I can totally change my mind.
[00:38:11] And this is while I am writing a book about unearthing the strength in who you were all along. Moving forward into the you that you know you're meant to be, bringing your full self to the table and to the stage in your own life, I was like, Better way to sort of, I guess, model this for people then to get on stage when it's like, nobody in New York knows me as that person, literally nobody, except for my parents.
[00:38:45] I spoiler, I ended up doing the cabaret, nobody, except for my parents who came to the cabaret had ever seen me perform or heard me saying like, not even my husband who we've been together for a decade now, and I definitely [00:39:00] had those voices being like, You don't have to do this. There are so many other things that you could do while you're launching your book and nobody does the book launch cap.
[00:39:10] Right? So, like, it would be fine. Nobody would know. But because I had had the idea and I had had the vision. So clearly, it got to the point where it was like, if I don't do this. Then I am not practicing what I preach. If I don't do this, then I am not living within integrity within myself and my work. And I define integrity as like your intention and your impact aligning.
[00:39:41] And I realized that I had to do it to be able to say that I stood by my word. And it ended up being one of the most fulfilling experiences. Of my life, but that I think is it's a very specific and [00:40:00] I guess sort of like inconsequential example, but that's what it's about, right? It's about these little instances where we have a choice as to whether we're going to be ourselves out loud or not, and we choose not to be the more we choose not to be.
[00:40:15] The easier it will be not to be yourself when those big moments come. So we are practicing this over and over and over again. And that, I mean, it's been six months now and I look back, but I imagine that I'll always look back on that as a moment where I had a choice. To either be myself or go a route that I knew would be safe, would be accepted, would, would feel good enough.
[00:40:47] And I didn't choose good enough. I chose not just like spectacular, but I chose to be the me est me that I could be. And that is what I'm proudest of.
[00:40:59] Lily: Yeah. [00:41:00] I love that example. Especially in a full circle from. The alignment with the aerial obsession and the losing your voice, finding your voice, the full of yourself, don't be too much, don't be too full of yourself message that you were receiving and internalizing.
[00:41:17] Then like full circle with this, like, I'm going to believe myself. I'm going to do this cabaret is so beautiful.
[00:41:25] Katie: Thank you. Yeah. I was like, I literally am going to take up as much space as possible and take everybody else with me. Like I wanted it to be this communal experience.
[00:41:35] Lily: What was the thought that you had or the belief that you had that then led to like, I'm going to live in it.
[00:41:40] Like, of course I'm going to do this. I'm going to live in alignment, but what's the belief about yourself that you built up to with practice that then created a fertile ground to do something so courageous for yourself because you wanted to.
[00:41:55] Katie: I think I've lived many different chapters in different sort of [00:42:00] lifetimes.
[00:42:00] Another thing that I have done for 16, I think 17, maybe years now, years now, I teach group fitness. And that is something that I found while I was performing. And I was like, well, there's always going to be fitness centers or community centers or YMCA is like, this is a great survival side. Yeah. And I realized in teaching that I so much more prefer to be myself on a stage than play a character.
[00:42:30] And I got one of the best pieces of life advice from one of my, Mentors few years ago when I first moved to New York, so almost eight years ago, her name is Lloyd Jordan. Shout out. Loy. She came to my class when I moved to New York and I had been teaching in Los Angeles for the same company for the same, the same brand for about five years.
[00:42:58] At the time. And I [00:43:00] had been teaching in Los Angeles for longer than that. So these were like my first couple classes in New York where I was learning like the New York personality, the rhythms, the fitness and sort of like group fitness culture in New York versus LA. And she came to class and I was admittedly trying to show her that I was good enough, which really like showing myself, I was good enough.
[00:43:30] And I was trying to be who she wanted me to be. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was afterward. We, and then like my music started freaking out on my phone. And so I had to like change things in the moment. So it's just, I felt like the overwhelm storm was, was a Bruin. And after class, she took me aside and she was like giving me a little feedback and I just started bawling and I [00:44:00] am not someone who just like cries at the drop of a hat, especially like that.
[00:44:04] It was like huge, big. Unstoppable tears just flowing. And I remember saying to her, I'm just so worried that LA Katie. Isn't enough for New York. And she looked at me straight in the eye. And she like is one of those people that when she looks at you, she looks straight into your soul. And she said, LA Katie is more than enough for New York.
[00:44:37] You have everything that you need. And I would so much rather you be fully you in that room and mess up or make a mistake. Then try to do what you think I want, because you don't learn from [00:45:00] that. You don't learn from the latter. If you're consistently trying to do what you think I want or someone else wants or another group wants, you're going to be morphing yourself through each situation and you're not going to be learning and growing and evolving.
[00:45:15] However, if you are, are you, wherever you go, that's where you get to learn. What works, what feels right, what people like, that's how you grow. That's how you learn. And I have taken that piece of advice with me. I was 29 at the time and I'm about to be 38. So I've really, that's been like a huge lesson of my thirties is he as fully you, wherever you go, because that's how you learn, that's how you grow and that's how you become your fullest, truest version of yourself.
[00:45:49] And so when it came to the moment of the cabaret, I was like, I could do the thing that I think other people will go to, because I didn't know if people go to like this offbeat thing [00:46:00] that I was creating, especially if they like, didn't know if I could actually perform or not. And I could have done the things that other people said, well, this has worked in the past, but then I'd never know.
[00:46:10] I'd never learn. I'd never grow. And I wouldn't be able to step into. The next and next and next and next fullest version of myself. I,
[00:46:20] Lily: I think the message of how can you build the resiliency to stand to be yourself everywhere you go in a, in a way that's like not like negative, like stand to be yourself, but like allowing yourself to be yourself.
[00:46:32] Katie: Yeah.
[00:46:32] Lily: Wherever you go.
[00:46:33] Katie: Yeah. Like stand firm in your own feet.
[00:46:36] Lily: Yeah. That's amazing. And what I love about your book is that you give very actionable strategies to make that a first tolerable experience for people who may not be used to it and then a more easeful experience to allow yourself to first know yourself and then trust yourself and then let yourself be yourself wherever you [00:47:00] go, which is the answer, by the way.
[00:47:02] Katie: Thank you so much for wording it like that, because it is, it's, it's about making it not an enjoyable experience right off the bat or an easy experience, it's about making it an experience that you are able to have and have again and have again, you don't have to like it, it does not have to be easy. It actually probably shouldn't
[00:47:28] Lily: be because you're doing something completely new, right?
[00:47:30] A hundred percent, Katie. We're going to finish with a reading from page 96 of Want, Want Yourself. So confidence, this is what you say on page 96, confidence then isn't about feeling good about yourself. Feeling good is irrelevant. Even the dictionary says, so equating, feeling good to being confident is a myth.
[00:47:49] Confidence doesn't always feel good, but it always feels right. Confidence is trust period. Confidence is about recognizing, appreciating, and trusting the truth of who [00:48:00] you are in any given moment. Thank you for coming on and sharing your wisdom with us. I think this book is so good and going to impact so many people who listen to this podcast.
[00:48:09] So where can people buy the book? I know it's everywhere books are sold, but like, how can people work with you and tell us?
[00:48:16] Katie: Yes. Thank you so much. So my book, want yourself shift yourself, talk and unearth the strength and who you were. All along is available as they say, wherever books are sold, ebook, audio book, physical book, go to your indie bookseller, go to your library.
[00:48:34] All of the places. They can also find me at Katie Horwich on all social media channels. They can visit my platform, women against negative talk at women against negative talk. com and on sub stack at women against negative talk. They can listen to my podcast. The want cast, which you have been on and they can listen.
[00:48:53] I highly recommend they listen to your episode on the want cast wherever they listen to podcasts. And they can work with me by [00:49:00] visiting Katie Horwich. com and learning more.
[00:49:04] Lily: Thank you, Katie, for coming on. We'll link all of that in the description and in the show notes and uh, talk to y'all next week. Bye.