Join Kathie Owen in this heart-touching episode of her podcast and YouTube series, where she embarks on a profound journey exploring the depths of emotional intelligence, the art of storytelling, and the power of effective communication.
In “Breaking Barriers: A Tale of Empathy, Mentorship, and Personal Growth,” Kathie delves into her personal narrative, sharing her challenges and triumphs in developing emotional awareness. This episode is a rich tapestry of experiences ranging from her early struggles with expressing emotions due to childhood experiences, to her insightful role as a mentor during her formative years.
Kathie discusses key learnings from influential books like "Amplify Your Influence" by Renee Rodriguez and "Never Split the Difference" by an FBI negotiator, highlighting how these insights have shaped her understanding of emotional intelligence and communication strategies.
The episode also features Kathie’s transition from an aspiring human resources professional to a dedicated corporate wellness director, underscoring her personal and professional growth. She provides an engaging discussion on intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, especially in corporate environments, advocating for a more genuine approach to motivation that goes beyond external rewards.
Moreover, Kathie emphasizes the transformative power of storytelling in fostering intrinsic motivation and invites listeners to explore their personal narratives to find authentic reasons behind their goals and actions.
Key Takeaways:
â–¶The importance of emotional intelligence in personal and professional life. â–¶Overcoming communication barriers through self-awareness and empathy. â–¶Insights from Kathie's mentorship experiences and their impact on personal growth. â–¶Strategies for effective communication and negotiation. â–¶The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and its relevance in the corporate world.
Join Kathie as she navigates these topics with warmth and wisdom, providing valuable insights for anyone on a journey of self-discovery and improvement. Don’t forget to share this episode with someone who could benefit from Kathie’s inspiring stories and lessons.
Hello. And welcome to my YouTube channel. Welcome to Kathie's coaching podcast. I'm your host, Kathie Owen. Today, we are going to talk about communication. Self-awareness emotional awareness. And storytelling all put together. Reality, trans surfing, all that good stuff. Let's get into it. So. If you listen to my episode last week, I talked about. Creating value, building your community. And being part of something that may seem small, but really, and truly it's big. And. When I was in the sixth grade. I was a mentor for the kindergartners. This was a big deal to me. And I learned a really valuable lesson at this time that I want to share with you today. You may or may not know this, but I struggle with communication. I struggle with. Talking about. Difficult situations. And the reason why stems from my childhood, I've talked about this before on my channel. How, whenever I stood up for myself, I got hit. I got slapped in the face. I was told that was disrespectful. Despite. Not in my mom's intentions were. We're good, but she put me in a place where I could not express my emotions verbally. Without getting punished. And that's what it says to my child brain. And when I did this, it, it created a. A really difficult way for me to communicate my feelings. But I became aware of other people's emotions. And I found out that this is emotional intelligence, emotional awareness. And because of this, I had to analyze every situation. To a T because I wasn't. Creating the value I wanted to create in my life and stand up for things. And listening to amplify your influence. I found out that's a book by Renee Rodriguez. I highly recommended. It's really valuable. But I found out that. Your values are instilled in you between the ages of nine and 13. You start to realize things that you value. Things that you understand, and people who were in your life were a direct influence on that between the ages of nine and 13. So I go back to when I was in the sixth grade and I worked as a mentor for children who were in kindergarten. And it just felt like such a good place. I could, I could see myself becoming a teacher one day. That was something I really valued. And I really enjoyed doing. And. My mom used to take us to school, but she wouldn't take us all the way. She dropped us off, like a little bit before. She had this big fear of traffic and driving, and she had a lot of fears and a lot of limiting beliefs that she placed onto us to. That just kind of really jacked up my perspective of the world. I guess you could say. But anyways, she would drop us off at this corner and we would walk to school. And on the way to school, we pick up this little boy at his house and his name was Jason. He was in kindergarten at the time and he was in this class and I just got a sense that something wasn't right in his home, I just picked up on it. By his behaviors, by the way he acted. And I just felt huge compassion for him. And at that time, I was only like nine, 10 years old. I didn't know how to take care of this situation. So I brought it to my mom's attention. Remember, my mom was one who had limiting beliefs. She had a lot of anxiety and fear and all that fear got placed onto me. And also they had this. Way that they acted in the world that was different from what happened at home. It was almost like they put on a facade and I don't say this to be ugly about my mom. She was doing the best she could. And actually my mom was a great mom. For the most part. Who isn't a perfect parent. It just happens. That's life. And. I told my mom about this little boy and I told her I wanted to do something about it and she never did anything about it. And that sent a message to me that my value. And what I thought and what I believed and what I felt. Was not out there. It wasn't important. And this left me with a big hole in my heart. And. As I grew older, I had to find other ways to communicate my feelings, my beliefs. Things like that. My point in telling you all of this is I am in a spot where I'm I'm. I'm having trouble communicating. The value that I can bring to the table. What do I mean by this? Well, I'm, I'm studying emotional intelligence, emotional awareness, and I found that I have this. Really. Keen sense of emotional awareness going on around me, but I can't communicate it properly. And it just, I, I just, I can't I'd struggle with it. But I'm working on it. And I'm also reading this book called never split. Never split the difference. And this book is written by an FBI negotiator who talks about using emotional awareness, emotional intelligence. To communicate and get what you're trying to get to get negotiated deal. Negotiate a contract, negotiate things in life, just in general. And this is something I personally have been missing because I, I. I have that limiting belief. Placed on me that, that deals with this. When I was in college. I was dead set on going into human resources. I wanted to be in human resources. I studied industrial psychology, which is human resources. I don't, that's probably not what they call it today, but that's what thing I did study. And when I was in college, I worked for this company that analyzed personality tests. And it was so cool because we would take these personality tests and we would analyze them for people who were hiring. And. Out of the blue. I got fired from this job. I got fired. For, I don't know why. I think it had to do with the fact that at the time I was taking a statistics course in psychology. And they said you had to do these tests that were very. Analytical and used a big population. And these personality tests that they did were not analyzed on a large enough population for them to be authentic. But I can look at it in retrospect and see that that was God's hand or my intuition's hand saying, no, this is not the route you want to take. So go a step further. And when I graduated from college, I worked for an oil company and I told them, as soon as I was hired, I said, look, I want to go into human resources. This is my dream. I want to do human resources, but I was hired as a contract administrator and this company. He was on the path for huge amounts of growth. And I was like, okay, this is what I want to do. Be careful. What you. Uh, you ever hear the saying? You want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans. Well, yeah, he was probably laughing up there and I'm kind of glad he was because it didn't work out. But I remember thinking. The girl who got the human resources job was one of my best friends, because about three years later, They did need a human resources person in the Houston office. I was like, okay, cool. They're going to consider me. But they considered the person who was in my position at the time. And which made me think, oh, I just got lost in the path. But yes I did, but I look back in retrospect some 30 years later and I can see why that happened because if I had gone into human resources, I promised you, I would not be happy today. And 20 23, 20 24 human resources is so full of all of laws and legalities and technical stuff. In my mind, it doesn't matter. Instead, I'm a corporate wellness director. I'm into fitness, I'm into health and mental health. Um, I'm also into mind, body spirit, functional fitness. These are the things I focus on, but there's a component in my job that goes with human resources and I see. Something happening in the corporation nowadays, and a lot of corporations. And what they work off of is extrinsic motivation. And extrinsic motivation is just giving somebody a. A bonus for. And not accounting for their behaviors. Intrinsic motivation is something. I try to coach with my clients because if you can get intrinsic motivation, you're more likely to accomplish the goals. I would like to see that more in human resources. And here's what I mean by this. At our company, we have this contest every year. The drives me freaking nuts. If you want to see who is extrinsically motivated, look and see who plays in this contest. Because what they do is they do a scavenger hunt and the times are from like nine in the morning till about noon. Well, some departments have to sit at their desk at that time. They cannot participate. In this. The scavenger hunt, but the ones that don't have to sit at their desk are the ones that are playing this game and they are playing this game like cutthroat. Like they hide these eggs and you have to go find them and they have clues and you know, there's always one in the gym and everybody comes running out. There are people I've never even seen. Never come to work out, but they come to the gym for this thing that is extrinsic Moda vacation. Extrinsic motivation is not going to last very long. If you want to motivate your team, you want to find intrinsic motivations. If you want to motivate yourself, you want to find intrinsic motivations. Back to my story. Of the little guy that was in kindergarten and extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. How does that come into play? Well, I was intrinsically motivated to help this child because it was something I wanted to do. And it. It's something I valued. I value helping others, especially those who I see need it. Or really, really want it. I don't want to coach somebody. Who's just going, okay. I want to get. Abs. That's her goal. Really. A circle. Give me some meat. Give me something good. Give me a reason why you want those abs, maybe you want your boyfriend to look at you differently. I don't know. But even that is not going to get you to the heart of the situation. I have so many people who will come to me and say, how do I get rid of cellulite? How do I get rid of fat? And they're not even fat. It's bloat. Or how do I get rid of this and not this? Or what. This pill. They've talking about this right now. Go low is huge on TV because it's new years. Everybody's going to be talking about getting healthy and getting fit. And that Golo is just trying to tell you, this is how it's gonna fit. It's gonna work. And it doesn't. That is extrinsic motivation. It doesn't last long. We went intrinsic motivation. Okay, Kathy. I get it. I get it. How do I get intrinsically motivated? Let me tell you. It has to do. With storytelling. What story are you telling yourself? What do you really want? Tell me about a time you went through a struggle and you overcame it. What did you do to overcome that? Tell me about a time when you did exercise and you enjoyed it. Tell me a story about that, because that is going to take you further. Then a stupid pill. Or a scavenger hunt. Extrinsically motivating yourself. And your team is just going to end up with more of what you don't want. That's what it's going to end up with. And that's the lesson I want to teach today. It's extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation. Doesn't last long. Extrinsic motivation does not last long. Intrinsic motivation will take you further. And then when you hit another speed bump, which it's not, if it's, when you're going to hit that speed bump. Guess what happens? You have a story to tell yourself. To come back to. To get you over that hump. All right. I really appreciate you being here. And I want to thank you. For watching. Today's episode. I trust that you found it helpful. If you know, somebody who could benefit from this, please share it with them. And until next time I will see you next time. Peace out. And Namaste. Bing!