Rock Bottom to Reinvention with Andrea Owen
Episode 132
In this riveting episode, we sit down with the extraordinary Andrea Owen, a renowned author, speaker, and life coach. Join us as Andrea opens up about her personal journey from hitting rock bottom to orchestrating a powerful reinvention that has transformed her life and empowered countless others. She shares the challenges she faced, including heartbreak, humiliation, and self-discovery, which ultimately became the stepping stones toward her path of resilience and personal growth.
Andrea imparts valuable lessons on harnessing the strength of curiosity, overcoming negative self-talk, and rewriting the narratives that hold us back. With a dash of humor and a wealth of wisdom, Andrea guides us through her strategies for finding empowerment, self-love, and authenticity. If you're seeking inspiration to navigate life's toughest moments and emerge stronger than ever, this episode is a must-listen.
After this Episode, You Will Be Able to:
Recognize and reframe negative self-talk
Make better decisions by trusting your intuition
Step into new chapters in your life with confidence
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About the guest:
Andrea Owen is an author and professional certified life coach who helps high-achieving women let go of perfectionism, control, and isolation and choose courage and confidence instead. She has helped thousands of women manage their inner-critic to create loving connections and live their most kick-ass life.
She is the proud author of How To Stop Feeling Like Shit: 14 Habits That Are Holding You Back From Happiness (Seal Press/Hachette Books) which has been translated into 18 languages, as well as her inaugural book, 52 Ways to Live a Kick-Ass Life: BS Free Wisdom to Ignite Your Inner Badass and Live the Life You Deserve, (Adams Media/Simon & Schuster).
Andrea is a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC) from The Coaches Training Institute, a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with the International Coaching Federation, as well as a Certified Daring Way™ Facilitator; a modality based on the research of Dr. Brené Brown. She holds a Bachelor of Science from California State University in Kinesiology. Andrea has been featured on The Huffington Post Live, xojane.com, NBC, and Entrepreneur.com. She is also co-founder of The Self-Love Revolution.
Connect with Andrea:
Facebook: Your Kick Ass Life with Andrea Owen
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heyandreaowen/
Instagram: Instagram (@heyandreaowen)
YouTube: YourKickAssLife
Website: Home - Andrea Owen
Spotify: Make Some Noise with Andrea Owen
Apple Podcast: Make Some Noise with Andrea Owen on Apple Podcasts
About the host:
Danielle Cobo is an international female speaker for organizations, associations, and the public sector. She works with audiences to harness the grit and resilience to lead through change.
With over 15 years of corporate experience in the medical sales industry, she knows how to build high-performing teams that increase sales, productivity, and employee retention. Her expertise includes corporate resilience and burnout prevention.
Danielle is the author of “Unstoppable Grit: Breakthrough the 7 Roadblocks Standing Between You and Achieving Your Goals” and hosts the globally top-rated podcast "Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo.”
As a former Fortune 500 Senior Sales Manager, she led her team through downsizing, restructuring, and acquisitions to become the #1 sales team in the nation. As a result, she was awarded Region Manager of the Year. Her resiliency motivated her to earn four consecutive national Sales Excellence Awards in a male-dominated industry.
While her husband, a Blackhawk pilot in the Army, deployed to Iraq for a year, Danielle learned to balance a demanding job while caring for their energetic 1.5-year-old twin boys, who possess more energy than a squirrel after a triple espresso.
Danielle’s resilience led her to start her own business, helping others develop the grit, resilience, and courage to thrive in life and business.
Her tenacious attitude stems from being raised by an ambitious mother and recovering from being taken from her father and cast out at 17 years of age.
She is a two-time 60-mile walker and a monster truck driver in Louboutin’s.
Danielle has a bachelor’s in communication with a minor in psychology from the California State University of Fullerton, Certification in Inclusive and Ethical Leadership from the University of South Florida Muma College of Business, and accreditation in Human Behavior from Personality Insights. Inc., and Leadership from Boston Breakthrough Academy.
She is a member of the National Speakers Association, the Central Florida National Speakers Association Chapter, Innovation Women, and a former member of Working Women of Tampa Bay. Danielle serves on the Military Advisory, Workforce Development, and Women of Influence Committees of the Tampa Chamber of Commerce. She is also a contributing writer for Women's Quarterly Magazine.
Her experience includes serving as a Training Pillar on the Military Spouse Economic Empowerment Zone Committee and Career Transition Advisor for Dallas Professional Women.
Through Danielle's captivating storytelling, content-rich and motivational style, she empowers individuals and organizations to cultivate unwavering resilience, igniting a transformative path towards increased sales, productivity, employee retention, and collaboration.
About the show:
The Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo explores the journeys of people who have overcome adversity and harnessed the grit and resilience to thrive in all areas of their lives, Guests share how they overcame difficult times - the strategies, mindset shifts, lessons they learned along the way, and actions that propelled them forward. From navigating career setbacks to overcoming personal obstacles, each episode is a testament to grit and resilience.
You'll learn how to develop the grit and resilience to lead yourself and others through change.
Join host Danielle Cobo, keynote speaker and author of "Unstoppable Grit: Break Through the 7 Roadblocks Standing Between You and Your Goals." A new episode is released every Wednesday at 4:00 AM EST.
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Life is filled with moments of uncertainty, finding the inner strength to handle these moments can be difficult.
It's easy to become overwhelmed with fear, doubt, and worry when things don't go as planned.
Trust your intuition to make better decisions, and emerge stronger than ever.
Life Coach
So I heard about Life Coach coaching back in 2003 when hardly anybody knew what that was. And I could count on one hand how many websites there were of like true life coaches.
I thought it would be an interesting profession. I thought I would be great at it, but I didn't have a whole lot of life experience.
Experience back then I was in my late twenties and had led a pretty well, just normal life. And then the person I was married to at the time, we were married for a couple of years, but we had been together for 13 years at the time, we were just about to start a family and he got our neighbor pregnant.
And our marriage ended, I started dating right away, which I should not have started doing, but I did and ended up getting conned and it was just this mess of a life I found myself in my early thirties at this point. And so I decided to change my life and I was my rock bottom at that point in my life.
I had never faced anything so incredibly difficult and just also profoundly humiliating too.
And so I signed up for a life coaching school. I didn't know how much of my own work I would have to be doing simultaneously, so it was sort of the universe is like wink wink at me.
In order to change your life, you have to change your life.
So all that to say, I used that difficult time as a catalyst or jumping off point, if you will, in order to get where I am today.
There are a lot of people that I've faced. We've, we've all faced challenges throughout our life. And the particular challenge that you went through and the experience that what you went through, as you mentioned very humiliating and I'm assuming self-discovery and reflecting on what your life was and probably second guessing a lot of the decisions that were made.
The most impactful learning lesson that you took away when you were in your program?
The first one was when I learned about negative self-talk.
I like to be right. I like certainty, as other humans do. But especially as a coach, if I'm facilitating a coaching conversation, I don't have all the answers, and I certainly don't have the answers that are my clients, so it's just remaining.
Open and curious, like, I wonder about this, or what if it was another way? or What are our options here? Let's look at all the options and the ways that things could go. Curiosity, I think is such a catalyst for, if nothing else, self-awareness. And at best, it's a catalyst for positive change.
And I'm going to stop there because I could go on and on. Well, some key areas I heard you hone in on were being very in tune with your intuition and seeing the red flags. When they're there. And not ignoring that in real time.
We hear a lot about mindset.
There's a lot of talk about mindset, but being very specific about that negative self-talk, and that was actually what I learned in cognitive psychology when I was working towards my psychology degree, was cognitive psychology and neurolinguistics, and as you mentioned, changing the neuropathways so that it's changing our perception of ourselves but also other people as well.
I have found that the less critical and judgmental I am with myself, the more compassion, empathy, and understanding I have for other people.
I try to live by the notion that people are doing the best that they can with what they have, and that doesn't necessarily mean that I let people off the hook for behaving terribly.
It means that more boundaries need to be set, but it just allows me to have so much more joy, understanding, and relief in my life.
Take responsibility for your healing
I think what jumps out at me the most with just this conversation is how much we underestimate how our upbringing impacts our adult lives. I'm a big fan of therapy. I think it can be really helpful when we find ourselves on either side of that coin of being so independent and wanting to do things ourselves but also being in a partnership where someone is saying, Hey, I, you can lean on me in, in, in that.
Or the opposite of that, where I was like, Who's going to show up to take care of me? And then feeling left out in the dark. I think it's important to kind of look back on those reflections and how you were raised.
The whole point is to look at it with curiosity, love, and compassion for yourself. Then just remain curious about it. You know, how, how is this impacting, how is this impacting how I show up in interviews? Possibly how is it impacting, how I show up in team meetings or as a leader in my organization and on purpose?
You can strive to change that because we can blame and shame all day long the people who raised us. But you get to a certain age, I feel it's around 25, and you have to take responsibility for your healing and your growth instead of pointing the finger. Nailed it on the head.
Rock Bottom
When I found myself in the fetal position in my bedroom on the floor after, you know, my second back-to-back relationship had fallen apart, And I was actually pregnant at the time with the Conman's baby.
I was so devastated and traumatized and thought It was my absolute rock bottom at that moment in my life. And I knew I wanted to change my life, and I was sort of desperate for a sign or some kind of direction, like, what is the first step that I take? I don't even know what to do. And so I don't know if it was some kind of Divine message download that I got, but I realized somewhere within, it might not have been in that moment where I was laying on the floor,
That's what it felt like. This is an invitation to not just start my life over, but just to design it how I want and to actually be in charge of it instead of putting all of my happiness and fulfillment into someone else's hands, which is what I had done up until that point. I thought if only I could be in a great relationship if only I could change my partner, and for some people listening, that might be if I could get to this point in my career or get this position or get this project to prove to everyone.
I decided that I didn't like having other people control it and that I wanted it to be mine.
So I looked at that invitation, someone was putting the control into my hands and that, and I've never looked back, you know, and I'm not saying like everything has been smooth sailing since that happened in 2006.
But it sure changed everything in terms of the kind of North Star that I keep coming back to, and that's trusting myself, trusting my intuition, and trusting that I can take responsibility for my life.
