Learning to lean into your strengths while getting rid of your saboteurs.

Consuela Muñoz is a Gallup certified strength coach who uses a strength-based approach to build confidence. Building remodeling and transforming the confidence of women and their teams is what she has done for over 12 years. She has recently founded C school, that she'll be sharing with us that’s designed for the professional woman who wished to own the room. She also is offering a 12 week leadership program that she's going to be sharing with us to towards the end of the podcast.  

She will be we work with both our strengths and saboteurs.  Strengths are something that you're born with their natural talents for you, it's the thing about you, that makes you the most amazing person that you are. And your saboteurs. They are really developed. They are developed as when your children, and it's a way to kind of protect yourself and survive your perceived threats of, you know, threats to your physical person or to your emotions when you're a child and you're not quite ready to handle all of that.

I'm sure there's like an official definition of a saboteurs. But to me saboteurs are those negative thoughts that you have, or the negative voices that you hear. And they're telling you things like you suck, and no, if you don't get moving, you're never going to be successful, you're not going to make it you're not good enough, it's telling you all those thoughts. And, you know, we needed them as a child. But as an adult, we don't need those thoughts anymore to protect us. But they've become habit, they become a way of a thinking pattern in our mind. And, and we've had them so long that that we don't even think of them sometimes as that sabotage or that negative thought is it's something that we depend on to help push us we feel like, but the thing is that every negative thought every saboteurs is a lie. Every negative thought is a lie. And when you start there, it gets a little easier.
Here is the link for the program  https://cschool.ownyourconfidence.com/applycschool  

Stay tuned, In this interview, you will learn so much more….

Transcript

Mike Raber  0:00  
Hey everybody, this is Mike Raber with the influences journey. I'm here today with another amazing episode and today I have the honor of introducing you all to Consuela Munoz. She is a Gallup certified strength coach who uses a strength based approach to build confidence. Building remodeling, and transforming the confidence of women and their teams is what she has done for over 12 years. She has recently founded C school, that she'll be sharing with us quite a bit about as we began designed for the professional woman owning the room. She also is offering a 12 week leadership program that she's gonna be sharing with us to towards the end of the podcast. So at this point, I would love to introduce you all to Consuela Muñoz.

Consuela Muñoz  0:54  
Hi, Mike, it's awesome to be a part of this. I'm super excited to be here and talk to your listeners today about confidence and all the things that go into making that possible.

Mike Raber  1:08  
It's great to have you with us today. And I have a couple of quick questions you never had the time to catch up before the call today. But one of the questions that I had in going over the comments on your confidence and all of that other different things that go into it is what have you found as far as which is more important to control your strengths, or your saboteurs?

Consuela Muñoz  1:36  
Ah, strengths and saboteurs. And that, I guess the quick answer is your strengths. But it's a little bit more complicated, then which one are we going to control. mean strengths are something that you're born with their natural talents for you, it's the thing about you, that makes you the most amazing person that you are. And your saboteurs. They're really developed. They are developed as when your children, and it's a way to kind of protect yourself and survive your perceived threats of, you know, threats to your physical person or to your emotions when you're a child and you're not quite ready to handle all of that.

Mike Raber  2:21  
with strengths, that's kind of I think of a lot of different ways of house drinks, owning our strengths kind of makes sense to I think a lot of us. But cyber tour that's kind of I always say it's a big word, but kind of is. Can you explain a little bit more what your definition of what do you mean by saboteurs? Yeah, so saboteurs

Consuela Muñoz  2:40  
I'm sure there's like an official definition of what a saboteurs. But to me saboteurs are those negative thoughts that you have, or the negative voices that you hear. And they're telling you things like you suck, and no, if you don't get moving, you're never going to be successful, you're not going to make it you're not good enough, it's telling you all those thoughts. And, you know, we needed them as a child. But as an adult, we don't need those thoughts anymore to protect us. But they've become habit, they become a way of thinking a pattern in our mind. And, and we've had them so long that that we don't even think of them sometimes as that saboteurs or that negative thought is it's something that we depend on to help push us we feel like, but the thing is that every negative thought every saboteurs is a lie. Every negative thought is a lie. And when you start there, it gets a little easier.

Mike Raber  3:41  
So it's kind of lying to ourselves in a way

Consuela Muñoz  3:44  
it is and and because again, as kids, we didn't know how to handle things. So we invented these lies to help motivate us, but we don't need them now. Because now we get things right. And so we often think of these thoughts as things that help us to be successful, and we see them as a friend versus that enemy. But the truth is that the saboteurs are going to pull us into action. And that they do that through anger, anxiety, guilt, shame, they pull us into action through those things. And the thing is, they tell us if we have these things that will be successful. And the real lie is that we if we believe that our greatest success is going to be achieved, because we're listening to these saboteurs. When reality The truth is that we should be playing more with our strengths and using our strengths in a purposeful way. Because our strengths are not going to pull are not going to pull us into action. They're going to push us into action, using things like compassion, curiosity, creativity. And the difference is that we'll be able to have that success without it. experience any or without sacrificing any of our happiness or our peace of mind. And that's why we want to use those strengths in a controlled way to get to the success that we want to have.

Mike Raber  5:16  
That makes perfect sense. And especially, I would imagine, it could be kind of counterintuitive to reaching that, or leaning into that strength that we want. If that's self talk about myself, oftentimes, I'm trying to do something and have that nagging voice behind you nagging at you, and without learning how to properly release that. And ideally, having that come up in the first place. can be a challenge for a lot of people out there, I believe. Um, can you tell us more about these 10 saboteurs and their lies?

Consuela Muñoz  5:50  
Yeah, so these saboteurs. So this is based on the work of Dr. Shah mean, he identified 10 saboteurs. And the first one is the master saboteur, and that's the judge, and everybody has the judge, and the judge is that guy that same? You know, he's the one that says you suck the loudest. And his job is really to work with these nine other assistant saboteurs. Now, remembering them is kind of like thinking about all the Rangers right? Like what are what are the what are all those nine things, but they are stickler, pleaser, hyper achiever, victim, hyper rational, hyper, vigilant, restless controller, and avoider. So those are the nine assistant saboteurs. And now the average person has roughly three of these assistant saboteurs that are, roughly three of these assistants have chores that are talking to us on a regular basis. And then the judge job is the judge the thoughts that the assistant saboteurs handle. So an example might be let's say, you have high achiever, or hyper achiever, and I thought you might have is I must, I must be the best at what I do. That's what that's what you're thinking. And then the judges over here saying, Well, if you don't do all these things, there's no way you're going to be the best, and you're not going to have success. So the judges judging your thoughts from your hyper achiever. So another example, if you have pleaser, maybe you have a thought that says, I can make anybody like me. And so then the judge is over here saying, Yeah, but if you don't do all these things, for people, if you aren't going out of your way, for these people, you're never going to have success, because they're never been like you. And so judges, then one more in the victim, so maybe you have the victim and you have a thought that says, terrible things are always happening to me. They're always happening to me. And your judges over there saying, Well, do you think that you deserve good things to happen to you, of course, terrible things are happening to so you can see how the judge just kind of adds on to whatever these negative thoughts are that you're having. From your, your assistant saboteurs,

Mike Raber  8:12  
kind of like your worst critical best friend, or critical friend, that critical person who does,

Consuela Muñoz  8:18  
right and so and for my thing, it's funny that you say, friend, because my thing is always about, you know, when you have that voice, and, and you just said the word friend. And the thing is, it's hard, it feels like a friend, right? We think it's a friend. But it's really hard to confront your enemy. If you can't even recognize it as an enemy. You know, it see it as a friend. Right? The best way to really deal with these saboteurs is to observe them, label them, and then let them go. Okay, now, of course, this is easier to say than to do, right. And in our, our leadership program, we really take a structured approach to being able to build our strengths. So the better control we have over our strengths, the more we can stop our weaknesses, and the better shot we have at defeating the saboteurs, especially once we realize that they're not our friends, they're not actually helping us, they're lying to us.

Mike Raber  9:16  
That makes sense. And what are some of the ways that you help a person figure out what their strengths are or what the weaknesses are saboteurs are,

Consuela Muñoz  9:25  
right, so so we have a couple of assessments that we use. And so we have the Clifton strengths assessment, better known as the strength Finder. And so we take that and we determine what are our top five, and we can determine all 34 strengths. There are three core strength themes that are natural to folks. But we really want to spend the most time focusing on those top fives. And then we also have a subtour assessment where we're going to look at, you know, what, what is those top three main saboteurs that you have to deal with. And so we work on those three The judge and how do we get control to them? How do we turn the volume down on those negative thoughts that we hear, you know, all the time.

Mike Raber  10:09  
Interesting? And have you found that it's a pretty lengthy process to figure all of this stuff out? Or is it something that person can do.

Consuela Muñoz  10:16  
So this is kind of a behavioral change. So we talked in that I talked in the beginning a little bit about how, you know, we want to control the strengths and how strengths are natural to us, and we're born with them. And the saboteurs are something that we've learned. So anything we've learned, and has become a habit, we can learn a new way of approaching, but we really need to change our behaviors. So though, so the thing about that anytime you're trying to change your behavior, you need a bit of time to work through it. So you want to have time to learn about your strengths, and really delve into them and start growing the power of them. And then we want to delve into what are those saboteurs? And how can we use our strengths in a purposeful way to deal with those saboteurs? How can we help use those to control and that is kind of a timely process. So that's why we have our program spread over those 12 weeks. You know, we have daily things that we're doing weekly, monthly, different activities that we're doing with structured exercises, specific research, proven techniques that we can take to really get control of those and help us slowly get get get better and better. And hearing that voice saying, okay, that's my achieve. 

That's my hyper achiever. You know, hearing that voice saying, that's my hyper achiever. But the real truth is this. And then letting it go, because it doesn't do us any good to get angry that our saboteurs showed up, because that's the saboteurs still winning. So we observe it, we label it say, that's my achiever. And one of the fun things we do. And I'm not sure your audience here, so I won't tell you but one of the fun things we do is we label our saboteurs. So we know it's an achiever, or hyper achiever. We know it's victim, but what is your name for the victim? What is your name for the judge in my name for the judges a cuss word? So that's why I'm not sure. I, you know, I refer to my judge that way. So every time I hear it, I'm like, there's that, you know, that rank, you know, there's that right. And, of course, my, my, my judges is a dude, because there's no way another woman would talk to me that way. Right? So you label and say, there's, there's my rant. And so I'm not, you know, that's not true, what he's saying is not true. So like if your judges saying something to you about, you know, I, so you might hear like, I don't think I'm capable. That's not you saying that. That's my judge the rat, saying, You eat that he doesn't think I'm capable. And so what does that truth? What is I know I'm capable, I know that I can do this. I've done this before. So you, you get those truths ready. And so you observe it, you label it, and then you just let it go. And, and how, what is your recovery time? How fast can you go from hearing that voice, to letting it go and moving on and keeping keep moving forward, because that voice wants to sabotage you that's that self sabotage, it wants to keep you from moving forward and being successful, whatever your goal or your project is.

Mike Raber  13:15  
I like that. And I remember years ago, I learned I Do not shout him to remember who came up with the phrase. But if we, if we, other people talk to us that we talk to ourselves, we would be fighting a good part of the time, or we would never let another person talk to us when we talk to ourselves. And it's interesting, I love how it sounds like you're empowering people to identify those components or saboteurs, those critical friends and get going back to that point, or I don't know if I would call him a friend at that point, but still analogy that, accepting it and releasing it versus getting mad and all the other unhealthy emotions that we tend to bring into it. So I really like how it sounds like your process is very efficient, but also a healthy way to learn how to address the saboteurs at the same time of leaning into our strengths,

Consuela Muñoz  14:10  
which is one of the things again with the friend and the whole analogy there is that if you if you heard someone talking to your best friend, especially for women, I think this helps us if you heard someone saying those awful things to your best friend, would you stand by and let them continue? You surely wouldn't. Because it's easier to jump in and stop that negative behavior towards a friend than it is to protect ourselves from that, you know, negative behavior and to get stuck in that. So, you know, think about that. Like, if if I wouldn't let somebody say that to my best friend, why am I letting that saboteurs say it to me.

Mike Raber  14:49  
I like that. When our kids were younger, we used to have you have people have like a square jar and a square yet what a quarter in a jar as an example, we had One where if you hear someone in the family say something negative about themselves to someone else in an unfair way, you have to reframe it and put a quarter in the jar. In essence, like one of the things that they would say is I can I believe, so if they would hear them starting to see going into a negative spiral, they would stop and say, I used to, up until now or from now on I am, etc. And they say I can I will, I believe, and then they would release it. Yeah. And it was interesting how, as little kids or keep each other in check, and someone would say something. And they'd say, Oh, that's not like you. Are you sure? And I say No, you're right, I can do this. I will do it. And I believe that anything's possible, whatever, however, they would tie it into it. But it was interesting how the more they caught themselves doing it, the less they did it. Yeah. Question for you to share with me before about initiative that you're working on? Would you mind sharing for the audience, the new initiative that you're beginning in 2021?

Consuela Muñoz  16:07  
Sure. So you know, 2020 has been quite the year, right. I can't even tell you how old I was, when I decided that 2020 was going to be the biggest year ever. You know, my birthday is on a 20. And I find the 20 to be a very lucky number. So I'm thinking 2020. That's going to be the year. And it's going to be awesome and insane. And really like. And so at this point, it's made a couple of those points, right, it was it was memorable. It's been pretty insane. I don't know about awesome. But so we'll see we got a little bit of the year left, right. So there's, there's a possibility. So as part of, of 2020, being such a rough year, we wanted to do something to really boost everybody for 2021. And so this is our initiative four to four. But I wanted to tell you a little bit about why it's so important. And a few years ago, when I was still working in corporate, I ran into a lady who, you know, we weren't exactly best friends or anything. But we worked at the same company for a while. So I knew her. And she was in my building. And she looked a little lost. So I said, Hey, is can I help you find something? And she said, No, I'm just, I'm just having a bit of a moment. I just realized that today, six months. And then she goes on to say six months from when I fled my husband, with my two small kids to the women's shelter, because he had been beating them. And how, you know, she had been she was at the shelter for a week before she called her mom, she wanted to make sure enough time passed that it was safe enough to call her mom. 

And then about another week before she was able to get help from a mom and get out and get try to get started back on their own and had been working this six months to try and she just realized like, Okay, I think we're at a point where we're, we're going to actually make it, we're going to survive, things are going to be okay. And I'm kind of in shock. I'm kind of in shock and even hearing this. But she goes on to talk about how blessed she was, How blessed she was because she had family that she could turn to, and how blessed she was that she had kept her job and was able to keep earning, and was able to use that to help them get to the point where they are, and how so many of the women she had met in the shelter. didn't have that opportunity. They didn't have that family to turn to and they had lost their jobs. They had lost everything. And and, you know, we finished our conversation and she she was you know, I gave her a hug and she walked away. And I was just kind of really taken by that. Because, you know, you think about if you think about people in women's shelters or in shelters like Well, that's other, right? That's other people, it's not going to happen to me, it's not going to happen to somebody I know. It's definitely not going to happen to a peer of mine and other professional woman. 

Because we work here like things are good. And so we I realized what we don't realize what someone may or may not be going through when we are meeting with each other every day. But more than that, you know, I had already been working with this leadership program and watching women just transform watching them transform from visibly, having low self confidence to being completely competent, or watching women who are just disengaged, becoming really engaged and finding their power from finding what their strengths are and being able to use them and talk about them. And that was their power. And you could almost see when a woman had found the power of her strength that she glowed from within like she found this power. And for me, it just is really important that every woman deserves that every woman deserves to know what her strengths are to find her true power from them, and be able to go out and be successful, whatever they choose to be successful. So what we wanted to do with our initial four to four is for women helping for women. And what that means is for every four women who take and join our leadership program for deserving women will also be able to take the program.

So for, for deserving women, so women in shelters, women, you know, you know, domestic abuse shelters, other shelters, you know, women who had breast cancer, and their survivor, any woman who's had their self confidence beat down, and otherwise wouldn't be able to afford this Leadership Program. These are the woman that we want to help through our initiative four to four. And so every woman who attends us is a hero, and that they're lifting up and helping one other woman to find their power and be successful. But, and this is, this is just not everybody knows this. So we're just introducing this now. But every woman, every deserving woman that goes through our initiative, will not only be going through the leadership program, but they will get a complete confidence makeover. So what's a confidence makeover, right? So a confidence makeover means that we are going to be giving them tips on what clothing to wear, what fashions they should be looking at, based on what role they're trying to, you know what job they're trying to get, we will do a makeover of their hair and makeup. And at the end of that, each of them will receive a professional headshot that they can use on LinkedIn or others social sites and their resume to help them get that job that they are looking for.

Mike Raber  21:50  
Nice. I love that. And that ties back into the whole purpose of this podcast, the influences journey, and that I'm a firm believer and why I wanted to create this as a resource for people is an influencer, or a celebrity people think of it as the athlete, the movie star, the singer, the celebrity person out there, or it could be the Tony Robbins, the Brandon Burchard. The person that we look at, and we go, Wow, I wish I could be like that person. And we forget that that person was us at one point, and they're just a few miles further down the road than we are now. And if we're willing to do what it takes, and figure out what our own core genius is, and lean into that, together, as we move forward, and we reach a hand back and bring somebody with us. So I love the four to four, because it's the exact same concept, as these people are a little bit further down the road, lean into it, and continue to grow. It's not like saying, well just go grab somebody bring them, they also have to do the work, I'm assuming they have to show up and grow too. But by doing that, now they're a role model for this person. And they're are kind of extending a helping hand. And sounds like you're facilitating environment so Bravo.

Consuela Muñoz  23:05  
Yes, we will. I mean, every every woman can go through these issues. And so having them all together is really important as far as being able to see what other women are able to accomplish. You know, just like looking up to a celebrity, it's the same thing, looking up and saying, I can see myself being successful, like that person is successful. It's a very important aspect of thing. And it isn't easy. You know, this is you're trying to change your behavior. So it's not easy. I was, you know, talk about its behavior change, like a diet, right, like, a diet is a behavioral change. And if here's the diet, and you follow all the rules, chances are, you're going to lose weight. Hey, but what happens if you stop following the rules of the diet, and you just go back to the way you're doing things before? You know, especially if you're trying to make a lifestyle change, if you go back to doing things the way you were before, and you're like, Oh, you know, and w is fine, let's just eat that every day, then you're not you're not going to continue. And it's the same thing with this, you have to work hard at it. And you have to set it up that it's going to be the new way of looking at things. So you're going to be using your strengths purposefully, they're going to cause you to be always working to lower the volume on the saboteurs. It is a bit of work, but Lord, is it worth it, right?

Mike Raber  24:18  
Yes, I love that we're purposely to because it's one thing to lean into our strenghts  because they're our strengths. It's another thing to do it on purpose or intentionally saying we are going to do this and stepping out. That's a very powerful word that a lot of people forget.

Consuela Muñoz  24:37  
I you know, obviously I agree. But, um, yeah, I mean, there's, if if you if you don't control your strength, it will control you. And that that pushes too far. And that's where you start having weaknesses show up and gets you further from the success that you want to have. Wow, very cool.

Mike Raber  25:00  
Don't you have an upcoming session or that session, but an upcoming event?

Consuela Muñoz  25:06  
Yes. So we have our leadership program for the winter session is kicking off here in January. And right now as the time of this recording, so I don't know when you all will listen to it. But right now we have five sessions open. So we have five sessions open, if you get in before, mid December here for the January session or winter session. And even if you don't, we will have a spring session that starts in April. So we'll put a link in the notes here that you can connect with to try to sign up for the Leadership Program, or to get on the waiting list for the spring session. Or it'll also include a thing if you just want to talk with me more and find out more about what the leadership program all entails that you can get that information, so you can make a really good decision on whether this is something that you think is right for you.

Mike Raber  25:53  
Wonderful, thank you. And at the beginning, I touched on C school the entirety of how you founded C school would you like to share a little bit more of C school on what that looks like?

Consuela Muñoz  26:06  
Sure. So C school is, is part of C school is where we have the leadership program, right. So this is part of that. But there are a few more things that leadership school or that, excuse me, that C school has, and that are, we have a smashing saboteurs that we do, which is totally awesome. It's another way of looking at those saboteurs and being really physical about destroying them, we go to the rage room, we label those thoughts that we've been having, whether it's pleaser or, you know, the rats, my cuzz word that I call my judge, and I put that information on some junk and some glass and I go in there with the bat, and I just destroy it right. And so that's a physical way for us to help. Remember, when the we hear that judge talking? No, I destroyed this, and help you shut it down even easier. We also have some other things that we work on, on presence, you know, where if we're improving our confidence, and we're getting control of the saboteurs, there's still that in order to own the room, we need to work on our presence, right? So we have some things that we do to work on our presence, you know, what our body, you know, our body image and our appearance, our speech patterns, our you know, the way we look, when we walk into a room, just how can we improve our ability to own the room. And that's really what's you know, see, school is all about helping women be more confident through strength, and controlling those other things, improving our presence to the point where people will see us and know that we only know that we're competent.

Mike Raber  27:46  
Nice. I love that. And as I'm sure people who are listening to this are going to have questions, I want to reach out to you what is the best way for people to reach out to you?

Consuela Muñoz  27:57  
Yeah, so my website is https://conquersuccess.com. We'll put that into the show notes. And you can go to the C School link where you can find out more about the leadership program and some of the some of the other events that we have to offer. And otherwise, you know, on that see school page, there's also ability to get in touch with us and have a chat.

Mike Raber  28:21  
Very cool, thank you. Because while us and everybody I would like to again, thank Consuela Muñoz for taking the time to share with us what you're working on and help us get a better idea of how are soft talk and how we all have strengths. We all have saboteurs and the importance of making sure that we are paying attention to those. And I encourage you all to reach out to control when you and learn more. Anything else you would like to share as we wind up.

Consuela Muñoz  28:57  
Well, it was a great experience. I'm really glad to be a part of your movement with the influencers journey. I think it's amazing thing that you're trying to accomplish. And just really grateful to be a part of it today. And thank you.

Mike Raber  29:11  
Great to have you here. And for that I look forward to talking to everyone and the next podcast.