Overcome Your Self-Doubt with Dr. Lynn Anderson

Transcript:

Sofie: Hello everyone and welcome back to Claim Your Potential, the empowerment podcast. I’m your host, Sofie, and for this episode we are joined by Dr. Lynn Anderson to discuss overcoming your self-doubt. Dr. Lynn is a yoga nutritional therapist, fitness professional, Karma master, published author, international speaker and video producer with over thirty years’ experience in the field of natural health and fitness. She has been featured in Red Book, Reader’s Digest, Huffington Post, Shape Self and various other national publications, TV Networks and podcasts. She is the author and producer of the Soul Walking Series, The Naturopathic Wellness Series, Dr. Lynn’s Proactive Aging Workouts and Burnout It Happens to All of Us. With over thirty years’ experience in holistic health and fitness, Dr. Lynn has helped thousands of students and clients establish balanced health stress reduction and proactive aging techniques, leading to enhanced quality of life, which means to be able to do our everyday activities without restriction. Please welcome, Dr. Lynn Anderson, thank you so much for being with us today.

Lynn Anderson: Well, thank you so much. It’s my pleasure to be here with you.

Sofie: It is a pleasure to have you on and so I’m really curious with your background, have you always been passionate about pursuing wellness and teaching it to others?

Lynn Anderson: Well, um, yes, and yes. I grew up on a small island off the coast domain and I grew up in a very rural area where we practiced folk medicine and we ate organically before it was even a word sort of. And so, I kind of grew up with that background. But my real challenge came to me when I was a single mother with two young children putting myself through college and it was a really quite arduous chore to get through all of that. And at the end of that, at the end of my undergraduate I had what I call a real major burnout and that burnout was a collapse physically, mentally and soulfully. And I would say that that is what really got me on to the track because as we say in naturopathy you know, physician heal thyself, and so in doing that and bringing myself back I realized that there were many other people out there I could help.

Sofie: Yeah, I know you mentioned burnout and I think that this is something that so much of us struggle with and even the most confident people struggle with burnout. And so what are some things that we should be aware of when it comes to dealing with it or healing with our burnout?

Lynn Anderson: Well as I say burnout happens to everybody and in my book, I talk about the macro and the micro burnouts. You know the little micro burnouts? You know at the end of the day you just feel, I’m so burnt out I can’t. I just got to get away from the computer and, you know, I can’t – I can’t do any be productive anymore. The macros are the real crash and burn. That’s when, you know, everything sort of falls in so it’s important to pay attention to the micros, pay attention to the stress, pay attention to the days when you’re feeling just lethargic and you just can’t quite get things together, and that’s the time to really focus on doing the number one thing you should do which is taking care of your health.

Sofie: Yeah, and I think, you know, when I think about my own situations where I’ve had burnout, for me, I felt like a lot of it stemmed from that feeling of imposter syndrome. And so, you know, I was asking myself “who am I to do this? I can’t do this. I’m not qualified enough.” And so then all of a sudden that stress that those negative – ah those negative thoughts, that self-doubt really makes burnout come to the surface and it’s a lot easier to feel burnt out because it’s because you’re throwing so much more energy into work and life in general so that you don’t have that sense of imposter syndrome. And so, I’m curious if you have any strategies that you would recommend to someone that continuously struggles with that imposter syndrome, that self-doubt in the back of their mind?

Lynn Anderson: Well, the first thing is – is that when we’re experiencing stress, it’s like having a million balls up in the air and we’re still bouncing all those balls and we believe we can keep all those balls going. Burnout is when the balls fall all over the floor and you can’t pick them up so that’s – that’s the different. Stress is really, we still think we have control but you know the impostor and – and we all experience that – that’s you know, it’s self-doubt which happens to be one of the obstacles that Karma yoga teaches us that is very important for us to work on overcoming is this sense of self-doubt. And that means coming back to your true self and coming back to finding out who you really are and what’s really important to you in life because unfortunately in our modern-day society, you know, it’s all about making money and material things and those things are not necessarily what make people happy or make you fulfilled and fulfillment is the most important thing you can do.

Sofie: Oh, my goodness. Yes. I think that this is something that I really try to push on this podcast and in everything that we do as an organization is that when you are aware of your values as a person and you are in touch with those values and you make decisions that reflect those values, there’s so much power in that because you’re putting yourself in rooms, in experiences, in relationships with people that reflect who you are as a person. That mirror that rather than saying, “well, I think that, you know, I should care about money so let me put myself, you know, in a career or surround myself with people that are doing that.” But maybe your value, maybe your values truly aren’t making money. It’s about helping people and when there’s that disalignment between who you actually are and who you think you should be, I feel like that really does lead to so many of these issues that we talk about whether it’s burnout or imposter syndrome, those feelings of self-doubt or even stress because it’s pretty stressful to be in environments that just aren’t where you’re supposed to be at. And so I was curious if you have any methods that you’ve used to really identify when it’s time to remove yourself from those situations?

Lynn Anderson: Well, you know when I first started out in my career I started out as um – I was the marketing director for a big huge development company, commercial real estate development company and I hated my job and I made lots of money. And I hated my job and on my side gig was I taught fitness classes. I would go to a local gym and teach fitness classes, I loved it. Now as a fitness instructor, we’re going back many, many years. I made six bucks an hour. You know, it was ridiculous the money that I was making but I loved it and I knew that was the direction I wanted to go in and as I began to move more and more in that direction, I began to feel more fulfilled and more satisfied with myself and happy with myself and what happened as a result of that, opportunities started to come to me because people could see my energy. Could see that I was happy, that I had a passion for what I was doing and that passion came out and that passion brought me onto my path of health and fitness. So you have to find what really fulfills you as a person and not so much comparing ourselves to others and unfortunately again we live in a world of comparison. We live in a world of, you know, I’ve got to have the mansion, I’ve got to have the big car, I’ve got to have the beautiful body. I’ve got to have all of those things when really what yoga teaches us that we’re really here about our essence. We’re really here about connecting with our soul and finding what fulfills your soul, fulfill your soul and you will fulfill your life.

Sofie: Thank you for mentioning, you know that level of comparison because and I think that’s a lot of the time why we get, you know, thrown in a different direction than what we’re supposed to be doing. And if you had a client and you noticed that they were constantly comparing themselves with others, how would you shift their mindset?

Lynn Anderson: Well, I would again – I would pull them back and um Karma teaches us we come here with different percentages and we work on these percentages. There are only two things you cannot change in your life. You cannot change your individuality and you cannot change your family of origin. You cannot change the sperm and the egg that made you and you cannot change your individuality and so therefore you are this beautiful, unique human being on a unique path. There is no one, nothing like you in the world and so when we compare ourselves to others, we’re comparing apples to oranges. Everybody’s on their own unique path. My path is totally different than your path and yet we share a common path.

Sofie: Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that and I know that, you know, you’ve mentioned a couple of times the relationship between, you know, confidence and really feeling, you know, secure in what you’re doing in life and who you are as a person and I know you mentioned Karma a few times and I would love to know how you think Karma affects our life?

Lynn Anderson: Well Karma is really cause and effect. That’s what it means. It means energy and of course we have the pop culture out there of good and bad and that’s not Karma. Karma doesn’t presuppose judgment, it removes judgment and it simply says if you don’t like the effect of something, look at the cause because it’s all energy. So that’s what Karma comes back to. It teaches us that we are all just potential energy here on this universe and it’s how we choose to use that, how we consciously use our energy, determines the outcome of our life.

Sofie: Yeah, and I think that with Karma, I’m a firm believer in it and, you know, a lot of the time when you know we think about Karma, we at least maybe not me but people I’ve spoken to about it, see it as this, you know, mystical thing that doesn’t really have a role in our life. But you know as you said that cause and effect of – of you know, things happen for a reason and the decisions that you make in your life leads to whatever other um situations you’re in. Maybe it’s the people that you end up surrounded with, maybe it’s people that you connect with, maybe it’s the job that you’re in. And so you know, do you have anything to say to those people that are like no Karma’s – Karma’s not a thing? It’s just this big idea that doesn’t exist.

Lynn Anderson: Well, you know Karma teaches us that we are here to work on what are called the four great passions and we all have an element of those in us but one of them is more prominent in your life than the other four and it’s deceit, greed, anger, and pride. And um, if we pick out anger, for example, we can everyone knows what it feels like to be angry. Everyone has experienced that. And it’s not that we shouldn’t experience that – that’s part of life, to experience all these emotions and things it’s what we do with them. But if I get angry, if you say something to me and it makes me angry and I feel that anger welling up inside of me and I lash back out at you, I become an angry person. But if you say something and it arouses that emotion in me and I can take a breath and step back and – and feel the emotion, feel the anger rising and then turn that around and do something positive with it, like can be kind. And what I’ve done is I’ve made myself a kind person. I’ve created that kind of Karma, that kind of energy around me. So it’s a matter of being able to consciously be aware that the anger is me. It’s not – you don’t give me anger. I instill that within myself how I react to things. So it’s all about how you react which is not easy. It’s very difficult and a lot of work to be able to stop, take that breath, feel it and then act.

Sofie: Yes. I think we so often, you know, like to say that “oh, you know, when they said this to me, you know, they put a lot of anger in me, they made me so angry,” and I love your point there that we can choose how we react to something. That we can let what someone says bother us and make us angry or we can take that go, yeah, well, that’s not true. I know that that’s not who I am as a person. I know that I am an amazing person and your words can’t hurt me but I’m going to be kind back to you because I know that you would feel bad if you talked to me the way that you’re speaking to me right now. And you know, you’re absolutely right there and I think that there’s so much power in that and we often neglect that and we often, you know, tell ourselves, “well, they made me angry so I need to be angry. They said something hurtful. I need to be sad and upset and throw my hands up,” and have this big reaction when really, it’s well is what they said true. No. Do I believe it? No. So why am I letting it bother me? And I think that’s such fantastic advice there and I would love to take a minute to give our listeners really an overarching theme for this episode so is there one thing that our listeners should take away from this conversation?

Lynn Anderson: Absolutely, the most important thing, you know, again and I will take you back because Karma is really – I’m a Karma master and I’ve been doing this for over thirty years teaching and writing about it, but one of the characteristics that Karma teaches us is that we should I feel seek to be the perfected human being. And what that means is first and foremost being true to yourself, doing no harm, and then disseminating health, happiness and peace to all. And you know if we could all strive to be totally true to ourselves always cognizant of the fact that we should do no harm and then just disseminate out this wonderful energy to everybody, what a great way to live your life. And so I would say if there’s one theme that everyone should pull back to is remember what I said earlier, there are only two things that you cannot change in your life. You cannot change your individuality and you cannot change your family of origin. You are a unique, beautiful human being on a unique journey. No one has your journey, so be true to yourself.

Sofie: Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. I think that’s such fantastic advice for everyone to take away. You know, as hard days come and we forget a little bit about who we are and we forget that we truly do have the power to shape our life, shape what we want to do with it, you know, shape the people that we interact with, shape our experiences. And to tie everything together, where can our listeners connect with you?

Lynn Anderson: They can go to my website which is Dr. Lynn dot com and it’s spelled out d o c t o r l y n n dot com and on the website there are courses, there are books, there’s ways to contact me for consultations and you can email me. Anybody wants to email me and say, “hey I heard the podcast, I’d love to come and take one of your classes,” I’d send them out a complementary pass to come to one of the classes.

Sofie: Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that with everyone and thank you again so much for coming onto the podcast Dr. Lynn, it’s been a pleasure.

Lynn Anderson: Thank you so much. I’ve totally enjoyed it.