Somewhere along the way, you were taught there was something wrong with you. How you looked, how you spoke, how you were in the world. So you spent years trying to prove that wrong, and no matter how hard you worked at it, you kept coming up short. You don't feel like a hero. A lot of days, you feel like a loser. That's where this class starts, and it's why I called it The Anti-Hero.

This episode is the replay of the live class I taught this week, and I did it differently than I ever have. No slides. Just me, a whiteboard, and the women who showed up. In it I walk you through why the voice in your head never shuts up (it's not what you think, and you can't think your way out of it), what emotions actually are and why you've been playing whack-a-mole with them, and why shame is always a liar. I teach you the 3 steps I use with every woman I coach, in the order they have to happen: regulate, allow, think on purpose. And I tell you about the girl in the Babysitters Club books who I was never going to be, and why Loki is the character I want you to think about instead.

I also cried on this one. I didn't plan to. I was telling the story of the first time someone said to me "you were never the problem," and it caught me. I left it in, because that moment is the whole point of this class.

Key Takeaways:

The person you've been measuring yourself against was never real. No woman has ever been her, and you were handed her anyway.

That voice in your head isn't keeping you honest. It's your nervous system stuck in survival, and you can't reason with a body in panic.

Regulation isn't "calm down." It's pebbles on the other side of the teeter totter, small and daily, until the hard days don't tip you.

You don't need to tolerate more emotion. You need to grow your capacity for it, the same way you'd build a bicep.

Shame is a liar. It was trained into you, and anything that was trained in can be untrained.

It's not "how do I do this." It's "who do I need to become." You're one belief away, not one strategy away.

Book a call with me: If you listen to this and something in you goes "oh, that's me," I want to talk to you. It's a free call, just you and me on Zoom, and it might be the first time you've had someone completely on your side while you say the thing out loud.

Book it here: amandahess.ca/bookacall

You are not the only one. I promise you that.

Links referenced in this episode:

amandahess.ca/bookacall

Watch the class on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po3p72xhYOE

Today I have my client Annabelle on the podcast, and I'm so glad she said yes.

When Annabelle and I first started working together, she was sitting in the car with her husband in tears. They had just moved from Denver to Northwest Arkansas with a 4 year old and no family nearby, she had opened a business a few months earlier, and she was working 12, 13, 14 hours a day. Not sleeping. Not eating. Opening her laptop first thing in the morning and adding to her to do list at 2am. And still feeling behind.

If you have ever thought "if I just work harder, I'll finally catch up," you are going to hear yourself in this conversation.

A year later, Annabelle doesn't work evenings. She doesn't work weekends. She doesn't open her computer on a Sunday. She has time with her son that she's actually present for, and her business has grown, not shrunk. Her husband left his job to come work with her.

We talk about what changed and how she did it. The 15 minute walk that sounded almost too simple to matter. Deciding when she stops working for the day, and then actually stopping. The guilt that came with both. Why her to do lists were making everything worse, and what she does instead now. How she stopped treating other people's emergencies like her own, and what it took to believe she was allowed to.

And I want to say this clearly, because Annabelle owns a business and you might not: none of this is about business. This is about what happens when you're rushing, guilty, and behind in your own life, and nobody ever showed you another way to live it.

In this episode:

1. Why working harder keeps you feeling behind instead of caught up
2. Regulating your nervous system in a way that actually feels good, not like another item on the list
3. The guilt loop: guilty at work, guilty at home, present nowhere
4. Boundaries that hold, and the belief you need underneath them
5. Why perfect isn't available and what to aim for instead
6. Letting things off your plate without deciding you failed

Annabelle designs beautiful custom closets at Up Closets of NW Arkansas. If you're in the area, go look her up. Find her here: https://upclosets.com/nw-arkansas/

You are not the only one. I promise you that.

Takeaways:

1. Working harder is not what gets you caught up. It's what keeps you feeling behind.
2. Your nervous system comes first. Everything else you're trying to fix sits on top of it.
3. A 15 minute walk sounds too small to matter, and it changed everything for Annabelle.
4. If you don't plan it, you won't do it. That goes for rest as much as anything else.
5. A boundary isn't something you ask other people to keep. It's something you decide and then hold.
6. Nobody's emergency has to become your emergency.
7. Perfect isn't available. Calm and honest is, and it works better anyway.
8. Letting something off your plate is not failing. It's choosing where your time actually goes.
9. You can have a full life and a growing business without burning yourself down to get it.

Want to explore working with Amanda? https://amandahess.ca/bookacall

If punishing yourself worked, you'd have healed by now. That's a line I said in a class recently, and I can't stop coming back to it. Most of us have been taught that when we're not getting what we want in life, the fix is to punish ourselves. We just don't call it that. We call it "holding myself accountable," or "making sure I don't make the same mistake twice," or needing a system and a list and someone to keep us on track. It hides in all these reasonable-sounding places, and underneath it is the same quiet belief: that there's something about me I need to fix.

In this episode I talk about where that belief comes from, how far back it goes, and why it was never yours to carry in the first place. I share how "making a mess" got baked into my identity as a kid, and how so many of us walk around with a version of that: the hot mess, the scattered one, the one who's bad with money or bad with love. And I get honest about what actually happens when we beat ourselves up for it. We shrink. We get smaller and less visible and less willing to go build the life we actually want. You can't make big waves with your wings when you've convinced yourself you're the size of a fly.

I also tell you about throwing my hip out this week training for a figure skating competition, and the exact moment my brain tried to turn it into proof that I should have known better. Having your own back isn't something you master once. It's a practice you come back to, one moment at a time.

Key Takeaways:

1. If punishing yourself actually worked, you'd already be healed. You've tried it for years, and it keeps doing the opposite of what you hoped.
2. "Holding yourself accountable" is often self-punishment in disguise. It hides in the lists, the systems, and the "hot mess" identity we carry around.
3. The stories about who you are (scattered, clumsy, bad with money, bad with love) were baked in during childhood. They were never the truth about you.
4. Beating yourself up makes you shrink. You get smaller, less visible, and less able to create what you actually want.
5. Radical acceptance of a messy life beats chasing a perfect one. Show me a person and I'll show you a messy life. Perfection is a setup, not a standard.
6. Real change comes from learning to have your own back: regulating your nervous system, growing your capacity for big emotion, shifting your perspective, and setting boundaries, again and again over time.

Come to my free class: I'm running a free class called The Anti-Hero on Monday, August 24th at 12:00 PM Pacific. It's all about shame, and about learning to have your own back in a way you've probably never heard before. Come find out what it feels like to stop being the woman who's always punishing herself, and imagine who you get to be on the other side of that.

Save your seat: amandahess.ca/shame1

You are not the only one. I promise you that.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. amandahess.ca/shame1