Hey girl hey and thanks for dropping into the Switch Pivot or Quit podcast. Get in the convo for the girl needing a lifestyle plot twist when she's deciding if it's time to switch Pivot or Quit. I'm Yana Angel, a former sports entertainment publicist in New York City, turned traditionally published author with Simon & Schuster who quit my old life to write a book, live in London for a bit and explore my dreams to find my happiness and fulfillment. I'm here to help encourage and guide you through your plot twist as your chief and character and host of the Switch Pivot or Quit podcast.
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I'm going to be talking about how to quit playing small. That's what we're going to be talking about today. My 5 tips for you to help you to quit playing small. Now, when I say quit playing small, what do I mean by that?
I simply mean start showing up for yourself in every moment like you want to win, pushing yourself past your perceived limits. Now, if you follow the Switch Pivot or Quit Instagram and you tune into the lives that we do, the Instagram lives, which I must say they are pretty fun. We have a really good time. You'll know that the last live that I did before the end of the year, the end of 2018, I shared that I'll be releasing a new book of daily inspirations called, You guessed it, Quit Playing Small.
We all do it at times. But I want to make it, top of mind for you, quit playing small. I really want that to be like always top of mind for you as you go throughout this year and the years to come so that you can do it less, so that we can do it less. I think the more that we have at top of mind for ourselves, the less likely that we are to allow this behavior to creep in routinely.
Because let's face it, we're human. It's normal to try and dumb it down to play small. That feels comfortable a lot of the times. So we just want to have a constant reminder for ourselves to quit playing small.
It's just like that little tap on your shoulder. Quit playing small, quit playing small, quit playing small, quit playing small. And every time you feel that and you hear that and you say it to yourself, I think it'll just give you a jolt and a boost to say, all right, what do I need to do to show up? How can I play bigger?
How can I be better? So quit playing small. The book will be out this month in January and available on Amazon. It's going to be your quick resource for inspiration when you wake up in the morning or during the day when you can't tune into the podcast.
So I want this to be a companion to the podcast. Some things we will have talked about on the podcast, some things we will have not talked about on the podcast, but either way, I want you to walk away having the same good feeling when you put that book down as you have when you stop listening to an episode or when you're done listening to an episode rather. So without further ado, let's go ahead and jump in and get into these tips. The first one is get honest with yourself.
My first tip to quit playing small is to get honest with yourself. Being honest with yourself requires more of you and your awareness. Okay. It's not a one time thing.
This is an ongoing thing to get honest with yourself. It's more like a commitment to yourself. So often we allow ourselves a pass, but this is you taking a real good look at you and holding you accountable for developing into the woman that you really want to be. So you have to be honest with yourself.
Now a good way to quit playing small when it comes to getting honest with yourself is to identify your areas where improvement or areas where you lack but need to be better. And so you do something about it. You take action by being honest with yourself. So for example, let's say that you are the person that is notoriously late.
Get honest with yourself about why you're notoriously late. Try and make an effort to change that behavior. Hold yourself accountable. What's at the root of you notoriously being late?
Maybe it's because you don't respect other people's time. Maybe that you think that your time is superior or people being on your time schedule is superior to other people's time schedule or what they may have to do in their day. So get honest with yourself. Why are you always late?
Why are you always disregarding other people's time? Get honest with yourself. Why can you never finish a project? Hm.
It's because you're lazy. It's because you're not committed. It's because when you start the project you never have intentions on finishing it anyway. It's because you always give yourself a pass.
Get honest with yourself. Really hold yourself accountable and think of the things that you do on the negative side that may be allowing you to play small where you can actually show up bigger and better if you just put forth a little bit more effort. The second tip to quit playing small, identify the areas in your life where your voice is muted or silenced. This idea of your voice being muted, I got that from my good friend Amber L.
Wright at TalkToAmber.com. She asks this question in her work that she does and she has these conversation cards and they're pretty awesome. And one of the questions is like, what area in your life is your voice muted? And I thought that was so powerful because that's something that we can easily overlook.
It's so easy to allow this to happen and never really notice what's going on, right? But there's a difference between the two things, your voice being muted and your voice being silenced. So I want to just break down those two things. So your voice being muted is, in my opinion, your choice.
It's your choice to hold back or not speak up in certain areas of your life. It's absolutely self-imposed. You are muting yourself. Now on the other hand, your voice being silenced, that's when you feel intimidated to speak up or use your voice and allow your presence to be felt.
That's imposed by others, but you allow it for one reason or another. And that's the key because therein lies your opportunity for change. You allowing your voice to be silenced. So in both of these instances, you have choices.
You have options. There's change that you can make to stop yourself from playing small. So in order to quit playing small, you have to identify the areas in your life where your voice is muted or silenced. The next one is invest in yourself.
The next tip to quit playing small is invest in yourself. But that's not the first time you heard that one, right? Many of us are looking for change, but often we're missing the opportunities that are right in front of us that can help us to usher in this change. Why are we missing those opportunities?
Because they require investment from us. That's the thing that most people don't want to do, aren't willing to do. Invest. That could be investment of our time or investment of our money, currency, dollar dollar bill job.
And that can sometimes feel like too much on the surface. You look at how much something is going to cost, what it's going to require, what type of investment is going to require of you. Oh, let's say it's a certification program that will help you to quit playing small and it's going to cost you $1,000. And you're like, oh my gosh, where am I going to get $1,000?
I just, I can't do this. You know, like I don't have $1,000 to invest in this right now. But wait, you had $1,000 to go pony up ticket money, outfit money, dinner money. Maybe even car service money, maybe even a flight to a different city to see your favorite artist in concert.
Beyonce, I'm just going to leave that right there. Because I know so many of us do this. That's why I use her as an example. So many people go out of their way to see queen bee in concert.
They go, they have spent $1,000. Let me say you have potentially spent $1,000 on a Beyonce experience before you even knew it because that's not just a ticket. That's a ticket and everything else that goes with creating this Beyonce night experience for yourself. So you're willing to invest in her.
But yet, this certification program is sitting right there in front of you, right in your face. It's an easy way for you to invest your money to quit playing small. Yet, you talk yourself out of it and you say you don't have it. You can't do it.
You can't work it into your budget. You can't figure it out. Oh, but you can if you want to, if you really want to quit playing small. So I'm going to leave that right there and let you spend five seconds on that thinking about that.
Now, the other thing that I want to touch on when it comes to investing in yourself and not being away to quit playing small, we are quick to invest in impressing others with material things. Whether that be a house, what we have in the house to furnish the house, clothes that we buy, shoes, hair, all the things, okay, that we are quick to invest in to impress other people on the outside world with our material things. But the real test is, can you show up for yourself? Can you impress yourself?
Can you sacrifice enough to quit playing small so that you can invest in yourself? And the question I always ask myself is, how bad do you want it? So I'm going to ask you, how bad do you want to quit playing small? What are you willing to sacrifice?
That's the real question. We have to take a quick 60 second break and then we're going to jump right back in to the five tips to quit playing small. I've heard about all the tummy teas and detox special just like you. So with TV blends, when I found out about it, I was curious but cautious.
I did my research on the brand Anisea CEO because I like to know what's going on behind the scenes. I watch interviews and read articles about her. She's an impressive business woman too. So when I looked at the website, I uncovered that T.
Blends is not just a quick fix brand. It's more like a lifestyle. As your chief and carger, I try to encourage you not only in business but lifestyle too. But I need help from time to time too.
I've been doing the T. Me blend 30 day detox with a colon cleanse. So with a side of colon cleanse, it feels cleaned out but in a good way. The products haven't been hard for my body.
And although I'm admittedly not the biggest tea drinker, I'm really enjoying my T. Me blends with a dash of honey. It's a holiday. It's you're trying to look right.
Are you seeing me blends? I'm going to buy. Me blends.com and use code SBQ25 for 25% off orders of $49.99 or more. Jumping back in our fourth tip to quit playing small is ask for what you want directly.
And that could be asking for what you want of the universe or of real people is just totally up to you. The whole idea is to make that ask though, to be clear, to state it, to say it, to make it known. You already know that people are not my readers and you can't leave things up to chance when it comes to your future. So beyond identifying that you need to ask directly for what you want, let's also talk about the next steps.
Your ask can be calculated and not immediate. Okay? So I'm not saying that after you listen to this podcast episode, you need to go right out and ask your boss for a raise because that's what you've been wanting or you need to go and hit up that connect or that person that you know that you started building a relationship with, ask them for what you want or what you need from them. No, let's be smart about these asks because sometimes you may only have that one opportunity to make the ask.
So let's be smart about it. Let's be calculated. Let's really know what we're doing and make sure that it's going to work toward our benefit. So what you want to do is identify who you need to make the ask of and assess your relationship with that person.
Are there subtle things that you can do between now and the time that you make the ask to strengthen your relationship or maybe assist that person in some type of way? Some type of way that you know that they need, right? This is you paying attention to your surroundings, paying attention to other people's needs and what's going on so that you can help lay the foundation for yourself to get that yes or to get what you need when you make that direct ask. So now after you identify the ask E, I'm totally making that word up.
But after you identify the ask E, the person you're going to ask, really consider your ask. Do any research required on your part? Find out if there are any risks, maybe identify the potential rewards for yourself also. And the thing about identifying those potential rewards is that it will give you a clear vision of motivation during the times when you want to check it out, basically.
When you want to say, never mind, I don't want to do that anymore. It's pointless. They won't say yes anyway. Why would they say yes to me?
Those times when you start trying to talk yourself out of it, having the potential rewards at the forefront of your mind will help you to not talk yourself out of it. This constant reminder of remember, quit playing small, right? They're over your shoulder. Quit playing small, quit playing small, quit playing small, quit playing small.
That coupled with knowing what the rewards will be, that will help you to keep going and keep reminding yourself of why you're doing this and what you potentially get out of it, if you can push yourself to make it to the other side. So now you have it in your mind that you're going to make the ask. You know who the asky is going to be. You've done your research and you've figured out what the risks are.
You've identified the potential rewards and you have a clear vision of what you're going to do because you're not going to check it out, right? So then you need to formulate your ask. In some instances, your ask may be in the form of maybe a proposal to a manager for a promotion or something of that nature. In other cases, it could be a simple request for an introduction from a colleague to another colleague.
It doesn't have to be these huge asks. It's just those things that if you did them, you would prove to yourself that you're not playing small anymore. It's those things that, big or small, you talk yourself out of because it's uncomfortable. You don't want to do it because it's easier to just fall back and let it just be what it is, right?
So either way, you want to wrap your mind around how you need to formulate this ask. In other words, your approach, your approach to the ask. Formulate a plan. Think about how you want to do it.
Don't spend too much time on it to where you get paralyzed though by even thinking about this ask. You just want to formulate a rough idea of how you should approach the situation. Then just do it. Just do it.
Just like Nike. Just do it. Push yourself to just do it. The fifth and final tip to quit playing small.
Hmm. What do you think it is? Okay. I'm not going to make you guess.
The fifth and final tip is to stop holding yourself back. Stop holding yourself back. How many times have you talked yourself out of what once seemed like a really good idea? You're like, oh my gosh, this is such a good idea.
I have to do this. This is going to be great. Then at some point, a couple of days later, after the idea, you're like, that's silly. Who would buy into that?
Why do I think that that would succeed? If I go to management with it, they'll probably tell me no. Why should I even try? Why did I think I could do this?
You talked yourself out of it. You decided you weren't qualified before even applying. You sat during a crucial conversation, even when you had a great value to contribute. From the big ways to the little ways, we all managed to find ways to hold ourselves back.
But sometimes we don't even know it. A quick way to tell if you've held yourself back, when you walk away from a situation and you think to yourself what you should have said or what you should have done or how you should have acted, that is a telltale sign of you having held yourself back. At this point, you have to stop holding yourself back. You're at a point where you want to be your best version of yourself.
You want your journey to continue to show you growth. You want to continue to flourish. So you have to stop holding yourself back. Quit playing small, play big and play to win.
Thank you for hanging out with me on this new year episode. I hope that you have amazing things in store for yourself. I hope that this episode has inspired you to quit playing small and show up bigger in some of the areas in your life. And just go out there and be good.