Sylviane Cannio on Self-Love, Authenticity, and Beautiful Imperfection: "I Never Fail — I Either Succeed or I Learn"

What this episode covers

What does it really mean to love yourself. Your true self, as something you actually live? In this episode, I sit down with Sylviane Cannio, a pioneer of coaching and mentoring in Belgium and around the world, and the author of several books that weave together strategy, human development, and meaning. Sylviane has spent more than three decades accompanying leaders through the big moments of their lives. And she has lived many of her own. She speaks with rare honesty about what it took her to arrive at true self-love: losing her father at six, a mother who was harsh and humiliating, decades of building her identity around performance and image, and the moment somewhere around forty when she discovered that she had been doing and having — but not being. We talk about the difference between self-esteem and self-confidence, why women over-explain themselves in professional settings, what it means to love yourself unconditionally rather than on the condition that you are achieving enough, and how self-love and abundance are far more deeply connected than we often realize. We also touch on authenticity as the new currency, the courage it takes to stop something, and why trusting the universe is not laxism , it is wisdom. Sylviane closes with something I want you to carry with you: "Trust in yourself, trust in the process, trust in the universe and live in beautiful imperfection." This one went straight to my heart. I hope it does the same for yours.