Speaking and Communicating Podcast

So in what world is tomorrow going to be easier?

I guarantee you, if you wait until tomorrow, it's going to be harder.

And with enough tomorrows, it gets harder and harder.

So today, right now, is the easiest it will ever get to change a habit.

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Roberta Ndlela.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning in to.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review.

Now, let's get communicating.

Now, let's get communicating with my home girl all the way from South Africa in Cape Town.

Her name is Anna Shilina.

I'm so excited.

Oh, my goodness.

She is the author of Habit Freedom, the founder of relatingacademy.com, and helps us with habits and relationships, especially in order for us to become high performers.

Anna is here to teach us how to not only take the steps to stop bad habits, achieve freedom, and actually create and cultivate good habits, but she will also be sharing transformational stories that will help us on our journey.

And before I go any further, please welcome her to the show.

Hi, Anna.

Hi, Roberta.

It's such a dream being here.

Thank you for having me.

My absolute pleasure.

Welcome.

I'm excited.

Like I said, you are home.

I'm so excited.

Another South African on the show.

Yes.

Yes.

It was instant vibes.

Instant vibes when we connected.

I'm sure the listeners are going to enjoy our conversation as well.

They'll feel the energy.

But before that, please introduce yourself.

As you said, I'm the author of Habit Freedom, which is my third and latest book.

I'm a human behavior specialist that helps people with habits and relationships.

Yeah, I've been coaching for about 10 years.

Ten years ago, I sold my security business.

I had a security guarding company in Cape Town, and I had about a thousand people work for me at the time, and I exited that industry.

Because I had been going to personal development, same as I was from the age of 18, I started making friends with some of the speakers and the coaches, and I bought lots of programs, and I had a lot of coaches and mentors myself.

And then eventually, because I'd done enough of these programs, of trainer-trainer, studied a lot about human behavior, personal development, then I started coaching and consulting, first in sales, then in mindset, and then I upskilled into relationships and habits.

The question would be, if you had such a successful company, you employed a thousand people, why would you let that go?

It sounds like you were successful, you know, at least by that definition.

By that metric, sure.

Yes.

It was an incredibly stressful time of my life.

I also didn't enjoy who I became in that industry, in that business.

Felt very like tough and hardcore.

It just did not bring me joy.

And Roberta, every single phone call was a problem, problem.

Like now that I have been coaching for 10 years, I love receiving messages, oh my gosh, you changed my life in this way, and this has transformed, and this is how I've improved my relationship, and my habits, and my business, and all these things.

And I love getting those.

Back then, the only phone calls that I get would be, your guards are sleeping, your guards are doing this.

Like everything was a very stressful problem.

I obviously learned a lot about leadership and people.

And it was a real privilege to be able to create an environment for people to thrive as much as possible.

And I really do stand by.

We had a system where we had the best security guards.

We just had really high standards, and we attracted the best in the industry.

But eventually, I burnt out, and I was like, this can't be it.

And the other thing was that I looked at the leadership in the business.

So we had directors, and I was one of the shareholders and directors of my region, but in the bigger company.

And I looked at their lives and how happy they were.

I'll never forget this.

We were on a leadership getaway.

We asked this question, if Monday was a color, what color would it be?

And one of the leaders of this business said, it would be black because Mondays are so doomy.

And I remember that moment so clearly going like, I don't want to stick around because I don't want to model that.

I don't want my Mondays to feel like the color black.

And so I found it valuable.

If I'm working towards something, are the mentors and leaders where I want to be?

And when the answer was very clearly no, even though they had the financial success, but I didn't want to feel like that.

And so that made it an easy decision.

You remind me of that scene in The Devil Wears Prada where Meryl Streep says, everybody wants to be us, and Inter says, no, I don't want this.

And it was shocking because I didn't know what else was out there.

Like I had no idea what I was going to do, but I just had this feeling that this can't be it.

Like there must be a better way when I'm not enslaved time-wise and location-wise.

And so I really started to think, like, what would be my highest values in life?

Like, what do I want out of life?

So I decided at the time, I wanted the freedom to be able to operate anyway in the world so that I could travel, work from my laptop, and I wanted to earn dollars.

And based on those two values, plus my skill set, obviously having years and years of personal development training and learning human behavior, including the skill sets that I had, then I built the business designed around those values and the skill set that I had.

I think your story, what it highlights, is the fact that a lot of people do know that where they are, they don't want to be there.

But the fear comes from not knowing where to go to next, and that's why they don't take the step of leaving the place they don't like.

In a lucky sense that I had quite a bit of savings, and I didn't have responsibilities of kids and a mortgage, and all those things that can be more challenging to make a transition.

So I was in that lucky sense, and I really do believe that when you're young, to take those bold risks as much as possible if you don't have those big responsibilities, because you can always get another job.

You can always find an opportunity to add value to somebody.

It becomes trickier later on when you do have those responsibilities.

And then, entrepreneurship, they say, is jumping off a cliff and building a plane on the way down.

And I remember saying this to one of the directors of this business when I was leaving, and they were really surprised because they were like, I was doing well and earning lots of money.

And also, I had just gotten to a place where I had a team and I was doing less and less, making more and more, but it was just sucking my soul dry.

But I said, you know, entrepreneurship is jumping off a cliff and building an airplane on the way down.

And sometimes you do crash and you don't end up building the plane on the way down, but you do learn to trust your own wings.

One of the other things that I really love is that a bird is not afraid of a branch breaking, not because the branch might not break, but because it has security in its own wings.

So in that process of flinging myself off cliffs, because I've started many different businesses, but in that process of leaving one thing, starting another thing, trying, failing, trying, succeeding, I learned to trust my own wings because it's the skill sets, the networks, and as long as I focus on how can I add value, what problems can I solve, then I'm always going to be valuable and I'll be able to land on my feet somehow.

Trusting yourself.

And it doesn't mean that everybody is supposed to be an entrepreneur.

It can just mean my values don't align with this current web place.

I can just move to a different web place, different industry.

Yes, absolutely.

My very first book called The Business Hagger was about entrepreneurship.

So you can be that leader inside a business, and it has to align with what's important to you.

So I would invite people to ask themselves, what are my highest values, and how is the career that I'm in or the business I'm in aligned with that?

And how is it not?

And do I need to make any shifts?

That's a really powerful exercise to do from time to time because things change.

And there's so many options nowadays.

It's interesting to me, just listening to your story, that you talk about habits, and yet so far, it seems all you've done is self, you know, personal development, and all the good stuff.

It doesn't sound to me like someone who really struggled with a habit and now had to overcome it.

Which part have we not heard about Anna yet?

What a beautifully phrased question.

I struggled with numbing out with alcohol for many years.

I had a bit of a problematic relationship with alcohol.

I started drinking when I was about 15 years old, but also for all fun and games for a very long time because everyone around me was doing it.

It was the norm until it really started to impact my productivity.

And it took me seven years of knowing that it was impeding me and knowing that I needed to stop.

Seven years, maybe even a little longer.

I hired a sobriety coach at one stage that didn't stick, and then I had like a year of relapses.

And then finally, I broke free from that limiting habit, understanding what exactly I was numbing out, what exactly was the strategy for, how I developed it when I was very young.

And so that was the biggest kind of like habit that had its teeth in me that really sank me down and had me visit some very dark places.

And then on top of that, I've had other numbing habits that I got to break free from, from eating unconsciously and just numbing out with food to doom scrolling, to binge watching series, biting my nails, all of these habits that were limiting me, for lack of a better word.

And so I got the opportunity to break free from many, many habits.

And here's the thing that I struggled with.

I'll be completely kind of vulnerable and honest.

I was struggling with the struggling because I thought that I had every tool under the sun.

Being a human behavior specialist, going to all these personal development seminars, like working on myself, I was like, why am I struggling with all of these things?

And at the end of the day, I came down with creating that relationship with myself, understanding lots of my inner child patterns, things that I developed when I was very young, and how they kept on recurring, and what they were trying to show me and teach me.

Finally, after all those years of struggle, I broke free, was able to put down the bottle, was able to start eating a lot better, put down the phone, I was able to be productive and a valuable person in the world again, and then started to help my clients with their habits.

And so when I started the Relating Academy, I was actually writing the book called Relating Academy, and I realized the very first and most important relationship is the relationship that we have with ourselves.

And that's where the habit freedom comes from, because that's the journey that takes you on self-trust, self-love, self-esteem, and self-respect.

And until we have all like that, we can't expect our relationships to work as wonderfully as they can.

So it all starts within.

Okay.

When I was growing up, they used to say, oh, people numb themselves with sex, drugs, and alcohol.

Like you mentioned scrolling, you mentioned binge watching, because we now have all these take attention away from us tools.

So many times.

And we don't identify those as falling under the numbing with sex, drugs, and alcohol, like when we were growing up, because they're not as tangible.

But we've found that nowadays a lot of people do use those tools.

So many things, shopping, gambling, so many things that just siphon our energy and siphon our potential.

Yeah, like all of these things can be good and like find a moderation, right?

You can scroll a little, learn a little, like watch a little YouTube video, like no problem.

But it's when it's a form of self-soothing, numbing, not dealing with what's in front of you, not being able to be in the present moment fully, not being able to sit with discomfort, right?

Because life, a lot of life is discomfort, but we live in a comfort crisis.

So every little thing, we basically pacify ourselves with vapes and our phone, and we're walking around like little babies.

A lot of people are really unaware of that.

So the first step in the habit freedom revolution paradigm shift is helping people wake up to that, yeah, hold on.

You know what?

I do have habits that are limiting me.

One of the things that people say like, I wish I had more time.

Well, what's your screen time?

And being radically honest with ourselves, that's really hard, but it is part of the process.

And speaking of the personal development seminars used to attend, it struck me that sometimes we do judge people who keep attending the Tony Robbins seminars because we feel that that first one, when you had a breakthrough, why are you going back?

You should be healed by now, Anna.

Why did you keep going?

I was the ultimate seminar junkie.

So I'm so glad that you brought it up because it was a form of escape as well.

And I remember I went to one seminar and I met my business partner and mentor there.

And he said to me, because I had signed up for yet another one.

And he said to me, Anna, you can only show up to the next seminar if you actually implement the things from the seminar.

Like promise me.

I did.

Like I promised him and I implemented it.

And that specific seminar was on sales and business development.

So I actually doubled the revenue in the business that I was in, in those few months.

So I actually did use the things and I was able to then go to the next seminar.

But yeah, it can definitely be a pacifier or an escape.

So all of these things to be used in moderation.

Take whatever you need, go and improve your life, really make sure that it works, and then go to the next thing versus just going, you know, event to event to event, because those events really do hack our biochemistry.

So like the excitement that you feel, like biochemically, you feel like you can take over the world because they make you feel like, you know, jump up and down and do the dancing and walk in cold.

And like, yeah, you could do anything.

And everyone is in an inspired up state.

And then you go home and you're like, okay, now what?

All right.

Back to my habit.

Exactly.

The euphoria was in the arena with the speaker and everybody and 5,000 of us, and we jumping and high fiving.

Now I'm home, quiet.

Now it's that relationship with yourself.

Yes.

Now it's the habits, which is far more important than attending any seminar.

And that's why I chose to focus on habits.

You spoke about the inner child earlier.

Sometimes the argument is your parents did the best they could.

And then there comes a time as a grown up when they say, you're an adult now, you make your own choices.

Anna, you can't keep just saying, my parents did this.

Roberta, you can't keep blaming your childhood for your procrastination and your this and your that.

When does it become a, it's no longer my parents, it's me now because I'm a grown up, I should know better?

As soon as you ask that question, that's the time.

When I started seeing my parents dysfunction, quote unquote dysfunction, as the greatest gift they could have ever given me, and it was the path that my soul chose to work on.

It's the curriculum I called Earth School, all right?

I came here to Earth School, and this is part of it, part of the curriculum.

When I started to see it like that, and that helped me step out of that victim consciousness, oh, these things happened to me, and into co-creator of my reality.

Things aren't always our fault, but they are always our responsibility, and they become our responsibility as soon as we wake up, and we are conscious in it.

They're like, okay, well, the past is the past, and now I'm in the present.

What am I going to do with the present?

Am I going to choose a disempowering narrative, or am I going to choose an empowering narrative?

Because each human has only two states, which is expansive or contractive, expansive or contractive.

Everything in the universe comes in only two states.

There's no in between, and there's no others.

And so my choice is always going to be, am I going to choose the expansive, empowered state, or am I going to choose the contractive, disempowered state?

And we oscillate.

There's no one who's ever going to be empowered, empowered, empowered all the time, right?

You need the contraction from time to time.

You need the cycles, the seasons, right?

We all are nature.

We're not just part of nature.

Human beings are nature.

So we're going to have the summer season, the spring season, the winter season, the autumn season.

We're going to have all of them.

They're going to have times of expansion and contraction.

But as much as possible when we are conscious of it, to choose the empowered narrative, to choose like, yes, it was shitty in the past.

Some of the situations are absolutely horrendous.

But if I choose to see it as a gift, how does that empower me today?

I actually have a client that just recently, we've been working together for about two weeks.

She's working on her relationship with her mom.

It impacts a lot of decisions that she makes and the habits that she chooses and everything, that core relationship from when she was growing up.

And she did this exercise on how is your parents, quote unquote, dysfunction, a gift to you.

And she journaled it out.

And the very next coaching session, she came to me and she said, could it be working so quickly?

Why do I have so much love and compassion for my mom?

Like all of a sudden, I'm not triggered.

Like she says something and I just see it.

I'm like, oh, okay, that's an interesting thing to say.

But I'm like not this reactive child anymore.

I get to step into my power.

Because we relive, like you said, yes, the child always comes up whenever you are triggered by whatever you didn't heal.

So even at 49, something might trigger me and I'm back to that three-year-old or the five-year-old.

And the other thing about parents as well, I remember when my parents got divorced after 24 years of marriage, at first you get angry and you go, why is my dad leaving?

I was in my thirties but my baby brother, I'm 23 years old and he was barely starting school.

But more than anything, I just thought, okay, I've moved out of my own life, but why can't my dad stay for the kid?

My mom had her own religious issues as well.

Long story.

But the thing is, I was angry at first.

You give us such an amazing life, me and my brother.

Now the little one here, give him the same thing and then you can leave dad.

And I was angry with him at first, but I remember after he left and I went to my mom's house, and I don't know if an African parent and African household.

My mom's house, my mom's rules.

You know, she must make us go to church on Sundays.

And I remember thinking, ah, that's what my dad used to deal with every day.

And when I flew back to Johannesburg, I still lived in an apartment.

I said, I wouldn't have stayed either.

And it dawned on me that when you're a grown up, you start to see your parents as human beings who deserve to be happy, because you are also on your own journey of seeking your own happiness.

I love my mom.

I love my mom to death.

Okay.

But I also see her as if she thinks she deserves a certain kind of guy, who's as religious as she is, and my dad wasn't.

He also deserves to have someone who is not like my mom in that aspect, you know, because the more she became religious, the more she just be, if I couldn't stay with my mom, what do you expect him to do?

If I find it unbearable, why do I think my dad should have stayed?

I love that you shared that, because a lot of our angst and pain around our parents comes from keeping ourselves tied to what we think a parent is or isn't.

Personally, I remember having a conversation with a friend, and I was upset with my mom because I had an intuitive feeling, and I've always been quite intuitive and gifted, and I've just known things.

Sometimes my mom would appreciate and honor that, and sometimes she wouldn't.

And so, it was statistically hurtful this one time.

I chose to be in the victim consciousness of like, oh, my mom doesn't believe in my gift or whatever the story was.

And my friend said to me, would it be different if it wasn't your mother?

My mind was blown.

I was like, just because I set all these expectations on this other human that happened to birth me and guide me for many years, but is also on her own journey, that is also playing many different roles.

We all play all these different roles.

That's what humans do.

And they're all very multifaceted.

And we pigeonhole our parents into expectations of, you should be supporting me like this.

You should be showing up for me like this.

Duh duh duh, duh duh duh.

And then they inevitably disappoint us because they don't show up according to our expectations as a child.

And what if we just open up that framework to letting them have the full human experience?

They're going to get it right sometimes, they're going to get it wrong sometimes.

You know, but when we set them free, drama's like, okay, actually, no, it doesn't matter if someone appreciates my intuition or not.

It's mine to appreciate.

And the fact that I felt that triggered by it was simply pointing a light on my own insecurity in a way, or my distrust of my own intuition.

She shone that light on where I wasn't seeing myself.

Exactly.

We have this blueprint of what a parent should be and what childhood they should give us, and that's why a lot of our issues, when we have them, they come from the...

It does.

And I write about this in my book, Habit Freedom, a lot, because a big part of the habit freedom journey often is disappointment.

We think it's going to look this way when we drop a habit.

It usually takes longer, especially because we do it in the natural, hard, consistent way.

You know, we don't do the hacks, we don't do the short-term gratification, we do what is going to create long-term gratification, and inevitably, we run up against disappointment.

And the only way anybody can ever feel any disappointment is if they have expectations.

So when disappointment does show up in my field, in my reality, in my relationships, it could be the relationship with myself.

Maybe I'm disappointed in myself, right?

Maybe I said I was going to go to gym three times this week and I didn't.

So that could be showing up.

Then my question becomes, but what was the expectation that led to the disappointment?

And then I can take radical responsibility for both the expectation and the disappointment.

It all really does come down to me.

And the other thing that I found, and I've worked with a client on this recently, where they just were experiencing disappointment a lot.

A lot of things in life were disappointing, like in this area, in business, and in relationships, and they kept on feeling let down and disappointed.

And what we did in terms of their inner child work, we looked at where did they learn the disappointment state?

Because we often become addicted biochemically to familiar states.

So in childhood, my client had experienced disappointment, and then they seeked out experiences as an adult to be more disappointed, and to validate that state, and to recreate it over and over again.

So when someone else would be in the exact same situation, they would either not be triggered by it at all, not be disappointed, just go like, okay, that's the situation, or they would find a way that it would serve them.

But this specific person just kept feeling disappointed no matter what.

And so when a lot of disappointment shows up all the time in life, I often like to work with inner child things and go like, okay, where did you first learn that feeling?

And how can we go and re-parent that inner child to give them what they were seeking so that you can be free from the disappointment and then also from the expectations that lead up to the disappointment?

So if that inner child, that personal relationship is not healthy, it then obviously transfers to your external relationships.

Do you find that your clients, they transfer that very relationship with themselves to the others?

You know what's interesting?

It often happens that we first notice the gaps in our external relationships.

We're like, there's someone with my parent or my sibling or my spouse or my colleague, right?

It looks like the problem is on the outside.

But then when we turn it around and go like, well, if every relationship is a mirror, if the world is a mirror, and we start to face the mirror and this reflection, what's it trying to teach you?

That's how we can alchemize it into a lesson.

And when we start to operate like the whole world is a mirror, then all of these different triggers and relationships that seem problematic on the outside start to become an opportunity for growth, for evolution, for self-love.

So really like being able to utilize our external relationships in order to improve that relationship with ourselves is an incredible skill set to have.

So some of us wonder, why do I keep attracting the same guy, the same toxic relationship?

We are the blueprint with the common factor, so we keep doing that.

So how do we then take the steps to work on these habits that sabotage us and form new ones?

Well, there are five steps, which I do outline in the books.

So I'll just run through them.

The first relationship that's super important is the relationship with discomfort.

So understanding that when you are going to be transitioning from one habit to another, inevitably, there's going to be cravings.

There's going to be cravings for the old you, because that's the familiar state.

That's the neural pathways.

That's what your body and your mind know.

And so when you are forging a new neural pathway in a new way, you will have desires to do things the old way.

It doesn't matter what habit it's going to be.

And so the first and most important step is having the ability to sit through the discomfort and not numb it, knowing, okay, I'm going to have the craving if we take sugar, for example, right?

Like, I want to eat less sugar because I know it's not serving me with my mental health and physical health.

And so I know that there will be a sugar craving.

In fact, you know, it's so interesting, Roberta, so often, if not pretty much every time that I start working with a new client, they will come to me in the first week or two, and they're like, Anna, the habit is worse.

And I say, yes, I know.

What is that, withdrawal symptoms?

No, no.

It often happens that when we make a commitment, like we're going to become the new, this different version of ourselves.

We're going to walk the walk.

When we make that commitment, it's a combination of, you can call it the universe, but it's a bit of a test going like, are you sure that you're committing to this new version of you?

Are you extra sure?

And I'm going to throw the whole kitchen sink at you to make sure that you really want what you say you want.

And that's where lots of people go like, oh no, this is too hard.

But if you just push through and know that it's the norm for the habit to get worse, and then it gets a lot easier.

But being able to notice that discomfort going like, cravings are much worse than I had them before.

Yes.

Also, because it's just your ability to see, because now you're not numbing anymore, it's just your ability to see what's been holding you back.

The tension is on this now, instead of the sex, drugs, alcohol, the scrolling, and all the things that were numbing you, like you said.

Yeah.

And it's much easier to sit through that discomfort when you are in a community.

This is why I love My Habit, Freedom, Mastermind, where people are supporting each other in changing habits.

Because then they can be like, oh man, today was really hard not to eat that piece of cake, or today was really hard not to drink, or not to go shopping online, or not to gamble, whatever their habit is.

And so it really helps when you have a community who understand that there's going to be a time when it's hard.

And so having that relationship with discomfort is super important.

But it's not enough because if you just go from discomfort to discomfort, this is what I used to do.

I used to white-knuckle and go like, I'm not going to drink today.

And then I'd make it through a day or a few days, a few weeks, a few months.

And then I'd crack because I didn't have the second step, which is the relationship with the light.

And what I mean by light is things that bring me joy, filling up my cup with things that light me up, and fill, like expand my heart, right?

Because nature abhors a vacuum.

So if we just ditch the limiting habits, and we don't fill that space and that time, then we are left feeling empty.

So the journey of habit freedom is really about creating a life so beautiful, so grand that we don't want to numb out from it.

So like I said, you do need to anticipate that you're going to have cravings, anticipate that it's going to be uncomfortable to say no to that croissant or whatever it is that we have with a glass of wine.

But then at the same time, it's like, how can I fill my life with so much light and beauty and connection?

Because in the absence of getting dopamine from things like, you know, reaching a goal, right, and progress and connection with other beautiful humans and nature and music and creativity and imagination, and in the absence of a life like that, we are going to reach for the cheap dopamine that's just on at our fingertips.

It's easy to pick up a phone and scroll on an app.

It's easy to order a takeaway, you know.

So the world is designed, in a sense, to enslave us in these limiting habits.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing when we understand that the purpose of this journey is actually to feel contracted and limited, and then to empower ourselves so that we can break free.

So once we have that relationship with the light, and we fill our time and space with things that we love, then it starts to become about the relationship with the now.

So that's the third step and third relationship, is really being able to be present with the now, no matter what comes up.

If it's good and feels good, or if it's challenging and feels overwhelming and challenging and not running away from the now.

So I realized that I learned when I was very, very young, that the now was unsafe.

I grew up in an immigrant family.

I absolutely loved my family.

But at the time when I was growing up, our household had a lot of conflict in it.

So my escape from the conflict was academia, and I was just study really hard.

And that escape from the now ended up in my addictive tendencies, because then when I did get introduced to alcohol, it's no surprise that I turned to it, because it was the same dopamine, much less work.

Anna, it's interesting that even academia, because it's really good stuff.

So all that work addiction, right?

It can look productive.

We can look like we're doing the most, but we're actually escaping our emotions.

We're escaping relationships that can be confronting and help us grow.

We're escaping, right?

So anything that is used as an escape is a limiting habit, and that can be academia or work or things that look productive.

Right.

And then the next step.

That relationship with the now is very powerful, you know, that book Power of Now, which teaches us that there are no problems in the present moment.

Unless there's an acute pain, most of the problems that we have are anticipating the future or ruminating about the past.

So if you get really, really present, there are no problems.

And here's the thing, that connection that we all crave, that love, that feeling of meaning and belonging, and potential, and possibility, and hope, and freedom is only found in the now.

But we have so many opportunities to escape the now, like I said.

We're consuming our power away by not having a relationship with the now.

And then the final two relationships is the relationship with the self.

And within the self, we have the inner child, which we touched on briefly.

You know, if I have an inner child that's having a tantrum and wants to numb out with food or numb out by scrolling, whatever, and my ability to sit with my inner child and understand her needs and give her what she needed, that attention that she was craving when she was young, very much transforms my habits.

And then also my relationship with my inner oracle.

So we have the inner child.

We also have the inner oracle, which is the older, wise self.

So connecting with ourselves, who's already gone through this journey and has all the answers, also helps us develop that inner authority that we're not constantly seeking outside validation, right?

And you are good enough for you, and you know that you can walk to the drama of your own beat, to the beat of your own drama.

So how do we know with the inner oracle?

Because this is the first time that somebody brought that idea in the discussion with the inner child.

How do we know that that's the wisdom?

This is the right way for me.

That's a beautiful, beautiful question, because we do have some fear-based impulses, and then we have that intuition or that inner oracle, developing a discernment between which is which.

And so the inner oracle is usually quiet.

So there's a lot less reactivity like, oh, you have to get out now, or like it's not so impulsive or reactive.

It's more of a whisper.

And this is why I'm such a big fan of meditation, because when we create a silence practice and a stillness practice, then we can hear the inner oracle.

And sometimes the inner child as well.

But it's really about creating that stillness and that silence for that inner oracle to show up, and then to hear that message over and over again.

Like any relationship, you're not going to go into any relationship trusting from the get-go.

It's creating that trust.

So you trust it a little bit, but you see how that works out.

And you trust it a little bit more, and you see how that works out.

So it's really nurturing this relationship as if you would nurture any other relationship between your present self, which is that part, which is both the witness of your experience and the active participant in it, and then that present self and that future self, or that inner article, is creating that relationship.

It's just that those compounding acts of trust and acts of connection that are going to help you trust yourself more and more.

And it's such a huge, huge part of that journey, that self-trust.

And when we do trust ourselves more and more, everything gets better.

Our external relationships improve.

Our careers often improve.

It's a massive part of the journey.

The fifth and final relationship or step that I talk about in the book Habit Freedom is the relationship with others and operating in the world as if the world is a mirror and relationships are a mirror.

What are they showing us?

How can I step into that radical responsibility?

And I even challenge radical responsibility, and I've renamed it to unreasonable responsibility.

And I borrowed that saying from Unreasonable Hospitality, the book, which I really enjoyed.

And it's like, what if you took so much responsibility that sometimes it felt unreasonable, right?

What if you took so much responsibility that 80 percent of all the relationships in your life are up to you how you experience them because of the filter that you have, and because every relationship is a mirror.

And it's just about like stepping that responsibility up to a degree that serves your growth and evolution.

That would be so empowering, because if you keep pointing fingers and say, Anna did this, that's why I'm a mess.

My mom did this, that's why I'm a mess.

My dad did this.

It's like you keep giving away your power and you keep waiting for the others to change before something in you changes.

Yes, there's no power in that victim consciousness.

And even though I teach moving from victim consciousness into radical responsibility, into unreasonable responsibility, I still find myself in victim consciousness sometimes, because that is how society is programmed.

That is what's expected of us.

So I get caught up in it from time to time as well.

And then I'm like, oh wait, this feels like victim consciousness.

And then I have to coach myself to that unreasonable responsibility.

That is where our power lies.

It doesn't lie in saying that things are happening at me or to me.

And what I love, speaking of trusting yourself and making your own decisions, which this I started, I think, in my early 40s to say, you know what, even if things fall apart after I've made a decision, but just knowing that I made it and I wasn't worried about what people think, I used to say, even if things fall apart, I'm just glad that I made this choice myself.

And then, any last words of wisdom, Anna, for someone who really is struggling to change their habits?

Before I share that, a story is coming to mind, which is about a reporter who interviewed a Fortune 500 CEO.

And this reporter says, you know, you've made so many good decisions, right decisions.

Like, how do you make such good decisions?

And the CEO turns to the reporter and he says, I make decisions and then I make them right.

So don't even be afraid to fail by not making a decision.

Yes, it's in your power to make that decision and then make it right.

So going back to a final kind of thought, when you read the book, you'll see right up front, it says one message, which comes in the form of five words, which is, do the hard thing now.

We live in this illusion that tomorrow it will be easier to change the habit.

Tomorrow it will be easier to have the hard conversation and to improve this relationship.

Or tomorrow it will be easier to go to the gym regularly or stop eating the sugar or stop drinking or stop smoking or stop scrolling tomorrow.

But tomorrow, as we all know, doesn't exist and not telling you anything new, because tomorrow is another now.

And tomorrow, in fact, it is much harder to break free from that habit simply because today I'm reinforcing biochemically newer pathways of the current habit.

So in what world is tomorrow going to be easier?

I guarantee you, if you wait until tomorrow, it's going to be harder.

And with enough tomorrows, it gets harder and harder.

So today, right now, is the easiest it will ever get to change a habit.

Words of wisdom from Anna Shilina, my home girl from South Africa, the author of Habit Freedom, the founder of Relating Academy, who helps us with our habits and relationships so that we can be high performers and be the best versions of ourselves.

Anna, thank you so much for being here.

It's been such a wonderful delight to have you, to have this conversation with you.

I'm so glad that you came to our show today.

Thank you for having me.

It was absolutely amazing.

It was indeed.

It's my pleasure.

And before you go, where can our listeners find your book and reach out to you with one if they want to?

On Instagram, it's at Anna Shilina.

I welcome DMs and questions about habits and relationships.

And the website is habitfreedom.com.

habitfreedom.com and Anna Shilina on Instagram.

Thank you, Anna.

Thank you for joining us on the Speaking and Communicating Podcast once again.

Please log on to Apple and Spotify, leave us a rating and a review and what you'd like for us to discuss on the show that will be of benefit to you.

We encourage you to continue to get communicating and let us know how communication skills continue to improve your life professionally and personally.

And stay tuned for more episodes to come.