Speaking and Communicating Podcast

That's where sort of soul exploration begins.

It's an internal process, and it makes us more efficient, stronger, better leaders, and I think better in everything that we're doing.

So to me, I see it as part of my professional life.

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.

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Now, let's get communicating.

Now, let's get communicating with my special guest today.

We are joined by Sara Byers.

She is a CEO turned soul explorer, the first of her kind on our show.

She's an inspirational speaker, a published poet who is here to encourage us to live in wholeness and courage.

Sara hosts the Collecting Insight Podcast, which we will hear about later.

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

Hi, Sara.

Hi, Roberta.

Thank you so much for that beautiful introduction.

My absolute pleasure.

Welcome to our show.

I'm so glad that you're here.

Me too.

The stars aligned for us.

They really did.

I bet.

Absolutely.

Welcome.

Please introduce yourself to our listeners.

Of course.

So as you mentioned, it's kind of hard when you sort of have so many different identities to put them all into one.

But I am a business owner and have been a CEO for about 20 years.

But five years ago, I started on a really new and interesting path after the passing of my stepfather and began writing in the middle of the night and really exploring what it means to be human in this world.

So I have sort of the business side of my life and the community leadership, serving on a bunch of different board of trustees, and then I have this creative and soulful space.

And so my journey right now is to see how of all of it can come together, because I think all of us have a whole bunch of different parts.

Absolutely.

And it's funny that you say that because there's always this debate of whether do I bring my full self to the workplace, or do I become this persona that I think I'm expected to be, so that I present this image and they think, okay, she's a great fit, she's a great asset to the company, we're going to give her a leadership role.

Because there's always that fear of just being a little extra.

Yes.

And I should say that this space that I'm in now is not the space I was always in.

So exactly what you are talking about, Roberta, is how I navigated much of my earlier leadership life.

You hear about imposter syndrome.

I really would sit at certain tables and think that I had to conform or be something to sit there.

And I had someone maybe three years ago say to me, we were talking about imposter syndrome and something that I was like, why am I leading this effort?

And he said to me, you are essentially saying that I'm not smart.

And I'm like, no, no, that's not what I'm saying.

I'm like, I'm saying that I don't feel smart enough to do this.

And he said, no, you're saying I'm not smart enough to see who you really are.

You're saying that all of us who have put you in this role aren't capable of seeing who you really are.

So you think you're hiding yourself from all of us?

And it made me realize that people really do see us.

Sometimes we think we're conforming, but the energy and the soulfulness and the sort of beauty and humanity and love that's inherent within us is something that people just feel.

And they can pick up on that no matter how much you think, I'm putting on a front, I'm wearing a mask.

Totally.

Because really, I think you're wearing a mask for yourself.

At least I was.

Because I was the person who didn't think I was worth being at that table.

So the work for me was figuring out that I was worthy, and then I could show up in my greatest wholeness.

That question of worthiness, because you do talk about breaking free from perfectionism.

Yeah.

Is perfectionism the thing that makes us feel that we're not worthy yet because we haven't reached that perfect level?

Oh, that's so interesting.

It totally could be, and it's really insatiable.

No one's perfect, so we're never going to get that.

That's so astute, because if you're in that race, it's never ending, so you never feel worthy.

And I think that realizing that we have an innate worthiness, that every single one of us is innately and inherently worthy, I finally realize that it's nothing that I do or that I'm doing, or a title that I have, or something that I own.

It is inherently me, and it is inherently you.

It's inherently each of us.

But it really took, as I mentioned, I started writing poetry in the middle of the night, and I've written 3,000 poems, and I call them poems for lack of a better word.

But these are the words that have sort of guided me to this space.

They've been my teachers.

And so, this question about worthiness, I sort of explored and discovered through creativity.

Those poems, would they be parallel to people journaling?

Because you said they were from a loss.

Yes.

Well, the loss really catalyzed it.

So I would say yes.

I think journaling can be very, very similar to sort of what's happening.

Although, because I am sort of doing it in the space between sleep and wake, almost, it's somewhat subconscious.

And I think journaling, we can get into that space as well.

The loss that I experienced in 2020 is where I started to connect beyond the everyday world that I see, because I lost my stepfather and had an experience after his passing that I knew was him communicating with me, and then had validation of it a year later.

And so that opened everything up, because I was very sort of structured and linear in my thinking, and I didn't go beyond the boundaries of what I saw in this life.

And that is what cracked me open, that experience, because I realized there's an entire world beyond that which I see.

If anybody is listening and they're wondering, is Sara trying to convert us to become Christians and go to church next Sunday?

Absolutely not, because I don't go.

So, no.

And I'm actually, I'm not religious.

I'm not, and I'm still not.

I sort of believe that all of us just carry connection to each other.

I guess the only spiritualism that I probably espouse is that of love, and the love that binds us all, and the love that binds us all, including the people who have passed on, they are part of us.

We are part of them.

That is so true.

Speaking of the spirituality aspect, and we're going to talk about this, because one of the reasons I was intrigued by your story was you were a CEO for 20 years, so you had this, what we call very successful career, very successful life, and then you took this detour.

A lot of the time, what I've found is, you know, the average person will go, oh, it's easy for Sara to say, you know, she accumulated all that CEO money.

Now she can go on her spiritual journey.

I got bills to pay.

Yes.

Right.

I know that's a fair question and a fair statement, because I often actually question that of myself.

I often say to myself, if I didn't, and even beyond finances, if I hadn't proven myself for 20 years and been in the roles that I have, and been state leader in all the ways that I have, would I be able to take this detour and be successful still?

But I think that we are moving to a space.

I think those of us who are in these positions, it's almost incumbent on us to become our whole selves so that we open the door for all of the people who are coming next.

And from sort of financial and resource perspective, the things that I am exploring actually don't take a tremendous amount of time.

I am not someone who sort of meditates for a half an hour twice a day.

I think it is just sitting with ourselves for five minutes and listening to ourselves.

That's where sort of soul exploration begins.

It's an internal process, and it makes us more efficient, stronger, better leaders, and I think better in everything that we're doing.

So to me, I see it as part of my professional life, because if I'm stronger, then everything around me becomes stronger.

It all starts from within.

And the thing about soul exploration or looking inward, some of us are a little intimidated by that for whatever reason.

Or if not, there's just so many distractions.

Yeah, it's hard at first, because when you sit with yourself, you have to see yourself.

I mean, it's really easy to see ourselves through the external lens, sort of as we talk about it, but getting validation externally for building achievement professionally, having someone tell you, you did a good job.

Like, those are where we sort of seek validation.

When you turn that inside, it's really scary to learn that you aren't giving yourself that.

I mean, it's really hard to let that kind of come up, to let your perfectionism and let, you know, I had anxiety for quite a long time, to let all of that come up, to let the experiences that may have been challenging for you throughout your life, which I have had, to let everything sort of bubble up is really, really hard.

But if we don't let that come up, if we don't spend the time looking in, all of that still sits inside of us, and it comes out in one way or another.

But for me, that moment, those five minutes of allowing things to come up, allows them to be released, so that I can be more effective at all the other things I'm doing.

That's right.

And when I was talking to you earlier regarding, you know, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and that whole Speaking of Success, everybody get yourself a side hustle.

Stop watching Netflix.

Do something else after work, because that's not going to be successful.

I remember some of them have started to push back and say, wait a minute.

No way.

I got to do something in my life that I enjoy.

I don't have to have a side hustle all the time.

I don't have to feel guilty about having a nine to five.

Not everybody is going to be an entrepreneur.

There's always this noise lately, this pressure to just do more and more, and nothing is ever enough.

Absolutely.

I mean, I think that is certainly the way that I operated for a long time, but it isn't the way that my 20-year-old daughter operates.

And I'm so happy about that.

I think about when she was born, my husband was working one job from 2 a.m.

to 6 a.m., and then going to a job from 8 a.m.

to 5 p.m.

Like, in looking back, why we were doing that, I mean, it just seemed to be what we had to do.

And I love these next generations coming up and wanting to find joy and wanting to find contentment and peace amidst the other, because at the end of the day, they're going to be more whole, so they're going to be better equipped to meet some of the challenges that we face that are pretty significant.

And I think that, you know, right now, we're trying to solve some of those societal problems from that old space, the old space of do more, think more, analyze more.

And in truth, I think the solutions are going to come from this next generation, who is feeling more, connected with each other more, coupled with the intellect and the cerebral and the analytical, but bringing it all together.

So to me, as I mentioned to you, I often question as I see these generational shifts, whether this is how evolution plays out before our eyes, how we evolve as species to new things and to meet the new world, because this world is very different than it was 30 years ago.

Certainly.

And there's so many changes.

Absolutely different, yes.

Because what I'm wondering, you said your daughter is 20 and she's making different choices.

You've given commencement speeches at colleges, and you talk about being happy.

And I know a lot of the time when we watch commencement speeches, they talk about, go and be a leader and have this wonderful career, and this is your bright future, and you're graduating today.

I sit there wondering, listen to your speeches.

I'm thinking, do this?

Kids sit and think, Sara is crazy.

I didn't think my school would bring her here to talk about happiness.

I want to know what career I'm going to go after graduation.

Right.

Any of them come up to you afterwards and say, what were you talking about?

This is not what we expected.

You know, no, I think because I encased much of those messages in my own career and experience, even with regard to sort of happiness, I think of that commencement speech where I talked about the fact that I kept upping where I would be happy.

I was sort of waiting to find joy.

And so I was like, okay, when I get this promotion, I'll find joy.

And then I would get the promotion and not feel it.

And so then I was like, okay, when I meet my partner that I'm going to spend the rest of my life with, then I'll feel okay.

And then I met my partner and I still didn't feel okay.

And I just kept up leveling the game only to realize that the joy was in the present moment.

So while absolutely and I am on a college board actually, I think that that preparation and education is such a gift for us all to sort of learn in a variety of ways.

It is also important for us to be human.

And so even at a commencement speech, that combination between academics and just being a person in this world is important.

And I don't think we always give voice to that.

So for me, if I can give voice to that as a leader and as someone who was chosen to give a commencement speech, that's what I bring.

Yes, leadership, yes, research, yes, innovation and entrepreneurialism, but also feeling okay to be you, because that's where your gift to the world is.

It's in being truly you.

Yes, and we need that gift and there's only one of you.

So please bring all of you to the rest of us.

Absolutely.

But it takes a while to realize that that's really the only thing you need, because the world and society and different careers, etc.

tell you you have to be this or that.

You know, those are tough choices.

And for me, in the beginning, there was definitely a level of conformity, but I would always push a little bit.

Like, if I was walking into a board table where I was the only female, which happened multiple times, and I'm with a bunch of people in black and Navy suits, I would be the person who's wearing a dress with a bright fuchsia flower on the front of it.

That's my small push, you know?

So I would always have just a small piece of myself, even in those environments.

So not full, total conformity?

No, because that's not really why I was there.

It's recognizing the privilege that I had in being at the table and in moving the conversation in a different direction, slightly, even amidst the work that we were doing, but giving it a slightly nuanced approach.

And that's how change happens.

Yeah.

Now, when you talk about upping each time and thinking, when that happens, I'm going to be happy, you just reminded me of my mom.

So after 23 years, my parents got divorced.

So my mom, most of the time, they shared custody, but raised my baby brother, who's much younger than I am.

And he said, Ma, you need to find a new man, you know, because my dad remarried.

And then she said, I'll find someone when your brother finishes high school.

He finished high school.

Ma, you need to find a man.

Oh, I'll do that when your brother goes to college, he needs my attention.

He goes to college away from home at a different town.

Ma, you need to find a man.

Oh, I'll do it when your brother gets married.

My brother got married last month.

And when he went on his honeymoon, my cousin, because I haven't been home in a while, so one of my cousins says to me, come stay with me.

She booked a hotel where my brother had the wedding reception.

Her boyfriend was running the Iron Man Challenge in my hometown.

And my mom says, why is everybody leaving me?

I'm all by myself.

And she was complaining.

I said, Ma, that's why we told you to fight them there.

Wow.

It kept shifting.

I said, when your brother does this, when your brother reaches the milestone, and now it's all our fault that you're going to be alone because he got married.

Oh, my gosh.

I love that story.

Oh, my goodness, because we all do that in a variety of ways.

It's almost like we're waiting to live.

You know what I mean?

In some ways, we're like waiting.

I don't know what we're waiting for now, but we are.

We're waiting.

The present moment, like you said, Sara, the present moment is what's most important.

Yes, it is.

But it's hard.

It's hard for us to be there, like I said.

Oh, my gosh.

So how's your mom doing for the...

She's been a month by herself now?

I mean, I was with her for a little bit because my cousin and I, it was just for the weekend.

And then I went home.

But she was a little distressed the first few days.

I do understand that feeling, too.

Your baby brother's gone.

Like, Mom, we've been telling you for years to find somebody.

And he was your excuse.

Now he's gone.

You see, that's how that works out.

Oh, my gosh.

It's going to be fun to sort of watch where she takes this next step, because I can say as a mom that when my daughter first moved out of the house, it was significant and almost felt like I'd lost a part of my body.

But it actually allowed me to go into all of these spaces as well.

So she'll find her way, but that's great.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

But yes, she's a classic example of don't wait until this happens, until this happens, because we do that a lot.

We always say, when that happens, when I check this box, then I can do that.

Yeah.

You know, to me now, as I think about life, life is about so many beautiful parts.

It's about living and enjoying each other.

And it is about speaking and connecting with other people based on my life experience, truth, yours.

Like speaking and communicating is about two people or more sort of coming together to create something brand new.

And so I think the more that we get out there and show ourselves, the more beauty we're creating in the world.

We need more beauty in the world.

What are some of the last two things you would like to challenge our listeners to start doing today after listening to you and your journey so that they don't keep making these excuses we've talked about?

I love that.

I would say probably two things.

And thank you for the question.

I think the first which we've talked about a lot is to try to muster the courage to bring all of yourself to everything that you do.

Because when you do so, you truly do give other people license to do the same.

And as I said a couple of weeks ago in a speech, we really want a world that is whole.

We've got to find the courage to be whole ourselves because I think everything starts individually and then builds from there.

And the second thing would be I think a lot of times we get in our own way.

You know, we don't want to say this thing.

We don't want to present ourselves in this way.

But to know that almost anything is possible.

I stopped a lot of the dreams I had for a long time because I didn't think that I was someone who was meant for them.

I didn't believe that I was someone who could write.

I didn't believe that I was someone who could join you on a podcast.

I didn't believe these things.

But I needed to start to believe that anything was possible for me, and to just trust that what showed up for me was for me.

And so I would say to continue to dream the impossible and embrace every opportunity that comes your way because it's there for a reason.

It needs you.

Dream the impossible.

I like that.

Is that the reason one of your mantras is, trust what you can't prove?

Exactly why.

Yes.

Thank you for that.

Yes, because I wouldn't have imagined doing half of the things that I am doing.

I wouldn't have imagined being a CEO or a board chair or all of these things.

I wouldn't have.

And so I've had to trust in this greater knowing that I was being carried somewhere.

Wow.

That's amazing, Sara.

Now, you co-host the Collecting Insight Podcast.

And after listening to you, I'm wondering the word in sight.

Is it looking within like you talked about?

I love that so much.

I can't wait to tell my partner, Laurie.

I would say that is absolutely part of the podcast, and it's great because Laurie and I have very different perspectives.

And it started with us just having coffee.

And the way that we viewed the world was really different in a lot of ways.

And so we just thought it would be interesting to carry our coffee conversations into a podcast, to have different perspectives on the same issue and to find the space where we come together, because we share the same heart and the same desire to have a more kind and compassionate world.

And so it brings them both together.

But for me, absolutely, it is sort of from that inside.

Yes, very perceptive.

I can't wait to share that.

I think being in your presence inspires me as well to look at things differently, because some of these questions, I didn't prepare upfront the way I set them, the way I asked you the question.

So I think when I have a conversation with someone of your energy and perspective, it also feeds into mine as well.

It means the world to me, and right back at you, because it's both of us.

I think that we have such reciprocal energy as possible when we connect with people.

There's so much symbiosis.

It's like the inhale and the exhale.

It's like we're breathing in, breathing out, and it just is an exchange.

So I'm honored to receive from you as well, Roberta, truly.

My absolute pleasure, Sara.

Thank you so much for being on our show today, for teaching us how to have the courage to bring all of ourselves to our spaces.

My absolute pleasure.

Is there any last words of wisdom before we ask you for your social media handles?

Just, I think that the world is ours.

The world is ours to create what we want with it.

So it's our time.

Yeah.

Words of wisdom from Sara Byers, who is a CEO turned soul explorer, who's published over 3,000 poems, is an inspirational speaker and cohost of the Collecting Insight Podcast.

Thank you so much, Sara.

I had such an amazing conversation with you.

I really appreciate you being here.

Thank you so much, Roberta.

The pleasure was all mine.

My absolute pleasure as well.

Please tell our viewers where to find you online.

Of course, you can find me at my website, sarasbyers.com, or on Instagram at dearjoylove.

sarasbyers.com is the website and Instagram, dearjoylove.

Joy, yes.

Okay, I'll put that on the show notes.

Thank you very much, Sara.

Thank you, Roberta.

So nice to see you.

Nice to see you as well.

Thanks for being on the show.

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

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