Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. And by the end of this episode, please remember to subscribe, give a rating and a review. If you think that chasing stuff and more and more will give you fulfillment, joy and peace. you probably might want to think that again, because my guest today, her name is Keren Eldad, an executive and personal coach is here to revolutionize your thinking and help you to learn how to really find fulfillment, joy and peace, be it professionally or personally. And before I go any further, please help me welcome Keren. Hi. Hi Roberta, it's great to be here. Thank you for the generous introduction. Thank you for being on the show. Well, generous it was, if you think so, appreciate that, thank you first of all. But more than anything, before we started recording based on our chat, I know there's a lot that you're going to share that's valuable with our listeners. So I'm really looking forward to our conversation. My pleasure. You know, I'm a professional speaker like you, a professional coach, and there's a lot that we just talked about before that sounds like it's going to just apply to your happiness. But if anybody out there is listening, know that it applies to your career and specifically to a career as a speaker, as a coach, as any kind of expert or known thought leader, because these are the components that create real confidence. So we won't just be talking about happiness. So first of all, give us a little bit of your background, how you got started. I got started the same way all great speakers get started. I'm not saying I'm a great speaker. I'm saying that all great speakers have one thing in common and that is they have a resurrection story, right? Yes. Everybody has a, I collapsed and I found my way through the collapse. And it wasn't different for me. I lived most of my life, Roberta, with the blinders on. I was doing my best to just become a successful person, whatever that meant. for me back in the day, it was about status and it was about success in finance terms and everything I did was producing the opposite results. So I was working really, really hard to make a lot of money and all I could do was lose money. I mean, I was just terrible with money. I was just a person with a very severe shopping habit. And I did get married, but I married a person who was absolutely horrible to me. We were in an abusive relationship. I blame myself too. Of course, I found myself in a relationship where I did not know my worth and didn't stand for my worth. Was in a career that was very nice, but it wasn't the career that lit me up from inside. And so by the time I was in my mid thirties, all of these systems start collapsing. I went through a divorce. I quit my job and I couldn't find another one for a really long time. And Before that, I was bouncing around from job to job to job to job for a really long time before that, too. Most of my circumstances begin to crash around me, not to mention, as I already said, my finances weren't really solid to begin with. So I'm broke, can't find a job, just got divorced. Everything is trying to look really, really bleak. And that's when I thought to myself, how can a person who did everything, quote unquote, right? I went to a good school, I got married, I got the corporate job. How did this happen to me? You followed the script, which is what most of us do. I followed the script and it blew up. It blew up. And so that's when I started to reach for all the self-help books. I hired a coach. I went to see Tony Robbins in Florida. Oh yeah. I jumped up and down. I did all of that stuff with a lot of time and a lot of dedication. I started to understand that I did not know what happiness was before. I was chasing all the wrong things and it was never going to be enough. So it's a good thing that it blew up. And I found. ultimately not only my new career and my new husband, but I found myself. And through this transformation, I've become coach Karen. That's the story. So does that mean that if you are not okay with yourself, everything you attract, no matter how hard you work, no matter how fast you chase, it's not going to have the end result you desire. That's exactly right. Because it starts internally. Yes. If you're below zero. If you really like have a feeling that your tank is really empty about yourself, then it doesn't matter how much gas you pour in there. It will never be full. And that's where the shift started to happen. When I started to ask myself, where are my beliefs coming from? And how do I feel about myself? I started to realize something very surprising. I didn't like me. I didn't know who I was and I didn't like who I was. I judged myself very harshly and most people do. Most people judge themselves very harshly. They're cruel to themselves. And if you're cruel to yourself, guess what you're going to attract? Very difficult, very harsh circumstances. So it made sense. But once I really truly learned to choose myself, to take care of myself, to love myself, everything started to line up in a different way. The results were radically different. Anybody listening might be thinking, let's say somebody is in a similar situation, but then comes a time when we feel like the devil we know is better than this devil we don't know the uncertainty. What if I step out of this and it's worse? At least this it's hard, but I've managed to create sort of a survival system. Yeah, I get it. And that's a normal tendency of the brain. So you're asking the perfect question at the perfect time. But I'm here to say the devil you don't know is way better than the devil, you know, so go for it every single time. The devil, you don't know way better than the devil, you know, because if the devil, you know, isn't in fact a devil, as in this is not comfortable, we get so comfortable with discomfort that sometimes we think discomfort is comfortable, but don't always it is discomfort. And if you're feeling discomfort, then I promise you what's on the other side. It's going to be a little more discomfort, but then you're going to be so happy that you did it for me. The wake up call Roberta was so interesting because. Not only was I not finding a job and didn't have any money, like all the weird things that make us feel like a failure, but my industry was also starting to collapse. This is when I started to think about entrepreneurship. I used to be in publishing before. Oh, that's when I realized, and this is a great analogy for anybody out there in a situation with a devil they know, the devil, you know, will not take care of you. That's what I started to understand. What I started to understand was that I live in a capitalist society where no one's going to take care of me just because I can't find a job. And no one's going to take care of me in the heart of a big corporation because they really don't care that much. It's just not the way corporations are organized. And so ultimately, if I want to be well, I only have myself. And this is not a bad thing. This is a good thing. If you have the wherewithal, then choose yourself. That American dream. of let's graduate from college and immediately find a perfect job and work there until we are pensioners at 65 and we'll have wonderful houses that are easily affordable and cars that doesn't exist anymore. That America dream was gone I think in 1984. By now we should understand it's dead and gone and if you have the ability audacity to choose yourself, you will manage to rise. However, You do have to find yourself first. You mentioned you went to a Tori Robbins seminar, you got yourself a coach. In the process of finding yourself, are you basically saying that entrepreneurship is the way to go? Or can somebody think, okay, it just means I have to switch jobs and do something I love or something that fulfills me? Exactly. So there are many ways to go from there. For me, it was the choose myself, which actually became. an entrepreneurship path, but it really is about choose your preferences. Really decide to go and line up with what you truly love and will light you up from inside instead of a corporate job that sucks the life out of you, you might as well do something that you love. The most important thing, however, is find yourself first. That's why I say find yourself first because the outcome doesn't matter. How you manifest it doesn't matter. Entrepreneurship, whatever. What really does matter is who you find within. And if you are. brave enough to go inside and to ask myself, what do I want and what do I love? I think Roberta, the most people I talk to in the coaching environment, sort of fall into their job and they're like, no, I just decided to do this when I was 24. So here we are. And I'm like, you, you still like it. Many people don't. People do not think that these careers, they don't think they were born to be a consultant. They don't think they were born to be a banker. They don't think they were born to be a lawyer. It's okay to question the choice and to ask yourself then the most important question you can ask yourself. The question I mean when I say choose yourself. What do you want? Not what does everybody else want? Not what is convenient. What do you want? Speaking of convenience, some people might say listen Karen, this all sounds good. I have kids. I have three jobs. I just got divorced. I don't have time to sit and do this whole brainstorming and the moushies, they call it moushy stuff, and the moushy stuff, because the responsibility does not enough hours in the day. Well, it's not my job to convince you. So if that's what you want to believe, no problem. Enjoy it. At the same time, if there is something inside you that really wants to try this out, then you do have time. You might not be able to do it immediately. You might not be able to do it today. But over time, you will get there. You're not the only one with other circumstances. Many other people who have three children, four children, two jobs have managed to do this as a side. And it took them as long as it took them and they did get to the other side. The question is never of time or mushiness. The question is about desire. And if the desire is burning in your heart, then you absolutely can and you will. Yes, and in the 24 hours, ask yourself, if you can't even spend 20 minutes, You know why I don't like that argument so much? It's not because I don't have compassion. Of course I have compassion. I also know what it's like because in the beginning I had several jobs because I didn't have any money and it was very, very hard to pursue my passions. At the same time, I say this respectfully, most Americans check their phones 150 times a day. Most Americans, and these are Deloitte toosh numbers, most Americans spend two hours a day on social media. So maybe this particular person. that we're fictitiously talking about does not have that time. But most people do. They have enough time to waste on cat videos on social media. So I just recommend that you take 15 minutes of that and think, think thoughts that will alter your life. That's all I'm suggesting here. So you're not saying forsake all your videos and commenting on your friends vacations, but just take 15 minutes and you take 15 minutes out of commenting on your friends trip to Greece. and think about yourself. Right, because as you said earlier, to love yourself enough to think, at least I deserve 15 minutes out of the 24 hours. Exactly. And love your desire and respect your desire enough, respect your life enough to take that time. And when you started, when you enlisted the help of a coach, what are some of the things that were aha moments or things that were, wow, I never thought about that? It was an incredible trip from the minute that started. And by the way, I still work with coaches. Most coaches are coaching junkies. The first thing that changed for me was paying so much money for coaching because I'd never paid a sum of money like that before I paid for my master's degree. And for my first degree, they were very expensive, but they were college degrees. So I thought that was an expense that was justifiable for some reason. Coaching seemed like a frivolity. But the first thing that I noticed was when I did pay that much and invested that much in myself, I already felt very empowered. I already felt like I was raising my vibration to a new level because I'd already taken such a big, big step in believing in myself. The second thing that happened was I started to understand how much I don't know. Coaching is a humbling experience, a truly humbling experience of realizing that the way you're thinking seems rational, but is not working. It's not... working to the creation of possibilities in your life. All of us are limited in our thinking. It's called having blind spots or biases. They're called blind spots for a reason. We can't see them, but a seasoned coach can see them a mile away. Not only have they been there, done that, so they can make processes more simple for you. A seasoned coach goes, I know you think you sound reasonable, but are you sure you sound reasonable? And that's when everything changes, where you go, wait, maybe I'm wrong? I'm wrong. And that's when the whole world opens up. You start really getting different possibilities. That first experience was a little bit of a shakeup. The second one was a big shakeup. The third was a big shakeup. And finally, here we are. I mean, really, it changed my life. It completely changed my life. So two things from that. One, you are worth investing in yourself. Yeah. And then secondly, like they say, because you know, this is the online space. So you have all kinds of coaches and all kinds of price tags. You have your $9 coach, your $27, your $97, and your 10,000 and your 50,000. The rhetoric on the online space is, if you invest $27 or something, are you even gonna take the time? And there's a lot of studies about that, but it's not even about that. Your frequency is your frequency, so I'm not gonna argue with what that is. I just believe that you do get what you pay for. In the ideal case, you get what you pay for. Right. There are lots of things that go into that, of course. So you're looking for pedigree. You're looking for a person who really knows what they're talking about and who is the right voice for you and who has manifested a life that is really resonating with yours and that's the level that you should be comfortable being coached at that kind of white glove service for me, any sum was a lot back in the day, but I remember $10,000 being just like, what, who pays that? Today, it's very comfortable for me. And it's because I took that plunge the first time, asked myself to go to that level, ask myself to stretch to that level. I knew that was the person who was going to help me. I just knew that was it. That was when the switch went off. And the second thing that you're so generous to recap is I have a lot of blind spots. I learned to know that I don't know what I don't know. And that at every step of the way, at every step of growth, there's going to be new discoveries. And to have a partner, who can see them and can help me see them is invaluable. It shortens the time between where I am and where I wanna go. Yeah, that is definitely true. Because like I always say, I'm not always right. So give me a nudge if there's something I need to rethink. Yeah, it really helps. And just as a disclaimer, we're not saying that everybody must go for $10,000 coaches. We were just giving an example. I think you should go for more expensive coach. In the words of Karen Eldad. Now let's talk about the phrase live with enthusiasm. Yeah. What do you mean by that and why is that your motto? I mean, live fully charged, live fully charged. I became suicidal before turning to coaching because I was so depressed about all the loss in my life. And I remember being in the shower and thinking about killing myself. For some reason, a light went on and I started to understand that this is it. This is it. This is all I have. This life is all I have. Why not live it saying yes to everything instead of freaking out about everything? It was a very sharp turn. And that's where with enthusiasm came through. I decided that even if I don't know and I am still in uncertainty, and I was, I was broke and going through that very tough period for a couple of years, I knew that I was going to say yes and I was gonna stop saying no. To me, that's what with enthusiasm means. It's to charge at life and to do your very, very best with what you have to have a great time around here because none of us get a lot of time. Yeah, that is true. Every moment counts. Live it with enthusiasm. I love the story of your TED Talk. Thank you. And the kid who was kicking behind you. How is it that as the years go, we seem to, I'm not judging, but. we seem to have lost either the patience or the compassion. Is it because we are going through so much ourselves? We don't have time to say to our neighbor, hey, you know what, smile, I got you, or if you need it. Why are we that way now? Are we getting worse? And is there something we can do to just give each other just a little leeway because it seems like we all need it, especially since the last two years. Absolutely. So we don't do this. We do not lose our patience with little kids who are kicking our seat on a flight. That's what the story was about. By the way, that child is now 15 years old. He's adorable still because I'm still friends with his mother. As he was kicking my seat, I was gonna lose my temper because somebody's kicking my seat on a plane. That's normal. But here's why it's normal. It's not normal because I'm a bad person who wants to condemn small children. It's because your brain defaults to feeling safe. And whenever something disrupts your environment like that, your brain automatically thinks it is not safe. It is in danger. Something is disturbing it. Something might happen that is difficult and therefore defaults to safety as quickly as possible, to biases, to shortcuts, to get you out of discomfort as quickly as possible, your job as an elevated person, as a person who really wants to think through things. and to have great results in life is to slow down your thinking process. And you're right in COVID we have become angrier. There are incredible studies out there, for example, about air rage. Did you hear about what's happening in the airplanes? How many people have had to be arrested or stopped because they're so hostile to people on flights now? It's a real problem. People getting enraged. I fly every single week and every week I hear the captain saying, please be civil. to your fellow passengers, please be civil, to your flight attendants. And so the reason I think we've become more aggravated is just because we really crave safety more than ever. The pandemic shook our sense of safety. The tribalism that's happening all over the world is shaking our sense of safety. So we're becoming more reactive. So here's the solution. Are you ready? Ready. It's called the pause principle. Many masters, many gurus have many forms of this. For example, the work by Byron Katie. that perhaps yes, this is my version. It's called the pause principle. And in a moment where you're challenged, a baby's kicking your seat. Somebody is expressing an opinion you absolutely despise right next to you before you land on them. Like a sumo wrestler, take 17 seconds, take a deep breath and ask yourself three questions inside your head. All you need is 17 seconds. Number one is the problem. Really the problem. Or is the way I'm about to react a bigger problem? Number two, is there any other way to see this? And number three, what's the opportunity here? Number one is the problem, the problem, or is me telling that person whose opinion differs from mine that they suck a bigger problem, it's none of your business, you're responding that way is definitely a bigger problem. Is there any other way to see this? Sure. They're a different person. They have every right to another opinion. They were not socialized the same way that you were. Number three, what's the opportunity here? Keep your peace, enjoy your drink, have a good time, live your life. Those are all opportunities that are better than have a confrontation with someone for no reason. And so when we can just exercise this pause principle, this 17 second silence between reaction and thought, we start to really tweak our results. And that same pause principle applies as we become keyboard warriors. He said something I don't like on social media. Oh, that's the worst kind. I just never understand why people take the time to send a negative comment. That doesn't make any sense to me, but okay. If you could just think, do I really need to comment this way? What does it matter? Do you know this person? You know, that's the other thing that I never understand. Do you know this person? Yes. Hence I say it seems as a whole. human species, something has really gone off the rails when it comes to how we connect. Do you know, it really is very helpful to when you're a speaker, when you're a professional speaker, you have to exercise this, there's always going to be someone in the audience who's sitting there with their arms crossed, right? Or you also have to be ready for criticism in the arena, there's a lot of criticism. So really learning how to not take things personally, really learning how to slow it down, how to slow it down, how to try to see it from other people's angles and perspectives. how to find an opportunity here, that becomes a critical skill. Yes, when it comes to speaking, like you said, if they are taking the attention away from you being on their phone, they were socialized differently. Sometimes something happens, sometimes they got a message from the school saying something is wrong with the kid. Yeah. Yeah, or if they interrupt, it's a chance for you to be adaptable enough to come up with something that's gonna, you handle the situation graciously and the audience see that. That's exactly right. You really never know what's happening. You know, the other day I was giving a talk and in the middle of it, the CEO of a very big company stopped me. And he said, can you at the end of the talk, make sure that you have a conversation with me? And I said, sure, no problem. I went back to the talk. What do you think? I thought when he said, can we talk after, did I say something wrong? Am I in trouble? Am I going to get this gig again? Exactly. Everyone has the exact same default. I immediately thought I did something wrong immediately. Now that's an assumption. So I pause principled and I thought, you know what, I'm doing my best and at best I can fix it. So I relaxed enough to do the rest of the talk. Well, at the end of it, he just wanted to talk to me to see if he could hire me as the executive coach for the team. We have no idea. Stop making assumptions, pause and try to at least mitigate anger. Any response from anger or reactivity is going to produce chaos. Always. Speaking of coaching teams, we talk a lot here about workplace communication skills and soft skills and teamwork. What are some of the things, you can name two or three, what are some of the things when you coach teams that you always have to emphasize for them to work more efficiently? Sure, there's only one, it's called trust. And by trust, I wanna explain that I think most teams originally believe that trust means I trust you to do what you're supposed to do. But that's not what trust is, not in relationships and not in the corporate environment. Trust means I know you have my back and you know I have your back. That's what trust is. And to build trust, you need a couple of additional things. Transparency, no fear of speaking up, no reprimand to the point where people feel like they're gonna be fired or punished if they make a mistake. When those elements exist, trust is high. when those elements don't exist, trust is low. And so that's how trust is created. And for me, that's the secret to communication is I have your back, I'm on your side. If you can join me there, we can have a good conversation. If not, we're always gonna be concealing something that's not a real conversation. That having each other's back, I think also applies to, if you know very well that I have your back, you have mine, and I do something that is considered questionable, you don't jump to the conclusion that I was being vindictive towards you Karen and I was trying to destroy you. You think to yourself, okay, I know her well enough that she wouldn't do this unless there's a very good reason. Let me give you a chance to explain. Exactly. Your assumptions completely change. If my husband forgets to pick me up, okay, I'm not going to assume he hates me and deserted me and he's never coming. Something happened. That's the difference between a person who has your back and a person who doesn't have You just never assume the worst. It would take a lot. Like I said, the trust, the, what I call the resume of that person. You know, they've deposited enough in you that you know, that you can trust them. That's how it works. And what about leaders? When you coach leaders? That's it. We have to work on trust, but believe it or not with all teams and leaders in particular, it begins with self-awareness because to be trusting and trustworthy. You have to learn how to trust yourself and be trustworthy. So you have to learn how to be honest. And most people are not honest. It's okay. We don't know that we're not honest, but we're lying all the time. All of us. I'm sure all of us do. Yes, that's true. Yes. Here I have put on a mask. We call it a representative. I have this book right behind my desk so that I remember all the time. It's called the honest truth about dishonesty by Dan Ariely. We all lie. Here's a stupid example of lying. I love your dress. Your check is in the mail. It's on the way. I wanna do this again. Absolutely. When can we meet again? Now all of us say these things offhand because it's kind. But we don't mean it. We don't mean it. Don't they say truth is kindness? I think clear is kind within confines. But as the coach Lauren Zander says, and I love this phrase, people pleasing is lying with a spritz of Febreeze. When we start understanding that even gentle things were saying, sometimes our lies, we have to start watching ourselves for honesty and for dishonesty, because sometimes we don't say the full truth. And to be trustworthy, we really have to start stepping into the zone of being comfortable, speaking clearly about things that are uncomfortable. For example, I made a mistake. We made a mistake. We are behind. Your performance is... not working out for us. I heard what you said, that kind of thing. Those are difficult things for us to say. And we have to learn when we're being dishonest in order to correct that. And then to allow other people to see us more clearly, which will build trust. That's how it works with leaders. Do you think also as leaders in that position, they struggle to be fully honest, so to speak, because they think of the repercussions such as Is my team still going to respect me? Yes. If I appear too human and should I admit I made a mistake? Are they still going to respect me? That's exactly the problem. And think about their type of lies. They have to look like they're always together. They think they have to have all the answers. They think they have to be the supreme expert in something. This is not possible. None of us is infallible. None of us is inhuman that way. And the belief that we need to maintain that facade is a lie. It's a facade and a facade is a lie. And so when we start to break down those walls, self-awareness increases, we start to become more aware of how we really behave, why we behave that way and what the defaults of that behavior are, we can start to modify it and that's how we can start to lead in a different way. Speaking of self-awareness, you remind me of, you know those interview questions where they say, so tell us about some of your weaknesses. Yeah, people take a strength and make it sound like a weakness and then turn it into a strength again. Well, one of the funniest things that you're bringing up for me, Roberta, is that a lot of people when they're asked, what are your weaknesses? We'll say my perfectionism and perfectionism is a weakness. It's a severe weakness. They think it sounds like a compliment, but it's not. Perfectionism is the heart of almost all mental disease, mental discomfort. When we are perfectionists, we're extremely hard on ourselves. And that means we're extremely hard on other people. It comes from shame. I don't need to say too much about perfectionism. Turn to the work of Brene Brown. You're going to know everything you need to know about perfectionism. But it is an actual weakness. And so I find it very comical that that's the one that comes up. They always bring that up thinking it's a very good. Yes. Oh, I suffer from perfectionism. Yeah, sure. OK. Well, you really do have a problem. And I'm sorry. You see, I told you that Karen was going to revolutionize her thinking around some of these concepts just before we go. Karen first. last words of wisdom from you. In the beginning, we talked about happiness and is it ever enough? And we've been talking about success in that vein and about communication. What I really hope that everybody understands is that success is not going to make you happy. That's not the goal anyway. It's what makes us lie. It's what makes us believe that nothing is ever enough. Real happiness is about knowing who you are and being okay with it. It's about understanding that you're enough, no matter what comes to you, and being easy on yourself as a result. When you live life that way, everything becomes nice, pleasant, satisfying, fulfilling. When we live the other way, everything becomes a hustle. Everything is hard work. Everything is an obsession. Entrepreneurship can work this way too, so can a speaking career. If you make it really hard, a big chase, a big pursuit, it's always gonna feel like a big climb. You'll never understand why some people make it and some people don't. But if you're really there for the joy of creation, for the happiness that you feel doing what you really love to do, it'll be a never ending explosive journey. That's the difference. So the real secret here is to learn that you're enough and that you should be easy on yourself because you're enough. I hope that was useful. You are enough words of wisdom from executive and personal coach, Keren Eldad. Now, Karen, we want to know more about the work that you do and how it can help us. Where do we find you on social media? Thank you, Roberta. I'm at Coach Keren. And as you know, it's K-E-R-E-N. So at Coach Keren is my Instagram. And that's the best way to find me. Okay. So Instagram at Coach Keren. Yeah. Thank you very much for being on our show today. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you. The honor was mine. Thank you. Don't forget to subscribe, give a rating and a review. Those were words of wisdom from at Coach Keren on Instagram. Thank you.