welcome CEOs I am herane Olivia and I invite you to cherish every opportunity to connect the dots CEO yourself was created as a destination for motivation and to inspire you wherever you are on your journey to become the CEO of your life coming up on this week's episode of CEO yourself purpose is one of the best fuels for the human mind and putting everything together where you get to get up you know here's a person who doesn't have any plans hasn't got clear on their IDE IDE self and they have exactly the same task to do as this person who's super clear on their ideal self knows exactly how this one day fits into the bigger picture of them like having their best life which one's having a better time with exactly the same day it's definitely this person you can 100% want that award just check that it's aligned with your values so that the whole thing's a holistic package where you know if no one saw that you got the award you're happy right it's when you're doing it for other people's approval and it isn't actually important to you that that's when the barometer is like a little bit off rebellious self-belief is the kind of like you know to Rebel is to Stick it to the Man it's kind of like yes 100% I have no evidence to think that I can achieve this I have actually ample evidence to prove that it is highly unlikely that I will be successful and I am most likely going to fall on my butt hard 100% I'm with you with that but I'm still going to do it anyway Sabrina Percy is a coaching psychologist and accredited coach specializing in executive and Human Performance coaching on this week's episode we Explore her CEO superpower rebellious self-belief Sabrina welcome to CEO yourself thank you I've been begging you to come on for so many months I'm so glad the moment is finally here me too me too you have recently graduated with distinction as a psychologist with a specialization in business congratulations thank you and what a pivot from where you were just a few years ago as an illustrator which you were also incredible at but it is an extraordinary shift in your career can you talk to The Listener about what motivated you to make the change and what inspired you to do what you're doing now yeah um and also I'm really bad at Double question so if I go off and don't answer half you'll be like no but I'm just like I can I feel like I can only remember one at a time like d it what motivated you to do it yeah yeah yeah so the motivation uh came from uh so you know you knew me during this phase I was working as a fashion illustrator in London um I I really actually think everything was actually going quite well with that you know I had I had dreamed when I was sort of like 16 to 18 that I would be going off to Paris cure week and I would be sketching front row and I would be sending my illustrations to like Le official or Vogue or whatever whatever um and then that was happening which was crazy um but I really enjoyed the drawing but I felt like I had been kind of not pushed is the wrong word but I felt like I'd been funneled down that career path because I was crazy dyslexic at school I sort of got semi kicked out of school GCSE year and when I went to a levels they basically chose my a levels for me and so they were like okay you're doing art textiles and studies least amount of reading and writing you know this is this is your route and then when I wanted to go to university CU my older sister had and I knew other people doing it um everyone was like um don't think you're suited to an educational system like we haven't really got a proven track record of that to maybe no uni for you um I think I'm probably quite stubborn so I was like I'm going to do it I'm G to find a course that I can do and literally after speaking to everyone they're like there's only one course in the whole of University that you can probably which is um a ba in fashion illustration because I had sketchbooks and sketchbooks full of like all of these drawings of girls and dresses and stuff like that and so they were like your portfolio is really big if you want to go to university like this is probably the only thing you can study so went to lcf did took four years doing a three-year ba course because it was is definitely still true like I did not have studying down like my time management my understanding of briefs all the extra reading was wasn't really up to scratch and so so I actually didn't do very well I think I got a third um you know after four years of a threee it's it was just it wasn't a good look so we came out um but then started working professionally as a fashion illustrator and the thing is is that what's crazy is that I even did I had to redo a dyslexic exam when I first started London College of fashion because apparently it runs out so the first one I'd done was when I was five and then they were like Sabrina needs to be retested cuz we need to know how bad it is at like 21 and when I got retested it was it was bad like I still have the report and it's like Sabrina is in the bottom 1% of people her age like we're talking like not completely illiterate but like we're not that far off the the worst cusp of it and so I think that was really was that discouraging I think it was just doors 100% bolted closed that had been interesting that were just like you you are going to have to be in art like that is going to have to be your happy place whether you like it or not because it just you have no evidence that anything else could be feasible right so the whole world was telling you that you had to be this person yeah and you started to believe it yeah and and L luckily for me like I actually thank God you know could draw um so it wasn't like I was shoved down you know uh a funnel that I was you know completely miserable in and unskilled like luckily even though though I had really bad dyslexia I could and that's that weirdly that's actually often really bad dyslexics are quite good at Art it's like that weird correlation that no one really knows why but um I really want the listener here yeah to take a moment before we Propel into this episode to think about where the world has pushed you into a door or a hole or they've they've put you somewhere that feels comfortable based on perception MH culture environment and think about whether or not it's right for you intuitively and honestly and then carry on with where you are now well and so and so we can we can go on that niggling feeling right which is that I loved I did love the drawing I had dreamed of doing it but I had this other like really intense passion for like the positive side of psychology so not psychology to do with Psychopathology and you know dealing with disease and depression and anxiety but more you know what is the theory around me becoming my best self and that psychology like the the I call it like the good vibe psychology but like you know the positive side and I I I loved it so much because it also suggested that you could push the predetermined possibilities that the world had already given you and as someone who did feel like the possibilities may have been a little bit Slimer than I'd wanted them to be you know that was a real you know I was drinking that Kool-Aid I was like yes that would be amazing that'd be so cool um however I was I didn't really have anyone in my life who was in Psychology or doing anything like this I didn't really have access to anyone to speak to um and so it all kind of changed where I had this burning desire and I found it really interesting and I know you've spoken before that you've taken like time out and sometimes done like an indepth self-development sort of like Diet where you've like eaten it all and it's amazing and I definitely done that as well and I'd been like this stuff is amazing it really changes how I get up and face the day like why isn't everyone doing this and talking about it um and so I knew I wanted to do it but I just felt completely uncapable of pursuing it in any sort of professional sense because I had to do art like that was the only thing I could do so I actually ended up going to this talk and an author was talking about her book and it was pretty amazing she was a neuroscientist she was amazing her name's Dr Tara SWAT people have heard of her potentially before one and only exactly and we actually joke about this now because I sat down afterwards I got her to sign the book and I was just like tell me tell me how to do this like I just this is what I love this is what I want to do um and funnily enough there must have been like a a sort of you know I was like exactly what you've done Lara's like well you know I did medical school and then I did a PhD in neuroscience and I'm thinking like oh my God 8 years time that's not going to work exactly and so amazingly she actually was like look if you're really interested in this Kings College London does a masters in Neuroscience here's the details why don't you look into it and we swapped emails and so that's what I was meant to have gone away and done and this is why I'm So Into accountability right because this is a literally the most serendipitous important potential Fork moment of my life which is it had been a year I'm sure people can relate to this it had been a year and I'd done nothing I just kept doing the fashion illustration stuff because it was easy and I knew it but also when you want something so badly sometimes the fear of rejection subconsciously is so huge it's easier not to act on it and to have it as kind of like this loose pipeline dream yeah than it is to attempt it test it and you exactly find out you can't do it and I had sort of semi looked at it and I knew you know my a levels w going to get me into an MSE in Neuroscience they just weren't and so it was going to take a diploma then an MSE and I was like you know what I haven't done maths or science since GCSE Double D in science C in intermediate maths like just don't know like you've got all those voices again being like you have no evidence to suggest you can do this this might just be one of those fantasy things so I didn't pursue it now this is incredible Tara messages me unprompted a year later incredible woman being like like have you signed up to that thing wow and I don't even I don't even know her right yeah I'd met her after her book things that was Inc and I I was filled with such like guilt that I hadn't done anything and so I sort of message her back and be like well you know I looked into it and I'd have to take a diploma beforehand and I don't know if I have what it takes and I just really want to help people be their better selves and I I know that Neuroscience is really important and she was like oh my God Sabrina you don't have to have a masters in Neuroscience to help people like in positive psychology she's like you can just become a coach and you know do that training and work with people on that level um and she was like if you're serious about it you should just sign up for some coach training and I think it was generally that conversation and also that energy of having not taken action for a year and then almost like embarrassingly being caught out about it on by such incredible person I know and so I immedi I just did it I just signed up I was like here we go we're pressing go on that button um and that started the long road which was that was first the human potential Institute that was was about eight months then I came out then I did an advanced practitioner diploma in Executive coaching that was a year then I that was gave me enough to be able to sign up and get accepted into the Masters in Psychology with a specialization in business two years and then now we're here and graduating with distinction and graduating with distinction from an MSE and the stats were heavy and the science was Heavy with severe dyslexia so I want to stop here again and say to the listener if you cannot see a path you will find one if it's meant for you you will find a way and this is the inspirational story that I was so excited to share because all the odds were stacked against you and even the people around you couldn't see the path until sometimes finding someone who's removed from the story that's been told about you yeah sees that everyone has the potential as long as there's burning passionate yeah lot of drive drive helps for sure and then you went and you took it on and you worked so hard so hard and then this is somewhere that we we share the same feelings which is it's one thing to have incredible Vision or to have all the the best wishes or will in the world but unless you go and back it up and you walk the walk it won't happen yeah yeah you have to go and put in the hours and that's what you did you basically disappeared hi for years yeah you turned your life upside down and you and it your all and it's so incredible and I'm so proud of you so let's talk about where you are now today you have been coaching on the side for 5 years along the way whilst you studied so let's talk about your thesis yeah take the floor tell us all about it tell us what you wrote so my thesis was titled how a Leader's level of Consciousness affects their executive function or it wasn't effects it was how it's related to because we did a what you would call a passive correlational design so we're not going to be suggesting any causation at the end of it um and the reason I chose that was because one I work mostly with leaders and so I'm very interested in the psychology that affects that demographic two I like working with leaders because they are a high impact individual which means that if you make them really happy fishing Full Cup you actually affect a bunch of people who you don't work with so it's of like a skittles bowling thing to do with human flourishing whereas if you work with someone who doesn't work in an organization and they're alone you can you can flourish that person but it might not have an immediate effect on like a team of subordinates or peers or sort of stuff like that um so you know predominantly work with Executives and in leadership so wanted to do it based on that demographic and then the question that I sort of had I've been coaching five years doing a lot of thinking and what I wanted to know is for me at the center of the coaching assumption is the idea that if we sit down and we're going to have I'm going to coach you I'm going to ask you a bunch of open questions about the situation that you're in we're going to discuss what's the situation like what do you want uh whether your current way of being is like hindering or helping you towards that and and outside of and inside of that I'm assuming that by you becoming more aware of the situation it's going to result in you having better valal control over your behavior to move towards what you want if I didn't assume that I would literally be sitting down with you expecting you to get really revved up and inspired but unable to do anything about it right so it h there has to be this sort of assumption that more awareness for the individual will result in better ability to coordinate their behavior towards a goal did you prove that to be true we well so if we then look at that one of the things that has to be occurring to sort of add weight to that assumption is that if I find someone who is really really aware they also should have very good ability to control their behavior right that would be the Assumption based on that coaching assumption and so what we did was we looked at do leaders who have higher levels of consciousness and this is consciousness more as a trait rather than a state so it's more that they have higher levels of self-awareness they are more uh pro-socially sensitive to the environment of like what other people are feeling instead of stuff like that um are people who basically more Consciousness more aware do they also have what when we had to find a measure for better behavioral like valal control um and so we chose executive function which is like this umbrella term that sort of encompasses lots of mental faculties that allow you to top down control your behavior and so variables with inside that are like planning working memory emotional control inhibition these sort of things and so when we looked at the two variables we did find yes that leaders who had higher levels of consciousness did also have higher levels of executive function but what we also found was that reflection was most strongly correlated to their ability to emotionally control their behavior to plan better and to shift their attention and so the reason I like that and I think that's so important is because I really like telling clients to journal I was about to say how do you encourage reflection journaling and I think people have a misconception of how to journal well and what I do say is that if you're using it to reflect to improve your life and and improve these other sort of domains of you know being able to plan better emotional control yes there is probably a time and a place for having a massive rant and a brain dump um and like getting all that negativity out I almost would encourage you to then like take that out of your Journal bundle it up and put it in the bin because I don't know how much it's going to serve you to reread the thing that you wanted to get out do you know what I mean because you're almost putting it back in at a later date then which is not really going to serve you I never read it back yeah no but I think some people they might do and they might be like oh I've got journal pages of just having a massive out oftion yeah yeah um so how do you encourage people to journal well I'd like people i' I say you know there's two things is that at the end of the day one of the best things I think you can do is that you're not really meant to be on your phone before bed right in a perfect world you're also probably not meant to be exercising a lot because it's not going to help you sleep you're also not meant to be eating so now like half an hour before bed things to do definitely don't drink no social sit in a room with your Journal yeah I know but I'm like that is that is a perfect time where you don't really have anything else apart you could read a fictional book which is also great to like turn your brain off but why not just take the 20 minutes before bed you get to wind down you get to not look at a screen you get to reflect on how your day went and you get to ask yourself you know have specific questions that enrich the reflection process like what was one thing that I learned today that I found really fascinating or what was like one thing today that really resonated at with me that sort of gave me that zest and Mojo feeling that I want to like actually bring my attention to and capture so that I'm more aware of the things that give me joy and stuff like that or it's like uh you know how did I uh like do something nice for someone else today and I like I also like to think I don't know if this falls into your negative pile but like how could I have done better today yeah yeah of course like like what or you know instead of saying how could I like how did I do well today like what what's one thing I could improve on for tomorrow you know that's a better way of and um and I think I I honestly think that's just it's such an underrated thing that you can do that if you build the practice of it because if your brain knows it's going to be asked a set of questions every evening it's going to start looking for answers during the day so it has the answers for those right positive reinforcement exactly and so if you're asking yourself how was today great you know what's one thing we could do to be even better tomorrow how did I give back today what did I do for some you know something that was nice for someone else you know maybe instead of when you're scrolling on the phone and you see someone coming in on tube you like oh my God I can give them my seat because I know that this is going to be like that thing that I did you know you're you're just you're going to give yourself a availability bias to look for the things that you're going to have to answer in the questions that you're going to ask yourself that evening and so I do I really think that that's an underrated thing that I think I almost think everyone could benefit from and I and I don't think that there's a Time compromise for the last 10 minutes before you go to sleep you haven't really got anything else better to do in that time anyway so yeah what else would you say are the tips and tricks that you regularly share with all these incredible Executives that you coach that we could easily Implement in our lives yeah so when I when I sort of came up with the like sentient term or like that's the sort of name of the business um you know I think loads of people have a real problem coming up with like the names of what they want to call their business and stuff like that and you know classic dyslexic I'm I'm I'm an absolute piece of making up words that don't belong in the English dictionary so I was like why not just keep with that and so for me sentian is about scent which is 100 so it's it's like 100 is like 100% like fully fully consciously sentient being being conscious being like conscious of creating your ideal self and I have to be so careful when I say that because ideal has a negative connotation to be an egotistical marketed version of self what I I don't mean that what I mean is that it is the person who is a version of yourself that is most aligned to your values that you would be most proud to become on that level of values and virtues not the proudest version that you would like to become to show off to your mates that you got some designer thing or a cool car or whatever so it's that sort of like much much deeper like this is a really aligned version of what I think is my values and I am closely aligning my behavior to this person how do you differentiate the two because I try to look at motives behind why I'm doing things like if I'm setting up my strategy for the year it's what's motivating you and it's very often that you go oh my God that's just ego I don't even want to do that necessarily I think that I am expected or I would be celebrated for doing that so looking at yourself in the mirror yeah how would you encourage people to get clear on the two so I you can totally put in fancy shiny things in with the ideal self I think the problem is is that what we trying to avoid is chasing a bunch of labels that when you get are not going to make you happy because it isn't aligned to any of your values and that's a really sucky place to be is that you go down this route you achieve all these things and you get all these accolades and then let's say your values are like you know um like helping others and like doing good and giving back and like all these things and actually you've really lived a life of like determination um being like super Cutthroat courageous um and then your life's an example of those and not of your more aligned deeper ones you're going to get cognitive dissonance and be a little bit you're like oh damn it you know like can I can I switch this up a bit so it's just 100% have the shiny things and I don't want it's not about oh you know okay I'm not allowed to want you know that that award or you can 100% want that award just check that it's aligned with your values so that the whole thing a holistic package where you know if no one saw that you got the award you're happy right it's when you're doing it for other people's approval and it isn't actually important to you that's when the barometer is like a little bit off I I think I love that that's such a good way of checking yourself so our CEO yourself principles are to have a Clear Vision a clear strategy and then to build the habits and lifestyle to support the fruition of that vision and strategy how do you recommend that your clients develop a really Clear Vision for themselves like you know we're coming towards the end of the year the listeners will be listening to this episode as they finish the year the work year I should say and you know it's an amazing time of year I think because it's an opportunity for introspection and everyone's offline so there's that incredible moment where you don't feel the pressure you're not missing meetings or emails at this point in the year and looking into the new year of 2025 how do you encourage the listener to look at what do they want to achieve this year what is their vision and how are they going to strategically make it happen yeah so I've actually I feel like I've coached enough that I've started to see like a pattern that because obviously the first thing you want to say is everyone's Journey's individual how am I going to give generalized advice like that's just not going to work but I think that is like having never met someone and them listening and being like give me something I can do without telling you my entire life you know like plans um there must be Trends yeah yeah exactly is that what I found I think serves everyone is like I would always start from actually value identification so have your top three four values like Center Stage before you plan anything because that is going to be your anchor for alignment and ending up when all fails in the right place right so I start with your values then it depends what kind of person you are and whether you're more clear on the person you want to become or whether you're more clear on what you want to achieve right and so depending on that I would actually go with the lowest hanging fruit cuz the other one will come depending on which one you lead with so for me I either get them to get really clear on what we call their sentian self which is that idea of this ideal self that's aligned with your values and not an egotistical for someone else self um and that when we do that we're like I want this person to basically create an avatar like I want it to be so so so clear like I know how they speak I know what they believe in I know how they handle conflict I know what their morning routine is I know how they love people I know how they show up in friendship like there is no part of this person who you want to become that is left under designed or unintentionally investigated right so it's literally like you've created someone who's almost real right in front of you and that does mean that the more real and the more you've made them into a person when you're in those situations where you're like I don't know what to do you can say okay well what would your sentient self do and that immediately if you've made that really clear it gives that person a sort of like droplet of right that's the most aligned Behavior because I know that this is what my sentient self would do and even though I'm feeling scared reactive defensive that's my immediate reaction to the scenario it's not my most intentional aligned behavior that I would take so that's really important is getting super super clear on that and then the other thing is I I always sort have say to people if they come into coaching and we like don't do an easy goal because you might be able to pursue the easy goal by yourself and you know you don't have to be here like I love chatting to you but like you know if we're going to like work together why not work together to something that you almost don't think that you could achieve by yourself and that's the purpose of this relationship is that I'm going to support you in those moments where you're like oh mate I don't know if I can do this and then you're like yes you can like you know 100% in you you have that other person to fill your cup when your Cup's running like a little bit low um and so the Everest goal you know I like people to do like five or 10 years because I it makes the one year ahead of you fit into a bigger picture and having that bigger picture I think is so important because I think if you chase yearby years in isolation they become disjointed parts of a jigel puzzle whereas if you have one year but you know that that's year one of year 10 and that there's this sort of summit at the end of that that you really want to happen then even the bits that suck in that next year that are like really admin heavy that aren't inspiring and don't fill you with zest do you know what I mean which they're inevit are going to happen you can be like but hold on this is one task that's part of this amazing Summit that I'm working towards that just means the world to me and it sort of injects that zest and Mojo thing back into the things that seem more trivial and like less inspiring to do but like you still need the energy to get them done so first things first get your values get your ideal self really really clear make like ideally a 10-year plan if you can't handle that make a 5year plan which puts your onee in context so you can connect to why you're doing all the things you're going to do over the next year and then when it comes to Habit implementation you basically take that first year and you break that down into 12 months and you now know what has to happen at the end of every single month for you to be on track to finish the year so that you can start year two of the 10-year plan at the end of it right and then if you want to go more detailed and you want absolute structure you take that one month and you plan the month and so now every single day you have purpose you don't just have purpose of a to-do list you have you're like raise on Detra or like Aristotle calls it Telos can't speak Greek so like me pronouncing that is going to go badly but um you know it's this idea of like you know purpose is one of the best fuels for the human mind and putting everything together where you get to get up you know here's a person who doesn't have any plans hasn't got clear on their own ideal self and they have exactly the same task to do as this person who's super clear on their ideal self knows exactly how this one day fits into the bigger picture of them like having their best life which one's having a better time with exactly the same day it's definitely this person right and so I think if th those are like the things you can do and honestly if you're on that train where you have your ideal self you have your values you have your year you've broken that down into even the smaller step so every day makes sense in a bigger picture and your compassionate to self not every day is going to be the best day but you know hopefully in your ideal self that you created for yourself that person's also going to be compassionate to the self when it's maybe like a less high performance day then at least you know I think we we spoke about this not on this podcast but you've only got so many decades can we talk about the decades I want you introduce the decade Theory yeah so you've got like at best eight or 10 like at best you know eight or 10 is kind of a push I feel like have like six I don't want to oh but then I feel like the first two decades no no ex no I meant total yeah yeah yeah I was like to on average you have like yeah 8 to 10 but in terms of work the first two are out the first two out the last one's out the last one's out let's hope at the end we can relax yeah yeah yeah exactly and so you have this sort of like you know almost like a 40-year push push span like you know if you wanted to leave something something that was important to you as some sort of Legacy or you wanted to take your talents and contribute in some way to the world this is this is actually your four decades like 1 two 3 four done and then you know yes of course you can pursue them later and there are people who pursue them much earlier so you know I'm going for a generalist rule but four de four four of anything is not a lot of things right and so you would only make this plan that I'm talking about four times that would be it you know which is it's just so crazy and so for me I I would not have been able to achieve what I have achieved now if I hadn't known how this all fits into a plan that I would pursue in a straight goal right I knew that I wanted to do coaching but I also knew that I wanted to become a charted coaching psychologist which I am on the route for now but like that's five years of reverse engineering one sit down like meeting with a bunch of people and a portfolio of work right and so sometimes when you want to sling a really really heavy Hammer you have to put in years and years and years of work to get the strength to be able to lift that one like handle and swing it properly and so it's that whole thing of like okay year one nothing exciting is happening in year one but it means that I get to year two and in year two it's going to be a little bit more exciting and then year three okay now I like can actually like hold my own and I'm I'm you know more of an expert and I understand these things like year four and then you just you start stacking all of them and you know knowledge and experience and professionalism it works on being compounded and so if you can stick with something for 10 years after those 10 years you're pretty damn good at that thing you know take the 10,000 hours right but I I hope in Reverse for those that are on the wrong path for themselves and know they are that they take this as the end of year wakeup call to reassess and jump off that train and then to jump onto the new one because even for me I call it year zero year for us we launched inch and the reason I call it year Z is because of that slaying kind of like not feeling like you're getting anywhere like of course you are but if you're particularly if you're like type A OCD yeah and you've got no compound got no compounding you are taking no leverage from any previous years so you are first principls enjoy and in those hard moments you shifted the thinking for me so much into this is the very beginning of the mountain it's okay that it's inevitably almost harder at the beginning because for example with your coaching when you started out you would have had to have a much more affordable rate or in fact you might have had to do it for free to get some experience yeah totally so to all of those out there we've been there and we continue to be there in a lot of ways and just seeing it as you've got to build those foundations so it's timely and it's expensive and it's harrowing but having that Vision as you said as to where you'll be in year two and five and 10 suddenly it makes that year one much more exciting yeah and motivating yeah and you're like I'm I'm going to take you know I already have planned in the grand scheme of things that this year is going to be a difficult year because you know I I'm not at year six where you know I'm known for this thing I've got practice in it I've got accolades or I've got you know social proof or all of those things um and even with like let's take it out of a professional sense and let's take it into for example just a study sense when I started that Masters oh my god did I have to eat Humble Pie and it was not good Humble Pie like it tasted bad like you know I got into the stack class and I was like I am so thick like I I do not get this like this is this is going to be an actual problem um and you were like I just I generally didn't have it's not that you have low you like suddenly have low selfworth but you're like if you always do the things that you're good at you do get this sort of like oh I'm good at things that's so nice you know and then when you go and do something that you are absolutely really bad at you sort of come crashing all the way down to like maybe those situations that we don't put ourselves in that we are at our early careers or early stages of life where you're like wow okay so I suck at this but this is one of those things that I'm going to have to learn to do if I want to do the thing that's really important to me so you know then it's just like we're just going to have to tredge through this like one stat at a time pretty much you know and so it's like okay you know if I don't get this I'm on YouTube I'm listening to a podcast I'm like watching a funny Ted Ed video about it because you're just you're determined you're like I this is I just have no basis for understanding this I have no pre-existing like I feel like all of My GCSE math is not with me right now to like help any of this make sense but and I I can acknowledge I am absolutely absolutely rubbish at it right now terrible and this is where your CEO superpower comes in at last rebellious self-belief yeah because where there's a will there's a way yeah why did you choose Rebel your self because I think it's you know I I definitely got branded with Rebel anyway I'm quite comfortable with that one do you know what I mean like it sort of it's followed me for a while um but when it comes to like rebellious self-belief it's that if you think of a rebel they will they are willing to like go It Alone even if no one else wants to go with them right and it's that like I don't I don't need the support maybe like I am just gonna make this happen come hell or high water you know and that's the kind of like Rebel energy is that everyone's like you know we're not with you or like you know you if you do that you're on your own or like you know or it's too hard exactly or it can't be done or stay in the safe road CU it makes everyone else feel comfortable yeah or like it's really really really unlikely you will be successful based on really good evidence so you are being semi- delusional in thinking that you can do this and so rebellious self-belief is the kind of like you know to Rebel is to Stick it to the Man it's kind of like yes 100% I have no evidence to think that I can achieve this I have actually ample evidence to prove that it is highly unlikely that I will be successful and I am most likely going to fall on my butt hard 100% I'm with you with that but I'm still going to do it anyway you know what because I really I like it and it's important and I think if I spent my life doing something I want it to be aligned with the thing that I think is aligned to my values and like does good for the world and is cool and like you know I want to be able to know the stats because I want to be able to be at the front of the theories that are going to help people that it there is I'm an an arm wrestle with life I have to do it so even if I'm going to suck at it I'm going to have to like figure a way through so what your advice to the woman out there who's listening and is so inspired and excited by this conversation that they want to suck it to the world and go and do that thing that they've always been told that they can't what would you say to them I think that they should 100% if there's something that they have a burning desire for and they and it's always niggled and they have self-doubt around whether they can or can't do it we live in such a cool age that I can say this I maybe couldn't have said this 20 years ago because I said to someone today I was like I'm a bionic academic right if you took all my tools away if I could couldn't listen to like the audio book version of the textbooks and if I couldn't rightclick and get the correct spelling of a word I'm pretty sure my thesis would have looked like absolute gibberish and I don't think my professors would have been able to mark it right so I'm I am a bionic academic I do rely if you took all my tech away I'm probably not going to be able to be successful in this endeavor but we live in an incredible world where like all of these things are coming together so you know even if you weren't good at something 10 years ago give it another go now because the world has changed massively and even if something that would have taken you a week to do 10 years ago can potentially take you one day now because there all of these things in place and so what I think it is is that you know first of all it's the being able to have the courageousness to reexamine things that you've tried that you have evidence that you can't do but maybe now things are different because of technological advances and maybe you're at a different stage in life and all this sort of stuff um and I also think that be ready to really really suck at it and and you know that's why I think knowing why you're doing it how it fits into a better bigger picture is so important because like there was no way I was going to do that Masters and not eat really severe Humble Pie like I was not going to walk in there and be like oh my God I never knew I was naturally gifted at really Advanced maths why has this been a secret to me all along like that was it wasn't going to happen you know it was going to be hard hard graphing and I think what puts people off is that they try something and they get there and they're like I hate this I have really low selfworth right now I'm trying to do this thing and I absolutely suck at it and that lots of people are sort of like I want to say I told you say but I'm not going to and the noise is like proven yeah yeah yeah and you know you have to push through it yeah and that's exactly the thing is that if you if you're going to embody rebellious self-belief you have just got to hanker down down to the deck and ride the storm you know and you have to be it's not going to be pretty I'm not selling you like a this is how you make your life like really like chilled and you know full of pink fairies and unicorns like I'm like this is going to hurt it is going to be like hard for your self-esteem and it is going to take a lot of cognitive effort but having you know it's that NY quote it's like he who has a why can survive anyhow you have you have to have a why because the the how of doing this new thing is going to be painful but it's going to be really cool and it's amazing for your self-esteem at the other end to do the hard thing and achieve it and to prove the nayay is wrong right exactly and I feel like the greatest metaphor for your rebellious self-belief is for those just listening Sabrina is incredibly tall how tall are you 6'2 6'2 and something I've so admired about her which in honor of that I'm wearing my highest highest heels today she never DED herself down or dimmed her Sparkle by wearing flat shoes to to make other people comfortable you always wore the highest heels and I've always admired that so much and every time I walked into a room and I could see you towering across people like where is she it's not it's very hard to miss you but I would always walk into a room and go wow that is so impressive and I always kind of like smiled to myself as I walked in because it became just who you are and I want that to be the closing message for The Listener is where the heels where the heels never lower yourself down to meet other people's expectations of you or to make other people comfortable yeah live in your fullness and your greatness and never be afraid and live rebelliously yeah and and what's I can actually so speak to that and this is this is I want to add something on the end which is that when I was younger I was 6'2 at about 14 right hard hard to be that to that age like ow um and I wasn't ready for the attention that you get from being that tall and I would like get up you know in the pub and I'd want to walk to the L and I'd hear people say as I oh my God that girl's so tall and look you know and you you start to do this right you start to really shrink into yourself because you're like H I just want to go to the bar and get another drink but you know I don't want to be this sort of like really obvious like you know and you get all the sort of you know I was called giraffe and all these names at school and d d and I think what was amazing with the process of actually getting older right is that it also helps you step into who you are even if that's different right and I think that I don't know the age range of your listeners but like you know when you're younger I did want to wear heels but I I mostly wore heels because I wanted to go out and and to be taken like seriously as an older than I was um but I also felt so insecure while doing it right I wasn't that person who was like I'm massive and tall and like I love it you know um but I think as I've got older you know it's that whole thing of like oh my God yeah I'm 6' two my hands are massive like almost can only wear guy gloves you know like literally can only shop at tool section you know um but you actually are like yeah I'm different that's me do you know what I mean and I think before you're like I'm different and I'm trying not to be really really hard you know just give me some seconds and I'll I'll figure it out and I think as you get older oh my God can I actually read a quote that I've seen recently that is like literally blown my mind and I think people should really hear it and I couldn't believe I hadn't heard it before and it's just I'm living by this at the moment okay this is brne brown we love her so she put you either walk inside your story and own it or stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness oh that one is hitting me so hard at the moment because I think there's there is this tempting that if you are slightly different you do want to be like can I just conform can I just be like everyone else and plen in that would be amazing and you know if you're 6' two or if you're really dyslexic or whatever it is that you have I think your life will be more enriching more fulfilling more aligned if you can find the courage to embrace to be the best version of yourself vers versus what we have which is being the best version of a societal self and at the end of the day individuality is what makes us beautiful yeah exactly so own and embrace it yeah B we have to wrap up although I could talk all day to you um where can the listener find you um so they can either find me on my Instagram which is Sabrina C Percy um and then if they want to get into the sort of purely coaching side of things the best place to go is my website which is ww..co.uk amazing we'll link everything in the show notes thank you so much for being here thank you so much I'm so proud of you and I cannot wait to see where the next 10 years take you yeah and I can't wait to see you past year zero it's going to be great it's going to be amazing you can make it you can make it thank you it would mean the world to me if you would share today's episode with someone you feel would enjoy it and don't forget to hit subscribe like and leave a comment