Is Self-Deception Blocking Your Success? with Andrea Goeglein aka Dr Success

“You don’t wake up and say you’re going to be brave today. You stumble upon it, and it’s the continual showing up, it’s the continual ability to look at the fear and not deny the reality, but to defy the reality. Be optimistic, make it grounded, and the tools are all here for us to use.” - Andrea Goeglein

Often there’s a force holding us back in our lives and in our workplace, and it’s a lot closer to use than we think. Today’s expert guest is here to talk about the role that self-deception plays in holding us back, and the practical ways that we can start overcoming it in order to reach for the success that we each desire, and deserve.

Andrea Goeglein is part applied positive psychologist, part entrepreneur, and all about success—your success.

She understands both the pressures you face and the dreams that inspire you.

Andrea merges her experience as a business owner with her training in Positive Psychology to provide effective, efficient and challenging personal development experiences. She combines an emphasis on objective assessment with an approach that is always powered by your spirit and guided by your goals. Her professional development offerings are based in theory and backed by direct business knowledge.

She views success as a way of being, organic and ever-evolving. It is the part of your nature that must be nurtured. In other words, success is more than achieving financial wealth and business results. It’s also about self-awareness, self-acceptance and love of self.

In this episode you’ll hear Andrea’s own inspiring personal journey, and the powerful reframes she has used and continues to teach her clients to achieve success in their own lives.

Connect with Andrea: https://servingsuccess.com/

Get the free video series on The Five Habits That Help Women Rise:

http://bravebydesign.net/fivehabits

Learn more about working with Laura one-on-one:
https://www.bravebydesign.net/private-coaching

Invite Laura to speak at your live or virtual event https://www.bravebydesign.net/work-together

Connect with Laura Khalil online:

instagram.com/iambravebydesign

linkedIn.com/in/LauraKhalil

What You’ll Hear In This Episode: 

• What exactly self-deception is and why it can be so hard to detect [8:07]
  
  
• How women often self-deceive in the workplace [14:09]
   
• When the pain of staying the way you are becomes greater than the fear of change, this happens [17:33]
   
• Helpful techniques to gain clarity and to take control of your thoughts [20:14]
   
• How to take action, speak clean language and use facts [22:21]
  
  
• Why we often jump to the worse scenario of self-deception - but it doesn’t have to be this way [25:49]

Additional Links & Resources: 

Andrea’s Don’t Die Book Series  

Her Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & LinkedIn

Andrea’s YouTube Channel 

The Messaging Shift to get prospects to stop, drop and run to work with you --> Free Messaging Walkthrough and Guide

Transcript

Andrea Goeglein : 0:00

You don't wake up and say, Oh, well, I'm going to be brave today. No, no. you stumble upon it. It's the continual showing up. It's the continual ability to look at the fear, not deny the reality, defy the reality. be optimistic, make it grounded. The tools are here for us to use. Welcome to brave by design. I'm your host, Laura Khalil. I'm an entrepreneur, coach and speaker. I love thinking bait, exploring the power of personal development and sharing the best strategies from thought leaders and pioneers in business to empower ambitious women and allies to bravely rise and thrive. Let's get started. Everyone, welcome to this episode of brave by design. I am just so pumped for our guests today and our talk today. I have with me Dr. Andrea Goeglein. Let me tell you a little bit about Andrea before we get into that She altered the truth of her age and got a job on Wall Street in a brokerage firm at 14. By 24, she opened her first operating business, a Haagen dazs ice cream store in Reno, Nevada. Many businesses and a PhD in organizational psychology later she felt she had experienced enough stress and anxiety to be an expert. Love it today. She is a success catalyst and you may know her as Dr. Success. Andrea is the founder curator and author of the don't die self improvement collection of books. Her latest book is don't die waiting to be brave. Oh, and you know I love the topic of bravery. As an expert in applied positive psychology. She is your success Sherpa guiding you as you climb the mountain of success. Oh my god, Dr. Success. Welcome to the show. Doesn't that just you know, here is one of the really cool things. There's a whole bunch To me that like, Oh my gosh, that's so sticky. But I must say that as I created it with the guidance of professionals, what it made me feel it turned my life It showed me what the concept of reframing and refocusing can do with the level of language. And I would offer to everyone listening today to write two versions of your intro, the down and dirty version. Mm hmm. And then the version that you know, when you craft the language to make someone smile, or to give them a visual love, oh my gosh, that was horrible, but, and the buck turns into that, and this is what happens. That's how you do it. I love it. It's so energetically it made me feel good. I want to know who the hell is this woman? I mean, this is incredible. So it's funny because we brought you on today. And we're going to get to this folks, we brought you on to talk about the role that self deception plays in holding us back. But before we get there, I really want to understand, let's just start with like the first sentence in your bio. Please tell us your story. Andrea, how what does that actually that's actually a really fun story. And then I can attach it to a slight piece of reality. Awesome. I was very, very fortunate to be born into a family of three older brothers and myself. I was the youngest. My youngest of the boys, my brother Wayne, was this incredible spirit during his lifetime, where he really wanted a party Hardy and take on this was a man who, so I was born in 55. He was born in 50. He was selling pot as his first occupation. Okay, and Wait, where are you living in Queens, New York, okay. The home I was born in, my parents lived in they were married. 74 years before my dad passed, my mom is still in possession of the home, although doesn't live there. So we, what happened was my brother, he loves to have fun, but didn't actually like to have real jobs. And one day during spring break, one of his friends call and worked at this brokerage firm in on Wall Street, pine, right, or pine or something like that. And it was 100 Wall Street. And he said, You know, I've got this little side job, and I want your audience who probably has no conception of this, because it's, I mean, it was such a cool thing. There was a time when there was such things as stockbrokers, and you got statements and your statements had to be folded. And that was done that part was done by machine but then they had to be stuff that was all manual. And so he did some people at the end of every month to stuff envelopes. So I sent to the young man, you know, Wayne's not here, but I'm off school this week. And my gosh, so he said to me, okay, just lie about how old you are. Because I was being paid off the books anyway. And what happened was, I was going to Catholic school. I went to the job with a dress on, not in jeans. This is 1973. And I went, actually, no, it was 7171. I went in the way I would have been trained to do this in a dress. Everybody else shows up in their hippie, little 1970s outfit. And I of course, I'm very efficient on that kind of stuff. And I caught the eye of the office manager. And after the three days, he came to me now remember, he thinks I'm 18 years old. Yeah, cuz that's how old I gotta say I was, oh my gosh. And he said, You know, I know. You're still In high school, but would you like to come and work after school or the summers? And I said, Sure. And to my memory now because of the year and it was 1970. I had to do it. during the summers he was offering me this was Easter break, he was offering me a summer job, okay. And so I quickly go to the man who had called me and said, they've asked me to fill out paperwork. What am I going to do? Right. And so we fessed up, we went to the manager, we said, Listen, I'm actually only 14 years old because my birthday is December. So although it was 1970, I wouldn't have turned 15 until December. And he was said such a great thing. He said, If you can get working papers, I mean, I was dealing with punch cards, computer punch cards, and filing, you know, wasn't a high risk job. Right. And I got that job and I kept it every summer. worked in my senior year, but it gave me And you know, I'll get very direct with self deception and bravery. Because each time I've been asked to reflect on where you come from where you come from what I know and you say brave by design. I know for me, the design is something I've never really been completely aware of. But what I have been willing to do is show up. I love that. And that historically, has been so for me, that ability to pivot at 14 years old and saved my brother's not here, but what about me, really came out of a traumatic childhood where there was sexual child abuse, but for reasons again, I did not by design, be brave, but I held the memories of what happened so that by 10 years old, I could actually say something. So again, did I decide no I allowed I observed something, and connected pieces of information. So for me, as humans, self deception is the greatest gift you will ever be given. Because if you ever allow your brain to have all of the information at once, honestly you can't do what I teach people and, and that is never deny reality, never deny reality. But then quickly, keep your eye on the one thing, half a thing, anything that may seem to be hope. So don't deny the reality of what's going whatever traumatic events don't deny them, where you came from economically what the color of your skin is, or your ethnic background, things you can't hide from Hmm, do not deny the impact of these things. But look for that moment of light that one shimmering thing and keep your eye there and hope Build in that direction. So for me self deception is actually the impetus of bravery. Because Wow, you is you actually show yourself enough so that you can potentially see where there will be help, but not so much that you, your brain can handle it and has to shut down. So Okay, so first of all, I want to just go back to your example, but you and your story of your life. Okay? You had an incredible skill for self advocacy at a young age. Correct. And that is very interesting because most people don't learn that even into their 20s 30s and 40s. How to say, Hey, what about me, I'm gonna raise my hand. So I want to point that out because that really stuck out to me now. Please, let's unpack this idea a little bit more around self deception, because you say it's the impetus for bravery. So give Some example of I'd love to hear it. So for people in the workplace, where does this often have her? Tell us about that, you know, historically where I have found it in my work with others, and even in, you know, all of the things, if a piece of information declining sales is a piece of information, new boss, piece of information, your name gets taken off of email groups, piece of information. That's all these are pieces of information. Now, there are some people who go into fear and they go into high drama conversations, and they want to have a fight about those things. Mm hmm. What I would suggest that you do is downtown your language, collect things as a piece of information. So in the workplace when you're seeing these pieces, and what I have seen people do one of the most startling and in my work every so often they will be Someone whose case just this one comes for a number of years ago in a construction company, I was hired by the CEO, because he had his lead operation person who was a power problem. Okay, now, in my work, if someone tells me somebody else's problem, I immediately start looking at who the real problem is.

Unknown Speaker : 11:23

Right? Exactly. Okay.

Andrea Goeglein : 11:25

So, I now start having meetings with the ops person. The ops person, actually in a conversation said, Well, I know I will never get fired, no matter how angry he gets at me, I will never get fired, because I gave him alone when he needed it. And I'm sitting across this thinking thing. I wonder why he thinks those two things are connected. an inability to get fired with having a lot like, could be loyalty could be this, but honestly, it's the seeds of self deception. That's how we do it. We collect in our own minds. A storyline that if I do this, this will happen. And it started with. If you get good grades, you'll get into the best schools. If you do the best work, you'll get promoted. If you do this, and you know what, you could do all those things, and you can get fired, and you cannot get into the schools. So we're changing these things at a young age. Absolutely. And my gift in my life, it is not that I advocated for myself, let's be real. I was not advocating for myself. There were environmental things that happened. Historically, I would now say that it was it seeded my willingness to be an advocate. But honestly, at that point in life at 10 years old when I first told about things, it was more I had been brought up in a progressive environment. I had three brothers. I took on the persona have their energies. So I was given that view that you you go from zero to 100 even if you should go a little slower Yeah, I am extroverted. I didn't plan to be extroverted. So if I have a thought it comes out my mouth a little too fast, most of its sure that Yes, okay. So what I want to share with your listeners is self deception is actually there's not a one size fits all things happen. You could be so so focused on a family crisis, that you don't pick up on cues in your workplace, that normally if you didn't have the family crisis you would have seen now Are you being self deceived? No, but that is what ends up happening. Cushing you are using the same attribute of looking the other way, looking the other way. looking the other way? And really, that's how self deception happens. When it happens. It's more grandma ways. Yes. Do you see certain patterns with how women self deceive? in the workplace? Are there certain common things that you're seeing? Or is it just? Or we all do? And I don't want to answer your questions like that unless I have a piece of science attached to it. So I'm going to clearly say no, and I'll quickly through my brain and think, no, you know, my experience is actually the, I'm going to say my experiences the opposite, okay, that women may remain quiet about things they see very clearly longer than a man would. That would be my experience, but they see it faster. I find women because of their multi dimensional commitments and multi dimensional communities. We're only in you know, we have The first 40 years of understanding how different roles impacted, and now we're into the next 20 years where men were trying to switch roles and integrate roles and do all these things with roles. Well, women never give up their multi dimensional responsibilities. They no matter how brilliant they are, and how successful they are, if they have love relationships, if they have children, if they have family relationships, if they have community commitments, if they have something that they got attached to, because of the love of someone else, all of that feeds in to what they bring to work at a different level in my experience than what men do. Men. were permitted a myopic for the first 25 years of my own career. The reason I like to work so much reason why I put that 14 year old incident is not because it was me lying about my age so much as in the midst of a chaotic childhood, having to show up at work, which had rules and times you had to be there in ways that ordered the chaos. Wow. Okay. So that's what we do as human beings and men had it easy for generations, because they only had one responsibility. Everything else that had to do with trauma that creates the majority of the traumas, actually, women were taking care of in their communities. And men just had to provide the money to get it going. I don't take that lightly. But I do. I know that my experience with my extroverted behavior and I do have a dominant tendency and these are the things that are the best for you to know about yourself and for free, you can do all of it, you can find out the little pieces of yourself so that you can reduce the potential of big self deception. By understanding how you interact with the world the best. It's always important for me to reduce all things like self deception down to who am I, how am I behaving? How could I do it better? for myself and others? Fascinating. So okay, let me ask you this. People were all in somewhere for him. What I hear you saying is we are gathering information. We put a label on that information and create a narrative or story around it to suit our beliefs, perceptions, or, you know, thoughts or whatever, hands down. Okay. So why don't we just keep self deceiving? I break out of it. What happens to someone when they say like, do people have a breaking point where they're like I can't do this anymore or this certain clinical terms. And I am not a clinician, and what I have a friend who is a clinician, Courtney Warren, who in fact, what I have delineated between her work and my work is her obligation is to diagnose pathology. My obligation to my clients is to find a path. Okay? You know, clinical terms such as cognitive dissidence in the self help community, one of the lines that really guided me young, when the pain of staying the way you are becomes greater than the fear of change. That's when we change and we have evolved that by saying and it is because we are given so much information, that now we are taking control better in order to maintain your mental health and ruin resiliency and IE life success in work and in all of your arenas, you must be the greatest guard to what you feed your mind. And so do not deny, I work in the field of grounded optimism. I do not deny the devastation of what's around me, whether it be medical, at the heart level, you name it. I wish I didn't see as clearly as I do on many days. However, from the moment I see clearly, my job is to then do what needs to get done, take the right action, and are totally has a line that I love. You either have a problem or you don't. You either need to take an action or you don't if there's no problem, don't take an action. If there's a problem taken action done. I have that kind of personality.

Unknown Speaker : 19:56

It's simple.

Andrea Goeglein : 19:58

It is. We make it Very hard. I make it very hard. Sometimes it takes me two or three days to realize, Oh, wait a minute. All I have to do and these are the techniques and I want to offer these to your listeners. Yes. The way you get clear, get it out of your head, put it on paper as quick as possible. If you notice that you keep getting distracted, you're at work and you keep getting distracted. Why am I off that email? Why am I off that email? Why wasn't I invited to that meeting? Why am I off that email? Stop yourself. And I prefer paper and pencil paper and pen writing instrument write down? I am currently concerned about this. Take control. I am currently concerned about this evidence. And there is actually in positive psychology and ABCDE disputation. There's actually an exercise where you name the wolf. Okay. You say what is it? What's coming at me? What's the evidence Is there an action? Or is there no action? Okay, so the activity to break the cycle is to in fact, write it down as quickly as possible. If you're of the mindset, do a little more writing about it, but just putting down the base, you know, it can even be I'm really pissed off that they've taken me off of this mailing list. What does it mean? You like, talk to yourself? I would then either hide that piece of paper or rip it off. Yeah, but what you've done is taken out of the redundant brain cycle. Hmm. And you have begun the process of identifying if there is a potential problem or am I just being crazy? And let yourself just be crazy sometimes, you know, but that helps you understand, am I being self deceptive or am I being just, you know, this redundancy of the brain? So Android by evidence, you mean actual physical evidence? Not the thoughts in my head. Those aren't true. Right? The evidence would be Janice just told me that everybody was invited to a meeting that I had been invited to last month, but I am not invited to this month. Hey, that's evidence. Yeah, crazy. So action. Do I go to the originator? and say, I know there is going to be a meeting on Thursday. I have not been invited. Is that intentional? Huh? Now, we want to talk about brave by design. That's brave by design, right?

Unknown Speaker : 22:37

That's the hardest part for people.

Andrea Goeglein : 22:39

Thank you. And you have just identified why we have a problem with self deception, because the pain hasn't gotten high enough yet. So I didn't spend all this time in my head. I am afraid that having a very clean conversation or a female noticed my language it was clean. I didn't go to the person and say, Hey, you left me off that email. Hey,

Unknown Speaker : 23:07

right. Let's be slightly accusatory.

Andrea Goeglein : 23:12

Thank you. Okay, so what I did was acknowledge reality. I've been in fact exceeding facts. When you need to be brave by design, cut the emotional language out. Take the drama out of the trauma is my motto. Okay, the drama out of the trauma. Don't start the conversation by you know, I feel really bad. I wasn't invited to this meeting. Really? No, I don't care. I got things to do. I can't heal the I didn't hire you to deal with your feelings. I hired you to do this. So your responsibility is you have to take the drama out Have the situation so that in fact, you can get to a resolution that would put the person in the position of saying it was an oversight, or actually, there's no reason for you to be at that meeting. And then the next, bravery by design, you must, and it won't happen in that moment, it will happen when you get back to your desk, I have to schedule a time to ask the question, why was I taken off the list? Yeah, if you take care of the small stuff, it may not get that much bigger. And that's the trick of self deception. And that's why as I started in my conversation, self deception is this really incredible gift that we whoever designed this mechanism gave to us. And what it is, is it allows you not to take in so much information that you can't move forward. The other side of it is you have to learn to manage that cycle. Because a lot of that drama when I love your example, and I love how clear that is for everybody listening, because everyone's been in that situation where we start running the story, and what I hear you saying, is a lot of that drama, maybe not always. But in many cases that drama born of self deception is in your head, that may not necessarily be out in the reality. Yeah, I have this really funny story that I used to tell when I would use this work. And how do you build better relationships as part of I don't die? Yeah, sometimes whatever the subject that would come up. And so here's the story and I because I live in a heterosexual world with I've been married almost 40 years, I'm going to use a he she, you know, so you know, husband and wife have a very normal life and relationship. Each of them have their own jobs, and all of a sudden the wife starts noticing that the husband being more quiet than normal and she Asking like you seem quiet you think I've no No, no, no, no nothing, you know, a very typical situation and then, you know, some time or other you come upon a piece of paper and you see a phone number and you see Laura 212 on it. And then you start in really starts going mind's racing. Oh, mind's racing, and you go and you, you know, show him this piece of paper. You're great. I'm going to show you and he's given you this invasive like, I don't know, I maybe someone just, I can't remember where that who that is where that number came from. You our anxieties gone crazy, crazy, crazy out. It never dawned on you. That potentially this person who you're in a relationship with, maybe was trying to build a surprise for you. Maybe you have an anniversary or an upcoming birthday or something where he was and it was too hard to try and stay and cover it up and come conversation. So instead, you go silent, a very typical thing for people to do. However, equally typical, females aren't generally thinking, Oh, my God is planet prize. No, no. So the Laura on the 212 phone number was nobody but a party planner was trying to keep this great surprise, we will all have these wonderful things. We do that to ourselves all the time, we often go to the worst we do. And out of the brain structure. The reason that we did that is because the brain as it developed, was in a fight or flight. They were dealing with big animals coming after them. There was a reason to really get there fast. There is a reason why our brain lights up or in danger. There is a reason that doesn't mean that we can't make ourselves knowledgeable of the reasons And then use the techniques that once we notice that we calm it down. Now I know you're called Dr. Success see and why brain by design your title brave by design, it is a choice in bravery is not something that you don't wake up and say, Oh, well, I'm gonna be brave today. No, no, you stumble upon it. It's the continual showing up. It's the continual ability to look at the fear, not deny the reality, defy the reality. be optimistic, make it grounded. The tools are here for us to use. Ah, you know, I absolutely love that. And as you were, we were talking a little bit about brave by design, when I believe to your point is if you show up and do the hard thing, it actually kind of gets a little bit easier over time.

Unknown Speaker : 28:53

I conversations aren't as scary.

Andrea Goeglein : 28:55

They are not. And again, I'm going to go back to that paper or pen and pen Please don't think you can do this and have those scary conversations off the top extemporaneously. We currently live with a lot of examples because a video and TV where people who speak extemporaneously sometimes don't get the point across the way they want to craft your message. If you I'm an extrovert, I'm going to and I have a lot of sharp edges. I tell a lot of people Thank God you're meeting me at this point in life because if you met the young version of me, it would have scared the heck out of you. So scared the heck out of you. So write down the cracking me. I want to have a fist by you verbally, version of what you want to say. That will tell you how you have to down code the drama until you can get to the cleanest message and then it is with that preparation probably Four or five sentences down the page that you go and say, I know that there is a meeting on Thursday, fact, I was not included. That is that intentional fact, boom,

Unknown Speaker : 30:14

removing

Andrea Goeglein : 30:15

all of that emotional sort of response. I love that guys. I hope you are hearing this and Andrew, how can people learn more? How can they learn more about this technique and learn more about you? Okay, so the glory of being where I am in life, meaning I've been here a while. I have tons and tons of investment free. And here. This is the snarky ust I'm going to be today. I have a piece that goes out on social media every so often. That is my picture with a statement that says, if you don't do the free stuff, my fee is not the problem. So I'm going to direct all of your listeners to all the wonderful free stuff that is available. If they go to my site serving success calm, they'll be invited instantly to get their values and action. This is a scientifically valid instrument where you get to learn your top strengths. And using your strengths is one of the easiest ways one to be brave and to to not self deceit. If you want to play around the whole site, I've got everything from one minute audios of inspiration to TV shows on various books, to a YouTube channel, under my name and Dr success where there is a library of topics, just to keep you going. And that's what I want you to know. Self deception is something that we can manage. It has a usefulness, but the way we know how to manage it is by taking in as much information as possible of the positive type, so that you can find those seeds that you can use in your life. Oh, Dr. success. Thank you. So much for joining brief by design. I have loved this discussion and I have learned a lot. Super Thank you, Lauren. You know, I never take an invitation lightly. I am honored that you asked me and I thank everyone for listening. I want to thank you for joining me and remember to subscribe through your favorite app so you can stay up to date, and I would love your review. If you've enjoyed this episode, please leave a review and comment on Apple podcasts. You can also keep in touch with me online. You can find me on LinkedIn and I'm also on Instagram at force of badassery. All that information will be available in the show notes. Until next time, stay brave