Welcome to the Sword of Sure Podcast. Where doubt looms, fear whispers, and the only way forward is through. I'm Samar Carbo and if you've ever felt like you're just sort of sure about what you're doing, you're not alone. This is where we face the uncertainty. Push past the hesitation and keep going anyway way. So take a breath, step in, and let's move forward together. Hello and welcome to the Sword of Shore podcast. As you may have heard in the beginning, my name is Samar Carbo and I am so excited to bring this conversation to you today. I spoke with Dr. Michelle Greenwell recently and she has some amazing thoughts for you on the self doubt and imposter syndrome front. But as we get into it, I want you to do your best to divorce yourself from your beliefs, suspend your disbelief, and let her teach you some lessons. You the point of every conversation in the world isn't that all of it happened the way when someone tells you a story or something, the point isn't that all of it happened the way they perceive the world. Your future self doesn't even need you to see the world the way Dr. Greenwell sees it. You owe it to your future self to understand that it happens, that maybe you don't have to think about the fact that it happened the way she said or that the world is the way she says. I think what's far more helpful is to think of it as the world happened. And she used fantastic problem solving skills and techniques to get herself out of a sticky spot and into a better one. She is giving great tools today and I look forward to you learning from them. But before we get there, if you have a story of imposter syndrome or self doubt, go ahead and reach out to me. Shoot me an email at sort of surepodmail.com I can't wait to hear hear from you. Let's have a listen.

My name is Dr. Michelle Greenwell and that is a PhD in Complementary and Integrative Health. My specialty is in movement to heal the body and that comes from a history of having many injuries and illnesses in my childhood and having to overcome all of that and learn how to be able to thrive and heal from it, but also to move forward. And so I do Tai Chi dance. I have different healing arts that I do. Lots of them is now movement based and frequency and I own a tea company and that tea company allows me great conversations with people leading them into wellness.

Well, it's possibly a silly place to start, but I hope this is important to you, what is your favorite tea right now?

Oh, my gosh. I was an outdoor festival yesterday, and I had several people ask me that question. Then they stand and wait. It depends what my intention is. The reason I say that is all the teas in the Cape Breton Tea Company, all of the teas have an intention on them. And so knowing what I want out of my project, my day conversation, I'm going to have. I'm going to choose the tea that has the best intention. So I'm not choosing it by. I want a black tea, a green tea. I want it to have lavender, chamomile or anything like that, because it's good for something. I want to pick the blend that's going to lift me up the best way.

Oh, I love that. Now, as you're sort of going through making your teas and things like that, how do you, I guess, infuse the intention?

So there are several ways. So one is the combination of herbs and how they work together. So I look at the relationship of the herbs to each other. So they've got the partner that they have maybe with one other herb, but then they have the relationship that all of them do together in that particular combination. Then you have the intention that ends up being put on the package based on that. And it might be, I have the 1909 first flight on Bade Bay, which is Canada's first flight in Canada with Alexander Graham Bell and all of his team. And that was right after the US had their flight. So I created a tea that was based on what Mabel had chosen to put into all the beverages, refreshments and things that she was serving the guests. And Alexander preferred a raspberry lemon shrub, which is like a vinegar. And I thought, okay, in February, is that what she's going to be serving as something cold? Probably not. So she would have had some kind of a hot combination. So I chose a pu erh black tea, which is caramelized. And then I have the raspberry lemon flavor within it. So you can see then how all of that's going to package together. And then the intention on the package and. And then on top of that, we infuse it with music. So we have different kinds of music that we'll play while we're packaging the tea. We always take the intention of the tea while we're working with it and bring it to life. And if we have a kitchen party here where we have a bunch of musicians, they actually all get stickers that say that they're in music and fusion Artists, they have a special label because they're helping out with the tea, and then all the tea here has been infused, so.

Oh, that's so fantastic.

The tea that's in front of me at the moment is releasing the warrior. Knowing what your audience is looking for with the conversation. Releasing the warrior is for the wood element. Anger and resentment, Liver gallbladder, detoxing, changing the way you're doing things and then being refurbished by the power of wood and the trees and how you can be lifted up. So that's what I chose for today, and that's for the wit element. And so we can play through all the water, fire, central and governing, and each system has its own tea.

Wow. And where were you educated? And can you talk a little bit about your specialty?

I started out with a psychology degree after I finished high school and that psychology degree, I finished it, but I decided that was not how I wanted to do my work, and I decided I would open a dance studio and I would go to movement, because that's what I really love doing. And of course, in hindsight, now I know I'm a kinesthetic person, which is I needed more movement in my life. I just didn't know that because at that time, we weren't identifying any of those pieces that the way people like to learn. And so I opened the dance studio, ran it for 22 years. I knew that people needed healing tools, particularly in the dance community, because there were so many injuries. My mentor used to watch dancers go across the stage and he could fix them from the audience. And so he could. He would see them go across the stage and say that that quad isn't functioning correctly, and he could turn it on. And then he would say, oh, those glutes aren't operating correctly, and he'd adjust them. I was like, there's no way I am ever going to have that kind of skill. Like, I'm never going to be where you are. And then one day, there I was, and I was like, wow, I'm actually here. I can't believe that I made that possible. And those skills just. They come with time, they come with your experience, they come with your injuries that come with your challenges. And then you have to look at what is. How do you want to turn that around? Because you could sit there and wallow in. I have really bad knees, but it's not very functional. So it's like, how. How do I get my knees to be the best they possibly can be? How do I keep the energy the way I want it? To be. And then how do I keep moving that forward? So, wow.

So. And I, and I absolutely love that story. I don't know how things like that are possible in my current iteration of it. Reminds me of a friend of mine who is a body worker, massage therapy. And he spends a lot of people a lot of time with people who do yoga and reiki and things like that. And he went to a workshop where they just explained things. And the teacher said to everyone, I don't know why this works. I'll teach you everything. I'll show you my intent, I'll explain my intention and it'll work. And I promise you every time it will work. And it blew my mind. And then he did it and it worked. And that's to hear that this, you know, almost medicine man, quality to life here in very Western, very industrialized civilization just kind of blew my mind. And so as you're sort of growing into this and you had the teacher with the diagnosing people and fixing people from the audience.

I'm not the person to work on a corporate team. I'm not the person that does the day job 9 to 5 sitting at their desk. I'm not that person. I'm the creativity person. I'm the idea person. I'm the person who asks a zillion questions of why and just because it's always been that way, is it true? Do we really need that? That's not necessarily the person who can follow another leader, because you'd be questioning the leader all the time. So I do know that about myself. But there's this space that we have where yes, you can doubt yourself, but then the question is why? And one of the things I kept in my mind as a performer, as I had this little phrase that I kept up, it is our responsibility as the performer not to be nervous because the audience did not come to see you be nervous. They came to see a performance.

That's.

That's your job. So that's my job while I'm doing this work. So if I'm maybe the person I'm working with as a one on one, we're not compatible. That's okay. Not everybody's gonna be. But I can certainly send them to the colleagues that I have where they could be compatible and that's okay. And I'm gonna have people who are always gonna buy store bought tea and they're not gonna buy the organic, high quality blend, but that's okay. That's their journey, right? So I had to learn that, right? That not Everybody's gonna go there. So I've got to just back up and go, it's not my story, and it's not my journey. Just here to offer the suggestion, and then if they take it, that's great. But from the perspective of not being enough, obviously I have this thing about needing more knowledge. So I don't have a free reading book on my nightstand. I have textbooks, and I'm looking at documentaries. I'm not really looking at fluff. I don't want a romance novel because I really want to know, how does that work? So that's where I do spend a lot of my time, and my poor husband has to put up with it.

Now, did you. Was this a more recent thing, or did you grow up and your parents were the types of people who really explained to you early on that just confidence exists and you can be a person who has it?

We never had that kind of conversation. I watched my parents be entrepreneurs. I've watched four generations of entrepreneurs in my family. So they were always working hard to be able to put the food on the table. That's for sure. They were always working hard to do their best. Not always in what they wanted to do, but what was going to provide for the family. But I had a grandfather that was an inventor. I didn't realize how incredibly inventive he was, of course, until after he passed. And I realized, wow, all the things he tried to show me to pay attention to. So there's watching and seeing how they do things. And I do really observe people and behavior. That's my psychology background. My parents have always accepted whatever I've chosen, and then they've just gone behind me 100%. I've never heard, we don't like that guy. We don't think you should do this. Why in the world would you move across the country? Instead, they said, I will get in the van and I will drive the van for you, and we'll take you across the country. That's what they said. So there was never. There was never any that doesn't fit in with our story. There was always, that's your story, and we're willing to be here for you and your story. And I think that makes a difference. And they weren't there to judge. I know they have their opinions. Not to say we don't have our disagreement, but there's also been this way of living that has been about striving for your best.

Oh, that's so awesome. I want to know if there's somebody who wants to soar to the heights that you have. I mean doctorate, many specialties. You have the whole Greenwell Center. What would you say to a person who is stuck in imposter syndrome or just mired in self doubt?

Don't believe in the imposter syndrome. Sure we have doubts. Should I be doing this? Should I not be doing this? Did I do the best job I could have done? That's our critical thinking. Our critical thinking allows us the opportunity to do better the next time. And if we don't do that, then we're just going to stay where we are. So we need that peace, but we don't need to be stuck in that peace. That's where if you're goal setting and setting intentions and you know where you're going, that's when you know you're not going to be stuck because you'll be able to look at it and go, okay, I didn't do that speech very well or I didn't do that interview as I wanted to. My two pitfalls were here, now how do I fix that? And then off you go, right? And they wanted me to be this kind of person and I don't think I have those skills. Well then go get those skills. You know, rather than sit back and go, I don't think I'm good enough. I don't think I should have been there. Well then what is the problem? Go, go and find it. Go in and make yourself better. The other piece that comes from my Tai Chi is I do Master Moy Lin Chin's form of Tai chi and you have to teach from your heart, which means you cannot have monetary gain. So I do a lot of volunteer hours because I love Tai Chi and I'm devoted to making sure other people have the opportunity for wellness for themselves and they have access. So teaching from the heart can be hard because if you don't have enough paycheck coming in, you have that side of things. But the other thing is it doesn't matter if there's one person in front of you or there's 25, everybody has value. The reason you're there is for that full lesson and you deliver it. And what it means is everything else that I touch is always about how is my action or my opportunity going to help somebody else be better. If I go back to my quote that I used for performance, they're not coming to see me be nervous. That leader is not going to hire you because they want to sit and watch you squander and think about it and self doubt and blow up a meeting. They didn't hire you for that. They hired you because they felt you could do that job. And then your job is to do the job. And then if you've got the doubts.

Go find the training thanks again to Dr. Michelle Greenwell for an awesome conversation and some great tools. I want to go back real quick to something she said. If you've got the doubts, go find the training. That harkens back to so many great conversations with awesome people, but it makes me think of the Will Ball episode that we had very early on where he said, you're asking the right questions. If you have self doubt, you got to train yourself up. In some cases now a lot of people are truly trained. You're as trained as you can be. There's nothing else that anyone could give you to make you better. You're just doubting yourself. But on the other hand, if you truly feel like there's a knowledge gap between you and the person who can accomplish the task ahead of you, train yourself up. Now. Don't overdo it. I know there's a lot of people who tend toward that, but train yourself up and then if something stops you, it's not because of a lack of knowledge. It's just because you need to try again. You need to try harder. You need to try different. I believe in you. I believe in what you were put here to do. Thank you so much for tuning in. I can't wait to see you again. And if you have a story of self doubt or imposter syndrome, shoot me an [email protected] later days.

Sam SA.