Be Your Own Guru

In this episode, I talk about why I'm done with experts and why I think you might be too. I explore the idea of experts and why I think it's holding us back and how I hope the self-development world will be moving forward. I also discuss some changes around how the podcast will be moving forward.

Please note: This track may include some explicit language.

Transcript

Hello,

And welcome back to a long overdue episode of the Wild Freewell podcast.

I'm Alicia,

And I'm here to talk to you about something that has been weighing heavy on my heart,

Especially moving into a new year and seeing the way the world has been and the things that we've been living through in the last,

I think the last two years,

And how that's affected us.

I just think this is a really important and potent topic.

So today I really want to focus on this idea of being an expert.

In our society,

We are obsessed with labels in general,

But especially with labeling ourselves and each other as experts in a certain field.

And of course,

There's value in this.

There are certain areas that you wouldn't want to work with somebody if they weren't an expert,

Like perhaps you're a doctor or a lawyer,

So on and so forth.

But I don't really think that it's necessarily possible for every single person in the world to be an expert in something.

And when it comes to the personal development world,

I think that people are too quick to market themselves as an expert,

Perhaps without even fully having walked that path.

And what happens when we use the label of expert is we automatically create a hierarchy in which one person,

Somebody external to us,

Knows more about a topic or our situation or even ourselves than we do.

And I think that is incredibly dangerous.

I think it is incredibly dangerous.

And so something that I want to dismantle and something that I want to actively work against moving forward is this idea of being an expert.

Now I've 100% fallen into this trap before,

Especially because in the last couple of years,

There has been this boom in which coaches were asked to view themselves and to market themselves as experts.

And I really felt a lot of pressure from that.

In fact,

It caused me to kind of pull away because I felt like I couldn't,

It was two things.

I felt like I couldn't come and show up online or show up on my podcast or show up in general if I wasn't showing up as a quote unquote expert.

And two,

Because it felt really inauthentic to show up as an expert when what I really want to be doing is exploring life and exploring the world alongside you,

Alongside the people who are listening,

Alongside the people who follow me online.

I don't want to put myself in a position where I'm the leader and someone else follows or I'm the expert and someone else is automatically then not an expert because the minute that we use terminology like that,

It puts somebody below me.

And I really hate that.

One,

Because I don't like being below other people.

And so why would I want somebody else to be below me?

And two,

Because I don't have all the answers.

I don't have all the answers for anyone.

I don't have all the answers for me.

Like there's no way that I can have all the answers for you.

It's just not possible.

And I think that's true of every single human being on the planet.

I think that people have their own answers,

But that does not mean that they have the answers for you or for your particular problem.

Obviously there are situations in which,

Yes,

They do,

Or maybe they have more experience and so they have more information to share and that's 100% fine.

I'm not saying that there isn't such thing as an expert in the world.

I just think that we need to be coming at our lives and especially our personal development from a totally,

Totally different angle.

I really think that in 2022 and moving forward,

What we need to start doing is take our attention off of listening to other people and focus that energy back on ourselves.

And so that kind of brings me to something that has been weighing on me for a while.

And I can promise you it's,

It's today I'm recording this is January 20th,

2022,

And it has taken me more than 20 days to get to the point where I was willing to sit down and have this conversation where I'm effectively taking the spotlight off myself,

Where to be honest with you,

Where it really doesn't belong and putting it on us as a collective and a shift in what I hope will ultimately become a movement in the self-help industry of exploring life together.

Let's explore our inner worlds together.

Let's have a conversation about why things are the way they are.

Let's have the hard conversations.

Let's ask the hard questions and let's create something together because this idea of being an expert and seeking expert advice that is coming from a place perhaps of needing validation or wanting validation.

And so that brings up the question like,

What are we searching for?

Why are we searching for something outside of ourselves?

And the answer for me is going to be different than your answer.

The answer for me is obviously it comes from a place of a little bit of lack of worthiness.

Like if I'm looking for an expert to help me with something it's because I feel like one that person knows better than me.

And in some instances that might be true,

Of course,

But they don't know me better than me.

And in 2021,

I did a business course and it's proving to be the best worst decision I've ever made.

It was the wrong decision.

There's no such thing as wrong decisions,

Of course,

But it was not necessarily effective in the way that I had hoped it would be.

I didn't get the results that I had hoped I would.

And I enrolled in this program because I was sold this kind of idea of how it would be.

And I fell for the marketing and all of this is obviously totally on me because I wasn't really following my own intuition.

And I really put my power outside of myself.

I put my power in the hands of this person who told me that they could teach me something or help me be a certain way or help me grow my business in a certain way.

And by doing that,

I put myself in a position to be influenced by that person's thoughts.

And I did the course and I learned some things.

I'm not going to say a lot because I don't really feel like I learned a lot necessarily.

And I asked for advice and I brought my opinion to the table and a lot of what I brought to the table I was told was maybe not the best or most strategic way to go about things.

And now,

Almost a year later,

I started the course in March or April of 2021,

Almost a year later,

I am actively undoing absolutely everything that I learned in that course.

And a lot of the decisions that I made I am dismantling because they were never mine.

They were never fully aligned with the person that I wanted to be,

The kind of coach that I want to be,

Or what I really want to create in the world.

And all of this work,

Which is a part of my journey and is going to help me grow inevitably,

It happened because I put my power in that person's hands.

I gave my power away by choosing to believe that this person was an expert who had the answers.

And if I just did things the way that they told me to,

It would quote unquote work.

And it didn't.

It didn't.

And not because it didn't work for anybody.

This person is very successful in what they offer,

I'm sure is very valid to other people.

It didn't work for me because it wasn't fully aligned with me and what I believe in my mission and how I want to show up in the world.

But at the time I didn't believe in myself or that mission enough to come at it this way.

So now I'm undoing that I'm moving forward and I'm doing things different.

And this podcast is an example of that.

I don't want to tell people what to do.

I don't want to give advice.

I want to ask questions.

I want to create or cause conversations within you within your life,

Within with yourself.

I want to say things that make you explore your world and come up with your own answers because you are your own guru.

You are the only expert on you that exists in the world.

There is no one that will ever know you better than you know yourself.

And so I think it's really important that we switch,

That we make the shift and we stand up for ourselves and we say,

No,

I'm not going to put my power outside of ourselves.

I'm not going to put my hands,

My power in the hands of someone else.

I'm going to take my power back and I'm going to start having conversations with myself to figure out what it is I really need.

And going back to kind of what I've alluded to earlier,

I weaved in and out of being present online because of the weight of this idea of being an expert.

And there's,

There's a lot of pressure to show up in a certain way or be a certain kind of person or to even have all the right answers when you're portraying yourself as an expert.

And like I said before,

I can promise you,

I just,

I really don't have all the answers.

I don't believe that anybody has all the answers except for us.

We have our own answers and I believe that my job and the job of every coach is to walk the path with you for a moment in time and help guide you back to finding your right answers.

There is no one right answer.

There is no one answer for everybody.

And I think that that's really important to keep in mind.

So I want to leave you with a question to explore.

Where are you giving your power away?

Where are you putting your power or your life or your decisions in the hands of so-called experts?

Why are you doing that?

And what would it take to come back to yourself and to be willing to have the hard conversations with yourself,

Be willing to ask yourself the hard questions and search for your own answers.

What would it take?

And if you were to do that,

What kind of life could you create for yourself?

Would it be everything that you hoped it would be?

And I know that these are a lot of questions to kind of end on,

But I,

I really hope that you take the time,

Pause the podcast or come back and listen to it again and actually have this conversation with yourself because this is the start of building that relationship with yourself.

And the more you know yourself and the more you foster a loving and stable relationship with yourself,

The more loving and stable your other relationships will be.

And the more that energy ripples out into the world.

And as we work towards our own evolution and our own expansion,

We inspire other people to evolve and expand as well.

And I wish that so deeply for all of us.

I think that is the thing that we need the most in the world.

I think we've seen so much contraction in the last couple of years.

And I think that this is the moment for us to really come into our own and really stand up and say what we think and be who we are and not be so freaking worried all the time about what other people think about that,

Which is not simple.

And I mean,

That's a podcast episode in and of itself dealing with the opinions of others,

But yeah,

Just what would it take for you to stand up and say,

You know,

Fuck the experts.

I'm,

I'm the own,

I'm my own expert.

I'm an expert on me.

I'm my own guru.

I'm going to follow my heart and walk my own path.

And that's going to be more than enough.

What would it take?

I hope this episode has served you and that you got something out of it.

I hope that you take time to journal and really go in deep and I'd love to hear what comes up for you.

So if you are interested,

You can message me on Instagram or Facebook.

On Instagram,

My handle is at Candice,

Alyssia,

C A N D I C E A L E S S I A.

And on Facebook,

It's at Candice Alyssia Coaching.

And you can find me on my website,

Www.

Candicealessia.

Com.

And if you're interested in having more conversations like this,

Or you're curious about what working with me would be like,

You can find more information about that on my website,

But please just reach out.

I'm here.

I want to have conversations with people and really spark change.

And I hope that we can do that together.

So until then have a beautiful,

Beautiful day and I'll see you on the next episode.