“A lot of times we want to look strong and independent like everything is great. But, it’s when we admit that things aren’t great and instead accept them for exactly what they are, then that’s when things can shift.” – Julia Wells

Hi there, friend! Welcome back to the show. I’m so happy to have you here. Today’s episode is exciting because it’s our first interview!

(Heads up: There’s a lot of adult language in this episode so please keep that in mind as you listen.)

Today’s interview has been extremely thought out and is very intentional on my part.  

As you can imagine, prepping to launch a podcast like this one takes a lot of planning effort.

It took me MONTHS to find the clarity around who this show would be for (and not for), what I would talk about, how I wanted the show to look and feel for its listeners, and who I would interview on the show, particularly who would be my first interview.

Without a doubt, I knew my first interview would be the woman I share with you today named Julia Wells and here’s why….

I’ve known Julia for 4 years now.  

Julia Wells is an empowerment coach, and we met through a mutual coaching friend who selected both of us to be inside a very tight community of 5 coaches that she handpicked to lean on and mastermind in many ways with one another.

When I met Julia, she was marketing herself as a health coach and her branding was about as cookie cutter as they come.  

It was a standard headshot of herself smiling head on against a wall. Her website was very basic.  Her messaging was very general and watered down.  

(This is a common thing among A LOT of coaches or anyone who is starting a new business or profession – myself included, they’re just finding their voice and their confidence.)

It didn’t ever feel like Julia was into health coaching that much. She seemed disconnected from it and in a space where she was truly trying to find herself.

Then, it came out that Julia was going to switch to business coaching and I started to see a passion arise in her more.  

But…you could still tell that she was finding her way as she grew into this new role. 

(If you aren’t a coach or entrepreneur, then you have NO idea the amount of work you have to do on yourself when you start a business.  It’s insane!)

Julia was definitely going in deep to do that work.  

And, because she was doing so much work on herself, she hadn’t really found her “it” yet.  She hadn’t tapped into let alone owned her power.

So, although I followed along with her stuff, it didn’t necessarily catch my eye or feel like it was anything beyond the norm of what I was seeing with other coaches.

And, then, something changed….

I started to see her own herself more and I even brought her on my former podcast, Life Luvers Radio, to talk about a message she was starting to speak a lot about at the time which was giving zero fucks about what people thought about her and her life.

I found the messaging to be empowering and it was a message I started to find myself repeating often and I know many of you took to that episode too because I got the messages about it!  

But, Julia was truly just getting started when it came to understanding herself and owning her power. 

Soon after her and I did that interview, I became pregnant with my son and was unexpectedly immediately out of work due to nausea and exhaustion.

I spent weeks upon weeks laying in bed most of the day staring at the wall or watching trash TV. Scrolling my phone made me sick and I was so brain dead and ill that I couldn’t handle any sort of personal development.

After the 1^sttrimester ended and I started to feel better into the 2^nd tri, I began to slowly get back into the world again including what was going on in the coaching industry, especially among my friends.

I began to notice Julia’s posts more and more to a point where when I’d log onto Facebook or Instagram, her posts were what I wanted to see most.

I found them to be empowering, smart, authentic and thought provoking. Among all the noise, she was now standing out the MOST to me and I couldn’t get enough.

I found myself thinking about what she was saying all of the time.  I found myself rebuilding my strength from the pregnancy with her words.

I kid you not, this show would not be here today if it wasn’t for Julia Wells’ words on those posts. 

It’s posts like this one….

“It’s safe to be seen

It’s safe to trust that your people are out there

It’s safe to use your voice

It’s safe to speak your truth and share your stories

It’s safe to do it differently

It’s safe to be as messy/poetic/inappropriate/bold/woo woo as you want to be

Stop holding back

Your people need your message…said your way….brought to life by your voice and your experience”

Julia Wells to me is unapologetic and yet still authentically herself in every way. She OWNS her power.

To me, this is what we need as women.  

We need to understand how to show up in life being unapologetically ourselves so we too can get exactly what we want from life. We too need to own our power.

When I reached out to Julia to come onto the show, she happily said yes and I’m thrilled she did. The interview we recorded was great!

IN THIS INTERVIEW, WE TALK ABOUT:

• What she did to start to own her power
• How she owned her power
• Why she’s looked like an “overnight success”
• How saying she was going to quit her business allowed her to thrive
• How you can know when it’s time to quit something you’re working on
• How just appearing to be strong when you don’t feel that way is costing you
• How pleasure is tied to your power
• How we’re taught to connect as women is keeping us small and powerless
• The constant dilemma we’re stuck in that’s making us miserable & how to fix it

…and so much more

This is a very chill but jam-packed interview.  I hope it makes you think, inspires you and allows you to grow in a whole new way.

Without further ado, here’s my interview with Julia Wells about how to own your power….(be sure to listen above!)

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

→ Apply to coach with me

→ Continue the conversation in my free online community

→ Get The 4-Day Accomplish Your Dreams Free Training 

→ Julia’s website

→ Julia on Instagram

→ Julia on Facebook

→ Visible AF group on Facebook

→ Life Luvers podcast episode with Julia Wells

Episode 5: OWN YOUR POWER

This is the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast with Lindsay Preston Episode 5, Own Your Power.

[music]

Welcome to the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast, the show for goal-getting, fear-facing women for kicking ass by creating change. I’m your host, Lindsay Preston. I’m a wife, mom of two, and a multi-certified life coach to women all over the world. I’ve lived through enough in life to know that easier doesn’t always equate to better. We can’t fear the fire, we must learn to become it. On this show, I’ll teach you how to do just that. Join me as I challenge you to become even more of the strong, resilient, and powerful woman you were meant to be. Let’s do this.

[music]

Hi there, friend. Welcome back to the show. I am so happy to have you here. Today’s episode is exciting because it’s our first interview. Yes. Now, heads up on today’s episode. There’s a lot of adult language in this one, so keep that in mind as you listen.

Today’s interview has been extremely thought out and very intentional on my part. As you can imagine, prepping to launch a show like this one, it takes a lot of planning on my part. It took me months to find the clarity around who the show would be for and not for, what I would talk about, how I wanted the show to look and feel for you, and who I would interview on the show, particularly who would be my first interview.

Without a doubt, I knew it would be the woman I share with you today, named Julia Wells, and here’s why. I’ve known Julia for four years now, her and I met through a mutual coaching friend who selected both of us to be inside a very tight community of five coaches that she hand-picked to lean on and mastermind in many ways with one another.

When I met Julia, she was marketing herself as a health coach and her branding was about as cookie-cutter as they come, it was a standard headshot of herself smiling head-on against the wall. Her website was very basic. Her messaging was very general and watered down. This is a common thing among a lot of coaches, or anyone who’s starting out in a new business or profession, myself included. They’re just finding their voice and their confident.

It didn’t ever feel like Julia was into health coaching that much. She seemed disconnected from it all, and in a space where she was truly trying to find herself. Then later it came out that Julia was going to switch to business coaching. I started to see a passion arise in her more, but you could still tell that she was finding her way. She was finding her voice as she grew into this new role.

If you aren’t a coach or entrepreneur, then you have no idea the amount of work you have to do on yourself when you start a business. It’s truly insane how much stuff can come up for you, and your mindset when you go out and you do this stuff in the world. Julia was definitely going deep into that work. Because she was going and doing that work on herself, she hadn’t really found herself quite yet. She hadn’t tapped into her power.

Although I followed along with her stuff, it didn’t necessarily catch my eye or feel like it was anything beyond the norm of what I was seeing with other coaches. Then something changed, I started to see her own herself more. I even brought her on my former podcast called Life Luvers radio, to talk about a message she was starting to speak about a lot at a time, which was giving zero fucks about what people thought about her and her life.

I found the messaging to be empowering, and it was a message I started to find myself repeating often. I know many of you took to that episode, if you listened to it, because I got messages about it. But Julia was truly just getting started when it came to understanding herself and owning her power. Soon after, she and I ended the interview, I got out of my business because I got pregnant with my son, and was unexpectedly very, very nauseous and exhausted.

I spent weeks upon weeks lying in bed. Most of the day, staring at a wall or watching trash TV, just to get through the day. Scrolling my phone even made me sick, and so I was brain-dead. But after the first trimester started to fade, I started to feel better and I got back on social, and Julia Wells was like a whole new woman to me.

Her posts were just things I couldn’t get out of my mind. I found them to be empowering, smart, authentic, and thought-provoking among all the noise on social media, she was now standing out the most to me, and I couldn’t get enough. I found myself just repeating some of the things she had been saying all day long in my mind. It was rebuilding my strength that I had lost from the pregnancy with her words. I kid you not.

This show would not be here today. If it was not for Julia Wells’ words on these posts, and it’s posts like this one, that says, “It’s safe to be seen. It’s safe to trust that your people are out there. It’s safe to use your voice. It’s safe to speak your truth and share your stories. It’s safe to do it differently. It’s safe to be messy, poetic, and appropriate, bold, woo woo as you want to be. Stop holding back.” Isn’t that so good?

Julia Wells to me is being unapologetically her, and yet still authentically her too, in every way. She really owns her power now. To me, this is what we need as women. We need to understand how to show up in life, being unapologetically ourselves. We too can get exactly what we want from life. We too need to own our power. When I reached out to Julia to come on the show, she happily said, “Yes”, and I’m thrilled that she did. This interview was great.

In this interview, we specifically talk about what she did to own her power. Why she’s looked like an, “Overnight success”, how saying she was going to quit her business, allowed her to thrive. How you can know when it’s time to quit something for yourself, how just appearing to be strong when you don’t feel that way has costing you.

How pleasure is tied to power, how we’re taught to connect as women is keeping us small and powerless, and the constant dilemma we’re stuck in, that’s making us miserable and how to fix it, and so much more. This is a very chill, but jam-packed interview. I hope it makes you think. I hope it inspires you. I hope it allows you to grow in a whole new way. Without further ado, here’s my interview with the magnificent Julia Wells.

Julia, I am so excited to have you on the show today as a very first interview, I said in the intro why I chose you as the very first interview and a big reason is you helped me own my power, even from afar. That’s how powerful you have become over the past year or so. It has been a joy to watch your step into what I consider, this authenticity and this beauty, and really just being unapologetically you. I have to ask you right out of the bat, what have you done to start to own your power?

Julia Wells: Just the easy intro question.

[laughter]

Lindsay: No big deal.

Julia: Thank you for having me. I’m very honored that I am your first guest. With that pressure, let me dive right in. What have I done to own my power? It’s been such a journey. I’m just trying to even break it down in a way that makes it easy to piece some of it out.

I think there’s been the internal and the external work. Honestly, just the biggest thing for me was letting go of caring what people think, because that was my most crippling thing ever. For a long time, I feel like it piled on top of it and maybe even harder, but I pretended that I didn’t care what people thought while actually caring.

I boxed myself in, and then I felt like this total fraud and imposter, because I’m like, “Oh, shit everyone knows me as this person who doesn’t care. I do all of these things, but secretly I really care, and just want to be loved and accepted.” Really working through a lot of my own stuff of freeing myself from that box that honestly, I just put myself in, and doing the work to basically love myself exactly as I was. Loved the parts of me that do care what people think, and do want acceptance and love.

Then also just letting go of some of the conditioning of how I thought I needed to be showing up. I hadn’t meant to be a woman. I feel like I’ve just tackled every part of myself, especially this past year. I did a year-long sex love and relationship coach training, which went to the depths of my soul. Then I’ve also been doing a lot of work around race equity, unpacking my own privilege, and all of that. Yes, just that.

Lindsay: Yes, no big deal.

Julia: Just casually evaluating everything in my life.

Lindsay: What’s interesting, is even though I’ve been following you pretty closely throughout the past few years, it almost seems like it was overnight. All of a sudden you became on fire, and-

Julia: I just love that [laughs]. That [crosstalk]

Lindsay: I know, and I think there’s so many stories that are like that. There’s just like a tipping point where it’s like, “Oh, what is she doing? She seems different to me”.

Julia: Interesting.

Lindsay: Do you feel like there was like one thing, Julia, that just set that tipping point over the edge?

Julia: I wish I could say yes, and then I could just give it to people so that they could just immediately have this overnight transformation. No. I feel like we see it all the time in the business coaching space of people who all of a sudden are fully booked with clients, and making a million dollars. It just looks like it happened overnight, but usually, it’s like years of– they’re working on things. You’ll know too, and People– I don’t know how much you shared, but my business went through a lot of iterations. I started with a lot of surface-level personal development work. Then I went into a lot of deeper stuff, and I wish there was one moment, but it’s such a culmination of everything. I do think– I don’t know if it was like the beginning of all of this, I was already doing a lot of work and sharing in a way.

Definitely, this decision to do the work around sexuality and exploring this, for me, it feels like a big turning point, because it was so unexpected. It was just this soul download. I was in my car listening to a podcast, and all of a sudden I was just hit with, like, “You have to do this work.” I was like, “What? Why? I don’t want to do this.” I haven’t really shared this story publicly, but my grandma did a lot of work around sacred sexuality.

There’s a lot in my family around her having done that and whatnot, and I was like, “I don’t want to be the one that has to do this. Are you kidding me? [laughs] What the hell?” Even though that’s not fully my work now. It’s just a piece of, allows me to hold space for that stuff to come up because it is part of us being unstoppable. Just even that decision to follow that guidance and having had that come in so clearly to me, I was like, “Okay, well, that’s my path. Here we go”.

Lindsay: You listened to it?

Julia: Yes, and there was no fighting it. Yes [laughs].

Lindsay: It sounds like in the journey, it was just a lot of you listening to yourself, prioritizing yourself, doing the work, not giving up too. Oh my gosh, I can think about the past few years of how many times it would have been so easy for you to give up, Julia. I think there were times that you have even considered giving up your business, right?

Julia: Yes, actually, there’s been a few times and I’ve really decided, “Okay, I’m going to quit my business. I’m going to go back and get a full-time job.” Usually, those were some of the points where then I was like, “Wait a second, what am I doing?” I recommitted, I went full out. I really got some clarity on what wasn’t working when I needed to shift. Yes, that’s a good point, I think that was maybe last summer, the summer before.

Yes, I was ready to quit my business because I was just frustrated, it didn’t feel good, it wasn’t really working. I knew something had to change and I just couldn’t figure out what it was, but almost giving myself that permission to abandon it made me realize that I couldn’t do that.

Lindsay: Let’s talk about that for a second. Because there’s so many decisions we’re faced with every day, especially those bigger ones. For a lot of listeners out there that are in their 20s, 30s, and even 40s, we are faced with a lot of career decisions, a lot of family decisions during these years, “Are we going to have kids? Who we’re going to be with? What we’re going to do? Are we going to start that business? Blah, blah, blah”.

It’s so overwhelming, I hear, for a lot of women, myself included in there sometimes. There’s so many ways that we can back out of something too of, “Oh, this isn’t feel good, maybe this isn’t my thing.” But for you, it sounds like it didn’t feel good but you found a way to shift it in a way. How were you able to decide that this was something you still wanted to stick with, even though it didn’t feel good at the time?

Julia: I think if I really broke it down, and made it also in a way that people listening could sit and do this themselves. I’ve now learned it’s an actual tool [laughs], it’s to see what it feels like in my body. A lot of times, it’s as simple as thinking through, like, give yourself two options, or more or whatever. Just lay them out and then if you actually visualize yourself going through with it. Maybe you’re six months or a year into leaving the job or starting the business, or having the kids, or whatever it is.

See, you can tell pretty quickly in your body, whether it expands or contracts. That doesn’t mean that they’re not going to be fear, anxiety, some tightness that comes with it. You’ll tell like, can you relax into that decision? Or does it immediately send you into fear? You’ll notice your shoulders might raise. As I started to make some of these big decisions, I’ll do that and I think before I just didn’t really realize I was doing that.

Now, I look at them, I’m like, “I actually can’t imagine the alternative”, and when I try it out in my body, and I think about taking some of these steps to go get the job or quit my business, like I’m, “This feels pretty terrible”, immediately stop not taking action. I think it can be hard because you’re going to get a lot of pieces. It felt really relieving just to tell people that I was quitting my business, wasn’t working, and I was going to go get a job.

The relief was that I just admitted that what I was doing wasn’t working. Then I was allowing myself to be seen in that instead of feeling like I have to keep pretending. Almost like surrendering to that is what allowed for the shift to happen. I think a lot of the times we just want to look strong and independent like everything’s great. When we admit that it’s not, and we accept things for exactly what they are, nothing can shift.

I do this with my clients all the time, even if it’s like a simple emotion. A lot of the times we’re going to fight the emotion, we’re like, “I hate that I care what people think”, or, “I hate that I’m feeling anxiety about this big move that’s coming up for me.” When you fight back against the emotion, you don’t give it any space to shift. When you’re just like, “Oh, look, I’m stressed out today”, or like, “I’m full of fear”, or, “I’m failing at this thing.” Then that thing can shift when you just meet it with acceptance. For me saying out loud that I was quitting was what finally let me breathe, and then reevaluate what needed to happen.

Lindsay: What I’m hearing you say, is you allowing yourself to truly feel what it is you needed to feel, instead of pretending it wasn’t there was what allowed you to kind of own your power.

Julia: Yes. Thanks for breaking that down into three words [laughs].

Lindsay: I want to go back to something. You’ve mentioned it a couple of times already, and that’s pleasure. I know that you write a lot about pleasure, you talk about it a lot in a very direct way sometimes, Julia, too, with orgasms, and all this other stuff. Let’s talk about that for a second. You specifically talked about when you’re making these decisions, you’re feeling in your body, an essence, you’re feeling, “Okay, what’s going to be more pleasurable for me?” Am I hearing that right?

Julia: Yes.

Lindsay: Let’s talk about specifically living in pleasure. Is this something that we can really be doing in a space where we’re truly living, and just a crap ton of pleasure in our lives?

Julia: Yes. Actually, this is what we need to be doing, this is essential and required. Oftentimes, it’s bottom of the list or the thing we stopped doing. Culturally, it’s not very glorified. Just be someone that’s all about pleasure and putting that first. There’s a lot of narratives around that, that we’ve been taught, especially as women, or mothers, or whatever. I do want to be clear, pleasure doesn’t have to mean sexual pleasure at all, that’s just one component of it.

Pleasure looks like doing things that feel good. It looks like basically awakening all of your senses and this could be something super elaborate, or it could just be like, “Oh, wow, the sweater that I’m wearing feels really good right now. I’m just going to pause to be present in the moment, and enjoy this moment of pleasure right now.” There’s just something about that, that being an energy of pleasure leads to more possibilities, because it’s also tied to presence.

Then you’re creating space for these things to come into you for you to have moments of clarity, to really be present, grateful, and aware of what’s going on around you. Yes, and it’s so essential, it just requires us slowing down a little bit and putting ourselves first.

Lindsay: There’s been times in my life in the past few years where I’ve definitely been living in more pleasure and it shows. I’m happier, I’m feeling more at ease, things come more naturally. But now I’m in a phase in life, Julia, where I have a little one, and it’s harder because you’re on-demand a lot longer.

I have to ask you, so somebody who’s in my shoes who has kids, a little one, maybe they’re in a hard spot in life. Maybe, they’re not having as much money as they would like, maybe they work with a bunch of assholes. Whatever it is, but pleasure is just as not as available to them. What would you say to them?

Julia: Meet yourself where you’re at and just accept right now, this is what’s going on, “What’s the easiest way for me to find pleasure right now?” If you only had five seconds. Again, I think pleasure a lot of it the fastest way to access it is through your senses; touch, smell, taste, hear, whatever. Maybe you’re in the middle of nursing but, can you just stroke the blanket that the baby is wrapped in? Can you put something on the wall that you can look at that brings you pleasure? That even if you only have a few seconds, you get a taste of that, like a hit of that in your body.

Lindsay: I know for some people listening, you may think, “Really? That’s it?” You just sit there for a few seconds and I promise you what Julia is telling you is so beneficial. I started doing this when I was going through my divorce and I had so much anxiety, I just felt horrible, and I was broke too.

It just became, “Let me rub lotion on my hands. Let me smell this candle. Let me just go outside and take a deep breath”, and that became moments of pleasure and it actually broke some of my addictions to things like shopping, and these other bigger things that I thought were pleasurable and they were, but they were also unhealthy. Do you agree with that, Julia?

Julia: Yes, and it’s almost like the idea of crowding something out. If you can just start to fill more of your life with these little moments of pleasure, then one, you have some contrast and you know how good it feels until there’s just not as much time for the other stuff, and just giving them credit because they really add up. The quickest thing can make just a huge difference in your whole, your day, your energy, your mood, everyone’s going to notice too, but more importantly, you’re going to feel better.

Lindsay: How would you connect living in pleasure with owning your power?

Julia: For me, it’s the same. Actually, living in pleasure is one of the biggest acts of rebellion that you can do because us women, I think, we’re really conditioned to be mothers, to sacrifice, and to think that that’s part of the deal, like this is just what we signed up for. Whether you’re a mom, or a caregiver, or taking care of everybody. Coming into your power is just owning that you’re worthy of pleasure, of putting yourself first, and deciding that that’s just how you’re going to live.

Lindsay: You touched on a very good topic there, with we have all been conditioned as women for generation after generation that living in pleasure is just not going to happen for us. We were modeled it, we didn’t see it. I just talked about on an email I wrote yesterday or today, I guess, about how women gossip with one another and that’s how we connect. That’s not pleasurable at the end of the day. It’s not enjoyable to do that.

This is really huge. It seems very elementary, “Oh, we just have these little hits of pleasure”, but it’s actually like, you’re changing generation after generation. I know that stuff has been super hard for me, Julia, to do that, all this programming.

Julia: Think about even what comes up for you if I told you that at the beginning of every interaction you have with a female friend, acquaintance, whatever, that I want you to start that conversation bragging or celebrating one good thing in your life before you can have any other conversation. For a lot of people, that’s like, “What the hell? Are you serious? No way I’m going to do it. I don’t want to be too shiny, that’s uncomfortable, blah, blah, blah.” We’re going to have so much stuff, and just think about that one example.

Lindsay: Man, that’s so true. Because I know you have a community where we’re talking about things like wins and all that other stuff that I do as well, and so many women say to me, “Oh, I love this community because we’re celebrated and I feel safe”, and I think, “Wow.” I can’t even believe it that that’s still going on in the world, and then when I go out in the world, the people who aren’t working on themselves and I’m like, “Oh, I get it now” because it is just this huge difference of so many women living in this space where it’s just negativity after negativity and there’s just no way you can ever own your power in that. Do you agree?

Julia: Yes, and if you go into any room of women and you ask people to raise their hand if they constantly worry about not being enough, everyone’s going to raise their hands. Then if you ask people to raise their hand if they’re scared to be too much, everyone’s going to raise their hand. We’re stuck in this constant dilemma of we’re not enough, but also it’s not safe to be shiny and to brag on yourself all day and to have things be too good. Like, what space does that really leave us to live in?

Lindsay: I know we can never win.

Julia: We’re constantly stressed out and we have addiction and we’re exhausted and we’re just like numbing out all day long.

Lindsay: What’s do we do, Julia? How do we fix it?

Julia: Of, course you’re going to ask me that. For me, it’s come back to pleasure. Come back ,be willing to put yourself first to find what, do you like, what do you desire. So many of us don’t even know those simple things. It doesn’t matter if it’s in the bedroom or what you want to eat or how you want to speak or dress or take care of yourself. We’ve just been handed ways that we’re supposed to do that. By giving yourself space to explore, this is so freeing and just trusting that if you can just do this for yourself first, there’s going to be a ripple effect of that.

Lindsay: Absolutely because you’ve opened the door for somebody else to do it. I will tell you, this is what you have done for me in the past year or so because I was in this space where I felt like total shame when I was pregnant. I felt like I had lost almost everything I had gained through all the personal development, all of that, because I just felt so crappy. Then I was seeing you shining out there and I was like, “Oh, this is what I want to get back to. This is what I miss. Then it also made me step into think, what do I need to do internally to get back there because there is something that is blocking me.

I had to go through a whole new set of blocks and work to get back to that place, and that goes back to what Julia mentioned earlier of, we are so conditioned to be in this space whereas women we just have to feel like crap, especially when we’re mothers or we’re pregnant of, “Oh, we’re treated like shit” or we feel like shit. We have to change that script. A lot of that is generational crap that’s been passed down to us. At least that was in my case. I was very conditioned. that being a mom is hard, being a mom will in essence, even ruin my life.

I had to really work through that and figure out, “Okay, how am I going to find pleasure in this, and two get rid of some of these negative beliefs.” With that, Julia, as I’m dishing my past story to you [crosstalk] there’s been so many posts, like I said, that have really stood out to me. I just happened to go on your page. Some of these, I think you’ve posted recently, but I was taking so many screenshots at things I had to stop. They’re all just so good and you all have got to follow Julia on social media. Where would you prefer they connect with you, Julia?

Julia: Either place. My personal Facebook page, Julia Wells, or on Instagram, I’m Juliamotherfuckingwells.

Lindsay: Then you also have a Facebook group, which is Visible AF, right?

Julia: Yes, that’s a cool place to hang out too. Any of those, honestly, you’re going to get amazing content, and then there’s a lot of high-touch engagement with me in all of those places.

Lindsay: You have incredible engagement, which is so fun. You’ll find these posts wherever you end up following her, but I want to read a couple of them, Julia, and talk about it real quick. One, it says, “Here’s the thing about asking for what you need. You have to then let people rise to meet you there, and sometimes you have to be patient. Not everyone is going to be able to. In the meantime, sit back, be a boss as bitch and go about living your best damn life”.

Julia: Amen

Lindsay: Wait. I was just like mic drop.

Julia: So funny hearing them read back to me and in someone else’s voice, because of course I always read it in my own voice and that was really cool.

Lindsay: When I read that stuff on my feet, I’m just like, “Damn, that is so good.” It is so good. Can we just talk about that for a really quick minute because when you are growing and you’re changing and you’re being disruptive, like you said, this work is going to create in your life because it is, because we’re breaking all of these email patterns. What happens then? These other women, people, whatever they’re like, “Who is this? What’s going on here?” It is a freak-out moment. I think it was for me, at least. “My friends no longer fit anymore, or this relationship doesn’t fit anymore.” That can feel scary. If somebody’s in that place, what can they do?

Julia: One, trust you’re going to be okay, always. You’re always going to be okay. Then I think there’s two parts. Find people that you can surround yourself with that meet you where you’re at, that are there, or even further ahead than you, that have your back, they get you, that you can relate to. Then for the people that you’re worried or you’re just aware that aren’t there right now, have compassion for where they’re at and then also trust that they can rise. Sometimes for me it lows my mind, how many people are watching me and supporting me and learning from me that I would never imagine.

My old corporate career, I worked for Geico. I lived in the South for a long time. Just people that I don’t think would pay attention to me or be inspired by what I’m doing pop up all the time. They’re like, “Wow, I love what you’re doing. How could I do this?” You have to have this belief that everyone can rise and also not take it personally, if they can’t. That’s cool.

Lindsay: It’s not about you, it’s about them.

Julia: [laughs] We have other work to do this lifetime.

Lindsay: Yes. When I read this post, and it says, “Sit back, basically, and be a boss ass bitch” to me that says live in pleasure, enjoy this, because I know this is something I really struggle with, and my life is to live in pleasure. I did all this personal development work, and then my life started getting really good. I remember the period when I was about to get married, and it was just all hitting me how much I had changed, and I was creating this life, I had a vision for myself, and it was almost like this anxiety, even when I talk about it now, I still get a little tight in my throat of how did I do this? How did I create this?

To me surrounding yourself, like you said, with people who are ahead is just like following Julia on social, or saying, “This is okay, it’s normal, it is perfectly fine for you to love your life, to do whatever it is that you need to do.” I feel like so many times as women, Julia, and I don’t know if you agree, we just need permission, so you’re giving that to us as, “Hey, this is okay, we can do this”.

Julia: Thank you. Yes, give yourself permission, find somebody else to give you permission, just get the permission however you need to get it because it’s true, we just sometimes forget that that’s available to us.

Lindsay: Yes. Okay, I want to read another one of your posts, it’s on a similar topic. My God, I love you so much. “Being yourself and showing up authentically is disruptive and enough, you don’t need to say fuck every other word, you don’t need to be perfectly branded, you don’t need to be the loudest one, you will attract more of the right people and opportunities when your energy is aligned and all you focus on is being yourself and speaking your truth.” Again, it’s like, “What do you say after that?”

Julia: Do I say amen again? I don’t know [laughs].

Lindsay: Because it’s so true. This is why we go back to these topics in personal development, and a lot of what you’re talking about today, Julia, it just seems so elementary, it’s like, “Oh, just be present in the moment, live in pleasure, start to think about your inner world,” and all this stuff and t’s like, “Okay, yes, that’s it?” “Yes, that’s it,” and then you just start showing up authentically.

Julia: Yes, honest. Even as you’re reading that, I caught myself doing the same thing, I’m like, “Julia, this is so basic, really? Is this going to change anyone’s life?” The answer is yes, this is the stuff that we have to do because everything else in the world is telling us we’re not enough all the time.

Lindsay: Yes, so true, it’s just so empowering. Okay, I’ve got another one. “If you’re anything like me, and you find perfectionism, doubt, comparison, and more taking you out, you owe it to yourself in your mission to start to quiet those voices and take back your power. It’s time for you to get out of your head and into action. All those reasons you have for why you aren’t good enough, or ready enough to teach or lead, are exactly why you must do it”.

Julia: I’m so wise [laughter].

Lindsay: My favorite part here is to get out of your head and get into action, so can we talk about that for a second? Where is the power and action other than the obvious?

Julia: Yes, it’s just how you’re going to get clarity, it’s how you’re going to build confidence and trust in yourself and be able to do things over and over again. I see so many people getting stuck in– I work with a lot of coaches and people building their own business and they need one more training or little more strategy, or a little more clarity on something, and the best way to get all these things it’s just go out there and see, not only what works, but how it feels for you. It doesn’t really matter if it worked for someone else if for you it makes you want to poke your eyes and pull your hair out.

Lindsay: It’s so interesting because when you start doing personal development, you learn these things of, “You have you got to go out there, you got to get into action, get used to failing”, and all this other stuff. If you’re really into personal development, you may know that term of growth mindset versus fixed mindset, of, okay, you got to just pick yourself back up every time you make a mistake, that’s part of the journey, but before you get into personal development.

All I feel like we are taught is you have to, in essence, be perfect. You go to school, you get these perfect grades, you go to college, and you figure out what you want to do and then everything needs to be perfectly aligned. If you get a divorce, that’s a failure. If you switch careers, unless it’s super successful, then that’s a failure. How can somebody start to take those steps to realize that what we’ve all been fed for so many years is just complete bullshit and instead they just need to go out there and get into action. What can they start doing?

Julia: Yes, honestly, I think it starts internally of just redefining your definition or relationship to failure. For me, failure is giving up and quitting, that’s it, that’s the only way you failed, and even still, I don’t know that that’s really failure, maybe you find a different path, I don’t know. Just beside that failure is just feedback and the faster you can fail, the faster you can learn.

I was just at a event last night with W. Kamau Bell, who is comedian and he would maybe consider himself an activist, educator, I don’t know, whatever, with a bunch of other comedians, but they were talking on UC Berkeley campus. He was like, “I really want you to look at college, not as a place to be perfect and figure it all out, but to see how big of a risk you can take now and start to prepare yourself for that when you get into the real world. because you don’t want to figure out later, convince yourself that I can take a risk, and what’s going to happen if I fail? Do it while you’re on campus and while you’re in college, redefine your relationship to that. Build the muscle that shows you you’re going to be okay, no matter what happens”.

Lindsay: Okay, so what if somebody is saying, “But Julia, what if I take this risk, and I fail and I don’t make any money? My family needs that to support and we’re on the streets”, and they just totally catastrophize in those moments, what would you say?

Julia: Got it. one, I totally get that everything inside of you is going to try to keep you safe, that’s just our human nature. are you willing to take the risk? Because the other side of that is the total opposite happening. You can send your kids to the best schools, you can feed your family the best food, you can go on vacations, you can live exactly how you want to live, but are you willing to take that risk? A lot of the times we catastrophize, but what’s the worst that’s really going to happen? Let’s just say that can’t happen, would you trust yourself to be able to be okay no matter what? What do I need to do start building that muscle?

Lindsay: Yes, and I know when I get to these places, where I catastrophize and stuff, a lot of that has been internal healing I’ve needed to do and, two, this goes back to me trusting the universe of, okay, the universe is abundant, and going to those beliefs. To somebody who’s who’s in that place, I would agree with Julia is, and that’s the question I asked a lot of people to, of, “Okay, what if you don’t do this?” Then you do have to go back to what is it that I know is true. If there’s something in there is like, “Well, one time I did this and I failed, or whatever”, that’s healing work that you need to do. Would you agree, Julia?

Julia: Yes, not evidence of why you can’t do this, just something you need to heal.

Lindsay: Exactly.

Julia: You’ll know, I don’t want to die not having tried doing this, period. I’m not available for it, so I’ll take all of the hits and I’ll figure it out.

Lindsay: This brings me back to what we’re talking about earlier with pleasure. When you start living with just little hits of pleasure, then it increases and you want more, and so you’re like, “Oh, I want to now take a bath instead of just rubbing lotion on my hands”, or whatever it is and get more, and more, and more. Then you start to find passion, or at least this is what happened for me, then it was like, “Okay, what am I passionate again? What is it I want to do?” Because I know so many people that don’t even know what they want to go after anymore.

When you and I speak and we’re like, “Oh, we have to do this, we have to do our business, we have to do this project or whatever it is”, it’s because we’ve been living in a place where we were able to tap into that pleasure and we can listen to those passions, but I know so many people are numbed out with that and they’re not able to take those steps and take that action. I just want to put that out there, what Julia is telling you right now, where you start going back into that pleasure, I really think is the first step to taking this authentic life, would you agree, Julia?

Julia: Yes, that’s free, there’s very little risk. You can’t die just following pleasure, what do you have to lose? Just add more pleasure into your life and see what happens [laughs]. Honestly, I do this all the time, even myself, I preach pleasure all the time, and then I get busy and I forget, and then make it away harder thing than it needs to be than I do, I’m like, “Oh, yes.” I think for so many people, for them they’re not relating to pleasure the same way, for some, what you do, maybe it’s like a cold beer, or their Sunday ritual, or washing their car, whatever, they might not relate the same way, so what’s pleasurable for me, it’s definitely not what’s pleasurable for other people. I think sometimes we have to initiate people into pleasure, especially when people have been a little bit disconnected, or maybe there’s someone we consider like more in their masculine, or grounded, or whatever. I was just the other night, I went to hang out with some friends on a boat in the Marina and my friend had set it up, and she brought her own candles, and a little string of Christmas lights, and some fabric to drape over things, and the guy who manages Vogue was like, Oh, my God, you just totally transformed the space, I would have never thought to do this. I thought it was already a great space, but I love the ambiance you’ve just created”.

I hear this all the time, men are like, “We don’t need all the candles and the smelly good things, and touch soft fabrics” but then when you do it, and you initiate them into it, they’re like, “Oh, my God, this is next level”.

Lindsay: Man, that’s true. I’m just like sitting here, and I’m thinking about what you’re saying there in that, as women, it’s hard for us. I think, for men, it’s been perceived as this Frou Frou, “Oh, I’m not going to do that” kind of thing. That just leads us into what can be a whole nother discussion about toxic masculinity, toxic femininity, but, again, it just all goes back to pleasure and starting to prioritize yourself, starting to listen to your body, starting to be disruptive in a way and saying, “Hey, I’m going to start doing these things to make myself happy”.

Because really, what I hear you keep saying is that we have the power within us. To own our power, we have to tap within ourselves, and that starts with our bodies, and finding what is pleasurable for us.

Julia: Taking back that power that we’ve just been taught to give away, or that it wasn’t safe for us to have it, or whatever. All the things we’ve been taught. That’s why I say, pleasure is an act of rebellion.

Lindsay: Yes, it sure was. Okay, Julia, we got to wrap it up here.

Julia: Ok, because I’m like, “We could get into all these things”.

Lindsay: I know, we can go in many of these, but I hope as a listener, you’re taking away something that, you want to change. “There’s something a step I need to take, maybe I need to do this with pleasure”, or whatever it is. I do want to end on one of your posts, Julia, that I think would be a good closer, and it says, “Do dope shit today, it’s okay to not know, it’s okay to fear the unknown. It’s okay to question yourself, it’s okay to see the same ship come up over and over again. Nothing is wrong with you, you are totally and completely safe and okay. Permission to love yourself no matter what.”

When I read this, I wish I would have seen a post like this, God, like five years ago, it would have been a game-changer for me, because I was sitting there thinking, “What is wrong with me? Why is all these other people enjoy going out and going to parties? They enjoy being in the corporate world and I don’t”, or, “They enjoy this, and I don’t.” I thought there was something wrong with me and the reality was that I just needed to figure out who I was and go on that path and continue to listen to that and go through that. That’s how I’ve been able to own my power.

What Julia has taught you today, again, may seem very elementary to you, but this is golden stuff and I really encourage you to follow her on social media. She gave her handles earlier, but again, you can follow her on Facebook, Julia Wells, on Instagram, Juliamotherfuckingwells, right Julia? Then her Facebook group, Visible AF is really good. I’m in there, you’ll see me kind of commenting on stuff all the time. Julia, you’re doing something really awesome in the world, it has been a joy to watch you really just step into the authentic person that you are meant to be.

I’m so grateful that you got to come on the show today, and I’m grateful at you’re friends, and I’m grateful you get to coach me, Julia’s coaching me later this weekend, which is so exciting. She’s going to help me get unstuck in some areas on social media that I need to push through, and that again, is the power of coaching, friends, is even when you’ve done a bunch of personal development work, or if you’re in the industry or whatever, sometimes you just need somebody else to see something that you can’t see in yourself.

For me, I knew I wanted to hire Julia for a long time because she just kept sparking something in me. If she sparks something in you, I really encourage you to reach out to her and follow that because, again, that’s something in your body that’s saying, “Hey, this feels good. I need to explore this.” I’m really glad that I’m going to finally get to do that with Julia. Thank you again, Julia.

All right, friend, I hope you loved that interview with women’s empowerment coach Julia Wells, Julia mentioned on the episode, she works primarily with coaches but she just also works with any kind of woman who wants to step out and own their power more. Again, if you feel called to go work with her, go find her, you will love it.

Now, next week, or next time on the show, I should say, I’m going back to a solo episode, we’re going to do one interview episode a month and one solo episode a month. My solo episode is going to be about growth and how growth can feel uncomfortable, and how to push through that when it does feel that uncomfortable. All right. The last thing, if you have not left a review for the show, please go do that, it would help me out so much. Just go wherever you listen to the show, especially if you’re on iTunes, and if you can’t leave one where you listen, go over to my Facebook page, find me there, leave review about how you’re loving the show.

Those reviews help me stay motivated to continue to give you this incredible free content. Please, that just take a few minutes of your time. If that, go leave a review about what you’re loving on the show. Now, that’s all I have for today, my friends. Until next time, all my loving blessings, and remember, you’re only as unstoppable as you believe you can be, so believe in yourself. You got this.