When you wake up, make sure that you understand what is in your control and what is not. That is how you can practice the art of self-leadership. What is in your control? In your life? In work? Once you find that, you’ll be able truly lead yourself.
Join Dolores Hirschmann and her guest Stacy Raske as they talk about the importance of setting boundaries for yourself. Stacy is the founder and CEO of the InFLOWential Leadership Mastermind. She is also a bestselling author, speaker, podcast host, Iraq War Veteran, leadership mentor, and so much more. She helps people, especially entrepreneurs, unlock their highest potential.
Learn how you can practice self-leadership and self-ownership. Start setting boundaries for yourself so you can be your most authentic self. Start taking control of what you can control today!
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Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
The Power Of Having Self-Leadership In Everything You Do With Stacy Raske
I am so excited about my conversation with Stacy Raske. I met her on social media like we meet a lot of people these days, but she struck me with her capacity to move a room and to show up powerfully. Stacy is a best-selling author, speaker, podcast host, Iraq war veteran, badass biker chick, leadership mentor, authenticity alchemist, and executive coach. Her mission in life is to unlock the highest potential and performance in others by shattering the invisible ceiling so that they can embody their full purpose while enjoying the ride. Come join me for this conversation with Stacy because I know it is going to be amazing.
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It is so good to see you again, Stacy. How have you been?
I have been amazing. It is so great to see you again too. It has been a little bit since we chatted on my podcast.
As we do in this show, it is all about exploring. I always say, “It is exploring the journey of clarity.” It was a little bit of confusion because one of the things that I love sharing with our audiences and our readers is that none of our journeys is linear. It is not clean. It is not precise. We do not know what that looks like. Let’s talk about your journey of how did you get to this point in your life?
It is funny because to a certain degree, the knowing is already there. All the clarity, all the knowing, and everything that we need are already inside us. The journey is getting to the place where we believe it and where we trust it. I feel like that was my journey because if I reflect, there were always the divine nudges, the intuitive nudges however we choose to frame that, they were always there. There were times when I did not believe it and decided to go with the overthinking, the programming, all the trauma, or the generational patterns. I went with that as my driving decision maker, rather than being in that place of my inner knowing, guiding, and directing me where I ended up anyway.
For me, it has been building that trust and confidence. Even though it has always been there, the journey of working on allowing myself to trust that came from my rock bottom moment, which was at the end of 2014. It was the culmination of a decade of deeply rejecting my truth, my power, and building this life of shoulds. The more time I wore this mask of who I should be, the way that I dealt with that pain of so much self-rejection, my old trauma, drama, and inner worthiness wounds behind that, was to numb out and avoid. A lot of the numbing out was food, drugs, alcohol, social media, television, or work. Even at my worst, self-harm to change how I was feeling in the moment.
My idea of self-control was an eating disorder because I had no skills to cope emotionally or spiritually. I was overwhelmed. Once I had this moment of clarity, of being present with who I am being in the moment and taking ownership of, “I hate myself and I hate the life that I have created, but it is my choices that made this.” I threw in the towel on trying to control anything other than myself. It has been a very rocky and messy journey to getting to the place of trusting myself and others and allowing the clarity to be there and follow it.
It is sometimes the courage to allow that clarity to come true for you. I love this concept of creation. People say, “Creation is always the great thing you create.” The reality is that we are creating every single moment of the day, whether it is intentional or unintentional. However or wherever you show up, you are creating an experience for yourself in the world. When we show up without a vision, without intention, and without awareness, we create what we create. You wake up one day and you are like, “I never wanted this.” It is true if you understand the power that this you created, then whatever the other this is, you can also create.
When you have healthy boundaries with yourself, you create internal safety for yourself to be more authentic and vulnerable.
That is the beauty of this work. What did you create, Stacy? You said that in 2014, you hit rock bottom and the life you had created was no longer a choice for you. Something shifted, micro steps started happening one way or another, but you created a new reality. Talk to us about your reality. What does that look like? What work do you do? What makes you tick?
It is about being in this place of full self-ownership. It is owning everything about who I am in the present moment and living this lifestyle of leadership in everything that I do. I am functioning from a place of self-leadership. In English, what does that mean? I have built this business and this brand. I am a best-selling author and a speaker, but my big passion is the coaching and mentorship of others to step into their genius, their greatness and unlock their full purpose and potential as leaders. I do this with predominantly entrepreneurs, but entrepreneurs and executives. These leaders are impact-driven and they are amazing high performers like myself.
I work with people who are like me. It is building this lifestyle where we are no longer chasing freedom or fulfillment. We are allowing ourselves to experience it by doing high-performance inner work. It is me always leaning into my own journey. It is bringing in this amazing team, curating this team, this process, and this pathway to help these leaders that are like me get results way faster without bypassing anything. I am like, “It is all the inner work.”
Let’s talk about the inner work because everybody wants to be given the blueprint for success or, “Let me read a book on leadership and tell me the framework. What is the framework? I will follow it.” There may or may not be one, but ultimately, no framework and no blueprint will work unless you can integrate it and allow it into your life. What gets in our way of leadership and even self-leadership?
The skillset for me was learning how to have boundaries. At the end of the day, the magic of boundaries is that they serve to support your inner work and your outer work. When you have healthy boundaries with yourself, it creates the internal safety for us to be then able to be more authentic and vulnerable. It creates the internal safety for us to go in and heal those inner worthiness wounds, which do not have to take forever when we are doing it in the right way. I see so many people like, “I want to be more authentic and I want to be vulnerable.” They go there and it is like a river with no banks.
Let’s create this beautiful structure and framework of safety to be the riverbanks for this creative flow, for this authenticity, and for this amazing feminine energy that we have. We have got to have that masculine energy in place, which are the boundaries. It is that safety, that energetic layer of protection. However, this also applies externally because, at the end of the day, we are not able to hold our team, our children accountable for themselves if we are not doing it for us as leaders first. Most people teach boundaries in the context of relationships with others. I am like, “Those are a mirror reflection of your relationship with you.” If someone is not respecting your time and your energy, ask yourself, “Where am I not respecting my time and my energy?”
Self Leadership: Don’t live a life of shoulds. Allow yourself to trust and be confident again. Because the more you wear this mask of who you should be, the more trauma and self-rejection you’ll feel.
I work with all these amazing leaders and they wanted freedom, geographic, financial, and time freedom. Yet, their business still is running them. They are maxed out on time. At the end of the day, I am like, “You are the one in charge of your schedule. If you are not willing to respect your time, your goals, and your vision enough, you are going to continue yes-ing and going over and then not respecting other people’s time. They are not going to respect yours.” That is just a small example.
It is sad. The concept of self-leadership is otherwise we look for it outside and it does not work. Leadership comes more on how you show up, modeling what you believe than talking about what you believe, or telling about what you believe. It only shows that if you do not act the part, you cannot talk about the part without because I was a dissonance.
Where people pick up on it is they think they have boundaries, but they are not boundaries. They are walls. The biggest wall that we have to create a layer of protection when we lack healthy boundaries is control. You see, so many leaders are struggling to fully let go and trust their team to delegate and to let go of some of these $5 or $10 per hour tasks so they can focus on the $500 and $1,000 per hour tasks.
Stepping out of the doing and into the leadership role where your job now is holding that space for your team, nurturing your team, elevating your team, and elevating the leaders within your team. It is a totally different way of being. Closing that gap is so important, but we got to go that route and be able to shift out of control and into that healthy harmony, boundaries, and trust.
Let me ask you a question. All of this is wonderful, but at one point, we need to take action. What does action look like from a place of self-leadership versus action from a place of no boundaries or a place of no leadership? It is the, “I will take it on.” My team, themselves will feel redundant because I will ask for something and get it done before they have a chance to do it or micromanage the doing. What does it look like to take action from a place of the self-leader, authentic, and that shows up powerful?
The simplest switch to flip is focusing on this context of control and building this relationship with boundaries. Boundaries, in their simplest form, is responsibility. What am I responsible for? What am I not responsible for? It is amazing that most stuff is not our responsibility, yet we are putting all this time, energy, and attention into it. The only stuff we are responsible for is ourselves, what we do, what we say, what we think, what we feel, how we respond to things, how we manage our time, and how we manage our energy and our emotions. At the end of the day, that is the only thing we have control over.
Don’t allow disrespect in your bubble. If you apply that to yourself, everything changes.
Every day, being in a place of self-leadership is strategically investing my time, energy, attention, money, and your team into what you have control over. The coolest thing is now you are in a place of self-leadership, self-control, and self-mastery to where you are now influencing those around you in a whole different way. The best boundary I tell everyone to focus on having is simply the boundary, no disrespect.
This is your energetic bubble. You will no longer allow disrespect in your bubble. If you apply that to yourself, everything changes. How would your world change, your impact, your income, or your influence change if you no longer allow yourself to disrespect your time, your energy, your body, your goals, and even how you talk to yourself?
It is in those micro moments, micro conversations, micro thoughts, and micro actions in our day that everything shifts. It is not the big moments or the daily initiatives, how you wake up and what you had for breakfast. If you wake up and the first thing you do is grab your phone, I would say, “Think again.” When all is said and done, what is the impact that you will have had on this world?
I had the gift of experiencing this. I spoke on stage at a women’s event. I got to watch onstage, not only my client, that I got to share the stage with her and see her standing in her genius and her power. I watched her client get on stage and stand in her genius and her power and move the room. I got to watch firsthand the beauty of that ripple effect.
I was talking with a client and what got me was sharing with her that I have age-appropriate versions of all of these self-management and self-mastery tools that she can share with her kids. We get to start impacting the next generation right now, break the generational cycles and patterns of trauma, lack of boundaries, and lack of confidence. That is what gets me.
I appreciate you showing up. You are powerful for that, Stacy. What book, podcast, or maybe Netflix series must be a watch or read?
Self Leadership: Being in a place of self-leadership is strategically investing your time, energy, attention, money, and team into what you actually have control over.
This is going to be a little bit of self-promotion. It is the television show. Season two launched. It is called 4 Days to Save the World. I am on the empowering women team. The actual release date for my episode is sometime in May 2022. What is amazing about 4 Days to Save the World is it puts people who have never met before in a room for four days. You have to create an economically viable business that solves one of the United Nation’s top world crises. It is things like suicide, hunger, homelessness, and cancer.
Is this on Netflix? Where do you watch it?
They have it on Amazon, Roku, and Human2Human Network. You can download the app, Human2Human, and they have their own network. It is on Apple TV, X-Box, and Amazon Prime. It is on a good bulk of the streaming services. I am on it, but it is not just about me.
4 Days to Save the World, you guys heard it. It is on Roku, Amazon, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and Human2Human network. We can download the app. We will see our own Stacey in it. Before we leave, what action can our readers take right now?
The most important action you can take, every morning especially, is shifting your focus to not only what your intentions are for the day but jotting down what is within your control and what is not. One side of the paper says “mine,” and one says “not mine.” I draw the line down the center and word vomit everything that I have been thinking about and investing into. If there is a lot that has been on the “not mine,” I pivot back over to the “mine” column. That is what generates the results. Take that moment, get clear on what is within your control, and focus on it.
Where can people find you?
You cannot lead a revolution until you lead yourself.
The easiest central hub is StacyRaske.com. That’s a great spot because you can find my books, my app, and all my other resources from that central hub.
Do you have parting thoughts?
You cannot lead a revolution until you lead yourself. You must lead yourself first.
It might feel like a revolution, but it is part of the challenge. There are a lot of parts of us that need to be led sometimes.
Self-parenting our inner child is what we are doing.
Stacy, thank you so much for making time for us and for sharing all your brilliance.
Self Leadership: The most important action you can take every morning is to shift your focus to what is, not only to what your intentions are for the day, but to jot them down. What is within your control and what is not?
You are so welcome. Thank you so much for having me. It is such a pleasure.
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I finished an amazing conversation with Stacy where we talked a lot about leadership, but not from the place that you are used to hearing the word “leader.” We talked about leadership from the place of self-leadership, and what it looks like to have self-leadership before you walk into the world to have an impact, and how you can show up much more powerful as a creator when you can exercise self-leadership and model that to everyone around you. You do not want to miss this amazing episode with Stacy Raske.
Important Links
- Stacy Raske
- 4 Days to Save the World
- Human2Human
- www.Facebook.com/stacy.raske
- www.Instagram.com/stacy.raske
- https://www.YouTube.com/c/StacyRaske
About Stacy Raske
Stacy Raske is a bestselling author, speaker, podcast host, Iraq War Veteran, badass biker chick, leadership mentor, authenticity alchemist, executive coach, and boundaries expert. She’s also the founder and CEO of the InFLOWential Leadership Mastermind. Her mission in life is to unlock the highest potential and performance in others by shattering the invisible ceiling so they can embody their full purpose while enjoying the ride. She loves to help Alpha leaders shift from intimidating to influential by embracing their rebellious side and disrupting the status quo. Stacy has written for and been featured in numerous magazines, including Authority Magazine and Business Insider.
Using the toolkit she’s learned recovering from trauma and addiction, she’s mentored and inspired thousands with her vulnerability, authenticity, intuition, and storytelling. Stacy believes that “everything we need to be successful is already within us and we must give ourselves permission to embody all we desire.” She lives outside Tampa, Florida with her husband, Jeffry, two fabulous motorcycles, and two cats.
