Power doesn’t come from outside of ourselves, as we often thought it would. Rather, it comes from the inside, our uniqueness, our soul, and our passion to become better. In this world full of negativity, what we need is a ray of light. For us to move forward in the right direction, all of us should feel empowered. No matter where we are in our journey, it is our job to break down barriers that can hinder us from becoming stronger and more confident. Today’s guest is here to help us with this subject. Jewel Ray Chaudhuri is an executive leadership and women’s empowerment coach. She’s on the show to give us some insights into what it takes to be empowered.
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The Power of Empowerment With Jewel Ray Chaudhuri
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. We talk about empowerment quite a bit on this podcast, because empowerment is part of the core reason for this podcast edition. It’s part of the core motivation for this show. In order to do what we really want to do, we need to be empowered. Lack of empowerment is something that prevents a lot of people from achieving your best life, from going after what it is you really want.
Our world is full of disempowering scenarios, disempowering talk, and disempowering messages, whether it’d be from a really old school, traditional, hierarchical work environment, whether it’d be from the media, the news, or whether it’d be from some of your well-meaning friends that have adopted a victimhood- or doomsday-disempowered mentality. We actually need to, no matter where you are on your journey, be consistently looking into what we can do to counteract a lot of those messages that we’re going to find in that ambient world.
My guest today is here to help talk about some of these subjects, Jewel Ray Chaudhuri, who is an executive leadership and women’s empowerment coach.
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Jewel, welcome to the program.
Thank you, Stephen. It’s great to be here. Really enjoying this.
Thank you. The first thing I want to ask you is about what I was mentioning in the introduction, which is what disempowering messages are in the ambient environment where most people are going. I don’t think that many people are not subjected regularly to messages of disempowerment. I identified a few sources, but I’m just curious, from your perspective, what I may have missed, are there other places where people are hearing a lot of things that are disempowering to them?
First of all, a lot of it is what we’re telling ourselves. We have these – I’m going to call them – little parrots, most Laras, who sit on our shoulder. They’re our inner critic, our judge, and they come up with all these messages. A lot of the message, especially for women, is around, “I’m not enough. I’m not good enough. I’m not pretty enough. I’m not smart enough. I’m not competent enough.” You fill in the blank, and that’s what it is. Those judges help us to tell those disempowering stories.
You mentioned being in victim mode. A lot of times, we don’t even start because we’re hearing the message, “No. You can’t go after that job. You have no experience there”, or, “Wait till you get this degree or that degree, and then you can have whatever you want.”
Would you say that, as far as anyone who needs more empowerment, which I would say is almost everybody — but you can correct me on that — the number one thing is the messages we tell ourselves every single day?
Yes, because we’re told those messages. When I was about 16 years old in high school, and I can remember what somebody said to me, I’ve carried that message for a very long time.
My message was about speaking and talking. I carried that into college where my throat would tighten if I raised my hand and things like that. Since then, I’ve learned to deal with it, obviously, because I was in training and development. I did have to speak, and I’m speaking now. We have to become aware of it. That’s what’s holding us back.
It sounds like that first step is awareness, as you’re saying, because it’s hard to really stop these disempowering messages that we tell ourselves if we’re not even aware that we’re doing it. If you were to think about the average person or even the average woman, because you work with women, the scenario tends to be a little bit different. How often do these disempowering messages being said within each woman’s mind? Also, how often are the women you work with when you start out even aware of how often these disempowering messages are being processed through the mind or brought up through the mind?
Those are interesting questions. For some people, every time you get on a call, or you’re on a networking group, you say, “This is really tough,” walking into a networking situation, “What am I going to say? How am I going to behave? Nobody will talk to me.” Those are all disempowering messages. If we decide, “Hey, I’m going to get into this room. I’m going to have some fun with it. I’m going to see how many people I can meet,” that’s a different message to tell ourselves.
A lot of times the messages are just going either positive or negative, but they’re going off in our heads all the time. Now, awareness is key. As you know, I told you I’m an ontological coach. Let me just bring that in for a second. An ontological coach works with body, emotion, and language. Example: one of the things we would look at is what are the assessments or the judgment that you’re making. A lot of times, what we do is, we say, “I’m not good at that,” and that’s a judgment or an assessment. It’s a story also, “I’m not good at that.”
In identifying the assessment, we could start to look at reframing it and saying, “Okay. What’s the evidence?”
Taking that assessment, we would look at how can we reframe it.
The same story when you’re talking about that one message you received when you were 16 years old and carrying that through. You’re going to receive these messages. It’s your choice as to which messages you carry through. Is it safe to say what you’re trying to do is achieve this balance where you receive the negative, you see the positive? A lot of people focus so much on the negative, but there is a situation where you really aren’t good at something.
Earlier in my life, participating in karaoke nights, I am not a good singer, and there’s not really anything I can do about that. Also knowing that when you receive that 14:1 positive or even 4:1 positive, that probably means that you actually are good at something and that you’re just telling yourself the story that you’re not based on one person who may have happened to be having a bad day that day or something like that.
Your karaoke, your bad singing, there’s other things that karaoke may give you. You are able to get up in front of a room and just do it. The message to you might be, “Hey. I’m really good at getting up in front of people showing that I can do that. If you choose to, you can learn.”
My question is, as far as these terrible stories we tell ourselves, what is the key first step that someone should do to get out of this bad pattern? Let’s say someone is really deep into that pattern.
Look at what story you're telling yourself and then look for places where you could reframe the story. Click To Tweet
“Hey, if I’m not good enough with this, I’m okay with it. I’m learning to be better.” Anything that’s going to stop us from moving forward is limiting. It’s a limiting belief or disempowering story, a negative assessment, all those things.
Is there anything about certain times of day or certain specific situations? Do you have a lot of clients that realize that every time I’m around this type of person, or every time I’m in this kind of an office, it tends to be associated with my mid-afternoon energy crash or something like that, where people need to be more mindful of that negative story seeping into their minds?
If you’re conscious that it’s going to happen at 3:00 P.M., at 3:00 PM, somebody is going to walk into your office, and you’re going to be so upset by them. There’s some things you could possibly do before 3:00 P.M. Get up and walk around. Instead of having them in your office, take them for a walk outside or change the environment a little, change what you’re talking about. Start in a different way and center yourself, deep breathing, before that 3:00 P.M. You can really handle it.
When we're centered, we have more choice. Click To Tweet
Somebody comes into our office, then we could usually handle that situation a little better.
A lot of times, what happens is, during the day, we forget to breathe. We’re not aware, especially in the corporate world. I often say that we’re talking heads without a body.
One of the questions I have is whether or not beyond the awareness of what the negative story it is you’re telling about yourself, are there general daily habits that people can do? I think of certain word choices. A lot of people who are less confident will tend to, into their emails, texts, say things like, “Well, I could be wrong,” or, “You could always change my mind,” put these things in there. Is stopping some of those word choices or picking more confident word choices another part of the equation that people can employ to try to get into that more empowered state of mind?
Women especially have a tendency to say, “I think this is the way it is,” or “I guess so.” We apologize a lot.
In your view, what is the right balance between someone who is apologizing too much or adding these lack of confidence words too low and the people who reach a point where they’re arrogant and they’re expressing maybe too much confidence in something that does actually have a decent amount of uncertainty in it?
That’s an interesting question. The opposite of showing lack of confidence is showing being out there. What you’re probably trying to do is hiding what’s going on inside, bringing it into balance. If we believe this is who I am, I don’t need to – I’m going to say –puff myself up.
I think we’ve all had encounters with these types of people who either express way more certainty about something. Let’s say it’s an issue that the public is divided 50/50, but they’re 100% certain that they’re 100% right on, or their way of doing things is the only way to do things even though there are plenty of successful people that have completely different ways of operating. It sounds like what you’re saying is that a lot of the times, if someone shouldn’t express uncertainty in an unhealthy, disempowering way, but when there are multiple ways to do things, there is a way to be empowered and still not claim everything essentially.
Yeah. The thing is, we have something called enemies of learning and friends of learning. Sometimes, in those friends of learning, we have to say, “I don’t know. I don’t know what the answer is.” It doesn’t mean I can’t find out an answer or explore something, a way of looking at something. Being right, you have to ask yourself, “Why am I so locked into being right? Is it because I want to prove that I know everything, that I’m an expert on this?” You have to ask yourself. Experts sometimes don’t know the answers.
Especially in scientific fields where people can spend decades and decades focusing on something and studying something, and still have a lot of uncertainty, because they’re very complicated processes.
Different sides of a continuum.
Part of it sounds like there’s confidence in knowing your opinion or your thoughts on something is right. There’s also confidence in who you are. You talk about a lot of people you work with, a lot of women having this, “I am not enough”. I’m wondering if this need-to-have-the-right-opinion, or knowing all the facts, and knowing that you have Wikipedia memorized in your brain, or something like that, can possibly come from this idea of people feeling like, “I am not enough,” and need to get to the place where people feel like, “Okay, this is who I am. Who I am is enough, and who I am is something that should be validated.”
One of my three points is that you have more power than you think you have.
You talk about the power of choice. You mentioned the power of choosing what narrative you’re telling yourself in your brain or what people you’re going to listen to. What other choices do a lot of your clients make that can be either empowering or disempowering depending on how they do it?
I think making certain decisions really comes back to self-awareness. When I’m self-aware, there’s choices whether to stay in a job or to leave it, or to do something in the job, or maybe not leave the company, but look for something else, another avenue, or add something to the job that perhaps wasn’t there before. A lot of what’s going on now is, especially for mid-life, mid-career people, for women, is that all there is. If we can realize that there are other possibilities than just “I need to be on this career path, or I’m going to leave,” there’s other alternatives.
You help these women find these other alternatives. What I’m wondering is — the first step is figuring out who you are — how hard is it from the step of figuring out who you are, then to figure out what is it that I want? What possibility to want to go out with this expanded view of what the possibilities are?
Some people don’t know, but it’s there. It’s asking people what’s important to them. There’s a therapist. I think his name is Marie Stein,. He says, “When you’re in mid-life, you go back to the things when you were 15 years old.” If you haven’t fulfilled some of those 15-year-old things that perhaps you did, and then you dropped it, you go back and you find them, or you find other things. I’ll give you another example. I did work in a corporation. We had a corporate gym. We had a dance teacher who came to our corporate gym and taught us dancing.
I gave that up to a certain age. I didn’t really dance that much anymore. I went back to taking dance lessons. That was something that I really love. Sometimes ,we’re picking up things, and sometimes, something outside of our work can give us the fulfillment to be able to do our work or give us a new perspective.
When you’re working with your clients and you’re talking about this expanded range of possibilities, do you ever have clients that will just express some form of shock at a possibility that they had never even thought to consider as something that can be done in life? A lot of people do come from this narrow framework, “I like my job. I just need to get a promotion. I just need to get this good review, get my 4% raise,” which will not keep up with inflation now.
I guess people can [reshaft], but there’s also the joy of realizing that it’s more than you had thought about.
A lot of joy comes from something that’s initially shocking. I live in Colorado where there’s a lot of skiing. The first time anyone tries to ski, it can be a little bit scary. The same thing can be said of entrepreneurship, or even as you probably encounter quite a bit, just the first time someone actually asserts themselves when they were accustomed to always just rolling over giving in or giving into what someone else wants.
There’s many ways to look at things. You just have to see it in a different way. That’s one of my other points.
I’ll give you a quick example. I want you to look around, Stephen.
Just for the audience’s benefit, I’m looking at my home, which is where I’ve been recording while on podcast. I’m looking around at a bookcase, a 2/3-done puzzle, a kitchen, stuff like that.
I want you to see if you can find yellow.
Yeah. There’s a bunch of yellow leaves in this puzzle on the table here.
Any place else you see it?
I have a few books that are yellow. Conscious Capitalism is yellow, so is Chris Guillebeau’s Side Hustle, The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin.
Now, if I didn’t mention the word yellow to you, would you have thought about yellow?
Probably not, because it’s not the dominant color. The wood floor is not yellow. The black bookcase is not yellow.
We got to thinking about yellow now.
And then you find it.
And then you find it.
I feel like there’s a trap here, where a lot of people spend more time — and I fall into this trap myself — thinking about what they don’t want, as opposed to what they do want. I had a good friend of mine put it in a really interesting way when he told me, “You don’t plan a trip to Hawaii by thinking about how you don’t want to take a trip to South Africa. You plan a trip to Hawaii by looking at hotels in Hawaii, airfare to Hawaii.” That’s the thing. A lot of it is getting your clients to stop thinking about what they hate, stop thinking about what they don’t want, and start actually thinking about, so they start looking for what they do want.
You need to know the destination. You need to know that Hawaii is the place you’re going to go. Otherwise, you could be going down the street, and that could be your vacation. You need to know that. Destination is really key. The way you achieve that destination may not be the straight path that you think it’s going to be.
That’s important, because that’s opening up more possibilities and the reframing thing. People are so attached to that specific, linear path.
This is what I was thinking about this morning. Our paths aren’t linear — knowing what you really care about, what’s important to you. If my choice is to get to Hawaii by tomorrow, in some ways, I’ve limited that choice. Now, if something happens, I can’t get to Hawaii by that path, then I’m going to have to think of all different ways to get to Hawaii if that’s what I’m seeing as my vision.
I wanted to touch base a little bit on the ontological — I hope I’m pronouncing this right — aspect of your coaching, because you’re talking about body language or what we specifically do with our bodies. Is that correct?
I’m not talking about body language.
Okay.
I’m talking about body posture and movement. It’s how you move. For example, I’m going to ask you to tell me a story. I want you to tell that story with a contracted body.
Hunched over, your arms folded over like that?
Yeah. Let’s add a little sadness to it.
Should it be a sad story, or should it be any story?
Any story, but you’re going to tell us in this body, hunched over. Stephen, tell me how you are today, and what’s going on for you.
Today, I’m really glad. I was sick all last week. I’m really glad I can, once again, go back to eating the types of food that I like eating, but I got to be cautious. I don’t want to gain any more weight. I have a couple of really key discussions, some networking, some meetups with people later in the afternoon, and then tomorrow, I’m going to fly off to Chicago to visit my family.
Stephen, I’m sensing that you weren’t smiling as you were telling the story. What was going on inside of you?
Part of it was, I was actually clutching myself so much to maintain that body posture, and it possibly made me focus a little bit more on the limitations. It might have been even what made me think of, “Well, I can eat whatever I want now, but I don’t want to gain weight.”
Okay. Now, same story, extended.
I want to put my arms out.
You can but just have an open chest.
Just an open posture, open chest, like out to the world.
Yeah. How are you doing, Stephen? Tell me what’s going on for you.
I’m doing pretty good. I always love recording my podcast. I always love these types of discussions. I’m happy to be sharing them with my audience. Yesterday, I did 30 miles of bike riding around, because I’m going to Chicago. It’s going to be a little chilly there. I’m not going to get a chance to really do a lot of outdoor stuff. I rode my bike all the way up Ralston Creek to this reservoir, which was really interesting — a great ride. I rode home really fast. I had some music going on in my head, which is really cool. I watched the American song contest, which I’ve been enjoying. I particularly enjoyed the song from the state of Delaware even though it doesn’t look like that one’s going to win.
What did you do in this one that you didn’t do in the other one?
Obviously, for some reason, at how are you, I naturally, for some reason, talked about different things.
You used words like great. You talked about bike riding. You were animated in what you were talking about. A different feel from the other person that showed up before.
What you’re saying is that things just like your posture — I think it was the Jordan Peterson book that talked about standing up straight, and having your shoulders back, things like that. Those things about your posture can really impact just the way you even present yourself to the world, even if you’re not even aware of this particular posture, this particular mode. Does this include things like how fast you’re walking, or whether or not you’re looking? One of the stereotypes I often have is that if someone’s in a really good state of mind, they’re looking straight ahead more often. If someone’s really depressed, they’re more likely looking down at the ground.
They’re not making eye contact with you.
Yeah, essentially.
It’s how we also move, our rhythm as we’re walking. You can see someone who’s walking really, really fast. That’s the person. The vision is there. I got to go. It’s determination. You can see somebody walking. They’re sauntering along the street, looking at all the windows. That’s more a lyrical, flexible way of walking. We need different postures for different situations. We can really say to ourselves, “Oh, maybe I need determination to get that goal accomplished,” or, “Maybe in this setting with these people that I’m having a meeting with, maybe I don’t have to be, ‘It’s this way. It’s going to be this way.'” Maybe I have to listen for ideas. That’s a different posture there. I need that openness in order to allow their ideas in.
It was about maybe six weeks ago. I was up at Keystone Mountain, skiing. At the end of the day, we’re all taking off our boots. We’re all putting our skis back in the car, getting ready to go home. This random woman is playing music in a car, maybe across the aisle from me. She suddenly looks at me, and we start dancing to the beat of the music. The people that were with me kept saying, “Steve, you always make random friends wherever you go.” I’m wondering if that difference in experience could possibly have anything to do with all this stuff about your posture, about where you’re looking, about how you look to the world.
How did she initiate that it would be you dancing, or did you just start?
I noticed the music. She was dancing. She just looked back at me as I noticed the music and just said, “We’re having a little dance party right now.”
Okay. You were open to it. Whatever your body posture was at that moment, you were open. Yeah. She looked at you and you were a welcome participant. It’s going into a networking session and saying, “I belong here. I’m going in there, and I’m going to meet five people. I’m going to really enjoy myself.” Just throwing yourself away saying, “I’m confident about it,” as opposed to, “Hey, I’m going to go to this networking event. I’m going to stand in the corner, so nobody realizes that I’m there.”
These things are related. You’re saying the stories that you’re telling yourself and then the posture that you exhibit to the world, they’re connected to one another. If you’re starting to tell these “I belong”, “I am worth it”, “I am enough” messages to yourself, your posture is more likely to be the kind of posture that displays confidence, empowerment, and a lot of these things that you work with your clients on. One final question I want to ask about is, you are a women’s empowerment coach, do you work exclusively or primarily with women?
Primarily with women. I’ll take on a man.
I’ve asked this question to a couple other guests on the podcast with similar pursuits, but it’s always good to get more perspectives on it. What do you think is the reason as to why this feeling you’re enough, this empowerment, this not-taking-that-one-message-someone-told-you-when-you-were-16 and letting it fester for you for a decade is more of an issue with women?
Because I worked it with women, it’s easier for me to answer it. It doesn’t mean that men don’t feel it, but they are the dominant culture. Their narrative is different, especially in a work setting. A man might say something like, “Oh, it’s done. Let’s move on to the next thing.” Do you ever possibly experienced that where a woman will dwell on it a little bit longer? “Gee, I didn’t do it that way,” where a man will more easily say, “Okay.”
Yeah. These are all generalizations. Obviously, there are always going to be a lot of counter examples to any of these. I just want to make sure anyone listening understands that. Not everyone fits the mold. Not every experience is what people expect from someone based on their gender or any other identity thing. Identity is not who you are.
I know women. I’ve studied their experiences of power. I hear it more from women. I’m sure men experience also powerlessness, and it’s going to look different.
Yeah. Anyone can experience powerlessness. I think part of your message is also that anyone can experience empowerment no matter who you are. If you change the story you tell yourself, you change your posture, all that ontological — the word gets tripped in my head quite a bit.
Yeah. It’s your way of being. It’s expressed through your body, emotion, and language.
Definitely. If anyone listening out there, now that we’ve learned a little bit about how you work and what kind of people you serve, if anyone listening out there is interested in getting a hold of you, what would be the best way that someone would contact you?
It would be through email.
Okay.
It’s jewel@jewelraychaudhuri.com. I have a website, as you’ve seen, but I’m in the process of moving to a new website. That’s why the email will be the easiest for now. If anybody would like my free gift, I have two. You’ve taken the power wheel, the wheel of personal power. If anybody would like that one, just email me. The other one is a three-step guide for getting from no time to plenty of time even before retirement.
That’s fascinating. Feeling it. People like to have time to go after the pursuits they really want, even outside their career.
Just email me. I also have a free revisiting my life session. You can also take advantage of that.
That is wonderful.
Jewel, thank you so much for joining us today on Action’s Antidotes, telling people what they can do, just some of the more basic things we can all do to try to reclaim some of this, because as you always say, “Most people have more power than they think they have.” One of the things is, of course, you have the power over your daily choices. You have the power over how you’re going to respond to that. You have the power over what messages you internalize, what messages you repeatedly tell yourself, regardless of these environmental factors, such as your good friend that’s very risk averse and very much in this whole discourage victimhood mentality. I think the media is very disempowering myself, because everything’s a problem that’s external, and then you’re just fucked, lack of a better way to put it, or anything that happens at your work that you have the power to say, “Okay, you just gave me this feedback about myself, but I’m not going to accept that narrative. I’m not going to accept that negative feedback. ‘You can’t do this’ is not something that I’m going to accept, and internalize, and bring to myself.”
I love that message. I hope that everyone listening out there, if you haven’t already gotten to a place where you’ve reclaimed that power, you can start working toward that. I’d like to thank everyone out there for listening. I encourage you to tune back into Action’s Antidotes for more episodes, or go and visit some of the older episodes where there’s some similar discussions about this and some discussions about many other types of topics, because lots of people out there lots of great, amazing pursuits. I’d like to wish you all a wonderful day.
Important Link:
- Email Address: jewel@jewelraychaudhuri.com
About Jewel Ray Chaudhuri
Jewel Ray Chaudhuri, Ph.D., is the President and founder of RC Consultants International Inc. T/A Revisioning My Life. Jewel is a women’s empowerment coach and career strategist who works with professional women who struggle with career burnout, boredom or loss of life’s meaning and use their inner power to create lives of freedom, balance, joy and meaning. She helps her clients create lives they love—on their own terms.
Jewel received coach training from Newfield Network and Right Management in 2006 -7. In 2012, Jewel studied Advanced Coach and Leadership Training with Newfield Network.
Jewel began a second career in 1983 in Management Development and Training for New York Life Insurance Company in New York. shortly after receiving her M.A. in Human Resources Management and Development from the New School University. She was a volunteer tour guide at the New York Botanical Garden and this led to a role as a staff underwriter, training new underwriters. It was then she realized her true passion of training and development.