What Does Giving Yourself Your Best Chance Look Like?

Believe it or not, I put off writing the answer to this IWW for a week because I dreaded having to face the answer.

I know exactly where I am not giving myself my best chance and saying it out loud would make me accountable to all of you. I found myself saying, “Can’t I just write something else, anything other than this?”

Nope.

So here I go.

Giving myself my best chance would look like me doing what I say I’m going to do. I’m specifically thinking about the social media calendar I’ve created for 2018.

Don’t Worry, Be Yoncé: How to Catapult Yourself Into Your Own Version of Super Stardom

Real talk: I been rocking with Beyoncé since the first time I heard “No, No, No” in high school. It’s no secret that I have tremendous respect for her and all that she has accomplished. It really inspires me that a 36 year old Texas mother of three children under the age of 10 is at the very top of the music game. She shuts down red carpets, award shows, Coachella, the Internet all with the magic of her authentic self.

It’s really easy to think, “Well, Beyoncé is uber successful because she has tons of help. She has a personal trainer, chef, nannies, management company, make-up artists, hair gurus, and a kick ass mama (Hey, Ms. Tina! I love you!) to help her out. I don’t have that kind of help so that’s why I’m not the Beyoncé of my own life.”

While there is truth in that statement, I want you to consider that the megastar Beyoncé that we all know and love today was once Beyoncé Gisselle Knowles, a little girl from Houston, Texas with big dreams.

Name Your Genius

My genius is that I am really good at vibing with people from all walks of life.

For example, when you look at all of my friends, they are each very, very different. We talk about very different things, too. For example, my friend, Amy, is my silly friend. To this day, we joke like little girls on the playground. My friend, Bevin, is my entrepreneurial friend. We love to jam out on our businesses, our dreams, our future. My friend, Lauren, is my fun friend. We love to talk about having a good time, music, adventure. My friend, Angela, is my sister. She gives me room to be myself with no judgment. Granted, I realize I am grossly simplifying these women into one sentence descriptions. However, they are just too wonderful to capture in a blog post.

The Best That Ever Did It: How to Give Yourself Credit Without Cringing

For as long as I can remember, I have had a really hard time talking about my accomplishments.

We’re talking all the way back to elementary school, where kids have no filter and just tell it like it is. Whenever anyone would ask me how I did on the test, I’d say, “Oh, I passed.” I never mentioned the fact that I got the highest grade in the class.

What Does Self-Love Look Like In Your Life?

I’ll admit that when I first heard the term “self-love,” it sounded like some code word for masturbation. 😬

While I learned the importance of loving myself, I’m not certain I ever knew that there was a specific term to denote the process. However, you’re talking to someone who didn’t know there was such a thing as hot tea until I was 16 years old. True story. 😬

I digress.

I Love Me: Taking The Necessary Steps Back to Self-Love

A good friend of mine recently recounted to me the first time she accepted less than she deserved and started to believe the story of her unworthiness.

As a sixth grader (sixth grade!!! The mom in me shudders), she had fallen head over heels for a boy in her class. He was cute, charming, and, much to her surprise, into her. “LaTisha, he was way out of my league and I couldn’t believe he was into me. I was tomboyish and chubby. He asked me out and I agreed. I was 11 years old. It was the most powerful, intoxicating feeling -- that young love feeling. So much so, that even as an adult I can close my eyes and still feel that feeling of hope, wanting, and love. I have never felt that way since.”

What Strategy Can You Employ to Battle Imposter Syndrome?

I’m going to put on my Career Development Coach hat for a second.

When I worked with one of my HVAC students, I made sure that he was fully prepared to rock his interview. This meant that I would conduct a mock interview with him. My students were expected to dress for the mock interview and come prepared as if it were the real thing.

I was super serious about it, too. I asked them difficult questions that tripped them up and judged every single aspect of the experience. Afterwards, I gave them extensive feedback on how they did. If they completely bombed it, we re-scheduled the interview as many times as they needed. No student of mine was gonna be going into a real interview looking a fool. Not on my watch, boo.

Crush Imposter Syndrome Once and For All With These Three Tips

In my blog post, I Was A Finance Fraud, I talk about my two year battle with imposter syndrome.

It’s something that I hid in shame the entire time I worked in Corporate Finance and that wreaked havoc on my mind, body, and spirit. I felt like a complete fraud and that any moment I was going to be found out and fired because I had been faking the whole time. It was irrational and completely untrue, yet I believed it down to my core and I could not shake the feeling.

What exactly is imposter syndome? According to this Fast Company article, imposter syndrome is a “psychological phenomenon [which] reflects a belief that you’re an inadequate and incompetent failure, despite evidence that indicates you’re skilled and quite successful.”

How Does Fear Feel In Your Body?

We tend to think of ourselves as separate compartments: This is my physical body. This is my mind. This is my soul. So on and so forth.

We go to our doctors for our physical ailments. We see therapists for our mental issues. We go to church for questions of the soul. Everything separate.

Reflection, Health, Life CoachingLaTisha CottoMay 30, 2018fear, i wonder wednesday, perspective, mind body connection

3 Powerful Ways You Can Address Fear

I’ve always been a pretty brave person.

All credit goes to Mama Terry. It was the morning of the first grade grade TAAS test. Standardized tests have never been my jam. Mama Terry, as per usual, came thru with the gamechanger. She wrote down Philippians 4:13 on a little sheet of paper. She said, “Put this in your pocket and anytime you feel anxious or scared, you take it out, read it and then set it on your desk. You can do all things, Tisha. Remember that.”

And that’s what I did. Halfway thru the test, I took out that little sheet of paper and I read the verse, written in my mom’s beautiful handwriting. I set it on my desk and then knocked that test out the park.

Don’t get it twisted, honey bunny.

What Triggers You

After many years of self-reflection, I know that I am deeply triggered when someone cuts me off during a discussion. It has happened to me many times that I’ll be having a difficult conversation with someone. The person expresses his or her opinion and, right when I am about to respond, he or she says to me, “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to hear what you have to say.”

Never Waste A Good Trigger: How to Harness the Power of Discomfort

In 2014, I did my 200 hour yoga teacher training at YogaOne Studios in Houston, Texas.

It was a life changing experience because I was asked to step outside of my comfort zone into a new way of being. My teachers, Roger and Albina, led our group, The Incredibles, thru many different exercises designed to inspire us to examine our beliefs and actions.

For one week, we worked sun-up to sun-down. We were physically and emotionally exhausted. It was the perfect environment for us to be triggered. There were many moments where I found myself shutting down or breaking down into tears, some of which I had no real clue why.

Life Coaching, Personal Development, Practical TipsLaTisha CottoMay 21, 2018life coaching, trigger, yoga, anger, healing

What Do You Want Your Legacy To Be?

Sheesh, this is a hard one, even for me (since I’m prone to think about things like this all the time).

How does one (especially a loquacious one) distill an entire lifetime of lessons into a concise thought? I had to look up the definition of legacy to really wrap my head around this question

Legacy: something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past

Mama Terry, Thank You

To be honest, this spiel started out as a “how to” post entitled “How to Cultivate Faith, Patience, and Courage.”

The main idea was that in order to cultivate these virtues, you must be placed in situations where they can develop. That’s really the only way. I started to tell the story of how I studied abroad in college and how my Type A tendencies were challenged by the new culture I found myself in. However, while reliving those moments, my mind wandered down a different rabbit hole.

This is what came next --

Reflection, MotherhoodLaTisha CottoMay 14, 2018gratitude, perspective, motherhood, self-reflection

What Self-Limiting Thoughts Float Around in Your Mind?

I've said it before:I struggle with feeling worthy of owning a business and allowing my business to be really successful. It is complicated because, at the same time, I know, deep down inside, that I have everything I need to be successful and that I can really do it.

How is it possible that these two opposite beliefs exist in the same space?