Build Unstoppable Confidence: Simone Knego

This is Women Road Warriors with Shelly Johnson and Cassie Ticcaro from the corporate office to the cab of a truck. They're here to inspire and empower women in all professions. So gear down, sit back and enjoy. Welcome. We're an award-winning show dedicated to empowering women in every profession. Their inspiring stories and expert insights. No topics off limits on our show. We Power Women on the Road to Success with expert and celebrity interviews and information you need. I'm Shelly. And I'm Cathy. Do you struggle with self-doubt or a lack of confidence sometimes? Many women can and do. Their ways to bridge the confidence gap. Simone Canego is an expert on confidence. She's submitted Kilimanjaro, raised six children, and is a two-time TEDx speaker and co-host of her unshakable confidence. There isn't much this lady hasn't taken on. She gives women incredible insights on building themselves up with her signature real method. A two-time TEDx speaker and award-winning author of the extraordinary, unordinary you, as well as her new book, Real Confidence. Simone's work has been featured on ABC, NBC, CBS, Entrepreneur, and Yahoo News. She co-hosts the globally ranked podcast, her unshakable confidence, along with her daughter Olivia, creating cross-generational conversations about self-worth, courage, and connection. She encourages conversations about identity, motherhood, and personal leadership for women who quietly struggle with second-guessing themselves. Simone talks about the unseen ways we lead every day that we don't honor ourselves and how the jokes we make about ourselves quietly erode our confidence. Kathy and I wanted to tap into her insight, so we invited her on the show. Welcome, Simone. Thank you for being with us. Thank you so much for having me here today. This is so exciting. I'm tickled pink. I'm like, you know, women like you inspire women around the world, not just women. You inspire people around the world. And to have you on as a guest today is phenomenal. So thank you for joining us. Absolutely. Yes. So I know our listeners already find you amazing, Simone. Could you give the cliff notes of your life, maybe, and who you are, how you got started, inspiring so many women? I mean, I'm amazed you climbed Kilimanjaro, too. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was not a bucket list. That was kind of a crazy decision, but I got started the way my whole life. I'm a big believer in it's okay to change your mind. So I was going to be a physician. My parents are both physicians. My sister's a physician. My husband's a physician. I failed organic chemistry basically twice. And so that was kind of the end of med school for me. I went on to become a CPA because I was good at math and did many things over my life. I flipped houses. I worked in medical sales. I went back to school to be a teacher. I did all kinds of things really trying to find my purpose and my passion. And I actually came across it by doing volunteer work and understanding that I had a story to tell. And so now that's what I do. I write, I speak, I podcast, and I love every minute of it. And so for everybody listening, it is never too late to change your mind. I love this. I've always maintained, I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I love to be able to explore all the opportunities. It's so exciting. How did you get into talking about confidence? So I am someone who really struggled with self-doubt for the majority of my life. I had an abusive boyfriend in high school. And of course, looking back, that was my realization of that's how I started down that path. I feel for many of us, we've had something that has happened, whether it's comments by somebody or just life beating us down, that we get into this mindset of that we're not good enough and we're not capable enough, we're not smart enough, whatever it is. And that was me for a very long time. And I put up a facade. It didn't matter that I had six kids, I really struggled. And it actually took climbing Kilimanjaro to help me realize what I was capable of. Now I'm not saying go out and climb a mountain, but it's that making a commitment, following through and doing something completely uncomfortable for me that helped me realize that I'm capable of whatever I want. I have to put in the work and I have to want it. So what did you realize when you submitted Kilimanjaro? I didn't need to worry about what anybody else was thinking about me. I needed to figure out a way to quiet my what if whisperer. That's what I call the voice inside my head, also known as Sally, but what if whisperer. And that I'm more than enough as I am. I think for a long time I really felt like I needed that external validation. But what I realized is that I needed that from myself, not from anybody else. Because if I'm not telling myself that I'm an amazing human, why would anybody else telling me make me feel any differently? I have to do the work from the inside. That makes so much sense. Kathy and I had interviewed Valerie Bertinelli and she had put out a book entitled I'm Enough Already. It was a great book. And I've had the pleasure of distributing her book to many women in need. And it was just such an honor. I think every woman on this planet struggles about are we enough? Like if we struggle with self-esteem, we struggle with, you know, what am I doing? Who am I? All this stuff, right? So it's hard. It really is. Simone, why do you think that is? Men can go and apply for a job and maybe be 10% qualified. Women think they have to be 100% or at least 90% qualified. Why are we so hard on ourselves? Yeah, it is such an interesting statistic when you look at it because what I want women to understand is that if you apply to something when you're 100% qualified, you are overqualified. Right? You're already ready for the next job. We, I think there's a lot of societal pressures. I look back to my mom. So my mom went to medical school in 1961. She had grown up on a farm in rural Pennsylvania. Her dad worked in the coal mines. Her mom had a sixth grade education, but in basically ninth grade, she walked into a library for the first time and decided that, you know what? I want this for myself. I want to do something that the world is telling me not to. And that's exactly what she did. She became a physician her whole life. She was told that she was working in a man's world and that her voice didn't matter, but it did. I mean, she changed lives. And I think the way I look at everything now is that we don't need to worry about what anybody else is thinking. I think there's like probably three things to why we still struggle so much. One is the societal pressures. Two is social media. And three is that we're constantly worried about what everybody else will think. Will they judge us? Will they do this instead of living our best possible lives? It's so hard. Well, and of course, when you think about it, we grow up. We watch advertising, which basically always portrays women as having to be perfect. Perfect, perfect, perfect. You don't have a bunch of gunk men have to put on their faces to feel pretty to walk out the door. But we're taught before you even leave the house, you have to look different than you already are. I mean, that right there, it roats our self confidence, our self respect. How do we stop that? I mean, I know high achievers struggle with this. I think all women, even if maybe they're not high achievers, have these issues. I think absolutely most women struggle with this. And it's interesting because I used to feel that way too, that I had to really chase perfection. There's no such thing as perfection. We're all unique. We all have individual things that we struggle with. And for me, I just stopped doing the things that I didn't want to do. We used to go to gallows and I'd have to be dressed all fancy. And that's just not me. I mean, I'm happy to go support someone if they asked me to come do it. I'm a jeans and T-shirt kind of girl. I mean, that's me. I was invited to this event after COVID and the woman who invited me is literally the fanciest person I know. She has amazing clothes. Her makeup is always, you know, everything's to the nines. And I said to my daughter, I don't know if I can do it. And she's like, why? I'm like, because I'm going to wear jeans and a jacket and sneakers. And she said, get out the door and go. And I did. And I have little mindset hacks that I use when I'm struggling, when I'm all up in my head about stuff. And I use that to kind of get through that moment. And when I walked in, so many of the women said to me, oh my gosh, I love the fact that you're wearing jeans. One woman said to me at the end, and this was something that will stick with me forever, is I would have worn jeans, but I didn't know we were allowed to. So a great reminder that we don't need permission to be ourselves, but we need to show up as ourselves every day. So when I record the podcast with my daughter, most of the time my hair is in a ponytail. There's no makeup on. When I walk out the door half the time, I don't have makeup on. That's just, I'm not worried about what anybody else thinks anymore. When I do dress up and I do those things, I do it for me, not anybody else. Amen. And that's- Yep, amen to that. That was really telling that that woman said, I didn't know we were allowed to. It's kind of like, oh wow, are we still in the 1800s? You know? Stay tuned for more of Women Road Warriors coming up. Dean Michael, the tax doctor here. I have one question for you. Do you want to stop worrying about the IRS? If the answer is yes, then look no further. I've been around for years. I've helped countless people across the country, and my success rate speaks for itself. So now you know where to find good, honest help with your tax problems. What are you waiting for? If you owe more than $10,000 of the IRS or haven't filed in years, call me now at 888-557-4020 or go to mytaxhelpmd.com for a free consultation and get your life back. Welcome back to Women Road Warriors with Shelley Johnson at Cathy Takarov. If you're enjoying this informative episode of Women Road Warriors, I wanted to mention Cathy and I explore all kinds of topics that will power you on the road to success. We feature a lot of expert interviews. Plus we feature celebrities and women who've been trailblazers. Please check out our podcast at womenroadwarriors.com and click on our episodes page. We're also available wherever you listen to podcasts on all the major podcast channels like Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Amazon Music, Audible, you name it. Check us out and bookmark our podcast. So don't forget to follow us on social media. We're on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube and other sites. And tell others about us. We want to help as many women as possible. If you've ever found yourself second guessing your decisions or downplaying your own achievements, you're not alone. And today's guest is here to change that. Simone Canego has lived a life that most people only dream about. From summiting Mount Kilimanjaro to raising six children, all while becoming a leading voice on confidence for women everywhere. But what makes her message so powerful is how real it is. Her real method isn't about perfection. It's about recognizing the strength you already have and learning how to own it. Simone is a TEDx speaker, co-host of the Globally Ranked Podcast, her unshakable confidence and the author of The Extraordinary Unordinary You. Let's get back to the conversation because what she shares next might completely shift how you see yourself. Simone, in our last discussion, we were talking about being ourselves. So many women struggle with that. They have to have permission. They think they have to have permission to be themselves. We're so worried about what everybody else thinks. But people are so worried about being judged and what other people will think that they say, oh, if this person is doing it, then I have to do it too. I read this great study where it was evaluating women when they go out to eat with friends or maybe even people they don't know that well, that if the other women at the table will order a salad, that person will order a salad too, even if she wanted something different because she doesn't want to stray away from the norm and have people say, oh, my gosh, she ordered the chicken wings. Oh, my gosh, what's wrong with her? I thought, well, okay, that's a crazy study that we don't even eat what we want to because we're so worried about being judged. Yeah. And we're still stuck in junior high. Oh, yeah. We're an adolescent wanting to do what all our peers are doing rather than what we really like to do because we want to fit in. Yeah. Instead of creating our own path. So you also talk about how we make jokes about ourselves from self-deprecation to self-respect. And how these jokes really erode our confidence. It's true. We do. I don't know if guys do that, but I think what we have, our subtext, what's inside our heads really does dictate how we interact. I agree with you 100%. I feel like, would you say these things to your best friend? Would you say negative comments all day long to someone you really cared about? Okay. You really care about yourself. We should not be saying these things to ourself. And so all of these little comments that we make where we think it's not a big deal, it builds up and it becomes a really big deal. There's so many things I used to say to myself, especially when looking in the mirror, right? Oh my gosh, you gained weight again. You can't control yourself. What's wrong with you? Your hair is frizzy. I mean, constantly just negative things about my appearance until one day my daughter walked in the bathroom. She was a young teen at the time and she said, first of all, you're beautiful. Second of all, you need to stop. You're giving me a complex. How can you expect me to love my body when you don't even like your own? And that just knocked me back because I didn't realize how much the things I was saying to myself were affecting the people around me. Very wise daughter at a very young age. No kidding. Mom, stop. I don't think I even realized I was doing it. It's such, it's part of my routine or it was part of my routine. Now I do the opposite. I say all the great things to myself because there is so much science behind it that what we say to ourselves is how we live our life. What we say to ourselves is what we believe. And so it's so important that we flip the script. We really have to be careful about the thoughts we think and the words we speak. Yeah. And the world needs you to be who you were made to be. You know? You just, you've got to be you. Yeah. I mean, I once heard this on a playground where a little kid was trying to copy exactly what this other little boy was doing and the nanny finally said, okay, you need to be John because Jimmy's already taken, right? Like you need to do your own thing. Do not try to copy every single person, every single thing the other kid is doing. And I thought that was such a great reminder too, right? We're supposed to be unique. We weren't born to be exactly like every other person in the room. That would make a really boring world if everybody was exactly the same. So it's a big reminder of like, yeah, be you. Yeah. We weren't built to be clones. No, for sure not. I'm one in a million and I'm loving every minute. My mom says, thank God. My mother said something similar. She said, Shelly, when you were born, they broke the mold. But yes. My mother said, when you grow up, I hope you have 10 kids just like you. Oh. And I was like, lip mom, I had six, pretty good, right? Oh, my goodness. I mean, what you've been able to accomplish raising six children too, that that's... That alone is a feat in itself. Really? I have one and my hands were full. Oh my gosh. Yeah, there's a lot of chaos, but it's good chaos and I can't imagine my life any other way. I think it has really... I mean, it's changed my life obviously in so many ways, but it's taught me such a level of patience and understanding and the things that they teach me all the time of like, okay, mom, practice what you preach. Why are you talking to yourself like this? You need to think about what you're saying. This is really important. I'm like, oh my gosh, you sound like me. Yes, you talk about what your six kids taught you about identity and belonging and you got an understanding of unconditional love and letting go of control because when you think about it, there really is all of that. The unconditional love, the bond between a mother and her children and letting go of control, you really don't have control always when you've got children you're raising. It really is like patience. You have to remind yourself, right? It's hurting cats a lot of days. Hurting cats, yes. We adopted our youngest three children and so our son Noah, who is from South Korea, he's 19 years old now, but when we adopted him, he was a baby. He was four months old and I had this whole idea in my head of how everything was going to go and how the return flight was going to go coming back from Korea and he cried 16 out of the 18 hours on the flight from Seoul to Chicago. Oh, wow. Oh, yeah. So I had no control and I questioned everything about myself at that point because, oh my gosh, I thought I knew what it was to be a parent because I already had three children and no, I had to learn how to be his parent. And so that was also such a great reminder for me of that everything, everybody's unique and you got to figure it out and everybody is getting through the day trying to figure it out. Very true. Sometimes life feels like an experiment or were Thomas Edison, how many times he goofed up and had to do it again and again and again until he got it right? Sometimes you kind of feel that way too. Yeah. I would say that my older kids would say that, yeah, I experimented a lot on them so the younger ones have it much easier. Thank you so much. So something else you talk about is why waiting to be chosen is holding you back? Do you think women wait to be chosen? Yeah, I think very often we do. I mean, if we just go back to the statistics about applying for a job, right? So we're waiting. We're waiting for things to happen. We're not going to put in our application because we don't feel like we're ready. We're not going to put our name in the hat for a promotion because we don't feel like we're ready. Whereas I think for a lot of men, they just step forward and do it. I'm not saying they don't have self-doubt. I mean, men do too. I know my husband. There are definitely things he struggles with. But for women, we wait to be asked to do something. We wait for, I can even tell you when I send out emails, if I don't get a response to certain things, I'm like, oh my gosh, I guess I did something wrong. My husband's like, they're not thinking about you, right? Like stop, get off of that high horse. They're not thinking about you right now. It has nothing to do with you. But I think as women, we internalize that and we think, well, okay, yeah, I shouldn't apply for that job. I shouldn't call the person and ask them not to lunch because what if they say no, which is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing. We should be taking those risks. That's where growth happen is when we keep putting our name in the hat and we keep moving forward, by taking action, that's how we grow. Women are hard on themselves. Ugh, aren't we ever? We're our own worst enemy. It's true. And I've been guilty of that and perfectionism. Yeah, I've got that issue going on. I always have to take a step back. It's like, it's not perfect. It's not perfect. It doesn't have to be perfect. But yes, I think that we somehow have it in our heads. Maybe it's because we want to compete and there's still the barriers that we sense subconsciously that we think that if we're this much better, we're going to have that edge. But who are we competing with? Right? That's the thing. When I look at it and we look at women in the workplace and you see this happen very frequently that they are competing with each other. I really think the only person you should be competing with is yourself. Right? How can you do better on certain things? How can you change the way you see yourself instead of using that blame game and saying, oh, wait, that wasn't because of me. That's because someone else took it away from me, but we didn't even try. Yeah. Yeah. I come from a very, very abusive background since I was a small child. And it took me until I was 42. I spent a period of two years in this women's recovery place, off and on for two years. And during that final year when I was there, I had to decide I was a nurse for 13 years and then I needed a career change. And so I ended up becoming a heavy equipment operator. And when I was in training for the first time, I went through all these obstacles. And even though like I'm struggling to like we had self-esteem classes, boundaries, anger management, sexual assault, like all these things to help me along the way. But there's still that it there's so many layers to to self-esteem that it took until the day when I was in training on heavy equipment. I had that particular day I was on the excavator and for the first time and I'm loading a rock truck, so I'm digging in the dirt and I'm loading this truck. And holy crap, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I could do this. I'm like, oh my God, I can do this. Right. And I'm jumping up and down. The girls from the class are jumping up and down. The trainers, he's on the radio. Can I marry you? You're a smooth operator. And like, all right. Smooth operators. Shut up. So that day, like that feeling was so overpowering because all of a sudden I knew and I believe that I could do it. And the transformation, it was I can't even begin. It was life changing, life altering, because as I'm walking home from that class that day, I knew that my whole life, 42 years of being told how stupid, how useless, how fat and ugly and never amount to nothing and blah, blah, blah, blah, but it was all somebody else's opinion. And it was, it was so life altering for me. I can't even begin to tell you that from that moment on, when I knew that I could do this and everything, it was a lie. Well, then nobody else, nothing else has ever affected my decision making. You know, I didn't depend on somebody else. Well, what do you think? You know what? No, this is what I think this is, you know, and yeah, so empowering. Just the, just that one thing, learning to believe in myself. Yeah. And it is not, it is not easy, but that's why I truly believe we have to get out, get out of our own way and get out of our comfort zone. So by you doing something completely different and most people would say, oh, that's man's world, right? I mean, that, that would probably be the outside view in and no, like you did it and you did it for you. And by believing in yourself, that, that was how you accomplish things. And it's about not backing down. I can tell you that same story with my Kilimanjaro story. You know, it was really about, I had to believe it for myself. How many people asked me, uh, do you really think you're going to make it to the top? No, I think I'm going to make it halfway. That's why I'm doing it. What? Like people love to put what they struggle with on you. And then we start internalizing it, believing that's true about ourselves. Mm hmm. People you surround yourself with can say, well, that'll never work. It's like, can't the word can't, it's a bad word. Is it really a right? Can't, can't means won't. It means you won't even try. So don't use the word can't. If you don't want to do something, that's the word you should use because or words you should use. As soon as you say can't, it means you're not capable. And that's what your brain starts believing. But if you say, I don't want to do that, great. That means you took back your power. That's right. Can't never did nothing is what I hurry. Very true. Very true. Yeah. I like it. Stay tuned for more of women road warriors coming up. Dean Michael, the tax doctor here. I have one question for you. Do you want to stop worrying about the IRS? If the answer is yes, then look no further. I've been around for years. I've helped countless people across the country. And my success rate speaks for itself. So now you know where to find good, honest help with your tax problems. What are you waiting for? If you owe more than $10,000 of the IRS or haven't filed in years, call me now at 888-557-4020 or go to mytaxhelpmd.com for a free consultation and get your life back. Welcome back to Women Road Warriors with Shelley Johnson at Cathy Takarov. We're here with Simone Canego, confidence expert, TEDx speaker and co-host of the globally ranked podcast, Her and Shakeable Confidence. She's the author of the extraordinary, unordinary you and real confidence. Simone's been featured everywhere from ABC to entrepreneur. But what really stands out is her ability to connect across generations, especially through her work with her daughter, Olivia. Together, they're opening up honest conversations about self-worth, courage and what it really takes to trust yourself. And coming up, we're diving deeper into how these small everyday thoughts can quietly shape our confidence in ways we don't even realize. Let's jump back in. Simone, in our last segment, we were talking about how we can have self-limiting beliefs, the use of the word can't. And how it really programs the brain. I hate the word can't. You know, as a child, I never liked the word no. And if you told me I couldn't, I'd prove you wrong. Yes, I can. Yes, I can. Watch me. And I think that as children, we may be more inclined to have that inclination. But as we go through life as adults, we tend to back down and maybe have more of that self-doubt. And when you talked about social media being one of the culprits, I'm not sure that's so good for teenagers and kids to see. Oh, I don't think so. I think that it, it's very hard to see someone else's highlight reel and compare it to your life. And that's what these kids do. I was even with a friend recently, we were sitting around the dinner table and this goes back to that self-deprecating comment. She said, I read, I read something or I saw a video that said that when you make friend of your girlfriends, you tend to be happier and you stay closer. And I was like, did you see that on TikTok? Cause that is BS. That is not true at all. Do you really want to hang out with people that are saying mean things about you? No, you don't. Like that. I was so caught off guard by that one. And, and then when you look at our, our younger kids, I mean, my daughter, who is 18 now, fortunately, she's really smart about things. And I'll always say, you know, that is not true. That, that is fake right there. That is completely fake. She's like, I know, I get it, mom, I get it. But I think a lot of parents might not have those conversations with their, their kids to say what you're seeing isn't reality. There's not one person that doesn't struggle with something that is a highlight reel and a highlight reel only. Yeah. Because what you're going to have our kids growing up to really question themselves, how do parents actually protect their kids or, or educate them that social media is, like you said, it's not real. And the messages you are getting, you really have to question. Yeah, I completely agree. So when I look at my kids, so I created, I call it the real method. It's really for women, but parts of it are I use with my kids because they're human and they need to understand how to build confidence, how to build that self esteem, uh, confidence is a skill and you build it from the inside out. It's not something that everybody else has and you don't. So in my method, the first step, well, so it's real, respect yourself, embrace your failures, ask yourself what you want and live without limits. And the first step is respect yourself because for me as a child, I was taught to respect my elders, my peers, you know, everything that goes within those categories, but never once do I remember being taught that the most important person to respect was myself. And I think that's so important for kids today to understand what self respect really means, that setting boundaries, saying no to things that are not appropriate and really understanding that the things that they see out there are, are they being disrespectful to someone else? Probably. And I think that for my kids has really helped. I see a lot of disrespect out there. You know, even face to face with people, it's like, when did everybody get so mean? What the heck? And I think I really have seen an increase in that since social media became so much a part of our lives. Yeah. You record everything and you put it out there and it's honestly kind of, well, it's sad and scary at the same time of the behaviors that we see now. And I agree a hundred percent. I, the fact that on airplanes now, they have to have like a sign saying something about like, if you hurt a flight attendant, then you'll be arrested. I'm like, why do we have to say these things? Because people are doing these things. And that's crazy to me. You know, it's, it's like some of this stuff has become so mainstream, which never. I mean, as, when I was a kid, the only thing you could do on a plane was smoke a cigarette, which was crazy to me that there was a smoking section on a plane, you know, but the things that are happening today just blow my mind that we have to put out these statements saying, please don't hurt this person or please, please be respectful when you're ordering. And it's crazy to me that that is really the society we're living in. Is it that the people haven't been taught? Or do you think that there's just a lot of anger and frustration that's been built up because it's across the board nationwide, even in other countries. I mean, it's not just in the United States or North America. What happened? Yeah. I would say that two things. I think we have a lot of really angry people. I mean, everything is very confusing right now. I would say also that I don't think that we talk enough to our kids about specific things and some of my daughter's friends will come over, they'll walk in the door and they won't even say hi. And I'll stop them every single time and be like, you know, hi so and so, how's your day going? Oh, hi, Mrs. Canago. And I always say to my daughter, I was like, please tell me that you don't behave like that. And she said, I would never behave like that. And I was like, well, then why do you hang out with people that do? Like this blows my mind because this is common courtesy, common skills. You acknowledge people's presence, right? And my, my older kids, their friends will come and hang on the couch with us. But something in this age group where they're scared to say hi, they don't want to deal with us. And I'm like, no, this is not okay. No, it's not. And that's exactly what I'm seeing. And it blows my mind too, because I was taught you respect adults and you were polite and you say hello and you say goodbye and you say thank you and you say please, you know, just simple little things like that make things so much better. When you just walk in and just look at somebody, you get the long stare. It's like, what's that? Have you seen that, Kathy? Just the look. The look. Yeah, you get the look. Like, oh my gosh, is she going to talk to me? Is she going to say something? Please don't. Yeah. Right. Well, maybe it's because they text all the time and they're afraid to talk. Yeah, I really think that's a huge problem for this generation is that they don't have those communication skills. I mean, they break up over text. They sit in the room and text each other. Like, no, you have to talk to humans. Like you have to, this is going to be a big thing moving forward. If you want to actually get a job, you have to know how to communicate. And I think a lot of the kids today, they just don't. And their parents aren't taking the time. I'm not being judgmental, but their parents are thinking, oh, well, this is what everybody does. Okay. Well, we don't have to accept that. Right. We can do something different. We can say, no, I'm not accepting this. You have to learn how to have a conversation and not just text someone that you're not going to be their friend anymore. Like that's ridiculous. That's right. And that's what parents are there to do. You know, and I used to try, well, so-and-so, they don't have to do that. And I'd hear, does so-and-so live here? These are our rules. Well, so-and-so can wear this. You're not, you're not leaving the house looking like that. That kind of stuff, you know. Yes. That's another big one. It's like, when did it become okay to wear shorts where your butt cheeks hang out? Like what? It's like, I don't, I don't get that either. Pajamas to the store. Yeah. I mean, I do like my pajamas, but I don't wear them to the store. So, but exactly. Stay tuned for more of Women Road Warriors coming up. Dean Michael, the tax doctor here. I have one question for you. Do you want to stop worrying about the IRS? If the answer is yes, then look no further. I've been around for years. I've helped countless people across the country and my success rate speaks for itself. So now you know where to find good, honest help with your tax problems. What are you waiting for? If you owe more than $10,000 of the IRS or haven't filed in years, call me now at 888-557-4020 or go to mytaxhelpmd.com for a free consultation and get your life back. Welcome back to Women Road Warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Takarov. Simone Canego is helping women redefine what confidence actually looks like in real life. She's a confidence expert, TEDx speaker and co-host of the Globally Rake podcast, Her Inshakable Confidence. She's also the author of the extraordinary, Unordinary You and Real Confidence. Because it's not just about big achievements. It's all about the quiet moments, the unseen leadership and the way we speak to ourselves when no one else is listening. Simone challenges us to notice how often we dismiss our own strengths or make ourselves the punchline of the joke. And that awareness? That's where real change begins. Let's get back into this powerful conversation and hear how you can start building unshakable confidence from the inside out. Simone, I wanted to unpack a little bit with your real method. It's an acronym. You said that it starts out with respect yourself and then embrace your failures. Yes. This sounds like a really good method and a good reminder on how we can gain our confidence. Yeah, it's really about building confidence. So like I said before, with respect, it's so important that we understand that we disrespect ourselves all day long, right? By not setting boundaries, by saying mean things to ourselves. We talk to ourselves that like someone that we don't care about and we really need to change that. The second part is embrace your failures. So we live in a world where nobody wants to talk about something that they weren't good at or something that they failed at, but that's where growth happens, right? We can't look at something that we failed at and say, oh my gosh, I'm never going to try that again. No, it is what did you learn from that? And just because you failed at something doesn't make you a failure. It just means that didn't work in that moment. I think a lot of people forget that and they're not willing to do anything. They're not willing to try anything because they fear failure. They fear that judgment that's going to happen or the negative feedback they're going to get. But again, you don't grow unless you put yourself out there. Then next is ask yourself what you want. I think this is a really hard one for women. We are so used to doing what we think other people expect of us and we get so caught up in life, whether it's motherhood, whether it's a job that we feel that we have to be perfect at because we're always holding ourselves to a higher standard. And we have forgotten who we are. So what do you want? It could be some of the simplest things, right? There's some women who don't even know what they like to eat. They eat whatever their husband eats or they, that this was a great one. I watched this movie called Run Away Bride with Julia Roberts. And in the movie, every time she was with a different guy, she would eat her eggs the way the guy she was with ate them. And it was finally at the end where she decided to not get married again. She was always the runaway bride. She literally sat down and tried eggs all different kinds of ways to figure out what she wanted. So it's even in the little things that we do where I don't, I don't have to say like your big life decision. Do you want this job? Do you want this marriage? Think about the little things you do every day where you're just doing them, but you've never asked yourself, do you want to be doing that? You know, that's a big one. I spent my entire life growing up doing everything, wearing the clothes that my mother liked doing whatever my mother wanted me to do. I was trying to gain her love and attention and affection and all that. And it took until I was in recovery and I sat there like a broken shell, not knowing what I liked, what I didn't like, what I knew nothing. I absolutely knew nothing because I was, I spent my entire life trying to please other people. And it was a real, real eye opener. Let me tell you, learning who Kathy was. I actually had to unlearn all the crap. Then I had to relearn who Kathy was. But the best part about it all, or the hardest part was accepting how frickin' awesome I am. I love that. There you go. Yeah. Love that. We are people pleasers and we do try to model after everybody else. I remember my mother saying to me, I can tell who you've been hanging out with in school because I was told by her I was acting like my friends, phrasing things, expressions. I didn't even know I was doing that. Sure. Yeah? But we do. I think that we don't know our identity. And I don't know, of course, this is when I was a teenager, when we're all exploring that, but I don't know if guys do that as much as we do. Yeah. I'm not sure. I see, like with my husband, he tries to fit in in certain situations, right? Oh, let's try this. Cause if I don't do this, they're not going to invite me to come back again. And I'm like, do you really care? Like, is this really what you want to be doing? And he's like, well, not really. I said, well, then don't do it. So I do think to some extent they do, but I think women do it on a much more regular basis. We certainly do. Now you were talking about your real method. Respect yourself, embrace your failures, ask yourself what you want. What is the L in the real method stand for? Live without limits. Ooh, I like that. Well, that's a good one. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So I, I feel like we limit ourselves all the time, right? From the moment we wake up, we tell ourselves, oh, we're not capable. We're just this, like I'm just to say, oh, mom, I'm just Rob's wife. I'm just a volunteer, right? I'm just an assistant. Drop the just, right? These are things that make you who you are. Own them instead of trying to justify your existence. And it's really by going through this process. And so much of my work is really about the words that we say to ourselves, the words that we say about ourselves and really looking at how do we want our life to be, right? Do we want to wake? Does anybody say when they wake up in the morning, I really want this to be a crappy day? No, but we allow it to happen, right? We start saying negative things to ourself as soon as we look in the mirror. Flip the script, say something different to yourself. Tell yourself how beautiful you are. Tell yourself that you're going to have an amazing day and keep doing that all day long. And by not worrying about what anybody else thinks, I mean, that's a big part of living without limits. Stop the drop the comparison game. Stop telling yourself that you're not enough. You are more than enough exactly as you are. Would you recommend people get off of social media or maybe have less of it? Because it seems like people are always stuck on their phones and that can't make them feel good about themselves and work without limits. Yeah, I'm just, I'm not a fan of social media. I have to be on it for certain things, right? I have to put posts up and that kind of stuff, but I don't allow myself to just endlessly scroll. My daughter, who's 25, she now puts like a work restriction on her phone and she can't take it off. So basically she'll set limits that she can't touch her phone between certain hours, like she can't get on any of the social apps because otherwise she'll just start endlessly and aimlessly scrolling. And then afterwards she's like, well, I just accomplished nothing and I feel horrible about myself. So I'm like, yeah, set the timer. Don't go on there because it doesn't make you feel good when you see, oh, look, that person has the new $10 million, whatever. And I'm barely able to afford McDonald's. Like we have to, we have to look at reality and say, first of all, we have no idea what that other person has or what that other person is going through. And we need to stop worrying about it. Right? The only person to compare yourself to is yourself. Yeah. Nobody ever posts pictures of their messy room, other dirty toilets, any of this stuff. You know, you always see how pristine and perfect people's lives are and what a great meal they just had or whatever setting on their plate. So it's so true. Yesterday or last week. So I posted a video for, I do a Monday morning mindset video and it's usually just something that I'm going through. So last week I wake up, I walk into the living room and there's a plastic bowl, clear plastic bowl upside down on a piece of paper with my vitamins on top of it. I'm like, okay, someone caught something. So I go and look and it's a big old roach and I go because I'm like, okay, obviously they didn't want to kill it. So I guess I'll try to take it outside. Okay. That did not work. Within two seconds, the roach was on my arm, up my sleeve, down my shirt. I'm jumping up down. And of course, of course I blame my husband because I'm like, okay. And he's like, why would I ever do that? I would never do that. Needless to say the roach did not make it up outside. All right. So you went up your shirt. My God. My dad, my dad actually had a roach in his ear before and had to go to the doctor to get it pulled out. And I was so terrified at that moment that was going to happen. So I go up the stairs because now I'm going to call my daughter out and I get to the top of the stairs and the dog had literally gone to the bathroom. There was a pile of poop right at the top of the stairs for me. So I'm like, not a good day. Okay. I've got the roach. I've got the dog poop. And then I go to ask my daughter, did you leave the roast for me? She goes, yeah, why? I was like, okay, let me tell you what happened. Oh, wow. Okay. I didn't expect that. I was like, okay, next time you, you take care of it. That is not my job. Oh, but like that, I made that, I made that video because like that's real life. Like that's what happens. You had no idea any moment. Like talk about the real things. Don't talk about how, you know, pretty you are today. Yeah. Talk about what, what's going on in your life. Roaches and dog poop. It's true. People need to be real. Instead of showing these utopian pictures and images of the most perfect lives, they don't do that. So they're lying to themselves and everybody else is feeling like, well, what the heck happened to my life? So Simone, you have a book, The Extraordinary, Unordinary, You, as well as your podcast, Her Unshakable Confidence. Where do people find all of this? Thank you. Actually, I have a new book that goes along with my real method. It's called Real Confidence, a simple guide to go from unsure to unshakable. My podcast that I have with my 22 year old daughter, which is so much fun, is called Her Unshakable Confidence. You can find that everywhere podcasts are. And my website, SimoneKanago.com. And my book is, if you look at realconfidencebook.com, I have a separate website for that as well, but I'm on all the social channels and I would, you know, love to hear from people, listen to the podcast, read the book, all of the things. I just love being out there and being able to help other women change the way they see themselves. And you're doing a fabulous job of that. I love this. How do people spell your last name? Ah, that's a great idea. Yes. Okay. So my name is S-I-M-O-N-E-K-N-E-G-O. I am the only Simone Kanago in the world, so you will find me. You're unique. Yes. I love you. I like all of us. I like all of us. That's right. We're all unique. Absolutely. We are not clones. We need to just realize how brilliant and fabulous we are. And we all need to be doing that, right? We all need to take a step back and say, why does that, why do I think that person has more value than me? Because they don't, right? We need to value ourselves every single day. We do. That's a wonderful philosophy. Thank you, Simone, for being on the show. This has been absolutely terrific. Thank you so much. I loved being here. You guys are amazing. Thank you. Thank you. It's been exciting. It's been interesting and fun. And you've been great. Thank you. Thanks. If you missed the website that Simone mentioned, I wanted to list them again for our listeners for her new book, Real Confidence. It's realconfidencebook.com. Again, realconfidencebook.com for the new book that she has out for her regular website, it's simonkenego.com. Let me spell that. It's S I M O N E K N E G O dot com. Simone Kenego.com. And then if you wanted to check out the podcast that she co-hosts with her daughter, Olivia, that's called her unshakable confidence. And you can find that wherever you listen to podcasts. We hope you have great luck exploring Simone's real method. Respect yourself, embrace your failures, ask yourself what you want and live without limits.