Renie Cavallari, Amazon Bestseller Author and Accomplished Entrepreneur, interviewed by David Kong (Part 1)

Renie talks about her Amazon Best Seller "Head Trash" and how we can dump those ugly voices that inhibit us from realizing out potential. Learn how to use shift questions to become constructive and productive. Renie talks about being aware of the big lies we tell ourselves and how we can develop the proper mindset to complement our skill set and process set. Hear how Renie's work as executive coach has helped others realize their true potential.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

0:02

This is David Kong, the founder and principal of DEI Advisors. We are a nonprofit organization dedicated to self-empowerment. Today we are delighted to welcome. Renie Cavallari to our show. Renie is a famous best seller author. Life coach. Entrepreneur. And a global speaker. We're delighted to have your Renie.

David Kong 0:26

I have known you for a very long time. You've done excellent work for your clients. We've certainly appreciated your help at Best Western Hotels and Resorts. I found your training to be substantial and practical. You've helped people evolve their thinking. You teach people how to fish, and I'm sure our audience will learn a lot from you, but they have some in the audience that may not know you. Would you be kind enough to provide a brief overview of your background?

Renie Cavallari 0:54

I'm happy to actually I, I'm a working class kid from Philadelphia and I did the corporate climb right out of college. Joined Sheraton Corporation, was in hospitality for so many years, and then I, oh, about 27 years ago, I had an opportunity to become a partner and a firm, and I became aware. what I, the path I was on wasn't the path I actually wanted to be on. It was like one of those moments where you're, you are given this great opportunity, but you have to really reflect. On what it is that I want to do and what is it that I love to do. And Aspire was created from that. And I have been blessed for 27 years to be working with teens that are dynamic, that are solving big strategic challenges, cultural oriented challenges, which are huge challenges right now, and also leadership development. And it has. Just a joy to be able to do that work. So I feel very blessed. And during that time, I have another company called the RCI Institute, and that institute has been responsible for studying human behavior and how to shift it. which is really the work spire does. So all of the study and analytics of how human beings operate came from there. And that led me to the, various books I've written

David Kong 2:25

talking about the various books that you've written. How many books have you written?

Renie Cavallari 2:30

So I've written it depends who you ask. So my mother says that I've written at least eight, but I only count six Now. There's a book of poetry that has, I only give two very, intimate people, intimate friends. And then there's little books, but there's been six major books. And of course, head trash. This last book has been really a labor of love. It took a very short period of time to write and a very long period of. To get to the conclusions of really how do you awaken your own potential and live, enjoy. Yeah.

David Kong 3:04

I've read this book a couple of times now and it's been a top sell on Amazon for a very long time. What prompted you to write this book?

Renie Cavallari 3:12

Let's start with I am an expert in head trash I have a lot more than the average person and but really what happened over these last 20 plus years is that as we worked with leaders, we came to understand that so many people were so talented in terms of their skills and the processes and what they were able to do, but what held them. Was as we sometimes refer to it as mindset, but as we drilled in, it wasn't just thinking positive, it was really more about how do we help people shift from what we call the disconnected side of their emotional brain. So we all have this emotional brain. We have a physical brain, which is telling our body how to operate, but our emotional brain is telling our life ourself how we're gonna feel. And that's really a reflection of how we think. I always say you feel the way you think F comes before t. And what we came to understand with working literally with well over 10,000 leaders, and that's where we started with leaders. But this applies to all human beings. And it was, how do you learn to manage and ultimately dump your head trash? Because that is that those nagging little voices that hold you back, they undermine you and they suck your energy. And what we came to find was that. This is really a part of a challenge is to get out of our own way. And so over the course of all these years, we've had the opportunity to help people shift from that disconnected side to the connected side of their emotional brain, where their collaboration is, their creativity, their problem solving. all of the things that really are, help them be at their best and therefore they feel happy and their, the quality of life is more joyful. And so that is really the essence of what's behind head trash. And it's a reflection of working with tens of thousands of people and then also working on it myself. Cause as I said, I got plenty of head trash. And learning how to dump it is an ongoing process.

David Kong 5:22

Yeah, for sure. And so you would define head trash as the ugly voices that we all have that inhibit our growth and our true potential. And it's connected to the emotional side of the

Renie Cavallari 5:33

brain. Yes. Yeah. It's connected to the disconnected side of our emotional brain, cuz we have those two sides. And I always say the goal of life is to spend as much time as possible on the connected side of your emotional brain. Because that's where all the good stuff is. Positivity, feelings of appreciation, gratitude a sense of our energy and our creativity. That's all over there. And the disconnected side is where our ego lives. It's where we have feelings of being overwhelmed, worry, fear, and even burnout comes from the disconnected side of our emotional brain,

David Kong 6:14

right? We all have these ugly voices. What are some of the strategies to dump the head trash?

Renie Cavallari 6:19

In the book, we've identified it and synthesized it down to three steps. You must own it, then you can shift it, and then once you shift it, you can dump it. And so here is why owning it is so important. And if you can imagine if there's an arrow going down and underneath it is emotional. So when we're in the disconnected side of our emotional brain, we have high levels of emotional stress, and that's why we don't see, clearly, we tend to react on that side of the brain, but when we learn how to decrease that emotional stress, We gain clarity. So almost imagine an arrow going across, that's the clarity arrow that leads you to productive action. And so when you gain clarity, your arrow is facing up, you're in productive action. So when we own our head trash, that allows us to start to make the shift and the shift comes in a number of. Sometimes it's proactive. We do things like our morning routine. Is so important to helping us get on the connected side. So I can remember I used to, barely get out of bed, sometimes even in bed, and I'm reading my email and of course there's something in there. We have a global company, there's people all over the world, and we all make mistakes and they're entering my inbox. And so before I even get outta bed, I'm like going, oh my gosh, I'm overwhelmed, or I'm worried, or I'm angry. I'm disappointed. All of these feelings that really aren't gonna serve my best approach to anything. And so when I stop doing that I replace it with, I personally, I like to meditate. I have a, I use a guided meditation. I have a lot of noise in that brain of mine. And so guided meditation just helps decrease any emotional stress and get me to the connected side. And then I journal. There's five questions actually in there's, I, there's another book called The Joy Journal, which just came out. That's the compliment to Head Trash. There's five questions in that Joy journal to help you. Think through not journaling we think of endless writing because we're not all good at that, but these are questions that help me move to the connected side of my emotional brain. The first is, what is my word of the day? And that allows me to set my intention like today. David, my word is inspired because I'm hanging out with you. I've done some coaching today. My goal is to help inspire people. Yesterday it was productive. I had a lot of deadlines and I was moving and we really needed to meet commitments. On Sunday I was hanging out with my four year old grandson, and the word of the day was, so whatever that word is that really helps you decide. What's my intention for the day? The second question is, what head trash do I need to dump from yesterday? And so that might be that, I was disappointed with someone or I'm worried about this. Those nasty voices, what were they turning on in me? Now, some days I'm happy to write down none but some days I write a whole lot. And so it helps. Be aware. Remember the first step is own it. And so it allows you to be aware because when we're aware, we can self-reflect. The third question is what is most important for me to get to focus on and get done today? And so that's starting to shift me into productive. So now I can really start to move into, here are the three big things I need to get done today. And allow myself to get my head around those things. And then of course there's the question of what am I grateful for? And that's a great way to transition from into your day because gratitude helps decrease our emotional stress and gives us perspective on what life is really all about. So that's one thing that morning routine and then I go into, I do yoga and I, I try and get on my elliptical bike and or I go for a hike and. Try not to feel guilty when I miss it. So I have this routine that allows me to really, when I start my day, I'm starting my day on the connected side. The second thing is habits I that you can do this proactively. It's like what habits do I have that serve me and what habits do I have that don't, and am I willing to let those ones that don't serve me, what will I do to replace them with something? And there's a lot of places to go with that. The third thing that you really wanna look at is the environment you create. So if you want less chaos in your life, you wanna look around and. What is the environment? Is it crazy? Is it chaotic? Because we ha have worked on, too many things, et cetera. Or is it calming? What's it, what's the environment that truly motivates you? That inspires you to take action and get things done? And then when something comes up, you wanna look at your environment and say, okay, can I change that? And then, of course, who you hang with is who you become. So the. Easy way to stay proactive to and as well as reactive. But to stay in the connected side is to surround yourself with people. Of course, that help bring out positivity, that help you create that, that give you a feeling of strength. And at the same time, you know who you hang with. So are you spending time on social media? And who are you hanging with? Is there a lot of anger in the communication you're receiving? Or if you're watching a lot of television, does it lift you up or does it suck your energy? That's all who you're hanging with. But the most important thing you can do to shift is to look at the questions you ask yourself. And so you have questions that we call shift questions, and then you have questions that are stuck questions. So a stuck question is like, why did he do that? What was he thinking? Those keep you stuck in the disconnected side where a shift question. One of my favorite shift questions who do I wanna be right now? So if I'm annoyed or angry or disappointed because I am human and those, it's not like you can eliminate these realities, but what will you do when you're faced with them? And so that question really helps. Another question I love is, what matters most? Or what's the first thing I can do to improve this situation? Or, How can I help? So actually@dumpheadtrash.com, if you go to resources, there's a ton of resources and that drop down, they're all free, and there's shift questions there and all kinds of tools that can help you shift so that once you shift, you move into productive action, and that's where you dump your head trash.

David Kong 13:32

I love everything that you said. When you started by talking about the word of the day how do you decide what that word of the day is?

Renie Cavallari 13:39

I look at my day and so I know that, I planned today, yesterday, I'm working through my day all the time. Because if I don't, if I don't get myself organized, I don't like chaos. I can't live in it all the time. I'm I can fight the fire when I need to, but my best. Isn't in chaos. And so when I do things like organize yet, tomorrow, today, now I know where I'm headed. And so when I wake up I'm thinking about, okay, this is my day and what's my intention here? What do I hope to do? Or how do I what is it that I need to draw on? Sometimes I'm a deadline on an article and it's, the word of the day is create, and then sometimes it's, organize or relax or have, sometimes it's just, And so there's so many places that you can go in terms of what your word is. But I, this is a great standup exercise for those who are leading teams. You start your morning, everyone's coming together, they've got their coffee, and you're talking about what everyone's day is gonna be if you start your meeting. Word of the day. It allows everyone to really connect. And as connection is what synergizes a team.

David Kong 14:56

I like what you said about asking yourself what you have to get done today, because I found that when I'm feeling angry or frustrated it's oftentimes helpful to. Think about something constructive what can I do? Turn that negativity to positivity. I love that. And what you said about being grateful for I like that very much too. We all have to be grateful for all our blessings. There's so many of them. It's just taking time to recognize that we are very blessed. Love that. And I love your shift questions too. It's really important to shift our mindset. talking about mindset. You've mentioned your book, how Important Mindset is and how that complements a skillset and process set. Would you mind to elaborate?

Renie Cavallari 15:44

Yeah, so as we worked with organizations all over the globe and it, we came to understand that sometimes we make things complex and so I was on a, always on a mission of how do we simplify things and we started to look at What is our real goal as leaders and coaches we're developing people and ultimately we, people, individuals we have a couple of things that we really need from one another, and one is we want to feel valued. And another is we want to know that we're aspiring, that we're actually getting towards our potential. And we looked at what would that mean? And it really was about what we call the competency set and the competency set identified. These are the three things. That allow a person to be competent at a specific job. And so as leaders and managers, if we can look at a specific job and say, what is the mindset this person will need to be able to be highly competent at this job? And then what is the skillset, those skills that they'll need? So in sales it might be the skill of opening or prospecting or closing or negotiating, right? Those are skills. And then the last is process set. And so process sometimes is overlooked in organizations. And because we dealt with strategic growth, like no one ever hires us for the status quo, and no one has ever hired us to say, we'd like to shrink our organization's effectiveness. It just doesn't happen that way. And what we came to understand is that the most successful people, whatever they were doing, it didn't matter whether. Were housekeepers or we were working on, difficult problems or in purchasing it, it doesn't matter. There always is a process. And that process allows for two things. Consistency first, which is so critical in organizations, and then process improvement. And so once we have consistency, then we can build onto improvement. So when we have these three pieces for a person, Competency, then we know how to coach them and develop them in the most optimal way. But on mindset, one of the things that we identified was that when people talk about mindset, yes, they definitely talk about what are your self-limiting beliefs? But not it, you can't just wish them away. We all have imprints and experiences that live in the disconnected side of our emotional brain. They were, an event happened and there it was, for. I lost my brother at a very, very young age. I was only four and we were obviously close and, there's no way that there wasn't an imprint on my emotional brain. There's just, it's not possible. And and some imprints are on the connected side. And so one of those was like I learned at four very quickly. That life is short and to live it. And I think that gave me the gift of being daring and bold and doing things I should never have had the confidence to do. I just was gonna go for it. And on the other side, on the disconnected side, that loss, that sense of, I can't count on. You just left and the, the sorrow that I experienced with my family, et cetera, it made me David fiercely independent. The word to notice is fiercely because of course we all wanna be independent, but when there's this essence of fiercely independent, it, it doesn't allow for much space for people to participate with. Because you're always you. You've gotta be in control. If you just can't let things go. And so I had to learn and it took me into, I was in my late twenties when I realized like, I think I have my first 360 and I realized, oh, life is a team sport. there's other people on the team. And so I really had to learn to build a muscle around how to not have that lead my life. And when it's triggered then how can I with people around me, tone that down. And ultimately, I became a really strong collabo. And that was what I replaced with it. But the imprints are still there. They're just not running the show. And that's the goal with imprints is how can we decrease the power that they take over when they're living in the disconnected side.

David Kong 20:24

Good stuff. And your book, I also enjoy reading about the fake lies that we tell ourselves. And in your book, you talk about the importance of reflecting on.

Renie Cavallari 20:34

Yeah, so we all have this came from thousands of working with thousands of people again. And we were studying, because a lot of times we hear self-limiting beliefs and it's true, but what are the real things that hold us back? And we identified that there were only really four big lies and that we each only have. You don't get two. And they only live on the disconnected side of our emotional brain. And so we, they don't live on the connected side. On the connected side, we don't have any of this craziness going on, but on the disconnected side, we have one of four. The first is I must be right. And so when this big lie kicks in for a. Who has the guy must be right. Big lie. They tend to get very stubborn. They're absolute, they use data to shut it down and they make other people wrong because it, they're absolutely certain that they're absolutely right. So you can see how the limitation can come on and the reactiveness. Oh, and by the way, none of these are good. They're equally. We wanna shrink them as much as possible, be aware of them so that then we can manage them and shift out of them. The second is, I must never lose and I must never lose. Is not let's win Team It's, I must never lose, and so when something hits the fan, the I must never lose. Starts looking around and they sometimes look collaborative, but they're really just trying to figure out who can help me. Get across the finish line here. And they're almost like rhinoceros that, like that kinda focus and their skin, they're like fixed skin and they're just charging forward and they have no idea that there's like dead bodies all over the place. They're inconsiderate and unconscious about their impact on others where the I must be right's. And it's not my problem that you're wrong. Where the I win is just. You're you. You have no use for me, so I'm moving forward. You're either on the team or off the team. That's that. And then you have the third big lie is everybody must love me. And the everybody must love me is the, they're the love bugs of the world. They go to emotion over logic. They have to be in connection. So when they feel that sense of disconnect with you, it's like death to them. They just will do anything. And it's not really just about people pleasing because personally I wanna please people, but I am not and everybody must love me. I am right there on that. I must never lose 12 step crazy girl program. And, but the everybody must love me is really tough. Love is too tough. So imagine. If two people are on the disconnected side of their emotional brain and one isn't, everybody must love me. And the other is, and I must never lose, and the I must never lose is charge him forward and sees no use to for where the, you know what the, everybody must Love me is talking about you don't get anywhere, right? One person's feelings are hurt. The other person is thinking, eh, useless. So this is the dynamics of just two people. But imagine on teams and then the. Big lie is that I must always feel comfortable, and this is where a person when they're in chaos, they're not wild about moving through change quickly. They see the problem. They want us to think through the problem. And when somebody just dumps the answer on them and says, here's the direction we should go. Are you good with it? They likely might just look at you and say, yes, but really, if you're listening, It's not a yes, they're just not comfortable yet, and they need a little bit of time. And so what happens is that they're not feeling comfortable and they're not feeling comfortable, and they're not feeling comfortable. And then all of a sudden you go, there's this blow. And they go postal, and it's because they're so uncomfortable that now they're laying it down. And As you can see, none of these are anything to aspire to for sure. But what is beautiful, and by the way, at dump head trash.com, you can take a free big lies test. So they're everything@dumpheadtrash.com. There's no marketing, there's nothing there, no shenanigans, David. It's just resources to help people get to the connected side of their emotional brain, which is my. Like it's in my soul to awaken potential. And when we understand our big lie, and by the way, when you know my big lie and I know your big lie, now I know how to support you when you're in the disconnected side Now. If I turn around and I say, David, you're just in the, I must be comfortable mood or whatever your big lie is, and I toss it at you like a hand grenade. All it's gonna do is make an upset. So it's not to label each other, it's to understand. So when people are working with me and they see me and I'm, trying, I'm struggling or against deadline, or I don't like my work, or whatever it is, they ask me a simple question, how can I help you? or what would feel most comfortable here for the, I must be comfortable, or, I know this feels emotional for you now let's walk through what would logically work and still for and meet the goal. So when we start to understand that, we can then ask shift questions to help shift another person. But first we have to be able to do it with our. So true. I can talk about Big Lies for a day and a half. David It's an amazing piece of what we call people technology at Aspire. All of this is people technology. You have computing technology that is about information and the ability to utilize information in a quickly and effective way. And what we call is people technology, which is the ability to optimize people. In an effective way. And the big lies is really 2.0 as we get into coaching and leadership work. But it is definitely a great, my husband is, and I must be comfortable. My daughter is, and I must be comfortable. God's joke on me is to surround me with, I must be comfortable because I'm an I must never lose and I go, charge him forward and I look up and my husband is unhappy. I thought we had agreed that I was gonna handle that, and he's not really happy about that. I'm saying it a lot nicer than it usually would sound, but when we realize what we do, when we get to that disconnected side, we can change it.

David Kong 27:28

So true. I love it. We all deal with different kinds of people and being aware of the lies they tell themselves is key to building a relationship, coming to the end of the half hour. So let me ask you the last question, which is, you've been an exec coach for many years. You've coached many successful people. What are some of the learnings that you can share with.

Renie Cavallari 27:52

Wow. I think the biggest learning is that we all need a coach. I have had a coach for 20 plus years when we need people to help us. Take our awareness and be reflective of it, and then do something productive with it. And a lot of times, I think the executive level in particular, the higher up we get, the more lonely it is. And I don't need to explain this to you. And the, because you have to respect the realities of the internal politics or the dynamics. So that's one thing. Get a coach, have mentors. Surround yourself with people who are behind you, that believe in you and that are there that you trust because it makes think differently and really gives you a sense of confidence when you do make your decisions. And then I think the other thing I would share is that, I look at. Life from a standpoint of how much joy is in my life. And that's how I look at balance. People say to, you have companies and this, that and the other, and I, how do you have balance? And I say balance is defined every single day. And I ask myself, how much joy did I have today? And joy is really the ultimate measurement of what I consider success. It's not money. It's not. About what was, what's the joy in my life and how am I ensuring it? Some days it's all about my, my, I have two daughters and it's all about them. And other days, Armand, and some days it's hanging out with friends over lunch. And then, a lot of time it's working on people, technology because I love it and I find joy in it. So it's. Really about joy and I think when we as leaders and humans look at our life from that perspective, we're gonna feel a lot better. And it's also easier to make the changes

David Kong 29:43

we need. Absolutely. Thank you Reini. I appreciate your giving us such valuable time and such sage advice. Thank you and appreciate the audience for taking the time to join us today too. Look forward to seeing you again soon. Thank you. Thank you David.