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Differently: Stop living by default. Start living by design.
Differently is for when you need to get out of your head and back into your life.
Created and hosted by Carla Reeves, creator of The Differently Journal, her work is built on over 20 years of helping people use writing to navigate real life. Not as a habit to keep up with, but as a way to calm your mind, get clear, and move forward.
You are always writing your life, whether it’s in your mind or on paper.
It's time to take the pen back.
Turn overthinking and self doubt into clarity, confidence, creativity and momentum.
Stop surviving your life. Start creating it.
Differently: Stop living by default. Start living by design.
Artistic Self-Confidence with Ingela Onstad
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What’s the next step in your life or business that requires courage? Do you need some inspiration to keep going?
This episode is for you.
My guest and friend Ingela Onstad joins us today.
She knows this feeling first hand. Ingela has an international career performing on stage, and now equips others to navigate and step powerfully forward in the face of feeling fear and doubt.
Ingela is a High Performance Coach for attorneys, performing artists, executives, and other professionals who are in the public eye. Her coaching business, Courageous Artistry, supports high performing individuals in their quest to perform at the top of their abilities when in front of the public by working on skills to target voice, body, anxiety-management, and mindset.
Ingela generously shares:
- The unbelievable power our mind has to derail our performance and what we can do about it.
- A different and wonderful perspective on perfectionism and self-criticism
- The importance of taking small risks, regularly
- How to deal with rejection
- About the importance of perserverance
- and, so much more…
Get ready to feel more courageous!
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Thank you for listening!
I'm Carla Reeves, and this is differently. Whether you feel stuck in survival, navigating a change, or seeking more for your life, may this podcast be your weekly nudge to take a risk to build a life that is uniquely bold, authentic, and in alignment with your deepest values. After a decade of coaching individuals from corporate leaders to creative artists to multimillion dollar CEOs, I'm convinced we are far closer than we realize to what we deeply desire, and it's a willingness to do differently that can change everything. Is there a next step in your life or business that has you shaking in your boots? Do you need some reminders and inspiration to keep going? This episode is for you. My guest and friend Ingela Onstadt joins us today, and she understands this feeling firsthand. She's had an international career performing on stage and now equips others, navigating and stepping powerfully forward in the face of all those feelings. Ingela is a high-performance coach for attorneys, performing artists, executives, and other professionals who are in the public eye. Her coaching business, Courageous Artistry, supports high-performing individuals in their quest to perform at the top of their abilities when in front of the public by working on skills to target voice, body, anxiety management, and mindset. Join our conversation. Ingela shares so many gems around the unbelievable power our mind has to derail and also elevate our performance. She shares a very different and wonderful view of perfectionism and self-criticism, showing you where this can actually be a strength as a performer. She talks about the importance of taking small risks regularly. We discuss dealing with rejection, perseverance, and so much more. Get ready to feel more courageous when this conversation is over. Meet my friend Ingela. Hi, Ingela. Welcome to differently. Hi, Carla. I'm so glad to be here. I'm really honored to have you here because we've been friends for a while. We met in the BizChicks mastermind, and then we've continued to just stay connected. And I've deeply appreciated that both on a personal level and just as a business owner having somebody like you in my circle to mastermind with and share ideas with and share heartache with and all of the things. So welcome. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. And I fully agree with you, Carla. It's been such a lovely friendship. We've never even met in person, but I feel very close to you. And um yeah, we share a lot about our businesses and encourage one another. And we also know things about each other's personal lives, and it just feels like a really rich relationship.
SPEAKER_00Agreed. So I want to start um with something a little bit different today. I wanted, I was really as preparing for this conversation. I was looking at your website and just all the things that you're doing. And your business name, courageous artistry, just really stood out to me like it never has before. And I would love to just, is there a story behind that name?
SPEAKER_01Yes, definitely. When I was first starting my coaching practice, well, I came from a background in therapy and then decided to go into coaching, which compared to therapy, the coaching world is sort of the wild west. Anything goes, you're free to create whatever. Therapy is highly regulated for good reasons. So even just thinking about having to find a name for my business was slightly intimidating because I thought, well, I suppose I don't have to be married to a business name forever, but I am a person who wants something to feel deeply resonant. And um my background prior to therapy, it was in the performing arts. I'm a professionally trained classical singer or opera singer. And I always knew from a young age that in order to pursue opera, I would have to be brave because it's not a guaranteed path. There's no guarantee of any financial security or of any success whatsoever. It's the performing arts, right? Your guess is as good as anybody's. You might think you have skills, somebody else might think you have skills, and you may still never work. So when I was 18, oh I've actually never told this story before, really connected in this way. So thank you for this question. When I was 18 and graduating from high school, I got a tattoo of a fire-breathing dragon on my back, but it has butterfly wings because I wanted it to incorporate the courage that I would need to pursue my path, but also the beauty and grace that I would need to have. So I couldn't be all aggression and all charging, storming forward. I had to find a balance. And that theme has sort of stuck with me that I've had to remind myself numerous times that in order to build a life that I want to live, um, as I believe we all do, I have to be highly courageous. And when I was opening my coaching practice and originally wanting to just work with performing artists on issues like stage fright, I knew that what all these artists needed was not more skills or a better voice or you know, better dancing skills. They needed to trust themselves. They needed to be able to have the resources and tools to calm their nervous system so that when they have their big moments, they can charge forward. They can take advantage of these opportunities instead of getting stuck in cycles of self-doubt or indecision or waiting for that mysterious quote-unquote right opportunity to arise, that they really had to be like warriors. And um, so I was sitting around with my husband, and we were thinking, what are adjectives or adverbs that really resonate with what I think I need to help people with? And it took me maybe, I don't know, two minutes of brainstorming, and I came up with courageous artistry, and I'm pretty decisive by nature. And I looked at my husband and I said, that's the name. And he looked at me and he said, Yes, it is, you are right. And there it was.
SPEAKER_00What a great story. I I love that name, and I think it resonates deeply with me too, because just what you said, you said, you know, you you have a dream in your heart, but in order for that dream to come to fruition, it requires bravery. And I feel like that's been my journey. Like, you know, I've I've all I've struggled with self-confidence my whole life. And it's I I wouldn't have followed any of the dreams in my heart without that courage element. And so I would love to speak to you, have you talk about um what was your journey around that that? Like, were you always brave and courageous? Did you always have that element in you? Or did that come out of kind of a need to um get outside of your shell to follow something in your heart?
SPEAKER_01I think it's a both um situation, both and I I will say that I was one of these kids who I always felt pretty confident and realized even from a young age that, especially as a young woman in today's society, that I was pretty lucky that even though, gosh, please don't get me wrong, I certainly have my struggles and my days, but I think overall I have seen in my lifetime that I had this strong inner core that directed me. I always I knew from a very early age that I wanted to be a professional performer, and many people tried to talk me out of it, including my own parents. Um and I still said, no, I'm I'm not listening to you. I'm I'm going to do what I feel called to do. So there was always this inner compass that felt very strong with me of how I wanted to show up in the world. But the performing arts is a rather brutal place to be. Um it's it's so highly subjective art, of course. And um opera, uh, probably very similar to the field of ballet, which I feel like more people have an impression of that field, is a pretty hardcore, very traditional, very hierarchical, historical art form uh with a lot of gatekeeping and a lot of um uh how should I put this? Your teacher always knows best. You are not there to question anybody, you are there to say yes, ma'am, yes, sir, and do exactly what they tell you. And even when the relationships turn unhealthy, which very frequently, unfortunately, the relationship between teacher and student can be very unhealthy and cross a lot of boundaries. Um, I definitely received a lot of uh really abuse from teachers over the years, multiple teachers. Um that mine is not an uncommon story. I mean, anymore it shocks me when I'm working with a professional opera singer to hear that they didn't have some type of highly abusive relationship with a teacher or a coach or a mentor. So we get accustomed to this, and uh, we many people's self-esteem, of course, takes a huge hit. So you're there to learn, and they are sort of the holders of this knowledge that they are about to grant you with, and your job is to bow down at their altar. And so it it's uh you know, it can be a hard place for your self-esteem and your psyche. And some people crumble under all of that and leave the profession. You know, you once again, if you think about sort of a typical ballet story, I think that's a very sort of commonly known aspect of ballet. You're not there for people to be nice to you. You're there to do a job, and nobody has to be nice to you, and you will put up with a lot to do that job, and you have to find something within yourself that allows you to keep going. So I think I was lucky in that I was born with a certain strength of identity and sense of self. Yet, gosh, it took so many hard knocks over the years, and I could see looking around the profession when I was singing professionally, I could see how much people's psyche was the main component of how they were able to be successful or not successful in the field. And maybe they were successful in that they had jobs and they were singing on stage, but I would see time and time again how it would affect these folks, what their personal lives maybe looked like, or, you know, how they would go into cycles of self-doubt right before a premiere of a big show, and then suddenly they would, you know, get sick or cancel, or they'd start cracking and dress rehearsal and not be able to finish the show, and they'd be fine for the whole rehearsal process, and then they'd get close to the finish line, and you would really see people crumble. So I knew that helping helping artists in the way that I would have wanted to be helped was deeply meaningful to me. Um, so yes, it's it's it's been definitely a journey. I still struggle with my artistic self-confidence. That's probably the area of my life in which I am least self-confident, which might seem ironic because on the surface it looks like I've had a successful career. But it is my standards for myself there are so high. And then I also tell myself and as well as my clients, it's a double-edged sword because your standards and your ability to be perfectionistic and self-critical are actually highly important in fields like that because you can't just rest and say, I think I'm good, I think I'm doing this well. You have to constantly be striving because the competition is so great. And then that means you can't ever turn it off. So being able to find a space where you can also be self-compassionate or where you can say, I'm enough, and what I'm doing right now is enough, is an incredibly hard balance to find for us professional performers.
SPEAKER_00Wow. So fascinating. Um, so I what I heard you say a little bit ago is that you saw that your psyche, your mindset was this differentiator that kind of made the difference from, you know, pre-performance to a great performance. And and so is that is was that curiosity and noticing about that, is that what kind of opened the door to you going into therapy and and eventually coaching?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I had always had a fascination with it. And and to be honest, I never had a plan B for my career. Plan, I only had a plan A, which was to be an opera singer. And I told myself, I may not reach the highest heights, but if I can make a living at this for a chunk of my life, even if it's just a few years, I will consider this a success because it's more than many people get. And I was, you know, lucky enough to be able to do so. I think luck definitely plays a part in it and right place, right time, and then also perseverance. But when I um when I was deciding, I had been living in Germany for a decade and singing there. And when I was deciding to leave Germany and come back to the States, it was actually after getting a divorce, and I decided, gosh, going through a crisis like divorce was so deeply shaking to my foundation, and it made me realize that although I could have legally stayed in Germany for the rest of my life, I thought, I want to go somewhere where I feel more held and where I have more community because the opera world does require you moving around from city to city every few years, generally speaking, at least in Europe. Here in the North America, you're a freelancer and you're always moving around. And I just didn't have it in me to restart in another city had I needed another job and then rebuild my roots. And I actually have a great community, excuse me, here in New Mexico. I'm lucky, I this is where I grew up. I'm lucky to have a lot of friends that I'm uh from childhood that are still my best friends. So I have this this big, really rich community here. And I'm as I was going through divorce, my priority shifted. And I said, as much as I love singing, I'm just not sure if I'm willing to go through what it takes anymore. And now might be a good time to go back home and start over. And I knew or I had decided I didn't want to go into full-time singing when I returned to the States. It would have, this is too long a story to get into, but it would have required too many sacrifices that I wasn't willing to make, also with no guarantees. It's a whole different business over here. I didn't have the same amount of connections that I had in Europe, etc. So I did, however, register for a master's degree in music because I thought, well, maybe I'll go the academic route and I'll become a professor and I'll teach voice professionally. I had been teaching voice privately for a while on the side, and I enjoyed it and was fairly skilled at it. And I knew also that getting that master's degree would give me a two-year buffer to figure out my next plan if that wasn't going to be the plan. And I saw pretty quickly that I didn't want to go into music academia. But I thought, well, what else do I like to do? And um, I met my now husband at that time, and he reflected to me that I would be a great therapist, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I had always played that role with people in my life. Always. I had always been the confidant, the shoulder. I enjoy being that role. I find great meaning in it, and I thought, oh my gosh, Eureka, this is it. So I got a second master's degree right after my first master's degree and went right into therapy and really enjoyed it. And it did feel like a deeply, once again, deeply resonant fit. And it had meaning is is a very uh important value for me, and I think for most humans. And I had found so much meaning in my artistic career. I woke up every day, just I knew that this is what I was meant to do on this earth, at least for a period of time. And therapy very much felt like the same type of deep meaning for me. But it was only a few years into my career as a therapist that it dawned on me that I could use these skills that I was building to help performers.
SPEAKER_00That's so incredible. Okay, so that's a great segue into what is artistic confidence? Like, how do you define that? That's a good question.
SPEAKER_01As I stated before, you do have to be highly self-critical. And I think, you know, according to today's beliefs, that sounds terrible and like we should want to abolish all self-criticism and perfectionism. But when I'm working with my clients, I see how that these incredibly exacting levels of perfectionism and self-criticism for their art and essentially for their person as well, also allow them to be successful. So I never want to have them fully get rid of that because you go through your training and you have people watching you all the time and always criticizing you, and you learn to internalize those voices, both good and bad. But some of it is good because when you leave your training, you may still be taking voice lessons. I still take voice lessons regularly, as do all professionals that I know. We still have mentors and teachers that we employ to help us, but you're generally speaking not doing it as regularly. And you have to be able, I have to be able to hear myself when I'm singing and be able to say, what's not going right here? Or why does that feel off? What can I do here? Hmm, that wasn't quite right. Uh uh, oh, my pronunciation of that German word wasn't quite good enough. Uh, my ability to make this note softer, um, that's not quite working. How do I fix that? And I have to look within myself, I mean, later on today at three o'clock, scheduled into my calendar, is practice time because I have a concert, a couple concerts coming up, and I have to prepare for them. I have to be practicing. I'll I'll be sitting here in this very same office that I'm in right now, or which is where my piano also is. I will be warming up my voice, thinking about how that is going as I'm warming it up. And then I will be practicing my music and thinking, is this right? Is this good enough? How can I tweak it? How can I make it even better? And that's absolutely necessary in order for me to maintain high standards. But I can't do that all the time, right? So I have to know, and this is my journey as well, I have to know when to turn it off and say, you know what, that thing I just did was good enough. Or probably more importantly, when I get to the rehearsal period where I'm working with the orchestra and the conductor and sometimes the chorus, whatnot, I still have to be highly critical and always with a mindset of improving. But when I get into the performance, if I am in that self-critical part of my brain the whole entire time, I will not be connecting to the music as much. I will be looking at, I'll be too inwardly focused instead of the outward focus of wanting to share this beautiful music with the audience. Because at that point, they don't, they don't care, right? They just want to be moved and transformed.
SPEAKER_00Well, and I can imagine there's an element when you're actually performing of letting go, right? Interrupting your practice.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Yes, you very much have to find that balance. But if I've only practiced the letting go, or if I'm only trying to let go in that very moment of performance where my nerves are so high and there's a thousand eyeballs on me, good luck. So it's it's constantly sort of for me at least, switching in between how do I find the flow and the letting go? How do I self-assess and improve? And that's a lot of the confidence process. And then there's also really like an entrepreneurial element to it in which you also have to build confidence because no, at certain points in my career, people will come to me and say, I'd like to hire you to do this. Here would you like to do this? Here's this opportunity. Luckily, I'm kind of at a phase like that right now. But for many years of my career, I was in the phase of please hire me. Will you hire me? Hey, how about you hire me? Putting yourself out there constantly. And it is a business. You are running your own artistic business. And that, as we know, as entrepreneurs, that takes a lot of confidence, and you have to actually be able to weather a A lot of rejection, a lot of no's. And weathering those no's is so important because the more you put yourself out there, the higher likelihood that you're going to be be hired for the most part, right? Um, it's it's really a numbers game. If I send out a hundred inquiries for auditions, maybe a dozen will come back and say, Yes, you can audition for us. And then maybe of those dozen auditions, one will hire me. Maybe none will hire me, and then I have to go through the next round. So I have to, you have to get used to really slim odds and not taking things personally. Because as I tell my clients, um, entrepreneurs or or performers, it doesn't really matter. We're not for everyone, and we couldn't possibly be for everyone. If you and I compared our you know favorite um albums of all times, we likely wouldn't have any of the same favorites, and that's okay. I would say, oh, interesting. Carla likes this type of music, and I like this kind, and it wouldn't be this big moral judgment about you. But when it comes to ourselves and what we are putting out there into the world, we get into this mindset of, oh, if not every if everybody doesn't love me, then I'm worthless. No, not everybody is going to love me in any given room, but there will be some people who do. And my job is to continue persevering and putting myself out there until I find the people who love listening to my voice or who want to work with me as a coach.
SPEAKER_00I always like to think about it like the matching game, like the card, you know, as a kid you played that card matching game. That's right. We're just looking for matches, memory. Yeah, we're just looking for matches. I love that. So I want you to so many good things in what you just talked about, but I want to go back for a second to this idea of like this. I I love the lens that you're looking through this self-critical nature because I know I have that. I know the people I work with have that. And you're right, there's like this, like it's a bad thing. But what you have highlighted is that there is a strength in that. It's it's what we have to watch for is when we're overing in that strength, when we're overusing that strength or using it in an area of our life where it's not helpful or it's detrimental. And I think that that's so helpful. Um, so I'd also love you to talk about this idea of, you know, what I've heard my clients call as rejection or the no's, right? Dealing with the no's. If you have any um, you know, in the idea of not taking it personally, and what is what are some tips around that that have really helped you or your clients to navigate those without getting so derailed.
SPEAKER_01When I'm working with my clients and I use these same things on myself, I really like to get into a therapeutic modality called cognitive behavioral therapy. And we can use this even in the coaching sphere, and highly high-functioning intelligent individuals can actually do a lot of self-teaching and self-education on cognitive behavioral therapy, which essentially states that our cognitions or our thoughts and their patterns, our negative thought patterns, or what are referred to as cognitive distortions, are oftentimes going to create a lot of inner conflict for us and distress. And it's not because things are actually bad in our world, it's because the way our brain is choosing to view things and talk about things is getting us locked into these patterns of negativity. So, for example, if I receive a rejection, let's say I go to an audition and they um they don't hire me for the job, I have a choice here. I can say, I'm never gonna get hired. No one likes my voice. Or I can take out those words no one and never and tell myself, sometimes I will be rejected and I have to learn to be okay with that. But if I keep going, likely I'll find some success. So it's about assessing where am I speaking to myself in ways that are locking me into these um, you know, our spirals. Our thoughts affect our feelings. Yes, these spirals and these patterns. Our the way we think affects how we feel emotionally. I would never say that it's 100% responsible for our emotions, but our emotions oftentimes can be harder to change than our thoughts. But our thoughts are literal in ways, a literal thing that we can take apart and look at. We can sit down and we can write out what am I thinking about my voice? What am I thinking about my business? And through cognitive behavioral therapy techniques, we can learn to identify certain patterns. They have names like all or nothing thinking, black and white thinking, selective abstraction, etc. And we can start to say, oh, right, that's that type of pattern. And if I continue allowing myself to think like that and speak to myself like that, likely I'm gonna feel higher levels of distress. And then that's going to affect how I feel emotionally. And then guess what? That affects the types of actions I'm going to take or not take. If I'm telling myself I'm never gonna get hired, we can all say that I'm less likely to go apply for the next opportunity. But if I can tell myself that's okay, maybe next time I'll be more successful, um, I'm not going to get every job I apply for, then I'm more likely to feel encouraged and keep going. So taking things, learning to take things less personally is really in many ways about self-talk and how our brain chooses to view the world.
SPEAKER_00100%. So, so vital and important. And it's the one thing we can control, right? That's that's what I love. Is there's you have so much power and influence by um being responsible for what you're allowing in your head. And it it has yes. So on your website, you talk about how you can be great at your profession, but performance is different. I'd love to hear you talk about that a little bit. What I hear in that is that you can be great at your profession, but then when it comes to performance, maybe you struggle a bit and that that's not uncommon.
SPEAKER_01Yes. I've transitioned, I still work with a lot of performing artists, but I also work with entrepreneurs and attorneys and bankers and um on issues like public speaking and presentation and pitching and selling, because in my mind, these are all types of performances. So whether you think you're a performer or not, for many of us in our business and career lives, there is some way in which we are called upon to perform, to speak to a room of people, to sell our services, to do an online workshop, to go to a networking event and talk about your business or give your elevator pitch. And more than 70% of the population reports that they are wildly afraid of public speaking. So there we see that we have this internal conflict of I need to do these things or I want to do these things to be successful. And it also feels terrible to do these things. And I know many, many people, um, and I can, you know, take this from the music world as well. I would have students come to me back when I was still teaching saying, Oh, I've always wanted to sing. And maybe they're passionately singing around the house, and then they had to work, they had to work up their courage for years to even contact a voice teacher to take a lesson. So we have these desires and we know we could be good at these things or we could like it, yet doing something where people are watching us and perhaps judging us, which is a part of it, strikes fear in our hearts and activates certain elements of our nervous system that are, you know, they're they're part of the ancient wiring of our nervous system in which social interaction and what others think of us is actually highly important to our survival and was even more so thousands and thousands of years ago. But that wiring still remains, that we deeply care about what others think about us. And it is actually a survival mechanism to stay in other people's good esteem and graces, because then we have more access to support and community and mates and resources. So this strikes fear in our hearts for a very good biological reason. And to say, oh, you just don't care about what other people think, good luck. That's just not how we're wired as humans. So, what it becomes is it becomes a matter of learning tips and tools to have uh more. Sometimes I struggle with the word control, but I suppose it applies here, to have more control or more agency about how our nervous system reacts to these more public performances. And if we can learn how to manage our anxious responses, oftentimes we will feel more successful when we're standing up in front of a crowd. So anxiety management and learning about how anxiety works and impacts the brain and the body and the voice is one of the cornerstones to what I do with my clients. Because if they can understand that more deeply, they can number one, see that they're normal and that these are totally normal reactions. Nothing has gone wrong. And they can also see that, aha, while these reactions are normal, I can learn ways of coping with them that then help me feel calmer and more confident when I'm in these public scenarios. And that's highly empowering. And I love nothing more than when I help a client with something like this, and then they go give their big talk or their big speech or their big performance, and they come back to me and say, Oh my gosh, I felt so much better. The nervousness was still there because it's even there for me when I get up to perform. That's not, that's not bad. We just don't want it at level 10. Maybe if we could have it at a comfortable level two to five, we're going to get through our task more easily.
SPEAKER_00You know, speaking, I mean, you talk about how it just, you know, public speaking is like one of the greatest fears for people. And it certainly was for me. I never, I never wanted to speak in public. I just had a message and a mission that grew in my heart that it just kind of, I just felt like God was requiring me to go share this. And I had to just put on my big girl pants and go do it. And I think over the years, the nerves, like you said, haven't gone away. Um but one thing I heard years ago was like that energy, that nerve nervousness that you feel is is really necessary in order to actually project your energy and your voice, like if you're speaking in a room, and that it's also excitement, right? So changing my relationship to that energy I feel in my body was a really big deal. It's really helped me to just do what you were describing. What is one of your favorite um kind of strategies for approaching performance differently that you've loved for yourself or that you've seen really impact your clients?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, what you're talking about is what I would call the process of reframing. And that works really well for some people. And obviously it worked worked well for you, where we can say, you know, um, I can't remember where this quote came from, but fear is a compass pointing us in the direction of that which we desire. And it often is. We're not afraid about things that we don't care about. We it doesn't matter to us, but when I'm afraid to get up on stage or I'm afraid to take advantage of an opportunity, it's usually a signifier that I want this and I want it to go well, and I'm so worried that it won't go well that I'm feeling all of this fear around it. So, yes, the energy of anxiety and the energy of excitement can be very similar in the body, and we do need some nervousness, I agree with you, or some of that higher energy in order to perform. An athlete needs it to run a race or win a match, a singer needs it to go on stage, a dancer needs it, an entrepreneur needs it to get up and give an energized talk in front of a group of people or sell their services. If we were just getting up there so bored and comatose, we wouldn't convince anybody of anything. So we do need some of that. And I think it's great that that reframing strategy worked well for you. However, for some people, reframing it that into excitement just won't quite resonate. It won't land with them for whatever reason. I'm not exactly sure why, we're all just wired a little bit differently. So for those folks, gosh, there are lots of things that I like to do with clients, but one of the most basic things is how can we prepare ourselves for this opportunity? So, for example, yesterday I was working with a client who is actually a very confident public speaker. Um, I've been in the room when she's been speaking in moderating groups before, and a very powerful woman in general, yet she finds that she gets very frozen when she has to do anything on video. And there's a current currently a task in her life for which she needs to record some videos while she's talking about a PowerPoint, and she just hates how she's appearing there. She says, I just feel so stiff and uh it just feels so unnatural. So we walked through a process of how can she prepare herself for this. And some of it is going to be about recognizing how does anxiety impact us and taking the mystery out of that and normalizing that, and then saying, okay, if we now know that this is how these nerves are showing up and affecting me, what can I do to mitigate the effects of this nervousness? Oftentimes for me, I start with clients by doing a couple very specific breathing strategies. Um, we probably don't have time to go into them, but uh deep breathing is not if you ask most people on the street, hey, do some deep breathing for me, they're actually doing it wrong. So being very mindful about how we are breathing in order to essentially stimulate what's called the parasympathetic response or the rest and repose response in the body, which is the opposite of fight or flight. So gaining back some control of how we feel in the moment. I think also learning how to visualize what success would look like for us, our brains are excellent at visualization, but they are almost always visualizing the negative. They're going down the what if this happens, what if that happens, what if my voice cracks, what if I forget my words, what if they don't like me? So our brain is a massive visualization machine, but it's always visualizing the negative because that's how we're wired. We have an uh an inborn negativity bias, and that is helping us stay alive on this planet. It's what if there's a lion around that corner? What if there's a bad guy around that corner? And it's constantly prepping us for the things that could go wrong, which is necessary, but it's not leading to us feeling very good. And when it's a situation like public speaking, we have to be able to feel like we're more in the driver's seat, like, hey, body, there's no lion here. It's just a little talk I'm giving on a video, in this case of my client. So figuring out what would success look like to you, client, and her being able to name how she wants to feel when she's on camera, and then practicing visualizing, could I feel that way? Or if I don't think I can call those feelings up in my body because that feels too far-fetched right now. How would a person who feels confident and comfortable act? And that might sound interesting to some people, like, well, I don't want to be inauthentic and be fake. No, we are acting all the time in all of these different ways. When we go into a social scenario in which we don't know people, we are acting. We might not be feeling that way on the inside, but we're putting on, for example, at a networking function for us entrepreneurs, we're putting on a hat, we're putting on a mask, and not in a bad way. We're doing this all the time. We're doing this when we're showing up with clients, we are wearing a different mask or a different version of ourselves when we are with loved ones, uh, with strangers, with the cashier at the grocery store. So we are all acting in some way, shape, or form throughout our day. And we can bring some of those skills also, I call this developing an alter ego, into our quote-unquote performances and trying that on for size. And it's not going to feel natural right away. And we're not going to fully get rid of the nervousness, nor are we aiming to. We're aiming to just have an eye for how can I be improving? And then when we're all done with that opportunity, it's really imperative to look back and to focus on the victories. Because what does the brain want to do right away? It wants to criticize everything that it thinks once went wrong. But we have to say, nope, what were the victories here? In which ways did I improve? And then later on, we can maybe pick an area or two for more improvement so that we feel like we have something to continue striving for.
SPEAKER_00So brilliant and insightful. And I love this idea that our brain is this visualization tool that is, it's it's already happening. We we already do it very well. We just kind of need to give it a little new. We need to steer it. And I I often will ask myself when I'm feeling doubtful or unsure or fearful, is like, what would confidence do here? And that just it helps me draw in a different part of myself. It kind of bypasses self-doubt. And then, oh, confidence would do this. Well, I can go do that. So I like that too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we oftentimes wait to feel a certain way, or we get stuck in patterns of waiting to feel a certain way before we behave a certain way. And we need to do the opposite. For my client, she may never like being on video, but she wants to do it. And so let's try to find a way to make it more comfortable, less stressful, to give her more skills and tools, but she never has to love it, but she has to at least choose to behave as a person who is more comfortable being recorded on a video.
SPEAKER_00So important. I love what you are teaching people. And it that just reminded me of a story. I years ago, I did the like a workshop through the National Speakers Bureau something. And this woman got up and she really shared her story. She was like a big-time public speaker, but had tons of anxiety and fear. And she, when she came out and spoke, so she came out and spoke in the room for us like she would on a stage. And then she kind of told us all the backstory. But when when she when it was her turn to speak, she actually wasn't in the room. She was like back in a closet with a microphone, and she had some little, I can't even remember, some little critter. He had a name. He was like a stuffed animal. He was out in the room and she was talking to the audience, telling them to like look for her little friend, this guy. And then she came out in the room and she later told us that that, and it was really fun. It created this whole different kind of experience, right? That you were not expecting. And um, but she came out and later said that that was really a way to ease her own nerves when she started speaking. So she created this little skit with this stuffed animal to ease her own nerves. And I thought that was brilliant.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that is that's brilliant because she was um sort of sending her proxy to do the work in a way, right? Or this alter ego that I talked about, that also is a concept that's used a lot in in sports psychology and in performing arts, that we are not bringing, I'm not bringing the the full expression of Ingela to my performances, right? Because although we are all rich and and have many facets, when I'm standing up on a stage to sing an opera or a concert, I'm there to do a job. I'm there to appear a certain way to the audience. So I'm bringing out certain sides of myself, certain facets like a diamond is faceted, right? I'm shining those facets on the audience and not other facets of myself. If I've had a bad day, if I've just gone through a recent loss, I don't want to, I'm not bringing that facet to my performance. That facet will be, you know, maybe on the on the other side of the stone, um, in a more hidden spot. It's still with me, it's part of me. But my job is to get up and to entertain people and to sing beautiful music for them so that they hopefully take something away from it. It's not my job to be all of me on stage. And it's the same in my business. It's the same with uh when I'm, you know, selling something in my business or speaking about my business or doing a workshop. It's the same when I'm with clients. It's not my job to be all of me with my clients. I'm bringing out the coach and artist sides of myself and sometimes throwing a little bit more of the personal side in if a story might um resonate with them or if I've had a similar experience that I think they might benefit from hearing. But we're all doing this all the time. So I I like to help people remove the judgment from it because they say stuff like, Well, that wouldn't feel like me. No, BS, that is you. You're already doing this in so many different areas. You just have Thought about it like that before, right?
SPEAKER_00That makes so much sense. So, why is it important for us to continuously be taking risks in our life and kind of getting out of our comfort zone?
SPEAKER_01The word that comes to mind for me, and this is taken from a psychologist named Abraham Maslow, is the the term self-actualization. And Maslow Maslow has this cool hierarchy of needs that people can Google if they're not familiar with it already. And he states that we have to have sort of our basic needs covered before we can worry about, so like you know, food, water, shelter, before we can worry about safety and security. And then when we have safety and security and our basic needs covered, then we can worry about love and belonging, which is sort of the middle part of the pyramid, and then esteem, and then self-actualization is the tip of this pyramid. And that concept resonates highly with me because I recognize fully that I am a very privileged person. And so I have the ability to think about something like self-actualization. How do I become the best me that I can possibly be? I am, you know, once again so privileged and lucky that I was, you know, born into a situation and have lived a life which allows me to even contemplate these concepts because there are many folks in the world, obviously, who are caught in worrying about basic needs being covered and their own safety and security, right? So I just want to address the inherent privilege in this statement that I'm making. However, because I am who I am and I've lived the life that I have lived, a lot of my time and energy can be spent in the higher levels of the hierarchy of needs. And I can how I have the luxury to contemplate how I want to show up in the world and what message I have for people and how I want to be of service to other people. So for me, this self-actualization piece really is something that I see a lot of my clients uh struggling with. And I believe that it's really a lot of the reason my clients hire me. Many of them are highly successful people whose lives are going quite well in many ways. Yet there is this piece that they feel like they're not quite reaching. We might be able to put it simply and say they feel like they're not living up to their full potential in some way. Maybe it's the performer who feels like, even though they have a Broadway contract, that they are not as free on stage as they would like to be, or that they get too caught in their heads and too self-critical and can't enjoy their performance enough. Maybe it is the uh banker who got a raise and has a new position and is doing quite well for themselves in their career, but now suddenly has to go to different branches of the bank and train and speak to larger groups of individuals, and he is struggling with um appearing on that stage and feeling like he's doing a good job. Maybe it's the client I mentioned earlier who is a highly successful executive coach, yet uh freezes up when she's on video. So there's obviously a uh a reason. I love to believe that there's a reason why these people come to me, and it's because they're striving for this top piece that they can't quite reach themselves. And it's this is not life or death stuff. They could be perfectly happy and survive without it, but they feel compelled to improve themselves in this way, and they recognize that they need some help and support with it because as resourced and intelligent as they are, they haven't quite been able to figure this one out for themselves.
SPEAKER_00And so that your work together requires them to get out of their comfort zone and take some of those risks, right? Yes, yes. And that as I'm sure your work does with your clients as well. 100%. That's some of my favorite. I mean, I even even in my own life, this like last couple of weeks, I courage is like something I value and something that I notice. Like when I watch movies, like people overcoming and being courageous, like it's always inspired me. And I know in my own life, when I start to feel a little bit stuck or like spinning in my own head, usually it's because I'm delaying some sort of courageous action that I need to take, that I'm afraid to take. And once I take that, then everything opens up, right? Like there's there's more flow and freedom and movement, and then you you build confidence taking those, even if they're small little courageous steps.
SPEAKER_01Oh, certainly. Maybe it's sending one email to somebody or uh arranging one, you know, networking call. The same thing happened to me just this week, Carla, and I had to coach myself through it. I was asked last week to co-author an article in a highly regarded academic journal on peak performance and performance anxiety. And man, did that spike my imposter syndrome, Carla. I just, I, and and right away I saw the email come in. And I I know the edit, I know one of the editors of the journal. I didn't um, anyhow, she wrote me this long email and said, we would like you to contribute with this other person, and you know, here's what the article would need to be, and here's how many words, and here's the publication process. And I watched how my brain right away said, I don't think I have time for this. No, I'm I'm definitely I'm too busy, and I don't think that this is a good use of my time. And then, of course, day by day went by and I thought, what's going on here, Ingela? This is a great opportunity, this is an honor. You are highly capable of writing and co-authoring with support a 7,000-word article for this academic journal. And I just was all up in my imposter syndrome of I'm not an expert enough, what will I say? Um I won't, I won't find the right words. And um, you know, it took me kind of waking up on on Monday morning and saying to myself, okay, you're gonna write them back today, Angela, and you're going to accept. And now that I've accepted, I feel still very scared, but that's okay because I know I am capable of doing this. And even if it challenges challenges me, I'm going to grow through the process.
SPEAKER_00Congratulations. That's amazing. Thank you. And I I love what you just modeled, a concept that I've been thinking about, but it's like this listening to yourself versus talking to yourself, right? And when you were listening to yourself, it's like, you know, it's trying to derail us and drag us down. But the moment you started talking to yourself, you could feel it's it's it's like the shift in energy in what's actually possible.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, and then my brain was able to set to even think, okay, if you had to write this article today, what are the key concepts you would talk about? And I thought, I love using the million-dollar question with clients. If I gave you a million dollars to complete this task or finish this project by the end of the day, would you be able to do it? Or by the end of the week, by the end of the month. And sure, if somebody said, Ingela, I'll give you a million dollars to write this article by the end of this week, of course I would do it. Yes. I'd be able to come out with the idea that I would make decisions. I would, I wouldn't spin, I wouldn't doubt, I would just take action.
SPEAKER_00Sometimes I'll set a timer if I have to like just create this 15 minutes. Like you have you have 10 minutes or 15 minutes to create this workshop outline. And I always, it's always surprising to me. Like it's in there. It's you just got to get beyond the noise of the mind. Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I love setting a timer too. That's one of my favorite things to do or to tell clients to do for a dreaded task. Just give yourself even try five minutes and just treat it like a fun game, a race to the finish line type thing.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So tell us a little bit about how you work with clients. And in case there's somebody listening who is really interested in what you've been talking about, um, what would you want them to know?
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you for giving me this opportunity. Um I strongly feel that the clients who are meant to work with me will find me and that we I really like to base things on a right fit model. So therefore, I like to do a free consultation, uh 30-minute free consultation with prospective clients because you're either going to feel like I'm the right fit for you or not. And if I'm not the right fit for you, wonderful. I I encourage you to go find the right fit. So I like to chat with people for 30 minutes and um get a feel for what they're going through and talk about what I have to offer. I work with clients either in a six-month coaching program in which we're meeting twice a month, and there's support of a software platform that you introduced me to. Thank you for that. In between with videos and worksheets and as much or as little support in between sessions as they would like to have. And I also do an intensive coaching package for professionals who oftentimes it's professionals who have an event, an upcoming event that they would like to prepare for, and they want my help in doing so. And that's really fun work too, because we get to get in there, get our feet wet, and uh, you know, really establish a lot of change in a quick amount of time. And that's a lot of fun too. And then, you know, some of my clients have been ongoing with me for years, and they enjoy being able to have somewhere to come that is, you know, I like to say, obviously, my therapy background informs my coaching practices, and I like to joke with my clients that I'm I'm like a therapist but more bossy. I like that. Because I'm unlike when I was a therapist, I am if I feel like my client is ready for this, and not everybody's the right fit for this, of course, and some people really do need the fit of therapy or coaching and therapy together can be a powerful combination. But I'm going to encourage you to take action and to take risks. They can be as small as you want them to be, but we want to see you moving forward and trying out new things to build those new muscles. Beautiful. And people can find me on my website CourageousArtistry.com or uh Facebook, Instagram, um, LinkedIn under my name, Ingela Onstad. But yeah, you can find me everywhere under Courageous Artistry.
SPEAKER_00And then all your um singing career, you have another website, Ingela Onstad. We'll put all of that in the show notes. So, what are you most excited about right now in your um in your life or business or singing career? Like what's what's exciting and edgy for you right now?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I guess there are a lot of things. Um, you know, I've been a classical singer my whole life, but I actually do sing pop music pretty well. Um, like it comes quite naturally to me. And about a year and a half ago, I joined an ABBA cover band. We're called ABBA Kirky, because I live in Alpha New Mexico.
SPEAKER_00I absolutely love that. And I every time I see a photo of that, it just makes me so happy.
SPEAKER_01It has brought such joy to my life, Carla, because you know it's it's sort of once again like likening opera to ballet. It has so many rules, it's so stringent, it's so structured. And when I step onto stage, sort of as my alter ego in my blonde wig in Albuquerque, I get to wear these crazy outfits. Um, you know, we get to sing these fun concerts. I'm my my bandmates are all friends of mine. And it's just so joyful. And I I love being able to make art in this different way that feels more carefree, and I have way less judgment that I bring to it. So it's it's really inspired me actually to think about my classical singing differently as well. How can I bring the same attitude towards my classical singing and the the care free, the freedom that I feel? How can I get more out of that judging, criticizing mindset, and more into the enjoying mindset? So that's always really um fun and inspiring for me. And in my business, I think there are a lot of things. I have a lot of really awesome clients that I love working with. I just I love tuning onto Zoom with my clients. It never feels like work to me. It always feels like it enriches my life as well. I love these relationships. And um in my business, I'm gonna be doing a motivational interview training upcoming that I'm taking part in. So I'm excited to learn some new skills. I did a bit of motivational interviewing training when I was getting my therapy degree, but I'm excited to sharpen some of those skills because that can be a really powerful line of inquiry and questioning that can really help clients. And yeah, I'm taking a trip to Guatemala next month to visit a friend who's been living there for six months. So I'm excited about that trip and uh yeah, just excited to see what the what the future holds. I feel like I'm in a phase of possibility right now, and that feels really good. I'm not sure where everything is headed, but a lot of things feel possible right now. And and as you know, we all have our ups and downs, and I I had a down phase at the end of last year, and now I feel like I'm sort of on I'm cresting the hill again.
SPEAKER_00In another season. I love that. So, last question, Ingela. What what does differently mean to you? Hmm.
SPEAKER_01I love that word, and I love that that's the name of your podcast because I have found such meaning and joy and rich reward in choosing to you know listen to the beat of my own drum, so to speak. And even choosing to pursue opera, I knew I was choosing a path where most people were like, what are you doing? What you can do that for a living? What, right? People know very most people know very little about opera. It's a somewhat arcane art form. And and so I love that the word so differently is just it's an ethos. It's how I approach my life. When I left my therapy career, which I could have stayed in and had a really stable thing going for a long time, it was because I wanted to do something a little bit differently. I I felt compelled to live the life that I wanted to live. And I I heard, I always am hearing these internal voices that are steering me in a direction that says, yeah, this might not be the traditional path, but your path is a little bit over here. And my job is to listen to that and then to work through all the difficult fuels that come up around that and the fears and the doubts and the anxieties so that I can continue living a life that feels really true to my own self.
SPEAKER_00Beautiful. So what a lovely conversation. I feel like I learned so much more about you. And I know my listeners just got such a peek into your world and your life and your brilliance and just this whole thing. I hope that people are inspired to fall either follow that thing in their heart that they've been knowing is there but not following, or taking something they are following and just going a little bit bolder, a little bit take that next courageous step. So thank you. What's the worst that could happen, right? That's right. Thank you so much for spending time with us. And um I can't wait to hear where things are going for you because I can feel that energy of possibility and what's next, what's brewing out there.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Carla. And you're such a gifted interviewer and such a lovely, warm, thoughtful friend and uh colleague and mentor to me. And I I really appreciate you and what you're doing.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Have a great day, everybody. Hey, thanks for tuning into this episode of differently. I hope it stirred your thinking, and I invite you to take one inspired action from something that stood out to you. If you want to hear more conversations like this, be sure to hit follow on your favorite podcast app. And if this episode can impact someone you know, please help us spread the word and pass it along. Remember, new episodes drop weekly. See you next week.