665: Overcoming Perfectionism and Self-Doubt and Becoming Flawesome With Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani

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Katie: Hello and welcome to the Wellness Mama Podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com, and this episode is all about overcoming perfectionism and self-doubt, learning self-love, and becoming flawesome with Kristina Mand-Lakhiani, and this was such a fun conversation with her. She is the Co-founder of Mindvalley, which is the world’s most powerful life transformation platform and an ever growing 20 million strong following. She’s also an entrepreneur and a writer, an international speaker, an artist, a philanthropist based in Estonia, and the author of Live by Your Own Rules, Seven Days to Happiness Online Program, as well as her upcoming book, Becoming Flawesome: The Key to Living an Imperfectly Authentic Life, which we go deep on today.

Her content has touched tens of thousands of students, and in this book we go deep on topics like fun fact, like she was born in a country that doesn’t exist anymore and selected for the Olympic Reserves multiple times. And then we go into deeper topics like why too much positivity can actually be detrimental and how to safeguard against it. How life is a dance and there aren’t necessarily simple answers or linear paths. How she defines authenticity and what happens when we aren’t authentic to ourselves, the dark side of personal growth and how the extremes can feed our insecurities. How to reframe things. Instead of thinking of our inner battles as slaying the dragons, think of taming them and learning to ride them instead. The two components of vulnerability, how people can misuse the practice of meditation or gratitude when they start to happen on autopilot, what emotional analgesa is and how she believes this is a big problem for us in the modern world and why we can’t numb our emotions selectively. If we numb one, we numb our ability to feel all of them and so much more.

We also talk about the parenting side of this and how to help our kids have a framework for these things from a younger age. It’s a very wide ranging conversation. She is an absolutely fascinating person who speaks many, many different languages and including, I believe, English, Norwegian, German, French, Finnish, Spanish, Italian, Hindi, Chinese and other. So fascinating conversation with her that I know you will enjoy. So let’s join Kristina. Kristina, welcome. Thank you so much for being here.

Kristina: Thank you, Katie, for having me. It’s a pleasure.

Katie: Well, I’m so excited to learn from you about Becoming Flawesome and overcoming our own self doubt and so many other things today. But before we jump into that part of the conversation, I have two notes from your bio that I would love to hear more about. The first being that you were born in a country that doesn’t exist anymore, and the second that you were picked for the Olympic reserves in not one, but two sports. So how did that happen? In what country was it?

Kristina: Yeah, I was born in Soviet Union, and Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. So that country doesn’t exist. I still suffer from it a little bit because I was born in Belarus. It’s a different country now, and in my past that it looks as if I immigrated. But in reality, it was one country when I was born there.

But the Olympic reserves, well, I was picked year after year. So when I was four, I was picked for gymnastics, and when I was five, I was picked for figure skating. And the reason is, in Soviet Union, they took Olympics very seriously and they took sports very seriously. So the belief was that if a child starts any sport after four, it’s too late. So I guess that explained why I was picked so early, but it didn’t work out for me, obviously.

Katie: Wow, that’s incredible. I know there’s some debate about that, whether it’s better to specialize early or be more generalized. And my kids, as they get older, are now specializing in pole vaulting and have potential Olympic hopes someday for a couple of them. So it’s fun to watch that journey.

But you are certainly a world expert in several things. But the one I’m really excited to jump in with you today is, I believe, the topic of your new book. And I think you touch on so many important points within this that are especially relevant to women and to moms and to what we’re all facing in the culture today. So to start kind of broad, I would love to tackle one of the topics you talk about, which is can too much positivity be detrimental to us? Because we see this movement, I feel like that almost can maybe verge into, like, toxic positivity on social media. And I’ve read some about the potential detrimental effects of this, and you explain it so well. So walk us through if too much positivity can actually be detrimental.

Kristina: So I’ll be a little nerd. I hope you don’t mind that. Well, I think the idea of positivity and going too much with positivity stems from our inability to look deep into the essence of things. So sometimes, rather than looking into the essence of things, we go for shortcuts and for simple surface solutions because they’re much, much more easy to understand. Now, with positivity, there is such a psychological phenomena as positive affectivity or your positive outlook into the future, which essentially describes optimists or people who have, let’s say, healthy relationships with themselves. And that cannot be too much. Now, the problem arises when we, rather than looking into the essence where your positivity is actually your outlook into the future or how you interpret events that happen to you. For example, if something happens to you that you do not like. Rather than making general statements that I’m always a loser or this always happens to me, you’re capable of seeing it in a more positive light. This kind of positivity obviously is not dangerous. Now, since the essence of this phenomenon, as I said, is a little harder to understand because it’s deeper. We go for superficial solutions like don’t be upset, don’t be sad, put on a smile, smile and keep pushing. That is the kind of positivity which can become toxic because it ignores or let’s say it devalues your natural emotions. This is one thing, but the other thing, especially if we are talking in the context of children, if we are practicing that, we’re not giving our children a very essential skill of dealing with painful experiences in life.

Katie: That makes sense. And I’m curious, how do we safeguard against the more negative side of that and nurture the positive? Especially I’m glad that you brought up children and especially help our children have a framework for that as they get older.

Kristina: Well, children are naturally more optimistic. And of course I’m simplifying because there are also people’s personalities and some people are naturally less optimistic. But children generally seem to be a little more optimistic. I think it’s not an easy answer. My answer would be it all starts with awareness and with honesty, with yourself. So there are no simple recipes in life. Life is like a dance. And if you know how to dance, or let’s say how to do a couple dancing, you know that there are steps you need to drill. But for you to perform well, you have to listen to the music. You have to be aware of your partner. So the same with life. I wish I could give you a very simple solution do this and don’t do that and you’ll be fine.

But in reality, in reality you have to be aware of what’s going on and you have to be honest with yourself and ask yourself a question: what are you doing right now? Are you actually trying to have a positive outlook into the future? Or are you disregarding your emotions or running away from problems which require solving? So a very simple illustration would be if you notice that your hand is bleeding, are you going to pretend that nothing is going on? Or are you going to be honest with yourself and say, hey, it looks like I have a cut. Maybe I need to dress that wound and let it heal. So the same with our emotions. They can become toxic if you don’t treat them, if you don’t look at them, if you don’t ask yourself the question, why do I feel the way I do?

Katie: Yeah. And it seems like this dovetails into also the conversation around authenticity. And I would love to hear your definition of authenticity and what happens when we aren’t able to be authentic with ourselves, because I think this word has gotten a lot of airtime lately, but it seems like there’s a lot of mismatched definitions of what authenticity actually means. And maybe some people taking it to the extreme in a way that maybe isn’t actually quite authentic.

Kristina: Have you heard people saying, like, you’re not being authentic or that person is inauthentic? It’s such an interesting phenomenon. Well, I have to say that authenticity, while it’s a buzzword, no question about that people talk about it a lot and they throw it around a lot, and they actually use it as an argument sometimes. But there is no scientific definition of authenticity in psychology or social science. There is in anthropology, which has nothing to do with us. So my definition of authenticity and I guess I take the liberty to define it for myself, is that it is being true to yourself. And it’s not so much the definition, it’s an explanation. I think it’s a relationship, your relationship with yourself. It’s an internal relationship. So if if we look at authenticity as your relationship with yourself, how true you are to yourself, to your essence, to your nature, to your values, then it becomes clear that authenticity is a force without direction because it’s your relationship without yourself, within yourself.

The moment you give authenticity direction, for example, let’s use authenticity to influence your relationships or to influence the audience, it gets a direction. This force gets a direction, and its essence changes. It stops being authenticity. It becomes a tool, a tool to manipulate certain situation. And I’m not using manipulation in a bad sense right now. So for me, authenticity is definitely your relationship with yourself. And that requires clarity and honesty. And here we come to an interesting part. I’ve noticed that when I ask people how honest you are with yourself, their replies are very curious. And very often there is this reverse correlation. Very often people who insist that they’re absolutely radically honest with themselves, they are the ones who are not aware of their delusion because that’s the nature of delusion. You’re not aware when you are delusional. And people who are honest with themselves usually are aware of the ways we like to tell ourselves stories or the ways our brain tricks us. So for me, authenticity is a lot about honesty—with yourself obviously.

Katie: That makes sense. And that’s a good I feel like a good building block for the rest of this conversation. I feel like you’re right that often that word gets kind of like weaponized or people use it against people, especially on social media. We see so much of that played out to the extremes on social media. But that also kind of springboards into the topic of personal growth which is obviously also a very big topic in today’s world. And I know that you’ve talked about this side as well, how there’s kind of almost a dark side to personal growth that maybe like this sort of leads into. But can you explain that concept more?

Kristina: Well, for me, personal growth is not just the matter of fashion. I’ve dedicated 20 years of my life to it and I’m co-founder of Mindvalley, which is one of the probably the more prominent platforms in personal growth and transformation industry in the world. We work with some of the best authors in the world. So for me it’s more my life’s work.

Now, like with any industry and like with any phenomena, if you take something to the extreme or if you take it without awareness or without clarity or without honesty, it can turn to be negative or detrimental to you or damaging. Like the toxic positivity or for example, this whole maybe you’ve heard authenticity is very often used together with vulnerability. And it was also very fashionable just a few years ago until we discovered that too much vulnerabilities may be a little bit too bad. So the same with personal growth. There are a lot of pitfalls and traps in it. Like in anywhere. You take education, any primary education, it’s a wonderful thing. But over time, if we close our eyes to certain things or ignore certain problems, there can be traps. So the same with personal growth.

Katie: And on that topic as well, I feel like at least I can speak for myself in this that I have had in the past a tendency towards perfectionism. And I’ve even said on this podcast before that I’m a recovering perfectionist. But I think this also kind of is an important part of this conversation and for moving forward. But how does perfectionism get in the way of that honesty with ourselves and of authenticity?

Kristina: So I actually can relate to you liking the term recovering perfectionist because I’ve been perfectionist all my life and I remember when I first heard this phrase, I was so excited, I was like, yes, that’s about me. Until a few years later I realized I can’t recover from being myself. And for me perfectionism is just an integral part of me. And of course we all have our I wouldn’t use dark side on perfectionist because that’s not quite true but let’s say our weaknesses or things that are challenges to us. So for me, one of them is perfectionism. I think the problem with perfectionism is that we usually have lower tolerance for failure. It’s really painful to fail because it’s really painful to fail, we sometimes avoid going into things so that we don’t need to fail.

And also with a very high bar, it’s very easy to fail because if you don’t do something perfectly, then you’ll obviously fail. Like in this movie, Little Miss Sunshine, there are only two types of people: winners and losers. So that’s the attitude of a perfectionist. You are either winner and everything else is a loser. And that is one of the hard parts about perfectionism, that failure is incredibly painful. And some people train themselves to still challenge themselves and feel the pain, but it is a stumbling block. Another thing which I think is very hard for perfectionists is it’s really hard, we have very low tolerance for our own personal imperfections, which is kind of natural. So whenever we feel that somewhere we are less than, it’s so hard to face it that we’d rather not deal with that. We’d rather pretend that it’s not there. For example, if you tend to be more thoughtful, melancholic person, and you’re a perfectionist and you are into personal growth, you will not deal with your sadder moods. You will slap on the smile and force yourself to be positive. And that’s how we come to toxic positivity.

Katie: That makes sense. And I think you’re so right of like, failure is painful. And as humans, we seem almost wired to want to avoid things like failure and then change even. And I’ve had to learn to sort of consciously be willing to go into those things because growing up that way, I very much felt like everything was high stakes and even games felt scary at times because failure was so risky.

And as I started doing the inner emotional work as an adult, I even hit a phase where I was like, worried to lose my edge because I realized that having that compulsive perfectionism was somewhat of a competitive advantage. And I had this phase of like, am I going to lose my edge and my drive if I unravel this trauma and I work through these things and hopefully become a little bit more balanced. And what I realized was, at least for me, you don’t ever lose those parts because, like you said, it’s an integral part of you. But you get to choose when you pick up that sword. You don’t have to always have that edge. You don’t have to always be so compulsively perfectionist, at least. But is that what you mean?

Kristina: Yeah. Because I teach Becoming Flawesome, and flawesome is in essence about recognizing your imperfections and dealing with them. So very often I get the question, so how do you slay that dragon? Because I call all our dark side or things that we think are flaws or imperfections. I call them dragons. So I often hear the question, how do you slay the dragons? You don’t slay them. You tame them. You learn to ride them, to use them for your advantage.

A late friend of mine, he was a wonderful teacher. Also, his mom used to say, are you going to make it your curse or your blessing? So you see, I was born in Soviet Union and I had no choice where I was born and am I going to make it my curse or my blessing? I was born a woman, maybe I wish I was a man, maybe not. I have no idea. But am I going to make it my curse or my blessing? So the same with perfectionism. You don’t slay it. You ask yourself a question, how can I make it into my blessing and not let it be my curse? So I know which my weak sides are and I have systems in place to let me move on despite my dragons.

Katie: I love that quote. And I think the other important point here for any of the parents listening also is that if we can embrace all of those parts of ourselves in an authentic way, it seems like that also by modeling, it gives our kids permission to be able to do the same for themselves. Like, I’ve noticed this pattern with my kids over and over is we can say all the things in the world to them, but really what we do is what they’re going to pay attention to. And that’s been such a beautiful lesson for me as a mom, but I feel like often kids and for me as a kid, I kind of grew up, despite the best efforts of my parents, sort of internalizing those expectations and not feeling like it was okay to be imperfect. And so I’ve been trying to build that framework with my kids. We talk a lot about what we’ve learned from our failures and things like that and hopefully give them the permission to have that mindset from a younger age.

Kristina: I’m probably the queen of Internet memes and cliches, but there’s this saying that you can teach your kids all you want, they will still grow up to be exactly like you. So I absolutely agree. I think that’s the only thing you can do for your children is just try to live the best you can. There’s another wonderful thing that no matter how hard you try, your kids are still going to pay the therapist for the trauma you’ve caused them.

Katie: Yes. And a good reminder of like we will all, hopefully as parents, do our best and also still our kids will have experiences that they will get to work through later. And that may be like on the message of failure may not be a bad thing. That may be a great building block or stepping stone for them. That becomes a life lesson. But to circle back to the topic of vulnerability a little bit too, because I see this playing out social media in today’s world quite a bit. How do we kind of guard against this sort of like weaponized vulnerability or I think you call it vulnerability tyranny and why we should reject that.

Kristina: Yeah, there is a little bit of a tyranny there. And I know it very well because in my industry I hear that phrase a lot. Can you please be vulnerable and share some painful story with us? By the way, if I share a painful story, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be vulnerable. I might share a painful story that I’ve shared before, and I know what kind of emotion it evokes in people. In that case, again, we have to probably start with definitions, and I’m going to refer probably to Brené Brown’s definition of vulnerability. I don’t remember it word for word, but in essence it has two components. Of course, it’s the fear or the courage of acting despite the fear. But there’s also the component of uncertainty where you’re not sure what result that’s going to provide.

So vulnerability is not just fear, it’s fear and uncertainty. For example, if you’re jumping out of the plane with a parachute, there is definitely a huge fear, but there is not much uncertainty because it’s one of the well, if you’re doing tandem, it’s probably one of the safest things you can do in the extreme sports. So there is no uncertainty. Now when it comes to vulnerability tyrannies, yes, there is this idea that you have to be vulnerable. Again, why and to whom and for whom is a huge question. And some people say if you’re not vulnerable, you’re not authentic. Well, probably from that person’s point of view, that’s the truth. But imagine if you are an extreme, introverted, reclusive person. For you, being vulnerable is the height, the pinnacle of being inauthentic. You’re doing something which is not natural to you. You’re not being true to your essence, you’re not being true to your values. So if you’re a private person, then being vulnerable in that sense that we understand where you share your darkest stories and your pain isn’t being authentic. Now, it doesn’t mean you can’t be vulnerable. You can’t do things without knowing what result is going to be. Maybe you will share something honestly or sincerely, maybe not the deepest, darkest secret, and still be vulnerable because you haven’t done that before.

In my example, and I usually like to bring this example because it’s a little bit upside down, because I speak from stage, I have some stories that I share that I know make some people shed a tear. And while they seem like this is such a painful story to share because I’ve shared them over and over again, I’m not vulnerable. I know exactly what I’m trying to make, exactly the message I’m trying to make. And I’m only sharing the stories because I’m trying to make a point, not because I’m trying to be vulnerable. I’m trying to illustrate a certain theory, a certain idea and personal growth. Now, what I love to do is to tell jokes, and I’m really bad at jokes, by the way. I grew up in this Russian environment of joke telling and lots of the times I translate jokes which are somewhere in the process of telling the joke, I realize they’re not translatable. So now I do that sometimes to break the ice, to make myself feel comfortable and sometimes I do it really badly and people don’t laugh. Now, for me, the act of telling a joke because I’m uncomfortable and facing icy silence is the act of being vulnerable and the act of telling a painful experience from my life to illustrate a point in my speech is not the act of being vulnerability. Now similar to what we do with authenticity. There’s a lot of people think that they know what it is about and rather than going deep into the phenomena, they judge it by the surface, oh, you’re not crying, you’re not being vulnerable. And that’s just silly.

Katie: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think to the one time or an example I can think of, for me that felt very vulnerable was sharing my story of a pretty severe sexual trauma in high school and not knowing how the podcast, like, people listening would react. And the beauty of that for me is realizing some of what you’re touching on is that when I was able to share that, I then heard from so many, like thousands of women sharing their stories of similar things and things much harder than what I had been through. But I realized it seems like when we’re able to actually be in that space of vulnerability, often we give other people permission to be vulnerable as well. We almost become a safe space for that in some ways.

Kristina: For sure. Yeah, that’s why it’s such a popular term, because people want to know that they’re not alone and they want to feel like I’m safe to share everything about me. But with that said, I don’t think we have to demand that from everyone because we are different. We are so different. We can’t demand that all people smile and good vibes only that all people are vulnerable, that all people share openly. For some people it may be so traumatic that we have no idea how they’re going to feel afterwards. I wonder if you’ve ever felt this hangover after emotional experience where you wake up the next morning and wonder what happened? Why did I go this deep? Sometimes we go overboard and then we need healing.

Katie: Yeah. Oh, that’s such a good point. And I would guess this also touches on another thing you’ve talked about, which is how terms like vulnerability and even meditation have just kind of become buzzwords now in today’s world. But can you explain what you mean by that?

Kristina: Well, by buzzword I mean when you hear the word and you have the whole picture in your head like these two words that we just talked about, authenticity and vulnerability, usually when we hear the word, we immediately make conclusions and then we fill the gaps and sometimes we don’t hear what the person has to say. So very often when I talk about these topics, I ask people to forget everything they know about those terms and hear me as if they hear those words for the first time.

So the buzzword in essence means that we talk about those things so much that we don’t even ask ourselves what meaning do I put into this word? And other examples would be actually happiness, success. There’s so much about success and happiness and this correlation. People sometimes don’t even ask themselves what do they actually mean when they say one or the other word. Now, when it comes to meditation, more or less we understand it. Similarly, nowadays people don’t say meditation when they mean thinking. Although that’s the older version of that word. I was sitting in the garden meditating about my life. Now we talk about meditation in more Buddhist terms. You sit down cross legged and close your eyes and go to your alpha level and do whatever you need to do.

Now, buzzwords is one issue. The other issue with personal growth is that our practices become so ritualistic that we sometimes lose while we do the practices. Meditation is definitely one of those examples. Sometimes people actually abuse meditation where rather than deal with their problems, where they try to meditate them away. Another, maybe a little easy example would be the practice of gratitude. Wonderful, beautiful practice. But if you do it for a long time and you start doing it automatically on autopilot, you kind of tick the boxes. Like similarly, like how you drive to work and you don’t even remember the road you took because you take it every day that practice stops bringing you the effect that it’s supposed to bring. So I think that is a slightly scary problem because what happens is that people acquire those beautiful rituals and practices in their life. They do yoga, they meditate, they eat well and whatnot and then they feel themselves in the dead end and they ask what’s happening? I’m doing everything right. We know, like this version of perfectionist, but I’m doing everything right by the book. Why am I in the dead end? Why I’m not happy, why I’m not at peace? Why am I, for example, having anxiety? It’s because we sometimes behind the rituals, behind the buzz, we start forgetting why we are doing certain things. What’s the essence of that practice? It’s similar to when you started and you asked me what’s the problem with our industry? The problem is that we like recipes so much, we like simple solutions so much that we don’t have time. We don’t take time to understand why certain things happen and why certain things need to be practiced or done.

Katie: Yeah, I’m so glad you brought that up because I have more education around the physical side of health. But I think it applies here too, which is that often we’re looking for that blueprint or that silver bullet or that exact protocol that we can follow that’s going to fix us the same way it fixed someone else. And obviously there’s so much to unpack there.

But one thing I’ve realized more and more the longer I’m in the health and wellness world is that we are also still all so individual and so personalized and so what works exactly for one person may not work the same way at all for another person. But the beauty of that is I feel like if we approach things with curiosity there’s something to learn in every single approach and that we can take pieces but at the end of the day we’re the ones who are responsible for figuring out which pieces in what order are going to work best for us. And I would guess the same is true in the personal growth industry is that we can learn probably something from every single person out there and every message. But at the end of the day the results will only come when we figure out how to integrate those for ourselves in a personalized way.

Kristina: That’s for sure. Physical world is not exactly the area that I talk about but I know that in gym there is this phenomenon where when you do the same exercise over and over again it stops having effect on your body because your muscle kind of gets adapted to it. So that also happens. We do things over and over again and we stop noticing the benefits of those things. So yeah, it’s really important to constantly be aware and ask yourself why am I doing certain thing? Even practices a lot of the practices, they stick with us for so many years that we never revisit them and wonder is there anything new or better for me to try or to change up? People suggest changing even like facial creams because your skin gets used to that, to change brands. So there is this adaptability where things just stop working because you’re too comfortable in your probably perfect routines.

Katie: Yeah, that’s such a good point too. And another term that you use that I think is a really valuable one to unpack is the term I believe you call it emotional analgesia and why you believe this is harmful to society. So can you explain what you mean by that and maybe how we can avoid that?

Kristina: Yeah, it requires a slightly wider explanation but you probably already noticed that I like to go about answers for a long time. So basically in medical science there is a thing called congenital analgesia and it means that people don’t feel physical pain. They cut a finger, they don’t feel it unless they see it. They wouldn’t realize that the finger is cut. So it’s a very small percentage of kids who are born with that. But those kids who are born with that condition, they don’t live to adulthood for a very simple reason. When their body hurts, not hurts. When their body is broken or there’s a sickness, they don’t feel the pain signal so they don’t know how to pay attention to that. Like a slightly gruesome example, you could bite off your tongue and not realize that. So that’s a scary condition.

Now, when we think about our contemporary world, very often we hear slightly, well, I like the word tyranny, but tyrannical approach to your emotions, don’t do this, don’t feel this, don’t feel that. When we are children, don’t be angry, don’t be sad, don’t be upset, don’t yell at your sister, don’t, don’t, don’t. We are told how not to feel. When we grow up, we also feel that. Oh, what do you have to worry about? Be grateful for what you have. Don’t you feel how blessed you are? Oh, this is first world problems. We constantly devalue our emotions. It’s almost a habit in our contemporary society. And if you start looking around you notice how much of that is going on where we are told what we are not supposed to feel and told how we are supposed to feel: confident, positive and upbeat all the time.

Now, the interesting thing in psychology is that you can’t numb your emotions selectively. If you numb an emotion, you numb the whole range of emotions. If you don’t want to feel pain, very likely you’re going to feel less pleasure. If you don’t want to feel anger, very likely your love is going to be also lesser. Now, like coming back to congenital analgesia, example, physical pain is given to our body for a reason because that helps us to notice where our body requires our attention and to apply something to heal it or to you touch a hot surface, you remove your hand, you cut a finger, you dress your wound. So that’s why the physical pain is given to us.

But the same as with our emotions, they’re given to us for a reason because they draw our attention to those areas of life that require our attention. So if you feel anger, there’s a reason, there’s a message with that emotion. If you feel jealousy, greed, whatever it is, whatever unpleasant emotions which we think that woke people are not supposed to feel, they are there for a reason. And you see, when we ignore them, these emotions are not going to go anywhere. It’s a wound which needs treating. And even if you ignore it with physical pain, if your head is hurting, you pop a paracetamol, I don’t know how it’s called in US something, the painkiller ibuprofen. You pop a painkiller so that you don’t feel the pain. So when you don’t pay attention to your motions, as if you’re popping a painkiller, yes, you don’t feel the pain, but the wound is there. And if the wound is not treated or healed, your life is going to deteriorate the same way like your body will deteriorate if you have congenital analgesia. So whether we like them or not, emotions are given to us for a reason and it’s super important to hear the message that they carry.

Katie: Yeah, I think of that quote that’s often used that what we resist, persist. And it seems very true with emotions. And I’ve heard similar versions of this from friends even, who they almost go through the litany of like, my kids are healthy, I have a great house, I have a great life, I have all these things. And it’s like they’re trying to justify to themselves, I should be happy and they feel guilty that they don’t feel more happy and then they have this other emotional swirl from that. But are there any steps or helpful tools to start being able to learn from those emotions versus repress them or ignore them?

Kristina: Definitely. And you know, on a funny note, I would say that this is called midlife crisis. On a less funny note, when I was 40, I felt exactly the same. I had a perfect life. I didn’t feel happy. And that was half the problem. The real problem was that I felt guilty for not feeling happy. And that’s the thing that kills you. So yes, there are steps. I have a seven-step formula to deal with your unpleasant emotions. But I’ll just probably mention some of the simpler things.

First of all, you’re not your emotion. And the fact that you’re feeling an emotion doesn’t change you as a human being. Just because you feel anger doesn’t make you angry. Because you feel sadness doesn’t make you a depressed person. You just feel an emotion. Emotions are like water. They come and go. In fact, emotions are so fluid that the moment you talk about emotion or you can try an experiment you feel an intense emotion. You sit down and start writing, describing it in a journal. As you are describing it, your emotion changes. Because emotions are like water. They are not stagnant, they’re fluid. The moment they become stagnant, they start sinking. And in psychology, there’s such a phenomenon which is called emotional leakage. It’s the emotions which you don’t recognize. They don’t disappear, they stay stuck and then they start leaking in the least appropriate circumstances and sometimes they can explode. So to make it more disgusting, like a boil.

Now, a very simple thing to remember is probably again, I don’t want to give you the whole formula because it’s going to take a long time. A very simple thing to remember is that you are allowed to feel emotions, but you can choose to act out of your values rather than out of your emotions.

So you’re allowed to feel anger, to sit with it, to ask it questions, and you can still choose to act out of your values, which is the value of being kind and compassionate. And here’s the huge difference. Now, what we sometimes misunderstand, we think that our emotion is exactly what I am. So rather than feeling anger. I’m trying to cheat myself, tell myself, this is not anger. I’m concerned about you. I am righteous. Whatever is more palatable because we judge ourselves. If I feel anger, that means I’m an angry bad person. And what is all this personal growth about? If I still feel anger? No, if you feel anger, there’s a reason and you don’t need to act out of your anger.

Katie: Yeah, that’s such an important distinction and you put that so clearly. I’m going to borrow that definition with my kids because I’m often explaining to them that it’s okay to feel any emotion and that’s a normal part of being a human, and that’s great. And we don’t have to judge when we feel an emotion and we still get a choice of what we do, even if we’re feeling a big emotion. Like it’s perfectly fine to feel angry. It’s not perfectly fine to hit your sister in the face because you feel angry, and learning to separate those. But I love how you explain that in the context of values. I think that’s really impactful, and I’m going to use that with my kids.

Kristina: I just wanted to say it’s really beautiful to learn emotional intelligence with your children because they’re naturally more skilled in that. So if your child is angry or whatever and you sit with that child and you let them express their emotions without judgment and just say, okay, that’s how you feel, I hear you, that’s how you feel, you will be surprised how quickly they get out of their emotions.

Katie: That’s such a good point. And rather than shutting it down or just telling them it’s okay or stop crying or stop yelling, but letting them actually have the time and the space to feel the emotion, like you said, it probably shortens that journey that they’re going to be on with that emotion and lets them get to a calmer space more quickly.

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I think another term speaking in the parenting world, and especially to moms, that’s really important is this movement also around that we see a lot on social media, around self care and self love. And I feel like these also both get a lot of different definitions in the world, and they also often get conflated with each other. But I know you make a distinction here, so I would love for you to talk about the difference between those two things and how they relate to all that we’ve been talking about so far.

Kristina: Well, I’ll be a nerd again, and I think the confusion comes from exactly the same thing. It’s so much easier to go on the surface. Rituals are so much easier to understand. I’ll probably bring a very interesting analogy. Religion, in the very beginning, any religion was about spirituality in connection with God. But different religions give it different rituals, and then we get stuck in those rituals and those dogmas and we lose the essence of that, well, that phenomena. Yes. The religion is about your connection to God, not about the rituals. So the similar thing is with love.

Self care and self love. Self love is a relationship. It’s your relationship with yourself. And relationship by definition is not ritualistic. So I do that trick question. Sometimes I ask people how do you express your love for yourself? And obviously most of the things that we do are ritualistic in nature. So they’re not really about love, not really about relationship. They’re more about self care. Self care is skin deep, literally skin deep. And yes, there is a correlation between self care and self love. If you love yourself, you’re very likely going to take care of yourself. Very likely. If you love a child, you’re going to take care of the child. You’re not going to abandon the child. Now, if you take care of yourself, it’s absolutely no marker of your love for yourself. You can take really good care of yourself and hate yourself internally and hate yourself every time you break that perfect routine of self care.

And that’s where the trap lies because self care, being ritualistic, is so much easier to do. I can spend more time meditating, more time doing yoga, doing yet another I do not know what for exercise, for nutrition. This is all something which we understand, especially us, the perfectionists, we know how to put more effort into doing something.

Now, self love is not about doing at all. And that’s a huge distinction. And very often the problem is that because we don’t understand that we run away. Rather than dealing with the problem, we run away into self care. But I take care of myself. What are you telling me? Of course I love myself. Look at me, I’m healthy, I’m beautiful, I’m young. That doesn’t mean you love yourself. It means you take really good care of yourself. Now again, it’s such a deep topic and we could go very deep into that. But I will bring an analogy which for moms will be super easy to understand. Picture a stereotypical kid who was born into a wealthy environment, whose parents have given that kid everything. Beautiful house, nannies, beautiful food, beautiful schooling, everything that the kid needs except they don’t have time to spend with the kid. So the kid is going to be very well taken care of. But we understand, we mothers somewhere deep inside in our heart we understand that without the attention, the love of the parent just sitting there with your child, the child has very small chances of growing up to be happy.

Katie: Yeah, I think that’s a beautiful analogy and an easy to understand one. And I think back to having been in that kind of space of distinction myself, where I had spreadsheets of all the supplements I was taking and I was eating by the perfectly laid out plan for all the experts trying to get better. And so I was doing all the things, but I didn’t have that self-love component. And what the irony was, I felt like at that time, it was so much work, all these things I was doing to try to take care of myself. And I felt like it was kind of like a battle. And I was restricting food and fighting myself, trying to make it my body look the way I wanted it to. And when I was able to start actually unpacking the emotional stuff and moving more toward that place of self-love, all the physical stuff, the self-care became almost effortless because it wasn’t a thing I was doing. It was just a natural outflow from kind of where I was existing at that point. And I wanted to nourish my body better because I was coming from more of a I’m not there perfectly by any means, but more of a place of self-love. And I wanted to move because it felt good. And I felt like I was giving my body something beneficial, not because it was a do list item on my list. And I think that distinction is really valuable.

Kristina: You know, one of the doctors here in Estonia once told me that glass of wine that you had probably has less damage on your body than that stress that you have about doing it.

Katie: And you just brought up such an important point that I see, and I think this is a perfect tie in to some of the physical side of health and wellness, is that often I think we can become so obsessive about that side. To your point that we have so much stress and fear about all the things in the world that are not optimal for us and all the things in our environment that might be harming our health or all the foods that are not exactly perfect. And I have come to that point of realizing it too is like that stress and that guilt or that shame or that fear is probably much more damaging to us, even physically in the long run than, like your point just having a glass of wine once in a while or eating the food we want to eat and not worrying about every single ingredient every single time we eat. I think it’s still wonderful to choose good options when we can. But also to your point that stress and that fear is probably one of the more harmful things we encounter.

Kristina: Yeah, I think we as a society, we’re just getting to understand how much our emotions and our emotional well-being actually influenced our health and our life. As usual, you see, emotional health is a little harder to understand now what’s healthy food or what’s healthy exercise, it’s much more action based, so it’s easier for us, perfectionists. It’s easier to get our teeth into.

Katie: Yeah. And I’d love to also touch on another topic. We haven’t gotten into yet, which is the topic of impostor syndrome, because I hear this a lot, actually more so in the business world. But I think maybe everybody felt impostor syndrome at some point in their lives. And it seems like it doesn’t discriminate either, that even some of the people that from the outside, we would look at them and be like, wow, they have it all figured out and they’re doing amazing things. They probably still have that experience of impostor syndrome. So let’s unpack that a little bit.

Kristina: I would say that impostor syndrome probably is a sign that you have done something good, because I have to research I don’t remember the exact term for that phenomenon, but there’s this phenomenon that the less you know, the more confident you are. I know a lot of their listeners will know will know what I’m talking about. Now, the impostor syndrome is usually the sign that you’re doing something right. And I know there are a lot of very accomplished people who have felt impostor syndrome.

But you know what? As you were asking this question, I was wondering, I’m quite sure actually, that it’s possible to feel impostor syndrome in parenting if we make a little assumption that maybe our children could reject us. Because impostor syndrome is this fear of people finding you out, finding out that you’re not what you say you are. Now, with children, very often what saves our life is that we know that our children have no escape. They’re stuck with us at least for some time of their life. That’s why we don’t feel impostor syndrome there. But probably if you were to go and perform at some symposium of perfect moms, you would feel pretty much like an imposter.

I really haven’t researched it much. I just know that perfectionists suffer from it. I know that a lot of really accomplished people suffer from it. And my teacher of physics used to say, knowledge is like an island in the sea of ignorance. The bigger the island well, the more you know, the bigger the island, the bigger the island, the longer the coastline, the more you are in touch with the things that you do not know. So the more you know, the more you realize how little you really know. So I think it’s just good to remember all of that. And I know there are probably teachers who can explain how to deal with this impostor syndrome better than I, but what I can suggest is just to stay brave and to do things, be vulnerable, do things without knowing what the things are going to bring onto you. And sometimes it’s good not to know the big picture. When I got into my book, I had no idea what I was getting into. And maybe that’s a blessing.

Katie: Yeah, that’s a good point too. And it also seems to circle back to the initial points of our conversation about perhaps understanding those emotions, not judging them. Having vulnerability and authenticity in the right way might help alleviate a little bit of the impostor syndrome. But also in the same way, not judging the impostor syndrome as a bad thing or identifying with it, but just allowing that experience to happen as well seems like it would be a good step.

Kristina: You know what really helps with fear in general? And it’s not necessarily impostor syndrome. Sometimes we are just afraid because it’s not really impostorism in classical terms. But let’s say, why would I go into that? It’s us playing ourselves down. It’s too much for me or it’s too high a goal for me. So that’s not specifically impostor syndrome, but the mechanics is very similar. What helps is just asking yourself a question can you still love yourself if you fail?

And this is something which we as we’re coming back to the beginning of the conversation, we as perfectionists have problems with. Failure is so painful because we are afraid if we fail. That is a marker that I am imperfect. And if I’m imperfect, then I can’t love myself. And that comes also from childhood. We use love as currency. If you behave, oh, you’re such an awesome child, I’m so proud of you, I so love you. And if you don’t listen to mommy, then mommy still loves you. But Mommy is going to make a show of being angry. And for a lot of children, especially small children, that feels like they’re not loved. So we learn that we need to behave in a certain way to earn love, to deserve love. And then for the rest of our life we suffer from that because we do—a lot of ambitious people, super competitive people, they do that in search of love because that’s what they’ve learned in childhood. I need to accomplish. I need to be good, I need to be perfect, I need to be the best, I need to be the winner. And then I will deserve love. And that comes from childhood. But we grow up carrying out, carrying this transactional approach to love into our adulthood. So rather than challenging myself and being afraid of failure because if I fail, I will not deserve my own love, we start feeling like an imposter or maybe I shouldn’t be going there, or maybe it’s not for me. So self-love and kindness towards yourself really opens the door to courage. To courage to go out and challenge yourself fully. Because if you say, I can still love myself even if I fail, you will not be afraid to try.

Katie: Yeah, you put that so, so well. And I know that there’s so much more in your book than we can ever cover in a one-hour podcast, but can you also talk about the book just a little bit more in depth and where people can find it? I know it’s launching about the time that we’re releasing this podcast, so it’ll be available a lot of places, but maybe just explain a little bit more about what’s in the book for people to keep on this journey.

Kristina: This book has been a journey for me. It’s a book about self-love, although when I started it, I thought it was a book about finding your path back to you. It’s not my autobiography, it’s a personal growth book. But I do use my life’s stories as examples or illustrations similar to what we did right now. You share an idea and then you tell the story. It is about self-love.

I do talk about the things that help you to master that skill, like courage, kindness, honesty, and some of the topics we talked about here. I just got my book. I just finally saw it. It’s such an exciting experience. Yes, it will be available in all the bookshops in US. In July, it will be available in all the airports in US. So it’s exciting. And yeah, I really hope people buy it and love it because I have a very important message. I truly believe that a world would be a better place if people learned to be at peace for themselves and to love themselves and to take themselves the way they are and stop trying to fix themselves and rather focus on healing their wounds.

Katie: Well, I fully agree, and I will put a link for all of you listening, to the book, and as well as to your work online in the show notes at wellnessmama.fm. And speaking of books, a question I love to ask toward the end of interviews is if there is a book or number of books besides your own that have profoundly influenced you personally, and if so, what they are and why.

Kristina: I like you that you’re asking if there are a few books. I actually have a library downstairs, but there are still books behind me. Well, I cannot give one book as an answer very simply because life is so there are so many areas in life and there are so many books that have had a huge impact on me. I always dread that question, but I’m not sure if I dread the question itself or the result that my answer creates. The thing is that I was brought up on classical literature, and if I were to recommend books to you, they wouldn’t be from personal growth, they would be from classical literature. I loved Dostoevsky. I think he is a very deep writer. He was a philosopher. I loved—surprise, surprise. I actually didn’t know I was going into it. I didn’t realize. But I loved Tolkien. I think he’s not just great writer, but also very deep. And you learn about life so much from books like that. I love Alice—both Alice’s books. Again, the author, Lewis Carroll, was actually a mathematician, but I think they are wonderful. I love Bulgakov very much. Master and Margarita, one of my favorite books I’ve read it many times.

Well, one of my favorite authors is actually Jane Austen. She takes life with so much humor. Well, Oscar Wilde, amazing source of humorous quotes about life. So this is my choice, and I would strongly recommend people actually, to not shun classical literature. Because, you see, in personal growth, transformation doesn’t come from ideas. Knowledge doesn’t change your life. It’s experience plus knowledge that changes your life. Experience gives you the chance to see the world in a different way. Now, experience without knowledge doesn’t change your life either. I mean, you can jump out of the plane and have thrilling experience but have no lessons from that. Now, what I love about classical literature and novels is because they give you the experience. Like, if you follow the Journey of the Hobbits and the Fellowshop of the Rings, you’re kind of living that experience and that knowledge comes or ideas come with that experience, and that gives you a transformation. So that’s why I love classical literature, and I think there’s so much depth in that. Of course, it requires a little bit of wisdom because all those lessons are not given to you on the silver plate. But if you read that with awareness, you’ll actually be surprised how much you can learn from that.

Katie: I love that answer. And lastly, speaking of that, is there any parting advice you would leave with the listeners today that could be related to one of the topics we’ve talked about or entirely unrelated—impactful life advice from you?

Kristina: The advice that comes to my mind right now is try an experiment of replacing judgment with curiosity in relationship with yourself, not with the world, with yourself. So replace judgment with curiosity. So you go about your life, and sometimes we say that to ourselves. Oh, I shouldn’t be this. Oh, I’m so angry. Oh, I’m doing this again. I’m eating what I’m not supposed to eat or not exercising. I’m being lazy. Rather than judging yourself, replace it with curiosity and ask yourself, oh, I wonder why do I feel like this? Oh, I wonder why I’m doing this. Oh, I wonder what is this thought? What is this feeling? What is this experience telling me about me, about my values and maybe about my needs?

Katie: I think that’s amazing advice. I don’t know if you’ve seen the show Ted Lasso, but that’s one of my favorite things he mentions similarly in that show is they have a scene with dartboards and he talks about the Walt Whitman quote of curiosity, not judgment. And I tried to keep that top of mind as well. So I love that you brought that up. And this has been such a fun conversation. I know we’re across the world from each other, and I love that technology let us have this conversation. Thank you so much for your time. And like I said, the book will be linked in the show notes. I encourage you guys to check it out.

Kristina: Thank you so much for having me and for giving me this opportunity to share what I think is important.

Katie: Thank you. And thanks, as always, to all of you for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did, and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast.

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.