Excuses keep you from having to face the truth about yourself. What excuses hold you back and keep you from moving forward in life and being who you were created to be? For the fifth part of our Moving Beyond Excuses series, Dr. Kim Grimes is joined by Mary Henderson, an internationally recognized personal branding and online business specialist. She helps industry experts systematize their digital lives and commercialize their knowledge, wisdom, and skills into a scalable and profitable online business and brand. Mary shares with us how she gave up her excuses and realized her true self. Mary believes that evolving with our values is critical for us to accept things as they are. Listen in as Mary proves that the only validation we need is within us.
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Moving Beyond Excuses That Hold You Back Part 5: The Evolution Of Our Values With Mary Henderson
We have been having a blast, a phenomenal time with so many awesome guests coming on and sharing. We are still in our Moving Beyond Excuses That Hold You Back series. I’m not even going to spoil it. I’m going to go right in and tell you about my phenomenal guest, but first, before I even do that, let me say thank you for being here. Thank you for your time. I truly appreciate it. I do not take it lightly for you guys and thank you so much for all of the feedback and the comments. We are grateful. With all of that being said, let’s dive in.
We all know the easiest person to deceive is the person in the mirror. Deceiving ourselves is another way of saying that we are lying to ourselves. We probably are good at catching each other when they are lying right to us, but we are not very good at catching ourselves when we are lying to ourselves. I believe one of the reasons why we are so good at deceiving ourselves is because we do not call them lies.
We do not say that we are lying to ourselves. Instead, we create excuses. We disguise our excuses as reasons because we all want to be reasonable. We dignify the lie. We say to ourselves that we are not lying. We come up with reasons. We dignify them by calling them reasons. We come up with thousands of reasons why we do not do what we are supposed to do, why we behave the way that we behave, or why did we do what we did?
We have reasons why we do not encourage ourselves, why we do not love ourselves, or why we are telling we do not tell ourselves the truth. We do not tell ourselves about our worth and the truth about our value. We find dignified reasons to stay stuck. Instead of being open and honest with ourselves, reasons are masquerade excuses and excuses are limiting beliefs.
What are those excuses that are keeping you from having a face-to-face with yourself? Excuses keep you from having to face the truth about yourself. Yes, it is easy. As I said before, to find a reason and an excuse. Instead of telling us that was the truth. It is so easy and that is our discussion. We are still on these theories about what excuses are holding you back and keeping you from moving forward in life, in being who you were created to be, in school, career, and in your life.
The excuses we can spit them out time after time and we do it in an attempt to save face or the shift blame even when we know better, but what we want to do is have a conversation or discussion about our reasons, masquerade excuses, limiting beliefs that are holding us back. We are going to have this conversation. We are going to share what they are and how to move beyond these excuses that are holding us back. That is why you are here reading to Moving Beyond Excuses That Hold You Back.
Our special guest, and I’m not even going to give you her name yet because I want to tell you so much about her. I’m so honored to even know her. I will have her share how we met, but I’m so honored to have her on our show all the way from Australia, Mary Henderson. She is an internationally recognized personal branding and online business specialist.
She helps industry experts systematize, digitalize and commercialize their knowledge, wisdom, and skills into a scalable, profitable online business and brand so they become an authority in their niche. She has many years of experience building 7- and 8-figure businesses and building and building high-performance sell teams in the IT sector.
She has fifteen years delivering online solutions for large and small businesses. She has been featured in many publications and is regarded as a thought leader in the digital sector. Her point of difference is her personal branding technology. A SaaS platform that has the ability to define a person’s brand essence with precision that can be applied across all communication touchpoints.
When you engage Mary, you access 39,000-plus hours of knowledge, wisdom, and experience in personal branding, client profiling, lead generation strategies, online course development, sales leadership, content development, and digital acumen. This woman is the bomb diggity. She embraces technology and social media in a big way, and her followers are growing daily.
She is a heart-centered, compassionate, and tenacious entrepreneur who thrives on human transformation and willingness and witnessing people fulfill their dreams. She is also the Editor of the Authoritti 5.0 Magazine. Please help me welcome Mary Henderson to the show. I am so excited that you are here.
Thank you for having me. It is great to be here.
You are so welcome. This is so amazing. I want you to share with our audience how we met.
It was such a fortuitous opportunity to meet you because one of our mutual friends, Dennis Yu, who we both obviously love. I reached out to Dennis because Dennis knows everybody. In my monthly magazine, may I say that magazine is 100% free? It does not cost a cent but it has been a very successful magazine exclusively targeting industry experts.
I reached out to Dennis and I said, “I want to do a front cover with twenty remarkable women to celebrate International Women’s Day. Can you please recommend any remarkable women that you have known?” He said, “Yes, I can,” and that is how we connected. What was fantastic was that we connected. It was so effortless. He reached out. He connected us, and immediately all the moving parts, everything fell into place. That is how we met.
It was phenomenal because the publication was twenty remarkable women, and it was for Women History Month. It came out. For those who are reading, if you saw it on my social media thread. I sent out emails as well and I had set up where I wanted to show the actual image. I want everyone to see this image. What did I do with it? I have it here and now I have to find it. I messed that one up because I had it waiting for me, too, and I do not know what I did with it.
To be unapologetically yourself, you must come face to face with your true self. Click To TweetWhat I will do is I will show it at the end as well so you guys will get to see it. I want you guys to see the cover and everything. Let’s jump into the discussion, and so what I can do is as we are having the conversation, I can see if I can find it. How about that? One of the first questions that I ask all of my guests, because of the title of our show is You Are You, Unapologetically, can you share what does it mean to you to be you unapologetically?
I always relate to being unapologetically myself back to my purpose. I think we have to go one step beyond or before being unapologetically yourself. To be unapologetically yourself, you must come face-to-face with your true self. Otherwise, how can you be unapologetically yourself? For me, it is understanding what the true meaning of purpose is.
Most people see purpose as something out there. I’m chasing something. I’m looking for my purpose. I want to find my purpose. For me, what purpose is an accumulation of your learned knowledge and skillset that is experienced that becomes your wisdom combined with your natural gifts, natural talents and value system? When you can merge all of that together, suddenly, you see that purpose lies within you.
It is not out there because if I have 39,000 hours of accumulated knowledge, that has now become my wisdom. That is called currency. That is not something that is on my CV. Now I go one step beyond that, and I ask myself, “What can I do naturally with ease and grace? That is my gift. What is my talent? What can I do that is easy, that I love, that lights me up? That is my natural talent.”
I need to merge all of that together to understand my true core purposes. When I can live from that space of being truthfully myself, then I can be unapologetically myself because then I can see that there’s nothing outside of me that I can compete with. The only thing I can compete with is myself. That is my version of being unapologetically myself.
That is so amazing and how you laid it out, where you went back and you related it to purpose and then you took it inside. That is one of the things that we do. We want our readers to start looking inward and not outward when I got it and realized that I had to stop looking around at people and waiting for their approval when I had my own approval that I was right here.
All I had to do was approve of it myself. When I did that, that was a huge mindset shift for me. It is so huge. After so many years, I know how to do this. It is automatic for me. We both can say we did not get here overnight. It happened. What I would like to ask you is, what were some of the limiting beliefs, excuses, or reasons that you use that kept you stuck? What did that process look like for you?
I do not think that most of us realize that we have limiting beliefs. The reason for that is because we are so brainwashed to think a certain way from the moment we arrive into the world. Our parents do the best that they can, but then you have got media, higher education, peer group pressure and all of these shenanigans.
What happens is that molds who we become and how the mind operates our operating system. For me, understanding what limiting beliefs I had, I had to challenge my paradigm. This is a very important thing that most of us do not do because it is hard. It is confronting when you have to confront the truth.
When you can look at yourself in the mirror and continue to say, “I’m fat.” That is the belief right there. Why are you continuing to look at yourself as fat? Why can we look at ourselves as the most magnificent thing that is ever existed in the history of mankind? I look at myself in the mirror and go, “I’m looking at 70 trillion cells staring back at me in the mirror.” That is a miracle.
When we look at limiting beliefs, we have to challenge all of those paradigms that have been downloaded into us first and foremost because when we can do that, then we can start to ask pragmatic questions. When you ask pragmatic questions, we expand our cognition and our consciousness.
We are asking different types of questions. We are not following the Joneses anymore. We are not going against the Joneses. We are saying, “Is that normal? Is that what I want?” When we can break away from that blueprint that we have been hanging on to, and we can then start to create our own tapestry of the life that we want to experience, that is where the limiting beliefs start to rise. That is when we can start looking at all of those limiting beliefs and ask the right questions to be able to give those limiting beliefs a new meaning. We do not want to give them up. We want to give them a new meaning. That is it. What people do is they keep reliving those limiting beliefs.
When you keep reliving those limiting beliefs, at some point in your adult life, you are going to hit a dead end and you are going to say, “Life is not working for me, but against me. How many times have you heard of midlife crisis scenarios? That is because life’s not working for me and life’s working against me. I’m not in the flow.”
“These beliefs are no longer working for me. They are no longer valid. They are antiquated. They do not work in this society and in this digital economy.” I have got to ask pragmatic questions. I have got to challenge that blueprint to find a new way and it is not easy. I understand that. It takes effort, commitment, and tenacity because when you confront that truth, it is hard but that freedom also lives in there as well.
I love the fact of the freedom part where you said it lives in that because you are stuck in bondage as long as you are believing in thinking the way that you are thinking. If you want to be free, these are the things and what you need to do. I loved that when you said freedom is in there as well. It is part of the mindset shift and us being honest with ourselves. Let me ask you. How does not being honest with yourself impact you?
It impacts you greatly. This is pivotal. I feel that a lot of people will relate to this story. I had a software development company for seven years. I started it from the ground up. It was a seven-figure per year business. I had an infrastructure. I started from zero and I was building this company. The first three years were great and the last four years were an uphill battle. I kept on going with the narrative, thinking that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life until three hours after I gave birth to my son.
Your purpose is an accumulation of your learned knowledge and learned skillset, combined with your natural gifts, your natural talents, and your value system. Click To TweetIn that moment of three hours, I reached out to get the lip balm from my purse and my business card fell out. It was at that very moment that I had the greatest epiphany of my life because that business card did not represent my work or a card with my details. That business card represented labels. I instantly recognized that was the beginning of my journey that, “My whole life has been about labels. It is coming all about validation.”
Why did I start that software company? I looked at myself in the mirror and I had to declare the truth. I could not hide. The truth was that I wanted validation from my parents. I wanted them to say, “We are so proud of you for creating this business, even though you did not finish your degree.” That was the validation. I knew at that moment that I would resign from my own company and come face-to-face with who I truly am, and I had a lot of work to do, which I did.
I resigned from my own company two weeks later. That was in December, and in January, I went on a twelve-month sabbatical and I had the most amazing mentor. He was a professor in Philosophy at Oxford University who helped me unpack Mary. That was the trajectory of my life completely changed. For me, it is all about we are all looking for validation outside of us.
It is very dangerous because it leads us to the wrong path and what I realized in that twelve months sabbatical because I had time to unpack myself and understand all of those paradigms and challenge those paradigms that were not my destiny, so owning a software company was not what God wanted me to do. What God wants me to do is what I do now because it is easy. There’s no uphill battle. It is a complete flow. That, for me, is the keyword validation. That is what I believe.
I love your transparency that you had the facial truth, but not only did you face your truth, but it also was not facing it. It was doing something about it. You took action. You said two weeks later you resigned and then went on a twelve-month sabbatical. I loved when you said you solicit help from a phenomenal mentor who was a professor in Philosophy.
You said you connected with him and he helped you to unpack Mary. That right there was juicy. How do we unpack? There are a lot of people that are reading and can relate to what is what you are saying in our conversation about moving beyond these excuses. What steps can you share to help someone to begin to unpack who they are, their true self? Especially the fact that we are living in a world where people are always trying to tell us who we should be or who to be. What can you share with our readers?
When I was working with my mentor, the first thing he made me do was to write about the first 21 years of my life in first person, and that was hard. I’m like, “I do not remember anything that happened to me at 1 or 2.” He said, “Trust the process.” It took me weeks before I put pen to paper because I was trying so hard because we are taught this in school. You have to learn. It has to be perfect. God forbid if you fail. You can’t have freehand writing. That is not allowed in school. I kept on blocking myself and he said, “Allow your soul to write for you. Do not write logically. Allow the soul to take over.” I’m like, “What is this guy talking about?”
One day, it was about 3:00 in the morning, I had that feeling that I was ready to write. I started writing. I did not stop. It all flowed out of me. It was so interesting, but through that process, what happened is that because I’m a mathematical person, I’m a systems person, I looked at the information that I had documented.
He did not want me to type it out in a word document. I had to write it out. There was no technology allowed. It was all going to be by hand, which was in itself a whole spiritual experience because it is all about connecting words like words of things and words are spelled. When I looked at that information, being a systems person, I took that.
I opened up an Excel spreadsheet and I looked at very specific things like what was going on? How was I feeling? What were the traits that I was experiencing? What was I doing? How did that make me feel? Who was with me? I unpacked every year of my life. Suddenly, I could see a pattern emerging. I could see that when I was happy and excited, I was doing the things that I loved.
To me, they were my natural gifts. When I was sad and unhappy, I was going against my intuition, belief system, natural state of being, and the things that I found difficult were things that were causing me pain. When I would look at this amazing spreadsheet, what I would call data, it made me see that, “How many people in the world are living their life based on all the things that they do not like that are completely against their soul and are completely unnatural to them, yet they are made to believe how many students and parents force their kids to become doctors.” The kids are creative geniuses in art, for example. This requires a paradigm shift from the parents because that is where it starts.
In my view and looking at this, I had the greatest epiphany because at that moment, I thought, “I need to teach people how to pursue their natural state and wrap that around the things that I can do well,” which was building digital businesses, sales, lead generation and brands because I have been building salespeople into brands since the year 2000. I knew how to do all of that. That was easy, but what I was doing was building this software company that was completely against my grain. What do I care about software?
What I cared about in my business were the people, relationships and how I could turn knowledge or data into a solution. I was good at that. What people need to do is unpack all of these elements. When I’m coaching people, that is why I built a SaaS platform that basically does exactly what I explained. It unpacks their brand, but not from the standpoint of corporate attributes. I unpack people as a brand in terms of who am I as a human? What are my values? How do I want the outside world to perceive me? What is my story? What are my gifts and talents? What can I do with ease and grace?
I want to know all of these elements of a human being. When I have truthful data, I can do something with it. We have to look at what problem can I solve with absolute ease and grace? Not something that I have to go and read a book or go to a seminar and then call myself an expert. I do not work with those people. I want to know what your internal inventory looks like when it is unpacked, and those attributes are critical because it is your natural gifts, talents, knowledge, skillset, and core value. All of these elements match up.
It is the steps of unpacking. As you were speaking and sharing, there’s an exercise that you can get off of a website and it is called Path to Greatness. I have talked about it numerous times on the show how our gifts and talents are covered because of life happening. Life happens, and if we have a loss, failure, or whatever it is, it covers up our gifts and talents. I agree exactly what you are seeing that we have a hard time seeing what our gifts, talents, and abilities are and it is those things that come naturally. I can talk your ears off until I’m blue in the face or you blue on the face.
Nevertheless, that is my natural thing. I love doing that. I can encourage and build up people like that does not take any of my energy to do that. These are things that come naturally to me, which I recognize are my gifts and my talents as well. The path to greatness is an exercise that I give to my clients and anyone who would love to take the challenge as well and to help them to unpack because it starts with asking for questions in the mirror. As you were saying, if you look in the mirror and you say, “I’m fat,” and that is all you can see and these are four questions. What I like, appreciate, admire, and love about myself? In no order, but I call it LAAL line.
It’s very dangerous to look for validation outside of you because it often leads you to the wrong path. Click To TweetMy readers know that I call it LAAL line, but this too is something that helps you to look at who you are and begin to start asking those questions. It helps you to unpack who you are. I think that is so valuable in the way that your mentor had you start. I thought that was that is phenomenal. Sometimes, we tend to overthink things and we make it hard.
Not only do we make things hard, but we also make things wrong. Have you ever been in a conversation? Not even a conversation. Nothing is going on and you say, “What’s wrong?” Somebody is looking at your back, and you are like, “What’s wrong?” It is like, “Nothing.” These are the things that we do. Thank you so much for that. What I would love for you to share is how has learning how to love, accept who you are and who you were created to be? How did that make your life better?
It is a working progress. As you get older, you think differently. It is not your values change. Your values become more important. We stand by our values and we use our values as our benchmarks. We evolve as we get older. For me, I feel that I have not changed my position on anything. I think that what I have become is a more interconnected person with my creator, and this is not religious.
What has become important to me is evident and obvious because you do not do anything if you do not get evidence. I’m a very evidence-based person. When I started to connect with myself at a heart level, I also came to realize that God lives there. I started doing a lot of prayer work and it was not about, “God, give me $1 million.” It was, “God, show me what I’m not seeing. Show me who do I need to meet? How do I do, resolve, and create this? Please show me the pathway.”
It was asking very deep questions and having the capacity to learn how to sit in silence, understand, the power of breathwork, and connecting those together so that I can become a better person, parent, coach, and citizen in my community. My ultimate goal always has and is still to raise my consciousness level at such a high level that I’m constantly aware of what is going on in my environment.
I may not know the core truth, and I do not need to know it. I need to feel it. That is my whole stance. Once I can feel it, that is when I’m connected to my creator, my soul, and my spirit, and we are working in tandem. I call this the trinity. That is the thing. Those three things have to work together, and my body becomes the vessel to start moving forward, so living a very conscious life, being conscious of what I eat or who I want to spend time with, who I want to work with, how I parent my children, who I want in my inner circle, and having the courage to say, “No. That does not feel right. That person is not right. That opportunity is not for me.”
I’m not a reactive person. I have become very proactive. I’m a very deep thinker. I do not say yes overnight. I’m a person that will say, “Let me think about it. I will come back to you.” These are things that you learn over a period of time because you can see now what happens on social media. Everything is about instant gratification. Everyone is reacting and wants to be famous, all these shenanigans, which is very sad and it is a very poor mindset.
It is a total disconnect from God. It is disconnected from our soul and spirit. We become this physical robot that is going for the ride. I do not want that life. I want to create massive meaning in my life. My driver is to leave a legacy. I’m passionate about that, and this is why I bring what I can do with ease and grace to such a critical part of my business.
Even though my business looks on the outside like it is very systemized, it is quite a spiritual process that most people do not even know that they are going through. The transformation that I take people through is evident because I’m opening up that Pandora’s box for them to connect with something much greater than themselves as well. That, for me, is where we need to be.
As you were speaking, and you were saying conscious, I was thinking about being present in the moment. That is what was running through my head, as you were saying. I was being present and enjoying the now, enjoying what’s going on, like where on this show together, and enjoying the conversation being present to this conversation. You said you are not reactive, but you are proactive. I thought of a response. The difference between the two is when you react, that is immediate. When I’m working with my clients, I will ask that question like, “Are you present to the moment and/or are you being reactive or you responding?” The difference is when you respond, it takes time.
As you said, you do not make a quick decision. You are going to be like, “Let me think about it.” It is a process. That is important for us all to know. I’m so grateful. Thank you so much for sharing what you have shared. One of the reasons why and I want to keep iterating this for every episode as where we are still in the series moving beyond excuses that hold you back.
The reason why I want to spend time on it, and I want to get different people’s perspectives behind it, is we are all in different spaces and places, but we are in different spaces where we are in our lives. There are excuses that we may have had when we were younger that held us that now we know that excuse is not going to work anymore. I want to get different perspectives on the same topic, because someone is reading and they can relate to exactly everything that you are saying because they are in that space as well.
That is why I bring in multiple guests on the same topic because I want our audience to be served and to know that this is the place where they can get some step-by-step techniques, guides, and things that everyday people like you and I are going through. I would love for you to share with our readers how can they get in contact with you?
That is important. I want you to share that, but also, what is it that you would want them to take away? What are some of the nuggets that you would like to leave our readers before we end this episode? Most importantly, you have to let them know how to get in contact with you because I know they want to. I want you all to know that she is in Australia and I’m planning on going back now, even the more now that I know that she’s there.
My husband and I were there once before, but we are going to lock in another visit. I’m so excited. With that, let me let you go ahead and share because my gift is kicking in if you do not recognize because I’m doing the talking. Please share with our audience how they can get in contact with you and then give them some closing remarks, what takeaways, and we can go from there.
To get in touch with me, please feel free to email me at Mary@MaryHendersonCoaching.com, or you can connect with me on my personal Facebook page, @MaryHendersonCoaching, or on LinkedIn @Mary Henderson Coaching with a pink circle around my face or Instagram @MaryHendersonCoaching.
It takes commitment and tenacity to confront the truth, but there’s also a freedom that lives in that truth. Click To TweetAny one of those will work. My website is MaryHendersonCoaching.com as well. Feel free to reach out to me. I also offer free 45-minute coaching calls. Please take advantage of that as well. I do provide a gap analysis, and it is beneficial. I want to note that my favorite topic that I love talking about is knowledge, wisdom and skills that we have inside of us is what I call our internal inventory.
That accumulation of knowledge, wisdom, and skills is what real currency is. I want people to understand this very clearly. When you look at money in dollars, that is one type of currency. If you left $100,000 in your bank account for 100 years and you came back, there will be zero left in your bank account, but your internal inventory, which is also a currency, lives with you forever. It never ever depreciates. It appreciates with time. Once we understand that is currency, we can do something with that, and that is what I want people to understand.
It is currency and looking at it totally different. It is always in us. It never goes away. Here is what I like to say, “No one can take it from you,” like the nose on my face and the ears on my head, and I say that is your greatness. That is who God created you to be, and that is why it is pivotal for you to walk in it, walk in your greatness.
Thank you so much, Mary, for saying yes and sharing the way you did. If you guys are not excited, I do not know what you are, but I am so excited. You all have her information. Reach out to her. It has been an honor to have you on the show. I am honored. This is what I want to do. I promise I will show the cover.
That is it right there, guys. Authoritti 5.0, 20 Remarkable Women of 2022, and I had the honor of being not only on the cover, but also in the magazine. What a wonderful blessing, and then to have you on the show. This was phenomenal. I appreciate it and appreciate you. That is where we are. Thank you, Mary, again. We are about changing lives and impacting our readers because we know it is easy to lose yourself in these clashing ideas, conflicting beliefs, the flood of information, and COVID-19.
With society’s rigid expectations and endless opinions, self-expression and self-appreciation can feel challenging and daunting. Most of the time, you are going to find yourself pushing to dumb down, hide who you are, and you will find that you will go with the flow, but we want to put us into that. This is a disparaging mindset we are putting an end to, and we are beginning to own our authentic selves.
Here in this safe space right here, we are having conversations and discussions where we are going to initiate influential conversations about you being you because you are you unapologetically. This is what I know. I know for sure that no one is better at being you than you. Thank you so very much for reading. We look forward to seeing you on our next episode. Until we see each other again, you guys take care of yourself, hang in there, and be you unapologetically. Take care. Bye-bye now.
Important Links
- Mary Henderson
- Authoritti 5.0 Magazine
- Mary@MaryHendersonCoaching.com
- @MaryHendersonCoaching – Facebook
- LinkedIn – Mary Henderson
- Instagram – Personal Branding Specialist
- 20 Remarkable Women of 2022
About Mary Henderson
Mary is an internationally recognised Personal Branding & Digital Business Specialist.
Mary helps Service Based Business Owners, Coaches and Consultants systemise, digitalise and commercialise their knowledge, wisdom and skills into a scalable & profitable online business and brand so they become an authority in their niche or industry.
Mary has 20+ years’ experience building 7 & 8-figure businesses & building high-performance sales teams in the IT sector and 15 years delivering online solutions for large and small businesses. She has been featured in many publications and is regarded as a thought leader in the Digital sector.
Mary’s point of difference is her Personal Branding technology, a SaaS Platform that has the ability to define a person’s brand essence with precision that can be applied across all communication touchpoints. She is also the founder of Lights. Cameras. Action an end-to-end coaching program that delivers tangible outcomes.
When you engage Mary, you access 39,000+ hours of experience, knowledge and wisdom in Personal Branding, client profiling, lead generation strategies, online course development, sales leadership, content development and digital acumen.
Mary embraces technology and social media in a big way and her followers are growing daily.
Mary is a heart-centered, compassionate and tenacious entrepreneur who thrives on human transformation and witnessing people fulfil their dreams.