Thank you. So real quickly, who I am? I am a 27 year combat vet. I started in the United States Navy. Get a little bit more into that later.I'm an engineer. I own my own engineering company. And also I am a professional speaker and I'm just really excited to be here today. Hi, Darcy. Welcome from Las Vegas. Alright. So for me, really? This is where it all started. The 1983 Barbie Dream House. When I was a little girl, I saved up all of my allowance. I did extra chores. I washed the dishes every night and my room was spotless. I even tried to mow the lawn, but I was still just too short. You see, I saved all of my money And I remember that day and how it felt to finally have enough cash so that I could go to Toys R Us and purchase this enormous box I brought a home on a Saturday morning, and I played with it all weekend long.

But this is what you really need to understand. The Barbie House. It wasn't for Barbie. Oh, no. You see it was much more than that. It was for me because this is what I would do is I would build it and then I would tear it down. And then I would reconstruct it and then I would demolish it over and over again. Barbie never actually got to live in the dream house because it was always under renovation. And you see? Looking back on those days, I realized that this is one of those defining moments that have helped shape who I am. I'm an engineer and I love to build. This sparked an interest and a passion in me that I didn't even know I had at that age. And this is what I'd like you to do today.

I'd like you to start to think back. Way back. And start to remember some of those moments that have helped to find who you are today. Maybe you also had a Barbie dream house. Maybe you had Legos and you love to build. Maybe you had a commodore 64 computer and you'd love to get on there and code things. Start to think back. What were those defining moments? Because our interests as children, I've helped shape who we are. And that pure, unbridled joy that we have then, It still lives in us. Maybe it's just been covered over by a couple years of working in our industry. And as children, we had grand dreams, but as adults, Our dreams are a little bit different now, aren't they?

I've gone around the world and I've started to ask people. What are your goals? What are your dreams? And I got answers like, you know, someday I'd really like to be a CEO. You know, I I'm just looking to get that raise. I wanna take up this incredible hobby. Some had really grand dreams that they wanted to they wanted to make the world a better place. But then I started to ask them. Tell me about your fears and what are your challenges? And what they told me fell into 2 different buckets. Number 1. What if I'm just not good enough or number 2? I just don't have time. But you see going after those goals and dreams? It requires a change to your status quo. And I believe that we can all be agents of change in our life, especially if we adopt a warrior mindset.

Now, a warrior mindset is not about picking up a sword and going out to slay everybody in front of you. I think that's technically murder or at least probably you're gonna go to jail. So so don't do that. But a warrior mindset is a choice. And if we use that warrior mindset, we can go after all of those goals and those dreams and those obstacles that keep standing in our way. Because you see I've found 2 really debilitating myths that are stopping us from going out and doing great things. Metths that are stifling our ability to go after those goals. So, Myth number 1, what if I'm just not good enough? If you have these feelings inside, don't even think about creating great change yet. You have to start with you.

So often we have these grand dreams but we feel like we're not good enough. We don't belong. Maybe this isn't the right time. I'm I'm not ready. This is imposter syndrome. An imposter syndrome, it is running rampant through our society. So let me just give you a quick example. Does anybody recognize this guy? This is Mike Myers, wildly famous actor. He once told the press that he wakes up every morning and is afraid that the no talent police are gonna come in and arrest him because he's not funny. This is a guy with multiple great movies, Austin Powers, So I married an axe murder. I mean, just there's just tons and tons that go on. He has a Hollywood walk of fame star. I mean, he's been on Saturday night. Live. He has 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of dollars, and he also has imposter syndrome.

And posture syndrome is that nagging little creature in the back of our mind that tells us you're not good enough. You better quit before somebody finds out. So if you have those feelings, just realize that you know what? You're not alone. In fact, 82% of the entire world has had imposter syndrome from one time to another. It doesn't discriminate. Men, women, children, old people. It doesn't matter. 80 2 percent of the entire world has had imposter syndrome at one time to another. So the question is, what are we gonna do about it? So Let's take a look at fact number 1. Warriors have learned how to lean into their strengths. Now there are a number of ways that we can get over our imposter syndrome. I have a really good friend and he has a book just like this.

And what he does is every time he has a win, he writes it down. And then whenever he starts to feel and syndrome starting to creep up on him again. He grabs his book. He opens it up and he starts to read what he's written. One of the things that I do is I go over to the printer. I grab a clean piece of paper and I start writing down every one of my accolades. I start with the fact that I won the 4th grade science fair. I start with, hey, you know what? I had the grace to give myself time to work out this morning. I did really well on a project last week. Start writing down all of your accolades because this is what happens.

When you start to read what you've written, all of a sudden you start going from I don't know if I can do this too. I've got this. And do you wanna know why? Science, Neuroscientists at the University of Tokyo have found that the act of reading what you have written increases what our brain calls coding. Now I know there were a bunch of women in tech here. So pass on the Python, forget Fortran, and jettison that Java. What I'm talking about is the type of coding that goes on in the brain and the hippocampus. You see our neurons, Don, little programmer caps, It's like they're going into some kind of high-tech coding dojo and they write down all of these little things. So as you start to read what you've written, All of a sudden, those feelings of elation, those obstacles that you've overcome, You start to remember all of these things.

And here's the most important piece of all of this. When you're writing down all of your accolades, I want you to start to think about how, How did you do this? Are you smarter than would you wanna give yourself credit for? Are you great at communication and making sure the right people know what they need to do? Have you mastered the artwork of teamwork so that your team can go out and accomplish anything? When you write down your accolades, I want you to write another column right next to that. And I want you to start to think about the how. How did I do these? Cause those are your strengths. Now I wanna take this one step further and a lot of this has to do with mindset.

You know, we talked about that mean little voice in the back of our head. So there's three ways that we can get over this. Step number 1. Realize that it's happening. A lot of times I we'll just sort of get into this and it's oh my gosh. I can't do this. I don't have the time. I'm not good enough. I should just quit. I'm I'm just gonna I'm just gonna give up. I'm not good enough. Okay. That's our brains basically just like running away with it. What we have to do is we have to realize that this is happening. And I know that's kind of hard because we got like a whirlwind going on in our head, but we have to train ourselves and change our mindset to realize what's happening. Now, sometimes this is gonna take a little while to get there.

You know, you might be kind of running in circles for, like, maybe 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes, 4 days. It, you know, it all kinda depends on the person. But you need to just stop and realize my mind is running away from me. I have to get control of my mind. So number 2, scientists have found that when we're able to visualize, we're able to solve problems better. So when my head is all in this, you know, conundrum and I'm thinking about all of these things, put a name to it. So mine is Bob. Now nothing against the bobs of the world, but whenever all of this is happening, I basically visualize and think Bob is running away again. And so what I'd like you to do in the chat as I'd like you to start thinking about what would you name this alter ego, this nasty little voice in your head?

This is your inner critic. Bob. Perfect. It could be Karen. It could be Capernicus. You know, whatever that might be. Think about and just write it in the chat. Who who is that? Sir Francis Bacon, the Joker. Excellent. I love it. Sir Francis Bacon. Have you been watching the 3 body problem? Yes. Okay. So number 1, realize that your brain is running away from you. Number 2, name it. Name that alter ego, whether it's Bob's or Francis Bacon or whoever that might be. Now here's where the Warrior mindset comes in. We have this alter ego, my Bob. I create a second alter ego, which is the warrior. Now this is basically your champion. And think about what that would look like. Maybe it looks like a samurai. Maybe it looks like Ooma Thurman from kill bill. It doesn't really matter.

Going back to what I talked about with those house and understanding those strengths, when your alter ego, Bob says you can't do it, I want you to start to think back to your house and your strengths and arm your warrior with basically saying, no, I can do this. I have done this before. And so you go back and forth and basically after a while, it becomes very natural that I'll get into something. I'm like, oh, man, Bob's running away again. And I was like, okay. Put put the warrior on and say, okay. You know what? No. I have done this before. I have met these types of challenges before. So start thinking about who is so I'll give you a really good example. So in 2014, there was an assassination attempt on my life. I was the commanding officer of a battalion of 800 people in Afghanistan. Sorry. It was a while. It choked up, so don't mind me. Okay. So I'm part of the navy, but I don't go on those big gray floating things in in the ocean.

I'm an engineer and I build. And so the Navy has a certain portion where we go out and land typically with the marines, and we build bases. And roads and re repair bridges and drill water wells, all these things that ground troops need in order to be sustainable. But when we got to Afghanistan, one of our jobs was to help train the Afghans on how to be engineers. Because again, every army needs somebody who knows how to build bases, repair roads, repair bridges, and drill water wells in order to be sustainable. I had the most fascinating job of all. My job was to work with the Afghan general. And we talked about things like communication, logistics, leadership. Imagine me, a woman. Giving advice to an Afghan general, especially given the culture of women, you know, in in Afghanistan. And this is what we would do.

Every day, we would get into our trucks and then we would convoy out to their site. We conduct training and then we had convoy back. Well, one morning, we're all standing around our trucks, and the interpreter calls and says, Stand down. The gentleman doesn't wanna see you today. Okay. That's fine. As a commanding officer, you know what? I've had to hold my own back from time to time. You know, we have some kind of admin logistics, something something that we have to do. Fine. We stripped down. On the second day, he calls and says, stand down. The general doesn't wanna see you today. Now this is getting kind of interesting? Okay. On 3rd day, he calls and says, The general is ready to see you again. And I said, great. Well, what's going on?

He said, Well, apparently there were some insurgents that infiltrated his group, and they were planning to kidnap you, do horrible things to you, and then kill you, and a couple of the other key members. But don't worry. He found out about them and well, you don't have to worry about them anymore. So are you coming out? Now I realize that being in the military, getting killed is actually part of the job description. I get that. And I've been shot at multiple times, but usually it's while I'm in the back of a helicopter and I'm flying from base to base to go check on my troops. Because you see, you can look at the back of the helicopter at night and you can see the tracer rounds as the enemy gunfire is coming after you. It's kind of like a spooky light show. But this was different. This is somebody who knew me by name and wanted me dead.

And this is about what all will happen in about the next five seconds of my brain. What the I was immediately assaulted by anger, rage, disbelief, and fear. But it was the fear that stuck around. Maybe today would be a really good day to stay in the office and do some paperwork. Yeah. And Bob says, maybe you're not a good leader. What am I even doing here? I I start looking around at my troops and some of them are angry, some of them are scared, So for the guy in the back who keeps picking his fingernails, so he doesn't have to make eye contact at me. Man, I've gotta make a decision. But what if I make the wrong decision? I go back out there and they kill me. Or worse. What if they kill my people? How would I answer to their families? But what if I make the wrong decision and I stay here?

Well, we're never going to get the job done and they might think I'm a coward. Maybe you are a coward. Gotta make a decision. Okay, Warrior. Man, I don't know where you are, but, man, you need to come out today. And I started to calm myself down and start to think, you know what? I've been through some really hard Harn choice. 4. But you know what I got through them? And you know, I can do this too. Because as I'm looking out at like everybody around me, that's my team and I know them and I trust them and they trust me. And so I told the interpreter, you know what? We're coming out. And right there in the parking lot, we replanned the entire security for our organization, and we went out that day.

And the next and the next until the end of deployment. Now, I know that this is an absolutely crazy story about imposter syndrome, but I'll just tell you, I still get impostor syndrome from time to time. I was asked to go speak at a conference a couple months ago and I'd looked at the other people that were there, and I realized, wow. Look at them. Look at look at how accomplished they are. Look look at how many books they've written. What am I doing here? And then I remembered, you know what? I am a warrior. I am meant to be here because I have a mission and a message to get out to people. You see, we have to know the things that trigger us. We have to know our how. We have to know our strengths.

So when Bob and that mean little boy start to come up, we're already armed with what we would say in return, to that mean little voice. So myth number 2. I'm just too busy. Okay. Whoever has said this before, I'd like to go after something that I don't have time. What is your goal? What is your dream? Now I want you to ask your stuff. What is stopping you from going and chasing it? We come up with these excuses like, I'm too busy. I don't have time. But we all know how to prioritize, don't we? Who here has spent a little bit more time on TikTok or Facebook instead of writing out their plan, you you don't have to self identify in the chat. I won't make you do that.

You see, there are some days that I would rather pick up my Basically, do my taxes, then pick up the phone and call a potential client. You see, we all have this fear. What if we put ourselves out into the world and people tell us no? What if we fall down? What if we fail? It's the fear of failure. And so it stops us most of the time because if we never take that first step, we will never know the pain of a possible future failure. And you know what? It's okay to be afraid. But if it stops you from going after what you really want, It's not okay. So I will tell you one of my fears. Hummingbirds. Yep. I am afraid of hummingbirds. Have you ever had a hummingbird come up right up close to your eyes?

I'm afraid that pointy little beak is gonna pull my eyes out. And I know I know it sounds absolutely silly and I looked it up. It's a real thing. It's called Colin Profobia. And I know I know that it is completely irrational because I looked that up too. According to Google, hummingbirds don't actually attack humans. So while we're talking about fears, I have a couple of other fun facts about fears that I wanna share with you. 72% of the populace is afraid of spiders. Anyone here? We got mosquitoes. Yep. That's pretty close. One third of the populace is afraid of flying. 9% of the populace is afraid of giving up chocolate on a daily basis. I honestly thought that was that was gonna be higher. And 3% of the populace is afraid of eating salads on a daily basis. I know that sounds silly, but actually my friend, Doug, is one of them.

It's basically just the leafy green kind. Apparently, macaroni salad totally passes the test. Now while we're talking about fears, here's one more statistic that I want you to think about. 49% of people do not go after their goal or their dream because of the fear of failure. The fear of failure. You see, we have to retrain our brains. So that we can go after those goals and dreams. So one way that we can do that is really looking at You know what? Maybe it's okay to fail. So in business and engineering, you know, we have cool charts like this. Where we look at the severity of something failed compared to the likelihood, and then you can go across the top and figure out what is the risk of actually going after it.

I'm an earthquake engineer, and so I have really cool sexy equations. I know it's really sexy, right? But when we look at risk, all risk is is the probability of failure and the consequence of failure. So here's an example. Let's say that your goal in life is learn how to play checkers. Now, the consequences if you fail to learn checkers is pretty low. The probability that you will learn to fail checkers is also pretty low. So the consequences and the probability are low, meaning that the risk is low. But what if your goal is to get rich? So you sell your house, you sell your car, you cash in everything from the bank and you play the lottery. Now the probability that you are going to fail to win the lottery is really high. Only 1326,200,000 people ever hit the mind ball.

And the consequences if you fail to learn when the lottery is also really high because you will lose everything, high probability, high consequence, high risk, but if you know this going in, you can put up safeguards. You can have alternatives like spending time in your parents' basement until you get back on your feet. If you know the probability and you know the consequence and you know the risk, you might find that it's okay to fail. Thomas Edison. He was once interviewed by a very snarky reporter that said, Mister Edison, you have now tried 10,000 ways to create the light bulb and failed every single time. What does it feel like to fail 10,000 times? Any cooler replied, sir, I had not filled 10,000 times. I have found 10,000 ways that do not work. That's a lot better attitude to take. A lot of times we fail because we are trying something for the first time.

But when you fail, you have to pick yourself up and you have to keep going. Ask yourself, is it worth it? And if the answer is yes, Pick yourself up and keep moving forward. Now the other way that we can retrain our brain is to not think about what if we fail but what if we succeed? So let's change this a little bit. Instead of likelihood and severity, Let's call it rewards and catastrophic doesn't make sense anymore on the far right, so we're just gonna call it awesome. Now we can look at this. And say like, what is the likelihood that we're gonna get in? What are the rewards? That's so much better.

We can rewrite our equations and talk about the probability of and the consequences of those success. This is a much better way to look at going after something. If you go out for a new succeed, will you become more financially secure? Will you have more freedom? Will you be able to finally take that trip that you've always wanted to? Will you have the courage to ask that cute person out on a date? Think about what would happen if you actually went after it. So fact number 2, Wears may be afraid but have chosen to move forward. Now I can sit up here and list thousands of people who have gone after their dreams because they conquered fear, but today is not about them. Today is about all of you that are on this webinar. What does it take to move you forward?

And I'd like you to read this quote from Martin Luther King. You just have to take the first step. So I'd basically have created my warriors path through fear. So the first step is just to breathe. I know. I get it. We all breathe. Otherwise, we wouldn't be on this call, but what I'm talking about is slowing down, taking some time, and let it our mind and our body relax. We get so caught up. We have these goals and dreams, but There's work, live, phone calls, zoom calls, milestones, deadlines, all of these things that get caught up in the way and we just don't have time to sit down and plan. And I would request that you take just 15 minutes every day Did you sit down and plan?

Because whenever you're able to just take a few deep breaths, what that does is it activates a parasympathetic nerve system. This is our rest and digest system when we're able to stop and breathe. This creates more focus, It creates more attention to detail, and we can actually start really writing those plans. So next, Courage. It's gonna take courage to go on this path. Now With courage, there's 2 different types. You have physical courage and you have moral courage. Physical courage Think about running into a birding building to save somebody. Moral courage deals with all of those Things we might have to deal with if we try something, scandal, shame, loss, or opposition.

Being afraid is okay, but we need to have the courage to move forward. From courage comes confidence. And with confidence that will keep you moving forward. I can't tell you how to find your courage. You're gonna have to find that within yourselves. Find that little spark. What is it that excites you and have that pull you forward but you had to find your own path the courage. Next. Plan. Okay. We're mostly engineers. We're really good at planning. So start backwards planning. Let's say that you're part of 5% of the entire populace that is afraid of heights. So you decide, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna go skydiving. Well, you don't just go and jump out of a plane. Right? You need to find a plane that flies slow enough. You need to find, you know, otherwise, you're gonna just get sucked into the engines. You're gonna need a parachute.

You're gonna need a cool looking outfit like that guy, and you're probably gonna need somebody who's going to train you how to be a skydiver. Just taking the initial step of just picking up your phone and looking up somebody who is going to train you To be a skydiver, that's how you get there. Write those huge goals down into something that's very manageable. Make that first step so incredibly easy that it seems silly not to take it. And I will go on record and tell you I don't believe in beliefs of faith. I don't. Leaps of faith are scary and a lot of times we are intimidated by them and said, no, I can't do it. Break down your goal. Step by step, what's it gonna take to get from here to there? Small manageable steps, and then celebrate Celebrate along the way.

For each one of those steps that you take, I want you to have a celebration. The Harvard Business Review recently did a study and they found that seemingly small things at work had huge effects on people's morale and it was celebrating small wins because you see our brains are absolutely wired for this type of thing. When we're able to celebrate these small wins, it releases dopamine, and that's from the hypothalamus. We love celebrating. So each one of these steps that I'm asking you to take You know what? Just just keep yourself a pat on the back. Go have a glass of wine. Go celebrate out with your friends. Each tiny little step that it takes to get to your goal. And finally, Never give up. When you're going after your goal or your dream, you're probably gonna hit a brick wall, and I want you to ask yourself, Is it worth it?

And if the answer is yes, then never give up. For many of us, the path to success, it's straight. We know where we're going, but for a lot of us, man, it feels like a hedge maze. You go down one direction, hit a wall, you go right when you thought you were supposed to go left. You might even have to backtrack and that's hard to do. It's okay to pivot, but never ever quit A few years ago, I decided, you know, I think I have this calling to become a public speaker. And I decided to do this in January of 2020. I know awesome timing, right? What a perfect time to be a public speaker right before COVID hit.

I had 3 conferences all lined up. They all canceled on me. The world had gone virtual, and I had to pivot in order to try to stay relevant. I had to learn how to work with Zoom and teams and circle and Google Meets and everything else in order to try to stay on top. I even went and took a professional course in public speaking to try to be better at it. Look, there were days when I was like, man, It would be so easy to just give up. Fight through these feelings of wanting to give up. These are the times that are gonna separate you from basically everyone around you. Everyone else is gonna wanna quit. But find something within yourself and ask yourself, is it worth it?

Because you see as we go through this, this this warriors path and you're asking yourself, is it worth it? And the answer is yes? You know you're gonna have to move forward and what I'm asking of you is not easy. This is really tough There's gonna be days when it's like, man, I just wanna acquiesce. I wanna just quit. I just wanna move on. Well, you have your choice. You can either put your warrior on or you can be satisfied with your status quo. Now, I have a quote And it says fate says to the warrior. You cannot weather the storm. No worry whispers back. I am the storm. Man, there's days when I'm sitting at my desk and I'm thinking, can I do this? Am I brave enough? Am I sharp enough? Am am I good enough to do this? And I say this sort of over and over again. No.

I am the storm. I am a warrior. I can do this. So find your own mantra if you need to. Remember, put your warrior on and move forward. Now, finish off with the second half of what Martin Luther King had said. You just have to keep taking step after step. So this Sunday morning, as I was sitting there, With my Barbie Dreamhouse, already showing the signs of multiple reconstructions, I realized It wasn't perfect. Not yet. So I did something daring and a little scary. I jumped up, I ran down the hall and came back with scissors and scotch tape, and I very slowly started to cut the floors apart. And then I started to cut the rooms apart.

And as all the parts and pieces lay before me, I realized I can build this back better than the manufacturer had ever intended because I love to build. And just like this Barbie House, we can rebuild ourselves. Over and over again refining as we go. We can try something daring and a little scary that's outside of our comfort zone. We have the tools to get over our imposter syndrome and our fear of failure, and we have the capacity. To make things better than they are today. So with that, I'd like to say thank you. I'd love to connect with you. And if you have any questions, please just pop them into the chat. Thank you, Tiffany. I will get you the slide deck. I will make sure that you guys get it. Thank you, Tanya. Thank you, Michelle.

I see that we only have about 1 minute left, but I wanna say thank you all so much for for being here. And you know what? I hope you have a really great rest of the conference. I have to put my glasses on so that I can actually see some of the names. Thank you, Tiffany. Thank you, Tanya. Thank you, Anna. I'm sorry if I mispronounced your name. Thank you, Stephanie, Claudia, Michelle. Adrianna, thank you so much. I'm also Christina. Thank you as well. Thank you, Tanya. I appreciate that.