60 – Strengths in Disguise: Why Your “Flaws” Might Be Your Superpower

0:03Lea WernliHello. Hi, so nice to have you here and welcome back to Time for You. It's Lia and Shelia. We are really, really happy to have you and we are doing this like one after another and we just spoke and for you it's like the last time about That what remains is love. And we are agreeing, like, on that. And we're pretty sure that's, that's the main theme— being in love, coming back to love, being present with what is. And having all these thoughts and feelings and experiences of being human, creating and failing and learning and trying and loving and heartbreak and all of it.

1:07And maybe, and we didn't point back to that for a long, long time, maybe because probably it's, that's our stand. Like we're coming from there as an idea as well. We never know it like for 100% sure, but from the standpoint of we are not broken, we are that love and we are that what remains even in the dementia center or in the kindergarten, like when the little kids are fighting or the old people are getting into their head. And But beneath, we see it with the old and with the very young ones. It's innocence, it's love, it's the soul, it's just mind through us playing crazy games in form. And in form, there are sometimes lessons, and they're not so nice.

2:13Shailia StephensOh, no.

2:15Lea WernliSometimes we don't want to, and it's easier to be the way we are, or we don't want to look at it, or there is something to see sometimes, not always. Sometimes it's also accepting who we are and the way we are and how we act in the world. But actually, I was writing to one of my mentors this morning why I think I am in a phase of more planning, and more strategic stuff. And it was something, a metaphor that came up this night. And a friend of mine, she went hiking alone in Sweden and she was, oh God, my word, preparing.

3:05Shailia StephensThat was really good.

3:08Lea WernliThat was good. That was good. And for a long time, like 6 months, and walked and really was looking to gear and a tent and the shoes and everything that could help to make that experience as good as it gets. Like, and, um, and it's still hard to do it by yourself and in the woods and walking like, like long distance and the weather, and you have to deal with the loans and the payments and all of it. So, but she was, she had all her stuff together and was, was ready to do it and, and had really cool and exciting and, and also, yeah, quite tough experience, but really transformative in a way. So, and, and cool. So she did it like with a lot of time and space and resources, of course.

4:21Shailia StephensMm-hmm.

4:22Lea WernliAnd what I often do is I do the same. I go hiking in Sweden, but I have the idea and I book the flight and I'm going there with my city clothes and nothing on me and like an old backpack and maybe a hat. And then I'm in the wilderness and I've, I've, I think it's beautiful. And then there is the sky and it's cold by night, but I will find a hut in the middle of nowhere. And of course, I meet people who help me and then, and it works too, somehow.

5:04Shailia StephensOh no. I'm always waiting with you, Lea, like what?

5:11Lea WernliNo, nothing happened. It's just a metaphor. It's metaphorical. I know, I know. That's cool, but it's also exhausting.

5:20Shailia StephensOkay.

5:21Lea WernliIn a way, because, yeah, the shoes are not made for walking like this long distance. So I have to like being really creative and finding ways and then walking with, I don't know, somebody is willing to give me their shoes, but they're a little too big. Or, and that's all of these kind of things happens to me, as Shelly knows. So I, not that crazy thing that I go hiking without, but you know what I mean, as a metaphor.

6:01Shailia StephensYeah.

6:02Lea WernliAnd yes, I'm quite tuned into the creation of life. I find often solution where probably a lot of people wouldn't, or I trust deeply that there will be a way and I find a way. So cool. Maybe you could say, yeah, that, but that's it. Yes. And no. To free up time or space or capability Maybe for a bigger project or something else, it could be very helpful if me too had the right pair of shoes and maybe a tent, maybe 2 bottles of water, and maybe a Funkgerät. What's a CB radio?

7:00Shailia StephensCB radio too.

7:06Lea Wernlihave a smoother experience. There are certain things that could be helpful.

7:12Shailia StephensMm-hmm.

7:13Lea WernliAnd in certain areas of my life, I'm also ready to becoming a better householder or to becoming a bit more strategic or having a better overview not like to feel more secure or not to, not being able to navigate or being flexible, but to just free up a bit of my energy and having more capability for maybe things that want to come through me in a, in a bit of a—

7:55Shailia StephensMm-hmm.

7:56Lea Wernlithat need more space or time, like a book or the new coach training or things I really want to put in my capacity and my energy. So it's again, both.

8:14Shailia StephensLeah, if you could see the party that's going on inside of me. Tell me more. Well, first of all, It just makes me laugh a lot because I think, you know, one of the things that I love about you is you're— in America, we would say you're a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of gal, you know? And it's what makes the movie Pretty Woman so amazing. You know, she— I think there's a scene where she says, like, she's flying by the seat of her pants. And, you know, she had Richard Gere, the high-powered businessman, and he was all structure and she was like, taking your shoes off and let's go sit in the grass barefoot, you know, kind of a thing.

9:06Let's hang off of the balcony at the hotel and watch I Love Lucy. Like, I wouldn't want to miss that about you. It's so charming. It's so indelible. It's so good. And—

9:21Lea WernliThank you.

9:23Shailia StephensI love that about you. And obviously, I've known you long enough to know that being a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of girl, it comes with a cost, you know.

9:33Lea WernliYes.

9:36Shailia StephensWhether it's dings and bings on your car or tickets from the police or just any, like, any number of things that happened. And so, but when you were talking, you know, what I hear is that What always takes me back when you say, and, yeah, so yes, I'm that fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants girl. And I'm feeling my inner wisdom calling me toward maybe some more structure, maybe some more planning, maybe some more systems in my areas of life where I want to free myself up for new things that are coming.

10:16Lea WernliMm-hmm.

10:17Shailia StephensAnd it's always that sort of personal insight or where life is calling us forward. And it's always in flow, you know.

10:28Lea WernliYes.

10:29Shailia StephensFor the people who are more structured and perfectionistic, like myself, right? Sometimes I'm getting the call to more freedom. And I'm moving over to the fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of side. For the people who are you know, really wild and free, they're sometimes feeling a call to more structure. And there's value in that. Recently, I had this, you know, you know, my whole life is systematized, Leah, like even, even the way the dogs are taken out every day. It's like a special—

11:05Lea WernliThat's true.

11:06Shailia StephensIt's a special time and the person who goes and how long we walk and the equipment they're wearing and my security system, you know, like I'm the absolute opposite. And recently, Sandra Heim and I were kind of— well, we still are in the middle of launching a new mastermind that's starting on January 6th in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, like the German-speaking space. And I kind of got this feeling like, you know, we'll have a Gruppestruktur. We have a system that we're using to communicate it. But let's keep it light. Like, let's keep it open. And, um, so I was like moving more toward that free side of, you know, your side, Liam.

11:49Lea WernliYeah.

11:50Shailia StephensAnd it was so messed up. Like today, today we sat down together and we were like, okay, now we were going to do this third part of the thing, the system we were going to do. And because I hadn't thought everything through from the beginning to the end, I had already taken some steps in step 1 and step 2 that now didn't match with step 3 at all. So we couldn't do that. We couldn't do that anymore because we had already sent out this stuff and that stuff. So this way of doing things strategically doesn't work that way anymore. And I just remember getting off the call with Sandra and thinking, what a mess. What a mess. Whereas before I would have sat down and like Really minuscule.

12:42Lea WernliMm-hmm.

12:43Shailia StephensAnd I would have thought all the way to the end of the 3-month, uh, communication period, I would have had every scenario in place. If that happens, then this. If that happens, then this. And it was energetically, um, funny. So I can really see Um, how it can be helpful sometimes. And what I was just thinking is, you know, isn't it fun to surf back and forth between the two? Totally.

13:21Lea WernliYes. And also, as when you were speaking, I also had the thought like, and to know it's a strength as well. Yours is a strength. Like, being very like clear and systematic, that has a value and the strength.

13:40Shailia StephensMm-hmm.

13:41Lea WernliBeing able to pull off, I don't know what, from I don't know when and where, that's a strength too. Like to also see like, oh, that's value and what's needed, where is it needed? Like sometimes we think we need to change like all of it and being like lighter or not that strategic, or I need to be really strategic, but just to feel into where, ah, here, but the rest works perfectly.

14:18Shailia StephensMm-hmm.

14:19Lea WernliAnd, and to not, not, not changing like the core value of it that also serves us in a way. That's what came to me. Um, when you were speaking too, like, um, having a lightness around, sometimes it looks like a strength and sometimes it looks like a weakness.

14:46Shailia StephensA weakness.

14:47Lea WernliA weakness, yes, a weakness. And, and, but, but to see when it when it comes as a way we are in the world, that of course we also did perfectionize it. Somebody else would die in the wilderness and I will somehow thrive. And somebody else would die on the online tech business part and Shelley will thrive. So it's also, of course, we did build like skills somehow as well.

15:23Shailia StephensYeah, yeah, definitely. I was— I've been obsessed with this podcast with Emma Grede. I don't know if you've heard it. She's the founder of Good American, the jeans company, and also co-founder of Skims with Kim Kardashian and her husband, who is a Danish guy. I think his name is Jens Grede. And he came to speak on her podcast. It was one of her one of my favorite guests that she had had on there. And he's really successful and he's very logical-minded, you know, very, very strategic person.

15:58And he apparently has this secret anxiety, like very bad anxiety. And he was working with a coach, a therapist, I don't know who, whoever it was. And in their conversations, he had suddenly had an insight that his anxiety was his biggest strength. And not— he didn't like the feeling of it. He didn't like the panicky, tight thing that was happening there. But something in it had like this massive gold nugget of skills that it unleashed, of empathy and of ways to navigate in his life and in his business, um, that makes him really, um, successful. And, um, once he saw that, it just, you know, kind of changed everything.

16:55Lea WernliMm-hmm.

16:56Shailia StephensChanged everything for him around that. And that's what I heard when you just said, you know, seeing it, seeing a thing, seeing a strength in a thing that we have been viewing for so long as maybe a weakness, an area of improvement, whatever the thing.

17:12Lea WernliYou know, I love that. And I already said it once, I think, when we were talking a couple of weeks ago, like, limitation creates style as well. Like, it does. It does. And to own that.

17:31Shailia StephensMm-hmm.

17:32Lea WernliI mean, that's what you said. Maybe you're going, you're going to die and you're still like chaotic in certain areas. And I'm, I'm not chaotic at all in the coach Training. Actually, I'm very good at it. I'm a real good teacher.

17:48Shailia StephensThat's true. It's very true.

17:51Lea WernliJust if you think, oh, I can't go to that crazy nation.

17:54Shailia StephensNo, she's very, very good at that.

17:55Lea WernliSo to see, yes, this limitation I have, it needs me to figure things out and to to, to be with that and how I could do it differently is unique. And that's for all of us somehow.

18:19Shailia StephensYeah.

18:20Lea WernliAnd sometimes we think we need to be like her, that to be successful, or how on earth could somebody like me being a— having a business? Can't work. Yes, it can, but it's different. I would, I couldn't do it Shelia's way. We were really good together, but because we had a lot of capacity to hold the style of the other one. But we, we couldn't have switched places.

18:50Shailia StephensNever.

18:51Lea WernliSo, so really seeing, yes, we would probably not succeed the way the other one does it, but we can find a way how we succeed with the limitations and what we need to learn as well. Sometimes it's both. There is something to see, like a bit freer, but not that free.

19:15Shailia StephensYeah.

19:16Lea WernliA bit more strategic, but not that strategic. And then we build from there. And not to be afraid to figure that out, not to be afraid to To try things in the area we're not that capable and not that good and where it doesn't flow that easy, but to see, yeah, there is something to see. And how can my weakness, strange weirdness be my strengths, the limitation of style as well? So both.

19:54Shailia StephensYeah, both. And I'm so, so curious, Leah, where we're going to end up in like 5 years from now, 10 years from now, because I feel like, you know, since you and I— for those of you who don't know, Leah and I used to be business partners for a while, and she was like my favorite person to work with on the planet. And that's just—

20:13Lea WernliSame.

20:13Shailia StephensYeah. And I feel like since we've gone our separate ways, Leah, like you've been going more to the direction of structure, systems, things. And I've been like going loosey-goosey, like more and more. I'm like, maybe you did this to me. Maybe I did that to you. I don't know. But, but I wonder where we're going to end up, um, at the end of the day. Like, um, it's going to be very interesting to watch. So, yeah.

20:42Lea WernliYeah, I'm very curious too.

20:45Shailia StephensWe will see. We'll still be talking.

20:49Lea WernliWe'll still be talking.

20:49Shailia StephensI'm sure.

20:51Lea WernliSo yeah, thank you guys. And it's just, yeah, so cool to have time, time for ourselves and together. And maybe you've heard something. So maybe you see, oh, that limitation is not that bad. Or what, what could it be? What could it offer to me? And to, to feel into it a little bit. And hear you, see you soon. Bye.

21:24Shailia StephensBye-bye.