Ep 64: Reclaiming Personal Power: Are You Willing to Do the Work?
I share a vulnerable look into my weekly "money dates" and paying instructors at my Lisbon studio. I open up about how financial conversations re-trigger old somatic memories from my teenage years, and why true personal power isn't about physical labor; it's about doing the internal, somatic work to grow through discomfort.
Key Takeaways
The Internal Shift: True growth isn't about working harder or putting in physical labor; it's about your willingness to do the internal, emotional, and somatic work required to reach your next level.
Trauma in Business: Unhealed childhood experiences, especially around money, control, and negotiation, will show up in your day-to-day business operations if left unaddressed.
Self-Awareness vs. Action: Self-reflection is only the first step; moving from understanding into real action requires nervous system regulation and sitting through somatic discomfort.
Power in the Choice: Deciding if you are willing to work through the stickiness of a goal reclaims your power. If you decide you aren't willing to do the work for a specific dream, letting it go is an equally empowered choice.
Chapters
(00:00) — Self-Empowerment: The Work Behind Personal Growth
(01:47) — Self-Sabotage, Healing & Building Self-Trust
(03:39) — Money Trauma, Entrepreneurship & Nervous System Regulation
(08:07) — Overcoming Financial Anxiety as a Business Owner
(12:05) — Working Through Discomfort to Grow Your Business
(13:13) — Personal Power: Making Empowered Decisions
(16:05) — How to Stop Feeling Stuck and Reclaim Your Power
(17:42) — Healing Community, Online Offerings & Staying Connected
Resources Mentioned
Asha's Place Lisbon: Studio offerings, workshops, and weekly classes.
Threads: Connect and share your reflections with me @ashawilkersonesq.
Email List Community: Join my email list for updates on new online offerings, memberships, and courses.
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Asha (00:00.81)
Hey y'all, hope that you are doing well. Welcome back to another episode of Because I'm Healing. This month we are going to be focusing on self-empowerment, on personal power. And I know that that could sound a little bit corny, but just bear with me for a little bit. I had the thought the other day, and I've seen this in many places before, almost as like a conviction.
Or a pause to make you think how bad do you really s want something? But I was thinking the other day, how much work are you willing to do to get the thing that you want? How much work are you willing to put in to get to the place that you want to be? How much work are you willing to put in to become the person that you are trying to become? That last one resonates a little bit more with me because I don't
like thinking about the connection between hard work and outcome because you know the older you get and the higher up you get you realize that hard work is definitely rewarded when you are a little bit lower on the ladder. But the people at the top are not necessarily working hard. They might be working smart they might be working efficiently they are paid for their decision-making powers, but they're not often the ones who are doing the work.
And particularly as black and brown people around the world, we have been taught and told and conditioned and enslaved in such a way that hard work was the way that we survived. And so now in this day and age, I think it behooves all of us to move away from hard work. But that's actually kind of on a tangent because that's not the work that I'm talking about. And I surprised myself when I came up with this when this thought popped into my head. Am I willing to do the work that it takes to get to where I want to be?
And really what I was asking myself is, am I willing? Really, what I was asking myself is, am I willing to do the internal work to get to where I want to go? Not about the hard work, not about the physical labor, but am I willing to grow through the things that I need to grow through to get to where I want to go? And I was asking myself this in
Asha (02:24.492)
The middle of telling a story about how I could feel myself sabotaging a good thing because I was uncomfortable in some kind of way, or because my nervous system is like, we can't trust that this good thing is here. Let's blow it up before it blows you up. I don't know if any of you all have ever been there before. We've seen it with people, celebrities, your friends, your family members, like you've got everything going for you, and then they do something.
And they get in their own way and they lose the opportunity or they crash the car or they show up late to the job and it was a good job and you know things happen, right? And I was I was kind of looking at myself with this bird's eye view of Asha, here's this opportunity. Let's say it's about growing the business. I think I was thinking about it in terms of relationships with people, but then also in terms of the business, and and one of them actually.
I'll just be fully transparent. One of them is a relationship or relationships with people that I pay through the business. Now I have a high degree of self-awareness, and it's not to toot my own horn, but I have been I was that kid when my mom was asking me, What was your role in this situation? So I learned how to be self-reflective really early and I got really good at the self-reflection part of it. What is harder to do is to move from understanding into into action.
Because that actually requires some nervous system regulation work. So here's the thing: every week at the studio, I pay out for the instructors, for the massage therapists, for anybody who does a workshop at the studio. And if the studio has been the entity that collects the payment, every week I do it. And I do not like math. I am not great at math.
And I have a challenging relationship with money. Historically, I would rather not deal with it, but I am really trying to deal with it because I don't want to be an under-resourced healer in this world. I don't want to be an under-resourced anybody in this world. And so actually having the studio and and making weekly payments is forcing me to almost have a money date with myself.
Asha (04:46.966)
every week and it's uncomfortable. And it's uncomfortable because I mess up all the time. Maybe there's like a week or two when I don't mess up and then I mess up. I like last week I actually forgot to pay one of the yoga instructors. Not on purpose. Not on purpose at all. They're in Lisbon at the time I'm recording this. I'm on the west coast of the United States. And so I'm looking at the schedule. I'm not there visually seeing what's going on and I just missed paying somebody. Totally forgot.
With another person, we have an agreement, but then there's a misunderstanding about what the agreement was and what the payment should be. with somebody else, we're looking at like split pay, but really it'll be in the best interest of the studio if I just play a flat pay a flat rate, which is a change what we've been doing. And so I am forced to have money conversations at least once a week. And my money story is.
Such that I saw money as this tool for control when I was a kid. My dad used to use money to control. When my parents got divorced, my mom didn't want to talk to my dad. And my dad probably would have talked to my mom, but that wasn't a door that she wanted to open. And so when I was in high school, I would have to ask my dad for money to buy school clothes or to or to support.
And he had set it up so that he didn't have to pay child support when my parents got divorced. So that was a thing. And so then I just had to ask, but he felt like he wasn't obligated morally or legally to come up off of any money to take care of his child, which meant when I would ask him, it would then turn into this negotiation. He would tell me, Well, if I do this, then you can't ask for that. Or if I do this,
What is your mom gonna do as if I'm not living with her and she's paying all the bills for me, right? And then I would come back and I would report to my mom and my mom would be so upset because how does this man not feel any sense of responsibility to his child? So I would be in the middle as a child myself, 14, 15, 16, 17 years old, of having this very adult conversations about my needs that I should not have been having. So I learned
Asha (07:10.828)
very early on that money was something that was better not to need and certainly don't ask. I didn't want to be obligated to my dad or to anybody because he gave me money and I didn't want to disappoint my mom when money when I had to report that money wasn't given. My dad would also make me sign contracts saying that he paid for this or paid for that. Now I was under 18, so it's not like they were enforceable.
And I knew at the time that it was absolutely ridiculous, but what was I gonna do? I was a kid. I was a kid, I didn't know. But all that to say that formed my relationship with money really early on. That money wasn't around enough. Money is a tool for manipulation. If somebody pays for anything for you, they're going to want it back or they're going to feel like they can control you. it was better.
To just not say anything than it was to ask for money if you needed money, all of this stuff, right? Now, you're probably going, what in the world does that have to do at this big age of 42 of running a business in Lisbon? I would tell you, if you do not heal from the traumas that you have experienced, they show up in so many different ways. So each week that I am making payments out for the business, particularly when money's tight.
Particularly because the business is not profitable yet. I am anxious. I hate it. My payment days are on Tuesdays. I hate them. If I could go from Monday to Wednesday, I'd do that. Except for Salsa's on Tuesday night. And I do like that. But I have to make these payments. I do not like that. And each time someone says, Hey Asha, I think you forgot to do this. And I'm like, my God, I did. Or I've calculated something wrong in a spreadsheet or
you know, there's a misunderstanding or whatever, whatever, it like there's something that happens in my body that it just I just want to like curl in on myself and I want to not deal with any of it. Like I had a brief irrational thought of like I should just close everything down because I don't want to deal with this. And shortly after that was when I had the thought, are you willing to work for the thing that you want? What are you willing to work through?
Asha (09:33.25)
To get the thing that you want. And literally, I was talking to myself like, Asha, are you willing to grow through this uncomfortable stage to be able to build the business that you want, to be able to help the people that you want, to be able to design the lifestyle that you want. Right now, at this baby level, you have to get comfortable with making mistakes, not to say that they should be.
accepted, you know, try not to make mistakes, but reality is mistakes are gonna happen, right? You have to be comfortable with revisiting agreements. You have to get comfortable with saying yes, this works for you or no, it doesn't, without feeling like you're it's not like it's a feels like a personal attack, but what it does is anytime
I am negotiating with somebody, particularly after an agreement has already been made. It sends me back into that 17-year-old body of me negotiating with my dad for my basic needs. Now, obviously, it's not the same thing, but that's the feeling that comes up in my body. That is the somatic memory that surfaces in my body. And part of it again is probably because the studio isn't.
profitable yet. And so I'm trying to balance like what does the studio need versus what do I want to be able to pay the people who are working for the studio. And of course, like I've got a good grand bleeding heart. I want to be able to do everything that I can, but I also really need to be able to take care of the studio first. Not even just any business coach would tell you take care of yourself first. I need to do that too. But I'm thinking about the studio. Like let's keep the lights on, let's come keep the rent paid.
Let's do the things that need to be done so we all still have a place to come and practice. So when there's a question around that, I go right back into teenage Asha's body and feel like, my God, my God, my God. I can feel it like I feel it now, even talking to you about it. I feel it like in my solar plexus. It feels almost like if you've ever drank really cold water and you can feel it going down your throat and like into your stomach and then into your intestines.
Asha (11:53.41)
That's what it feels like, but in reverse, it feels like it's coming up through my stomach almost like a cold drop of water and then comes up into my chest and spreads out. It's like fear or fear's not quite the right word. I don't have quite the right word for it. But again, the other day I thought, okay, Asha, this is part of the process of being a business owner. You could outsource it, but then you wouldn't know what was going on with your money in the same way that you do now.
And so are you willing to work through this discomfort? Not to say that you have to get to a point where you love it or enjoy it, but are you willing to work through the triggers, through the discomfort of being wrong, through the discomfort of having someone negotiate for themselves, which they're entitled to do just the way that you're entitled to negotiate with yourself for the questions that may come up because people just want more clarity. Are you willing to put in the work to move
through this stickiness so that as the business grows, you're not caught up in these issues. You'll have other bigger issues to deal with. Are you willing to grow so that you can get to the other side and welcome in more? Are you willing to put in the work to get to the other side? And I thought, you know, put like that, yeah, I think I I am willing to put in the work to do that.
I am willing to put in the work. But it's also really important to identify what the work is. So if you are a business owner, you're thinking about transitioning into entrepreneurship, you're thinking about leaving a job, oftentimes you think about you got to be willing to work hard to get to the next thing. But again, I'm telling you or I'm suggesting that the work may not be about the physical labor, it may not be about the hours that you put in. It will absolutely be about addressing the pain points.
The traumas, the stickiness, the discomfort that you are experiencing so that you can grow through it and get to the other side. Are you willing to put in that hard work? And there's no right or wrong answer. Maybe sometimes you will be, maybe sometimes you won't, but deciding whether or not you're going to put in the work really is an act of reclaiming your power.
Asha (14:16.737)
Because if you decide that you're not going to put in the work, then leave the thing alone. Maybe that goal isn't for you. Maybe I don't ever want to, I shouldn't say don't ever want to be comfortable with money. Maybe I Let's take a visibility thing. I let's say I wanted to be on TV or something like that, and I'm extremely shy. Maybe I'm not willing to work through the discomfort of visibility. Maybe it's not something that's actually that important to me.
And so this dream that I have on being of being on TV, I'm not willing to do the work to get there. So I can let go of this dream. And that's okay. Because I'm not willing to put the work in to get there. And that is a choice. And when you make a choice, you experience personal power. And maybe you can decide that I really want to move to a different country. I want to come join Asha in Lisbon. And so I need to figure out.
either how I'm gonna get a remote job or how I am going to learn how to make money for myself, but I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how I'm gonna do it. I've always been told that getting a good government job and staying there until retirement is the way to go. And I don't want to wait another 25 years to be able to do that. Are you willing to work through the discomfort, to put in the hard work to catch your nervous system up to where your brain wants to go? Are you willing to put in that work to do it?
And there's no guarantee about how little or how long of time it'll take. No guarantee. Could take a lot of time, could take no time at all. But it will be work in the sense of there are things that you're going to have to address and understandings you're going to have to come to, conclusions you're going to have to make, and decisions that you're going to have to decide on. So you can really chart your own path and feel a sense of personal power.
If you're willing to do the work to get to where you want, great. And if you're not, that's also great. That's wonderful information. But when you decide for yourself, yes or no, I'm willing to do the work, I'm willing to work hard to get there, then you've made an empowered decision. It's your decision. If you are in the middle, if you're not sure, if you're not, if you're like non-committal, if you're even unwilling to look at what that work might be.
Asha (16:42.028)
you will feel zero sense of power because you will not understand why you are staying stuck in the same place. And it could be because the goal is actually not that important to you to do the work. Or it could be because you haven't identified what the work is. And when you identify what the work is and if you're willing to do it, all your power comes back. Cause now you know exactly what to work on. So I don't know. I hope that episode
Resonated with you. It's been on my mind for a couple of days. It's interesting because I get these hits for podcast topics at all different times. And I I the reason why I do this podcast on audio instead of video is because I just want to turn on the microphone and record whenever I want to. And this idea popped in a couple days ago and I was like, nah, I'm gonna go to my friend's house. And then it popped in again when I woke up like nah, I gotta get ready and go do this thing. And then finally today I was like, you know what, girl.
You better sit down and record this episode before you forget, because if it's on your mind for days at a time, then it's definitely something that you're supposed to share with the world. So I'm trusting that it has landed with you and that you have enjoyed it. All right, y'all. I hope to see you on Threads if you're not all the way, if you're not over there already. My name is @ashawilkersonesq on Threads.
And I would love if you would join the email list community below in the show notes so that you can stay on top of all the things that are happening between Asha, me, my personal brand, and Asha's Place Lisbon. I am While I have been away, I have been creating a lot, creating infrastructure around a lot. And so we're going to be rolling out some new offerings and memberships and courses online. So you do not have to be
In Lisbon to stay in community and to stay connected. And I love that for you. I love that for me too. So join the email list. You can get all of the first updates and things like that. I promise I will not spam you. And I will talk to you soon. Have a wonderful week and I love you all. Ciao, ciao.