From Comfortable to Bravery: Finding Self-Confidence and Resilience with Brenda Mariah

Brenda Mariah is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to boosting confidence and helping individuals navigate career transitions. With her impressive background as the president of the National Resume Writers Association and certifications in interview coaching, job search strategy, and more, Brenda is a true expert in her field. As the founder of Push Career Management, she has worked with top brands to provide corporate outplacement services during layoffs. Brenda's engineering and project management background gives her a unique edge in assisting even the most technical professionals. Recently, Brenda embarked on an incredible journey to Portugal, where she experienced a new level of peace and self-discovery. This transformative trip has fueled her passion for helping others find their own sense of empowerment and explore the possibilities that lie beyond their comfort zones. Get ready to be inspired as Brenda shares her insights on healing and self-discovery after divorce.

Go to Show Notes here.

Here’s the transcript:

00:00:03

Welcome to another episode of BOSS™ Talk. I am your host, La'Vista Jones, and today I am joined by my guest, Brenda Mariah. So let me tell y'all a little bit about this woman before we dive into the interview. So when confidence is missing from your job search, career advancement, interview preparation performance, salary negotiation, LinkedIn profiles or career related communications, Brenda Mariah is your girl. And when you know that you can do the job but you are having trouble getting others to see your value, that is where she shines and comes in.

00:00:43

Specializing in boosting confidence in those who are going to battle emotionally in their careers or transitions. Brenda Mariah of Push Career Management is a career focused speaker, wordsmith, career storyteller, encourager, author and strategist that can help them and you see what you're made of. Brenda Mariah is the incoming president for the National Resume Writers association, the past president of the Resume Writers and Coaches association, and is certified in interview coaching, Compensation negotiation, job search strategy, resume writing, career management, LinkedIn profile development and employment law. She works with major brands to provide corporate outplacement services during layoffs, and her prior engineering and project management background uniquely qualifies her to help even the most technical professionals. Welcome to the show.

00:01:49

That is an amazing introduction. And when I tell you that she lives up to every word, she lives up to every single word. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for having me. I am so honored.

00:02:03

I'm excited about our conversation that we are going to have today. So really, without any further ado, are you ready to share Brenda Mariah, how you are walking out your BOSS™ Talk? Girl, I'm ready. All right, so let's do it. So, first and foremost, if you can't already tell by the introduction that I read about our guest today, she is a woman on fire, truly.

00:02:26

And so if you have the fortune of following her on social media, you will see that one. She's kind of everywhere and she's got some amazing things going out. So tell us a little bit more one about this course that really just dropped and why do we need it? Those of us that are still, especially like in corporate America, in that traditional job setting, why is this course so. Know, first of all, we're about to have a good time, y'all.

00:02:58

I cannot wait. But this course, this was a whole labor of love. The On Demand Interview Push Course with Brenda Mariah, all of that to say that folks who are in some form of a career transition, whether it be promotion or they've been laid off, whatever the situation, is so often I encounter people who have not interviewed in many moons, sometimes a decade or more, and they don't necessarily understand how the landscape has changed over the course of those years, and so they're struggling. I come across folks who then start tweaking their resumes to death. They think LinkedIn isn't working.

00:03:42

Nobody's giving me a chance. The system is rigged against me. It's not fair, and it's because they're getting to the interview stage, but they're not crossing that finish line and getting those offers. And I said, enough is enough. I talked to people who just simply could not afford to invest in my one on one coaching services.

00:04:03

And I said, there's got to be a solution for them, too. And so I built an accessible On Demand Course so that they can just pull at the necessary elements as they needed them. You don't necessarily know how to prepare for an interview because it's been such a long time. You don't know the latest and greatest technology platforms to leverage to do your research and to understand where your salary range is supposed to be. All of those pieces are now accessible and available to you at quite an affordable and reasonable price because this is necessary.

00:04:42

No more missing out on opportunities that have your name on it. Not on my watch. I love that. And I was just having a conversation with my bestie, April, a couple of weeks ago. We were talking about job searches and things like that, and I'm sitting there kind of like, listening to her talk about, hey, this is this opportunity, or I found this, and I was just like, first of all, where do you even go to look for jobs, right?

00:05:09

Because I started thinking I was doing the math. I was, like, working for myself, especially coming out of corporate. So it's like thinking about the time that I served in corporate and then going into launching the business. I have not technically looked for a job in 15 years. Exactly.

00:05:26

And I was like, if I had to, I wouldn't even know where do I go? What are the places that I go and look at and getting a resume together? So it's like, I know without a shadow of a doubt that if I ever found myself in a situation where I felt like I needed to go back into corporate, you would be the first person I would be calling. So I'd be like, help me help myself get what I need together, and even, like, the negotiation that you're talking about, right. I can remember my time in corporate and during the time that I was, like, the hiring manager, and it was always so interesting seeing that onboarding process of a new team member where some people would just take what the offer was and then some people would come back like, thank you, and I'm excited about the opportunity.

00:06:24

However, I need $5,000 more, or I need more vacation or I need this or whatever. And I will say that the only time I experienced negotiations like that as a hiring manager was men.

00:06:40

Are notoriously the ones that just do not have the nerve, or, quite frankly, believe they have the right to ask. We have been brought up in a system or a society with cultural norms and what have you that say you kind of take what you're given. Like, you get what you get and you don't throw a fit. And this is the kind of philosophy, right? We tell that to our children, even.

00:07:08

You get what you get and you don't throw a fit. And then we kind of look at the women sideways, like, what? You didn't even negotiate your salary. Well, of course they didn't. Of course they had fear around missing out this opportunity because this was what was ingrained in them from day one.

00:07:28

So, yes, ladies, ladies, ladies. Especially the ladies. If you're listening, I want you to get brave and recognize that negotiation, even. It's not like I talked to a client the other day and I'm like, it's not like an arm wrestling, strong arm who's going to blink first? Kind of game of chicken.

00:07:49

It's not like this dark room with a single light bulb hanging, and we're just trying to see who's going to break first. It's not like that. A negotiation can be as gentle as a question. Right? What can we do to move the needle?

00:08:03

Can we do anything to move the mark on this offer? I appreciate the offer that is negotiation. And so don't feel like it has to be some big, sophisticated, orchestrated thing. It can just be a question. But make sure you're asking those questions and having the words, having the language to start that conversation can be very powerful and, quite frankly, half the battle.

00:08:31

So we do definitely make sure to address that in the course. Yes, absolutely. It's so needed. I've literally seen it with my own two eyes. It is so needed.

00:08:44

So, like she said earlier, not on her watch. You are not going to take the low ball offer. Not if she has anything to do with it. I love that. So it's quite clear, right?

00:08:59

Business is popping, right. And so I want to maybe dive into on the personal side. I know that you just recently came back from an amazing trip, so I'm not even going to say where you went. I want you to just dish and just share the high level details. Right.

00:09:20

Of where you went. But it was just like, oh, my God. That just seemed an amazing journey that you were on. Tell us about it. It was an amazing journey, and I will dish, I will tell you where I was.

00:09:33

So a friend and I went to Portugal for a little over 30 days, and it was, I will say, one of the most, if not the most, magical times in my life. I've described it as magical. Not real magic, not Abracadabra magic, but, like, rest, peace. LiKe, this just feels right. So many beautiful elements from in the same day.

00:10:06

I'm at the mall, and then I'm at the beach, and then I'm at a rooftop restaurant having a sangria with new friends from all over the world. And so that, to me, is magical. To be able to thrive and function in a place where I don't speak the language and be perfectly fine, to feel safe because I'm in a place where guns are not commonplace is magical. To have access to healthy foods that did not break me is magical. To be able to relax and live life at my own pace and drink coffee at a coffee shop and just kind of be is magical.

00:10:50

And so that experience was so much of what I didn't even know I needed. And being there really just opened my eyes to how small the US is in comparison to other parts of the world, but how big the world is and having access to it. And it started to really change my thinking, even. It started to change what I thought was possible and what I saw as a possibility. And so things like, could I live in another country?

00:11:30

This was a question that really, through the whole 30 something day journey, I went to battle with. With this question. Like, I want to be here, but I can't do that. I can't leave. I can't this, I can't that.

00:11:45

And then I saw an evolution over. By the time we were headed home, it was like, darn it, I can. I can, I might.

00:11:58

What's stopping me? So, really, the conversation shifted, the thinking changed, and it was just really, by virtue of being exposed to so many just amazing people with amazing backgrounds and from different cultural experiences, and I just don't think I could ever trade that for any amount of money in the world. There is a price tag you cannot assign to peace. I love that. And so, listening to you talk, it made me think of a question.

00:12:41

Would you personally have been ready to take a trip like that ten years ago? No. Why? And I didn't even hesitate to answer that question. And it's because ten years ago, I genuinely do not believe that I was brave.

00:13:01

I don't. I was comfortable. Ten years ago, I had achieved the peak of all that needed to be achieved in life. I was somebody's mother and I was somebody's wife, and that was all that needed to be had in order to be somebody. And I saw something the other day.

00:13:29

It was a meme, and it was like a sign they were holding and it said, treat women with respect because they're somebody's wife, mother, daughter, sister, et cetera. And what it did was cross out all those words and simply focus on the fact that she is somebody. And that was a revelation. I just saw it the other day after I've been to Portugal. But that image helped give language to the very thing that I had been struggling with.

00:14:12

I was only somebody with respect to. Other people, not for yourself. I was not somebody all by myself. And I would never, unless my whole family decided that that's what they all wanted to do, because we do things as a family and we make sure that you guys are taken care of. That would have been the only circumstance in which I could have found myself in a place like Portugal ten years ago.

00:14:48

And so going on my own 2ft, I mean, yes, I traveled with a friend, but I'm by myself.

00:15:00

I didn't have the courage, the guts, the gumption, the nerve, the bravery to even try something like that. I love that. Yeah, I love that explanation. Right? We're going to dive into your evolution from comfortable to bravery.

00:15:23

Right? So one of the reasons that I think that I get so excited about seeing your wins, like on LinkedIn and the various places that you share, like, hey, this is what's going on with the book, or this is where I'm speaking, or now with the course, is because I know that you have had some challenges that you have had to fight through, and let's keep it a buck. I'm specifically talking about your divorce. And so we were talking before we got on the mic, that kind of just like seeing your own personal evolution, like going through that situation and just everything that you had to fight through to get to where you are now, it seems like that was a catalyst for you to kind of go inside, right. And to focus on yourself.

00:16:15

And I'd love to hear from your perspective what it was that caused you to kind of shift that focus to your own personal care, to you doing stuff for you, not because you were somebody's mom, not because you were somebody's spouse, not because you fill in the blank relation to somebody else, but because of what you needed. What was that like? Well, I was broken. And so I think when you start from a place of brokenness into all the pieces, thousands, millions, billions of pieces, you at some point might decide, that's it. This is over.

00:17:07

I'm nothing without that thing. Or you could decide, as I had to really fight to decide. I can rebuild and I can reshape and reform into really something that I never fully knew, I never knew myself as an individual. I went from a child to a student to a wife to a mother. Yeah.

00:17:43

And I never really, as an adult, took the time, had the time, made the time. What have you to understand? Who am I? I never really sat with that. Of course.

00:18:02

Now, as you go through something like a divorce, what I found is that so many people will seek out coaches and counselors, and I did all of that. And I am unashamed. I believe in therapy. I believe I used a tool called Life Guides. I went to a support group called Divorce Care because I didn't see the divorce coming.

00:18:26

It wasn't my choice. It was brought to me. And so, okay, so here you are, crumbled into dust, a nice, fine powder of dust, broken in the dark by yourself. Still got two kids that now you got to figure out how to raise them on your own. You've got to provide for them, you've got to do the things.

00:18:52

And you are broken. Yeah. So now I have sought out these resources, and the common thread was heal. Okay, well, that sounds good. That's a nice word.

00:19:08

And I've heard that term before, move on, Cis and heal. These are really fine sentiments. I think maybe at the right moment and maybe with a little bit of definition and process, because just to tell somebody to move on sounds very rude, almost palace. It doesn't acknowledge the actual hurt that is still actively being felt. And so it's difficult to just move on.

00:19:43

And now you're telling me to heal, but nobody's telling me what that looks like. I just keep. Time will heal. Okay, well, then it's been a couple of years. Am I healed now?

00:19:55

Am I healed now? Did I do the things that were required to heal? And then they'll get things like pray for those who hurt you. Okay, I'll pray for you to get hit by a bus, but. What specifically am I praying for in this situation?

00:20:14

Right? I will pray for you to fail and fall into a ditch. I will pray for that. And so I think over time. And with the right guidance, I finally started to learn that healing meant things like acceptance, that healing meant things like letting go of anger.

00:20:35

And for me, Rage. Let's not get it twisted. It wasn't just your run of the mill anger. It was all the way full blown rage.

00:20:48

And so these things started to take shape. But it felt like darkness. It felt like brokenness. And there were many times that I just felt like nothing. I had been told I wasn't that pretty, and I wasn't stylish enough, and I wasn't this enough, and I wasn't that enough.

00:21:10

And so guess what? That started to take a toll on me. Even after my marriage is over, I'm not that pretty. So who's going to want me? And so I just really went to battle up here.

00:21:25

My physical body hurt. I only later realized I had an actual diagnosis. Only later did I come to discover that in time, because even before, as somebody's mother, somebody's wife, I never had time for me, and I never made time to go to the doctor. Yeah. And so here I am now.

00:21:49

Okay, wait, what? I'm a whole individual. I'm good people. I'm not that bad to look at. You're gorgeous.

00:22:00

You're gorgeous. But even that La’Vista, that's a work in progress. Because when somebody tells you you're not, especially somebody that's supposed to believe the best in you, when they tell you you're not, you kind of start to believe. So it took a lot of time, a lot of years, a lot of speaking into me. People like, I want to publicly acknowledge Melissa Davis.

00:22:31

She was a huge force in helping me to see myself as worthy as enough, as beautiful.

00:22:43

Of course, I give a lot of credit to my daughter as well. But we're going to talk about Melissa for a second. Melissa, this amazing wardrobe strategist. She can really help you with some of the visual elements. I told her I was like, I'm not looking to.

00:22:59

I don't want to do the. Make me look pretty so he could be jealous. I don't want to do that. I didn't want to play that game. I said, I want to feel good.

00:23:08

I want to feel good about me. Help me. And she did. And she came and she came with me into my closet. She knew some of the things that I was dealing with.

00:23:18

And so what she did is she took an eyeliner, y'all. She took an eyeliner off my bathroom sink, and she wrote vandalized right onto my mirror, the whole vandal. And she wrote on there I am enough. And she wrote it right where I would see it every day. And I looked at that, and then she continued to write, just as I am.

00:23:49

My daughter followed, I think, the next day with a little heart and said, you are enough, on that same, two vandals under my roof.

00:24:02

And I looked at that every day, and I would clean my mirror and I would clean my bathroom, but I just had to ever so carefully avoid that area because I wasn't ready to let it go because I didn't believe it yet. And month after month after month after month went by, and one day, finally, I was like, you know, I am enough. But it took months. And really, that process didn't start until years.

00:24:39

And so all of those things. And then I'll further shout Melissa by saying she coordinated a photo shoot for me. So some of the little grand pictures you see of me and my little cute ponytail, well, she was the force behind that. And after I saw those pictures, that day was the first time probably in my whole life that I looked at myself and thought I was beautiful. And so I owe so much to her.

00:25:15

It's beyond words, because she helped me to reclaim a sense of self confidence. But it started by being broken. It started by being so desperate for help that I sought out all the resources. I went to all the support groups and all the therapists and all the. My friends, I'm sure their ears are just tired of just listening to me vent and moan and whine and cry.

00:25:48

And they tried. They really tried. And I burnt out a lot of friends, and I count you among them. La'Vista. Right?

00:25:58

I had a conversation with you. I'm like, I'm burning her ear.

00:26:03

But it was necessary. All of it was necessary. We keep hearing these stories about folks, especially if you're a Bible Totem Christian type, right? You keep hearing these stories about the wilderness. And then when you find yourself in your own wilderness, you don't want to be there.

00:26:21

Yeah.

00:26:27

Without the wilderness, you can't look back and say, wow, look how far I've come. Yeah. And that's where I sit today, on the other side of wilderness saying, wow, look how far I've come. Yeah.

00:26:47

I love your transparency and your vulnerability. Right. And when we had had our breakfast and we were just kind of talking and I was sharing with you that even though you weren't necessarily even still at that time, in a place where you are now, there's like a different glow and just kind of, like, way that you kind of carry yourself now. That is new, right? It's new and it's inspiring and it's palpable.

00:27:25

Like, you can feel it. Like, it's an energy that you just kind of exude that for the time that I've known you, I've not felt that come from you. I've not felt that being radiated from you, right. And so it was just sitting there and just, like, listening to you. But even where you were then, it was so inspiring to hear your strength, to hear your own personal evolution, because at the same time, life doesn't just stop because you're dealing with an unmet expectation of divorce or a business deal going south or whatever the case may be.

00:28:03

You still have to work. You still have to be out in the community doing things. And so what was that like? What did cultivating your particular work life balance look like for you as you had this personal evolution going on at the same time? Because work didn't stop.

00:28:24

It couldn't stop, especially in your situation, right? You still are somebody's mother, right? It's not just you. You can't just go get in a moomoo and sit on the couch and eat some ice cream and cry yourself to sleep every night. You have to still be a productive part of society, no matter how it is you're feeling.

00:28:47

What does that look like to cultivate a work life balance, especially going through that kind of grief and trauma? I want to tell the whole truth. And the whole truth is that at the very beginning of my trauma, my hurt, um, was. It was in 2020, and there were so many people struggling with being laid off. Their whole industry got just completely, massively disrupted.

00:29:24

And I was at that time under a contract with the city. And so 2020 ultimately was my best year in business ever. It was my worst personal year ever. And so showing up, trying to show up for people when I, quite frankly, couldn't bring myself to care the way I know to care, was hard. But I did it because I got mouth to feed, I got a mortgage to pay, um, and these people needed help, quite frankly.

00:30:05

And so I had to get to this place of, you know, thinking beyond myself and focusing on those people who I was called to help in the first place. And so I showed up and I did the thing. And what I didn't say is, in the midst of all of that, my sewer line broke and my house flooded, and my whole downstairs was completely gone. I mean, gone. I had no floors, I had no walls, I had no furniture.

00:30:38

And we couldn't even stay in the house for at least a couple of days really extended out for a couple of months due to reconstruction and dust and water treatment and all these different kinds of things. And so what? A major shake up to an already just completely inconceivable time, and yet I got to still show up. And so now I don't have a downstairs. This is where my office was.

00:31:11

So what do I do? I grabbed the only things I have around in my house. I had a dining room chair that happened to be upstairs for some strange reason, and I had an ironing board, and that became my desk. Oh, wow. And nobody in the world knows that I was working on an ironing board.

00:31:32

Well, they do now. They do now. That was three years ago, but I was working on an ironing board, and I had a TV dinner tray. You all know, the old school TV dinner tray, and I had one of those. That was it.

00:31:49

I grabbed whatever files I could before they carted all of my stuff out.

00:31:57

And that's what I had to do. But there were plenty. When I say, I got to tell you the whole truth. Outside of that flood, there had been months that I couldn't get up off that couch. That depression was so very real.

00:32:14

It hit me so hard, it was heavy to the point of just paralysis. Getting up to take a shower was, like, worthy of applause. And so if I didn't have a client on the books that day, it would be a miracle if I got out of the bed. Just a flat miracle. And so it was so nice when there were days when I didn't have anything to do because it's like, finally I can just sit here and be woe as me and have my pity party all by myself.

00:32:50

But it did get to the point later in 21 where things weren't quite as jumping, quite as thriving, and my mind isn't as engaged in the work. It's so difficult to still show up. And so I'm like, well, how do I. I had no financial margin at this time. I was earning enough to pay our way and to do the things, but I thought to myself, gosh, if anything goes wrong, we're toast.

00:33:23

We're in trouble. Yeah, any one thing. If my car breaks down, if I need a new AC, anything goes wrong because I just got a new water heater. You all in 2019. So my savings was down to a bare minimum.

00:33:42

New water heater, but no money. Any one thing goes wrong, we're done. And then I caught wind of what was happening with the real estate market and made a decision to sell my house. And I sold it and cashed out of it. I became a renter, and it afforded us a little breathing room to recover.

00:34:10

Why do I say us? Because my children were affected, too. Yeah. And so they were going through a hard time. They needed to still get to all the different school activities and different things, and I'm in no shape to be anybody's soccer mom.

00:34:27

So everybody gets a car. You get a car. You get a car. You know what? I'm done.

00:34:33

Everybody's personal Oprah.

00:34:38

Everybody got a nice, reliable used vehicle so they can get to where they needed to be and I could focus on this thing called healing. And so, yes, in the meantime, there were moments of hard. There were a lot of moments of hard. There was a lot of pain and feeling like you're just kind of walking through mud. Very difficult to take even the smallest of steps, but having the, there we go again.

00:35:10

Courage, bravery, the nerve to say yes to certain opportunities to try and focus on some form of future, to say, oh, gosh, well, God, I know that all things work together for my good. I know that. And so I can't believe that this thing is going to just be my downfall. I have to believe that even this thing you will use for my good. And so in 2022, I was approached about being the president elect for the National Resume Writers Association.

00:35:56

And I was like, well, hold on, I know I'm honored, but I'm going to need a minute. Like, I'm not giving you an answer right now because I'm not sure if I can. I'm not sure if I should. Am I in a good condition? This is a major national association, over 600 members, just massive database.

00:36:20

I mean, we're talking about some real big stuff. And you asked me, and here I am just kind of clawing my way out of this dark pit.

00:36:35

And then I went, know God, you called me to serve these people in the area of their careers. What better platform than to do it under the umbrella of the National Resume Writers Association? And so it took me some weeks to really sit with and journal out and pray and do all these. And when I say pray, I need you to understand how difficult prayer was for me because there was an element of church hurt that I kind of cross confused with my relationship with God. So come back to that.

00:37:11

And so finally, ultimately, after weeks of really just thinking contemplation, I told them yes. I've been scared ever since, but I told them yes, and we're going to be fine. We're going to be better than fine. We're going to be great. But all of those things had to happen.

00:37:36

What I didn't also tell you is that because my house flooded, oh, you all are going to love this. Because my house flooded, I got brand new floors, I got brand new carpets, I got brand new furniture, and I was able to sell my house far. More than it would have sold in its prior condition. That's so interesting. That is so interesting.

00:38:03

So it's almost like. Right, like the damage that was done to the house made it better. And I would dare to say that the damage that was done to you with this life experience and going through this separation, with the divorce, I feel like this is like the best version of you that I've ever had the privilege of knowing. And not that I would want anybody to go through a similar situation, but I feel like that refining process helped you to reimagine who you are. I wouldn't dare say not reimagine.

00:38:49

Imagine. Yeah. Discover, adventure. Exploration has been part of this whole journey. Getting to know myself, I didn't know who the heck I was because I was always somebody's wife, always somebody's mother.

00:39:10

That's it. And I never in all of my, at that time, I think 42 years, never knew who I was when it was time for family vacation. Well, where do you guys want to go when it was time for dinner? Well, what do you guys want for dinner? And even have my own taste.

00:39:35

And now I do. Now you do. So now that you have gotten acquainted with yourself, talk to us a little bit about what your self care looks like. Right? Like now that you know your likes and your dislikes and your preferences and things that light you up and things that you're like.

00:39:55

I'd rather not. What is your self care? What does that look like now? And why are the things that you do so important to you?

00:40:07

I think back, I think it was 2019, the very first time I spoke to you about what self care looks like. You had just relatively recently started to talk about getting selfish and all of those things. And you talked about how a lot of times self care can be small, incremental things that you just build into what you're already doing. You gave the example of, you like to drink out of a nice wine glass, but you didn't drink alcohol, I don't think. And so you had your lemonade.

00:40:41

I drink alcohol, but I don't do it. I don't day drink typically. Well, that's right. About business. Yes, I will joy some lemonade or some tea in a wine glass, but don't get it twisted.

00:40:56

All of the wine, I got it a little twisted because I'm a join you with a nice glass of moscato or sangria. But the concept of drinking your tea or lemonade or water, whatever you drink, whatever you do or putting it in the type of glass that brings you joy or brings you a sense of peace, lighting the candles, doing the things. And I started to think when I moved out of the house, we were unpacking all the cabinets and doing all the things, and we had come across the mysterious cabinet over the refrigerator that nobody really reached. Well, we go to me and my son, we're packing things up, and we go to reach into that cabinet, see, make sure it's empty. And that cabinet had these really nice plates from pier one, and my mother had bought them years prior.

00:42:01

I don't even think she remembered that they were in there. And so I opened, these plates are so nice. And I'm like, well, do you want your plates back? Like you bought these plates? I don't even think you knew they were there.

00:42:15

She was like, no, I don't want them. I'm like, okay, so these are the fancy plates. Like, you don't use these plates for just regular, everyday. Correction, I use these plates for regular every day because those plates are awesome. And they're far better than the little plastic 75 cent target plates I bought.

00:42:35

And so I want to use those plates. I don't have my candles here for decoration anymore. My candles get lit. Yes, they get lit. I enjoy the fragrance.

00:42:47

And so, yes, those are very small, Practical, tangible things. But I also invest in my own mental health care. I recently found an amazing therapist. She is just absolutely phenomenal, and she doesn't take insurance. And I'm like, I need you.

00:43:09

I'll find a way. How are you going to pay for it? I'll figure it out. Don't you worry. Because I need this.

00:43:17

I have prioritized my doctor's appointments, and I schedule right on the spot. I schedule the follow up. I don't play that game anymore. Like, oh, I'll call you and schedule. I'm not going to call you and schedule.

00:43:27

I'm going to schedule right now. And if you say, I got to go see two more doctors, I'm going to call them that day. Because if I keep putting off my own health, it only costs me. And if I'm not well, I can't be anything to my children who are adultish but not full fledged. And it's hard enough, this thing called life.

00:43:56

I've come to recognize that people will disappoint you. People have the capacity to hurt you. I know that now. I didn't know that coming up. And so that's why when it came from some of the most inconvenient places, it hurt like nothing I could ever describe.

00:44:16

I could only describe it as like a dagger through the heart, being actively twisted. That's what it felt like to me. And so if people have the capacity to hurt, you might ask yourself, well, how do I know I could ever trust again? How do I know I could ever love again? Well, you don't know.

00:44:34

Nobody would ever hurt you again. But you know now that you will not die. You will survive even this level of pain. You can make it through, and you can even have the capacity to thrive on the other side. And so just getting to this place, it's going to be everything.

00:45:00

Especially if you're dealing with some form of hardship, heartbreak, trauma, these kind of trials, they really can come. I was ill prepared, but that's why I'm here to share, so that anybody else who didn't quite see it coming has some sort of a safety net to fall on. That's so good. And so as we segue into the end of our time together, at least on the microphone, something that you said earlier, you said that going through everything that you've gone through and then being on this trip specifically, you realize that, hey, I can rebuild, I can reshape, I can get to know myself as an individual. What advice would you give to another entrepreneur or just person listening to the show that currently feels overwhelmed by whatever life experience they're dealing with right now?

00:46:01

If it's something related to business, if it's something related to work, interpersonal relationships, but they're just feeling the weight or suffocated in their own life, right. Because they're dealing with an unmet expectation. What advice would you give them right now?

00:46:20

Honestly, this is hard for me because I'm going to answer it. It's just difficult because it's something that I'm still actively battling. But I'm going to share one of the things that I want to encourage anybody, especially if you are a spiritual person, you have belief in God or some higher power. Don't forget that. To anchor yourself to the right things, it's really easy to just kind of get caught up in not being enough and believing some of the things that other people would pour into you or what have you to believe.

00:47:03

Maybe because they're dealing with stuff, usually because they're dealing with something, they have some of their own inner insecurity or disease, whatever that looks like. So if you are dealing with some kind of a trauma or darkness or what have you, please just anchor yourself to the right things. In this case, it's going to be God. And why I struggled with that is because I didn't do a good job with that. I didn't do a good job with that.

00:47:37

And I think it cost me a lot of time and it cost me a lot of energy to try to fight my way back when I should have never left. But overwhelm has been a constant kind of undercurrent through this process. And one of the more recent discoveries I've made with regard to overwhelm is to start to start, do one thing, and that one thing generally will lead to a second thing and a third thing, and momentum can build and start with the smallest thing. I don't care how insignificant you think that small thing is. You might think getting out of this bed and taking a shower, that's not an achievement.

00:48:25

That's not something that I need to even celebrate. But if you haven't been able to get out of the bed for days and days and now you can, and now you took a shower, I definitely want to celebrate that. I definitely do. And so your to do list may not be so magnanimous, right? They may not be these just incredible feats.

00:48:47

And I wrote a book and I created a course and I did a thing. It may not be such a big whoopi doo moment. It could be take a shower. And if that is on your to do list for, like, three days, and you finally, on day three, took that shower, yes. I'm going to clap.

00:49:08

I'm going to clap big time. Like, you just finished a marathon. Because to you, it was a marathon. I was just thinking how different society, the world would be, right, if that was something that we collectively recognized, right? Like, hey, I showered.

00:49:32

And depending on the season in your like, that is just as much of an accomplishment as saying, like, I just ran the Boston Marathon or I just made New York Times bestseller. Because where I am physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually showering today was the thing that I was able to accomplish. And it is huge. It's huge. It's tremendous.

00:50:04

And so, no, we don't have a habit of celebrating these kinds of things. But forget what everybody else celebrates. You celebrate the thing. Please know that you are going through a hard time, and so you have to just be patient with yourself. Try to hold on to some sense of vision.

00:50:27

Right. And I speak about, try to do this and give yourself grace because you have to. Because for me to just say, well, girl, move on. Come on. Come on, boss queen.

00:50:39

Move on, sis. No, that is not how this works. And so you have got to sometimes fight for that thing. Fight mentally, physically, emotionally. You are in battle every day for even a small victory.

00:50:59

Like, send that follow up email. It might take everything in you to do one small thing and be okay with that because, you know, this is not forever. I'm not going to be here forever. I'm not going to be sad forever. Genuinely, there was a moment where I thought I would be sad forever, like, I'm just not going to ever feel better.

00:51:29

And I ain't. No part of me wants any part of that.

00:51:37

None. But it took all of that. And I'm really trying to actively paint a picture for everybody so nobody is deceived by some glamour shots that somehow, oh, look at her. See, what you didn't see is the year and a half that I wasn't on social media because I couldn't pursue any speaking engagements because I didn't want to be on somebody's stage. Yeah, you didn't see that.

00:52:10

You saw all the things that I showed you on the other side. Of course I'm not going to sit there and post to you. Well, I didn't apply to be a speaker at that event. I didn't post that. Why would I?

00:52:24

And so there was a lot that I didn't do because I couldn't do it yet. And now I can. And now I say yes. And now I pursue things even with the risk of failure. I pursued an award and I didn't get it, and it didn't break me.

00:52:44

Yeah, I was proud of myself for trying, but every other speaker proposal that I'm submitting is accepted. And I'm like, yes, okay. I don't need to win the award. I need to do the work that I'm supposed to be doing. Yeah.

00:53:03

And so do you. I love that. I love it. So thank you for being my guest today. Thank you for pulling the veil back and letting us take a peek at the whole story and not just the highlights.

00:53:22

Right. That we get to see and we get to celebrate collectively, we get to know more of the story behind how and what you had to go through to be where you are now. And like I said earlier, it feels like a really great place for you to be in. And, I mean, I'm excited just being able to bear witness to it. So I want you before we go to share with the audience how they can connect with you, get in touch with you, and then you've got a couple of offers that we want to talk about as well that our listeners could take advantage of.

00:54:00

But first, how do they even connect with you? I'm trying to come down from such an amazing and energizing conversation, but the main thing I want people to know is I'm a real person, and so you don't need to be afraid to engage with me. Talk with me. If you have questions about your career, if you have questions about your divorce or your business, like whatever, but I am a real person and I can be reached at LinkedIn is probably the best, absolute best way to connect with me. And so connecting with me on LinkedIn at Coach Brenda Mariah and or you can follow my company page, push career management on either Facebook or LinkedIn.

00:54:52

And so I would be delighted to have you come and join and ask questions, be part of the community and get what you need because I still absolutely care about your career. I love that. And so if you feel like you need a consultation, there is an opportunity to do a free consultation@pushcareermanagement.com. And we'll have the link to that in the show notes for you to go out and schedule that. And if you are in that transition place.

00:55:24

Right, like some of the things we were talking about earlier, like needing to negotiate salaries, looking at your resume, getting ready to do your interviews, those kind of things, that course is out there. The On Demand Interview Push Course with Brenda Mariah is available out on the website as well. That is not free. Let me emphasize that is a paid offer. But if that is something that you need, I do highly encourage you to go out there and get that.

00:55:51

Or I think at the time that this is going to air, we're coming up to the holidays. Gift this to somebody. If you know somebody that is in a role where they could use some support with their career, this is a great way to invest in someone that you love and that you care about to help them get to the next level. Because, listen, you don't have to take it from me, but she is the real deal. She will help you get to where you are trying to go in your career.

00:56:22

So go out there. Pushcareermanagement.com and with that, thank you to everyone that is listening. Again, check out the show notes at the Realbosstalk.com for the tips and resources that were mentioned in today's show. And I am above and beyond confident that something about Brenda Mariah story resonated with you and is challenging you to cultivate your own culture of work-life balance and to prevent burnout. No matter what unmet expectation you may be dealing with right now, allow me to leave you with this reminder that you can love what you do in the marketplace without sacrificing yourself to do it.

00:57:01

And until next time, be sure to subscribe to the show and download your favorite episodes while you continue to battle, overwhelm with systems and self care, and walk out your BOSS™ Talk. Bye.