Why Didn’t They Tell Us?

The Source of Unnecessary Suffering (And How to Stop It)

“I wish someone had told us to feel the emotions, and to feel them all, even the painful ones. Life is meant to be a mix of the good and the bad, the dark and the light. And we only know the goodness of life's most magical moments when we allow and accept the darkness of the hard and heavy times,” shares host and self-confidence coach for women and teens, Leslie Randolph. When we resist our negative emotions, we actually add more suffering on top of the existing suffering. In order to gain the emotional intelligence to begin processing emotions that we might otherwise choose to avoid, we need to practice allowing ourselves to feel every emotion. 
 
Humans are not meant to be happy all the time, but often when we experience a negative emotion we think that implies something inherently bad in us. You are not weak or wrong for feeling badly, you are just a human experiencing a completely normal human emotion. If your reaction to feeling any negative emotion is to be mad at yourself or feel ashamed, you are adding unnecessary suffering onto your existing suffering. Instead of resisting negative emotions, allow yourself to feel them. Check in with your body and label your emotions, because this will help you to normalize those feelings. 
 
It is perfectly okay and natural to feel negative emotions sometimes. In spite of what you continually see on social media, no human is happy all the time. Tune into Why Didn’t They Tell Us for a conversation with host Leslie Randolph about the importance of allowing yourself to experience all emotions, good or bad, in order to reduce unnecessary suffering.
 
Quotes:
• “Suffering on suffering comes when we resist emotions versus allowing them.” (6:58-7:03 | Leslie) 
• “We are not supposed to be happy all the time. We're not. It's a lie that's perpetuated everywhere.” (8:26-8:36 | Leslie) 
• “If you subscribe to a social platform that shows you just one sector of people's lives, you might believe that we're supposed to be happy all the time. And I promise you, we're not. Reels are not reality, my friend. But if we believe that we're supposed to be happy, then when we feel a negative emotion, we believe something is wrong. And then when we think something is wrong, that adds just a whole new layer of negative emotion on negative emotion. I'm feeling sad. I shouldn't feel sad. Something's wrong. Now I feel sad about feeling sad. Suffering on suffering.” (9:05-9:53 | Leslie) 
• “I wish someone had told us to feel the emotions, and to feel them all, even the painful ones. Life is meant to be a mix of the good and the bad, the dark and the light. And we only know the goodness of life's most magical moments when we allow and accept the darkness of the hard and heavy times.” (25:12-25:37 | Leslie)
 
If you or someone you know is struggling with depression, suicidal thoughts or mental health matters, please call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline to connect with a trained counselor or visit the Lifeline site at https://988lifeline.org/. Connect With Leslie:
https://www.confidencecoachforgirls.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_coach_chronicles/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CoachChronicles/
Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Cut the Should

“Words matter, my friends. And when we get more mindful about them, we change the way we feel,” explains Leslie Randolph, host and self-confidence coach for creating confident women and teens. Going into the new year, Leslie wants to remind everyone that words matter, especially the words you think or say to yourself. If you are always thinking, “I'm too busy,” for example, you will feel overwhelmed and be unlikely to tackle your to-do list. Whereas, if instead you say, “My life is so full,” it means essentially the same thing, but you will feel completely differently inside. People think on average 60,000 thoughts a day, so word choice really plays into shaping how we view ourselves and directly impacts the direction of our lives. 
 
Your thoughts are a roadmap to becoming the person you want and living the life you want. By not thinking through the words you use, you’re likely to actually block yourself from achieving your goals. Instead, try to be mindful of when you use words like ‘should’ or say phrases like “I can’t” when what you really mean is “I don’t want to” or “I’ve never done that before.” These types of words and phrases feel very negative and do not take into account your own agency over your life. Instead of “I need to” think “I get to” or “I choose to,” because that feels much more empowering. These simple word switches will help put you into a growth mindset so that you can be in a position to love yourself more. When we have more self-love, that leaves more room to love others.
 
Practice mindfulness when it comes to the thoughts that you think and the way you speak to yourself and others daily. Your words directly impact how you feel which in turn impacts what actions you do or do not take. Words have the power to shape your life, and you want to make sure you are choosing words that honor the agency you have over yourself and your desired future. Tune into Why Didn’t They Tell Us for a conversation with host Leslie Randolph about why words like ‘should’ would be best left in 2022. 
 
Quotes:
• “Why didn’t they tell us that words matter? Sticks and stones may break my bones? Puh-lease, it is the words that hurt. And it's not just words that other people say. If I just said we think 60,000 thoughts a day, that is really the soundtrack of our lives, the thoughts that we think. So if we can be mindful about the thoughts we think and the words that we use, that would save us from so much unnecessary suffering, and this feeling of shame, or guilt or other unnecessary negative emotions that come from the words we use.” (5:39-6:22 | Leslie) 
• “Mindfulness and what we think, and then say out loud, is the greatest tool in our tool belt to live a life we love. Because it's not just how it makes you feel, depending on how you feel, will then determine what you do or don't do. And depending on what you do, or don't do, that creates the life you live.” (6:54-7:21 | Leslie)
• “Busy is this permission slip to not do.” (8:33-8:37 | Leslie)
• “The thought ‘I'm so busy’ usually makes you feel overwhelmed. When you feel overwhelmed, do you know what you do? Not much.” (9:09-9:24 | Leslie)
• “Focus on the fullness of your life rather than the burden of being busy and just see what happens. Notice, it's just words. It's just words that have two totally different meetings and have you showing up totally different in this life.” (12:42-12:56 | Leslie)
• “Check in with how it makes you feel when you say these things, saying I need to, it really takes away that power and agency of which you have so much of and you are reminded of it when you simply shift to I get to, I choose to.” (16:25-16:46 | Leslie)
• “When we are loving and taking care of ourselves and honoring ourselves, honestly, it just makes the world a better place, because we are taking care of our own needs. And we are examples for other people who can then take care of themselves. And I always say that ultimately, when we practice self love our capacity for loving others gets so much greater.” (18:02-18:25 | Leslie)
• “As we set new goals and we try to create new things in our lives, be very mindful of when you just lean into I can't because nine times out of 10 it's not true. What may be true is I've never done it before. I'm scared. I'm worried I might fail. But it doesn't mean I can't. If you believe you can't, then you won't achieve whatever it is that you want.” (18:55-19:25 | Leslie)
• “It actually creates an emotional deficit when you tell yourself what you should or should not be thinking, saying, feeling, and doing when you're actually doing the opposite.” (21:36-21:48 | Leslie)
• “If you are acting on the opposite side of that should, then you're fighting with reality. Shoulding forces you to focus on what you did or didn't do and telling yourself why it was the wrong choice.” (21:57-22:14 | Leslie)
• “Do you really want to be exercising more, scrolling less, whatever your ‘should’ is? Or do you simply think you should because some external voice told you so?” (24:48-25:02 | Leslie)
• “Beating yourself up with a word like ‘should’ is like beating yourself up with a butter knife. It doesn't hurt too much, but over time that pain is going to have an impact.” (27:05-27:22 | Leslie) 
• “Words matter, my friends. And when we get more mindful about them, we change the way we feel.” (31:14-31:21 | Leslie)
Connect With Leslie:
Leslie’s class: https://www.coachchronicles.com/seasonoflove
Website: https://www.confidencecoachforgirls.com/ 
Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Learning to Love Your Body with Naomi Finkelstein

“When I started to be kinder to myself, I noticed that I stopped being as critical of other people too, and vice versa,” shares Naomi Finkelstein. Naomi is a large-bodied yoga therapist, health and wellbeing coach, and licensed Be Body Positive facilitator. She has been a yoga teacher since 2009 and began coaching in 2019 when she noticed that the health and wellness space did not tend to cater to larger people. Naomi struggled with her body image her entire life and found self-love difficult when there was so much external pressure being put on her to lose weight. As an adult Naomi found the messages of the body positivity movement and finally realized that all those mean beliefs she had about herself were lies. Her value as a person and worthiness of love was not actually connected to her weight or size, yet those are the beliefs that were ingrained into her from such a young age. 
 
Our society is historically terrible in the way it treats and represents fat people. The diet and beauty industry actively benefit from equating health, self-worth, and beauty with size. There is nothing inherently wrong with you for simply existing in a larger body. Body positivity provides the space for people who look different from society’s ideals to learn to love themselves not only in spite of their differences, but in many cases because of their differences. It can be challenging to confront the lies about body image that have been ingrained into you since childhood but the work is worth the effort. YOU are worth the effort. Some ways to start recognizing the beauty in our differences is to begin following more diverse people on your social media feeds and to spend more time in nature.
 
You are worthy of self-love and self-confidence regardless of the size of your body. Body positivity can help you to reclaim the narrative surrounding your body image and health, so that you can feel happy and confident in your own skin. Tune into Why Didn’t They Tell Us for a conversation with Naomi Finkelstein about how you can learn to love your body and stop believing the lies that our fatphobic society has ingrained in you.
 
Quotes:
• “So much of health and wellness is centered around helping people lose weight, and that is not the best way to pursue health and wellness, in my opinion. In fact, I believe that it causes a lot more harm than it actually helps.” (2:45-3:00 | Naomi)
• “I don't think people realize how their nervous systems are damaged due to this obsession with body and food.” (28:05-28:15 | Naomi)
• “It is imperative that everybody understand that we are all at war with our bodies, because we have bias against fat people.” (28:35-28:46 | Naomi) 
• “People who consider themselves to be social justice oriented miss the mark. They don't really acknowledge fat as a social justice issue, but it is and it is inextricably linked from racism as well.” (31:49-32:03 | Naomi)
• “The more diversity we expose ourselves to, the more we're going to start to see beauty in places that we might not have seen it before.” (33:38-33:48 | Naomi)
• “When I started to be kinder to myself, I noticed that I stopped being as critical of other people too, and vice versa.” (34:00-34:09 | Naomi)
Connect with Naomi Finkelstein:  
Website: http://www.naomifinkelstein.com 
IG: @well_rounded.wellness
Connect With Leslie:
https://www.confidencecoachforgirls.com/ 
Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Maybe They Told Us in Second Grade

“If we can approach life with curiosity and resilience like a second grader, perhaps we will get much further,” shares host and self-confidence coach Leslie Randolph. People don’t often think they are going to learn anything useful about themselves at parent-teacher conferences. However, even though you may have heard these same lessons from your own teachers when you were little, it’s likely that hearing them again as an adult will have a different impact. Kids are so resilient. They are not only allowed to make mistakes, but are celebrated for it. They explore and try new things constantly; but somewhere along the way as we age, we begin to fear failure. 
 
To grow into confident teens and confident women, it is important to allow for self-compassion and kindness. Choose to be your own cheerleader and normalize making mistakes. Second graders are not the only ones allowed to color outside the lines. Don’t let the fear of failing or looking stupid hold you back from forming deeper more authentic connections or trying new things. Instead, celebrate yourself for having the courage to take risks. You will likely not be amazing at everything you try at first, but that is okay! Allow yourself to make mistakes on the way to your goals, and don’t let those mistakes stop you from continuing to try. 
 
Why didn’t they tell us? Maybe they did tell us in second grade. Tune into Why Didn’t They Tell Us with host Leslie Randolph to hear more about the life lessons we can all apply to our adult lives that we may have been told as children, but surely need to hear again now. 
Quotes:
• “Maybe some of the greatest life lessons are the simple ones that we learned in second grade.” (5:16-5:23 | Leslie) 
• “If we can approach life with curiosity and resilience like a second grader, perhaps we will get much further.” (6:08-6:20 | Leslie)
• “Starting a business or going after a promotion at work, or any risk that you're taking in your life, the stakes aren't celebrated. But in second grade, the stakes are and they should. They should be celebrated, encouraged and normalized.” (6:44-7:03 | Leslie)
• “Let's all aim to color outside of the lines, to try something wild and crazy that only a sliver of that beautiful brain of yours believes is even possible. But you let that sliver be what leads you and go make that mistake. And then celebrate the fact that you did it, that you tried, and maybe something absolutely incredible will come from that.” (7:36-8:02 | Leslie)
• “Every time we put pen to paper, or we go out and try something new, whatever that risk you take is, certainly you're going to have an expectation. And if you don't meet it, you get to decide how you talk to you at that finish line.” (11:42-12:03 | Leslie)
• “If you know you are going to be kind, and compassionate, and your cheerleader at your finish line, you better believe you will get yourself in the race next time.” (12:10-12:19 | Leslie)
• “Find what you love in this one and only life of yours. So many of us in our later years of life, we just end up going through the motions in autopilot. We stop taking risks or trying new things. We just get through the day, but life is so rich in experiences and opportunities and conversations and connections and humans to meet. Go try it all.” (14:27-14:55 | Leslie) 
Connect With Leslie:
https://www.confidencecoachforgirls.com/ 
Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Change Your Mind, Change Your Life

“Choosing to believe in you, that is always an option. Choosing to believe that whatever you want in this one and only life of yours is possible, that is a choice available to you all the time,” shares host and teen confidence coach Leslie Randolph. If you have been feeling stuck and unable to make the changes you want to your life, the most important thing to remember is that your thoughts are optional. You can choose to believe or not believe whatever your mind is telling you. The default mode of the inner teen inside your head will always say whatever it thinks will keep you safe and keep you within your comfort zone. In order to change your life, you need to challenge that default voice and change your mindset to believing that what you want for yourself is actually possible.
 
Mindfulness is not just a buzzword. By learning to be mindful of your thoughts, you can change your life. Leslie explains that thoughts are like a roadmap and that the more you believe and focus your attention on certain thoughts, the more likely those thoughts will be the outcome you find. If you want to change the outcome, you need to change the thoughts themselves. Instead of telling yourself that what you want for your life is impossible, start challenging that inner teen and telling her that it is possible. You can always choose to believe in yourself, because your mindset is a choice determined by the thoughts you allow. 
 
Do you want to increase your self-confidence and make real, impactful changes to your life? You can have the life you have always wanted, all you have to do is challenge your inner teen and change your mindset. Tune into Why Didn’t They Tell Us with host Leslie Randolph to learn more about mindfulness and how your thoughts influence the roadmap of your life. 
Quotes:
• “Nothing about you or your life actually needs to change in order for you to achieve anything you want. All you have to do is learn to manage your mind.” (1:51-2:01 | Leslie)
• “When you learn to manage your mind and change your thoughts, you can change your life.” (2:43-2:47 | Leslie) 
• “You can always change your mind, because your thoughts are optional.” (3:04-3:12 | Leslie)
• “Your thoughts are your roadmap in life. If you believe you will achieve something, you will. Believe you won’t, and I promise you, you won’t.” (4:04-4:19 | Leslie)
• “What you focus on is what you're going to find.” (6:07-6:12 | Leslie)
• “You need to be willing to face embarrassment, failure, rejection, those negative cringy emotions, if you want to achieve something that you don't yet have, you want to achieve that life of your dreams. All you have to do is learn to manage your mind when your brain on its default setting tells you, you can't do it. It's not possible. You will learn to challenge it, you will learn to question that. It’s not a set in stone definitive verdict. It is just your default brain keeping you safe.” (10:16-10:54 | Leslie) 
• “Choosing to believe in you, that is always an option. Choosing to believe that whatever you want in this one and only life of yours is possible, that is a choice available to you all the time.” (11:27-11:42 | Leslie)
Connect With Leslie:
https://www.confidencecoachforgirls.com/ 
Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

A Goal Getter’s Guide to Birthday Wishes

“I wish someone had told me that wishes don’t come true. Why didn’t they tell us that wishes don’t come true?” asks host and teen confidence coach Leslie Randolph. Today on her 40th birthday, Leslie reflects on the concept of wishes and how they differ from goals. Whether it is birthday wishes or New Year's resolutions, we tend to think of these wishes as out of our control and unlikely to come true. Wishes are dreams that we outsource to the universe, when really what we should be spending our time on is making goals. Goalsetting can be an intimidating process, because it requires us to get out of our comfort zone. We must be willing to face temporary discomfort and the fear of failure in order to truly be a goalgetter.
 
Your inner teen wants to keep you safe and is very resistant to anything that causes you to leave your comfort zone, so anytime you set a goal there will be pushback from that voice inside your head. In order to keep moving forward and not get discouraged, you need to have a strong ‘why’ to ground you and a clear path to your goal. A goal is similar to a wish, but what differentiates it is that a goal comes with an action plan. Instead of outsourcing the outcome to the universe, you are taking the outcome into your own hands. By truly committing yourself to the goalsetting process and choosing a ‘why’ that you feel strongly about, you can make that dream happen for yourself. It takes self-confidence to push back against your inner teen, and one of the ways to build that confidence is to have a very clear goal, a very clear why, and clear steps forward, along with a plan for any obstacles you may face along the way. 
 
Why didn’t they tell us that wishes don’t come true? Sure, sometimes they do, but the odds are much better with an action plan in place. Tune into Why Didn’t They Tell Us with host Leslie Randolph to learn more about the difference between wishes and goals, Leslie’s goalsetting process, and how to gain the self-confidence to stand up against the obstacles that will inevitably come your way. Leslie shares her process behind the goal she had of creating this podcast, her ‘why’ of wanting to get these confidence lessons to as many women as possible, and how you can use her method for any goal you want to achieve. 
 
Quotes:
• “Why doesn’t anyone tell us how to set a goal and the illusion that comes from wishes?” (3:04-3:14 | Leslie)
• “The common theme with all these wishes is that we outsource destiny to the universe. We close our eyes and wish to the powers that be that somehow this will just happen for us.” (4:49-5:09 | Leslie)
• “You are going to decide on a goal or a resolution and when you do, you are going to commit to it.” (11:19-11:30 | Leslie)
• “I want you to get very clear on your ‘why’. Your ‘why’ is your port in the storm that you can always come back to when you are struggling.” (12:11-12:24 | Leslie)
• “If you set a goal, it requires you to get out of your comfort zone. It requires you to create something in your life that does not yet exist. To create something in your life that does not exist requires you to risk failure, to face fears, to risk potential discomfort.” (14:32-14:52 | Leslie)
• “If I was watching the movie of your life, what would I see you doing every day to get closer to that big goal? Write all those down.” (19:28-19:36 | Leslie)
• “I wish someone had told me that wishes don’t come true. Why didn’t they tell us that wishes don’t come true?” (22:35-22:43 | Leslie)
Connect With Leslie:
https://www.confidencecoachforgirls.com/ 
Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Why Didn’t They Tell Us?

“This inner teen operates from a place of fear. She’s just trying to protect you,” explains host Leslie Randolph. Leslie is a confidence coach for teenage girls and the teenage girl that lives inside each of us. We all have an inner teen that is trying to keep us safe from cringey emotions like rejection, embarrassment, failure, and humiliation. Our default brain is an insecure teenage girl who simply cannot differentiate between the fear of embarrassment and the fear of physical injury or death. To our inner teen, being rejected can be just as terrifying as falling off a cliff. We tend to think that this ingrained fear of failure and criticism will keep us safe, but Leslie explains that all it really does is keep us small and keep us from living the life of our dreams. 
 
Your inner teen’s motivation is to keep you safe and keep you alive, she just can’t tell the difference between perceived dangers and actual dangers. In order to reclaim self-confidence and embrace self-love, you must get to the other side of those cringey emotions that your inner teen is trying so hard to avoid. It feels uncomfortable to allow yourself to face those fears and risk rejection, embarrassment, and failure, but it is so worth the risk. The life you have always wanted for yourself lives on the other side of those feelings. 
 
It can be daunting to face the longstanding fears held by our inner teens, but it is exactly what we need to do in order to become confident women with the lives that we have always wanted. By better understanding the motivations behind our inner teen, we can better cope with the fears and face them with wisdom, love, and grace. Tune into Why Didn’t They Tell Us with host Leslie Randolph to learn more about your inner teen and how to choose self-confidence. 
Quotes:
• “I always wonder what my life would look like if I had known what I know now as a teen.” (2:55-3:03 | Leslie)
• “Your default brain is kind of like that insecure teenage girl.” (4:28-4:36 | Leslie)
• “This inner teen operates from a place of fear. She’s just trying to protect you.” (5:00-5:06 | Leslie)
• “You remember as a teen that first experience with rejection, embarrassment, humiliation, failure. Those are the feelings that your teen is trying to keep you safe from. The inner teen believes those emotions are just as bad as physical pain or death. Your inner teen is a primal creature. She just wants to keep you safe and keep you alive. She can’t discern between embarrassment and being attacked by a lion or differentiate between failure and falling off a cliff. She’s just going to protect you from all of the above.” (5:17-6:02 | Leslie) 
• “I wish someone would’ve told me that my fear of failure wasn’t keeping me safe. It was keeping me small.” (6:50-6:57 | Leslie) 
• “What I wish someone had told me was that there is so much on the other side of those emotions, those cringey emotions that your inner teen is trying to keep you away from. There is so much connection on the other side of rejection. There is so much pride when you are willing to feel embarrassed. There is so much love and acceptance when you are willing to put yourself out there and face your fear, but you’ll never know it and you’ll never experience it unless you are saying, ‘I am willing to take that risk.’” (11:07-11:59 | Leslie)
Connect With Leslie:
https://www.confidencecoachforgirls.com/ 
Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Trailer

“Why didn’t they tell us we could love our body at any size? Why didn’t they tell us that self-confidence was simply a choice we could make, and one we were so worthy of choosing?” asks host Leslie Randolph. Leslie is a confidence coach for teenage girls, and also the confidence coach we all wish we could have had access to when we were younger. She applies the wisdom she has learned throughout her life to the advice she gives her clients so that they can be confident teens that grow into confident women. 
 
Women are constantly put down and told that in order to have value they have to look a certain way or behave a certain way. Even as adults, many of us still struggle with the beliefs and experiences we had as insecure teenagers. No one ever told us that we were allowed to love ourselves no matter what or that we could simply choose self-confidence. No one told us that we didn’t need to choose to beat ourselves up every time we didn’t quite meet our goals. No one taught us how to be kind to ourselves. Even though no one told us as teens that we could choose self-confidence over insecurity, Leslie is here to show women of all ages that self-love and confidence are choices that we can all make for ourselves. 
All women deserve to feel confident in themselves and worthy of self-love and self-compassion. Sadly so many of us were taught otherwise as teens and this impacted our confidence levels as adults. Tune into Why Didn’t They Tell Us with host Leslie Randolph to learn how to reclaim your self-confidence. 
Quotes:
• “Why didn’t they tell us we could love our body at any size? Why didn’t they tell us that self-confidence was simply a choice we could make, and one we were so worthy of choosing? Why didn’t they tell us that self-love and self-compassion felt so much better than emotionally beating ourselves up every time we missed the mark on achieving a goal? Why didn’t they tell us that guilt was an optional emotion, even for nice Jewish girls?” (00:09-00:38 | Leslie) 
• “I’m the confidence coach I wish I had as a teen, because I know I could have saved myself and my mother a whole lot of heartache if I had only known then what I know now.” (00:50-01:01 | Leslie)
• “Why Didn’t They Tell Us is a gift of love and wisdom to the insecure teenage girl that still exists in all of us.” (01:10-01:18 | Leslie)
Connect With Leslie:
https://www.confidencecoachforgirls.com/ 
Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm