Kendra Q. Dodd, Kendra Dodd, SOul Roadmap Podcast, Dina Cataldo, human resources coaching
26
Sep
Podcast

#71: Making a Breakthrough in Your Life with Kendra Q. Dodd

I can't wait to introduce you to Kendra Q. Dodd.

In this interview, we cover the gamut:

  • Self-acceptance 
  • The question that’s challenging for successful people to answer and why it’s so hard for them to answer it. 
  • What it takes to truly make a breakthrough in your life
  • Obstacles we create for ourselves 
  • Creating a different path for ourselves
  • Building awareness in our lives where we're making unhealthy choices

One question she asks above all else for you to consider: “If all else fails, are you happy with you?”

If you could take a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, I would very much appreciate it. That helps this podcast get found by more people than any other tool. I also love reading your reviews and may even spotlight yours in an upcoming episode. 

You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, iHeart Radio and Spotify.

 

RESOURCES MENTIONED

 


 

TRANSCRIPT OF MAKING  A BREAKTHROUGH IN YOUR LIFE WITH KENDRA Q. DODD

Dina Cataldo: Hello, how are you doing today? I hope your day has been fabulous so far. No matter when you're listening to this. I have to say I am off a incredibly relaxing weekend. I was doing biodynamic breath work with Gitan Tonkov at my local yoga studio and it was quite the treat. It was hard work and it was really emotional and it helped me create some amazing bonds this weekend. So I am incredibly grateful for the kind of work that Gitan is doing. So I am mentioning him today because if you are interested in doing something outside of the box, something that is a little maybe weird and uncomfortable and totally different, I highly suggest looking into this biodynamic breathwork.

Dina Cataldo: I'm going to link in the show notes at dinacataldo.com forward slash 71 and I will link to him. He's written a book about this healing process. It's specifically designed for people who have had trauma in their lives and really every single one of us has some sort of a trauma in our life. Whether or not you consider yourself quote unquote a victim. That is not the point of this. This training is really designed to start creating some release in your life, in your body because our bodies hold onto so much of that trauma in our life and if you are interested in doing that kind of work, if you really want to take that kind of work to an area that maybe it was a little out of the box, out of your comfort zone, then that is certainly something to look into and I will make sure that I've got some information about that on the website.

Dina Cataldo: I also just felt this incredible connection with the people doing this kind of work. I mean it's all kind of people, lawyers, nurses. There's just so many amazing people doing this. I actually bumped into somebody while I was there. I didn't even know that we worked together. We're in different offices, but we work in the courthouse together. And it was really interesting to see somebody from that walk of life there because of course as lawyers we definitely need to get rid of some of that trauma because you know, law school was traumatizing. I don't know if you remember that. So check it out. I'm actually still kind of over relaxed from all of the work. It's a Monday night when I'm recording this and we did basically two and a half days of this biodynamic breathwork. So today I was really relaxed and then I came home and I had a list of things that I needed to get done and of course recording this was one of them.

Dina Cataldo: So I am still a little fuzzy. I could use a nice day to myself to do nothing, but that's not in the cards for me today. Maybe later in the week I'm planning some time to myself, which is the best thing to do is to plan all of your time to yourself first and then do all of the other things. So I scheduled a lot of time to myself this weekend. So now it's time for me to do some other things before I could schedule some more time for myself. Okay, so what are we talking about today? What are we even talking about? Well, we're talking to Kendrick Q. Dodd. And Kendra is a really amazing person. I think you're really gonna like her and we talk about pretty much just making a breakthrough in your life. I mean, there's so many ways we can do that, right? Like I talk about that on this podcast all the time.

Dina Cataldo: There's all these different ways to do that, but we really start going into topics that I think we need to hear more about and I think as lawyers, I think we need to hear more about, before I start talking about what we're going to get into, I want to invite you to grab a free PDF guide with links to all of the transformational work that I'm really fascinated by right now. If you go to Dina cataldo.com forward slash transform is a guide specifically for lawyers. And when you grab that guide, you're going to get an introduction to basically the whole world of what I like to do and where I think more of our energy needs to be spent. Because in those areas, you're really going to discover that there's not a whole lot of focus on those areas as lawyers, right? Or anyone who's a professional.

Dina Cataldo: Like we just do not focus on these areas of our life. And instead we're constantly externalizing all of these circumstances in our life, and we're saying that those circumstances are causing what's going on in our life right now. So I really wanted to break down some concepts and create a guide that would give you like a primmer, a primmer on all of the work. I love to do all of the work that I am especially interested in right now. And they're all things that I think will really have a huge impact on you, especially if you are a lawyer who is stressed out and overwhelmed and just looking for something different. You're just looking for that thing that seems to be missing from your life right now. So go to Dinacataldo.com forward slash transform and you can find that there. Okay, so Kendra, let's talk about her.

Dina Cataldo: She got into coaching because she saw that there were successful people like you and me who were really unfulfilled, like we really felt unfulfilled. She saw and she saw that they struggled with their emotions just like anybody else, but they didn't really recognize it. So when she started working with these people, she decided that she was going to go all in and she really works on coaching, consulting and training people and giving individual and group services, two private higher learning and the corporate sector. And these are people who don't normally do coaching. Yeah. When I talk to you about coaching, it might be like a foreign concept, which is why I talk about it so much. It's because I really want you to feel more comfortable with it because it has such a huge benefit. That's why I do it. That's why Kendra does it and that's why it's taking off in such a big way.

Dina Cataldo: Now Kendra really concentrates on providing tools to help people find work life fulfillment, finding their life purpose, career development, goal setting techniques, and really creating a personal organization process. And when we talk today, we're really going to get into a bunch of areas that you might be thinking about right now. So one of the questions she asked during this podcast was so amazing. I just, I loved it, I loved it. And she said, if all else fails, are you happy with you? I mean, are you happy with you? That's the question she's asking. And really we create our own obstacles to our happiness. And we talk about that. We talk about creating awareness by intentionally reflecting, we talk about self-acceptance, we talk about so many different things that really boil down to making a breakthrough in your life. So sit back, listen up. Kendra has some great things to share with us and I will talk to you at the end of this podcast.

Dina Cataldo: Hello Kendra. How are you doing today?

Kendra Q. Dodd: Oh, wonderful. I'm doing wonderful.

Dina Cataldo: Oh, that's great. We've had a pre-conversation, so I love the topics that we hit on and we hit on so much in such a short amount of time. So I know this is going to be jam packed with useful inspirational information to get people going, but I want to start out with just what you do day to day. Can you share who you are a little bit for listeners?

Kendra Q. Dodd: Oh sure. My name is Kendra Dodd. I add the Q, I added the Q not probably in the past few years because that's an identity one that you can see me but to for me accepting for my past and who I am. I you say, Hey, my middle initial in name and so I wouldn't tell anyone and now it becomes a moniker for me. But my name's Kendra Q Dodd and I am a career in life coach. My background is human resources. I was a human resources executive or a corporate 100 company, large corporations that you're probably familiar with. And then a little bit less than a decade ago, I decided to start consulting and then it transitioned to, I realized as I was consulting and having more of a personal relationship and helping people, that life coaching career coaching was very important, which didn't differ much from the career and profession I had in human resources.

Dina Cataldo: So now that you've said it, now I have to ask you what the Q stands for.

Kendra Q. Dodd: Oh, it stands for Quinette.

Dina Cataldo: Oh, that's really nice.

Kendra Q. Dodd: Thank you. I like to say quintessential, but you know, I like that too.

Dina Cataldo: So that's something that I'm glad you touched on because coaching is such an essential part, um, for me growing as a human being. So to recognize that CEOs and employees within a firm are getting the coaching that they need to reach those milestones that they want to hit. I mean, that's in part what we're going to be talking about today and you know, making sure that you're recognizing what your needs are so that you can get on the path that you want to take. And so much of that is about recognizing what's going on. And you're going to tell us a little bit about your experience with that, but can you give us some of your background? Like why did you get into this area?

Kendra Q. Dodd: Sure. What I realized, especially when you're in corporate America and you are working with executives, you're working with people that you think, I put air quotes around things they haven't put together, that they had their life all made out or they're making a certain amount of income where they don't have strife or there don't feel unfulfilled. And what I realized being a confidant, I wouldn't be the only person really they could talk to because I would know what's personally happening to them. I was in a place where I would know things that other peers wouldn't just due to the nature of my job. And I noticed that, you know, I had the struggle, like one of the things I put on my resume so you can get a job was I had to pay my way through school. So you had these ideas and I had these ideas of these individuals and I realized that they struggle, that they struggled of life just like anyone else.

Kendra Q. Dodd: They struggled with how to balance things. They struggled with, am I really happy with what I'm doing? And what I realized is maybe I was more true to myself and then knowing what that looked like, but what I realized in helping them, I wanted to help them even more as time went on because I saw it being successful, but also then I got formally trained on how to effectively coach and I saw life changing. I saw people maybe even changing the path of their career because of it, because people don't spend time to reflect and my life had me in a place where I was forced to early on that I always reflect and I always try to figure out what is the next steps, what are things going? And I still then stumble on that question a lot of times, but I was placed early in my life of trying to determine what that is because I was on my own per se earlier than maybe some people.

Dina Cataldo: Can you tell us a little bit about your story growing up? Because I found it really interesting and I think listeners would find it interesting too.

Speaker 3: Thank you. So I grew up in a probably typical American household that you would've thought middle income and then some things and some struggles happened. But my senior in high school probably was the big life change for me where I ended up on my own. You know, nothing bad. I mean I probably have as typical you can have of professions. Dad's a cop, mom's a school teacher, but things happened where I was kicked out my senior year in high school and I didn't do anything bad. I still was a very studious student, but things weren't perfect. I lived in where things had to be kind of perfect. And then I was on my own and then I decided what do I do now? So I paid my way through school, probably was disassociated on and off and then ended up reconciling and then that didn't go well and then reconcile again.

Kendra Q. Dodd: So I've had struggles back and forth. So I had to decide what did I want to do and what did my life look like probably earlier than others. I didn't have that luxury. I think in the back of my head of saying, Oh, let me have a gap year or a, let me think through. I knew what I didn't want and I knew that, you know, through need and desperation of what my goals were. So I learned very quickly of what a goal setting was, what things look like. So that's my struggle into my journey. And then ended up, you know, in fortune 500 but I had, I planned it out, I was a very, a strategic planner and figuring that out. And then I think there's a truancy of them searching, how did I end up here? And then how to make things right. So I think because of my personal background of having that reconciliation of things that didn't go well and then you think it's perfect and then there's a disowning again and then there's a reconciliation again and things ended up well, right, of there's learning and knowing what those stumbles look like in life.

Kendra Q. Dodd: So I would say that kind of lends me when people are in dark places or places that are very challenging for them, how to get through that and how then to progress and move forward.

Dina Cataldo: In my personal experience, I did not have that guidance and I had the work ethic. I knew how to work hard and I think a lot of people listening might relate to that is I knew how to work hard. I didn't know how to work strategically. I didn't know how to do what we're going to be talking about today, which I think is so valuable and I have the same. It was lower middle class, lived in a not great neighborhood, but I had the benefit of two loving parents and they showed me how to work really, really, really hard.

Dina Cataldo: And all I knew was let's go to college. I knew that was the step and then what next. So that I think is a path a lot of people are on is that they know that the next step is college and then a lot of people are like, okay then what next? For me it was law school for other people it's other things. But all I knew is that I needed to find a way to sustain myself cause that is how I was raised. As you need to be independent, you can't, you know, count on us because we don't have any money so you're going to have to figure it out. And you know, my dad didn't graduate high school. My mom graduated high school, none of them went to college. And so I had to rely on other people too. Help me figure out how to get into college.

Dina Cataldo: Like I just followed the rules. It was very much a rule following thing for me. Get to the next step. And what I like so much about what you do is you help people think about the big picture and you got a little dose of that early on with people who were able to support you. Well, let's start talking a little bit about how you support somebody who comes to you. Can you tell us a little bit about how you get started with somebody?

Kendra Q. Dodd: One of the main questions that I ask someone is what did you want to be when you grew up? And I will tell you that is a hard question for people to answer. It is very challenging and they look one either it becomes an rhetorical of what do you mean by that? We'll win and they're pushing that because they really don't know because at some point we are born into an expectation and some along the way, most of us then are living up to that expectation of what that should be and it's very hard.

Kendra Q. Dodd: So I asked that question and the reason one of that's one of my key questions I ask them is because we don't separate from the passion of what that truly is. Of what our gifts are and we forget about that so it can go a round it. But what those passions are, they're like, well Kendra, I want to be a ballerina. So you're saying, yeah, everyone wants to be a ballerina. No, it's been, there's a heart of, maybe there's music, there's a centralized core of every human being and we forget what those things are due to what other script, and I say script as in what we're supposed to follow of what that truancy is. So that is usually always then the first question and then the second question usually leads to some type of a balance of all aspects of their life. It's an assessment of how happy and fulfilled are they.

Dina Cataldo: So when you talk about truancy, what I hear is that there's kind of like this abdication of what your heart has been trying to whisper to you. Yeah. Like saying, Hey, there's this other path and you've been ignoring me for a really long time. Is that kind of what you're talking about?

Kendra Q. Dodd: Actually it is. It truly is. And people try to think that it's a generation thing, that it's a new thing and people then try to put it in different categories. But if you really truly believe and understand that and you can follow whatever premise you want that to be, the part of that ideal is that then you are who you are. If you try to argue with who you are in the sense of it, not trying to add in a spirituality in a religion, any theories to this, then if we truly believe that we are created or we became here for a reason, then what does that reason?

Kendra Q. Dodd: Then what is that truancy of that? Not what you think is done, but you can look at the next person. In law school, you can look at the person and any education of why is it that you could do certain things easier than others. So there is a truancy of are you really listening to what that is? And there are some that have found that sooner than others and those are the people that have what their ideal of successes of happiness, not from success or from a monetary standpoint. Like you can name some very poignant people that have made differences in this world are the ones that have found what that court is.

Dina Cataldo: For some reason when you started talking about this, I was reminded of a woman who came to speak to us in one of our legal writing classes and she looked very put together. She was gorgeous. She worked for one of the top firms in my city and I remember her saying very forthrightly that the reason she went to law school was for the money and we all kind of giggled at that. But that's why we all did it. We all did it because we wanted some kind of security, but we all felt very nervous. Like you never say like you did it for the money.

Dina Cataldo: You did it because you know, for whatever reason. But you didn't say that. And there was a girl who spoke up in our introductory class. He was one of those orientation things that we all did. And there were about, I want to say 300 people on this auditorium. And the Dean asked people, why did you want to be a lawyer? And some people said, because I wanted to help people because I wanted to make sure that this group of people was represented or because I felt that this topic in the world wasn't focused on enough. And one girl raised their hand and said, I want a Mercedes. And everybody was just kinda laughing about it. But I guess the reason I thought of those things is because we're talking about very heart-centered things. And so often we may not have the luxury to say, I want to be a ballerina. I want to, you know, sing on stage because we're so much in that survival mode. What do we believe we're supposed to have based upon how we were raised and maybe we didn't have money and we didn't have all those things that everyone else looks at as necessities would have been luxuries to us. But because of how we were raised, we recognize that there needed to be a path. For me, it was working really, really hard to get somewhere, not really thinking it through. So for those people who are coming to you and they haven't listened to their heart and so long because they have been in this lack mentality, a needed to kind of grind their way to where they are right now, grind to get that success. How do you talk to them? How do you draw that out? Because you're getting, what you're telling me is, a lot of resistance, which I can totally see, but how do you even connect with them?

Kendra Q. Dodd: I'm going to give you a patent dancer in the first this time and people don't think that they have it, but before you came to me, that's all you've been using in the first place, if that makes any sense. Oh, totally. Yeah. Like they think there's going to be an answer and a lot of these individuals have never had coaching before. It sounds safer than counseling. Of course. You don't need counseling. I don't need any counseling. I just need to be better. So just tell me what it is. Tell me the potion and let me be better. So the first thing it takes is time and trust. And so it feels uncomfortable. One, I'm asking some questions that can be challenging, but also what happens is it can take time. I remember I had a very high achiever. You look at her pedigree, it was amazing.

Kendra Q. Dodd: She was a nurse, she ran marathons. She also then had rescue dogs. I think she was on her, she was training her third, but she already had to to go into nursing homes to help be companion dogs. Right. So she was going through that process. I mean, everything you think that did volunteer work. And so when she came to me, she was wanting to start doing yeah. Triathlons. So she was like, I just need to know. So we would start our first one and I asked, okay. And hers, she already had a very specific goal. And some people do, some people come in, they're like, I'm just not happy. But she had a very specific goal. This is what she wanted. She knew I had the same type. I've always, I'm juggling several things. So that's what she liked about me cause I was multi-age, diverse and my background and everything.

Kendra Q. Dodd: So that's how she chose me as a coach. But then she didn't realize that this process is about her and people have not spent time to just sit and be with themselves. So part of this is the time of day. Well, what is it? Well, why aren't I? And she would always start with, there's nothing wrong with me. That's how we start our sessions. There's nothing wrong with me. I just need to figure out how to make this better. So it would take a few weeks of, well, how was your week? We'll tell me how the weeks went. And it was very rote. This is what she's done, you know? And so we went through in time of just then her talking, like hearing yourself talk or thinking through and processing through. We were going through, okay, here's the day. I'm like, here we go again. Right through the process of our sessions.

Kendra Q. Dodd: And she made the comment, well, here's my day. Well, I couldn't do this. I couldn't get swimming done. Well, why couldn't you get swimming done? Because we create our own roadblocks. She's right. Like I didn't have her answer. She had the answer. But we create our own robots in our head of what the path of what we think our roads should be. So we're going through, we're going through and she said, well, you know, I can't get the swimming done. I can get my running done, I can get my cycling done, but the swim is only open for this certain period of time and I can't do that. And the only time that kind of works, since she's kind of talking through it is the morning. But I can't do that. I got to walk. The dogs can't, okay, why can't you walk the dogs? And this is where the time of just, let's go through and searching through our day to day life.

Kendra Q. Dodd: Because it took a while for her to get there in her life. So I was like, well, why couldn't you want it? I have to walk them in the morning. Well, what are some other options? So we went through options and one of those options was asking her husband, well, okay, well why can't you do that? Well, they're my dogs. Okay, well have you ever asked him? No. Well, why haven't you? Because they're my dogs. Well, why do you feel that you can't? Well, it got down to several of, she felt like, well, I'm going to summarize that. If she asked her husband, then it's her responsibility and then her putting her responsibility on her husband is being selfish. Now you got to go back to the script of who she is. She's a giver. She's used to being in control. She's used to being, because of what her profession end up being, but she didn't know that everyone needs help.

Kendra Q. Dodd: Now, if you turned it around, if I asked, do your husband ever ask you for assistance? Will absolutely. How is this any different? So some of these things that happen takes time. [inaudible] don't leave on the fallacy. I am really into neuro science and how we think [inaudible] on how we process. It's gonna take longer than 21 days. Not saying it will. So saying, okay, can I have a coaching process in 21 days? Get one month should be enough rate, we should do this. No, it's not. It's usually three times that there's a neuroscience seven funding and she said, actually it takes like 63 days. Your mind has to get through what we're creating because we create those protections. Your mind does that on a natural basis to protect itself. So part of what I do in the process is the time it's me supporting you, you feeling safe or someone being there and then being safe to go ahead and say it.

Kendra Q. Dodd: It's kind of like what you said, that person having that luxury to say, you know what, this is my truth and I don't think most of us fall on the truth because we're scared of what that says on the outside. But here's the thing that's very ironic. You're already thinking it. We're already thinking it. It's just the differences is actually saying it out loud to find out what that is and then you can deal with what do I want to do with that? But you have to be truthful in how you're feeling about it. And that situation.

Dina Cataldo: I Think you've hit on something really important, which is our identity. And when we identify as being the kind of person who is a giver, the kind of person who doesn't shirk responsibility, the kind of person who doesn't say out loud that security is important to them, then we put ourselves in a box. And you know, identity is key for success in life too. So I'm the kind of person who wakes up at four 30 in the morning because I get things done and that identity is key to success. But it can also hold us back in ways that we can't necessarily see unless we have somebody who's helping us. And it's like a coaches, a reflector for that to recognize where we're holding ourselves back. And so that's why I think this work is so important. Another thing you hit on was the importance of observing our thoughts. And this is something that I've been talking more and more about. You know, I have a program called the Lawyer's Soul Roadmap. And this is something that I break down and that's going to be relaunched again.

Dina Cataldo: And so this is a big key of it, is taking the time to recognize our thoughts. But if we don't sit down, if we don't make the time to sit with our thoughts and whether that's, you know, talking to someone like new, who's a coach, who's able to parse out what's going on, or if we're creating that time on our own to really think through the fallacy that we get into with so many of our thoughts, which very few of us do, I believe, then you're going to fall into these traps. So is there anything else you wanted to say on that topic while we're still on it?

Kendra Q. Dodd: Um, no, I think it's very important. I just thought about this even when we didn't talk about this. So my background is human resources. I got my master's in human resources. I'm actually even an adjunct instructor helping people with strategy. And you touched on something by saying the thoughts and who our identity is, is that I worked with a lot of colleagues during my practitioner days that were lawyers. They were in the practice. And ironically I would say I'm being very conservative in this number. Probably 40% had their J.D. I was in a program, a corporate America, and they ended up going from a firm into legal law, which then maybe even transition to HR. So just even having that connection of, you know, I could have a room full of people and let's say there's 10 people, it would be easily four of them when I was in higher corporate America that had some type of a law background, even in consulting as a consulting business. And they ended up there because of what everything that we're talking about now.

Dina Cataldo: So what are some of the common roadblocks that you see? We've talked about one, which is you know, kind of like this attachment to time and how we use our time and how we create these identities and don't detach from them so that we can get things done the way we want to get them done. What's some other things that you've seen that have been some blocks?

Kendra Q. Dodd: Time is one. I would say financial would always falls up there because most of them are in their forties mid to late forties and so financially they've created a lifestyle they've created even more so the identity of who they are and then what does that look like with the life in which they become accustomed to.

Dina Cataldo: Yeah, and that's really interesting because I know that that is true of a lot of people that I talk to that even if they had the fleeting thought that they might want to do something different, they have this feeling that they're going to lose everything if they decide to dip their toes in another area. For me personally, it was really shifting my identity from someone who cared about what other people thought and like what, you know? It's so easy for us to get into that groove of, Oh well people like me don't do this, and I know that there have been people in my office who, not for me personally, that I know of, but for other people who have pursued different areas of interest, that there's been pushback from like, yeah, one, two vocal people who say, “Oh, well we don't do that.” Lawyers don't do that. You either pick being a lawyer or you pick doing whatever else it is you want to do. It's one or the other. And that's because they have limited thinking. But if you are able to push past some of those things that make you uncomfortable, those people who are judging you from their perspective. If you're able to push past that, then there's a whole world of opportunity to do things like this. Having a podcast and still having a legal practice, you know? So how do you get people to kind of like recognize that they can move past that themselves?

Kendra Q. Dodd: I think the first one is them figuring out what they're happy is. And that's why I asked that first question of what did you want to be when you grow up and then the second of, how happy are you in these avenues and then why aren't you, and then traveling through kind of that idea of you couldn't fail or what ideally, what would that look like? And some people can't answer that question. I just had someone that couldn't,.”I don't know.” And that's very hard to answer, but a lot of that stems on then the predication of who they are. The predication of my friendships, my circles and am I okay being by myself? Yeah. All little spills. Are you happy with you? Are you happy? Okay. Of just sitting with you no matter what. And that is being competent that then you are okay and that's a hard pill to swallow no matter what. I remember when I first started my career, even with corporate America, there's this idea where this gentleman, which that's all they have now, he had a backpack, laptop backpacks became very popular and a senior executive said that is not what we do. You do not have a laptop. That is not professional. And he was torn with that. I mean, but that happens like we are constantly being told what something looks like, but it's all through someone else's judgment, you know?

Dina Cataldo: And that's another thing. I had an intern, this is years ago and she said that she went to court and she was wearing flats and somebody told this female intern, “I understand you're wearing flats today, but you know female attorneys wear heels.” No, that is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. And to them it appeared more professional. Now I choose to wear heels when I'm in a trial situation because it makes me feel more confident. That's just something that I put on and it just, I feel ready and I choose to wear heels on certain days when I go to court because I feel very put together. But if I want to wear flats court, I'm going to wear flats to court cause that feels good to me. So it's so interesting that we kind of follow the leader even if to us it doesn't feel good. Like there's that jarring because we think that somehow that other person knows better or we respect them. It doesn't feel good to us though. It's crazy how we just fall into these little traps all by ourselves.

Kendra Q. Dodd: Constantly and they're rewarded by that. We can call it a trap. It is a trap, but there is certain paths. But what we have to realize in life that that's not the only path. And that hit me too when I got to the certain ideal of way certain things are and I got to a certain level, I hit my goals very early in my career and when I hit those goals, I hit that earlier because I had this such distinct passion of what I wanted to do and my goal is I hit them earlier and that's with anything you concentrate on it and that's what I have to realize with my clients and help them as once you're aware of it, the awareness, they say go a long way and that's an any step program and then actually concentrating on it.

Kendra Q. Dodd: You probably will hit it faster than where you are, but I wouldn't call it a trap. It's a choice. But here's the thing. How do you feel about that choice? Kind of like you had the choice of wearing heels or not, but when people start saying, then the ideal of that's the only way. That's a fallacy. There's a fallacy to this. Only way, and the irony is the people that probably have made significant difference in history are the ones who didn't follow the path. Isn't that ironic? The ones that are amazing, when you really hear their stories, they didn't follow the path, but it reminded me of the idea, which goes back to you got to know them, what your strengths are. You know, one of my bucket lists, I was actually able to see Oprah live who very cool this year and I didn't know those. There's certain things about her. I'm not saying, Oh, I'm her number one fan. I'm a fan of a lot of people. I'm a fan of anyone that has gone through adversity. To be quite honest. I think it people of human beings resiliency. And that's what I want everyone to know and that's why I'm so passionate in what I do. Is it, do you feel overwhelmed if you fill in a space, you have the resiliency to get past whatever being that you're in, but you can choose that path if you want to wear heels and that's where you go put together. But it's the idea of people thinking that they're, it's the only way. So in the Oprah Winfrey situation, she ended up doing what she was doing and talk shows is because they told her as a newscast that she was too passionate. She could have fought it and went the path and say, you know what? I will tone down and being passionate as a news anchor to follow that path. But that's why we go back to the heart of what are you passionate about?

Kendra Q. Dodd: Because that's going to lead you on the path of more fulfillment.

Dina Cataldo: Yeah. I want to make sure that we focus on something that you talked about because I don't want us to gloss over it. It's the amount of time that we spend with ourselves is so limited because that's my belief because this is where I was at is we feel like the more we do a quicker, we're going to get to the next step where we're finally happy in the future. But the process of taking time to ourselves isn't something that we can skip. It's the being able to sit with ourselves to begin thinking through what you're talking about. That gets us in a place where we finally recognize, look, I have everything and I want something else. You know, I have everything right now. Sure this is good, but this doesn't feel right. Like you don't recognize. You can't actually hear that whisper from your heart that we were talking about earlier because you are so busy doing okay that you don't sit still and think things through. And we get really uncomfortable doing that because we're then along with our thoughts and you know, maybe those thoughts are really uncomfortable. We start questioning things that are going on in our lives that we aren't as happy with as we feel like we quote unquote should be. So I want to make sure that that crucial step isn't skipped. Like what you're talking about is really important. When was the first time you recognized that that was what you needed to do to really start recognizing, okay, this is where I need to focus.

Kendra Q. Dodd: Being alone, I've already told my story and I'm not disnoming, the fact that I had help; everyone needs help. You can't do it by yourself, but put in that place of here I am, it's me. What am I going to do now? It's me and what do I want? And people don't like quietness. I was doing a session with a group of people just two days ago and I said, “Even when you're engaging with people, do you allow quietness?”

Kendra Q. Dodd: Like I just, allowed what, five seconds and I think I allowed 10 and I asked the question and I just gave quiet. And that quietness creates stillness and that stillness creates reflection and it's hard. And I'm not saying I did it perfectly because at one point I'm like, I can't do yoga because my mind races too much. But it's the thinking through. But you can have active thoughts, right? You can have a pen if you're someone that is movement, I call it the flushing out system. Where have you got so much in your mind? You get a pen, you get a paper and you just flush whatever is out and then once it's out, then the stillness. You got to get past that. The chaos in your mind or whatever feelings of I'm overwhelmed or too much or I have to do this or I don't have time. Then your mind is thinking about multiple things, but you can get so much more done if you let the stillness happen.

Kendra Q. Dodd: To think about that one thing that then you can effectively action plan against.

Dina Cataldo: Yeah, and that's something that you can do right now. If you're listening to this and you're kind of struggling finding time, you know, trying to find that space then in the mornings you can do just that. You can flush everything out. You write everything out that's on your brain and then you can look at it and say, okay, there are all my thoughts. I don't have to be concerned about whether or not I've written it down and now I can focus. I can pick one or two, three things that I need to do today or I can let it go to later in the day and now I'm fine. I can just sit back and have my cup of tea that that's a really great exercise to do to really start getting some stillness in your head.

Kendra Q. Dodd: When people get anxious or if I start a call with someone with a client and I realized that they're on 10 meaning their energy's very high, I'll do a pause, I'll do a timeout and I'll say, okay, let's purge it. Let's purge our thoughts out because we can't move past it because you're thinking about several things. You kind of have to purge it out. If not, you're moving two steps forward to move three steps back. It is a good strategic way to think through it. Here's the thing, life can force you sooner or later to get to that pause and that's how people end up with me sometime. It's either through sickness, some life changing event that causes you to reset and quite honest. That can happen to anybody where your plate gets so full that you're processing you thinking you are, but you've allowed it to get so full that you don't have that.

Kendra Q. Dodd: I've had people that you're hitting the goals but then there's something that's just not there, but then everything comes kind of crashing and it causes you to stop and in that stop, if you use it effectively, there's kind of a purpose of why maybe you hit that roadblock, not the robot for yourself, but that just happened in your life where maybe your relationship isn't where you want to be. Your job isn't where you want it to be. Any relationship you can insert from your children to your parents to that transition of then stop of then actually envisioning what do you want it to look like moving forward. And I think that's the next piece that's missing is they know what it is. They know what they don't want, but they're scared to envision what they would look like if they could.

Dina Cataldo: One thing that you and I have talked about is being open to hearing what said to us because so often we become defensive maybe because we don't see ourselves as quote unquote, that kind of person, you know, because we've identified with whatever it is that we are living in at that time. But there was a story that you told me about really listening to somebody. In this particular case, it was what a secretary had to say, can you tell us that story?

Kendra Q. Dodd: Yes, things will happen in your life. Here's the thing, having your environment in village is important and allowing yourself to be open. I grew up in the South and there was a situation where in my life where you're going through what you think is right, and it was a secretary and she had a dotted line to me and she sat me down and she just retired. She had 40 plus years with the organization and she told me, we continue down this road. I don't know if you'll be married. She didn't say it that way, but it opened my eyes of I was doing so much. I was an HR director at the time.

Kendra Q. Dodd: I was on a national project and I was never home. I had my nanny, you know, didn't want to call it that. I forgot my caregiver and I had all the things that looked right, and then bringing that awareness, I could have said, first of all, you have no place. You have no right. You don't know me. And there's another one that just jarred me and one of my favorite books is the year of, yes. Yeah. I love that. That's what happened. I could resonate so much where someone says something about you that steams, but if you sit into it just for a minute to figure out the truth of it and worse, that honesty, then there you can see you want people like that in your life to see that, but enough to know that they care about you and doing it, and that it was really the transition where I made some differences where I realized what was doing and she was actually right.

Kendra Q. Dodd: I don't think my husband would have ever said, honey, you're a workaholic. I joke all the time and say I'm a recovering and I continue trying to work through that in those lines. Okay. You know, and people can see what they see another's. That's how that client chose me because I do a lot of things. Yeah. In those ideas. But I think it's very important to see that. Just like I, when I had a girlfriend, when I had my second child, she was moving to that town and she said, Oh, I'm so glad I'm moving because you don't know what to do with a baby. And I'm like, this is my second one. So it's the idea and the concept of having the right village, but also when someone says something about you, what is the truth in it? Where you can help with that perception of what you are and who you are.

Kendra Q. Dodd: Yeah. And that's ideals. I do this for living, but my number one thing that people would sometimes say about me was, and I even had an admin tell me that I stared at her and I made her feel uncomfortable. And when I think stare, I think stalker. And so I was always a very strong, you look a person in the eye and the ideals and that was too much for her. And so sometimes they're like, well Kendra isn't friendly, but then I'll have some people say I can have either Kendra's really friendly or I don't know. I'm scared of her cause I can get so intense right now I have to be balanced in that intensity of understanding what that is. So it can be looked at as compassionate or it can look as threatening.

Dina Cataldo: Yeah. And I think we might take this in and say, okay, yes I can see why they might feel that way, why they have that perception and then it's up to you. You have the choice to either alter your behavior. If you feel like that's something that you want to do or recognize that, okay, that's fine. You feel that way and I'm not going to change. As long as you recognize you have the choice. That's what it comes down to when we start hearing other people's opinions about us. But it's so important to take it in. I know that so often in my life I've had feedback and I was very defensive about it. And when we're defensive about anything, then we lose the opportunity to grow we give it up and we totally abdicate what could be an incredible growing experience for ourselves and we can take our lives to the next level.

Kendra Q. Dodd: Yeah. It's so easy to live within the bubble of your own reality. And that's called narcissism, right? It's very easy. And that's why some very famous people have a hard time of understanding what the reality is because no one is telling them the truth as well. That's why you said, how did that end up here? Because I had senior executives that had no one, they felt like could tell them the truth and I have no problem doing that. You know? And having a point of view. And when I got certified, the first thing she said in the first day of classes, if you can't be coachable, you will never be a successful coach. So it's that reflection. So if you want to be a successful, you feel in that blank, you have to be coachable. You have to listen and figure out how then can I kind of the old adage of make this better and make this more honey of making things feasible in this walk because you can't do it by yourself. No. It's going to take yourself to make it different, but to become better. Part of those tools is the village in the feedback that you have from others.

Dina Cataldo: Yes. I love all of this. This is just such a great conversation. So this conversation has really been about finding out who you are from the inside and I think that the work that you're doing as a coach, you know the work that I'm doing as a coach, it's just so necessary in this because we have really given up so much of our power too, outside opinions and outside forces and not really dug deep into ourselves. So I know that we've covered a lot here. We've talked about trying to just sit still and recognize what it is that we want, what really makes us happy, how we can start listening to those thoughts that we have that may not service, where we can start recognizing things like our time and where we're spending it and how we can ask for help and kind of loosening those ideas of identity that might be holding us back. And we've talked a lot about just recognizing that we can get feedback and use that to our advantage in order to just move in the direction that we make a choice to move into. Is there anything else you want to bring together? Like kind of like some final words on what we've been talking about?

Kendra Q. Dodd: I can get it from a recovering workaholic of finding that ideal time of what that is, but if you are someone that actually drives their own vehicle, that five minutes right before you go into work or that five minutes in your garage or in your driveway before you walk into the home can mean so much of resetting of how your day's going to be. There's times where I know my day is going to be a full day and I just sit in my car. That can be your sanctuary just in that car of just sitting before you go out to anywhere before you go into the grocery store. Just that five minutes, just the calm of what do you want to do next or before you get out of that bed, just lay for one more minute before you raise your head, before your feet land on the floor to do that and then I'm going to get a little bit TMI. Maybe it's the bathroom before you walk out of that stall, give yourself just that few extra minutes. That right there as a baby step, that can be huge. That can add up throughout the day.

Dina Cataldo: That's really nice. I like that. Brendan Burchard, he talks about that and high-performing habits. He talks about the space that you make transitioning between one place and another. So if you've had a really busy day, I love that idea of just sitting in your garage for five minutes, one minute taking a few breaths and thinking about how do I want to show up right now, how do I want to show up with the people inside that house or how do I want to show up for the people inside that office, wherever it is that you're going. I think that's a wonderful way to wrap this up. And one thing I want to make sure we do is let listeners know where they can learn more about you. If they want to work with you, if they want to just get in your world, where can they do that? And I will link to everything in the show notes.

Kendra Q. Dodd: Oh, thank you. So one of the main places I think where people can find me, where you're seeing my work and my ideas is on LinkedIn, you'll see that greatly. I work specifically what the connection piece of work and your ideals and LinkedIn and then you can always go on Instagram. That's where I'll have my little tidbits. One of the things I realized is that I can be really intense so I'm forcing myself on Fridays to do like little jokes on Fridays cause they were like kindred. Do you know how to smile? Like I know you can find me on Instagram, @KendraQDodd there. If I'm in Kendra Q. Dodd on LinkedIn. That's where you'll find the connections. You'll see articles and links that I'll do and then if you just want to get to know me more personally on a personal level, I do have a public Kendra Q. Dodd on Facebook. I do have a website you can connect me through there and it's www.fulfiled2be.com so it's F U, L F I L just oneL and then the number two b.com. So that is my website. I intentionally did that because out of that fulfillment, you fill in what thatL is in that space, but thank you so much for having this time and feeling out who you are and in that space that you have to have were and where you want to be present. If it was overwhelming, ask yourself why we don't ask ourselves why enough and you never should get past, I call it the five-year-old stage of asking why, why did you react that way and then you'll get to the heart of you are really the more that you give yourself time to yourself of that why and then listen for the answer. You'll get to know some more of the next steps of what you want to do. Oh, I love that. That is great. Those are great parting words. Thank you so much Kendra. I really appreciate you. Thank you so much. Have a great day.

Dina Cataldo: Okay guys, I'm back. So I love Kendra. I loved what she had to say. I especially loved that question and I want you to think about it some more. If all else fails, are you happy with you? When you go to the show notes, Dina cataldo.com forward slash 71 you will get links to everything that Kendra just mentioned. I will also put in a link to that Brendon Burchard book, which was really great. I will also link to the Biodynamic Breathwork that I talked about and I will put in a link for the lawyer transform your life PDF that is totally free and as like a primmer to all the work that I am doing right now and I like to do with other people. So go to Dina cataldo.com forward slash 71 to grab all of that. Next week we're going to talk to Alexis Neely. She is a lawyer. I can't wait to introduce you to her. She is a fireball. She is really spunky. So tune in next week, Thursday. Be sure to subscribe. I am loading bonus episodes, so I want you to be sure that you're subscribed so you don't miss any of them. Okay? I will talk to you soon. Have a wonderful week. Bye.

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