My clients are always looking for clarity. They want to know what they should do, where they should go, and how they should do it. And through the Courage Driven Latina program, I can help them do just that – I can help them plan out their most authentic lives. 

During the program, my clients are taught how to take action and look inside themselves to figure out who their most authentic self is. 

In this week’s episode, I discuss how I help my clients find their most authentic selves, even when they’re feeling lost. Through the process of self-discovery, I help my clients find clarity on who they want to be, what they want to do, and how they can get there. Tune in to hear how you can find your authentic self and discover if the Courage Driven Latina program is right for you! 

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Follow Erika on:
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Website:
http://www.theerikacruz.com

How to work with Erika:
Join the waitlist for Courage Driven Latina here.

Podcast production for this episode was provided by CCST.

Episode Transcript:

Erika: Hello, and welcome back to Ch*ngona Revolution Podcast. I am your host, Erika Cruz. I am a Latina coach and speaker and founder of Courage Driven Latina, which is a group coaching program to help women take action on a Courage Project. And it’s a 12-month long program. Women take action on this courage project in 90 days or less.

And it is incredible. And I love it so freaking much. And here I am. in person at a podcast studio. So if you’re watching the video version of this, then you can see where I am. But I’m so excited to talk to you all about what to do when you feel like you’ve lost your identity and who you are.

Maybe you’ve gone through some life changes and you don’t know who you are anymore. This podcast episode is all about how to find your authenticity. Authentic self when you’ve lost it in the opinions of others, right? Or in the shoulds in what you should do. And this is a topic that comes up a lot inside of my group program, courage Driven Latina, and I wanted to just read off just a few of the things that my clients said in their entry survey.

As to how they felt because perhaps you feel this same way. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to go over, okay, what, what does it mean to not know who you are anymore? How does this happen? What are some examples and some scenarios? Then we’re going to go over what to do. to help find yourself. I’m going to then take you through the process that I take my clients through and then we’re going to talk about what happens when you follow that process and what your life can look like on the other side.

All right, so let’s get into it. Here are some of the things that my clients have said. They said, I struggle a lot with setting boundaries with my family and always being there for them when they need my assistance, so I don’t work on my own stuff. Another person said, I’m too busy saying yes to others and I have not had a chance to explore who I want to be.

Somebody else said, I recently got out of an eight-year relationship and I’m not sure who I am anymore. Somebody else said, I’m worried about my family and what they might think of me so I don’t allow myself to explore who I am. Somebody else said, I feel this responsibility to take care of my parents so I’m just focused on them.

And somebody else said, I’m really struggling with communicating my needs because I don’t even know who I am anymore. Right? So if you resonated with any of those, we are going to talk about this today because there was definitely a moment in my life when I felt like I didn’t know who I was anymore. And if you’ve been following this podcast, then you know that I called off an engagement.

And when I was engaged, I remember feeling just I wasn’t fully who I was. I felt like I was in somebody else’s body. It felt like something was disconnected in me. And if you’ve ever been in a situ, in a situation like that, whether it’s a job that was unaligned or a friendship that was unaligned or a romantic relationship like me that felt unaligned, then you’ve probably felt something similar.

You can’t fully describe it, but something just feels off. And I didn’t know who the hell I was because I was living the life that I should live. Right? So how do you know that you’re struggling with this? 

So maybe you know that you don’t really know who you are because you’ve always done what you should do. You’ve always checked the box, right? Like, okay, did that. What’s next? Okay, so I’m gonna go to school. I’m gonna get a job. Maybe I get married. Maybe I have kids. And then at some point you’re like, wait, this is not me and this is not what I want, right?

But we have maybe lived our lives just doing everything that we should do. Like, now it’s time to take care of my parents. Now it’s time to do this. Now it’s time to hustle. And once you, like, check one box, you move to the next, like, okay, what’s next? This is how we know that we don’t know who we are anymore, that we’ve maybe disconnected to our authentic selves.

Another way that you’ll know is if you feel like there must be more, even if you don’t know what it is. You, if you feel, if you’re at work or in your current life and you feel like there must be more or another tell sign is if you don’t like your life, right? And I think a lot of, I mean, there was a long time that I did not like my life.

I wanted it to be different and I was working towards it. And if you’re listening to this podcast and that’s you as well, right? If you feel like you don’t like your life, you’re working towards it and I want to commend you for that. So what does one do? What do you do if you’re in this situation where you don’t know who you are anymore?

Oh, I also had a client who, um, was working a job that was super toxic and she lost her confidence and her ability to see herself in her highest self. Right? So maybe you’ve been through. A toxic relationship, a toxic boss, and that’s influenced the way that you see yourself and you don’t really just, you don’t even know who you are, right?

Like maybe you’ve gone through a big life transition, maybe a divorce, maybe a breakup, maybe a job transition, maybe you moved to a new city. You’re at this moment in your life where it’s almost like, okay, I get to choose who I want to be and I don’t know who that is. So if this resonates with you, keep listening because that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

So what does one do? What’s the solution for this? The solution is If you’ve been following me for a long time, then you know I used to call myself this type of coach. The solution is self discovery. And the thing about self discovery is that you’re never done figuring out who you are because you are going to keep evolving as a human being.

You’re going to keep evolving who you are. So I used to call myself a self discovery coach and the solution is self discovery and community. And this is something that we focus on inside of my program Courage Driven Latina. Because a lot of us have maybe done the work of who we are, but that maybe, maybe that version of ourselves is outdated.

So much has happened since we’ve done that work that we’re like, wait, who am I now? Who am I now in this phase of my life? Maybe you became a parent, right? Maybe you had this big transition and you’re trying to figure out who you are. So the solution is allowing yourself to discover who you are, and not just once, but often.

And then to find community who doesn’t try to keep you as to who you once were. Okay, so those are the, that’s the solution. Because your childhood friends, your family members, are going to see you as the version of you that you were. Last year, the year before, 10 years ago, even, right? Sometimes when we’re around family, we revert back to who we once were.

We revert back to those family dynamics, but you’ve changed and you’ve evolved. So it’s important to find community who is where you want to go. If you want to go launch a podcast or you want to create content, you have to have friends who are also content creators and a community of people who are also creating content.

Um, if you want to go start a business, you have to have other entrepreneur friends. If you want to work on your confidence, you can’t hang around people who are super negative. You have to have a sense, uh, you have to have a community of friends that are going to call you out whenever you’re not talking nicely about yourself in a very loving way, right?

Or maybe people who see you as the, as the highest version of yourself, even if you don’t see yourself that way yet. What’s the, like, way that, you know, I, I’m telling you the solution is self-discovery and community, but like, how do we do that? So inside of Courage Driven Latina, I have everybody go through a guided visualization and I have found that this is one of the Best ways to tap into your subconscious.

So visualization is really, really powerful. I have an episode specifically about visualization that you can go and check out. But visualization is essentially using our imagination to create the reality that we want. And sometimes when we’re just using our logical brain with like, Who am I? What do I want?

And we’re trying to, you know, just like think our way through it. We will think what other people have told us we want. And that’s. Why we feel stuck because we’re not listening to what we actually want. We’re not actually listening to our intuition, but something like the guided visualization inside of Courage Driven Latina, or if you go back and listen to the visualization episode, it allows us to really tap into our subconscious and see and visualize what it is that we want in our lives.

And what my clients have found is that they’re surprised with who’s in their life, who’s not in their life, what they’re doing and what they’re not doing. And really just allowing the play time for your imagination to show you what your dream life looks like, what you’re doing, who you’re doing it with, where you’re doing it, when you’re doing it, right?

All of these different things. So really utilizing the power of visualization allows us to gain so much clarity on where it is that we want to go and who it is that we want to be. So visualization is that step that helps us find a little bit of clarity. And then something like a courage project or something that you’re working towards.

I call it a courage project because this is what we work on inside of Courage Driven Latina. But you know, any project that’s helping you work towards something that’s having you take action is going to give you clarity on what you like and what you don’t like anytime that we take action. So inside of Courage Driven Latina, we have a courage project plan that walks my clients through.

I’m actually going to read it to you right now. So the first one is all around. Writing out their courage project, but in order to write out their courage project, they first have to go through the visualization, and then there’s a reflection area, right, so these are some of the questions that I’m just going to read to you.

Once they pick their project, the question is, does this project scare you, and why? Does this project excite you and why? How will this project make the world a better place? Because those are the rules for The Courage Project, has to excite you, has to scare you, and it has to make the world a better place.

And then these are other reflection questions. Why is it important that this project comes to life? You know, what would happen if you don’t execute it and what would happen if you did execute it? And this plan continues to have them think about what are possible risks that could happen as you’re executing this plan.

What is it that you’re going to do if these risks happen? So we’re having them already think ahead and make plans. We’re also having them work on their mindset around this and through the project, through the executing the courage project and following the plan, they are getting so much clarity on who they are, what they value.

They’re placed in the world and it is giving them this sense of purpose and fulfillment that they did not have before. And this courage project plan, I mean, I only read a few of the pages to you all, but it even encourages accountability and community. So section in the courage project plan is identifying an accountability friend or an accountability buddy that they can count on to execute this courage project.

So, through working towards a project, and it doesn’t matter if this is a project to make you money or not to make you money, you are going to find who you are and your tribe. And that’s why spaces like Courage Driven Latina or online communities or, you know, just like any community is so important. And whenever you do these things, whenever you do.

Work on visualization and work towards something. The result that you get is that you just have unshakeable confidence in who you are. And I’m telling you from like clients. So I wrote a few things down. Let me bring my, um, computer close to me so I can read them out to you all.

So when my clients have implemented this in just like in less than 90 days because courage driven Latina is a 12 month program, but in less than 90 days, here are the things that I’ve seen in my clients. They. Inspire others in their lives to become the best version of themselves because they’ve been working on the self discovery and on towards something right on the courage plan.

They inspire other people to start things. I mean, I’ve had clients who have told me, Oh my gosh, I inspired my mom to finally start the baking business that she wanted. Or I inspired my friends to finally start the Instagram account that they wanted. And how beautiful is that to influence the people around you, right?

The people who you thought you needed to people, please, you get to influence them. To go become the most authentic version of themselves. They also began to really advocate for themselves because they had clarity on what they needed and what they valued. They began to speak up for themselves in relationships.

They began to speak up for themselves at work. They really just began to be their biggest cheerleader and their biggest advocate. They became the most confident version of themselves. They also became decisive because they were no longer looking to other people as to who they should be and they knew who they were and they accepted that they’re going to keep evolving.

And lastly, they felt fulfilled. And abundant and like there was unlimited possibilities and there’s really nothing more beautiful than seeing somebody step into their authentic selves. And I’m telling you from personal experience because I mentioned earlier that I didn’t know who I was when I had called off that engagement.

I mean, y’all, I called off an engagement. I was living by myself like an hour and a half away from my family. My uncles and aunts thought I was freaking crazy and then I decided to quit my tech job to start a business and I moved back into my childhood room. So I went from this like 26 year old, making six figures, traveling the world, engaged to suddenly moving back into my mom’s house at 29 and leaving a tech job and making zero money.

And all of this was possible because I was confident in who I was. I used visualization and I used, even though I wasn’t calling it the courage project plan at the time, I was using, I was working towards a project and that’s what helped me get to the other side. And that’s what gave me the courage to Leave the job, leave the relationship, and then it really became this beautiful journey of who do I want to be?

And now I freaking love my life so much. I mean, I really, I was texting my friend the other day and I was like, I absolutely love my life and we are the creators of our lives, right? Like you hold the pen in writing your story. And one of the the biggest things that happens when I work with my clients is that they almost gain The power, like I get to see them go from having, letting other people use the pen to write the story of their lives to seeing them take the pen back and write their own narrative.

And that is beautiful. And I see this happen through the process that I just mentioned to you all, which is the visualization and working towards a goal, which is something that we help you do inside of Courage Driven Latina. So if this podcast is resonating with you, make sure that you tell me, like, let me know on Instagram, leave us an Apple podcast review.

That’s how podcasts grow. So leave a podcast rate and review. Also if you’re listening to this on Spotify, you can rate it as well. And if Courage Driven Latina sounds like something Right up your alley, then I would love to work with you. Let me tell you a little bit more about the program. Doors are now open and doors will close on February 21st.

Okay, so act now. Don’t delay it. If you are feeling like you don’t know who you are anymore, and you really want to live an authentic and fulfilled life, this is the program for you. You’re going to be surrounded by so many other people who are also becoming the most authentic. authentic and aligned version of themselves.

So Courage Driven Latina is a 12-month group coaching program. Everybody in the program works on a courage project. You get to work on this courage project and start taking action and some people even execute it within 90 freaking days. But because the program is 12 months long, you can work on one courage project, two courage projects, three or even four courage projects.

And I’m so excited because I just redid all of the curriculum. Um, you get. Literally help every step of the way and we just introduce courage project paths so you can pick the path that you want to take. We have the confidence path, the content creation path, the career path, and the Chingona CEO path. So even if you don’t want to start a business, this program is still for you.

If you do want to start a business, this program’s for you. If you already have a business and you want to grow a business, this program’s for you. If you know you want to create content or don’t. This program is still for you because you get to pick your path and what we help you with is leading with courage, becoming your most authentic self, and whatever project you work on, you’re still going to use the courage framework.

So this program keeps giving back, not just the 12 months that you’re in it, but you learn tools. for the rest of your life to help you build the confidence, build the courage to be your most authentic, authentic self. And I can tell you from somebody who is living the life I should to then living the most authentic life.

Oh man, it’s scary to live the most authentic life, but it is so freaking worth it. Okay, y’all, if you would like to schedule a consult call with me, ensure that you schedule your consult call before we close doors for Courage Driven Latina. You could get on a call with me. We can make sure that it’s the right fit for you.

Again, the doors are closing on the 21st of February. Okay, act now. No need to delay. I can’t wait to work with you and I will see you all next week.