EPISODE 218 WITH LYNITA MITCHELL-BLACKWELL: THE POWER OF EMBRACING YOUR AUTHENTIC SELF

Ready Yet?! Podcast Episode 218 with Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: The Power of Embracing Your Authentic Self

Transcribed with Descript

Erin Marcus: Hello, hello, welcome to this episode of the Ready Yet podcast with my guest today, Lynita Mitchell Blackwell, who I’m excited to talk to because, you know, we always get, get the ball rolling here and get comfortable before we hit play. And I love what you were saying when we were, before we hit record, play all the, we were also talking about my complete lack of ability with electronics.

Erin Marcus: So there we go. But we were talking about your book and Live Life on Fire and this concept of excellence rather than perfection. And I was sharing with you a redirection in my business and the quote that was given to me, the redirection is for your protection. And I think this all goes together. So I’m excited about this conversation and what people are going to be able to take away from it.

Erin Marcus: So why don’t you give everybody real quick, a little more formal introduction into who you are and what it is that you do.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: Absolutely. I am Lanita Mitchell Blackwell, the intuitive business coach, and I teach people how to live their lives on fire, lives full of peace, joy, and fulfillment. And I am so excited to be here.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: Thank you so much for having me on your show.

Erin Marcus: This is fun. I love this because I was just sharing with you and I’m very transparent about all this because I think I want people to learn from my experiences, right? Learn from my experience. I’m very transparent about this year for me felt the opposite of everything you’re talking about,

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: right?

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: Yes, but those are the times the years that we really need these tools, right? One of the things that I came to learn about life. In general, myself specifically, is that I had taken what most of our parents had taught us. And let me tell you right now, I believe that we were all raised by the same parents.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: Oh my God. Especially like those

Erin Marcus: of us of a certain age, right? Yes. I totally agree with you.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: Yes, we were all told if you work hard, you are going to do well, you’re going to make money, and you’re going to live happily ever after. And so we believed our parents because they love us, our community leaders, our teachers, right?

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: And we saw them do it. But we didn’t understand that this was going to be a hamster wheel that we were never going to get off of because this happiness concept is fleeting. We would achieve whatever it was we set out to do. I’ve had a blessed life. I said I wanted to be a CPA. I did that. I wanted to be an attorney.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: I did that. I wanted to run a media company. I did that. I wanted to be a speaker, a best selling author, a coach. I did that. I did that. I did that. And my personal life, I wanted to marry a great person. I did that. I have a child. I have a great daughter. But this happiness thing continued to come, and then it was gone again.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: And so that meant a new goal had to be set. Right. So what I came to is, happiness is not what any of us are actually going for. We’re not trying to be happy. What we really want is joy. And the difference between the two is that happiness is externally determined. You’re happy if the sun is out. You’re sad if it’s not.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: You’re happy when your girlfriend comes to town and y’all can go to shop for dinner. And then you’re sad when she leaves. And so that’s not what we’re really looking for. We’re looking for the inside job, which is joy. Which is regardless of what the weather. Whether it is outside, we’re grateful, regardless as to whether our girlfriend can come or not, that we’re thankful we have a girlfriend.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: You know, these are the things that no one knows to teach you. And I’m saying it like that because we tend to blame people, blame circumstances. I’m asking you to instead embrace your power, to shift the narrative, and then embrace the fact that you can, can determine what joy looks like for you.

Erin Marcus: And I absolutely love this.

Erin Marcus: I had this conversation a couple of weeks ago with my boyfriend actually, because so many of my goals for this year were not met. So many of my plans did not work out. So many of the things and how I wanted it to happen, it just didn’t go through. All of the efforts and which is unusual for me, like to your point.

Erin Marcus: So I was getting very frustrated about that. However, we have this house, this new house, we have this property. We all summer long and into the fall, we worked outside every weekend. And we, and I remember standing there with him at the edge of my, my new joy is burning things on weekends. Who knew I grew up in, I grew up in Chicago.

Erin Marcus: We didn’t, that wasn’t a thing, but now I’m out burning trees and, you know, and enlighten things on fire. It’s very nice. But one of the things I said to him was, even with all that going on, I’m not unhappy. Like, in the moment, I’m not, I don’t feel discontent.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: Yes, yes. And you know why? It was in what you just said, because you were in the moment.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: We spend so much time planning, strategizing, thinking about tomorrow, that we forget that if this moment right here, right now is not taken care of, tomorrow can’t come. Not won’t. It cannot, because if you’re too ill to enjoy whatever it is you planned on, if you are so distracted by the chaos that’s going on, then tomorrow means nothing.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: And so that’s, that’s, that’s why you were able to feel that way because you have cracked the code. You understand that joy is now. Joy.

Erin Marcus: Well, and you know, and I try to. Going back to the fact that you’re a business coach, I try to bring these ideas into planning for the business because, you know, I don’t know when this comes out, but we’re recording this right at the end of the year where, yeah, we, we watch our numbers and debrief on wins and losses all year long, but there is a sense of the beginning of the year of a fresh start and you really do a deeper dive on all this.

Erin Marcus: And this idea of Being in the moment and cracking the code on how I want to feel while I do all these things is really what I’m applying to the business. The whole 80 20 rule, you know, what’s the 80 percent of things we’re doing that is only leading to 20 percent of our revenue? Let’s just get rid of it.

Erin Marcus: What if this were all easier? What if the only things I did, not only because, you know, there’s Yeah, but what if what I did was work at the intersection where what I love to do meets what I’m good at doing where it meets where it helps. My client’s the best. And what if we just stayed

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: there. And what if we did just stay there.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: You know, a lot of times we think of our lives as being pieces of a puzzle. Right. And we have this piece. That belongs over here in this corner, which is our business. And we have this piece that belongs over here, which is our personal life. So that’s relationship kids. And then we have this piece that belongs here.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: So that’s our professional organizations or community involvement. And we think that we show up differently in these various places. We don’t understand. That who we are shows up wherever we are. And even when we put on the mask and let me tell you, I was a master at that. Growing up, we called it cold switching.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: And so depending on who you were around at that time, that’s who you present yourself to be. And. We didn’t realize, I didn’t realize, that real Anita was peeking through the eye slits. And, and, and I didn’t realize how confusing that was to people who would meet me in one space, and then we would run into one another in another space, and that would be totally different.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: And they’re just like, Who is this person really? And it’s, you know,

Erin Marcus: and you talk about that, that was one of the things, and I see this over and over again, my success in my business didn’t come until I massively embraced the authenticity. And yet your experience is similar to mine, where we come out of professional services.

Erin Marcus: I was in financial services, C suite level, like all of the designations you had and the impression of what we thought that person was or who that person needed to be. And it just erases all the authenticity, and I actually, you know, combining all these things together, I think one of the reasons I am content in any given moment, regardless of the external, right, you said it before, the external circumstances, is because of the, like, it’s just the authenticity of it.

Erin Marcus: I don’t have that added layer anymore.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: Yes, yes. That’s exactly right. And we don’t realize that as business owners, as entrepreneurs, as careerists, how exhausting that is to not show up authentically.

Erin Marcus: I just don’t have the attention

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: span. Well, the truth is none of us do see, we think we do, but we don’t.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: Because when we’re doing that it is wear and tear on our bodies, on our mental health, and then we wind up taking it out on some version of something we love, whether it’s our bodies, we start getting ill, right, dis ease, we’re not at ease the people we love, we’re snappy with them, when we go out and we’re at the grocery store, and And somebody cuts us off and instead of us saying there are 20 other parking spaces, no, we’ve got to get to this one!

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: Women

Erin Marcus: get mad. I had a woman get mad at me last week because I gave her my parking spot. Like, and this is, right, like, and all I could think is What is your life like on a regular day? If I had pulled through, right, I was going to pull through to make my life easier. And then I realized she didn’t see that.

Erin Marcus: And truthfully, I was there first, but she didn’t see that. And now I could see that she had actually driven past all the other options. So it was easier for me to just back up a step than her to like, So I did, whatever. She gave me the dirtiest look, and I’m like, How unhappy do you have to be to get mad at somebody else for giving you their

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: markings?

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: But, and, but this is an example of what we’re talking about. And, and audience, we can’t make these stories up. Oh, I was like, really? Yeah. Oh my gosh. Well, and you know,

Erin Marcus: bigger picture, I think. The so one of the things I was taught and the definition of frustration is the difference between expectations and reality.

Erin Marcus: Yes, that’s right. And going back to where you started about what our parents and our parents generation told us was the path versus. Right? Expectations versus what the reality is of the path has created amount of frustration just in this country that you are watching leak out over

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: everybody. I totally agree.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: You know, I love DC and Marvel movies because they have a way of really bringing things to life for us. And the last version of The Flash or the last installment of The Flash.

Erin Marcus: I’m behind, by the way. No, no. Oh my God. I’m a little behind. You gotta go see them. I’m a little behind. I used to see them all opening day and now I’m a little behind.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: Okay, well, I can tell you this little part without killing it for you, but there is this point where Flash realizes that a bad guy has been trying to do something over and over again, and he was like, Dude, how long have you been doing this? Like, they’re supposed to be fighting, but there is this moment where Flash is like, I could become that.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: What did you do so I don’t become you? And so the myopic view that he had, it expanded and he realized what we all have to get to is that we’re all human beings having this experience and we’re doing the best we can with what we have and what we see at that moment. And so. If we want to get to a place where we see beyond what our parents taught us and what they saw, then we have to embrace our power and authority over our lives.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: That’s number one. And the way we do that is a shift. We have all been taught that we have to live up to or above standards, which is really the definition of perfection, it’s meeting or exceeding standards, right? But you gotta get to, but who set these standards? Because I didn’t set these standards for my life and I’m too old at 47 to be blaming my mama.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: Come on, right?

Erin Marcus: Well, and the other piece of that puzzle that I realized is it’s a moving target because there’s no set definition. Right? Because there’s no set definition of what those standards are, and it’s really more of a, I don’t know if this is the right term, but a value system as opposed to a objective situation.

Erin Marcus: You’re never, it’s a moving target. You’re never going to

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: hit it. Let me tell you, so that was the shift. You have to go from perfection to excellence, and excellence is you set the standard, and that standard includes grace. That’s the moving target, because who I am And how I show up in the world now at 47 is very different than what I did at 27, and I really hope it’s going to be different from what I do at 67, you know, these things have to happen for us, for us to realize that whatever it is, we’ve said we want to achieve money, cars, clothes, relationships, whatever, that they all have one thing in common, and that’s us, and the way that we view our lives, and the way that we move forward in them.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: And until we get there and until we get to the place where it’s like we it’s not someone else’s job to determine it’s ours. Well, I think

Erin Marcus: there’s an added pressure. I think there’s an added pressure to this whole story for women of for people of color. Yes, for immigrant families. Yeah, like if

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: you

Erin Marcus: look at any Of those groups and there’s more to two different degrees.

Erin Marcus: Not only were we taught what we talked about. We were also instilled with the belief that we were a representation of that entire group of people. Right.

Erin Marcus: Like you are representing the not even like the

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: family. Yeah, you have the whole community on your back, like for real.

Erin Marcus: A woman in STEM, a woman engineer. It used to be woman lawyer. Now that’s more common. It used to be like whatever breakthrough had to happen.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: And, you know, I am so very grateful for our pioneers.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: We would not have them. I’m grateful for our ancestors who toughed it out and who said there will be a better way for you. My downline, right? That being said, if we get to a place where we say, I am going to do my best for me, that automatically transcends everything and everyone so that we don’t take our eyes off the prize.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: Because when we’re talking about the community, we’ll see now we’re worried about other people’s expectations and standards.

Erin Marcus: Yeah. There’s no grace. Another moving target.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: Another moving target. There’s no grace there. So I have

Erin Marcus: to ask, I want to back this up because you gave us your list of credentials when we started and I know when I met you, like, woman, what?

Erin Marcus: Who put you on a path? So

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: it really was my parents. I have wonderful parents who absolutely adore me and who always said I could do anything that I put my mind to. So

Erin Marcus: you set out to do everything. Well,

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: you know, it’s one of those things where. I thought that a certain career path would make me happy.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: And so I would get out there and I was just like, Oh, this is not it. Like, especially when I came out of undergrad and becoming an accountant. And any accountants listening to this, you know, I love you, but y’all have a certain way of looking at the world. And that didn’t really mess up with my personality because I’m very outgoing.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: I love people, right? And so then I was like, I’m going to go back and become an attorney and I still practice law. I have my law firm over 17 years now, literally but I needed to practice in a way that would play to my skills, gifts and talents, right? Not

Erin Marcus: lawyer culture, not the old version of law firms.

Erin Marcus: It’s a, yeah, institution, right? Not the institution, but your own

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: version. Absolutely. But even getting there took time and, you know, experimenting and, and trying new things like speaking and writing and, and podcasting and being out here among people. And I, I came to understand that my love language is service.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: And so anything that I’m involved in, it has to have a component of that, including my relationships with individuals like my husband and my child, or I’m not going to be satisfied there. Yeah.

Erin Marcus: Yeah. I mean, when I. I’m always interested in someone with a storyline like yours where you’ve had all these accomplishments and now you’re talking about this thing over here, which, and this is one of the points to me that is so important, talking about joy, talking about excellence over perfection, talking about living in the moment.

Erin Marcus: These are not things that are the antithesis. To success. Right? Like we are not talking about the person who has entitlement and wants to sit back and do nothing because the world owes them a living so they can be happy and joyful. No, these

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: things go together. Yes, absolutely. They absolutely do. And I promise you, I understand that for me to have the knowledge That I have now that there were things that I had to go through, right?

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: But if there were some way I could take it and drop it into my 20 year old self, my life trajectory

Erin Marcus: would

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: be so different. And it’s not to say that I would not have tried all these things, but my perspective of what they meant for my self worth and my self esteem would have been drastically different because my self worth and esteem were tangled up with achievement and accomplishment for most of my adult life.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: It wasn’t until I was in my early 40s, I think I was maybe 42. I was just like, this is not working. I get these things and people are just like, Lynita, you’re just so awesome. And for that moment, it was great. But then there it would, their moment would pass.

Erin Marcus: And I call it, it’s like, and I think there’s so many people in our generation, and I really can’t speak to if the younger generation feels this way, where on paper you should be happy.

Erin Marcus: Oh, yes.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: Well, I can tell you, my daughter has had the unique perspective of watching me go through all of this, and she knows that that paper is just that. It’s a tree that died so that some ink can be printed on it. And I am so glad that she understands that life is so much more than that. I’ll never forget when she started 11th grade.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: She was invited to three AP courses and she’s in the performing arts and she went to her classes the first couple of days and she sent me a text. She said, Mom, I’m dropping two of these AP courses and the third one I’m coming down to honors. This is too much work and I will be stressed out. And, and the fact that my child knew that I would 100 percent support that, she didn’t ask, she told me what she was doing and I was like, yes, yes, because life is too short to be stressed out like that.

Erin Marcus: And, and I watch my niece do the same thing. She’s halfway through high school. She’s in model UN. Travels the world. She’s 15. Travels the world. I call it baby UN. It’s my, right? Like, you know, you’re not actually solving world peace. You can calm down a little bit, right? Like, but the pressure. And so here’s an interesting question.

Erin Marcus: If we have this figured out, or at least some awareness, that our parents created a story, not intentionally, but our parents have created a story whereby external accomplishment means happiness, and here we are having this conversation of what we’ve learned to be accurate and inaccurate about that, how come these kids are In a worse situation, because I promise you when I was in Chicago public schools in the 70s and 80s, the last thing I was worried about was three AP classes, you know, they’re actually in a higher pressure.

Erin Marcus: situation than what we

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: grew up in? Well, if you think about it, right, the world has shifted dramatically from the time our parents came through to us and then now our children. So that’s the first thing, right? And information overload is a real thing. Because we think that we have to be engaged in everything at all times.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: And that if we put the phone down for an hour, that, Oh my gosh, I’ve missed everything in the world has just ended. And we have to get to a place where we understand that that’s not true. But that comes from believing that something external. Yeah. Right. It’s going to dictate our, our, our self joy.

Erin Marcus: That is the happiness.

Erin Marcus: Yeah, and I think there’s just a certain amount of years that have to pass and a certain amount of internal work that has to be done. Yeah, you watch my friends who have not done the type of personal growth work that I focused on who still feel, you know, mired in. The story. And you do, you know, you watch and you have all the empathy in the world for people who haven’t done the work yet.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: It is not. And you use the right word with empathy. You know, we, we went there, been there, done that, got the t shirt. Right. And so we’re not looking down in judgment. There’s true compassion here. But you do get to a place where you look at folks and you just like. How many times you’re gonna keep trying to do that?

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: That’s the definition of success. How hard do you want

Erin Marcus: life to be? Yeah!

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: I watch

Erin Marcus: that, the one that I end up with a problem. I have a couple people in my life who are brilliant people who stay in. The most horrible career situations, and I don’t understand.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: I don’t know if we were meant to understand.

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: Right. I think that we were just supposed to support them and hold space for them, and be there when they’re ready to help them, however that looks.

Erin Marcus: Which is a perfect, perfect segue to, if you want to connect with Lynita and have her hold that space for you and learn more about living life on fire, what is the best way for folks to reach out to you and find

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: you?

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: Best way is my website, which is my name, Lynitamitchellblackwell. com. Lynita spelled L Y N I T A. And from there, you can join my email list. Check out my blog posts. We can connect on social, but all roles lead to my website.

Erin Marcus: Love it. Thank you for spending time with me today. I love chatting with you. I love your rose gold headphones.

Erin Marcus: Very cool. Been staring at them the whole time, but yeah, love your insights in your story. So thank you. Thank you for joining

Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell: me. Thank you so much for having me.