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Invisible To Unmissable: How to Build Your Visibility

by admin | Oct 5, 2026 | Female Leaders

Visibility isn’t the same as being seen. Emmanuella Grace, voice and communication expert and founder of Find Your Voice, has performed on stages including the Royal Albert Hall, the Barbican and the Sydney Opera House, and now coaches technical leaders at organisations including PwC, Future Fund and Amazon on the same command of presence.

In this second conversation, Emmanuella and I move past the mechanics of finding a voice and into how you build visibility that lasts, the kind that earns credibility rather than borrowing it for a room. We talk about performed confidence versus embodied confidence, the three R’s of motivation, and the sophisticated forms of workplace BS that hide behind the language of culture and care.

Also, heads up: There is plenty of oversharing in this episode. And yes, for those wondering, it does include a botox admission …with damn good reason.

➡️You’ll Hear :

Visibility built on performance collapses the moment the performance stops. Here’s what building it on credibility looks like instead

The Royal Albert Hall story Emmanuella hadn’t thought about in years, and the lesson it left her with about staying visible under pressure

Introverts often make the more compelling speakers. Excitement and fear run through the body in almost exactly the same way

How to spot which of the three R’s, Reason, Resources or Reward, has fallen away when a strong performer starts to wobble

The difference between assertiveness and passive aggression, demonstrated live in the conversation

Emmanuella has broken up with clients. What that decision says about the integrity of her work

Key Takeaways:

Performed confidence and embodied confidence look identical on the surface. The nervous system of the person across from you can tell the difference

The question isn’t whether you’re capable. It’s whose agenda your capability has been serving

Investing in yourself isn’t optional work. It’s the work that makes every other skill land

📖 Read the full transcript of this conversation here.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

DI GILLETT [HOST] (00:03)

How of women? Who comes to mind?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (00:06)

Nina Simone.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (00:08)

Just like that.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (00:09)

Just like that, just thought of it now. I don’t know, we were Well, we were thinking about you know, we were talking off camera about all all the formative experiences we have that make us the strong women we are. And none of those experiences are like, that was such a great experience and it made me so strong. Right right? And if you think about her, she there’s there must have been myriad of educated white women in the same era who had a musical education.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (00:12)

I love Nina Simone.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (00:38)

Right. But you have this black woman who’s not allowed to go into a conservatorium because she’s black. So she takes up a job working in brothels. I can’t imagine how safe that would be for a woman in that era at her age and her skin colour. And she went on to break open for so many musicians, the industry like covering people like Bob Dylan. And she is one of the most recognizable voices on the planet.

And she plays her own instruments, by the way. So she’s not sitting around waiting for someone to bring her a band. Right, she plays piano and sings. So completely authentic, recognizable voice.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (01:21)

Fabulous voice.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (01:22)

Yeah. If you wanna think about power, that’s what power sounds like. Is that woman’s voice?

DI GILLETT [HOST] (01:27)

Well there’s the promo for Power Women Done, and the episode’s over. So

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (01:31)

Good, great. Okay, move the car. ⁓ Time for one.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (01:48)

I’m Di Gillett and welcome to the POWER OF WOMEN Podcast, where we celebrate the strength, resilience, and achievements of women from all walks of life. And whilst most podcasts tell you what’s possible, these women will share with you what it took them to get there. It’s a place where women supporting women isn’t just a sentiment, it’s a decision we make every single day.

I’m back with Emmanuella Grace. Welcome back to the studio.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (02:19)

Didn’t we eat? ⁓

DI GILLETT [HOST] (02:23)

Voice and communication expert, former performer and founder of Find Your Voice. She has performed on international stages, including Royal Albert Hall, The Barbican, and Sydney Opera House. In our last conversation when we were together, we went deeply into why women silence themselves and what it takes to reclaim their voice. Today we’re going further into visibility.

what it means to be truly seen and why so many high achieving women, at the height of everything they’ve built, find themselves wondering why it feels so hollow. Emmanuella Grace, welcome back to the POWER OF WOMEN Podcast.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (03:06)

Thank you. I’m so excited for this conversation.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (03:09)

You’ve mentioned it yourself, the irony of your position. You coach people to find their voice, step into their visibility, and yet you know what it’s like to be on stage when everything is falling apart around you. Tell me about that time at Royal Albert Hall, the night the guitar my god. Yeah.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (03:28)

⁓

God. Do you know what I n I hadn’t thought about that in years and then it came up ⁓ just before our conversation. And I just you have these Yeah, you have these moments where you go, that’s where every you know these moments where everything changes. And like I said, sometimes the most formative moments aren’t the good ones. So

As a deeply insecure teenager who wanted to be a singer, because you know there’s something about athletes and and musicians where our careers f at a professional level with high scrutiny start so much sooner than most people. And the amount of training and effort, yeah, that goes into being at that level where I’m professional at sixteen. Most people don’t start their professional career for a decade later where they’ve had some life experience and

Well and and you’ve learned a few life skills, right? So you’re you’re so affected by other people’s perspective of you and you’re so affected by other people’s perception of you. You know, very few sixteen year olds know themselves. So you’re really buffeted about and informed in some ways by how people reflect yourself back at you.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (04:40)

You

And it explains why the wheels fall off when that structure’s taken away. Absolutely. Like for example, swimmers.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (04:46)

Right. And we’ll we’ll get into that in a little while later because whose agenda are you serving ultimately? And that’s something that I think a lot of singers maybe or athletes have that collision in their th twenties to thirties. But for career women it’s happening in their fifties because now they’ve been on that journey of self discovery. But Royal Albert Hall. I’d gotten to a point where I would say that that’s a pretty high apex of a career, you know.

I have this tendency to kind of go, there’s a goal, that’s a thing I want to do. And then the logic of it doesn’t really weigh in in that moment. I just go, Yeah, that’s a thing I can shoot for. And then I just make my way to it. And I I’m very flexible on the route. But ultimately I go, what I’d like to sing in Royal Albert Hall. And then I get that. And and how I get there’s, you know, this mirandering meandering? Mirandering? Meandering. Meandering journey.

So I get to Royal Albert Hall, I’m doing a season there with this ensemble, and I’m sitting in the pit and I’m having this thought, I think I’ve proven my point. ‘Cause what I’ve done is I’d started coaching on the side. I’d had ⁓ I’d been performing my own music. I’d started to perform my own music and I’d had an American Idol finalist approach me and she’d said, well you teach me how to do what you do And I was like, no, I’m not a singing teacher. She No, I’ve got a singing teacher. I need someone to teach me what you do in terms of your presence on stage.

And so I’d started coaching her and that really changed the way I perceived what my possibilities were in the world because I thought you could be a singing teacher or a singer and that was it. If you if it that didn’t work, you went and worked at Virgin Music. Right. But but she introduced me to her Yeah. So she introduced me to her voice coach in New York, who was working with some of still does work with some of the biggest names in the business. And Norma took me under her wing and taught me what it was to be a coach, which is a very American thing at the time. And

I just was loving it. And I was starting to work with professional footballers and weightlifters and bankers and doctors because I didn’t realise that I think I had started to have this realisation that you could teach voice to anyone and stage presence to anyone. So back we’re back on in the pit in Albert Hall. And you’re you’re doing your you’re doing your thing. We were doing Stravinsky’s Ride of Spring mashed up with We Will Rock You.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (06:51)

Yeah.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (07:05)

Which is like pretty full on. And then my friend’s doing this big rock solo and he’s up on the top there. And the stage doors are on this kind of air, air suction release thing to make the stage soundproof. And as he’s gone off stage and out the door, his fingers got f stuck in the door. And some of us realize what’s going on because the doors only open one way. There’s people having to run, figure out what’s going on and run all the way around the stage, around the back.

To get the door open and get him out. Meanwhile, we have to keep singing. Because in venues that size, if you stop, the audience will panic and you can end up with a swarm. So you you have to keep going. And and we’ve seen some really horrific situations in in concerts where audiences have just surged exactly towards whatever it is the singer’s putting the attention on. So as the performers, you have to be very conscious that they you’re there to curate an experience for your audience.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (07:41)

Wow.

Absurd.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (08:01)

And so the show must go on. It’s not just an idea of like, ⁓ you know, on with the show. It’s it’s really something where you must keep going because you have responsibility to some extent of your audience’s experience. And if that experience is to draw their attention to something that’s happening that’s not great, it’s gonna create a pretty distressing situation. So meanwhile, we find out later that he’s gone to hospital, he’s lost his finger. And I just thought

You know, I’ve I’ve proven my point and I realize that this isn’t actually what I want to be doing. I’m gonna I I’m loving the coaching and I think I’m gonna do that. And I wasn’t traumatized by the situation. He went on to become a very lovely guitar teacher, and and it was a very upsetting thing for a while, but I think it was just the confluence of realizing I’ve proven what I needed to prove to myself. I’m done proving myself to other people, and also it being in such an extreme environment.

really kind of made that a formative memory for me where I look at that moment and go, That’s where it changed. So

DI GILLETT [HOST] (08:57)

You say you’ve you’ve you’ve done that, but is is or was the stage your happy place?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (09:04)

It still is. You know, I think you’ve got to remember that there’s so much preparation that goes into those moments. I think you know, we watch these shows where Lady Gargar meets a guy in a ⁓ parking lot and suddenly she’s a world star and it’s really amazing for her and that’s great. That’s not how it is. Okay. There you know, you’ve heard the phrase it takes ten nights to make t ten years to make an overnight sensation.

There is so much practice and so much rehearsal and so much risk that goes into becoming a professional athlete or singer in the first place. And I was trained by by by sport psychologists that trained Olympic athletes. So I kind of can see that they are parallel training. ⁓ and so

And and so many of us don’t ever make it in Bunny Ears, you know, make it for those of you watching at home. but it’s it’s something where when it does come together and you’re finally on the stage and you and your band or you and your orchestra or you and your ensemble have rehearsed, there’s so much trust and so much cohesion and so much that’s gone into rehearsing that skill set that there is a state of flow that you you take with you on there and the performances where you

don’t have the time to prepare are usually the ones where things ⁓ it’s not as enjoyable. Whereas if you’ve prepared really well and you’re you’re synchronized as a as an ensemble, even when things do go wrong, you tend to handle it better because you know how to flow together and you kind of become a little bit of a hive mind.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (10:38)

Yeah. Well let’s let’s bring this back to a point where our listeners and we’re going to assume not many of them have been on stage at Royal Albert Hall. But visibility is something that they they’re grappling with in in their professional and personal lives at at any given time. So we talked when we were together before about introverts potentially make

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (10:49)

Yeah.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (11:05)

better speakers. And that excitement and and trepidation can feel the s that same physiological response.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (11:13)

Are you talking about Skregs Blunderfried Di? I’m so glad you brought it up. So for those of you watching along at home, Di and I had a call the other day and she said, What’s that written on your wall? And I said, Skregs Blunderfried

DI GILLETT [HOST] (11:16)

That’s the

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (11:30)

yeah, great. So, ⁓ some of you are probably curious about my weird accent. I ⁓ I’ve been with my Norwegian husband for twenty, four, twenty-five years, and Norwegian is what we also speak at home and that’s impressive. We we live part time there. I hope that my children will speak it. It’s a really lovely language. And ⁓ in you know, one of the great joys of living in another language sometimes is that our perception is shaped by the languages that we speak.

So if you only ever learnt English, then you would only ever know the word terror or joy is polarities. So at one end you have something bad, terror, the other end you have something good, joy, and never the twine shall meet. They are two extremes that are at opposite ends of a spectrum. For Norwegians we have a word Skrexblandfried, which translates as terror blended with joy. So it’s the

Intersection of the two coexisting simultaneously. Now, if I describe to you the experience, you’ll know what I mean. Like a first kiss with someone you really like, or a roller coaster. That’s Gregsplandertfried, right? You’re kind of terrified and you’re also loving it. That’s right, but the word that we have that’s the closest to it in English is excitement, but that has a positive connotation.

When we can look at terror and joy coexisting, then we can start to normalize the experience of being scared and happy simultaneously. And I would say, even for me now, after decades of performance, I still feel like that every time I get behind a microphone, every time I get on stage. And I think if you’re not, then perhaps you should be thinking about doing something else. You’ve gotten too comfortable. Because I think there’s a magic that comes.

With the coexistence of those extremes within one human at a time. Yeah.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (13:15)

And my husband, who is also a media professional, will talk about that feeling of trepidation or you talked about earlier the sweaty sweaty palms. That that still happens fifty years on in his career and that’s the piece that propels him over the line to to perform.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (13:34)

It’s sparkly. It makes you sparkly. So when I’m training voices, I say to people, look, practice absolutely all out at sixty percent. Don’t go over sixty percent as your biggest note because you know, you kind of want to when you’re practicing, you start at about 10 to 20 percent when you’re marking your notes. But you know, if you’re going for a big note, sing it 60%, because by the time you’re on stage, the adrenaline and the excitement and also the sound of it will push you. And if you’re hitting it a hundred all the way through, you’re gonna injuries.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (14:02)

Yeah. Always a marathon every you don’t run a marathon to train for a marathon.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (14:03)

That’s not sustainable. ⁓

No, exactly right. So you you always need to leave yourself somewhere to go.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (14:12)

Yeah. Well let’s get to the crux of today’s discussion, which is whose agenda have you been serving to gain your visibility? Can you reorientate our understanding of why she feels lost despite everything she’s been told to want?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (14:22)

Yeah.

It goes back to she the lady that I’m working with, let’s say a woman in her late forties to early fifties, sometimes anything up to sixty, depending on if you took time out to have kids. ⁓ depending on what your career looks like. You know, there’s a lot of women in law, for example, that have a choice at around this point in their career where they have to choose do they go one way or the other. And there’s a lot of ⁓ gravity in one and and there can be a little bit of ⁓ side eye for the other.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (14:35)

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (15:03)

And and so there’s a lot of careers where you have these moments where you’re making a decision, do you make it based on what’s important for you and your values, or are you making it based on what brings you prestige or more money, but might not necessarily align with your true beliefs of what quality of life is or what’s important. So when I work with people, no matter who it is or what context, we always start with what’s important to you. Yeah. Because what I think’s important and what you think’s important is going to be different because we’re all individual.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (15:28)

Yeah.

So this is how we do this honestly, because it it’s uncomfortable when you get to that point of going

I don’t know what I value anymore.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (15:43)

And so sometimes you need someone outside of your head to help you get honest about that. And I’m big on honesty and it can be uncomfortable. So hopefully I help people hold the space for that and navigate that. ⁓ but you know, in the voice model that I teach, V is for values. If you don’t know what you represent, how can you ever articulate that out into the world? How can you ever behave in a way that aligns with that? And how can you ultimately curate a life that aligns with your values if you don’t know what they are?

You’re ultimately just serving someone else’s agenda.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (16:15)

So and I’m I’m hope I’m not putting words into your mouth, but you work with leaders who I think at times you’d say are technically articulate emotionally new.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (16:27)

I’d say that’s absolutely spot on.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (16:30)

Not a lot of people might describe it. They might not be just like not mine.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (16:33)

They they might not even think they are and then they might the the really the people that get the most shaken is when they think they’re expressing themselves really well and then they get the feedback. yeah, no it’s not land.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (16:42)

Yeah.

How do you begin to find what that thing is?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (16:49)

What’s important to them? You know, let’s if I tell you, listen, your message isn’t landing, go fix it, or else, are you gonna Yeah, no, you’re not gonna be like, Yes, sure. I’d love to. No, no, no. Okay, so what we need to do is go, well, do you even want to change the way you’re delivering a message? You know, if you don’t want to, that’s fine. But if you if you can identify something within you

DI GILLETT [HOST] (16:56)

Wasn’t working.

Yeah right.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (17:13)

that’s important that’s going to motivate you to want to learn this new skill set and test it and risk failure and develop it and invest the energy and time and sometimes money into developing that skill set. Let’s start there. Let’s find a reason for you to be motivated. So there’s there’s a model that I worked on with my a friend of mine who’s a expert in peak performance for teams and I’m peak performance for individuals. So sometimes we put our heads together, we nut things out, and we came up with a model, the three R’s of motivation.

So people used to think that motivation was actually finite, which is why they would teach you, okay, put on your jogging shoes in the morning and do your exercise, because by the end of the day you have no energy. But what the new research is showing us is that actually motivation is a self-perpetuating cycle. And for that to work, you need three things, your three R’s. You need a reason, you need the resources, and you need the reward. So I’ll give you an example. Let’s say you want to get

Fit. Why do you want to get fit? Your reason is that you want to get a girlfriend. I’m gonna say it from the perspective of a boy. Okay? Yep. Just realize that. Okay, so you want to get a girlfriend and you think that getting fit will help you, it’ll help you build your confidence, you’ll have more testosterone. Excellent. So you have the reason. The resource is the money to pay for the gym or the time to go. And the reward is a couple of weeks in, you’ve lost a few kilos. And that cutie over by the green smoothie bar said hello. Okay.

And then she gets your number and then you go on some dates and then suddenly all you want to do is Netflix and chill. Reason’s gone. So now the reason’s gone. Resources are still there. You still have the time. You still have the money for the gym. The reward would still be there if you kept going. You’d still be getting fitter. But suddenly now all you want to do is sit on the couch and hang out with her. Okay, so now you’re gonna get married. reason’s back. But now you’ve got all the wedding planning. You don’t have the resources anymore, you don’t have the time. Still got

You still got the reward, you still look good. Yeah, but think about it, if you remove any one of them, your motivation falls over. So my HR people love this because the first thing I say to them is look, if you’re dealing with someone who until recently was a really good performer in the organization and suddenly they’re looking wobbly, which one of those three R’s has fallen over? Right? Because we we communicate.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (19:12)

Yeah.

What what fellow white

Yeah. Take hole.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (19:36)

What’s going on with us in different ways. People think of communication as the words, the sounds that’s coming out of your mouth, but it’s more than that. Okay? You can communicate a whole lot with a look.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (19:47)

I can do it with body

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (19:49)

Right. And this is where I’ve been thinking a lot lately about passive aggression. Because

No. No, I think that was assertiveness. And there’s a big difference. Okay, so what you did was own that. You wanted something to stop and you said stop. And you had a physical gesture, a voice tone, eye contact, and word that all aligned. That’s why it was powerful. All the points of communication were in alignment. There was no ambiguity. Here’s where passive aggression’s interesting. It’s still aggression, but it’s not you owning your voice.

It’s not you owning that decision. And so ultimately you might achieve what it is you want to achieve, but you’re not going to feel good about yourself because on some level it’s dishonest. And that creates what we call cognitive dissonance, which is that uncomfortable feeling in your mind and body when two ideas are conflicting.

You with me? Right. So that’s where I think this emergence of people talking about microaggressions and passive aggression is a problem in the workplace because what it’s doing is encouraging a lack of honesty, which is what we need for people to really own their voice and to feel empowered.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (20:40)

And we do.

Mm, I get it. And and that microaggression aspect is so destructive to culture. So Yeah. And we’ve all experienced it.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (21:08)

And I’ve been open about saying you look, I think sometimes it’s okay to in indulge a little bit of revenge fantasy, but you’re not going to do it, right? The revenge fantasy is the teenager or the child. But ultimately we want the owner we want the grown up But we want the grown up driving the bus. You remember I’ve said to you before that high executive function leads to high executive presence. Right?

DI GILLETT [HOST] (21:22)

No son grown up.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (21:33)

High executive function is the grown-up driving the bus. It’s the ability to juggle multiple ideas that can be true. It’s the ability to pivot. It’s the ability to think creatively, you know? And I think that passive aggression or aggression in the workplace, or even not speaking up, shows up when we feel like we don’t have any options. Whereas high executive function enables us to see that there’s always multiple routes we can take.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (21:57)

Yeah. Get it. So tell me the difference between performing confidence and actually embodying it.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (22:04)

I I think this is we’re onto something, right? When you say stop and you raise your hand, you look me in the eye, and it’s with absolute clarity and no hesitation, everything in you is aligning. Performative finding of your voice means that on some level something’s out of alignment. Now it might all look good on the surface, but my mirror neurons are gonna pick up with what’s happening in your body, and I will sense a fake. I’ll sense something’s off.

Right? I might not be able to tell you what it is. Have you ever had an interaction with someone and everything looks really good but there’s a part of you that walks away with the ick?

DI GILLETT [HOST] (22:44)

Some

things not right.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (22:46)

Rust that. That

is because we can only take in if you think about our consciousness, it’s they often use the idea of the iceberg. Like we really are only ever taking in the very tip of the iceberg, but our subconscious and our peripheral vision and all the senses in our bodies that are like taking in things like pheromones, they’re picking up on a whole bunch of other things, but it’s below the conscious.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (23:09)

It’s a bit like and my husband tells a story and and then and the couple will renate will remain nameless. But the first time I met them and it was ⁓ for all intents and purposes, looked like a harmonious relationship but on the drive home I said to George, that marriage is over. He said, You’re kidding. They’re a they’re you know, they’ve been together a long time, they’re this, they’re that and I went nah it’s all got just so

Feel it below the surface and and and within six months that ended up being the case and and nobody would have seen that coming.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (23:47)

Have you heard of micro expressions?

DI GILLETT [HOST] (23:50)

I’m hearing about it now.

So ⁓

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (23:57)

Just want to ask, because maybe you know something I don’t, and you can tell me something. But okay, so micro expressions are these tiny little expressions that happen, you know, in a fraction of a second. And my consciousness looking at your face might not pick it up. But your subconscious will register it. And get this, it’s why I haven’t had any injectables or Botox. No shade on those beautiful.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (24:22)

There’s a billy

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (24:24)

There you go. So no shade on the ladies who’ve done it, but there’s research coming out that’s showing that the the work that we’re having done on our faces are impeding our ability to read others. Yeah. Because the system works like this. You will have a but the mirror neurons in my body will replicate what that expression on your face feels like, and my brain will interpret what that feels like now. If

My face can’t replicate that expression. My brain can’t read what it is. I’m losing my ability to pick up on those cues.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (25:00)

There’s so f so many places I could go with this conversation, but I’m gonna park it it’s okay.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (25:06)

But on this fascinating on the subject of visibility, when you’re a young professional musician in training, I had a piano teacher stick a mirror in front of my face when I’m practicing because you’ve got to learn to manage yourself on stage. Even if you’re feeling impassioned because this Mozart’s amazing could really put your audience off by not managing your facial expressions properly.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (25:22)

You

Yeah. I can understand that. It’s a bit like watching watching a recording, but really, it’s the same thing. You need to know what what you’re doing and you need to see it to improve. So I get that. So let’s put ourselves in the audience now. What what to your point about that? What is happening in the nervous system of a listener when a speaker is being genuine versus when they’re performing? So

Let’s let’s assume they’re not Botoxed, we

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (26:00)

Look at no shade, right? I I will thoroughly admit that I often oscillate backwards and forwards on that, but I I do enjoy the feeling of connection I have with people and I’d never want to impede that. Yeah. Because I’m notoriously real. Some people call me spicy. I just keeping it real. okay, let’s put ourselves in the audience. What’s happening? You can feel when another person’s nervous.

Right. Now let’s say you can feel that someone’s nervous and you’re sitting in the audience and you came there

Wanting some escapism. Do you want the ballet dancers on the stage that are dancing for you on your lovely, lovely one night out away from the kids? You’ve had a little champagne, you’re wearing a lovely dress. Do you want them to make you feel the pain they feel in their messed up feet with their toenails that are falling off and the hours of bleeding and terrifying, overwhelming pain and risk of having broken a back? No.

You want it to look effortless. And so that and they have to get to a point where that effortlessness feels real for them on stage to be able to transport their audience there. Right? Because if they are nervous, if they are scared, we will feel it. And that’s the work of a professional performer is doing the practice until you can get past the nerves, you can get past the discomfort, and now you’re thinking about a performance that’s a gift for your audience.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (27:07)

analogy thanks for that.

Okay, that that’s powerful. Can you share with me an example of that in a professional setting for a leader?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (27:42)

Yeah. If you’re going to give a talk, you need to practice. You can’t just have your speech writer do it and you go over it with your voice coach once and then you think because all the words are in the right place it’s gonna sound great. No, you have to do the emotional work first. Yeah. You have to know what do you want from this speech? Who are you trying to connect with? What’s in it for them?

DI GILLETT [HOST] (27:54)

Because you don’t know and I suppose.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (28:05)

What’s in it for them?

DI GILLETT [HOST] (28:07)

Kick the bucket, if you’re wondering what that is.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (28:10)

The the bucket of water. The bucket. When I said I needed to be hydrated. Right. So so you can’t well, you have to manage your expectations, right? Work goes into poor performing at that level. When you see someone get up and give a good talk, it’s not because they’re a natural. Yeah. If they’re more extroverted, maybe they’ve been practicing it in a more informal or passive way, but ultimately they’ve done

that type of performance before. It’s not new to them.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (28:41)

Yeah. Excellent. You’re listening to the Power of Women podcast and I’m talking with Emmanuella Grace about building our visibility. And coming up, we’re gonna go deeper on performative behaviour.

If you’re loving the Power of Women podcasts, be sure to jump onto our YouTube channel and hit that subscribe button to ensure you never miss an episode. This is gonna sound like relationships and and it kind of is and it kind of isn’t, but you have broken up with clients, which says everything about the integrity of the work that you do. When did you know in in

And reflection looking back when it’s time to walk away. And what had the coaching become that made it impossible to stay?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (29:34)

When I knew was when on the surface everything looked good and I was getting paid really well and there were really impressive clients, but every time I walked into that room something in my chest felt itchy or tight or I I don’t know how to describe the sensation, but I have a sensation in my body that I now interpret as cognitive dissonance or as I’m behaving in a way that doesn’t align with my values right now.

That’s so cognitive dissonance, you remember I said it’s when two ideas coexist in your head but they’re in conflict. Yep. I have a physical sensation in my upper chest that I associate with that happening in my mind. That happens for me less and less. The more I live in integrity in terms of interrogating what I’m doing and asking, does it align with my values? The less I experience that. But what engaged Huh, it’s

DI GILLETT [HOST] (30:28)

Yeah.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (30:31)

Lots of good therapy and calling yourself a nonsense thing, maybe. Yeah. You know, not all of us are in a place where we can call ourselves out on our BS. I’m in a point in my life now where I I’m surrounded by people that love me no matter what. I’m I feel supported. I feel resourced. I feel that I’ve had ⁓ time to reflect on things and heal. And one of the byproducts of that is that I don’t feel like I have to do things the way I used to.

Now I can and step back, I can take time to think.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (31:04)

So have you mastered the art of tapping into both your body and your mind on reflection with what you’ve just shared?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (31:17)

Definitely better at it. You know, as artists, we have to work in a space where we’re unifying those things all the time. But I think for me, it was shifting it off the stage and into my life that was the challenge. ⁓ I I left a record label in a modeling agency, you know, in my early 20s, very early on. There was a big move. And ⁓ that was me kind of starting to own my own artistry and own my own music and own my own voice. But

Actually, in the work environment when I started to move into working with more corporate spaces, I think I didn’t feel as confident because I’d come from the world of the arts and I didn’t really feel like I yet knew my place. I was brought into a corporate environment by people that could see the value of what I did and they believed in me. But me getting to a point where I believed in me and could see the value of what I brought into the workplace has been a journey in itself. I guess finding my voice all over again, but in a different context. And so

when you’ve got these really impressive people that are in charge of lots of monies and lots of people and lots of things and they are sitting in the room talking about whatever their professional challenges are, and you’re going through the exercises and you’re going through the conversations, but week after week you can feel that they’re kind of saying things to try and impress you, but the dial’s not really moving in terms of their performance, feeling any improvement. That’s when you

DI GILLETT [HOST] (32:43)

Because they’re the person who wants to be there or because the board’s told them that they’re the CEO and they need to sharpen their a

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (32:49)

So people can end up in that situation for a lot of different reasons. But the ones that are mandated are notoriously challenging. What can often happen if we’re really lucky is they’ll come in and we’ll be able to find something in their values that motivates them to want to rise to the occasion. You know, I’ve had, for example, CIOs and CFOs where a company is about to go public and communication’s not their strong suit and they’re worried about how that’s going to affect

Their public persona. And obviously if it goes well, there’s something in it for them. So we work from that point outwards. You know, ⁓ what’s at the heart of this for you? And for some people, it’s even stepping away and handing it to someone else, right? That’s still a win for everyone because it’s saving you problems down the track. ⁓ whereas there’s some people that you know, one of the biggest red flags I see dies when someone tells me it’s fine.

Yeah. I’m fine, we’re fine. It’s all fine. No, it’s not.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (33:58)

Yeah. You know. ⁓

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (34:00)

Yeah.

Yeah. And so I think there’s something about people that are fine, that stay fine for a really long time. After a while you have to say, Well, if it if it’s fine, I think that maybe I don’t have a lot of value to add here.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (34:12)

The person who says, Would would I tell a lie? Well you just raised it.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (34:18)

Yeah, I always say to my kids, don’t trust people that tell you to trust them.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (34:21)

Yeah, trust me, yeah.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (34:23)

No. No thanks. Stop.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (34:27)

Well it’s so true. So there’s there’s the power of of words of what we’ve we’ve

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (34:34)

Words misaligning with intent, right? Yeah. ‘Cause if someone says, Trust me, what does voice tone voice tone say to you? It says like It’s like I’m trying to manipulate you.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (34:38)

Yeah. Well

Yeah, it’s yeah,

it’s it’s pushing, it’s pushing at me. Right. It’s like woo.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (34:51)

But you’re particularly astute at picking up on that. I think like I’m one of those people sometimes it can take me a really long time to understand that I d I wouldn’t undermine your

I wouldn’t undermine that you might have a good spidey sense for it. You know, I don’t think that’s just age. ⁓ we acquire it through like going back to the start. Some of the most teachable moments are the ones that are the hardest, right? Yeah. But but this is where it becomes important to trust your body. Sometimes your body knows long before your mind does that something’s off. Right? Back to that couple and the micro expressions that you might have seen going between them. The sneer on the lip.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (35:21)

Yeah.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (35:29)

The refusal to make eye contact, the flinching away from a touch, there might have been all these small indicators that were so small, so microscopic that your conscious brain didn’t pick up on them, but your subconscious did.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (35:42)

Well let’s go a bit deeper on that because BS comes in all shapes and sizes and it and I think it’s harder to detect when when it’s dressed up in polish and and and corporate presence and and leadership presence. What’s the most sophisticated form of BS you see women and and men for that matter carry into the room? What’s that?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (36:06)

I made a note about this. Now what was it?

Hm. It’s when meanness is dressed up as an agenda that’s going to serve the organisation.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (36:23)

Wow, I’ve been on the receiving end of that. I bet Yep.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (36:26)

you have.

Also known as passive aggression. Very hard to challenge that. I found can I teach you a trick? Yes. Say something mean to me.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (36:32)

Absolutely.

Yeah.

What’s wrong with you?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (36:45)

I hear you say what’s wrong with you Help me understand.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (36:52)

You’ve thrown it back at me. Yeah. And I’ve got to take I’ve got to take a back the you’ve you’ve you’ve lobbied me. You’ve lost back in my in my Yeah. That’s powerful. I’m gonna think of another one. Why would you do that?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (37:01)

Completely neutral voice though, right?

Clever one, right? Yeah, let’s do it.

I hear you say why would you do that? Help me understand the question.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (37:18)

You’ve completely thrown water on it. So it’s how you diffuse an argument.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (37:24)

Yeah, just so okay, do you wanna hear something interesting? Yep. ⁓ I when I was studying psychology, there’s a whole subject you do on attachment theory. And I’m terrible at remembering which one’s which. Okay, so don’t don’t ride with me on that component of the journey. But there’s basically types of there’s one type of attachment where it’s good and you’ve got a healthy attachment with your parent, and then there’s a whole bunch of other attachments that are like unstable and volatile and whatever.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (37:35)

Yes.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (37:49)

And the child hasn’t developed a good attachment to their parent. Here’s the research that blew my mind that I will never forget, even if I can’t remember the technical words. In the context of bullying, kids with secure attachment don’t engage, they walk away, so they don’t get bullied.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (38:06)

Yeah.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (38:07)

The kids

that end up in a bullying dynamic, either as the bully or the bullied, it’s a sympathetic relationship where there’s there’s balance. One person is really desperate for approval and to feel safe, and one person needs to peel feel power over to feel safe. And so you end up with this symbiotic relationship of bully and bullied. Whereas children who don’t engage, they just walk away, they don’t get bullied.

Because there’s nothing there, there’s no tension in the dynamic.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (38:37)

I just describe my childhood and and and I tell the story of where I was bullied and I and I made a conscious decision to overcome it. But at the same time made a conscious decision not to become a bully to do that. And that’s exactly what I did, but I didn’t know what I was doing at the time, it just worked.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (38:56)

Yeah, and that’s what that is in the workplace, right? Is that look and there are gonna be times when it’s just not worth the fight and life’s unfair. And that’s what I explain to my girls all the time. Sometimes life is unfair. So if you go into it with the bias that things are going to be fair, I’m sorry, darling, that’s not how it is. But what you can do is increase the probability of you being in environments where you will be treated fairly by having better boundaries, choosing better people to hang out with.

And being more assertive in terms of setting the expectations of how people can treat you and ex what they can expect from you.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (39:30)

And I’ve always said you can’t argue with the person in the room who won’t argue back and that’s the person who walks away. It’s the same thing. So you can completely dilute the the emotion and ⁓ and flatten the

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (39:43)

You s you do you do see it a lot though, this kind of passive aggression or cruelty or meanness dressed up as corporate speak.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (39:49)

Absolutely. Well, my last question for you today, before we get into a little bit of rapid fire, but I want you to speak directly to the woman who’s listened to both of our episodes together. So our initial one. ⁓ she recognised herself in self silencing because she couldn’t find a voice. Yeah. And in this one in invisibility. What do you want her to know?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (40:15)

Finding your voice and developing confidence in your voice is something you can do, but it does take work and it’s not the kind of work that can be outsourced. So enlisting support resources, if you can’t afford a coach, then listen to books, listen to podcasts, talk to friends that believe in you. you know, y you do need support on that journey. And it will be work, but it’s work that’s worth doing because the reward

will always be greater than the effort you have to put in, I believe.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (40:50)

So my take from that is investing in yourself is not something to be underestimated.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (40:59)

Yes, and the cavalry’s not coming to save you. You have to do it for yourself. You know? ⁓ that’s that’s something that I see. you see some women that have all the capability in the world and all the resources and they’re brilliant and they just never seem to cut through. And I think that

DI GILLETT [HOST] (41:03)

Yeah.

And I’m sure a lot of listeners will will resonate with that.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (41:24)

And

it’s a hard truth. Like it’s not an easy thing to say even. And and I guess the privilege of my position is I get to be the person that helps them with with building those internal systems and enlisting the support ⁓ from their friends and their peers and giving them books and podcasts. But there are some people who, for whatever reason, don’t ever get to the point where they back themselves and invest in themselves. And ⁓ if you don’t take the initiative

No one’s going to come and give this to you. No one’s going to come to the little girl standing in the front yard hanging out the laundry singing Disney tunes at the top of her voice and whisker away. Yes.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (42:01)

Think you might be talking about your child?

And you did something about it and look where you are. Well finally we’re gonna have some rapid fire questions, same rules, honest answers. Mm-hmm. One thing visibility is not.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (42:19)

Fake smiling.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (42:21)

What’s something your body knows before your brain catches up? Best piece of advice you’ve ever received that you had that had nothing to do with communication and yet it had everything to do with it. Okay.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (42:25)

Gaslighting.

I actually have two.

So the first one was James Morrison, ⁓ was one of the teachers when I was ⁓ learning to be a musician at a camp. And someone asked him what his big break was, and he said, There are no big breaks, just lots of little ones. And the other one was years later interacting with Don Walker, the pianist and songwriter from Cold Chisel, and I asked him.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (42:54)

Love there?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (43:04)

Have you got any tips for a burgeoning songwriter? And he said, Yes, kiss. And I was I don’t think so. No, no, keep it simple, stupid. I’m thinking Yeah. I think about it all the time. Look, it’s not a not pretty and it’s not kind, but it’s true. It is true.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (43:14)

And do you think I went to the b

How often do we over overcomplicate things? Yeah. So two conversations that we’ve had together, the the voice you have for the voice you use, the visibility you earn and the one that’s actually yours. Mm-hmm. What should somebody do to actually engage with you if they want to work on either of those two things?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (43:48)

⁓ get in touch. I love having this conversation, even if I’m not the right person for you, which, you know, not everyone is your person. ⁓ I can definitely always make recommendations of resources. But if you’d love to work with me and I’d love to work with you, please do get in touch ⁓ via LinkedIn or at findyourvoice dot com dot au or emanuelagrace dot com.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (44:08)

Fantastic. Emmanuella, thank you. Because this is just the type of conversation power of women exists to to share. Because these are the the investments that people you know think about making in themselves when they don’t even know where to start or or what to do, or they can’t quite put their finger on what it is that’s not gelling. And hopefully conversations like this bring that to the surface and and this gives them a roadmap.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (44:35)

Yep. And everyone’s journey’s diff everyone’s journey’s different, right? So some people might just need a book at the right time or a podcast at the right time. And some people might need a bit more support, you know. And so that’s why speaking to someone who understands really how how this process works can really help you find your way through it as well.

DI GILLETT [HOST] (44:55)

I find with every episode I too learn learn something and and between talking with you and and living in a household where emphasis is the be and all about what we say it’s a it’s an ongoing learning curve. So I’d love you to engage with ⁓ with us and and leave a review and let us know what you think about episodes like this because that’s what propels these podcasts out into the ether for more people to listen to.

And come and engage with me on LinkedIn. I write a couple of newsletters. I certainly write a a fortnightly newsletter that accompanies each one of these episodes. And I also talk about power of reinvention, which is a little bit of a a fun topic that ⁓ at ⁓ in my sixties is rather a passion project. Until next time.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

01:51 Visibility and Authenticity: Finding Your Voice

05:53 Formative Experiences: Lessons from the Stage

09:47 The Intersection of Fear and Joy in Performance

13:54 Understanding Your Agenda: Values and Visibility

17:57 Motivation and the Three R’s: Reason, Resources, Reward

21:54 Authenticity vs. Performance: The True Voice

24:20 The Art of Performance and Authenticity

28:49 Navigating Professional Expectations

29:04 Recognising Cognitive Dissonance

32:06 Finding Your Voice in Corporate Spaces

35:58 Identifying Passive Aggression in Leadership

40:07 Investing in Yourself for Growth

Connect with Di:

Find Emmanuella at:

Website https://findyourvoice.com.au

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmanuellagrace/

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/emmanuella_grace/

This is the home of unapologetic conversations and powerful stories of reinvention. New episodes drop every 2^nd Monday to fuel your week with insights on leadership, resilience, and success. Subscribe and join a community of women who are changing the game.

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How Much Does Self-Worth Drive Your Decisions?

by admin | Sep 21, 2026 | Health & Wellbeing

Self-worth isn’t a mood. It’s the architecture underneath almost every decision we make. For nearly three decades, Dr Maria-Elena Lukeides has worked with women carrying anxiety, exhaustion and a self-rejection. What makes her different from many in her field is how openly she reveals her own relationship with self-worth, one she describes as ongoing, evolving, and far from finished.

Dr Maria-Elena Lukeides is a Sydney-based clinical psychologist with 28 years of experience treating anxiety, trauma and depression, and the deeper patterns beneath them. Her approach is warm, direct, and grounded, and she takes the whole person seriously, not just the symptoms, but the body, the health, the life. Dr Lukeides believes healing isn’t just psychological. It’s physical, relational, and deeply personal. She has just finished a book on self-worth.

I reached out to Maria-Elena to understand more about the relationship between our self-worth and the decisions we make.

In this episode, I talk with Dr Lukeides to examine the difference between self-esteem and self-worth, the physiological and psychological roots of anxiety, and the internal battle for control that shapes so many of the choices women make; in relationships, in the mirror, and in the relentless pursuit of enough. Dr Lukeides has one consistent belief: understanding changes everything.

➡️You’ll Hear :

The difference between self-worth and self-esteem.
How self-rejection shapes the decisions we make, from the partners we choose to the clothes that we wear.
The physiological and psychological roots of anxiety, exhaustion and low mood.
Why control sits at the centre of the war within.

Key Takeaways:

Self-worth is not a fixed trait. It’s an evolving relationship you build with yourself for life.
Self-esteem is conditional, built on achievement, appearance and comparison. Self-worth is innate.
Anxiety and exhaustion are rarely the problem itself. Clinically, they’re usually the symptom of something deeper.
Letting go of control isn’t the same as not caring. It’s the difference between striving from fear and choosing from worth.

Dr Lukeides said:

“My relationship with my self-worth is ongoing and evolving. It will be for the rest of my life.”

“I’ve achieved so much more since I stopped caring about achieving, because I’ve got nothing to lose.”

Recommended Reading:

Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach

📖 Read the full transcript of this conversation here.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

DI GILLETT – HOST (00:00)

You need to love yourself as if your life depends upon it. Because it does. Now This is a quote from Dr Maria-Elena Lukeides and it is at the core of what this episode’s going to be about today.

I’m Di Gillett and welcome to the Power Of Women Podcast. The place where women supporting women isn’t just a sentiment. It is the decision we make every single day.

Maria-Elena will help us better understand our self-worth, our need for control, and the societal and other influences that underpin the choices that we make. And I’ve reached out to her today because there are a number of topical points that keep showing up in the community that I’m really curious about and I trust you are too. Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides thank you for joining me on the podcast.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (01:20)

Di it is such an honor and a pleasure to be on this podcast and a real gift to to share maybe some of my insights, but also some of my concerns about women, our burnout, you know, and hopefully we have a really invigorating kind of fun discussion. Doesn’t have to be too serious, but also like that really touches at the heart of you know some of the things that, you know, I think women

get to a certain age and we have, you know, just this place within us that that feels unheard, unseen, and a little thirst that has never really been quenched. And I think there’s so much around mental health and well-being. But I think we need to really kind of dive in and and really kind of explore what it means to to heal that space and to be able to feel fulfilled from that inside out.

DI GILLETT – HOST (02:16)

I already know we’ve got the right person in front of us. What a what a what a privilege. So thank you so very much. Could could I start with and and I think it helps our our listeners to to connect a little more deeply too.

Touching on a little bit about about you and and your personal experiences because I know you’ve been renowned for revealing a little more about yourself than perhaps other clinicians. And and And tapping tapping into that, Maria-Elena, could could you share with us what your relationship is with your own self self-worth? Because I think that’s a great spot to start.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (03:03)

I’ll start by saying my relationship, my self-worth is ongoing and evolving. And and I and it will be for the rest of my life. A bit about myself. So the thing that I find most important and why self-revelation for me i i isn’t just about talking about myself or it’s not a gimmick per se. I think when I’m in the room with someone and and they’re struggling and

I’m a woman that struggles as well. That sense of meeting as two humans that are in the same mud together. And that doesn’t mean that I don’t have some skills or some perspectives. Like we all can offer, you know, even if we’re in the same battle as our friends, from a bit outside, there are certain perspectives that

reveal certain insights that can be helpful. And obviously my studies and and you know, almost three decades of my work hopefully have made me a l or able to offer something a little bit more than just a a friendly perspective shift. But for me it was really important that no one came to me and felt that they were speaking to someone who acted as if they were above them.

Or acted or pretended or didn’t share with them that same common humanity of sometimes overwhelm, sometimes distress. you know, I think in my book I I talk a lot about, you know, in terms of trying to talk about how mindfulness and mindfulness practices and taking care of your inner world can be helpful in releasing patterns, but that

you know, I often will shout at my daughter when we’re running late and you know and

DI GILLETT – HOST (05:03)

You’re human.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (05:04)

then, you know, have that same feeling of feeling like I’m drowning in in this, you know, hole of guilt and and self criticism in a way where I I I know that what I’m doing isn’t really helpful and potentially is is harmful and and difficult for my child and I don’t want to be that parent. And so

Being able to reveal things about myself is always about allowing this other person to know that what they’re experiencing isn’t because that they are different or they’re failing or they’re broken in some way or they’ve missed something or they’re, you know, don’t have the capacity for things. It’s about creating that common human ground that this life is tricky and bloody hard.

And a lot of us, you know, find that really comfort when we hear something, we’re like, my God, I have that same thing, or that thought comes up for me as well. my God, I’m not the only person. Because we carry these difficulties that, you know, as as these inner shameful parts that we’re scared will be revealed. And that I think creates a whole level of suffering.

That is unnecessary and I want to liberate people from. So, you know, when I share, I share from that perspective of, you know, we’re all in this together. No one’s above or beyond. And and the humility, like that sense, that word, it it comes obviously from the Latin hum, you know, to to be with the ground, the the humus, like the the ground.

But what it means is that we’re all people whose feet get dirty. No one’s got clean feet here.

DI GILLETT – HOST (07:00)

It I don’t know whether you watch it and I and I I digress, but it reminds me a bit of one of my favorite Apple T V series, Shrinking. Have you have you watched that? I love that. You know, it’s the raw humility of a group of psychologists going through exactly what you’re talking about. The the everyday traumas and and trials and anxieties that that we face and and and we’re all trying to work it out.

And I it just takes me to that to that show. I I I have a rather soft spot for it.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (07:35)

Fantastic

and and I I you know I really recommend anyone watch it. It’s it’s a hoot but it’s also warming and it’s touching and it’s able to both balance, you know, irreverence as well as kind of tackling really deeply painful scenarios and difficulties on a on a human journey.

DI GILLETT – HOST (07:55)

Could I ask with the benefit of of hindsight, your relationship with your own self worth ten years ago by contrast to today? What’s What’s changed?

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (08:09)

Not much, but it’s an ever improving relationship. So I would say my self-worth was very limited. It was, you know, impoverished

DI GILLETT – HOST (08:20)

Bished.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (08:21)

not heavily invested in, I guess. up until so my I guess my personal journey is one in which I think like many of us, you know, we grow up and, you know, we’re confronted with schooling and, you know,

socializing and you know, dating and I always say I was very, very lucky to have been gifted with an above average IQ. It’s definitely lowered as I’ve aged significantly.

DI GILLETT – HOST (08:57)

How you measure that?

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (08:58)

remember being so cl like I really remember being able to absorb a lot of information. I I would have like five books out of I mean I taught myself to read at two and a half years of age from do you remember those cassette books that we used to have? Like it was the the original portable, right? And I often joked that Angela Lansbury taught me how to read ’cause she was the narrator for the Cinderella one. And I remember being obsessed with this book and I I was around, you know, one and a half and two years old when when

When I got gifted this book. And within three months I learnt to read because it would make a ding, it would have this little like bell.

DI GILLETT – HOST (09:37)

yes, yeah.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (09:38)

And

because of that, I learned how to track the words. Now both my parents are Greek immigrants, so they didn’t know how to read English. And so I I come in from two years of age, and then I think my appetite for reading was voracious up until, you know, probably still now, but it was yeah, I I kind of remember absorbing a lot of information, being able to write a lot, do multiple fields of study. Like, you know, I wasn’t just doing school, I would then do

DI GILLETT – HOST (10:05)

Yeah, but keep in mind you’ve got a little bit more on your plate now. So your your bandwidth to s to dedicate it to you is a little different, isn’t it?

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (10:14)

You are definitely right and and I’m probably being a little bit harsh on myself, but I I d I d I think so I would say that clearly I had a keen intellect. So I was one of these kids that was able to thrive at school very early in terms of scholastic achievement. But I always struggled with friends, I always struggled my social relationships, I

you know, struggled with my physical appearance. I didn’t feel very confident in my attractiveness, in my social attractiveness. I had a pretty difficult home life. It was quite stressful. There was a you know, my parents’ relationship wasn’t very harmonious. It was a house full of a lot of conflict, a a lot of sadness and distress and high stress, economic stress. And I also then struggled socially. I struggled with parents who

His predominant kind of focus in parenting was was more the practical needs and definitely not the emotional. And that’s just a factor of their social cultural upbringing themselves and and education. But I think, you know, that sense of what they believed was really important was us just learning to have discipline, being hard workers and and studying and getting a good education for them.

And so there wasn’t a lot of what we would call pastoral kind of care in the home. So I carried quite a lot when I was younger, and I I was someone who really struggled with intense anxiety. I mean, I think I remember having insomnia from at least 14 all the way to 20, and would actually get anxious as night approached because I knew that the the night would be endless. So with a lot of that, I had an why I say I was quite.

Lucky to be able to have this vehicle of success in front of me was because I anchored a lot of my worth in achieving and winning. So being first all the time was really important. You know, coming first, being first, I think it created this kind of buffer of self-esteem that I felt like, well, if I could just be a really high achiever.

then whatever I lacked in social skill, personality or physical attractiveness would be kind of made up. It was almost like there are these scales in front of us. And I’m like, okay, well maybe I’m not great on these things. So if I just put a lot of my eggs in my basket with this, maybe that will be enough to kind of, you know, make me, you know, make me likable, make me feel more worthy.

DI GILLETT – HOST (12:51)

You

made choices. You you made considered choices to improve your circumstances. As as a as a young child.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (12:59)

And and and it worked. I was lucky enough that I had that vehicle and that that you know that that strategy ahead of me.

DI GILLETT – HOST (13:07)

Hm, not so sure it’s luck.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (13:10)

I definitely made choices. It I definitely worked hard and I always worked hard on myself as well. I wanted happiness. I was very interested in spirituality. I wanted to know what the big picture was all about. I mean like I’m a clinical psychologist. I was interested in the brain, in the heart, like what makes humans humans, what what you know flourishing is all about, you know, why do some of us have these problems? You know, why do we suffer? And so for me there was this keen kind of personal experience.

But also watching the suffering of my parents in many ways and and how difficult their lives were and then how difficult a lot of lives are around us in that in our community. Mm. And so I was very drawn to to that that space of suffering. And it wasn’t until my first big heartbreak where I got a

fell in love with a young boy that was very good looking. And of course that felt very dangerous dangerous. He was just now it’s like you know those memes on, you know, Instagram where it’s just your girlfriend’s like bringing in her new boyfriend. It’s just a red flag. I mean that’s that’s who

DI GILLETT – HOST (14:20)

Yeah,

yeah, yeah. Good good looking is fraught with chora.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (14:25)

Right, especially for someone who never felt physically attractive enough, right? You know, so you’re just like, Well, if he likes me, I must be in, this is it, finally validation. And it was I I mean, and and I got rejected hard, I got cheated on, I got rejected. And so all of this kind of I’m not good enough came up for me i in a wild way, at around twenty four, twenty five. And it was

Palpably so distressing for me. It wasn’t the heartbreak, it wasn’t him per se. It was this unworthiness that deep within me I I had hidden from, I think, or had dressed up, you know, like it was almost like I, you know, put on the feathers and put on the drag makeup

DI GILLETT – HOST (15:14)

I can so relate to this.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (15:16)

and her out, presenting her to the world. Look at this person. And wow, that just

made me feel naked, you know, like that I had been stripped naked and and there I was feeling super unworthy. And a psychologist I was working with, a colleague of mine, said, here’s a book. I really like it. It’s called Radical Acceptance. And up until that time, I I mean, had been doing, you know, meditation and yoga. And I thought, okay, this is, you know, by a writer who’s both a clinical psychologist and a

Meditator and that book changed my life. Acceptance. Radical Acceptance by Tara Brack, V R.

DI GILLETT – HOST (16:02)

Okay.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (16:03)

And I mean, sh she’s still working to this day and does, I think, almost weekly live podcasts and talks. But this book wasn’t just a meditation book, which is, you know, here’s how to breathe, or here’s how you can do to relax, or here are some, you know, just talking about

ways in which we can escape, you know, the the rabbit hole of the mind. She fundamentally changed how I approached mindfulness and also then how I approached working with my clients and my patients.

DI GILLETT – HOST (16:35)

Could you share a couple of the key points that that underpin that?

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (16:39)

So what she shifted was that at the core of our suffering isn’t necessarily just that we have this monkey mind that keeps talking or the stresses that are in our lives. It’s that these things impact how worthy or unworthy we feel. That they impact and kind of tug on deep core wounds from wherever and we all have them.

DI GILLETT – HOST (17:02)

And this can happen at any point in our journey.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (17:05)

Any point and radical acceptance was about starting to look at the self not as something that needed to be shaped and molded into this palatable thing, but something that at the core of us, in order to feel loved, genuine love, we have to be okay with who we are as we are.

DI GILLETT – HOST (17:24)

Yeah.

‘Cause we have to accept ourselves before anybody else.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (17:27)

And accept ourselves in a way where we’ve real love, not just as a token gesture. ‘Cause I think we talk about self acceptance, but the near enemy of self acceptance is resignation.

DI GILLETT – HOST (17:39)

Is self loathing on the same continuum?

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (17:42)

Self-loving might be the actual enemy, the near enemy. In Buddhism, we have a concept which is called near enemies, right? Looks like, feels like, tastes like

DI GILLETT – HOST (17:51)

Mm.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (17:52)

and is it? And so we work on this sense of, I well, I I guess I just will have to accept that this is who I am and that’s it. If there’s a reason there’s an anger there, it’s not actual acceptance, it’s it’s a giving up.

DI GILLETT – HOST (18:06)

It’s a resignation, isn’t it? Yeah.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (18:09)

So there’s a qualitatively different way that that acceptance was more than just letting go of trying to change because potentially you might fear that it’s unchangeable or it’s too hard or you just give up on that. It’s acceptance, it’s it’s an embracing. It’s actually it’s a welcome, it’s it’s an embrace, it’s I’ll still love you, I still love you.

DI GILLETT – HOST (18:34)

And

only us can can work through the journey to land at that point. That’s that’s not that’s a a deeply embedded personal point of acceptance.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (18:46)

Absolutely nailed, Di because if you think about it, even if someone else loves me, the only reason I want that love is so that then I can tell myself that maybe that’s true too. But ultimately, the person that I really want to feel good about me is me. It’s that interrelationship. Because when I truly love myself and that sense of worthiness no longer

is up for question within me. It’s not even something that can doubt. It becomes silly to doubt it. Then even when someone rejects me, it’s hurtful and painful. But it no longer touches that worthiness. It is it’s two different things.

DI GILLETT – HOST (19:31)

So do those rejections along the way add value to finally landing at that point of acceptance or can they be detrimental rather than positive?

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (19:44)

Depends you work it. Yeah, it depends how you approached. Definitely it was detrimental at first. And then I found this book and it was, you know, it was really altering of that relationship. And the big difference, and I and I want to make this point because this is what I see very commonly, is that we conflate worthiness with self esteem.

DI GILLETT – HOST (20:03)

Yeah. Well that’s and that’s that’s really interesting ’cause that was going to be one of my one of my questions, Maria-Elena was th you know, the difference between self worth and self hatred. It’s that same it’s not this or that. Is or is it?

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (20:20)

No, I mean self hatred is an active despising of a part of the self. But what I would say is that I I don’t know if anyone really has self hatred. What I think is that we have cut off parts. So there’s a part of me that is really angry at another part of me.

for not being different or better or or adjacent because the angry part of me loves me so much that it wants me to have everything that I want, meaning love, worthiness, whatever. So there’s that angry part then is that part that actually has that sense of worthy. Because I said, well, why do you

DI GILLETT – HOST (21:08)

‘Cause that’s the fuel. That can be fuel, positive fuel.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (21:11)

So once you can so when you can work with that in a way where it’s like, well, why do I hate myself? Well, I hate myself because I’m bad at this, I’m bad at that, I hate this, I hate this about myself, I’m unlovable, you know, I’m I’m sh I’m shameful or I’m a failure or I’m dumb or whatever it is. And like, well, why is that a problem? Well, because I want to have the things that I would have like, you know, so it’d be about seeing that these deficits

which are more related to self-esteem, are causing the true self to miss out on the things that the true self believes they deserve. And if you believe you deserve it, then somewhere we know we are worthy. That’s it. And so if psychologists or therapists go too quickly to try and move to that eradicating that self-hatred, we’re missing the very entry or the doorway.

DI GILLETT – HOST (22:08)

‘Cause you need to sit with it.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (22:10)

Yes. That

part of you that is actually angry, unnecessary. I mean, we don’t have to keep, you know, hating ourselves, but it’s like, where is that part coming from? It’s coming from another part that knows that we are worthy, that we deserve love, we deserve fulfillment, we deserve to be safe, we deserve to be loved. If I believe I deserve that, then there is an innate belief in my worthiness.

And where we suffer is that we don’t have faith in the external world to recognize that worthiness in us. And so we build esteem stuff. So this is where the self-esteem comes in, because the esteem stuff is all the stuff that I was doing. Achievement, making sure I dressed well, making sure I, you know, performed, you know, so that the feathers, does that make sense? The costume.

I’d wear it and so that self esteem is criteria that we use or that we believe other people will identify as worthy for us. So self esteem is

DI GILLETT – HOST (23:20)

But you might not be feeling any of those things that you’re presenting.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (23:25)

And self esteem is about a projection of how I believe others see me, even though it’s an internalised measure.

DI GILLETT – HOST (23:32)

Sounds like Instagram just got completely exposed.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (23:35)

So self-esteem is about how highly do I esteem myself on certain variables and that always is going to be in comparison. I can’t esteem myself. I can’t rate myself unless there is a rating. To be a rating, there needs to be a differentiator. That means someone has to be above, someone needs to be below. So this is where that innate sense of looking out into the world and very quickly rating ourselves, ranking ourselves. Where am I? How good?

Who’s I’m in the room and I’m looking, okay, where do I fit in the scheme?

DI GILLETT – HOST (24:09)

And you see girls doing that against each other so so often and and and one’s the leader of the pack and the others will be being held back because they’re competing e against something that they may never achieve. Yeah.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (24:23)

And so there is a sense that I think some of this comparative nature is evolutionarily based. I don’t think we can overcome it, but we can stop buying into it as a factual reality of what leads to fulfilment, happiness and safeness.

DI GILLETT – HOST (24:41)

I think what is more pervasive though today is the whatever the imagery is, whether it’s it’s visual or success or the like, the what’s been held up is so much more prevalent in it in it coming at us today for all the obvious obvious reasons, than it than it was before. So this

sense of anxiety and this feeling of of compromising our self worth has got a whole lot more enemies coming at us or a whole lot more inputs coming at us at such a such a rate that it’s no wonder self esteem is taking a battering amongst Yeah. Not just younger people, but peop people in general. All of us.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (25:34)

I mean you’re absolutely that’s absolutely I mean that’s that’s statistically proven, right? Like the the more imagery and it’s not you’re right, it’s not just about like when I was growing up a lot of the visual imagery was two dimensional, right? It was it was only i in terms of what they were wearing, maybe you know, what they looked like. Now we have insights into how they relate with their partners and does that make sense how like so it’s also now

brought into direct comparison things that we couldn’t see from a magazine two-dimensional of like three-dimensional, but you know, like the the image. Yes. Now where, you know, people are posting little snippets of their conversations. They’re taking videos of them relating with their kids or packing lunch boxes or, you know, doing things with work. So suddenly we’re exposed to almost all aspects. None nothing’s private.

And so now we have comparisons on so many more variables in our lives.

DI GILLETT – HOST (26:36)

Which may or may not be authentically

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (26:39)

True. They may be authentically true in the moment, but it’s a sliver of someone’s entirety. Right, you know, if you see me on a Monday morning at eight AM, I’m not s yelling at my daughter and you’re like, Whoa, what a great mum and

DI GILLETT – HOST (26:50)

It reminds me of when my when my mother who could be quite quite strident who’d be yelling at you and then the phone would ring and she’d say hello Margot speaking and you’re like How did you just do that?

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (27:06)

Show yourself woman.

DI GILLETT – HOST (27:08)

Exactly. You just ripped my head off two seconds ago and and the next thing you’ve got your phone voice on and it was so hard to reconcile.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (27:19)

You

know, and the answer to well, who’s the real Margaret, it’s both of them. Both of them. And yet, you know, the public facing might be, hello Margaret speaking. And and the like, you know, so the experience we’re not given again, even though we have so much saturation, we’re we’re still not often given that that real glimpse. And so we’re comparing ourselves on things that you know are are unfair, but it’s that comparison, right? And

And that constant sense of the and somehow the benchmark’s always up here. It’s not in the common realm, like it’s not that average. So that’s that’s really hard. And and the reason why self-worth gets a battering, because self-esteem is all about this ranking, it’s achievement-based, it’s it’s criteria-based. You know, you’re you’re in or you’re out of a category. Whereas worthiness is not an in or an out criteria.

DI GILLETT – HOST (28:16)

Yeah.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (28:17)

This is the way I want like if anyone takes this away, it’s why sometimes I say self-esteem is the enemy of worthiness, whether it’s good or bad. Because self-esteem is is literally how do I score on a number of variables? Like I go to the doctor and you know I get eighty tests done and there’s there’s an answer for each one of those tests. You’re here, you’re here, you’re here, you’re here, you’re here, you’re here. But aliveness

like my worthiness, my potential for health.

DI GILLETT – HOST (28:48)

It’s not a direct scorable part of our world.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (28:52)

You might say no test can pick up that.

DI GILLETT – HOST (28:54)

And then it’s subjective. It’s not it’s not objective.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (28:57)

Or, you know, I say like worthiness for me when I when I when that clicked for me, that my worthiness isn’t the same thing as self-esteem. Actually that worthiness, that entitlement to safeness, that entitlement to love, that entitlement to friendship, to to to to to to positive experiences.

and when when I say safeness I mean everything we need to be safe. I don’t just mean physical safe, I mean financial safety, the the ability to thrive, to be respected, to have my human rights. That that these things are not conditional upon me meeting certain social cultural criteria, which really, you know, are only and and every culture has a different set of criteria to have of and

DI GILLETT – HOST (29:44)

Cool.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (29:44)

and or and historical time points. So does worthiness change then according to, you know, like

who’s worthy in ancient Egypt is different to who’s worthy now. I mean worthiness should be a constant construct.

DI GILLETT – HOST (29:57)

If I tie worthiness to self esteem in in my own situation, I would I would say I didn’t really land there until my early forties. But events going on around us, be it political, social, whatever, start to chip at that, that can get dinted at at any point in time.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (30:24)

Absolutely. Especially because it’s coupled with self-esteem. So someone who feels worthy because they’re I’m pretty great in the world, things are going well, I’ve got good friends, I’ve got a partner, or I or I have, you know, I feel confident in my body or my look, I don’t have issues with that. So their esteem is high. It only takes one redundancy.

DI GILLETT – HOST (30:46)

Yeah. And it all comes crashing down.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (30:48)

One divorce. It only takes

And and this is what I kind of try and preach. You know, I’m almost like a preacher. I’m so passionate about this. You’re gonna hear me be super passionate. Because all of this self-esteem stuff, work on it if you want, you know, or not. But it’s also because it’s based on conditions, and most of our conditions, no matter how hard we try.

DI GILLETT – HOST (31:14)

They can change at any point in time.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (31:17)

AI, I mean I say this all the time. You know, people we we’re for for many centuries intelligence has been highly prized, does that make sense? And there has been a sense that well, you know, intelligence and and working hard, if you’re smarter, you deserve to have more than other people. That is it’s kind of like we’ve all accepted that. Well, you know, it’s unfair, but you know,

DI GILLETT – HOST (31:40)

Now that’s up for grabs.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (31:42)

or more attractive, then, you know, life’s gonna be easier for you and that’s just how the dice rolls. And we’re about to see that maybe AI is going to come and be like, well, no one’s gonna be like, no matter how smart you are, you’re probably not gonna have the same memory retention as Google. You’re not gonna be able to go, okay, do you remember what’s what’s that thing for this thing, right? Now Google already is smarter than most of us in terms of just I’m not talking about true intelligence, but just that ability to hold

DI GILLETT – HOST (32:10)

Recall.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (32:11)

We don’t need that anymore. So that’s not necessarily we don’t that’s not impressive anymore. So if we are also now, you know, going to base all of our sense of worthiness and we feel good about ourselves because we’re like, look how like, you know, maybe not egotistically, look how much I’ve achieved, but you’re like going, I’m pretty smart, I earn a good living, you know, I’ve done a lot in my life, you know, I must be pretty good, I’ve got a good family, whatever. And then suddenly now

Maybe your industry collapses.

DI GILLETT – HOST (32:42)

There’s so many industries that will be feeling like that now. I mean, I think probably one of the obvious ones are are advertising and and media and and all of those creative spaces because it’s all been all been done differently. And and prized roles that were on pedestals in the past, a bit like in the day, you know, when my my

p my grandparents in in the day the the prize role might have been the bank manager. Well well these days that’s probably almost seen as a pariah or non existent. So, you know, the the world the world is changing constantly, but I think I think you’re right. If if intelligence was linked to and and knowledge was linked to self esteem

That’s got the biggest bit of competition coming at it right now than we’ve we’ve ever had in any point in our history. Ever.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (33:42)

And so you’re going to be left with, well, what makes me good enough now? What if like what use am I? And to me, I’m devastated when I hear that. And I’m like, having a higher self

DI GILLETT – HOST (33:52)

Yeah, that’s a depressing

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (33:54)

should never have been what you anchor your worthiness in. How about your humanity? How about who you are as a human being? How about how you relate to others? But the problem is that we’ve tied worthiness and self esteem into this competitive edge without knowing it.

Because really what we’re saying is if I’m not better than other people at stuff, how am I good?

DI GILLETT – HOST (34:18)

I keep seeing either in my friendship group or broader circles and and then more in in discussions with with people where you know and and you touched on it about your relationships early on, you know, we we who we choose for our partner and and maybe you know we’re attracted to the poor choices, not the not the right choices.

And then down to what we choose to wear, choosing to go and opt for a cosmetic procedure, all of these things trying to fuel our self worth. Is that the internal battle trying to elevate our position?

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (35:04)

If it’s coming from a place of fear that unless I’m competitive in this like in the market, whether it’s does that make sense with my looks or you know, anything else, if I if I’m not an eight, if I’m not a nine, like so again, I want us to start thinking about the difference between knowing that you’re worth, which is just that because people inherently have value as they are, with the uniqueness that that they have, compared to this sense that

And I’m I have value and worthiness only because I reach this criteria. And if that goes lower, then I lose what I have, because what I have is based on this conditional that I’m in this box eight plus, seven plus, you know, and if I go four to six, then I’ll lose what I have. I’ll lose this thing. Or it’s there’s insecurity and so this fear.

that is constantly chasing us of, you know, it’s almost like the makeup will come off, the feathers, I’ll lose my feathers, you know, I’ll I’ll lose the Emperor’s new clothes and everyone’s gonna see me naked. And I think it’s really important for us as women to feel able to, you know, do whatever we want with, you know, to upkeep, to look good, to to feel ourselves in the way that we like.

That’s a passion project. It’s like, you know, going to your home and updating it and taking pride in how it looks is very different to patching things that you’re scared that if I don’t fix this, it’s gonna fall apart. Where, you know, it’s been driven by fear. And that fear it means that temporarily you’re going to get the face done or you’ll get a few things, you’ll feel confident again, but only for six to nine month nine nine months.

Yeah.

Back again and women waste an entire lifetime. Men as well, like this is ubiquitous, but women especially, because I think social culturally so much of our value is not about innate stuff.

DI GILLETT – HOST (37:19)

It’s all this superficial cosmetic stuff in whatever in whatever that cosmetic package might be.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (37:25)

Right. And so so much of our sense of how we’re seen by the external world is based on whether or not we’re meeting that criteria of eight plus. So f and I use the word eight, you know, like that number arbitrarily. So that’s a lifetime where you’re constantly on a treadmill and you’re only safe for very short periods of time, you know, like you lose the weight maybe, you get fit, you like how you’re looking.

And then one week of bed rest because you were sick, or a busy period at work, or you go on holidays and you click and it slips. And so it slips. So that fee comes again. And so we spend a whole lifetime in this cycle of constantly chasing, constantly scared, with very brief intermittent episodes of maybe feeling good. That’s such a that’s that’s such a difficult experience. The cumulative effect of that.

DI GILLETT – HOST (38:20)

I’m talking with clinical psychologist Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides and coming up we’re going to delve further into the root cause of what impacts our feelings, causes anxiety and that general feeling of being flat.

If you’re loving the Power of Women podcast, be sure to jump onto our YouTube channel and hit that subscribe button to ensure you never miss an episode. Maria-Elena, so often if if we go to the doctor and and we’re feeling anxious, we’ve got low mood and exhaustion, there’s a tablet for that.

there’s a something to shift our our our mood that comes in a in a bottle. But it’s really the symptom of something much broader than that, is it not? What what would be the root cause of of some of this and and should we be treating it with a tablet?

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (39:31)

That’s it’s a million dollar question.

DI GILLETT – HOST (39:35)

Yeah, it’s a million multi billion dollar industry question, I think.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (39:39)

Yes.

And it’s not an easy answer. The road to hell is paved with many, many paths. And what I mean is that anxiety, you know, low mood, depression, there’s multiple pathways to that. And I I really want to kind of say that for many women, some of it is physiological and we’re often gaslit.

by doctors and not on purpose, but there is a sense of, well, it’s just your mood, maybe you’re stressed, is is work hard, are you tired? And you know, maybe sometimes the right type of tests or, you know, especially in menopause, for example, so many women should have been prescribed HRT, for example, now that we know that it is safe enough for some women. For some women it it won’t be, but it’s peri menopausal symptoms and they they have been dismissed ’cause maybe someone’s

not finished their period. They’re still in that 10 year. So anywhere from, you know, 35 to to 50 where some of these symptoms can show up. And they authentically can create panic symptoms because the because so we have a top-down and bottom-up model of s of of mental health. Top-down meaning it’s the way that I’m thinking, it’s, you know, maybe some beliefs,

DI GILLETT – HOST (40:59)

Leave.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (41:01)

it’s the pressure, it’s it’s

it’s psych psychological from the perspective that it is based on experiences that I’m having in the world. But there’s also what we call bottom up. And that’s that this is we’re all integrated. So it’s a holistic system. So sometimes there are genuine physiological causes for our mental health concerns that might be overlooked and and and maybe you’re having a a real understanding of your clinical picture, you know, sleep.

you know, digestion, absorption of macro and micronutrients, w we know hormones have a huge effect. We know our thyroid affects us iron. There’s a whole range. So that’s one thing that I think we need to note because there’s so many women that have come to me and and really we’ve discovered down the track that there’s a physiological issue that really needs to be taken care of. But let’s look at the more psychological kind of nature of anxiety of

you know, worry and then depression a little bit different. So fear and anxiety, anxiety is always our attempts to try and find a way to not experience something that we don’t want to experience. That is the simplest way I can define it because that then encompasses a whole all of the spectrum of things that might come up. So anxiety occurs as a hormone to help us

Stay focused on something that might lead to something that we don’t want to happen.

DI GILLETT – HOST (42:36)

Fight or flight?

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (42:38)

It will include fight, flight, freeze. Yep. Right.

DI GILLETT – HOST (42:43)

Food?

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (42:45)

And mating the five Fs. So we we like there are many. So it’s not just fight or flight, it’s freeze, which is I’m just stuck, I can’t move, right? It’s also feed. Sometimes it’s this overwhelming hunger, like so you’re and again that makes sense, right? If some bad times were coming that we’re fueling up for the winter, for example. So for some people, there’s a real kind of feed response.

And and you know, sometimes also, you know, physiological markers of like anxiety can also be in hyper arousal states and things like that, again, much less common, but can actually happen. So what I would say is that that major fight flight freeze is probably the ones that we know. It’s that that symptom of adrenaline. Now, adrenaline’s going to be extremely useful if we need to run away from something.

Scary very quickly. It’s going to be very useful if we need to fight off some attacker, whether it’s animal or human. The flight, so flight or fight, so avoid.

Or worry. So the avoidance is when we we are actively proc so procrastination is part of this. So procrastination isn’t a laziness issue. It’s not a can’t be bothered issue.

DI GILLETT – HOST (44:14)

That’s a freeze.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (44:16)

It’s an anxiety issue. It’s an avoidance. I want to I want to leave. I don’t want to do this. I start doing other things. I get up to paint the house instead of writing the paper. You know, so there’s there’s this sense of feeling overwhelmed with that task, fear of failure with that task, you know, fear of not knowing what I’m doing.

So avoidance is part of that flight response, procrastination, that flight response. So it’s a sense of trying to move away from the thing that’s worrying us. Or we’re in fight mode, which is okay, I’ve got problems. So that can actually look like problem solving. Working through a problem. So worry isn’t anxiety, it is a strategy to try and come up with a solution to the thing that you.

Don’t want to experience

DI GILLETT – HOST (45:05)

then be linked to worthiness, I’m trying to problem solve so that I feel w worthwhile, I’m useful, I have value. Or am I conflating issues?

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (45:13)

Well, there probably

like I think there is a sense of that worries about something triggers in me and I need to solve a problem, not to feel good, but because I’m actually concerned about it. So concern there has to be some level of concern. Or it could be vicarious concern. Two people have this issue here and you’re like,

it would be I I would like to say I don’t want them to not solve that problem. So there is still that sense of problem solving that’s important. Problem solving and worrying is a skill. So it doesn’t always have to be applied through anxiety. Like if you’re sitting down at work at the boardroom and there’s a, you know, kind of strategy issue and people, you know, you’re you’re not doing that with anxiety. You might even find that it’s super invigorating to do. I love doing, you know, samurai sudokus, like, you know, bring them on.

I’m there for hours trying to solve the problem. I’m a problem solver. It’s not necessarily anxiety fueled. So the type of worry that I’m talking about is when it’s it’s happening in this, you know, space of fear, anxiety, where it’s linked to it it doesn’t feel like problem solving, it feels like worry.

DI GILLETT – HOST (46:24)

What about those days where you wake up on a Sunday morning and it’s it’s grey and and cloudy and you feel demotivated and you don’t want to get up versus the Sunday morning where summer’s bursting out, it’s a beautiful sunny day and you wanna get out and and and amongst it. Can it be as simple as the weather fueling and influencing our emotion?

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (46:52)

There’s

a stepping stone, but yes.

DI GILLETT – HOST (46:54)

So Okay And the stepping stone is what?

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (46:58)

There is a silent analyzer in our mind. So there is some type of decision maker and thinker. There’s a couple of thinkers in there. And so if it’s, you know, it’s been cold, so on a Sunday, and it’s finally one of those days that you can feel spring creeping in and it’s sunny and it’s warm, you’re not freezing, you’re it’s comfortable to get out of bed.

And you think, wow, I’ve got lots to do. So I want to get out and do them. Wow, it’s going to be great. Maybe I can take a walk here. Maybe I can do that. Today’s, it just feels great. That feeling is energy. So I want us to kind of have a different model of happiness, motivation. What is that feeling? It’s energy, it’s energy towards. And so on a day where I’ve said, today is a nice day. I’m going to enjoy it.

I release energy to go out into the day. When I wake up and it’s cold and it’s red and I can hear that it’s been raining all night and there’s a whole ton of things that I have to do. It’s not that you don’t have energy, but that part of you that’s supposed to open the gate for energy or close it, if it’s like this is gonna be miserable, I’m gonna hate today, I’ve just said that my day is going to be miserable. I’ve just said that my day is going to be hard.

that it’s gonna be painful, like whether it’s because it’s cold, it’s soggy, you know, all that thing and it’s like I’m not looking forward. What does I’m not looking forward to it mean is that I’m not gonna experience anything positive.

DI GILLETT – HOST (48:37)

Now I’m on the couch right now ’cause I I have declared how some Sundays do play out.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (48:42)

Yeah, right. So when I’m saying to myself, today’s today’s today’s a fail. Today’s gonna be a shit day, why would that part of me that’s responsible for delivering energy help me out with that? It’s like going, Well, I don’t want you to have a shit day. I’m gonna keep you in the bed. This is what we don’t realize about dopamine, which is this function. We keep thinking it’s the happiness thing. It’s not. It’s it’s based on my assessment.

Of how successful I’m likely to be today, how much fun or how positive, like it’s not just a fun thing, but it’s more like, am I gonna, you know, is today gonna be a good day? So if it’s not gonna be a good day and you can stay on the couch, you’re gonna go, Well, I’m not I’m not going out there and wasting my energy because from an evolutionary point of view, the part of us that’s responsible for giving us energy or not is a hoarder.

DI GILLETT – HOST (49:39)

Because

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (49:41)

Evolutionary

point of view, we shouldn’t be burning a calorie unnecessarily. This is why we have an obesity issue. Because we’re designed to keep like we don’t have a mechanism that that makes us hungry or appetitive based on how many calories are left. It’s just if it’s available, keep going. Keep going. And you know what? I’m not going to spend a cent if I can hoard it for as long as I can. I’m not paying out some money.

So this energy system, and I’m simplifying it somewhat, but it’s kind of like this, is that it’s like this, you know, kind of stingy money, like your accountant, your money manager, who’s like going, Yeah, if you’re not gonna win today, I’m not giving you money to burn on shit. Like I’m not doing that. If you’re gonna have a good day, because a good day means that I actually get more money in than I’ve spent.

I want to sit there. So when I have a good day, I actually replenish and I’m in surplus. So I actually bring back. So I allocate a little bit of money, but I actually get 10%, 20% more. That’s money in the bank. When I’m gonna have a bad day or I’m not looking for the thing that I have to do today is not a great, it’s an awful day. It’s with people I don’t like, or it’s a task that’s horrible, or I might get fired today. That system is like, I’m not letting you go to work.

Now here’s where adrenaline can come in, and this is something really important, is but I not every day Sunday, I can’t stay on the couch. So on Monday, if I don’t go to work, I don’t get paid, if I don’t get paid, I don’t pay rent, if I don’t pay rent, I don’t have anywhere to live. So now I have to. But I don’t want to. So my manager, my money manager goes, I don’t want to allocate resources.

But now I have to, so the fear network comes in and goes, Well, if you don’t go, so now there is a consequence that I do not want to experience. This is anxiety.

DI GILLETT – HOST (51:43)

And is this battle going on in your head? This is left left brain, right brain battling ourselves?

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (51:49)

It’s multiple selves. I wouldn’t say it’s left brain, right brain at all. It is different parts that are supposed to be doing different things and it’s not based on any component in and of itself. So these are different emotional motivational networks where it draws from multiple areas of the brain that organizes our behavior through chemistry, right? So if I now don’t have natural energy because I’m not looking forward to going to work, but I have to.

There’s a consequence and I want to avoid getting fired. Adrenaline comes in and goes, well, I’ll guess I’ll lend you the money.

So now I’m getting up out of bed, but with adrenaline. Now adrenaline is like a loan shark. You’ll get it. Like they will give you like an unlimited supply, but it’s dirty fuel. It feels yuck, it doesn’t feel great like you’re getting there, but it’s like a yucky energy. And then you have to pay it back with interest. So then we come home, we’re finally done.

Now on the good day, we’re finally done. If we’re fueled by dopamine, if that money manager goes, Okay, you’re gonna have a good day, here’s the dopamine. You’ve got this yum energy, it’s nice energy, it feels great, you’re motivated, you’re good, you come home, there’s actually a surplus of cash, you put it back in the bank, you feel good. When you come home after you’ve been fueled by anxiety, even if you’ve successfully navigated the day, so even if you have had a win, you’re depleted.

You don’t feel rewarded. You actually just like, thank God that’s over. So now that gets hashtagged as a loss, as a fail. Thank God it’s over. Isn’t I killed the day? I’m so glad I went. It’s that’s a loss. So tomorrow, if I’ve got a similar day to attend to, guess which system’s likely to kick in? Adrenaline again.

DI GILLETT – HOST (53:50)

Starting

yeah, you’re starting from behind the eight ball. Yep. And that and that could be the pattern of of so many people’s so many people’s lives. So is this what is this what you’re dealing with in a clinical setting more often than not? All

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (54:05)

Right. And teaching people like, you know, and and part of it is understanding the motivational network and system that this is how it actually works. So it’s not normal. It actually would be mentally unwell for me to look forward to going somewhere where I’m gonna get my ass handed to me. Yeah. So some s and this is what I find, you know, so sometimes it’s like it would be mental illness for me to have no problem going somewhere where I perceive

Constant threat, constant anxiety, disasters, constant stress, constant battles. So someone, you know, for example, who’s living in a really toxic relationship coming to me and saying, Look, you know, I know he yells and I know he’s emotionally abusive and he criticizes me, but I just want to feel happy. I I would have to make you mentally unwell.

DI GILLETT – HOST (54:57)

So it’s a it’s a scenario where, you know, this this war within is is an ongoing battle and there are so many influences coming at us at any point in our lives, right back to where you started when I asked you about your self worth and you said it’s a it’s an evolution. This is

The same for all of us. How we feel, how we operate, the level of of anxiety we may experience at any given time, it’s a constant evolution because life is ever changing.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (55:42)

Right. And the demands in life is ever changing. So if we’re going to have any shift, we have to free ourselves from what we consider unpalatable. So in order for me to liberate myself, I actually need to stop seeing the rain and going, okay, so I’m gonna get wet. You know what? Maybe that’s okay. You know, or there’s a lot at work that I can’t control, I’m gonna have super lot of demands on me.

And I I might stuff up and get fired. I don’t want that to happen. That’s that’s a reality one way or the other. You know what? I need to let go of that. I need to stop controlling that bad thing from happening. And I also need to start looking at my day in ways that I can start to see myself as being successful. And what I mean by that is rather than going, I just

I almost lost that or I stuffed up here. It’s actually being aware of how we’re talking to ourselves because that is like it’s Instagram’s a great analogy. Is it’s like all of these moments are like images that get hashtagged. And if we’re hashtagging them critically, low self- like you know, like l self-criticism, failure, loss, I don’t think I can do this. We’re actually

Going to be calling on the adrenaline system to help us out. The dopamine system, you know, this kind of clean energy, if you will, kind of model, is when dopamine is only going to be released if there is a high likelihood of success. And what I mean by success is that I’m going to navigate that task optimally. Like, you know, I’m going to finish it. There’s a criteria like, yes, I finished that report. It’s going to be good enough.

You know, or if I go to see my friends, I’ll see them and I’ll have a good time. You know, as opposed to, I’ve got to go see these friends, what am I gonna wear? It’s cold outside, where am I gonna park? I’ll have nothing to say, I’m exhausted, this is just gonna take me out of We’ve

DI GILLETT – HOST (57:51)

All the

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (57:53)

all that is going, actually this is I felt like this the last time, the last three times and we laugh. We actually had a great time, and by the time we sit down no one knows what you’re wearing anyway. How

DI GILLETT – HOST (58:02)

How often is that true? We go to all of that effort and then you realise it simply didn’t matter. All that effort or all that expense or all of that anxio Yeah. And it just didn’t matter.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (58:14)

Didn’t

matter and actually that these things are the things that actually give value. And so when we really look at that is like, how are we hashtagging the moments of our lives? Because they’re shaping this money man to know, like, you know, so for me, getting up, even if it’s a hard day, it’s like I’m gonna sit with five, six, seven patients today, and we’re gonna have beautiful moments of connection. Does that make sense? And and heart space.

And even if I’m feeling a bit unwell or I’ve got other things to do, I’m like, that’s important. I really want to go to that. I want to show up for these people. Not I have to, right? Because then that’s going to bring that sense of coming into that space of value. It’s similar to if I’m if I’m looking at other aspects of the things that I’m not looking forward to, is finding the value underneath, is okay, well.

Like I don’t want to lose my job. That’s a fear I have. I’m getting managed at work, or there’s pressure, or I’ve got issues with my husband, or you know, the kids. But actually, I need to if I keep trying to control that and make sure that it’s all okay, I’m I’m going to be using this energy that is ultimately going to rob me of the very thing that I’m trying to maintain. So, in that, you know, in that stress or in that

I’m going to perform less well. I’m gonna get cranky. I’m I’m probably going to forget something or mess something up. It’s like no one wants to lose. Like so when we let go, it’s not about not caring. And people think it’s about not caring. Of course we care. Of course we all want the win. But it’s about no longer trying to control that anymore. To step out of this treadmill of anxiety and worry, it’s not about.

tightening the criteria and getting a performance coach and seeing how much more pressure I can put on myself, more criteria, you know, more kind of leveraging of the and that’s the problem is that we just go deeper, we double down and we’re just like, need more strategies, need to work harder.

DI GILLETT – HOST (1:00:24)

And I know I do that in my own mind and and and question my decisions and and then go and engage a third party external to to give me some some input on and so many of us could could relate to that. Dr Lukeides, you’ve could I ask you as a closing thought today, you’ve you’ve just finished a book on on self worth.

For women listening to this episode, if there was one thing they could focus on to help optimise their self worth, what would it be?

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (1:01:01)

It would be really kind of starting that relationship with themselves. And when there is a part of you that’s feeling overwhelmed or stressed or you’re critical of something within you where you feel like something that you’re not quite getting and you’re trying to kind of work on it harder and harder, it’s like what is that part of you that feels like it’s failing you feel like? And what does that part of you need from you?

And this doesn’t mean that we don’t achieve. In fact, I think I’ve achieved so much more since I stopped caring about achieving because I’ve actually got nothing to lose. So I can venture everything. So I can have the conversation, right? I can, you know, be more spontaneous and effortless in my relationships because if they leave me, they leave me. But I can only be myself. So I actually enjoy them more.

I’m probably a nicer person. It’s to allow yourself that freedom to no longer control the catastrophes, because they’re probably not that controllable. The catastrophes meaning the job loss, you know, the the chastisement, the criticism, the you know, the the argument, w the the you know, someone’s disappointed in you. It it’s almost like that let them, but not just them, let everything.

DI GILLETT – HOST (1:02:29)

Mm-hmm.

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (1:02:30)

And within that space to kind of find that freedom to then be more expressive of our true nature.

DI GILLETT – HOST (1:02:40)

Thank you. I think And if I put my spin on that, I think it’s it’s not about striving to achieve but as you’ve just said, you’ve achieved so much more when you’ve taken the emphasis on that away because you now have nothing to lose, you’ve only got something to to gain and I think that is a much easier

place to live than constantly striving and putting ourselves under impossible pressures, whatever those pressures may be, to fit in, to do better, to be better, to be more. when we haven’t and I’m not saying don’t be ambitious and don’t be motivated, but take some of that pressure off yourselves. Yeah.

Dr Maria-Elena Lukeides thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. Could I ask if somebody is interested in learning more or exploring more in this area and engaging your services, where can they find you?

DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (1:03:49)

I’m on Instagram, Dr Maria-Elena underscore Lukeides and also my my website’s actually my name so it’s super e you know easy to find. So doctor Mariaelinalukeides dot com dot AU.

DI GILLETT – HOST (1:04:02)

Fantastic. Well, hopefully that gives all of us some further insights into the struggles that that life presents. And and look, we’re we’re all on a journey of self-discovery and we’re all on a a a journey of self-improvement. And it’s clearly not linear. There are ups and downs in life. And but the more we understand about who we are and what our worth is, we’ve got a

better war chest by which to face the world and go forward positively. Until next time.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

03:44 Maria-Elena’s own relationship with self-worth

37:30 Self-esteem vs self-worth

38:51 The internal battle behind the choices we make

43:00 The roots of anxiety

48;52 Letting go of control

51:06 The one shift that optimises self-worth

Connect with Di:

Find Dr. Lukeides at:

Website https://www.drmariaelenalukeides.com.au/

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/drmariaelena_lukeides/?hl=en

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-maria-elena-lukeides-psy-clin-d-270379a5/

@ Ponti Health https://pontihealth.com/our-specialists/dr-maria-elena-lukeides

This is the home of unapologetic conversations and powerful stories of reinvention. Subscribe and join a community of women who are changing the game.

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How to Become a Rockstar Communicator

by admin | Sep 7, 2026 | Female Leaders

Typically, women don’t lose their voice in a single moment. It happens gradually, in a thousand small acts of editing: the qualifier added before the opinion, the sentence softened before it lands, the point made smaller, so it takes up less space in the room. Emmanuella Grace has spent decades understanding why that happens, first as a professional performer on stages including the Royal Albert Hall and the Sydney Opera House, and now as the voice and communication expert behind Find Your Voice, coaching technical leaders at organisations including PwC, Future Fund, and Amazon.

In this conversation, Emmanuella and I go beneath confidence and technique to the part of this story most communication training never touches: the amygdala hijack. That split-second, physiological response that floods a woman’s body with fear the moment she’s expected to speak, regardless of how many times she’s been in that boardroom before. We trace how socialisation, not capability, teaches women to qualify themselves before they’ve made their point, why men are so often the loudest champions of women’s voices in rooms where other women stay silent, and why the research on introverts may upend everything you’ve assumed about who is naturally built for the stage.

This is a conversation for every woman who has felt her voice disappear at the exact moment she needed it most and wanted to understand why.

➡️You’ll Hear :

Why the amygdala hijack happens identically in every brain, and what makes women’s socialised response to it different
The physiology of fear, and why telling a woman to “just breathe” has never been enough
Why introverts may be the most underrated communicators in the room.

💡Key Takeaways:

Self-silencing is learned, not innate, and can be unlearned with the right tools
Finding your voice starts with owning it
Authenticity, not performance, is what audiences and boardrooms are responding to.

Emmanuella said:

“It’s physiologically the same for all of us. We all have a little nut inside our brain that tells us this is dangerous, get ready for action.”

“There’s a word that’s had such a thorough bashing I’m loath to use it. But it’s at the heart of this: authenticity.”

“High executive function leads to high executive presence.”

📖 Read the full transcript of this conversation here.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (00:02)

Power women, what does it mean to you?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (00:06)

I come from a background where I think in the context of choirs and bands and a thought that often comes to me is how do we be greater than the sum of our parts? And women naturally congregate into communities. We are nurturers and people that come together collectively by instinct. And I think that that’s the great gift of communities when they’re pulling together is their ability to be greater than the sum of their parts. And that’s what I think is the power of women.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (00:47)

Di Gillett and welcome to the Power Of Women Podcast where we celebrate the strength, resilience, and achievements of women from all walks of life. And whilst most podcasts tell you what’s possible, these women will share with you what it took to get there. It’s a place where women supporting women isn’t just a sentiment, it’s a decision we make every single day. Today I’m joined by a woman who has

Built a career helping others with the one thing many of us have struggled to grasp: your voice. She has performed at Royal Albert Hall, the Barbican, and Sydney Opera House. Joining me in this studio, she is the voice and communication expert, a former professional performer and founder of Find Your Voice. Emmanuella Grace, welcome to the POWER OF WOMEN Podcast

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (01:43)

Di, thank you for having me. I’m so excited to be here. You can hear that in my voice, I’m sure.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (01:49)

did share just off camera that the first time we did meet, I told you to stop. I’m not gonna do that today.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (01:59)

I love a woman who knows boundaries and how to put them right in their place.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (02:03)

Maybe. But before we get into the word today and we are going to do some work, I want to know about Emmanuella Grace. What was the defining experience that brought you to this point?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (02:17)

I think we look back on these things with 2020 vision and we can go, that’s the moment that everything changed. For context, I was born in the Outback and then grew up in a little fishing village from the age of eight that was incredibly isolated. And so I used to volunteer to hang out the laundry.

In the hope that if I sung loud enough, some tourist who was visiting our little village might hear me and whisk me away like a Disney princess to somewhere where I wasn’t living in a fishing village with 300 people. and through a series of events, by the time I was 16, I was singing with a professional-level ensemble in places like the Sydney Opera House. But part of that constellation of events also

Meant that there was a music teacher who didn’t like the sound of my voice. And as an adult, you look back and you go, Well, that was their aesthetic choice. They didn’t like the sound of your voice. But in those formative years, what I heard was, you can’t sing. Your voice is invalid. It sounds awful. You should be quiet. And being the stubborn person that I am, instead of accepting that what I did was withdraw from formal music lessons, ⁓

in the school context and actually hire private teachers and start taking lessons with teachers that understood about jazz and musical theater and things outside of the classical world where I was performing. And that became a journey for me of understanding that if you can find the right teachers who can give you the right exercises over time with practice, you can learn anything. And I might not have been the best singer, but I was certainly at certain points in my life the best trained singer I knew. And that’s what

gave me the ability to then break it down and teach it to others.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (04:09)

Did your world ever wrap around again to the person who didn’t believe you were a great singer?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (04:17)

In a way, I had my high school reunion last year and there was a whole group of girls there who had been a part of that cohort. And as adults, they were telling me stories of things they remembered, of cruelty that was I guess directed towards me that I’d forgotten about, you know? And they were horrified that that was allowed to happen and they were so proud of me.

Some of them were girls that had actually participated in that bullying as well. So it was really healing and really cool to spend time with them and we could look at it as adults and kind of go, whoa, I’d forgotten about that. Or yeah, like, you know, teenage girls are awful. Sometimes teachers are awful. And I’d so thoroughly moved on from the, you know, the idea of speaking from the scar, not the wound. ⁓ turns out twenty five years was just the right amount of time to get over it.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (05:01)

Yeah.

There you have it. And speaking of age, because you’re on the cusp of millennials. Mm-hmm. I’m on the cusp between baby boomers and Gene X. I’m curious, does when we were born relate to how we earn our voice? Is there a a difference by generation?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (05:36)

Our voice is the byproduct of a number of things, our physiology and how we learn to use the instrument, our socialization, our culture, what we hear. I feel like there’s probably very subtle components that weigh in to to shape how we use our voice, ⁓ probably with our generation. But what I’m also seeing is that change in the Gen X into

millennial into Gen Z, Gen Z now using their voice more as their their perception is changing based on the platforms they’re using as well. So technology didn’t play a very big role in how we used our voice in some ways. It was probably more subtle to do with the vocal habits that we had. I’ll come back to that in a sec. But what I’m seeing now with ⁓ Gen Z and Alpha is they’re seeing social media as a component of their voice. And when I say voice, I mean your words

The sound that you make, your body language, all forms of how you express yourself, all forms of how you communicate what’s inside you to outside you. Does that make sense?

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (06:46)

It does. And I think that’s gonna come back to something we’ll touch on later about performative expression.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (06:52)

Right. But further to your question before, what you would see is in different generations different vocal ticks. So I come from the generation of the sexy baby and the upspeak. And you probably come from a generation, definitely the one before you, with the Bacol syndrome, where where you sound like you’ve been smoking and

Having lots of whiskey, but that’s not that different to what came back around the the generation after mine, ⁓ millennial into zillennial, where we had ⁓ a lot of vocal fry, right? So that’s something that thoroughly gets blamed by vocal coaches on the Kardashians. I don’t know. I feel like it’s a constellation of things. ⁓ and it’s interesting because that’s a byproduct of not enough tension in the vocal folds. And so it literally conveys, if you think about

How w with mirror neurons, that’s something we can talk about later as well. I can feel in my body what’s happening in your body. Literally the lack of effort in someone’s throat can be felt by the person sitting across the table and interpreted as not caring.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (07:56)

I don’t feel at all anxious sitting in front of you talking to you.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (08:00)

My heart not. I’m very friendly.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (08:05)

I know, but your ability to read what’s going on based on my emphasis is is somewhat unnerving. So we’ll we’ll see how we work with that. Because you’re a you’re a performer. I mean you’ve you’ve performed as a as a singer at at Royal Albert Hall at at at Sydney Opera House. Mm-hmm. What work have you done to own your voice to own your voice? You’ve only got one voice on those stages.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (08:36)

It’s something that translates really beautifully into business and probably I didn’t know how to articulate when I was a singer, but now having gone back and studied teaching and studying psychology, I have a way of explaining it that might make sense to some of your audience. Maybe all of them, who knows? It’s the idea that if you don’t own your own voice, you’re kind of letting the team down.

So I sang in very elite ensembles where there’s sometimes three or eight or twelve of us. And you might have a full orchestra and you might have a full chorus as well. But I’d be part of that very small group of people that kind of are in charge of representing the voice of the composer as a collective. So as an alto, you kind of have one of the lower lines, you have one of the deeper voices. I have sung soprano, it’s not my favorite. ⁓ I don’t like being the center of attention.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (09:27)

Ha Don’t delete me, but that’s okay.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (09:28)

But you do have

No, that’s for the sopranos. ⁓ Leave that for the girls with the high voices. But it’s one of those things where if you don’t take ownership of your own voice and start there, you’ll undermine the entire ensemble. And if you imagine that you have a whole orchestra, a whole chorus, and suddenly you’ve got this one little group that’s doing, you know, let’s say you were doing Vivaldi’s Gloria or something like that, and someone starts to sound like they’re a honking goose.

You’ve ruined it for everyone, not just on the stage, but in the audience as a collective. So that’s the first thing. You have to own your own voice. Then you have to learn to blend with those next to you. Because even if you’re singing in tune, you have to learn to blend so that as an ensemble of that size, it becomes a homogenous sound. So everything sounds really smooth and beautiful together. So then you have to listen to the person next to you while holding on to your own voice and blend with them.

And then when it comes to things like dynamics, do we get louder, do we get softer, you know, what’s the pace? You then have to listen to the whole ensemble. So there’s your voice in your head, there’s the voice next to you, then there’s the voice of the whole collective. And so when I think about finding my voice with the maturity that came from performing at that elite level, it was about learning to own your voice and the importance of getting on with others and working well with others because

It’s never just one person on stage. Like not not in stages that size. If you’re playing in a pub with a guitar, that’s fine. Knock yourself out. But if you’re playing at that level, you’re not one person, you’re part of an ensemble. And so you have to think of yourself as part of a collective as well as taking ownership of yourself. So

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (11:12)

you could be sitting here talking about how a team works together. Exactly right. Exactly the same way as as you’re talking about your voice blending. Yeah.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (11:20)

And I probably didn’t know how to articulate that well. We did spend a lot of time when I was studying in London, studying collegiate music and ⁓ stagecraft and understanding how to set up stages as performers so that the experience was good for your audience. But I wasn’t really conscious of how universal that experience was until I started working with people in business settings.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (11:41)

There you go. Well that that that raises a point because if we get into the heart of it, you’ve w you’ve worked with women who are professional, capable, articulate business leaders. But a lot of them are not using their voice or not owning their voice. Correct. What’s happening there?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (12:02)

I think you can’t underestimate two things. One, the impact of socialization. So you might have ascended to a point where now you’re a s a a deputy or a CIO, CEO, CFO. So a lot of the technical people, they’re my people. Yeah. There’ll still be a component of you that still thinks of yourself the way you did when you were a child or a teenager. Those versions of you come with you. And if something happens in that moment that puts you back into that component of your identity.

That’s the voice you will use. And if so your teenager thinks, ⁓ no one’s gonna listen to what I’ve got to say, even if you’re at the board table holding the talking stick with everyone’s attention and all the gravity in the room directed at you, if you don’t take that and step into your adult voice, you’re gonna show up as a teenager or the child. I had a client that had a pretty big profile as the ⁓ ultimately the CIO of a very multi billion dollar fund.

And she told me when she first started with me how she’d sit at the boardroom table knowing that people wanted to hear from her. But when it was her time to speak, she fell into what she called the white hole. And that’s something that I would say is her experience of something called the amygdala hijack. Have you heard that term?

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (13:20)

I have heard you talk about it but please share shares and details.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (13:24)

So your amygdala’s this little nut shaped part of your brain that doesn’t understand time or context. So let’s say you had a traumatic

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (13:33)

People who object by that all the time.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (13:36)

There’s some people where that might be all they’ve got. I’m joking, that’s not true, you’d be dead. So ⁓ that little part of your brain is very, very old from a from a human development perspective, but it’s the part of us that says, this feels dangerous. Get ready for action. Now it might have learnt that it felt dangerous from something that happened in childhood or earlier in your life.

Because it doesn’t understand time or context, it doesn’t have the ability to say, no, but hang on, I’m a grown-up, everyone respects me, I’m safe, whatever. So first the amygdala says, get ready for action. This feels dangerous. It triggers behaviors that we would call fight, flight, freeze, or fall, and there you go. And what a lot of people don’t talk about though is what comes after that. Then you have cortisol that goes, actually it’s okay, you you don’t need to run.

You don’t need to go anywhere, you’re safe. So the cortex comes online, you start to think creatively, hopefully you start to think creatively, you start to think contextually. And then you’ll have this big dip afterwards of these low feelings.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (14:44)

White space.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (14:46)

Yeah. Anywhere in there, I think I would say the whole thing is like a wave crashing on her. So that big dip can be shame, embarrassment, self-doubt. And obviously I have tools that I teach people how to navigate that both from a physiological and psychological perspective. But I think it can be so enormous that wave of your brain feeling like something’s dangerous. Yeah. That that it just feels like a wave and you’re taken out.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (15:14)

And that would not be uncommon. No. Particularly if you’re delivering some some some news that is less than than ideal or or trying to push push forward an idea that you know there’s gonna be resistance.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (15:29)

Even

just saying no. If if if teenage you is scared of what the repercussions of that’s going to be, fear is part of that constellation of things, right? Feels dangerous. I feel fearful. Fight, flight, freeze, or fall. And fawn would just be like, okay, whatever you like. Okay. Fight would be stuff you. You know. Flight would be, I’m out of here.

If you don’t want to do it my way, my way or the highway. You know, you see these people that are really uncompromising in business. That’s a defence mechanism.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (16:04)

And do men and women experience this amyg amygdala amygdala hijack amygdala hijack differently?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (16:11)

No, it’s physiologically the same for all of us. We all have a little nut inside our brain that tells us this is dangerous, get ready for action. What I would say is different is the socialization around it, perhaps how we’ve been taught to handle it. You know, there’s a long history of men being taught, you know, you have to be brave, you have to be bold, you have to fight, you have to behave this way. Whereas women are being told you need to be compliant, you need to be easy to get on with, you need to be nice.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (16:38)

I’ve heard that. I’ve never listened to it, but I haven’t heard it.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (16:41)

I’ve heard it happens too. I do my best to let my children just choose their own adventure with that one.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (16:49)

There

you go. Well, here’s something I find I I do find confronting, and I really want your honest take on it, because in many instances we find it’s men champion women’s voices, not another woman championing another female. What why is that? What’s going on there?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (17:10)

I actually have been thinking about this a lot lately because I experienced someone recently in the workplace just being absolutely horrible. And I was so shocked because it was someone who’d built a profile publicly on championing women. And it’s literally all over their marketing. Yeah. And and then when this incident happened, I was so shocked because it beast seemed so disparate with their public persona.

And on reflection I realize that any workplace you walk into where people say, This place is great. It’s like a family. That’s a red flag because some families treat treat treat each other awfully. Right. And so I was thinking about I I don’t think there’s any been any research about correlating these two ideas. I didn’t have time to look. Really?

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (18:03)

Interesting point D.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (18:05)

But if you look at the interpersonal dynamics in a workplace and the interpersonal dynamics within a family, if you had a family where there was a deficit of things like emotional support, strong boundaries, clear expectations, structures on how we do things around here in a clear culture.

It is a pretty dysfunctional family. And so the siblings will fight and they’ll be competitive. And they’ll always be looking for who can get ahead and who can prove themselves and how to have one up. Whereas if you have a family with good boundaries, clear culture, lots of love, lots of grace, the siblings are more likely to get on, more likely to be loving, more likely to platform each other and want to work together. Right. So how is that from a social psychology perspective any different from an organization where historically

Even if women are getting opportunities now, historically they’re starting from a lower base in that they haven’t had the support and resources that men have got. So even if things are starting to tip now and the scales are evening up, we still have a history of women having a deficit of resources. And I think that that might be something worth looking at as an explanation for that.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (19:14)

And we’ve got the added complication now of AI dipping back into history as it’s learning. And all of this is all the things that we’ve been trying to put to bed and move on from get bubbled up because AI’s learning has been ingesting all this information of past and I think that threatens to bring it back to the fore.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (19:37)

I I would also say that I’m not an expert in AI. I I work with a lot of people who are literally at the forefront of this industry, mostly because I love working with geeks and really highly technical people and helping them translate their technical messages into something that normies like me can understand. ⁓ but what I do understand is that AI learns from us. And if that behavior is still happening in the corners of the internet and it’s getting clicks and platform and attention, that will inform

the learning that it develops. So it’s not even in the past die. It’s still happening now. Even if the bubbles so what’s happening is humans are becoming more siloed. We live more and more in our own bubbles. The algorithms reinforce that. And so our sense of reality is more and more becoming just what we see and what we know and and it feeds itself. So we start to think that that’s all there is. We’re kind of in a way creating our own villages again. And

If that stuff’s happening outside of our sphere of understanding, but AI is sweeping the whole of the internet, the whole of the internet will inform how the AI robot develops its logic. Yeah. Yeah. I just a caveat there, as I said, not an expert in AI. This is what I’ve gleaned. If if I’ve given the robot a name when in fact it’s a piece of software.

You’ll excuse me. I did have Siri jump in on a conversation the other day in the car. She was uninvited. She wouldn’t work when I wanted her to. But then I said to my daughter something about Siri being a robot. She said, actually, I’m not a robot. I’m a piece of software. Shut up. I don’t understand. I said, play the song, shut up and dance with me. I don’t understand what you want me to do. Shut up. ⁓

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (21:20)

Yeah, then that’s gonna increase as I understand.

Yeah. I’m not not I’m not gonna contextualize that further. We could we could do ourselves a disservice.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (21:36)

You

know you can choose the voice though, right? There’s a really sexy male Irish one. Sometimes I think about putting him on just so that I can have someone say nice things to me in a sexy male Irish accent.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (21:39)

Yeah ⁓ thank you.

That’s really sad.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (21:50)

Voice does affect us, right? And this is why I feel on some level quite safe because because of the way our brains work, AI can replicate some components of the human voice, but to date it can’t replicate exactly the experience of the human voice. So I often think about all the songs where it says your voice does something to me, your voice makes my heart beat fast, your voice makes me want to so far.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (22:16)

Well, I imagine for your husband living with you with a with a trained voice in the same way as I my my partner, my husband, has a highly trained voice. Mm-hmm. And knowing how to use that can be extremely powerful. We’re at a disadvantage. Well I’m at a disadvantage. Your husband may be at the same disadvantage. Well I am.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (22:34)

You’re assuming he listens to me.

Twenty five years of marriage. I think I’m starting to get some cutthroat.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (22:44)

Well that’s an interesting point. So let’s let’s get back to you you talked about the woman hitting the white space. ⁓ and that can happen to any any one of us when we’re standing in front of a microphone. Yeah. Presenting on ⁓ on a on a stage. What is she is she afraid of? Is she afraid of the audience reaction or is she afraid of her own voice?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (23:13)

love that question because it’s one of those things that helps me realize I do know something that’s useful. I think you have to zoom out even further and understand that it starts with fear. That’s the common thing there. The logic of what she’s afraid of takes a different part of the brain. Right? So all she’s feeling first is fear. And yeah, it doesn’t matter what she’s fearful of. ⁓

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (23:38)

Everything else is irrelevant.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (23:43)

And then you can unpack it, you know, where did that fear come from? What is it that you’re fearful of? But this is where we understand from research self talks really, really important because all of our actions ultimately start with a thought. Right? Whether it’s a subconscious or an automatic thought or a conscious thought, it starts with a thought. So you can feel the fear. You you remember that book, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. I think it’s it’s it’s really a book about self talk.

Right. It’s about right, you feel the fear in your body and now what do you do? So ⁓ that feeling, if you kind of let it wash over you, lasts about ninety seconds is a keynote talk I give where I I still get that every time I go on stage and my hands sweat like they are now and they shake.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (24:31)

Is that not a good thing though? That that is. Well I think that gets you ready and you’re that’s the competitive edge that needs to do you to do your best.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (24:33)

I think it’s

Yeah. ⁓ it’s about do you let that physical sensation and your subsequent interpretation of that drive the bus? Or do you choose how you want to handle that? So I’ve been working with some of the guys at the Air Force and they can, you know, fly a plane, no problem. But when it comes to getting up and speaking, that shortness of breath that came with the release of adrenaline that said, something’s gonna happen, get ready for action. Remember the amygdala?

I said to them, is there a way where you can trigger that before you go on stage? So that you’ve had that 90 seconds, you’ve let it wash over you, and you’re on the other side of it. Where, huh, this is like you’ve got to remember most audiences want you to do well. I can’t think of a single audience that wants to see you fail, right? Yeah. So if you can get into the mindset of, look, at least 30% of the people in this room are gonna love me, they’re gonna think I’m great. Maybe 30% are on the fence and 30%

Just wanna be doing their shopping, getting their toenails clipped, literally anything else, just don’t want to be here at this conference. And intuitively what we want to do is focus on the thirty percent of the people that are giving us the dodgy vibes because we wanna try and win them over. Because we’re herd animals. We want to bring people into the herd. That’s the mistake. You’ve got to focus on the people that love you. The people that are like, You’re amazing, we want you to do so well, you’re so great. Because what what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna draw the attention to that really nice

virtuous cycle that we have with them and the people that are kind of on the fence will go, ⁓ that’s where the fun’s at. I’m going over there. So that’s how you end up with most of the audience on side.

Sorry. That was a left hand turn. I didn’t see us going there. There was a

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (26:25)

And I was just I was just wondering which one you’d gone back to when you did that. So

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (26:34)

Well that that’s what shouting ⁓ as an audience sounds like when you’re right on top of a microphone. Because if I actually shouted into your microphone, like I’d blow blow blow it up. Yeah, I’m pretty I’m pretty loud. This is me at about a two.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (26:50)

Well I’m talking with Emmanuella Grace and coming up we’re going to talk about what it takes to reframe your voice.

If you’re loving the Power of Women podcast, be sure to jump onto our YouTube channel and hit that subscribe button to ensure you never miss an episode.

How far can you project your voice?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (27:17)

I’ve never really tested it, but there’s this thing called the singer’s format. So I get asked a lot about my accent. Would you like to ask me about my accent? It’s a hot

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (27:26)

Your accent is a complete mishmash of there’s a tinge of an American, there’s a European, there’s there’s this good old Australian within the mix. Again I put that down to generational because I think anybody millennial and b and below has an American tinge coming into their more performative or spoken voice.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (27:52)

So what you’re hearing as American is actually called twang. And it’s a sound that I use to help project my voice with very little effort.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (28:02)

So it’s deliberate?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (28:03)

It’s the byproduct of probably twenty to thirty years of training and also we speak Norwegian at home. So if you look at how the American accent developed, you have Irish, Italian, Norwegian, they’re all languages and accents that really pronounce their R. Mm-hmm. And the tongue shape sits in a way where the sound bounces up and forward. Whereas with the Australian accent, our tongue’s a lot flatter and further down at the back of our throat forward.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (28:29)

More with feasure than I do.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (28:32)

forward. Yeah. ⁓ so what you what you’re seeing is the the dorsum or the back side of the tongue is up towards your molars and then it kind of waves forward and the tip of the tongue lands behind the lower teeth. And what that does is relieve pressure from the from the throat and it makes it easier for your voice to resonate. But there’s also this idea called the singer’s formant, which is what opera singers or classically trained singers use, which I was originally, which when you’re having to do music that is not amplified,

You have to go to a concert hall, and then you have to go to this venue, have to go to that venue. And between venues, you have to create a consistent sound. So this singer’s format enables you to change the ⁓ angle of a a part of your throat called the aeroepoglottic schwinker. I don’t expect you to remember that. ⁓ which changes the resonance of the voice and can make it bounce further or less by adding more frequencies within the sound of the voice. So that

twangy sound that you hear makes a clearer sound, it makes it easier for people’s ears to hear it, I could remove it. There would be less of it. But you would have to work harder subconsciously to hear me.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (29:41)

I’m still trying to remember a mix of the hijack and you throw that at me. So there you see that he’s getting really true.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (29:51)

Now you can see why I get on with these technical geeks, right? It’s there’s so much about how do you take something really technical, like sound waves or anatomy, and translate it into something that can be understood by someone who doesn’t have training that doesn’t have the time, they just need the information and need to apply it.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (30:07)

Wow. So let’s see how much of that has got something to do with reclaiming our voice. So we’ll get into it because I want to talk to you about what’s happening in the body when when fear kicks in. Because it’s not just mindset, is it? It’s more than that.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (30:23)

Hundred percent, it’s physiologically as well. So you have a thought, which is psychological. You have your mind, which is how we interpret it. Okay. And then you have what does your body do with that? And one of the first places that people often feel that is in their throat, because our throat naturally starts to close as a way of protecting the lungs. Right? So you can have a brain that’s no longer functioning and your body, your organism organism is technically still alive.

Mm. But if you’re not breathing, that’s it. The show’s over. And so the body is going to intuitively protect the lungs and the part of you that’s breathing.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (31:02)

And that’s when we’ve got no chance of speaking.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (31:05)

No, and so and so this is where so much of the work to be done around finding your voice, I believe, is psychological. It’s about first getting command of your mind. I I talk about this idea all the time that high executive function leads to high executive presence. Yeah. Right. So a lot of the time f I I ended up doing this job

As a result of the frustration I felt when I went to lovely events and barbecues with my husband who’s in the finance world and spoke to his very introverted peers, ’cause all of us would end up in a corner drinking wine trying not to c talk to anyone and I would ask them

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (31:46)

Three four dinner. ⁓

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (31:48)

You

know, ⁓ how did you find the public speaking training? You just had your bank spend, you know, four K per head for the last two days on and I’m like, it’s good to have a day off but, you know, the best part for me was the ten minutes where I had a one on one training session. I was like, Good lord, why don’t we just do that with everyone then? Yeah. You know, I can save we we can do it for that much. And so, ⁓ until that point I’d had a vocal coaching company in London and then in Melbourne and then we started saying, Okay, let’s coach everyone.

Mm. Let’s have a department that’s f you know, the d the deans and the the research guys and the quant analysts. Give them the superpower.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (32:26)

Although Well

and that’s the interesting point. You’re talking about ⁓ positions and character traits and and if I think of possibly CIOs, engineers, even CFOs, I often think those individuals tend to be introverts more readily than extroverts. But most of us would believe that extroverts are better at getting on stage or standing out front.

I’m speaking. But I think you say experience tells us a different story.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (32:57)

Yes, and

Yes. So there is an idea in the public speaking world that actually the most intr interesting speakers are the introverts. I would say that the bias that extroverts are have more to offer is a byproduct of the post industrial revolution where ⁓ we were living in a world where we had to rebuild after two wars and we had to really give a lot of credence to the people with the gift of the gap because they could get things done faster and bigger and

And ⁓ but not necessarily more sustainably, right? Yeah. And so the deep thinkers, the philosophers, the value of these people, the perception of their value is diminished in that era. And we’re kind of living in the after effects of that now. Have you read Quiet by Susan Kane? my God. If you are an introvert, buy the book. It’s so good. And if you’re not feeling like reading a whole book, go and watch her TED Talk. It’s 17 minutes. It’s good for you.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (33:50)

No I

And

as an extrovert? What would somebody get out of it?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (34:04)

As much. You know. Okay, I was going to say something snarky. No, no, I’ll it’s not about you. More about my husband. Yeah. He’s gorgeous and he gets away with a lot because he is. But culturally Yeah. He’s he’s ⁓ you know, marry your best mate, right? It’s been twenty four years of of twenty four, twenty five years, good Lord, of us being together and probably about

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (34:09)

Not I’m not defining myself as

to get into the sidehouse.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (34:33)

12, 13 years into our relationship, we just had this weekend where I was like, my God, I’m so done. There’s all these things that I should be looking forward to, and I’m just feeling really anxious. And so I picked up a bottle of wine and a copy of Quiet and I said, I am going to the park and reading this book. And you are going to go to all the parties. Because what we’d started to realize was he was a shy extrovert. So shyness comes from fear and comes from conversation.

culture and comes from being told to behave a certain way to be socially acceptable.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (35:03)

word put together but I totally relate to that.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (35:06)

Yeah. So for him there was a fear response. So my girlfriends used to say to me, Does he talk? And I’d like, Yeah, not to you. But he loves being around people. He loves being in the middle of everything. He loves interacting. I’m just like, Good Lord, when can we leave? ⁓ it’s really lovely to see you, but I’d rather have three people over for dinner and we have some really deep discourse. And I could do that all day, no problem. And then I’ll, you know, people know

When we have big parties at our house, after a while I might just wander off and read a book. And that’s fine. I throw a good party, everyone else is having fun. But I’m quite a confident introvert. Music has taught me skills that enable me to communicate with both individuals and giant audiences alike with confidence. But it does take something from you, something I’m willing to give, something I love giving. But I do also need time to reboot up.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (36:03)

Yeah, I can relate to that. Nothing nothing I crave more than just some complete silence and me time.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (36:11)

And you might be an ambivert as well. That’s someone who ’cause it’s a spectrum, right? If you imagine extroversion at one end and introversion at the other. And a lot of the people that I work with that are let’s say they’re working in a very technical environment but they’re known as the one that everyone gets on with and everyone really respects, they’re obviously somewhere in the middle.

Yep. And so what can happen is they’re really good at the pitching stage and they get really social and they have a great time, but then they don’t allow themselves that rebooting time that they also need. And so a lot of the work we do together is planning to manage your energy so that you have your peak energy when you’re in front of your audience and then you have time to also regroup.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (36:50)

No different training as an athlete. Same scenario.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (36:52)

Well, I was actually trained by a sports psychologist as a musician.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (36:56)

Yeah, that makes so much sense. So we touched on it before because we are in an era where performative behaviour is absolutely increasing. I’m seeing it everywhere. But there’s a difference between learning to project sound and reclaiming the thing that is that is yours. What does it mean to find your voice and how do you know when somebody has actually nailed it?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (37:24)

I was thinking about that this week. There’s a word that has had such a thorough bashing, I’m loath to use it, but it is at the heart of this, I think you can guess. It and it’s authenticity, right? Yeah. But sorry for those of you on the other end of that microphone.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (37:35)

Go on.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (37:46)

You can feel it.

Yeah, look, I can’t I I use AI sometimes to check for spelling mistakes, but I given

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (37:54)

Yeah, so let’s kick my a that

quick cause I’m gonna give you permission.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (37:58)

To So I I think you can feel it, right? Let’s talk about do you know what a mirror neuron is? It’s so interesting. ⁓ it’s this neuron in our brain and deficit of them in sociopaths and psychopaths, which I think is interesting. But for example, Di, if I kicked my toe, you’d feel it. Or if I leaned on a hot hot plate on the on the oven, you can feel that because your body

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (38:03)

Not really.

Yeah.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (38:26)

is simulating inside you what I’m experiencing. Now if I am a fr Well, you know, apparently they’re the only people that can tickle themselves. ⁓ But can’t use that one at work. And No. but heads, shoulders, knees and ⁓ toes.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (38:32)

Afraid just isn’t

Wow.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (38:55)

What are we teaching? Right. For those of you listening at home, Di I have just gone off on a tangent on how to behave at work. ⁓ heads, shoulders, knees and toes is a rule that they teach children at school on appropriate touching. I don’t know. I don’t really want anyone touching my toes at work.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (39:13)

I don’t want it touching my toes just quite apart from part from my my manicures, but yeah.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (39:21)

Yes. Well if your manicurist is touching your toes.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (39:24)

She’s

in the spot. Yeah, thank you.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (39:26)

Getting this back on track. ⁓ you can feel the fraud. I had a meeting years and years ago with ⁓ one of the representatives at the record label I was with and I took him some songs. And he was just like, Well, these are technically good, but I feel nothing. And then he played me some songs and he said, This girl’s fourteen and you just

Your stomach dropped when you heard her and it just moved you so much it turned out to be a young adult. And he said, you know, g go go to some music festivals, go camping, take some drugs, and then write some songs about that. And I thought, Well, I don’t camp and I don’t take drugs, but I went away and wrote about other things that I knew, things that were really painful that I was ready to talk about. And they were the songs that were nominated for awards and were used on films and ⁓

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (39:59)

Wow.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (40:23)

think the easy songs the songs that are written quickly are sometimes the best because we’re not getting in our own way. But they’re not always the easy songs to write.

That’s your voice, right? But you have to choose how much of that you want to share and and that’s the mastery of it, right? That’s the craft is learning how do I demonstrate being candid and being real ⁓ but also keep some of myself for myself because we don’t want to emotionally vomit on everyone.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (40:52)

Yeah, and that’s that’s an interesting point because it it’s that’s one one part of this exercise that we’re talking about of how to find your voice. But to your point, how much of it we want to share. That’s that’s something that I personally struggle with and you know, it’s suggested that we need to do more of that in terms of elevating our own brand, but sometimes I I struggle with that.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (41:05)

Right.

Yeah, my coach constantly pushes me about that as well. But I think it might be different for dudes as well. Like maybe they don’t have such a deep understanding of their emotional landscape, so maybe they don’t have as much to share. No. But I I don’t know. That’s not really something I think that much about. But I do think that there’s a lot to be said when it comes to resonance.

And and if you can feel that your voice is resonating with another person, like if your your mirror neurons and my mirror neurons are vibrating together. Yeah. I think that that’s where you’re moving from being technically correct. Like you can order a coffee, the data is correct. I can give you an analysis of something that’s happened. Versus me having mastered the ability to share that information and share that experience. So when I went to uni,

What I saw when I came over to Australia to do my masters was that there was a demographic of students that were technically brilliant. But when we moved from doing an honors degree or a bachelor degree into doing a masters, they really struggled because they ha that’s where you start to have to be an artist. You have to have mastery of the music beyond the technical components. You have to start to have your own perspectives and your own interpretations of things and your own ⁓ discovery around what did the

Composer want here. And now what do you want this to mean? Right? So you start to have some agency. And these students had only been taught you just keep practicing until you’re perfect. They hadn’t been taught what happens beyond that. And I think that’s life. Yeah, but I also think that’s finding your voice, right? Is that I say to people, look, when it comes to communication skills, if you can order a coffee, you’re conveying data from one person to another, job done. But if you’re looking to influence a movement, that’s something else.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (42:48)

Yeah.

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (43:06)

And that’s the area that I want to play in. How do we move people? How do we while you still feel like you’re you, you’re not becoming jazz hands and shouty. Even in your beautiful, quiet way, how do you bring that gravity into the room where people feel psychologically safe with you and they feel motivated and they feel moved? Because we know from research that people don’t have to agree with a leader to believe in them and want to follow them. So it’s about how do these leaders

Demonstrate to their cohort, demonstrate to their peers, demonstrate to the board they’re trustworthy. And that’s moving beyond conveying data from one person to the other.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (43:45)

That’s getting really masterful in on your OS. Well, before we wrap, I’ve got a a couple of rapid fire questions that I’m going to shoot at you today. What’s a lesson you had to learn the hard way?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (44:03)

Not everyone’s going to like you and that’s okay.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (44:06)

I I’m still on that gym. What’s the most BS thing women are being told about how to communicate?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (44:16)

To focus on the end product first, like your pitch, your pace, your volume, your gestures. It’s never going to work if you start at the wrong end and work backwards. You have to start internally and work outward.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (44:29)

And where and when are you most yourself?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (44:33)

In my garden with the kids.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (44:35)

There we go. Yeah. Beautiful. Finding your voice or find your voice is your business. And where do we find you?

EMMANUELLA GRACE [GUEST] (44:41)

Find your voice.

Just ⁓ Emmanuel Grace dot com or find your voice dot com dot AU either of those things will get you to me. Or LinkedIn.

DI GILLETT [ HOST] (44:52)

Brilliant.

Well, I have learned a whole lot of words that I can’t pronounce today. But I’m going to put them in the show note and and probably need to put a link on a a few of them because they are beyond my voice to even pronounce some of those. They are quite quite wordy. But seriously, thank you for your honesty and depth in understanding that. There really is a a mastery around how to find your voice and and what you were touching on toward the close of today of

You know, you can have a degree taking it to that next level to really invoke change, go beyond the ordering of a coffee to actually inspire piperish behaviour and have everybody follow you off the cliff is a whole different different ball game. Yeah. So much of that can be done in your voice. So thank you for that, Emmanuella. Thank you. I ⁓

I’d love you to share this episode with somebody in in your network because I think finding our voice is something so many of us really do need to to get a grasp on and at different points in time we know we stand there and we see that white space and we’ve lost it. So please share that. You can follow both of us on on LinkedIn. Both of us hang out there quite a bit and write a review because that’s what propels these podcasts and allows others to find us. Until next time.

Chapters

00:00 The Power of Women: Introduction

01:58 Emanuela Grace: A Journey to Finding Her Voice

06:10 Generational Perspectives on Voice Ownership

14:10 Navigating Fear and the Amygdala Hijack

17:48 Women Supporting Women: The Dynamics of Workplace Relationships

22:00 The Role of AI in Shaping Voices and Perceptions

25:31 The Virtuous Cycle of Audience Engagement

29:39 Understanding Voice Projection and Accents

30:25 The Connection Between Mind and Body in Voice

32:07 Understanding Introversion and Extroversion in Communication

36:59 Authenticity and Finding Your Voice

43:32 Mastering Authentic Communication

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