– Welcome everybody to today’s Building My Legacy Podcast. I have with me today, Rebecca Haydon and she is delightful because she is not our mainstream type of podcast person that we have. She’s a performer, a singer and everything I guess because performed in big big musicals that have toured all over like Tommy. And so she comes with a perspective of life and how you work. And so as she’s now a life coach dealing with confidence especially in women. And so, I’m gonna have you Rebecca, share a little bit about your journey, why you left performing, because you’ve made it to the big stages and big, big performances and walked away and started in a new direction. So share with us that journey and how you ended up doing what you’re doing.

– Yeah. So I have wanted to be a performer my whole life. I started dancing when I was three years old. It was the thing that I wanted to do. It was what I did in school. Like I did it as A level, GCSE, I then went on and did it at university, what we call Stage School. And it was something that my heart was set on. I remember being in the playground and asking other kids what they wanted to do when they grow up and they didn’t know. And I was like, how can you not know what you want to do? And, you know, for me that was it. That was the only thing I ever wanted. And I kind of climbed my way to the top. And it was a very hard journey. I faced a lot of upset. I faced a lot of rejection. Got myself to Stage School which was a hurdle in itself. And then when I graduated got myself an agent and started working my first job was, was Chess the Musical, which was amazing and kind of went on and did a couple more after that. And Tommy, like he said, that was on one of the biggest stages in Europe. So that was amazing. And I think for me I was on this journey of almost hiding myself. It was a really strange experience because I was always playing someone else. Like I was always playing a character or playing a part in the musical or playing a person that wasn’t me. And it was very easy for me to kind of hide myself away, which was a bit strange because I’ve always been very outgoing and very confident, you know, I was the kid at any party that was like, sit down and watch me dance. I was one of those children but I just found this weird sense of not being able to be me. And especially with my weight, I was never a big girl in anyone else’s eyes but I was a big girl in the performing arts industry. So I was, you know… I’m a size 12 and size 10 or 12, but everyone else is like a size two to eight or something, you know? So I was always kind of a bit bigger as well. And I got to the like near the end of my performing career and I was just so measurable and kind of going back into that time now where I reflect I just, you know, I couldn’t look anyone in the eye. I couldn’t, you know, I didn’t want to speak to anyone, which is, you know, very unlike me I can make a conversation in a supermarket queue like I’m okay with making conversation. And I was just really, really unhappy. And I got to the point where I was just like, you know what there’s more to life than me feeling this unhappy and being, trying to kind of fit myself into something that I don’t feel that I am. So I decided to walk away which was the biggest… For me at the time I felt a failure like a hundred percent hands down. I felt a failure. And I think it was because I’d had my heart set on this dream and this massive dream for so long. And even though I got that dream and even you saying you been on these big stages and stuff I still go, oh yeah, I did that but I didn’t ever give myself recognition ever. So yeah, I think for me, it was kind of I felt such a failure at that point and really had to do some work on that. But I went into teaching and I taught dance at a local school that where I used to work and where I used to live. And I vowed to myself that I would never teach ever because teaching, you know, teaching dance for me was like I definitely have failed, like definitely have failed. So it was quite a weird one actually, because it was it was just like, oh my God, like I’ve now gone back and I’ve now gone back and now I have to teach. But actually the teaching was the most empowering bit of it because I got to see all these kids and I got to experience all these children, like so enthusiastic, just like I used to be and really started to empower and inspire them, I suppose.

– So you, sometimes something do that that’s the beginning of our own healing because as we give we think he is sort who we are. So talk a little bit more about that being teaching and then from there you moved away from that also. So sharing a little bit about

– Yeah. So I started teaching and did the place that I started teaching at the dance was very I think there was about three or four in the class. It was a very kind of, not very popular not many people knew about it. And I worked there for just over two years and I managed to grow the dance faculty and grow the dance space of that performing arts hub. And I used to have like 37 to 40 kids in each class. So we went from having like no dance at all to like massive there’s massive classes that I just loved and was so passionate. And I remember, you know, I did I choreographed Cats The Musical and we had 107 children in Cats in the, in this musical. I know, I know trying to, trying to piece that all together, that was the moment where I was like oh my goodness, like, this is amazing. Like what I’ve created. I think that was probably the first time that I was truly proud of myself and I’ve done quite, you know, I had accomplished quite a lot of things by then but I think because I’d stepped back from it and started to give more, I give back more. I really did feel so proud of that moment but there was still something missing. There was still that kind of something in me that I felt wasn’t… I didn’t feel like I was doing the thing that I was born to do basically. So kind of long story short, I met my boyfriend on a very random night out over Christmas. And we started going out and he said to me look like I want to move to Australia. So I don’t really want to carry on anything with you right now. And I was like, oh this is too good to kind of, too good to lose. And I was like, well, what if I came with you? And it was a bit of feel the fear and do it any way decision we’d been going up for awhile. So it wasn’t just like a hop dash kind of decision. But I knew that that was where I wanted to be. And I had this real feeling and I listened to my gut and my intuition quite a lot on it usually is right. So we decided to move to Australia which was January, 2019, and joined that transition. And even really when I was teaching I used to help a lot of the kids with their mental health. So I went, I suffered a lot with my mental health when I was in the performing world. And I know that they were going through the same things that I was going through or that I’d been through. So I actually started a blog and I just started blogging everything that I’d learned. And it, it was called Sunday Soul. It used to go out on a Sunday every single Sunday for like nearly two years I blogged. And it was quite powerful. And I used to get lots of comments from the kids being like oh my God, Becky, this has really helped me today Or this technique has been amazing. And I was like, wow, like there might be something in this. So there might be something that I could do with this. And I started researching, found NLP Neuro-Linguistic Programming, found hypnosis, fell in love with all of it. And the rest is history. And now I have a really successful business, coaching women for confidence. So I still get to do a lot of my performing side of it because it’s showing up on camera showing up online, speaking, doing podcast interviews. So I still get to be that performing side of me but I just get to be me as well.

– You know what’s interesting is the thing that so many women, especially women especially struggle with is confidence. And I always think of performers is having that one nailed, right? You’ve got to nail confidence otherwise you gonna be out putting yourself out, night after night after night. So you have something really unique to offer because she would come at it from a perspective where it is life or death. Competence is life or death, right? And most of us don’t live in that world. So tell me, how do you go about working with women. NLP working with the unconscious mind? And so it can talk with the conscious mind is so huge in terms of healing and in terms of being empowered But tell me, how do you work with people?

– So I think for me, the biggest one that I see within women is the I’m not good enough. And a lot of us go through that. A lot of us feel that pretty much most of my clients when I’ve peeled back their bits of the onion, that’s the kind of perks of it. So the first thing I really, sorry the first thing I really do is to do the inner work that, you know, before we add on all the strategy of how to be confident or how to show up confident or how to speak confidently I’ll go back to the subconscious programming. And, you know, just like you said if our conscious and our subconscious programming or on different radio stations they’re not going to much together and we’re not going to get that confidence. So for me, I always talk about ourselves like a house and we might have this house at the moment, but it with a gust of wind, it comes flying down or the windows are falling out or the roofs blown off. So what I try and do with my clients is to to kind of break that house down and go back to that concrete foundation. This looks, I timeline therapy a lot which I absolutely love. And it just allows us to basically go back into the past into previous events, into trauma, traumatic times and when I say trauma it doesn’t always have to be like a very traumatic event. Sometimes the client, we’ve gone back to a time where another girl said something about my client’s hair in the playground or wouldn’t let her play, or, you know and we take on these beliefs from those events and we don’t necessarily know what those events are until we kind of go and dig a little bit deeper into them and almost take the positive learnings away from that. So we can leave that memory where it is and kind of not think about it anymore. And that’s probably one of the most empowering things that I do when we’re in clients first, when my gorgeous clients come to me first is that we work through that inner work, that real inner confidence. So self-belief, self-love, self-worth self-respect all of the selves to build that concrete foundation of confidence.

– How did people find you?

– I am a lot, I’m always on Instagram. So Instagram is pretty much my kind of favorite social media outlet I suppose. I’m always on stories and doing lives. Literally before this podcast I did a live hypnosis on my Instagram, which was lovely. People come and join an experience. You know, just the many hypnosis that I do. I also have a podcast myself. So people find me through there. I love collaborating with people. There’s something special. I think about having to, especially women, you know too powerful, empowering women together, collaborating and creating a space to kind of open the audience for them and for me. So I love doing that too. I am in quite a lot of spaces.

– You have so much to offer because think of all, all the young people who have similar dreams to yours and always, there is a point where it changes. I was working at one time a few years ago with a young woman she was going to Juilliard as a dancer, ballerina and she was one of their top ballerina for performing. And so she always gets some of the top roles. And I said, you know, how do you view your future? And she was just a delight to watch full of energy, full of life, full of enthusiasm. And she said, every day I dance I know it may be my last dance because just one injury away from retirement. And I have thought about that so many times because most of us don’t work within mind where today may be my last day and I’m gonna give it my best. So it’s a different kind of pressure that you live in. But it also is a pressure of I’m gonna give it my best because it may be my last, right? And sometimes we don’t give it our best because we think I’ve got tomorrow. So it has both sides to it.

– I love that. That’s really powerful. That gave me goosebumps everywhere.

– She was really just a treasure of a young woman. And so tell me, as you work with women, confidence that’s one of their biggest issues, the various self concept self worth bringing up all of those things. What else are some of the issues that women deal with that you help them go though?

– Yeah, I think that the I’m not good enough is definitely something that shows up all the time. Body confidence is another thing, which I think is linked, I always think is linked but having that, you know, having that, that confidence in yourself and that to be honest I’m still on that journey myself too because of the trauma that I went through in the performing arts industry, I still look in the mirror and I still don’t really like what I see. And I’ve had to do a lot of work on that myself and help clients before I got into confidence I was attracting a lot of women for weight loss. And I did a lot of work with weight loss hypnosis and pretty much it all tied down to that self-love, that feeling of worth within ourselves and being able to stand. And I just love what’s happening at the moment, on social media and a lot of plus size girls are getting in bikinis and everyone is really behind that. I absolutely love to see that because I think we’re so programmed as a community, as the world. We’re so programmed to see mannequins of size, size six or really tiny models on the catwalks and actually to see that shift in the world and how we view that is so empowering but there’s still a lot of work to do. I think in that sort of sense of how we view ourselves as women and how we can stand there in our power is probably another thing that I really work on with my clients.

– So tell me, if there was one piece of advice that you would give, what would that be?

– Oh I love this one and it’s what I give all the time, feel the fear and do it anyway. The amount of things that have come from me being in that space and really fearing things and being scared but pushing through my comfort zone and saying, yes, hell yes, I’m in, I’m going all in has been the most incredible changes in my life. And I know it feels scary at the time but you never know what’s on the other side. So if my one piece of advice is always, always always feel the fear and do it anyway.

– I have two good friends. Actually, I have a podcast with them that I did early on. They’re both principal dancers and being Paris Opera and then went to London then. Yeah. So they were, they were major players and then both retired after a number of years and started a business of their own. And I said, so how is it different? And this is what they said to me I thought was so fascinating. They said quit. So they danced together. There were a husband and wife, they were both principals in the Paris Opera. And basically every day we’d wake up and we’d look at each other in the mirror and we’d look at how our bodies could change overnight because we knew our dance would have to be different that night. Because when you land, you have one square inch to Landon and extremist populated, she would fall and get injured. So every day they’d study how their bodies had changed overnight and then shift their dance. And she said, that’s what we did in business everyday came to business and said, how did business shift for us? And what do we need to change for today? Wow, isn’t that a powerful, powerful learning in terms of how to approach life rather than searing it it was accepting it and saying, okay now how did I do it in a different way? So I love that. What else do you talk about or share with people? I just love your experience because so few people had the unique experience that you have.

– I think for me, one of the other things that has really helped me and what I tell my clients is that, yes, we may be programmed to kind of hear those negative thoughts or to kind of get ourselves down that spiral or play the strategies that we think are serving us at the time, but they’re probably not but there is always a better serving thought for you. And the more we focus on those better serving thoughts it doesn’t have to be positive, rainbows, fairies and unicorns all the time. It just needs to be just a slightly better serving thought that takes you away from that space that you’re in. And that really changed my life to have that, to know that I have that power to then focus on something else and what you focus on is what you get. So if you focus on being sad and shy or un confident then you’re going to bring in more of that. Like you’re training your brain to find things to prove that that is true. So if we can move away and move into those better serving thoughts and even if that’s, you know, I’m working on myself worth or I’m working on myself love. It doesn’t have to be, I am amazing. I am incredible. It doesn’t have to be that. Just needs to be that better serving thought. That would be one of my, one of the other things that I would like to share.

– I think it makes sense because sometimes when you are so up front and say, I am, when you’re in process, your body doesn’t accept it. Your unconscious mind doesn’t embrace that because it knows there’s steps that are involved, that that haven’t been addressed. And then we fight our own brain and then it becomes even more problematic. Doesn’t that?

– Exactly. Exactly.

– So tell me what else, would you love for people to know and to think about as they approach life, as they approach who they are as a human being?

– So I think for me, I use this phrase a lot which is standing in your superpower. And I think we all, as individuals, no matter who we are what we’ve been through, where we’re going, we all have a superpower, whatever that is. And if you haven’t found yours yet then that is okay because you can. And I think the more we can tap into that that person that we want to be that I call it your best self or your future self or whatever that is to you, the more we can tap into her or him whoever’s listening, the more we can start to embody and embrace it right here right now. And I use a technique called acting as if I’m not a massive fan of fake it until you make it because I think it kind of goes against the subconscious programming, but acting as if it really does tap into who we want to become. So, me as a business owner of, whatever my dream is or living in a house in Noosa or whatever’s on my board, I always ask myself, okay if I had all of the things that I want how would I be waking up in the morning? How would I be walking down the road? How would I be sipping my tea? How would I be eating my dinner? How would I be working out? And really starting to tap into that person that I truly am meant to be on this planet. What I am meant to be on this world and really focusing on that, really acting as if you already have the things you already want because if we spend time in the, Oh, I hope that happens or I wish that happens. Hope is a word that I feel is used a lot but really it’s not very hopeful for me. I think when we stand in, in the kind of we stand in the power of, I know it’s going to happen or I expect it to happen. We start to feel more confident rather than hoping or wishing. It’s a very, I kind of almost see it as a soft, weaker word. Whereas if we use I know, or I expect or that sort of word is a lot stronger and can really pull us into that confident best self that we want to become. If you’ve got a meeting coming up that you might feel scared about going into or a presentation that you’re going into how would you feel if you showed up as your best confident self and then go and do that act as if it’s already happening, it changes your life.

– Wow. Act as if. It is true form because you’re creating it every day. We’re creating a new form of who we are, right? And making it turn, you’re thinking it till you make it where it lacks reality is there’s a lack of honesty, a lack of truth. And I tend to really reject that notion. Becky it is almost time up for us in terms of this podcast. And before we quit I want to just give you an opportunity. Are there things, last things that you think are important for people to think about or to put in their minds that you have seen, that you would like to leave with the audience?

– I spoke on about all my favorite things but I think one of the thing is that we always have the control. We are in control of how we think, how we feel, how we act and not necessarily we might not necessarily feel that all the time but no matter what is happening externally we always have the control internally. So if someone is making you feel a certain way or something’s happened and you feel a certain way because of it, just get curious, like go inside and kind of go inside to come out is what I say. You know, get curious with your thoughts and how you can stay in control of that situation. I see a lot of people sitting in the driving seat but not putting their foot on the accelerator. And we have that option. We have that ability to do that. And we just have to find out how and just want you to remember that you do always have the answers inside of you. You might need a coach to help you see it or show you the yellow brick road, as I say, or you might need to listen to a podcast or read a book. You might need some help in some sort of way, but never ever be scared to ask for help. Never be scared to kind of say, hey, I’m struggling and I need to solve this because you are always in control. And I think that’s so important to remember.

– So those of you who are listening, you may be interested in learning a little bit more about what Rebecca has been talking about in terms of looking at the unconscious mind and the conscious mind. And here’s, what’s important that you will learn is that your ability to process in here will be so much faster. You’ll be shocked at the progress you’re able to make and do it in a way that is honoring of yourself. So if any of you would like help or would like to connect with Rebecca, information about her will be in the show notes and we’ll be glad to make that available to you. Just contact us. Then we’ll be glad to make the connection. And then please visit us on our website @www.build2morrow.com and on our social media channels, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn @build2morrow.com. Becky, I am so grateful for this time with you and for all of your sharing. Your perspective is so valuable. And I think many people wonder, if you’ve given us a little glimpse into a world of performance and what a gift you’ve given everybody today. So thank you for that.

– Thank you for having me. I have absolutely loved it.

– And thank you everybody for listening to Building My Legacy Podcast today.