SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Undoing. Women on the Thresh and the Journey and Beyond. I'm your host, Jamie Duncan. This is a space for the brave and the becoming. Women who are redefining success, power, and purpose on their own terms. Each week we step into honest, unguarded conversations with women who have dared to pause, pivot, or completely unravel what no longer fits. These are women who are standing at the threshold, they're deep in the messy middle, and they're emerging with something truer, deeper, and more aligned than what came before. Together, we explore what happens when we like global identities, untaple the narratives we've inherited, and choose to trust the parts of us that are still taking shape. Because courage isn't about holding everything together, it's about letting yourself unravel. So what's real can rise. This is undoing. I'm so glad you're here. Hi everyone. Joining me today on Undoing is Pia Alt. Pia is executive coach and founder of Kabbalah's Coaching and Consulting, where she helps high-achieving leaders bridge the gap between external success and internal truth. After a successful corporate career, including a decade leading strategy across the Middle East and Africa, an unexpected turning point changed everything, a corporate restructure, and an unlikely teacher who invited Pia into a new way of living and leading rooted in presence. That experience led her from the boardroom into nature, and inspired work that blends emotional intelligence, embodiment, leadership development, and equine wisdom. In this conversation, we explore the courage it takes to leave familiar identities behind, embrace major life transitions, and choose authenticity over achievement. And Pia knows firsthand the cost of building a life around performance and perfectionism. If you've ever spent your life striving and always reaching for that next goal, this conversation may offer a different path, one grounded in presence, clarity, and peace. PIA. We met through our work in the equine assisted leadership development world. I remember just gosh, it must have been about two or three years ago, we were in teaching horse certification together.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

And it was virtual. You know, there you are in Spain, here I am in the US, East Coast. And there was just something about you, even just seeing your face on the Zoom tile. And then of course we went through that program and I felt a sense of sisterhood with you. The sisterhood, what I was feeling was that some of the things we share in common is we've both traveled a career path where we were so such driven, high achieving women, coming to a point where we realize, wait a minute, this isn't the gig I thought it was. All this performance, all this achieving, climbing, in service of what? And what is this life of mine really about? And I'm like, oh, I want to know her. I want to know Pia. I want to know more about her journey. And we've gotten to know one another a bit since that time, just a short three years ago. And we have so much more to get to know. And this is a great space to riff around a little bit on this topic of undoing. And so hello, Pia. Hello. Welcome to Undoing. I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad to be here. I know we could talk about so many things today, but what's on your heart to bring to our listeners in this space?

SPEAKER_02 3:42

So a couple of things that have been coming up recently, because it it seems like things are coming full circle. I remember when I first started out in coaching, how I said, I've just jumped out, I've launched myself out of corporate life. And the last thing I want to do is coach people in corporate. Right. It was kind of like I don't want to be reminded of what I have gone through. I remember my mentor coach said, Well, you know, Pia, you you attract who you are. And I was like, Well, what does that even mean? Right. And and so we had a conversation about that. And she said, Well, you have gone through a lot of things. You've, you know, like you've served, you've performed, you've you're ambitious, you're you're everything that other younger women and men who are coming up through the ladder and shattering glass, glass ceilings and what have you, that they are also, they're gonna thread that same path. And you have the ability and the opportunity to help them not take the same steps that you did or not go into the same pain or frustration that you've gone through. So I I had to sit with that for a while because all I wanted to do was run away and say, I don't want want to be part of a corporation. I don't want to even go into the environment. If I have to go in and coach somebody who's sitting in a corporate office, I think that I'll I'll be triggered in some ways, you know. Understood. And so I started pivoting onto another path for a while. I started uh to coach people and individuals and families that that have family members or children who are have ADD or ADHD. And that worked really well for a while, but it wasn't completely genuine for me. I had a lot of experience in that because my husband's ADHD, my oldest son is ADHD, and my youngest son has inattentive ADD. And there may be some spectrum issues along the way there. We don't quite know. We haven't been through all the diagnosis, but I felt that that was really near to my heart. So it was natural that would be my niche for a while. And it also worked when I started the work with the horses. Right. And and so I don't know the time frame that I sort of woke up, but I think it started as a trickle. I got one corporate client reaching out. I got I started freelancing for an agency, and then I started with very young leaders, and I started doing coaching work for people who had been made redundant. So that I could actually, I could it's like, oh yeah, this I like because there are other people that are leaving corporate. So I don't have to go into corporate, they're coming out. Oh, because I was part of that redundancy coaching program. But over, I would say over a year, maybe two years, it really started to come hard and fast. Like I really started to get a lot of clients that were up and coming leaders or already as part of the C-suite, but really needing help, sort of navigating what's my next step, where do I go from here? How do I lead my teams? So, and that all just happened naturally, almost like I didn't see or know that it was coming.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Like it's like the universe says, I need you right here.

SPEAKER_02 7:20

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

It gave you some time to get ready for that, right? It looks like it happened a little later.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

It happened a little later, but it also didn't happen just okay, today I'm ADHD coach and tomorrow I'm leadership coach. It was a very nice blend and a very nice transition. And and I had time with that to build my confidence along the way to say, oh, I how can I be coaching a CEO if I never got to the CEO level? But that doesn't matter. It's what they're facing and where you're meeting them at in the moment and how you kind of dance together. So yeah, I think it came in a very natural, kind of a natural, what's the word? I don't want to keep saying transition, but it it just it just grew out of that. Very naturally, it sounds yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

And right on time. You know, it's it's like the I think there was probably you getting ready for that, and and I love what you said a moment ago about meeting them where they are, because it's not about a role, it's not about the responsibilities that we have in a particular position, it's about being human and dealing with all the things, all the messy things of being human. Yeah, so you were open, that's what I'm hearing. That's beautiful. And so I know I like to kind of for myself timestamp some things. So you left the corporate world about when?

SPEAKER_02 8:46

I left in 2011, end of 2011, and I was living in Dubai at the time with my family. Well, with my husband. The kids had gone off to university, and well, at least no, actually, my oldest had gone out had gone off to university, my youngest still had a year left. Okay. And at the time, that was also around the time when I got gifted my horse. So a lot of things happened around then. I also at the same time, I left corporate, I thought, what will I do? Not go into corporate again, at least not right away. So I threw myself into a lot of different things. I took some art classes, I took a photography class, I started my master's degree in social psychology. But I realized now, this many years later, I was just trying to keep myself busy because I didn't actually know what the hell I was when I left corporate. I left my identity behind, if that makes sense. It sure does. But that was, yeah, that was 2011. And going through all of those different things, dipping my toes into all sorts of different things, one of them also being looking for colleges for my son and doing all that for him. I think at one point, I don't think I ever slowed down until I went through my final certification for CTI and ICF, which would have been later 2012.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

So I want to jump in here for our listeners. So CTI, this is one thing that we have realized that we have together. So CTI is coactive training institute. I've I think that goes by coaches training institute.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

Coach's training institute, yeah, or coaches training international or something like that. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

Yeah. And we were going through that at the same time, but you were across the pond. I was. I was taking it here in the US. Very different chapter, yes. And you there and coactive, though the the model is coactive. Yeah. That was absolutely life-changing for me. Me too. So it's like you go in thinking you're getting a coaching certification, and what happens is you do your own work. And sounds like for you, you were in between. I was in between. I had just left a CEO position myself and was starting my business and realized I wanted to focus on coaching, but I didn't have a coaching certification. And so I thought, well, I need to go do that. You know, it's all about credentialing. Yeah. Yeah. And little did I know when I walked into that room that first morning that my life was about to change in ways that I couldn't even fathom. And knowing you uh as I do, which is not too deep, but what what we do know about each other, there is depth there. What what I do know is that the same was about to happen for you. And you you and Lola, your horse Lola, came into one another's life um not too long after that, or is that correct?

SPEAKER_02 11:50

Um, well, she came in before I left corporate, but she was not, we were not doing any equine facilitated or equine-guided work at all because I that didn't come to me until uh probably around 2014. I I knew that I wanted to do something about helping other people with the horse involved, but I had no idea that there was such a thing as equine-assisted, whatever, fill-in-the-blink therapy, learning, guiding, whatever. Um, so that was really interesting because she was part of healing me when I left corporate and I had to go through all of that um the mess, really. I had to go really deep. I had to heal in so many ways and bring myself back up. Not so much on a it wasn't so much a broken confidence, it was just a deep sense of being lost. Again, going back to losing your identity when you've been something and you've done something for so long. That's who you are. It defines you. And then you're all of a sudden going through the door and you're shutting the door, and then you're like, Who the hell am I now?

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Right. I can imagine you almost like on the edge of something looking behind you, shutting the door and out in front of you and going, like, what? This big open horizon. So you said just a moment ago about there were so many things you needed to heal from. Can you share just what the primary things were for you that you were needing healing from?

SPEAKER_02 13:28

A deep sense of being treated unfairly. And I don't say that in a victim kind of way, but obviously when you lose something and you're not in control of losing it, you really have to grieve. It's you know, it it wasn't your choice that something ended. So you so grief comes up to help you get through that. So there was a definitely a period of grief or mourning and grieving, but also this deep, deep feeling of I have been treated unfairly, and one of my biggest values is fairness. And I would always fight for somebody who'd been unfairly treated or the underdog kind of thing, and now I I was the unfairly treated one. I did actually sue the company I left because at some point I had been pushed out of my role for no reason, with no apparent explanation, while I was performing beyond expectations, and my boss at the time even said, we just don't know where to put you. We have this new person coming in, and that person wants the team this way. And he goes, I'll be very honest with you. We just we've got to find another role for you. I said, Okay, that's fine. I don't have a problem with that, but then help me find the role. Don't tell me to go out and look and then shut every door or take away every wreck. So it was like the restructure was on, so they were cutting the amount of open wrecks. And every time I applied for an internal job somewhere else, I would go to the interview and then they'd go, Oh, the rec is closed. Like HR was literally whoever does that, I don't know. Procurement, HR, talent development. It wasn't about me, it was about them having to restructure and cutting the chairs in the musical chairs.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

And you were clever in the midst of all that.

SPEAKER_02 15:24

I was caught in losing the ability to grab a chair when the music stopped.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

What a great metaphor.

SPEAKER_02 15:30

And that was the unfairness. Yeah. Yeah. That was literally, there were no more chairs to grab. So I I obviously didn't get anywhere with my lawsuit. They just said, Well, we can offer you a redundancy package. That's all we can do. At some point, you just gotta go, okay, I'll throw in the towel and then I'll just take what you're gonna give me. But that was the in my mind, that was the unfairness, and there was healing from that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Okay. Um what else their healing?

SPEAKER_02 15:59

Healing, I think, from my oldest son leaving home and going on his gap year, and then consequently going straight to university after being after having traveled, worked, lived in so many different countries, it was so weird that he was so far away. We were literally on opposite sides of the world. So there was a great loss as a parent that I had to heal from or get come to terms with. We had my youngest son that was going on that same journey, and so I was pouring myself into helping him, but he also he was very independent, he wanted to do his own thing. So there was that healing from okay, I'm no longer the traditional mom in that sense. I need to pivot to being a different kind of mom.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

And that was an identity change as well. That's what I'm hearing.

SPEAKER_02 16:52

Yeah, and most certainly, yeah. And then I was yeah, healing from just coming. I would have been in my late 40s then, so menopause was setting in, my husband had a job, I didn't have a job, there might have been some envy, lots of different emotions for sure coming up at that point.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

At this time of life, that's what undoing is all about. Any one of these by itself would be plenty, or maybe more than plenty to to handle and deal with and process. But at this point in a woman's life, you've got the intersection of the what you described in the work situation of it it wasn't just leaving a position, leaving a career in corporate, it was how you left when feeling that that unfairness and things that were out of your control, and then our kids growing up and leaving home, which is that's what we want for them, but it doesn't mean it's easy. And then menopause, where you've got this lab experiment going on actively in your body all day, every day, having no idea what to do about it and feeling so out of control, and no one, very little help out in the world for that. So a lot of things at this intersection and our identity, I hear identity is a thread through all three of these things because menopause, it's like you're leaving a part a woman is leaving a part of her life that she's known, and it's this transition point into what's next. And so I don't know about you, but I I had a lot of had and have a lot of groundlessness in this space of wanting to cling to the things that I've known, the identities that I've had, and I can't. I've got to let that go. And also not clearly knowing what identity is here, like it's just this kind of no no woman's land. Yeah. Which I'm laughing, which is not funny at all. It's a really difficult place to be. And so you were healing from all of these things. What uh what helped you heal?

SPEAKER_02 18:55

There was a couple of things at the time. Obviously, uh my husband definitely was one of my biggest supporters. I think the issue with his support, and I'm not no disrespect, not taking anything away from him, it's just that he's a fixer. And he thought I would just jump right into the next corporate job because he knew I was good at what I was doing. I'm smart, I'm intelligent, I've always been able to land on my feet, get good jobs, had a good career. He didn't see any reason why that couldn't continue. I think what he didn't realize was that I had no desire to go that way. And so he couldn't fix anything because I wasn't I didn't need fixing, but also I wasn't fixable because I didn't choose what his fix was. Just go get another job, go to another corporate, go to Microsoft, go to go to SAP, go to any other technology. I'm like, that's just jumping right into the same shit. Right. So that was as much as he was there for me, it just was not what I needed at the time. It wasn't the right. It was support, but it was not it didn't do what I needed it to do because we weren't on the same playing field.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

Right.

SPEAKER_02 20:15

So I I took to the stables, I went almost every day, and just if I didn't ride, I just at least spent time with my horse, just being near her or with her, even if we just walked or I sat, I have a picture I found the other day. I'm sitting on a large bale of hay with my journal in my lap, and she's just standing right next to me with sort of her head between my legs and the and but on near the bale. And just she's not really tied up, just she has the lead rope up, the holter on the lead rope, but I wasn't holding it. We were just I've sat there on this big bale of hay going, thinking that I remember that picture. Someone took the picture of me just sitting there journaling.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

What a beautiful image. Yeah, she was just being with you.

SPEAKER_02 21:02

She was just holding the space, yeah, yeah. And I was probably I would have to find the journal, but I'm sure I wrote down everything that was going on with me physically, emotionally, spiritually, and just writing my little heart out and just having her there. That's all I needed at the time.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

Why what comes to me as you first of all, thank you for describing that image so beautifully. I can see it like it's a photo in front of me. Such a reminder of the power of being with. Like when there's nothing to do, nothing to say, nothing to fix. I feel like you horses have taught me more about that than probably anything else in my life. The power of presence and being with. So that was an important part of your healing journey and the support that helped you was it sounds like nature, being out in nature at the stables and with your horse.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Yeah. And it was beautiful. I don't know if you've ever been to Dubai, but it's obviously very hot. It's hot and muggy. And this would have been towards the end of the year, so we would have gone into the winter. We would got a little bit of relief, October, November, December. And this could have also very well been in January or February. But that's the best time in Dubai. You can just be in jeans and t-shirt and not sweating, not needing AC, and you know, the palm trees around the sand dunes and the sort of sandy colored buildings with rough cement, almost almost like Moorish kind of with the Arab style building. And they had like an old, it was built like a fort or like an amphitheater, but they weren't using it anymore. But that was towards one end of the property. And you could just, you were walking around something that was almost like old Arabic, medieval, just so gorgeous. Date palms, gazelles.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

You can feel the history. So deep. It's like ancestral.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

So deep. And the perfect setting for for being no cars around, no noises, no just nature and birds and insects and the smells and I'm right there beside you, Pia.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

Oh, nature. I mean, you're broadening the lens, that aperture a bit, so we can take in more of the surroundings and just recognition of how healing and supportive nature is. And I I sense what you were describing about the corporate environment. It's almost like a frenetic highway of cars and sounds and noise and metal and all of that, and this opposite image, and it sounds like it really spoke to your soul.

SPEAKER_02 24:00

Oh, that's such a yeah, what a great phrase that is. That spoke to my soul. Absolutely. It and it spoke to more than my soul. It just spoke to my whole being. It yeah, that's something that I think I'd like to get back to. I don't think even though I have a really nice, calm, not so stressful life now, but I think that I still need to get back to that. That's just a nice reminder that I have nature at my fingertips here. I live right next to the Mediterranean. I go on walks for walks on the beach with my dog every day and go in the hills with my horse, but just that specific moment to just completely stop, take that pause, and inhale, or touch a bush, or put your hands in the water, put your feet in the water. That's a great reminder. I need to do that more.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

That's a great reminder for me, and I'll bet to our listeners too. It's like nothing around us in our world helps us really to slow down, or that's not entirely true. So many things don't support us slowing down. But you were just sharing about your horse and nature, that very much helps us slow down, if only we'll step outside and into the space that you're so beautifully describing. And with beings like Lola that that are our guides, they're our greatest teachers. One thing I know from you that you shared with me about your horse is that she's taught you so much about presence. When so much of your life had been about performance, you were a performance machine, really, so driven, so accomplished in your work. And she was here to teach you about presence. Can you say a little more about that?

SPEAKER_02 25:56

Yeah, I I think that it took me a good while to really figure out you're in something, you don't see that you're in it, right? Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 26:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:07

And so I had no idea. I thought it was normal to want to perform, to want to please, to have ambition, and to strive for more. That was normal. That's how I've been conditioned since I can remember. And my husband and I talked about this the other day. We literally were out for our 39th anniversary, and we talked about how we met and how we always worked two jobs. At some point, I think he or I, may it might have been him that had three jobs in our early 20s after graduating. And we were talking about, so this is the romantic dinner. We have a glass of wine and we go, Do you remember when we sat when we had two or three jobs? We would come home from our normal job, our main job, and then we'd get back in the car and go to the mall where we had our second job, a retail. And then I also liked it on the weekends and la la la. And I just we looked at each other and went, How the hell did we ever do that? The sheer energy, and he said we wanted to buy the house. Yes, we wanted to climb the ladder, we wanted to buy the house, we wanted to get the car, we wanted to have our two kids and the half the dog, and whatever the statistics are. So we wanted the American dream, we wanted the life that we felt we deserved. And so, was it any wonder that's how I went, I went in with that attitude, tenacity, willpower, strength, and I saw nothing wrong with that.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

So because you had so much around you that was you probably saw a lot of models around you.

SPEAKER_02 27:47

My college professor in speech communications, she was the epitome of success. There, this was we're talking early 80s, and she came in high black patent leather stilettos and glossy nails, and the perfect haircut, and her jacket, her suit, her jacket, shoulder pads could double first. She should, you know. And so I and she was like, and I remember her just going, This is what you need to do to be successful. And we were taught to write CVs. This was when you had to type them on paper and send them out. And the more the more textured the paper was, ivory. What did I remember? I remember that. And that I can't even say I must have licked, I must have licked 350 stamps, literally with my oh, back in the day when you had to link them to lick them and send them off to every PR agency in Chicago and New York and whatever else, and zero response, right? So we I don't know how we kept going. I don't think I could ever do it now, nor do I think I have the desire to. So when I all of a sudden saw, I saw and met a horse that had also performed because she's an ex-endurance racer.

SPEAKER_00 29:23

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

Who was whipped into winning constantly. She had whip marks, scars from when I got her, she had these dark gray scars. She's a light gray horse, but you could see where that had been. They just beat the horses as machines. And I thought, oh my god, I've been that machine. I don't have the whip marks, but I have the mental scars of being whipped to keep up. And so I felt that that's yeah, yeah. And she didn't know anything better. She didn't know better than to just run. She'd get in the desert and she thought it was an ex it was an endurance race. And she just opened up. Now I love to ride her fast and just I love that freedom, that feeling of the air and everything whipping through my hair and her mane. And but she was running because she that was all she knew. That was her performance, and that's all I knew for almost 30 years.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

That was your identity, each of you. Yeah, that's who we were. And who are you now? Compared to that, I'm a lazy ass. That sounds delicious. Just slowing it down a little bit. Absolutely. Because you can see once you slow down, you can see, and then you can't unsee. And then you wonder why you never saw it before. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:46

And then I think that's where the guilt and embarrassment comes in. It's why didn't you see it before? What's wrong with you? Why couldn't you see that this was the complete wrong path, or you should have done this, or could have done this? And it's yeah, that's not really helpful. But that was really all we know. So there was a lot of unlearn there you are, the undoing, the unlearning, yes, the stepping back to basics and saying, does it really matter who I am? Or does it matter that I'm enjoying life more now in whatever identity I am?

SPEAKER_00 31:21

Yeah, and it's like it's we ease right in, like in your twenties, you ease right into this lightning fast highway of your career, and you're blazing at a hundred plus miles an hour, no wonder we can't see. And going that fast, you get it's almost like an addiction to speed and achievements, and we're rewarded for that constantly. Yeah. And so it's natural to just want more of that, and you can never raise your head up and look around. So of course we don't see what happens over time, and that we become just like a horse is just bred to to race and run and speed and when we are too until you walk away. Yeah. Or something happens and you don't have that any longer. And you can actually then see it because you're not in it and of it. And having a partner like Lola, your horse, it's almost like you were both doing that together. The slowing down, the presence. So you have this uh kind of presence over performance is what I'm hearing.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

I think that's my new mantra. I think that's the principles that I'm living by now. It's taken me a long time to get to accept presence over performance. But I'm now able to see that there are so many of us, so many successful, smart, intelligent, high performers, high achievers, women and men, but that are facing going through all the different stages of life, facing burnout, facing depression, facing anxiety, stress, whatever. It doesn't really need a label. We all know what it is when we're in it, maybe not able to see it, but we're feeling something, and it's not good. And I'm now able to see coming out on the other side, hey, there's a whole bunch of people that I can help because they're going through exactly what I was going through. And so I think this whole perf presence over performance, that's what I want to take to my clients. That's where I want to be of service.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

Pia, what a gift. I think that uh when you're in it, you can't see it. So if you are able to connect with other human beings in the world and be able to see them, they can feel that. A human can feel when someone sees them. And when they feel seen by you, then they can see themselves. That's what I believe.

SPEAKER_02 34:11

I think you're right.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

And wow, there's just no greater gift, I think.

SPEAKER_02 34:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

You're in the right place.

SPEAKER_02 34:20

That's exactly how I feel. I feel like I'm in the right place now. It's taken long enough, but I'm starting to f funnel down also just to the learning that I can't I feel I can help everybody. Let's be honest. You can't help everybody because that's that wouldn't be. When they're ready, they'll find you. That's exactly. But to kind of narrow down what pain did I go through? What issues did I have? What were my challenges? And what did I have to go through to finally come out on the other side? What has that experience taught me? Why wouldn't I want to give that to someone else who I see with the same struggle or the same suffer suffering?

SPEAKER_00 35:04

Feels like some shared experiences, some similar paths that you've traveled with the clients that you work with.

SPEAKER_02 35:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:13

Say more about that.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

Just that that having to go through decades of working yourself up to be extremely good at performing yourself, and then I mean mistaking that performance for being the real thing. Right? I believe that I was freaking hot shit, right? And I was extremely good at being hot shit. I'm quite sure. Like I had a manager that said, Pia, you've got pixie dust. You just have that ability to build relationships and give increase sales and develop business. And I was like, Yeah, I am really good at performing this self, whatever this Pia was. But I also mistook that performance for being real. Now I know that it wasn't real.

SPEAKER_00 36:05

So, what is the real thing?

SPEAKER_02 36:07

This is a good question because I was so convincing that I believed it for so long.

SPEAKER_00 36:13

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_02 36:14

And so this is the restructure that I think we have to go through, and this is the painful thing. That story we want to dive into to begin to tell, first of all, ourselves, but others as well, that being discarded by a system that you've given everything to, and now you have to all of a sudden pause. That's the first moment you realize that you're performing for nobody. You might be on a stage, but there's no audience. Oh wow. And there's no intermission, and there's no curtain call. This is exactly what I realized at the time that all this was happening all this turmoil was happening with me leaving corporate. Lola was actually the first being, not person, but being, who responded to my presence, not to my perfection or my performance. And all she cared about was whether I was real. And that was, I think, the beginning of me knowing what real actually looked and felt like.

SPEAKER_00 37:27

What does it feel like?

SPEAKER_02 37:29

Freedom, pure freedom where you don't have to curtail to anything or anyone, and you don't have to fake it, and you don't have to mask it. Just noticing when you start drifting a little bit from presence back into performance, that you know that she's there. She's oh excuse me.

SPEAKER_00 37:55

I'm just my my little giggle there was like, I know exactly what happens to me when I'm in the presence of a horse when I drift away from presence to performance. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:06

So Lola, if I do that, Lola will go left when I wanted to go right, and then I'll be like, Well, why the hell did you go left? And she's like looking at me like, well, you didn't steer me left. Or what are you even awake up there?

SPEAKER_00 38:17

Until you come into the scene. Yeah. You know, until you're gonna be with me. I'm gonna just gonna I'm gonna lead.

SPEAKER_02 38:25

A hundred percent. She is the lead mayor. And I have to constantly be on my toes to be her equal, or even to say, All right, the we're going this way.

SPEAKER_00 38:37

What's the gift of presence, Pia? You've spoken a lot about that today. What's the gift?

SPEAKER_02 38:43

What's the gift of presence? I think ultimately it's that you have to you have to acknowledge that you that it's okay to live in the presence. Give yourself permission that it's okay to go into presence. There is no need to perform or fake it or let even let the inner critic pop out. It's just that total acknowledgement that this is okay for you to be in. It's okay to just be.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

I like that word drift, like it's just this it's almost like something drifting down a river or there's this drift. It's it can be subtle and we don't notice it until we do. How do you know when you're drifting away from presence into performance?

SPEAKER_02 39:42

For me, I think it's something that I feel in my body and my mind.

SPEAKER_00 39:48

Say more about that. How do you feel it in your body and in your mind?

SPEAKER_02 39:52

I know that when I drift, when I stop being present and start to go back into performance or pleasing, something physically happens in my body. It's that little tight knot in the stomach that goes, Oh, I'm about to apologize for something that I don't even need to apologize for. So it could be as simple as starting a sentence with, oh, I'm so sorry.

SPEAKER_00 40:20

Which what a great sign.

SPEAKER_02 40:23

Well, I've been, I feel like I've been a big excuse my whole life.

unknown 40:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:28

Which part of the people placing? Just that oh, I'm sorry, oh apologies for being late, or apologies for not writing the response to the email, or I'm sorry to interrupt, or excuse me, just a quick question. Yeah, we're like one big freaking excuse.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

Yeah. So when you hear yourself saying that, that's a sign for you, like, oh, I might be in that space. Yeah. For me, this is a a big thing that I'm always working on. Presence over performance. I had a good, he just a wonderful mentor say to me, I do leadership development facilitation, like front of the room facilitation with leaders. And when I get into that space of am I getting this right? Did I say that right? Oh, you know, it's when I am thinking about myself and what I'm saying and how am I competent enough? Am I am I knowledgeable enough? Those questions when they start rolling through my mind so so quickly, they just boing, boing, boing, boing, boing, you know, one to the next. I know I'm in that performance because I make it about me. And he reminded me it's about your participant, it's about that human in front of you. So focus on the human, they'll show you where to go. And that deep presencing of truly seeing that the group in front of me and truly being with Lola just comes up beside you as you were sitting on the bell of hay journaling. That's one of the most powerful things that we can do.

SPEAKER_02 42:03

Yeah, you said something that kind of just sparked a thought that because when we perform, that's our comfort zone, right? That's everything we've been conditioned to. And it's also where we know that we are strong, we believe in ourselves, we it's like autopilot. I know I can do this. But we've been trained our whole life for it. Absolutely, absolutely, by our parents or siblings or teachers or whatever. When we start stripping that away and we go out of our comfort zone, what is left then? It we have no choice but come back to our own essence. And then what is that essence? What is beneath all that performance? That's really what I'm trying to figure out now. Because I know what I was like at 10. I know what I was like at 17. I mean, 17, 18 was all about me surviving, exploring the world. I left, I moved out of my mom's house when I was 17, because there was no space, pure and simple. Her and me and my younger brother lived in one bedroom. So that was just about space and survival. And then in my 20s and 30s, it was about achieving, climbing, you know, doing, doing, doing. And then I think when the shift happened in my late 40s, losing my job and going into menopause around 50, it became something more quiet, but also something harder, like really for me taking a hard stance that it was about aligning what I felt like and what I said and how I showed up. So much more congruence. And now I'm gonna be 63, and I'm like, I got no time for performance anymore. I have to live my Last third of my life. I don't I don't want to waste it on performance.

SPEAKER_00 44:05

And what instead of performance? I got no time for performance. What do you have time for now?

SPEAKER_02 44:11

Pure presence. I want to live now. I want to be in the now. I want to be present. I want to do things with my husband. I'm looking forward to him retiring. I don't know when, but it can't happen soon enough.

SPEAKER_00 44:23

There's so much possible with presence.

SPEAKER_02 44:26

Oh yeah. So many things I still want to do. More of what I want to do now.

SPEAKER_00 44:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:33

And I have choices.

SPEAKER_00 44:35

So many. So many. Oh, Pia, this has been such a joy having you with me on Undoing today. I like to summarize almost like the threads I'm hearing. There's such richness here. You just did such a beautiful job naming these decades and who you were and the theme of identity in your twenties and thirties and forties and so forth. So that evolution of identity and the story you were sharing about leaving corporate and who am I if I'm not that and being in that place of discovery and allowing that to emerge in you. And presence over performance. That is clearly the headline. And I can just there's this huge smile on my face over here, imagining you with your horse Lola, and how you're probably revealing to each other, you know, because she's similar to you, it sounds in her own way, in her own past, and you're you're co-discovering presence together. Yeah. How beautiful is that? That is very beautiful. So this stuff is there's a lot here, and there can be a heaviness to it, but I have a question for you as we close. It's not heavy at all, it's fun. You ready for it? So when you were a kid, what did you dream of being or doing when you grew up?

SPEAKER_02 45:59

For years that I can remember is I wanted to be an astronaut. Oh, and of course you did. Oh yeah. Because to put it into context, I was born in 1963, and that was when NASA was starting to evolve. Uh there were uh space journeys and the moon landing and all that. And they I remember my mom going to get in we lived in Copenhagen, and when you filled up with, I think it was Shell, the comp the you know, gas company, Shell, oil company, they would give you little coins and they would give you like a hard cardboard sort of sleeve to put the coins in, and each coin had an Apollo something on it. And I think it was up to 13 because the different Apollo Apollo journeys. That was probably a good four, five, six years of a dream of mine for sure.

SPEAKER_00 46:58

Wow, how cool is that? So you just wanted to get as close to them as you could.

SPEAKER_02 47:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:06

How close are you today to the stars?

SPEAKER_02 47:09

I I have Sky Guide on my phone and I and all that my iPad. And I sit quite often, I'll sit outside and look at what's that, and then I'll turn it on and it'll guide me to what is what. And it plays some really nice kind of spatial music. I can just sit out there with the night sky.

SPEAKER_00 47:29

So I I asked that question because I'm like, so how does that dream live in you today? And I just want to witness back to you for a moment that I feel like that's where you are, and you are orbiting with the stars in your work when you're working yourself and your work with your clients, you just like helping them see their light. Thank you so much again, Pia, for being with me today on Undoing. It has been my pleasure. Thank you for joining me on Undoing. I hope today's episode offered you a moment of recognition, resonance, or relief. Something that reminds you that you're not alone in your journey. This is an opportunity to tune into your inner wisdom and open to what's wanting to emerge. If you're enjoying this podcast, please share it with a friend or colleague, leave a review, and follow the show. Until next time, what's the undoing that needs to happen in you?