45. Got My Mindset On Me

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Episode Transcript

Alisa Manjarrez: (00:00)
Do you guys remember that song, I got my mind set on you?

Alisa Manjarrez: (00:05)
(singing)

Rosa Santos: (00:05)
Yes. I love that song.

Alisa Manjarrez: (00:07)
Well, I was watching this video from Carol Dweck, the founder of the Concept of Mindset. She said having a growth mindset means to embrace trying and learning the skills of learning.

Alisa Manjarrez: (00:22)
For her, she said, “Effort is part of the journey to enjoy life. So just putting in effort and knowing that it’s okay to try and embracing trying, that’s a form of growth.”

Alisa Manjarrez: (00:34)
I wanted to know if you guys ever thought about the idea of trying as a way of signaling your brilliant minds in action.

Rosa Santos: (00:44)
Oh, I’m laughing because I think that’s the only thing I do all the time. I’m trying, I’m trying. I’m actually trying to be a better mother every day.

Alisa Manjarrez: (00:54)
Well, she showed a picture when you’re trying or when you’re putting effort in, or you feel challenged, she had a picture of your brain. It’s all lit up and if you’re not trying and if you choose the easy route, your brain is not really doing anything. So you trying to be a better mom, your brain is firing on all cylinders.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (01:11)
I don’t know. I think for me, I’m always trying to do something different. It was interesting you said that, because Dr. Dweck also said that something in terms of, “Your desire to challenge yourself, even when it seems impossible, is the growth mindset.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (01:28)
And one of the things that I like to do is continue to challenge myself. Yesterday I ran for the first time in a while and I’m like, “Okay, I’m going to do two miles.” And then I was like, “I’m at two miles, I’m going to do another half a mile.”

Dr. Merary Simeon: (01:42)
I continue to challenge myself in everything that I do, whether it’s school, whether it’s at home, at work, or even Rosa, as a mother.

Rosa Santos: (01:51)
And what I like about this, and I think everybody’s talking a lot about growth mindset these days.

Rosa Santos: (01:56)
I, for one, develop leadership programs that are based on pushing growth mindset and getting leaders into that way of understanding themselves and pushing themselves.

Rosa Santos: (02:09)
The other side of the equation is fixed mindset. So I think it’s just having the distinctions for ourselves. And to your point, Merary, I think it is important that, yes it is about trying, but I think it’s also about persisting, embracing the challenge rather than avoiding it, because if you don’t do that and you look for the easy way out, that’s a fixed way of thinking about your own growth and where you’re going.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (02:38)
It’s about being aware of your thoughts. Because if you tell yourself, you can’t do this, you’re proud going to be in a more fixed mindset.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (02:47)
And I think the more that you think of a fixed mindset or you practice a fixed mindset, the harder it probably is to get out of it, because it’s not as easy as you’ve been thinking all this time, “I can’t do this,” and all of a sudden you wake up and it’s like, “Oh, I can do this.” It’s not as easy.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (03:04)
It takes work. It takes discipline.

Alisa Manjarrez: (03:05)
It’s a choice.

Rosa Santos: (03:06)
Yes.

Alisa Manjarrez: (03:07)
Absolutely.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (03:08)
Let me give you an example for some of the things that I… Even for going back to school and going for my doctorate, it took me four to five years of me thinking about it, like, “I don’t know if I could do it. I don’t know if I will do it,” until I finally talked myself into it.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (03:21)
And then I did wake up one day and said, “Okay, I’m going to do it.” But it was a journey.

Rosa Santos: (03:26)
So hear this. If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve. Own the power and create your future, then you’ll deserve that future.

Rosa Santos: (03:39)
The second part of that is, do what you love and don’t stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as you can. Imagine immensities.

Alisa Manjarrez: (03:50)
Immensities. That’s cool.

Rosa Santos: (03:52)
Right? Immensities.

Rosa Santos: (03:54)
And it’s interesting because, of course, and I think for all of you guys there who have teens and, again, their brains we know they’re not working properly, but it’s this challenge of how you instill in them imagining immensities. Imagine what’s possible and that they can actually reach the stars. That’s what they want to create for themselves.

Rosa Santos: (04:15)
How does that relate to us, to multicultural women, and women of color? Is it the same?

Alisa Manjarrez: (04:25)
What rules are there? If you think that something is meant to be one way forever and ever, that’s a fixed mindset. And we’re here to break through that with What Rules.

Alisa Manjarrez: (04:35)
Rosa, who you’ve all been hearing is Rosa Santos, talent management, executive, and a leadership expert.

Alisa Manjarrez: (04:42)
And it’s really cool, Rosa, that we’re talking about this with you because you’ve developed, as you said, programs using all of these philosophies and this research to help leaders become better leaders.

Alisa Manjarrez: (04:55)
And then we have Dr. Merary Simeon, HR executive and motivational speaker, the woman behind growth, challenging herself all the time.

Alisa Manjarrez: (05:06)
I’m, Alisa Manjarrez, an executive coach and vision producer at the Happy Cactus.

Alisa Manjarrez: (05:11)
Part of what I do is help people understand that anyone can be a leader. Anyone can be a coach. We’re all capable of so much.

Alisa Manjarrez: (05:22)
When I think about growth mindset and how it relates to this podcast, I think this is why we’re here.

Alisa Manjarrez: (05:29)
I remember I was just listening to our first episode. Merary, you were saying we are here to change the face of leadership. The face of leaders are not just a white male, and I think that thinking about that is a very fixed mindset.

Alisa Manjarrez: (05:46)
And we’re here highlighting all these amazing multicultural women who have overcome these barriers and broken the rules with their growth mindset. And we’re here to prove that they exist. There’s more that’s possible.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (05:59)
And to answer your question, Rosa, for multicultural women, I think this is even more critical because to have a growth mindset during our failures and challenges is critical.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (06:14)
And the reason I say during our failures and challenges; yes, everybody has failures and challenges, but when you look at intersectionality, it’s hard to be a woman. And then on top of that, now you add a woman of color, a mother. Whatever it is that you add to it, it becomes even more difficult to achieve those things that other women that are not minorities could.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (06:39)
So we may find ourselves, many of us, maybe not everybody, having more setbacks or more failures because we may not have not had those role models or those opportunities, or people may have looked at us different.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (06:53)
So I think minorities, women of color, multicultural women with a growth mindset need to look at their failures and challenges and still move forward.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (07:03)
“Hey, what have I learned from this? What can I do different?”

Dr. Merary Simeon: (07:06)
There was a story that I read of the first man with a disability to climb Mount Everest. And as you all know, Mount Everest is high fatality rate and it is extremely dangerous.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (07:20)
Now, this person had a disability, but this was something that he wanted to do, and he was able to reach the summit on his third attempt. So you would think he would give up on his first or on his second, but he didn’t because every time he learned from it.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (07:38)
When I was reading this, I was thinking you have to have a growth mindset to do something so difficult three times and still come back.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (07:48)
That’s the way that I think, from a multicultural perspective, we got to think about things, is, “Hey, I may not have been able to get at it this way because of the different biases or rules that society may have put on us. I have to go at it a different way,” and continue to have that growth mindset to go after it and not give up if we truly want to change the change of leadership, because it’s not going to be easy to get to the top, but without a growth mindset, we’re not going to make it. We need to change and elevate the way we think.

Rosa Santos: (08:20)
And I do believe that I think we are more predisposed to really exercise a growth mindset versus a fixed, because there are so many hurdles that we usually have to overcome to achieve our goals and we often talk about how resilience is our currency at the end of the day. And I think to your point, Merary, the ability of trying, I think it’s a state of being. We have to try and we have to push forward, and we may not get things in the first try. Sometimes it’s a 10th or the 20th and it’s this idea of the resiliency and the persistence and determination. And you get knocked down, but then you push, you stand up and continue. And I think folks who have to overcome, who their careers haven’t been as straightforward, because they may come from a different school, they may not have the many years of experience in a fancy firm or whatnot. And they still go at it and is still manage to get to where they want to go. That is truly exercising and growth mindset to achieve their results.

Alisa Manjarrez: (09:43)
I think that this episode is all about getting unstuck. Maybe we haven’t been taught the term growth mindset, but we’ve been taught that there’s more possibilities. There’s another way. It’s all the journey. But we all get to those points where sometimes we forget and we just feel like there’s no way out.

Alisa Manjarrez: (10:11)
I was with a friend one time. We were watching this movie and she said, “I’m so jealous of the woman in this movie because she actually did what she wanted to do.”

Alisa Manjarrez: (10:19)
I said, “Well, you can do what you want to do.”

Alisa Manjarrez: (10:21)
And she’s like, “No,” and she started listing all of these external reasons like, “Oh, I just quit my job because it wasn’t good. And my last job wasn’t good either, and this and this,” and she had all these things surrounding… She was in a cloud of doubt and a cloud of fixed mindset.

Alisa Manjarrez: (10:39)
And so for people like that, what suggestions would either of you offer to someone who feels stuck in those thoughts?

Rosa Santos: (10:47)
I tend to compartmentalize quite a bit. There’s a lot of things that happen to me every single day that if I took them seriously, it would be huge step back for me in the way that I may choose to address a specific situation or lead a specific program or a team or something at home. But I tend to compartmentalize and I think there is something around what’s within your control versus what’s not.

Rosa Santos: (11:15)
And what you’re talking about, Alisa, in the case of friend, a lot of the things that she seemed to be citing were actually outside of her control at the end of the day.

Rosa Santos: (11:25)
I think what’s within your control is exactly what we’re talking about today in this episode, which is how do you choose to think about yourself, and how do you choose to create possibilities for yourself?

Rosa Santos: (11:41)
And then when you imagine immensely, then you know how to live with. Plan it. Plan around it.

Rosa Santos: (11:51)
So that on the one hand.

Rosa Santos: (11:52)
I think on the other is not taking things so personally. And I know I do sometimes. And prior to this recording, I had to vent a little bit about something that happened to me, but I’m like, “Okay, I’m venting, I’m done with it. I’m moving on because it’s what it is,” because if I choose to put it, where I call in my baggage, in my bag and I fill that bag with all kinds of things that people may be saying to me or asking me to do, or maybe appropriating or things that I have done. And if I do that, I couldn’t get up every morning.

Rosa Santos: (12:35)
So it’s how do you train yourself a little bit to, “Okay. That happened. It was awful. It happened, it was terrible.”

Rosa Santos: (12:42)
Okay. Scream, yell, get a couple of friends like you guys, vent out loud and then park it, move on.

Rosa Santos: (12:53)
Imagine, create. Create that possibility for yourself and then get into that growth mindset, make it happen because you have what it takes to make it happen.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (13:04)
Deshauna Barber, I watched this video, she says “Giving up is the birthplace of regret.” And she is a motivational speaker, a American beauty pageant and captain in the United States army. So get that. Army and as well as beauty pageant. But she tells the story that she kept going back and back, and I think she won on the sixth or seventh time. She won the American beauty pageant.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (13:32)
But for her, it was out not giving up because she felt that she would’ve regretted. But I think it’s number one, being aware of your thoughts. And is it important to you? Because if it is important to you, I believe you should try it one day at a time, because time will pass you by. But if you take one step each day, it’ll move you forward to whatever your goal is so that you do not have to sit back and regret.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (14:01)
Alisa, your friend. She’s like, “Oh, this other woman can do that and I can’t.”

Dr. Merary Simeon: (14:06)
That’s regret. And it’s like, how do you do a little bit? Maybe it’s not something you get up and do each day. You’re transforming a day, but little by little building the habits because your habits are going to be the ones that will ultimately change you in the future.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (14:22)
So I think from the everyday habits that you build will help you continue to think of that growth mindset.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (14:28)
And it doesn’t have to be something big, just do something different each day.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (14:34)
“Okay. Today I’m going to try to walk how half a mile,” or, “Tomorrow I’m going to do something different.” Just keep pushing yourself and challenge yourself each day to move forward.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (14:43)
Now, don’t go and say all of a sudden, “I’m going to run a marathon tomorrow.” Be realistic. Take one day at a time and start training your brain towards these different habits to get you thinking different.

Rosa Santos: (14:54)
Can I tell you what somebody told me yesterday? “Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life.”

Alisa Manjarrez: (15:01)
Yeah. That’s so true.

Rosa Santos: (15:04)
Then I’m like, “Oh!”

Rosa Santos: (15:05)
That really woke me up, you guys because I felt like, “Oh my God, that really put me in a completely different mindset.” Thinking like, “Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. It’s a new day.”

Rosa Santos: (15:17)
It’s a new day and you can create it. And it’s the first day of the rest of your life, so choose wisely.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (15:25)
And I think it’s the way you speak too. You can also create your reality based on what you say. Because sometimes, we all have negative thoughts. “I’m not good enough,” or, “I can’t do this.”

Dr. Merary Simeon: (15:37)
Let’s be realistic. We all have them but it’s also what are the words that you create and, and the actions that follow that.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (15:42)
It’s okay to feel down, but you can’t live there. You can’t live in the negative. And sometimes we have to talk about it first before start taking those actions or even getting your mind to think different.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (15:56)
So your words can create your reality.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (16:00)
When I ran yesterday that last half mile, I was like, “Oh, what was I thinking?” I just kept saying to myself, “You can do this. You can do this. You can do this.” And you know what? I did. I almost cried, but I did make it, and today I’m sore, but I made it. So it was all worth it.

Alisa Manjarrez: (16:14)
Can you make a little, ‘You can do this’ loop for me because when I’m running, I say, “I hate this. I hate this. I hate that.”

Rosa Santos: (16:20)
We need that, Merary.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (16:22)
No. Every time I do something that I hate, I’m like, “I love this. I love this. Oh, my God, how can I get better at it?” And I really pump myself up and that’s how I get it done. Because say I hate this, oh man, you won’t get me out there the next day.

Alisa Manjarrez: (16:36)
That’s why I’m not running right now.

Rosa Santos: (16:40)
Hey, what about this concept, which is part of the growth mindset, which is learning from criticism?

Alisa Manjarrez: (16:48)
What I’ve learned about learning about criticism and receiving feedback is when you get feedback, you address it or you take it in, in that moment, but you don’t necessarily take it with you as part of your identity.

Alisa Manjarrez: (17:03)
So if someone says, “Hey, when I’m talking to you, you’re not listening,” or something it doesn’t mean I’m a bad listener. It means in that moment I wasn’t listening. And so when I think about receiving criticism, for me, when it comes to growth mindset, it’s about taking it in that moment, but not owning it as all of me.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (17:26)
I love that. Thank you for the coaching.

Alisa Manjarrez: (17:32)
Self coaching.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (17:35)
No, but that’s important because just think about society, period, and all the things that it’s about multicultural women and diversity and the things that you see, whether it’s on TV or on the radio, or what people say about you, or even within a meeting or just people in general. They say a lot of stupid things that are very biased. And if we take all that in and carry it with us or make it part of our identity, they already made it part of our identity, it is up to me as an individual not to bring that to life.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (18:07)
And thank you for saying that, Alisa, because I think that’s something we should continue to be reminded of, especially as multicultural women, because people have placed a lot for multicultural women in a box, and it is up to us to say, “That is not my identity. That is not who I am,” and not carry it with us even though we hear it from all different places because it’s not one situation, one sit down. It’s all around us.

Rosa Santos: (18:32)
I really like that you guys are actually making those distinctions because when I first remember coming across this concept as part of growth mindsets and that you have to learn from feedback and criticism and whatnot, when you really overlay that lens of the difference, the bias, it was actually challenging for me to say, “No, I don’t want [inaudible 00:18:57]. I don’t need feedback.”

Rosa Santos: (19:01)
They only know what they’re projecting themselves on me about the idea that they have because they’ve constructed based on my likeness and my name could potentially tell them.

Rosa Santos: (19:16)
And that’s what I’ve wrestled with a little bit, but the way that you guys have described it, and it just reminded me. We had a guest in the podcast, a couple of episodes ago who talked exactly about this, about your identity and then how you prove them, and I’m making air quotes, ‘wrong’ in the sense of having the agility of foresight to actually disrupt some of those biases, which on its own, you are helping the other person also grow and see things differently from what they used to see.

Rosa Santos: (19:51)
And so I’m glad that you guys brought up that perspective because otherwise depending on what it is, especially for us and for women in general, it can be actually quite daunting being told certain things, or being diminished when you are trying to speak up.

Rosa Santos: (20:06)
And then not only that, but you have to embrace it. It’s like, “I’m not sure I want to embrace it.”

Rosa Santos: (20:14)
Maybe I’m being a little fixed here.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (20:20)
How do you disturb your thinking by imagining beyond the comfort zone, which is something you mentioned earlier, Rosa? How do you snap out of it? Especially when you’re being bombarded.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (20:32)
Forget society. Think about our own cultures and what they believe women should be achieving and not achieving. Not only do we have the culture of the workplace, but now we have our family members. They have a fixed mindset and they want to put it on us.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (20:55)
My cousin and I used to laugh because; oh my God, my grandmother God rest her soul, she would call me and then tell me about the things about my cousin and then she would call my cousin and talk bad about me and we would call each other and be like, “Okay. You better call because this is what they’re about you.”

Dr. Merary Simeon: (21:10)
And it was all criticism. At the time I wasn’t married, they are like, “[foreign language 00:21:14], she’s doing all her things.” And I’m just like, “I haven’t got married because I haven’t found the right man and I don’t want to settle.”

Alisa Manjarrez: (21:24)
They don’t want to hear it.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (21:25)
No. Did you forget that, at the time, I have a master’s degree, I have a great job. I’m an independent woman and holding it down. But no, all they had to talk about was the fact that I wasn’t married and that I was just going to throw my life away. When I heard these things, I was like, “Come on now.”

Dr. Merary Simeon: (21:45)
So anyway, culturally, and honestly I didn’t care but I think deep inside, you’re just like, “Wow, is there something wrong with me?” Because when you hear it all the time from the people that you love, because I love this old woman, and it was like, “Ouch, that hurts. Even though I want to tell you a few things right now, I know I can’t.”

Rosa Santos: (22:09)
You are just talking about another concept that I wanted to bring to the conversation, which is learning from the success of others and not being threatened by that success, which in all honesty and even what you guys are talking about and what we all human beings, no matter what culture you come from, a lot of times there are some women that don’t like seen other women succeed or have achievements more than themselves, it’s easier to get bulked with gossiping and telling others how terrible choices you’re making and all of these things, rather than celebrating, Merary. Rather than celebrating your success or the successes of others who are around you.

Rosa Santos: (22:55)
And I would go even a little further, which is, how you can feed from enabling other people’s success.

Rosa Santos: (23:04)
I feel like we could all talk about it forever.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (23:09)
I’m with you and I’m not going to go to a rant about it, but I am going to say this. I heard one of my friends, she was actually giving a word in our church a year ago. And one of the things that she said is some of us have the ability to help other women rise up. And maybe that’s our calling to help empower women.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (23:30)
I don’t know. Let’s look at my teacher that helped me just to give that example. She is a teacher and her whole purpose was to empower others to surpass her and to do better than her, and that’s as a teacher, that was her calling. That’s what she did. And she didn’t look at other people surpassing her as a threat. She saw it as a win. So I really believe that when we get together as women and I have a way to connect you, to help you rise, or to put you in contact with somebody that’s going to shoot you to the stars, we should be able to do that because we have the capacity and we’re capable of doing that.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (24:05)
The difference is we’re not taking those actions. There’s a lot of us that are not taking advantage of the positions that we have to help other women rise.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (24:16)
And to your point, Rosa, there are so many other of us who just sit there and criticize with other women and other people at the table; doesn’t have to be women, could be men, they’re criticizing other women at the table and what we’re doing is ruining their reputation in that room, versus helping them rise in the places where they’re not even in yet.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (24:37)
And I hope that if people that are listening are doing this every time that you feel that you need to speak bad about another woman that is not in the room, know that you’re not just ruining her reputation, you’re ruining all of the other women’s reputation.

Rosa Santos: (24:51)
Let me ask you this because part of really moving and exercising and then getting into this growth mindset is actually learning, is finding lessons in this success, in this case, of other women. Are you guys purposeful, or maybe not; and maybe this as you can think of an example of when you have found a lesson or an inspiration on somebody else’s success, and if so, how did you do it and how did you incorporate it in your own planning, if you guys like, in order to move forward and continue to grow as professionals?

Dr. Merary Simeon: (25:26)
I don’t know that I plan on it, Rosa. So that’s a really good question and for me to think about.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (25:34)
I do look at other women’s success and I do try to learn, and I’m like, “Oh, I want to do that. Oh, I want to be that. How do I get there?” So I do love to ask questions. I do love to -and you all know this- it’s like, “Hey, how did you do that? How do you get there?” So I definitely see it as, I guess I’m curious because I want to do it. And also because I want to learn, so if somebody asks me, I want to be able to provide them some type of support or help, or make a connection.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (26:07)
So to answer your question, I think for me, when I see other successful women or successful people, period, I like to ask, “Well, how did you do that?How did you get there?”

Dr. Merary Simeon: (26:16)
Let’s say for the book, for Radical Women, I started questioning people that wrote books. “How did you do this? How did you do that?” And then I end up writing. So I think that’s just how I think, not all the time, but if I’m interested, I’m going to ask questions and then I’m going to take action, which is something you said earlier to Rosa.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (26:35)
It’s not just about imagining it and thinking growth mindset, but it’s also about taking action. And for me it’s always been, “Okay if I want to be like her or better, I got to take action, whatever that may look like and know that I may do well, or I may fail but it’s one step at a time.”

Alisa Manjarrez: (26:55)
I think I just had an aha about myself when you were talking, Merary, because sometimes I’m not jealous of women who are younger than me doing awesome things or older than me doing awesome things but I do get jealous of women the same age as me. For some reason, I don’t know.

Alisa Manjarrez: (27:10)
Something that I’ve been practicing, I haven’t put a name to it, but as you were talking, it made me think, “I think that when I can get curious, it erases the jealousy.”

Alisa Manjarrez: (27:19)
So there’s this woman. She became a coach right after I did. And she has been very successful in her online side of her business. And I congratulate her and I’ll engage with her staff, but I get jealous from time to time.

Alisa Manjarrez: (27:36)
And finally, I just asked her some questions, like “How did she do that thing on Instagram? And how did you da, da, da?”

Alisa Manjarrez: (27:44)
And she goes, “Oh my gosh. Let me just tell you. Here’s the link that I… Here’s what I learned, da, da, da.”

Alisa Manjarrez: (27:48)
And then all of a sudden, the jealousy left. And then I just said, “Oh, okay. I’ll just copy you.” And then I learned from her.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (27:58)
It’s so true because I do that too. Anybody ask me for anything, I feel like sharing, I share. And I do ask. So I’m the type of person that if I see that I like your shirt, I’m like, “Hey, where did you get it?” I have no shame in wearing the same shirt as you because I like it.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (28:14)
But there are people that are like, “Oh no, I wouldn’t.”

Dr. Merary Simeon: (28:17)
I’m like, “Oh no, I don’t care. We’re twins because I love your shirt.” And I don’t mind saying that I got it from Alisa’s website. But I think because I’m so interested in it, I don’t care. I’m actually happy for you.

Rosa Santos: (28:31)
It’s interesting what you just said, because for me the insight, Alisa, is being afraid of asking, of exercising that curiosity and while doing so, you’re flattering that person because of what they did and how is it.

Rosa Santos: (28:45)
And more often that not, you’ll be surprised how much people want to do good in the world and what will want to share the how they did it. Because they’ll say, “Hey, if I did it, you can do it, and here’s what worked for me.”

Rosa Santos: (29:01)
And that’s what I call augmentation. Augmentation is really just understanding what was that worked for them, and yes, you now know it. You have the recipe, the same as when you’re baking. You have the recipe, but then you might decide to add other ingredients that are going to make it much better and your own because it’s going to give it that flavor or that flare that wasn’t there before. But it helps you propel to a point that without that beginning, you would’ve never allowed yourself to create it.

Rosa Santos: (29:37)
And for me there’s actually that growth mindset when you find inspiration or a different way of thinking or pushing a different neuron to then create something else because of somebody else’s success, whereas that fixed way of looking at it would be like, “Wow, I feel so threatened. I don’t want to be friends with this person. I am going to make sure that I talk badly or do things that ignore that fact actually exists.”

Alisa Manjarrez: (30:06)
Again, it’s owning your power.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (30:09)
Yes.

Alisa Manjarrez: (30:09)
So it’s owning your power to ask questions to get curious, owning your power to decide that trying is better than regret, as Merary said earlier, and it’s owning your power to keep going even when failure is part of the journey. It’s hard.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (30:31)
It’s learning from it. If you go back, how do you tweak it so that you can make it and win? And let’s say, “Okay, what do I have to tweak? What lever did I not move that I failed?” Because I believe that’s the recipe. I don’t cook, but what I’ve learned in the little bit that I cook is, “Okay, that needed a little bit more salt. So maybe next time it’ll taste better.” It’s learning.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (30:58)
I don’t give up. Maybe my family wishes I would, but those sorts of things that every time I go back and just tweak it a little bit, until it gets better and better.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (31:09)
Now I make really good beans that I’m proud of. And it was because of my growth mindset, not giving up on the beans.

Rosa Santos: (31:16)
And I recently was actually listening to an old interview of a comedian. It was at the time when she was everywhere and being interviewed. I said “How are you coping with this sudden success? You’re an overnight success.”

Rosa Santos: (31:34)
And she said, “Well, this overnight success took 15 years in the making.”

Rosa Santos: (31:39)
We all know, and our listeners know, and especially of color and multicultural women know it is hard. And what we just saying is don’t give up. Don’t give up and don’t give in and embrace the becoming, embrace the process and do learn through that process.

Alisa Manjarrez: (32:06)
Want to know how breaking the rules can help you level up your career game? Search What Rules Podcast on any social media platform and join our members only group on LinkedIn, where we discuss rule breaking strategies for multicultural women.

Alisa Manjarrez: (32:21)
What Rules is a production of Color Forward. The show is produced by me, Alisa Manjarrez, with editing and fabulous sound design by Mathr de Leon.

Alisa Manjarrez: (32:29)
Visit colorforward.com for more stories, events, and of course, all the episodes of What Rules.