Ending bad relationships, navigating mean girls, and finding our confidence

Erika Cramer, The Confidence Coach, talks to us about love, confidence, and the power of our minds. From abusive relationships (and never ending up in one again) straight on through to turning our toughest moments into our deeper strengths, Erika discusses it all. Tune it to hear about changing our bodies with self love, not hate, and the power of exploring our thoughts.

Topics covered: 

• How getting that 'perfect body' doesn't automatically result in self love and confidence
• Why we end up in bad relationships (from friendships to toxic bosses)
• Why we can't always control our mind, but we can choose what we believe 
• The power of realizing everything we think isn't true
• Why journalling is amazing 
• Body image concerns and how changing ourselves with love, not hate, is critical 
• Mean girl bullying and how to handle it

(Also my mic hated me in this episode. Ya girl is still learning, but we'll get better x.)

Where to find Erika: 
instagram.com/erikacramer 
thequeenofconfidence.com/

Transcript

Intro

From body image pressures to social media, like sometimes it can feel like the world is full of noise, and that's exactly why we've got to start talking out loud. Welcome to the podcast. I'm your host today, Danae Mercer health journalist and eating disorder survivor. I'm glad you're here. 

Danae Mercer

Hi, guys, welcome back to Talking Out Loud, the podcast, it's all about helping you find your voice. I'm your host Danae Mercer, and today I'm joined by the incredible Erica Cramer. She's the queen of confidence. She's an international confidence coach who has shown how you can turn trauma into triumph. Erica, thank you so much for joining me today. 

Erika Cramer - The Queen of Confidence

Hello. I am so happy to be here, honestly. Thank you.

Danae Mercer

Now, what does an international confidence coach do? Like what? What is that?

Erika Cramer - The Queen of Confidence

So I get to talk about confidence to women all over the world every day. It's amazing. It's the best job ever. I basically help women to let go of the idea that confidence is something you were either born with or not born with, that it's reserved for the pretty ones, the skinny ones, the celebrities, those girls over their air quotes. It's really an amazing thing to be able to understand what confidence really is and how each and every one of us can cultivate it if we are willing to do the scary stuff that it takes to create it. So, I have a global program. I also serve my women here in Melbourne so blessed that I get to do this, especially in the year that is 2020 where I feel like confidence crashed for everyone. 

Danae Mercer

That's certainly I mean, I know I've tuned in to one of your incredible seminars before, which is how this happened, and I  did that a time where I thought my confidence had massively crash and I was just fumbling around and I felt really insecure in myself and it helped me. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your journey? I mean, your life story is really intense and pretty heavy.

Erika Cramer - The Queen of Confidence

Yeah, yeah. It was gosh, it's so crazy. And so I was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to a bipolar single mother who, you know, she did amazing. I mean, my mom is my hero to this day, but she struggled and so she would stop her medication, get mentally ill and physically abused me. And the police would come and arrest us and take her to a mental hospital and take me to foster homes. And this really happened from when I was like three weeks old all the way till I was 16. And there were sexual abuse. There was abandonment issues. I had lots of issues with my self-confidence, with my self-esteem. I didn't really feel like I was good enough. And I was because I was home to home, kind of handed over. And so it raised a child who was very self-conscious of herself and always seeking validation in. When I was 17 years old, I joined the army. I was in the US Army for ten years. I married my high school sweetheart. We got into a drinking and driving accident where I broke my back and almost was paralyzed in the hospital. And it was really a wakeup call for me. And I started modeling thinking that that's what I needed. I was on magazine covers in bikinis, seeking. I mean, I feel like my body, I guess. Look, the best air quotes that it's ever looked and I felt the worst that I'd ever felt about myself, which was so interesting. And the following year, my husband got into an accident drinking and driving on his own and he passed away. And that just shook me so much. It was like rock bottom, like I had I had so much trauma. And then my husband passed away and I was like, I can't do this. I wanted to control all, delete my life. I met a man at a hair conference in Las Vegas because I was a hairdresser and an Army soldier. That's a whole another story at the same time. And I moved to Australia to live with him and pretend to delete my life. He was a narcissist. I met another man that was just like him who was no good. And then I met my husband, who was my personal trainer, and he was into coaching and spirituality and self-development. And he just took me gently, gently led me to this journey of working on my stuff. And within 12 months, I was a whole another person. And I got so obsessed with this that I decided I want to help women, especially women who went through hard things, really manage their minds and let go of the old stories and reclaim the life that they want to have, not that they think they should have, but that they genuinely desire to have. So long story short, that's kind of the story as to how I came here and started doing this work. 

Danae Mercer

My gosh, there's so many things that I want to talk about, and it's powerful and it shows just how strong you are, I think, because there is a lot there that that is easy to get swept under and lost behind. So I just I think I just want to take it step by step, you mentioned, that you felt the worst about yourself when your body was, quote unquote, its best. And I do think a lot of women in their brains, they're like, if I have that perfect body, if I have abs, if I have a puffed booty, I'm going to love myself. My world is going to be great. I'm going to go for that promotion. It's going to be perfect. So, talk to me about why changing your body isn't the solution to finding confidence?

Erika Cramer - The Queen of Confidence

Well, we know it's it's an inner game. You know, I think it's really funny. We believe that when we and I talk about this in the book, when I then, I so I can't be happy right now until I lose 20 kilos. Until I lose five pounds, until I make the money, find the man, get my dream job. And so, what happens is we believe that something outside of us is going to fulfill us and make us happy. But the reality is that our happiness, our joy, our confidence, it's an emotion, it's a feeling. And you can choose to have a feeling any time you want, depending on what thoughts you're thinking in your head. So I'm going to get really coachy on you here. But when you're thinking certain thoughts, it makes you feel a certain way. This is the way all of our minds work. This is how we work as humans. So, if I'm thinking really incredible thoughts about myself, I'm going to feel really great. And then the actions I take are going to be amazing actions. I'm going to get some great results. The flipside to that is that we think I'm not good enough. I'm not pretty enough. I'm too skinny, I'm too fat, I'm too short, I'm too tall.0020So when I then I and then we feel like crap about the current reality of our lives or who we currently are in the moment. And we can't be present. We can't find happiness until something outside happens. So I know you've probably seen it in your incredible work, by the way, that you do the incredible work that you do. I honor you for it because we need it. We need more of it. And you see that these women lose weight or get the money or find the men and they look in the mirror and they're still not happy. So it cannot be the external thing. This is an inside game that you have to look at what you're thinking about yourself. You have to look at the beliefs and the stories that you're allowing yourself to attach to and believe about yourself. 

Danae Mercer

So then how if I like, look in the mirror and I see my body and I'm like, oh gosh, this is an awful body, no one's going to love me, my I can't go out tonight. What steps can I take to start to change that conversation?

Erika Cramer - The Queen of Confidence

Oh OK, great question. My favorite my favorite book in the world is Byron Cady's Loving What Is and she talks a lot about your mind and questioning your thoughts. Let's take the thought. I'm not thin enough or pretty enough to go out tonight and in around the world. Actually, there's a stat that says 90 percent, it's eighty nine percent. But let's call it 90 percent of women opt out or cancel plans because of the way that they look. So nine out of 10 women around the globe, this is a study that did are opting out of life, are choosing to cancel because they're not happy with the way they look about themselves. So this is a true thing that we do. I've done this myself in the past. So what happens is that she says we don't inquire, we don't ask more about our thoughts. So we believe the B.S. story, that we tell ourselves that we're not pretty enough or thin enough. And what is thin enough mean or too fat or like according to what I always say, that when you compare yourself, when you say I'm not good enough, sorry, it's directly correlated to comparison, because if I say I'm not pretty enough, enough compared to who in my head I have a someone else that I'm thinking I'm not smart like done. I'm not pretty like Erica. I'm not witty enough like Mary. There's a there's another. And we can't compare ourselves to other people. So when we realize that the thought that we're thinking is a conditioning that we've been served up, our family maybe told us our boyfriends or girlfriends or the media maybe told us that, then we get to go. Hold on. Is it true that I'm too fat? Because if I ask a size twenty two, if a sixteen is too fat, she would say, oh no, I want to be a sixteen. A sixteen is going to say, oh no, I want to be a twelve. A twelve wants to be a six. A six wants to be a four. And so it goes. So what does too fat mean. According to what. That doesn't exist. And if you don't ask more of your mind, if you don't do the work on paper and start questioning your thoughts and why you think them, you'll never get freedom from that.

Danae Mercer

That's so that is so powerful. And I do. I think one of the most liberating things that I really started to practice is this idea that everything you think isn't true, right? 

Erika Cramer - The Queen of Confidence

Yeah. 

Danae Mercer

If I sometimes I'm what I'm on my period right now and I'm retaining water and I just I'm not feeling like my fear is fear itself. But even if my body, my mind comes out with these horrible, sharp things, I don't have to listen to that. That is not what I believe. 

Erika Cramer - The Queen of Confidence

Yes. So it's yeah. That's a powerful point. And, you know, it's crazy. We can't choose what we think. So I think a lot of coaches will go, you know, control your mind and control your thoughts. I'm sorry, but have you ever tried to do that in, like, meditation, the thoughts of, like, did you take the trash out? Did you do this thing? You know, like, I can't control my mind, but spot on what you said, we can choose what we want to engage with and what we want to believe, that is something that we have the power on and just if you those of you listening can can hear that like I have the power to believe whichever thoughts I want, now, they're going to come in and out. But the ones I want to attach to and take for a ride for the next four hours or the full day, don't attach to the crappy thoughts because you're going to have a crappy day like it's just you can choose. And that's really powerful. 

Danae Mercer

And now you mentioned you fell into several bad relationships, and I do see this happening a lot with women who struggle with body image or confidence concerns is they go towards these guys that kind of they make them feel worse. They wear them down constantly. So talk to me about that and how can we learn to choose and pick partners that are better for us? 

Erika Cramer - The Queen of Confidence

Yes. Oh, so good. So, yeah, I think I believe this is what I believe. I believe we attract what we secretly believe about ourselves. And so, I was attracting men who were telling me and showing me how I wasn't worthy. I was putting up with, I was teaching people how to treat me. And the good news is if you're teaching people how to treat you and you don't like it, you can re teach them. It's very scary. You have to stand up for yourself. You have to say no, you have to stop people pleasing and start putting you first and beyond a fluffy Instagram quote. I mean, legit, like actually doing it. And so I realized that all of those air quotes, bad relationships, I needed them. They were incredible for me because they taught me that what I was settling for, they taught me how I used to speak to myself. It was manifested in that man, how he would speak to me, how he would treat me. It was only happening because I allowed it. And not only did I allow it, but I attracted it because I thought that's all I could get. And so when I started putting Erica first, I started putting myself first and I started thinking and questioning and journaling like I used to be so funny about journaling. But honestly, it's like such a game changer because it's basically for me when I journal is I put my mind on paper. So it's like doing a stocktake or an inventory like what's in there? and I just put it on paper and I go, oh my gosh, that is a bunch of crap. Like, no wonder I feel overwhelmed or I don't feel good enough. And then I start like picking it apart and extracting it. So if you are attracting really terrible relationships into your life, whether that's a friendship, whether that's a toxic boss, whatever that is, ask yourself what is it that you're allowing those people to do? What is it that you're allowing in that relationship and why? And if you start unraveling it, you may find a belief like this is all I'll ever get or there's no one else out there or there's no more men in the world or there's no good men or good women, which is another B.S. thought that we think. And so unfortunately, our minds just gets to working on proving us right. So we will find little signs. Yep. See, they're all taken. See, there's no one out there for me. See, no one will love me. And so instead it's like love you, date yourself. I did a podcast on that. Like Date your MF self is what the podcast is called. You know, it's like do you know who you are and what you want, what you love. And if you don't, please don't go out there and date because maybe there's more work to be done. You with you you with self that relationship first. 

Danae Mercer

Gosh, I'm over here. Yeah, that's it, that's resonate with me so strongly. I mean, I've had an emotionally abusive relationship and a couple and I think it happens often when you don't believe in yourself and you think, well, this person does it because they love me and this person does it because they call me this. Because it's true, because I am this. And that's like now it's like, would I ever let a friend be in that situation? Absolutely not. We do it to ourselves so often we let ourselves be in those situations.

Erika Cramer - The Queen of Confidence

Yeah. And it's and it's you know, I talk a lot about if you're if you're wanting to change your body, let's say, because there's a lot of women who want to change their body. I've had two kids. My tummy is jiggly and wrinkly and all that jazz, and I would love to tighten it. I go to the gym. I would love to do that. So is it going to work for me doing that in a way where I'm loving it, I'm appreciating it, I'm treating it well, I'm feeding it. I'm sending it love or do I look in the mirror every day and go, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. Why don't you change for me? I hate you. And then I spend hours on the treadmill. I'm basically sending hate to my body and wishing that it would change by hating it. Like nothing that we love works like that. We can't raise our kids with hate and expect them to love us. We can't feed hate to our plants. We feed them water and neutralizer. We can't put fire on something and expect it to bloom into this beautiful thing. It's like we need to treat it with love and appreciation and be gentle with it. And that's how things like that transform. So I think so many women want to change something about their lives, their bodies, their situations. And we do it with anger and hate. And that's not going to get us anywhere, you know.

Danae Mercer

Yeah, that's such a great analogy to the plant and the and the animals. You're absolutely right. And now what about I think a lot of women struggle with, like, that kind of mean girl bullying where maybe a group of girls are being subtly mean to them or in the office and they have some colleagues or they have a boss. That kind of environment where it's not new to you. It's other people to you. And you don't really know how to navigate it for one reason or another. Like, what would you say to someone in that situation?

Erika Cramer - The Queen of Confidence

Yeah, I as a coach now and who I am today, I when I look outwards into the world and I see someone doing something that's not really kind or being really angry or gossiping or, you know, just being mean to other people. This happens on social media, I'm sure, you know, because it happens all the time. And I now look at it with the eyes of I feel so sorry for what that person's must be going through, like they must be in deep pain in order to want to, you know, crumble someone else's tower, like, they must be so miserable themselves or in such a lack themselves for them to actually go out of their way to tear someone else down. And it never speaks on us. So if someone's talking badly about you, they're making fun of you, they're gossiping about you or just being rude to you. It says nothing about you, my love. Nothing. It's everything about them. I mean, what kind of person they are, how their temperament is, their character. For you to talk badly about another woman or tear her down, you yourself must not be well and happy. And so this is this this sad thing where, you know, so many of us get trolled on the Internet and this doesn't happen to me. But sometimes. But not really. But so many people feel the need to attack other people on the Internet or do the mean girl thing, like you said. And I now see that as a woman who is not secure in herself, a woman who is in an abusive relationship at home or her parents or her family, her siblings treated her like crap. And the only way that she could gain power was to try to put people under her because she's powerless. A real power doesn't do that. You know, real power and real love gives that back. So you can only pass power from power. You cannot pass it from a place of lack or or scarcity or picking on someone that just shows us. And I know it's hard when it happens to us, but if you could develop this belief that what other people think of you is none of your business, which I think Wayne Dyer says, and that people will be wrong about you because we don't even know who we are. I don't know who I am today, who I was last week versus who I am now, who I'll be in five years. I'm constantly changing. And so aren't you. So how if I don't know who I am, how can she or he or they know who I am? They're reflecting themselves. They're projecting their stuff on me. That's not me. You got me wrong. And so I say, let people be wrong about you. Like, let them be wrong because they will be.

Danae Mercer

And I love the idea of approaching it with that kind of that lens of kindness as well. I mean, I think, you know this when I, with social media, I had to learn very quickly how to handle a lot of different opinions about me and views on me. And it for a while it was it was very heavy, and it was very overwhelming. And now I think I found that strength to take it with take it with kindness and say we are all just trying to do the best we can with our own struggles and our own pain. And I take that approach. And speaking of social media, we've I think so many of us have felt our views of ourselves and our lives and everything getting worse during COVID obviously the world's chaos, but also because we're on social media more so like what kind of advice would you give for someone who is feeling worse about themselves and their lives right now? 

Erika Cramer - The Queen of Confidence

Oh with social media? OK, I'm going to go ahead and be a little bit Kohji right now, but I highly, highly, highly recommend that each and every one of us take responsibility for our digital energy and the Instagram and the Facebook and all the LinkedIn and anything out in the world that is a feed or a timeline or something where you scroll and it's your feed, that is your energy, that is your digital energy field. And so would you let someone really negative and nasty come into your house and lay on the couch and stay at your house all week or all day or for four hours in your car? Of course not. You know, when someone feels yucky, you don't even want to hang out with that person. But why do we do it on the Internet? Why are we not cleaning up our digital energy field, our digital timelines? So this is a responsibility all of us have. I believe social media is neutral. It can't be positive or negative. It's a platform. It's an app, it's a phone. And so you have to look at how are you using it, you know those accounts that you follow that you know you should not be following because you feel yucky following them or you feel bitchy or judgmental or catty or something comes up for you. You feel jealous or something. That feeling is your intuition going, oh, nope, unfollow. Don't look at that. Don't look at that. And sometimes during COVID, we had nothing else to do. So we almost fed into the reality TV the drama of oh my God, have you seen Kim Kardashian? Have you seen. Have you seen this? Oh, my gosh. Because we have nothing else to do. And I'm like, spend that time doing something that's going to feed you and feel good for you versus deplete you and take your energy. So unfollow a social media should make you feel great. It's an amazing technology and platform. If you don't like it, unfollow, don't look at it. It's up to us as grown women to decide what's good for us. And we start with our phone. We start with our timing. We start with the I go in there, too. I look at your photos. I look at Meghan. I have amazing women that I follow and I actually go there for inspiration. You know, social media can't kill your confidence. It's how we're using it. It's the user. 

Danae Mercer

Yeah, that's I  agree with that so not I think it's it is a platform, it is a tool, but it is up to us to sort of set that boundary. And you I mean, there is a real rise of what's called hate following over COVID. I've seen several articles talking about that where like we follow accounts not because we like them, but because we hate them and then we comply with why would we play that game. That's a really why would we say I want to go and feel angry, annoyed, vicious, mean? Why do we feed in to that?

Erika Cramer - The Queen of Confidence

I would tell you what we are. Stuff is too much. There's too much stuff. So someone has stuff, you know, they're the stuff we sweep under the rug. Let's say the sexual abuse, the dad leaving you, the narcissistic partner, your being bullied by your weight or your acne, all the stuff that we've we all have stuff. Some of us have different degrees, but they're all things that bothered us in our past or our childhood. And instead of us dealing with that, you know, we just shove it under the rug and it's easier to walk over this lumpy rug every day and put on a fake mask and go, nope, can't deal with that. Let's go. got to go to work. Got to be happy today. We put on the mask and we zip up our suits. Some of us have full body suits. I used to wear a full body suit. I didn't have a mask. I was like, let's just go and be fake all the way around. And I can't do with any of my stuff and my rug sweeping, sweeping, sweeping. And one day we have to look under there and go, oh my gosh, that's all the stuff that I've been avoiding. And that is where your magic is. It's like a Pandora's box, like it is really messy and hard to deal with your stuff. But let me tell you what, you will not gain your resilience or your lessons or your blessings. You can't unless you deal with it, because all of that pain, the trauma, the hard stuff has a gift for us. It's like a gift in the poo. You know, you've got to put your hand in it and it's gross and you're like, yuck. But in there is a gift, but you got to get your hands dirty. You know, it's not easy work. And so I feel like we avoid it, to be honest. And it's easier to pick at her and talk crap about her because she's out there putting herself out there. And I don't have to put myself out there. I get to just make fun of her and keep myself hidden when really only people who make fun of other people and gossip about other people, they have their stuff. They just haven't dealt with it. So I feel like we're too scared to deal with our stuff. And I encourage you, if that's you to start looking at it, pick up that book, start working on your mindset, start questioning your thoughts, because you will always look out into the world and nothing will change unless you change yourself then your whole world shifts.

Danae Mercer

My gosh, that is some incredible advice, Erica. I can't believe how quickly this time has flown by. I could ask a thousand more questions. Where can listeners find you?

Erika Cramer - The Queen of Confidence

So I'm on Instagram like you all the time. I love it. @theQueenofConfidence on Instagram, I have a book that's come out called Confidence Feels Like It S-H-I-T, and that is out now. And that's probably the easiest, most accessible for anyone who can't pay for a coach or wants to work on themselves. It's a step by step guide on how to create more confidence for yourself, how to cultivate it, how to stop people pleasing and let go of the need to make other people happy so you can do it for yourself. My website, the QueenofConfidence.com and the podcast, The Confidence Chronicles podcast as well. 

Danae Mercer

OK, perfect. And my final question is, what is your favorite inspiring quote?

Erika Cramer - The Queen of Confidence

Oh, my goodness. My favorite inspiring quote. Oh, I have so many Danae. OK. OK, I have to say, Byron, Katie, because I love her. So, she says an unquestioned mind is a world of suffering. And I love that 

Danae Mercer

Beautiful. Wow, I love that, I love that we've got to we've got to go into the poo.

Erika Cramer - The Queen of Confidence

We've got to go into there, put some gloves on, COVID safe. There's some gifts in there. Thank you 

Danae Mercer

Thanks, everyone, for tuning in to talking out loud. We will have another podcast up next week. So make sure you click subscribe. I'll speak to you soon. Bye