Teneshia Warner: Steps On How To Thrive Instead Of Just Survive
“...the journey that will be required of you to meet the best version of yourself. ...is between your comfort zone, and where your dream is, the dream is always going to be outside of the zip code of your comfort zone.”
Getting to speak to people that really understand how powerful your mindset is in correlation to how successful you are is one of my favorite things in doing these featured collabs for So She Slays. I believe a lot of people are not really fulfilled in life where it be personal or professional. Instead of thriving a lot of us are just surviving and although there are people who are okay with this I know there are plenty who are not. That’s why I loved this interview we did with Teneshia Warner, author of “The Big Stretch” and CEO of one of the country’s most successful multicultural marketing and communications firms, EGAMI Group, which Forbes magazine also named one of America’s Best PR Firm’s of 2020.
In this interview, we talk about how fear plays a huge part in whether we pursue a dream, how to work through it, and what exactly her book “The Big Stretch” helps you do.
How Do you know when you are surviving instead of thriving?
So to survive, to survive is to continue to live and exist in spite of an obstacle, right? And so in spite of, you're making it and you are striving to exist. But thriving, to thrive is to prosper, to flourish. And you know, what we need to do is figure out what are some things that we can do to move us into a thriving mindset in spite of the obstacles? I always encourage all of my followers or who I call my dreamers, to be well aware that any dreamer that is living their dream, they have actually tapped into an ability to fight. It's important to know and almost welcome obstacles. So that when you are faced with an obstacle, you're not just paralyzed but you almost realize that a part of your dream journey is going to come with obstacles that stand between you and that dream. When you know that I want you to embrace the dream war, you're in. I want you to dig deep and be willing to fight. If you even look back over this past year for me as an entrepreneur, I had to fight the battle of like, how do I move a company from a physical location to 100% remote? I had to fight the battle of how do we continue to run the business in the midst of receiving some contract cancellations? How do we build a team culture when we no longer even see each other? And I was completely surprised at how many obstacles I could actually take on and plow through. I feel like I got my muscle strength up, that it made me stronger. So I encourage you to take time to give yourself kudos too because this past year you also ended up having to bring your work life home. If you're a mom, you know, maybe you had to all of a sudden work from home and be a parent and a teacher. So many things were thrown at you. I want you to look at the mindset of I'm stronger than I knew and whatever dream or path you want to take on this should be evidence that, hey, you're strong enough, and you can do this.
after we figure that out what do we do next?
I think there's a huge opportunity to really get real with yourself about your happiness level and your satisfaction level in life personally and professionally. So, you know, if you were on cruise control, just surviving, I think what the year taught us is life can change in a matter of seconds. And so knowing that, and knowing that we can see now how quickly everything can change. The question that I have for you is how happy are you? And how satisfied are you in your profession? Are you really doing the thing that brings your heart joy? Are you moving upon a path that you feel you're able to operate on purpose, based upon, you know, why you feel you're here on the planet, and if you're not, then start mapping opportunities to get you on that path. Because if you're just going along and you know on the inside that something's not quite right, or, you know, I'm not quite fulfilled, this would be a moment to shift from surviving to thriving and be willing to take that risk and that chance on going after what you want life. I know from experience, I worked at IBM Global Services for five years. Which by the way, I want to say this IBM was an amazing company it just wasn't the role for me in terms of aligning my passions with what I was doing there. But what held me back was good job security, a great salary, and society. From the outside, it was like, “Hey, you made it. You should be really, really happy where you are. But I had to be willing to do a true internal assessment to answer those tough questions. Yeah, everybody else thinks I'm supposed to be happy. But am I really?
So what if you’re not truly happy?
The title of my book is called the big stretch. And my definition of the stretch is the journey that will be required of you to meet the best version of yourself. And that journey usually, is a distance in between your comfort zone, and where your dream is, the dream is always going to be outside of the zip code of your comfort zone. I've had a chance to interview over 200 iconic Dreamers. I promise you, this is a universal truth amongst all the stories is, at some point, there's a dreamer, they have this idea, they have this vision they desire for more. And it's a decision that has to be made. Do I stay in what I know, do I stay in the land of familiar? Do I stay in the territory that I'm very comfortable with? That can be your job that can be the city in which you live, that can be your friend circle. Or do I would to take that leap or stretch and expand outside of the comfort zone? All of them had that question? The difference is that great dreamers say yes when the question comes. Now, it does not mean that it's going to happen in the absence of fear. Because the fear was also a universal truth. So right after the vision, or right after the calling, right after the thought, maybe I should be thinking of doing this versus this. The feeling of the butterflies in your stomach, the nervousness, and there's usually a natural desire to cling to what you know. So being in tune with that, when that feeling comes to say, “Hey, I can recognize what this fear is about. I can recognize it's a natural feeling for me to want to stay in the familiar. However, I'm unwilling to let fear, make this decision for me, I'm going to step out in spite of it.” You almost have to get comfortable and in a good relationship with fear. And you know, as you stretch over and over again, it becomes easier. And even to this day, I've been on a dream journey for 17 years. So when I drove out of that IBM Global Services parking lot that day I'm telling you that the fear was there. I had the voices, “What are you doing? What are you thinking? You have no idea what's next.” But I kept driving forward and I allowed fear to be there. 17 years later, there are decisions that I'm contemplating today and fears right here, still. “Oh, man, are you serious? Are you thinking about that? You just get comfortable again.” So it's a constant. The fear has been here every step of the way, whenever it was time for an expansion.
What do you do to combat the fear?
An exercise that I've done a lot is, I'll do the worst-case scenario in my head. I'll give you an example with IBM. I was like, okay, you leave IBM and you, you cannot find an opportunity, alright, you don't find another option, and your cash goes low. Your money goes low, you lose your place, okay? Then it was like you lose your place and ultimately call your grandma and ask her, can you stay with her until you get on your feet? I do the worst-case scenario. And in the end, guess what? I'm alive. I have my right mind, which means it's a new day and a new chance, and you can always start over. It takes power out of like, okay; this could happen, this could occur. I almost go through it and then allow myself to say, you know, what, if that's the worst thing that can happen? How bad is it? And, yeah, so I've done that mental game quite a bit before where the worst-case scenario is not worth the reward of what if it works out? So that's another thing as well. The working relationship with yourself when you're on a dream journey is essential. There's a phase in my book where I talk about the importance of building the mind, body, and spirit of a dreamer. And that's making sure what you’re putting in your mind supports you in moving in the direction where you see yourself evolving to, and almost like being protective over everything. Asking yourself, “Is this social media feed feeding you?” When you're scrolling Instagram, are you being inspired, or are you comparing yourself and you get off Instagram, and you feel worse? Pay attention to what is fueling the mindset that gives you energy and makes you believe in yourself. It would be best if you did more of that when you're ready to go on the journey.
I know your book isn’t just about surviving and thriving. What else does it talk about?
The whole basis of the book is to ensure that the readers can identify what their dream for today, not your dream of the past is, but what is the goal that you want to work on now, and then provide you with a step by step guide to moving it from dreamland into reality. So almost think of a 90-day Bootcamp for a dreamer. So for me, there are many inspirational stories in there, and I wanted it to be inspiring. But my ultimate intention was you need to work on your dream. So it could be inspiring, but you need to be in action every single week. And so it's a hybrid of different stories of other dreamers because I believe the more accounts that you can learn about, the better. And it's also proven that if it's possible for them, it can be possible for you. The second thing is the action-oriented templates of the exercises that you do are based on a format that helps you through a system because some people are like, you know, it's good to have this idea, but where do I even start? It's a four-phase approach. There's one phrase that deals with dreaming, and there are tools that people can download some of the exercises now it's available for free. You can even test out some of the activities in phase one, which is all around dreaming. There's a dreamers profile assessment that I would encourage everybody to learn something about themselves. It's all about helping you identify what path is right for you. Are you an entrepreneur? Are you a career partner? Are you more of an activist that should be doing something in the nonprofit space? Please find a path that is right for you. The second is design, and that's where we will help you map out a plan. You take that vision and what measurable goals I can see for this vision 12 months from now. And then you kind of work backward to hold yourself accountable on 90-day increments; it's measurable. The next phase is fear. And this is where we're getting comfortable being uncomfortable in the face of fear; I have exercises that I have you start doing small daring steps every day in the name of your dream. So that when you need to take that big daring step, you're not so uncomfortable being uncomfortable. And then the last phase is doing. And that's giving you tips about how do you do the dream for the long term; it's straightforward to launch an idea, but when the first obstacle comes in your way, you have to have that dream warrior fight on and go for the long term. So we give a lot of strategies there as well.
Follow Teneshia on her Instagram and purchase “The Big Stretch” here.
Listen to the rest of our interview with Teneshia on the
So She Slays Podcast.