Traumatic events push us to become inauthentic with ourselves and the rest of the world. Misty Gilbert unravels the power when you claim your authentic self and not waver from your truth. Find out how to live your true identity intentionally.
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Claim Your Authentic Self With Misty Gilbert
This is Charla Anderson, host of the Charla Anderson Show Collector & Connector of Fascinating People (and EVERYONE is Fascinating, especially YOU!). Thank you for joining us. This is June 14th, 2023. We are going to have an incredible second round with Misty Gilbert. I’m so grateful to be on the platform of Win Win Women and Podetize Podcast, Roku, Apple TV streaming services, and Amazon Fire. Many things are coming together in this new world of live TV for me. I’m grateful you have joined us.
I will introduce Misty in a moment but I want to do a little breathing exercise we do every single time. It’s a little 22-second mini vacation. What we do is breathe in for 7 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, and breathe out gratitude for 11 seconds. We breathe in calm and breathe out gratitude. Join me for this little brief interlude. Let’s breathe calmly for seven, hold, breathe out, and release gratitude. Thank you.
We all need centering. We are in a hectic world. You can do that exercise multiple times a day anytime you are in a stressful situation. It is brief but it will help ground and center you as it did me. I’m grateful we are here. I appreciate you continue reading. We are beginning this journey of the Charla Anderson Show Collector Connector of Fascinating People (and EVERYONE is Fascinating, especially YOU!). Here we go with Misty Gilbert, part two.
In the last episode, we learned about Misty’s incredibly horrific mind-numbing past. She has more of that in her TEDx Talk, The Art of Authenticity. We learned about that horrific childhood and her overcoming. When I met her, she had never cut her hair, worn makeup and pants, and things were mind-boggling to me.
She seemed a little old-fashioned but she was very sweet when we met several years ago. Misty, we are going to go the rest of the story. We are going to find out what all those things you are overcoming, who you are in this world, and what is next. Let’s go there. Where are you? What is going on? You are still on a movement. We are going to mention some fun things we came up with.
I’m finishing some things I have started with a little bit more clarity and purpose as to what I’m doing. In 2013, I bought the domain Misty W Gilbert. I have both brands around my middle initial but I haven’t completed some of the goals I set. In 2015, I was a contributing author. In 2017, I began crafting and compiling my book. I worked with a writing coach. I set that on the back burner for some work projects that came into my world. I didn’t have the bandwidth to do both.
I did my TEDx Talk in January 2019 in California and then the pandemic hit. In that same timeframe, in November 2019, I became sick. They weren’t sure what was wrong with me. Between all of these circumstances, I haven’t done a lot with my brand, message, and some of my dreams and goals. Several years later, what I’m doing is I want to finish my book and get that published. I have seven books I want to publish. I have a couple of them. I’m working simultaneously but the initial one is going to be the one of my stories and sharing that in a written format with not just the information in my TED Talk but more than that.
I am moving forward with more of a speaking presence. I have done speaking for several years but I am moving forward with expanding my message and territory and communicating with more people. Where I’m at, which is a transition, is more of getting dialed in and focused on my message and having more clarity about what I’m trying to accomplish. My book will launch. I signed a contract to begin the process. We are working with a videographer to turn my story into a movie series. We have a pitch already to PBS with some contacts.
I don’t say that lightly because I know this isn’t a small thing. There are portions of it that can be intimidating, especially for somebody like me who doesn’t have experience and understanding of the entertainment world and did not grow up with it. I haven’t seen Little Mermaid, Lion King, SpongeBob, and things that people are used to seeing. I haven’t had that exposure.
I wasn’t introduced to having my television until 2015. I was living most of my life without it so it is not my default mechanism to relax or learn. I read books. I have hobbies like knitting and other things I like to do. I’m very passionate about spending time with people. I love having dinner, lunch, or activities with somebody and getting quality time with people. There is some learning around that.
I also know it is something I need to be shared, not just because of the message I have but the fact that I don’t believe there is enough content out there that shows people how to live through life-altering experiences and come out on the other side. We can talk about being an overcomer, transforming your life, creating the life you want, and living intentionally. Those are all topics I talk about.
It’s a practical application like, how does somebody do that? How do you leave an abusive childhood and family? That is all the connections you have. You have nothing outside of those resources. How do you reframe all the upbringing and content put into your psychology, emotionally and spiritually, regarding beliefs with God, religion, church, right and wrong?
I want the video series to be not just fun to watch but that even if you have not been raped or been in a cult, you can relate to having devastation wreck your world. You are not sure how you are going make it, and being able to understand key elements on how to do that. Will the movie be documentary-style/movie-style? I’m not sure. We are still working out the format but I want to use my experiences to encourage, support, and inspire other people to take that first step and live the life they want. It is your life. God is with you and in you.
Take that first step and live the life you want. Click To TweetI don’t want this separation that there seems to be and this mentality of us versus them, even if you haven’t had the hard life I have had. You have had hard experiences for you that are hard and it is not a comparison game. I want people to feel that no matter whether you are the black sheep of the family and have been ostracized or annihilated as I have been, or whether you have a loving family but you have had other catastrophes, cancer, losing a parent, losing a child, bankruptcy, and divorce. There is a number of things that can be surprising to us. The carpet is pulled out from underneath our feet. We don’t know how we are going to even find the air to fill our lungs for our next breath.
Your authenticity becomes a buzzword but you live, breathe, teach, and express it. We all have experiences and trauma. The only way most of us know to get any help is through therapy. You are opening up that big audience and message to people that have been traumatized that don’t have the means to go to therapy or can’t find one that makes it right for them. Your definition of authenticity and loving is you are opening up some alternatives, perhaps to traditional therapy and sitting on the couch for several years trying to overcome your childhood, which keeps you facing backward, instead of forwards, which is touching.
The art of authenticity, the definition I share in my TED Talk, is to be open, real, raw, and vulnerable. You are open about the situations you have been through. You are real about the circumstances, like the reality of what it was. You are raw in the details and vulnerable about how it makes you feel. In being authentic, it has become a massive buzzword.
Some people feel that they have had conversations with me on other podcasts, interviews, and speaking engagements that maybe authenticity isn’t the right word. Maybe it is integrity, transparency, or vulnerability. In all those plays, I still stick to my word, “The art of authenticity.” I believe authenticity is more than living with integrity and being transparent. In transparency, you can be clear but you may not be revealing and vulnerable. Integrity is alignment with who you are in your truth and beliefs. That doesn’t again mean that you are being vulnerable. You can be integrous without being vulnerable.
Authenticity is something we need more of because our culture has created a stigma around what topics are to be shared or generally raised to believe that religion, sex, politics, and money are not topics you talk about. If you look at social media newsfeeds on any platform, those are the topics that rile people the most and they get most passionate about. What if we were more authentic about where we are in our lives and the experiences we have had in those four areas? How it affects us and why?
The art of authenticity is being open. You can’t be closed. You have to be real, remove the mask, and not fake us. You have to be raw. You can’t be guarded. You are guarded like you have got something to protect. You are hiding and vulnerable because that is where the true connection is established. Vulnerability is the gateway to the true connection between people and that leads to being authentic.
The art of authenticity is being open. You can't be closed. You have to be real. Remove the mask. Click To TweetAs far as how that plays into transformational coaching versus counseling versus other types of modalities of therapy, all of them are helpful. The thing with counseling is it is as known as talk therapy. Talk therapy is important. There are different forms that they do. You need somebody to work with you through this because when you have lived it, breathed it, and been it all your life, it is your modality, habit, DNA, wiring, and hardcore startup operating system, like a computer. To move past that, you got to have somebody that can work with you.
Counseling tends to stay surface able. Talk about how you feel and what you think. It doesn’t dig deep into the desires of why that is so painful. You may not even be conscious of thoughts or feelings but you are reacting out of programming. You don’t see a way out of it. You don’t even sometimes see that you are doing it.
In my transformational coaching, what I’m trying to help people understand is I love the personal growth development world. I love the books and the people out there teaching people to work on their mindset. Unfortunately, for trauma survivors and people who have endured abuse, it can’t be done with your thoughts. The arena is not focused on the fact that your experiences are stored in your body, cells, and feelings. Your feelings create thoughts. Your thoughts create feelings. It is a bi-directional interface.
If we only focus on our thoughts, we are bypassing the heart. The heart is the lifeblood. Your brain can be dead, physically speaking. You could be in the hospital. Your brain could be dead and your heart still be pumping. God designed the body in a unique way. If we took that analogy into practical life, we could feel things in our hearts even if we changed our mindset.
You may not be thinking negative things anymore but why don’t you have the ability to take a step forward with courage? It is because inside, you still don’t feel it. You psyched your brain up with new wiring and programming but you still don’t feel love. You can tell yourself you are loved and God loves you. It doesn’t matter if your parents rejected you, your boyfriend, or whoever in your life has created this dynamic for you of challenge. What about your feelings?
Your feelings and emotion are how we live. The Spirit inside of us creates energy. That spirit is both thoughts and feelings. An example I use many times in speaking is coming up on a wreck. There are times you see a wreck and your thought is, “I wonder if somebody is okay when you see how it is laid out.” There are other times you come up on a wreck and you are feeling things before you ever even thought a thought if somebody is alive. You saw the images. What I’m trying to help people understand is it goes both ways. Thoughts become feelings. Feelings become thoughts.
Words matter so much.
Even if you sat and did one of my courses on the power of your words, we can reframe how we say something. If you are not feeling it, there is still a disconnect. You are not able to be the authentic person you want to be. You are not able to be open real, raw, and vulnerable because you are not feeling it inside. The coaching work I do is not just facing your habits, beliefs, thought patterns, and actions. It is also looking at your feelings because your feelings drive and they are the backbone to all of that.
I would say my definition of integrity because you have used that word many times. It is honoring your word. That means honoring your word, not just with other people but with yourself. I’m tossing that out there. This is another question I was curious about. How do you live with intention and feel freedom? If you listen and read your Facebook posts, and you never post another thing, we know Misty. You got every component of vulnerability and all those things you are putting out there. It has always been an inspiration to me and sometimes a waking up to hear your messages. What is intentionally free?
Intentionally living in freedom is to look at your life. Where are you being a people pleaser? Put yourself inside a box because of your parents’ beliefs, religious perspective, or any other community you are part of. In communities, the way they build a tribe is by getting people that look, think, and act like them. To get outside of that, you got to be able to be willing to do things you have never done. Some of that is facing fears you have had. Do that fear.
I grew up in a religion that I call a cult because it was a cult. For the majority, it is very racial. When I was out on my own, one of the things I did, though I didn’t believe I was racial, I wanted to break any residual effect of that belief or energy. I went and visited an all-Black church. I started engaging with different people from different cultures, and people that I was taught were wrong and didn’t have God, whether they were gay, adamant that they didn’t have a belief in God, and they were an atheist.
Be curious. Why do you believe this? How did you come to this? Be open to learning. Not just going through the motions but truly being of interest in their life. The Black community still struggles so much with Black Lives Matter because they feel safe in their culture. White people haven’t created a safe place for them. If we are going to create a safe place for them, we are the ones that have to undo what we have done in our country for years. We are the catalyst. It is not on them to change it. It is on us.
Be open to learning, not just in going through the motions, but in truly being interested in another person’s life. Click To TweetFor me, to be a leader in that, it would be to go into their communities, bring these people into my circle where they feel like me, and there is no difference in skin color in how we live. You take that into any other thing. I’m not gay. I don’t want to be gay but I have gay friends that love God. It came by truly going, evaluating, listening, and hearing their story, struggle, how they came about to their beliefs and why they do, and how they have been ostracized because God loves them.
He doesn’t look down on them any less. He is not asking them to change their life. That is not what he is doing. Unfortunately, that is the way religion paints it. They painted an all-or-nothing repentant of your ways. I could share a lot of evaluations I have of scripture that are different than how I was raised, like the woman at the well.
There is no reference that she changed her ways. She was enlightened to the truth. She went back to her communities and said, “She told me everything about me.” It doesn’t say that she ever changed. You could look at numerous examples in the Bible that are shared as principles to live by. Some of them are good but a lot of them missed the mark of what God is trying to say. Even the woman caught in adultery in the Bible, is the woman held responsible for all?
Where did the guy go, even in your case?
There are people who said back in that time, “A knife would have been driven through his heart and they bring the woman for punishment.” The easy way out is to kill the man and bring the woman to have to be the one humiliated, shamed, and put on trial. Unfortunately, that is still an undertone because when a woman is raped, even if people believe that the men instigated it and she wasn’t doing anything, they still have a question, “Where were you? What time of day was it? What were you wearing? What did you say? How did you meet him?”
It puts everybody on the defensive. Therefore, to cope with what has happened, they can’t be authentic. They have to put a mask on and act like everything is okay and not be open, real, raw, and vulnerable. That causes people to build more shame, guilt, regret, and fear. These layers build on top of things, especially if you have a foundation, faith, and belief in God. If you have been taught numerous things, like you have to be in his will and to do his will to be loved, you are always going to feel like, “If this isn’t God’s will, I’m not loved.” There is always this contingency.
Having been raised in that framework, both by my parents and the cult that I was raised in, I have a different perspective on how I look at people’s lives and what I want them to see. That is because of the work I did. Every fear I had, I decided to face and go directly head-on toward answering your question. How do you live intentionally? It starts with now. You have now. You don’t have tomorrow, and yesterday is gone. Intentionally now, who do you want to connect with? How do you want to be known? What do you want to experience and make those things come about? Intentionality can be too much of a focus.
In our last interview, you said I’m very driven. I believe there was a time I was driven. I believe now I’m intentional and I’m purposeful because there is a different energy. Driven is you feel you have to produce, perform, and get somewhere quickly. Otherwise, you are not successful, not pleasing God, doing his will, sharing the message, and changing lives. God didn’t have a frenzy when he was here. He came and did his message. He lived it, breathed it, and be it.
I want to do the same thing. It can be me walking by the streets like he did. Somebody touched his robe and you didn’t say anything but he said, “Who was that? I felt that energy.” When God said, “We are going to be able to do greater things than he did,” those are the things he is talking about. We are able to impact lives on the same level, if not to a deeper level than he did because we are continually here being the arms and feet of Jesus with skin on.
God needs people with skin on and it is us because he is in us. We are him. He is us. I’m going to go back to something you said in this whole conversation. It is about communication, authenticity, and conversation. People don’t know how to have a conversation, discourse, and healthy curiosity with questions. People are so offended and think they are being judged when they want to know, “How is that for you? How did you come to that decision? You think the earth is flat. I think it is round. Isn’t that interesting? It is a great phrase. How did you come to that information?”
Having a conversation and being curious isn’t how most of us are taught. We are taught, whether it is through our parents, school, church, or work, “This is the right way. This is how you do it. No offenses or bouts about it.” I’m not saying there isn’t a need for HOA to have bylaws for an organization and business to have a policy and procedure manual. I’m not saying that stuff is not important.
When you come down to it being the only way, truth, and life, it is not. There were many people that came to God in more ways and were saved, whether it was the thief on the cross who said, “I simply want to be with you,” or whether it was the man by the ponds who wanted to be well when God asked him, “Do you want to be healthy? Pick up your mat and walk. God saved him. God forgive me. I’m a sinner, please.” All this way that this is the way you connect to God. That is not true.
The definition of religion is returning to bondage. It is a manmade God in a box. I don’t remember if I said that in the last episode.
You did but it is good to reinforce it.
It doesn’t encourage relationships. It encourages control. A man has to be the preacher or the pastor. They are higher than we are. That is not true. When we look at religion as bondage, it doesn’t mean we don’t have great people and people in churches. The church is people. It is not a building. It is not worshiping and having to do all these things because there is nothing you can do for yourself to be saved. You are already saved.
That goes back to the foundational belief I have. God said, “It is finished.” I don’t think there is anything to prove and have to do. We are already there. That salvation and finishing work isn’t just for people who claim to be Christian or saved by God. That is for everybody. They have not adopted, embraced, and embodied God in them but God is in them. They don’t recognize that spirit. They don’t feel, see, trust, and believe in it. We all can be there.
We all can get there at any point in time with any circumstance. Curiosity started when I was willing to look at everything in my life with a different lens. Even if I came away still believing the same thing, I was able to say, “Why do I believe this? What is the truth about this? Can I prove it is true?” Even if I can prove it is true, is it possible there is another truth? There is not just one truth.
When I started studying nature and looking for the lessons in nature, whether it is the sun, moon, and stars in the night, why did God create all that? Why did he create darkness and yet there is still light to show? There are more lessons in nature than we give credit for and a true understanding that God is in every living, breathing thing. I am never separated from God. God is always with me. We feel separated. Even God felt separated on the cross but he wasn’t. God was still with him.
That is the part where I think when we are willing to take a step back and go, “On both fears that you have and things that are holding you back and things you are fermenting solid, that you believe this, why do I believe this? Is it true? Is it possible that there could be another truth? Is it possible that my way isn’t the only way?” Those questions allowed me to look at every aspect of my life, from religion to families, to business to personal growth development. It is something I’m always questioning.
I was at a conference in Dallas. Different speakers were speaking. Some things I agree with. Some things I didn’t. Whether I agreed or disagreed, I did the same process. Why, all of a sudden in my spirit, do I disagree with this? Is it because I am not willing to receive something? Is there a reason I don’t want to believe that because it violates my integrity, core values, or where I’m at in my life? Do I agree with it because I have always been told that is the way it is?
Some of my things, even exploring why in the personal growth development world is so much focus put on changing your thoughts. Your life won’t change. You change your thoughts. Working with transformational coaching clients and them still struggling after I see them meditating, doing prayers, creating affirmations, journaling, and looking at their past, present, and future because you got to do all three.
If you spend all your time in the past, you are going to miss the present. If you spend all your time in the past, you are not going to create the future. If you spend all your time in the past or the future, you aren’t living now and all you have is right now. What matters to you? What do you need to do to get where you want to go to enjoy today a bit more? What do your spirit, mind, body, and soul need? What will nourish it? What will bring it to life? What creates peace? What creates truth? Back to that question of intentionality. Are your habits supporting the life you say you want to live?
Most people make audacious statements, “I want to live on an island someday. I want this.” Are you doing any work to get there? It might. You can be the slowest turtle on the planet but are you taking a step forward? Is this a hypothetical statement? A lot of times, it is because deep down inside, they will have words and a vision board of what they want that, internally, they don’t feel. They are good enough. They deserve it. It is attainable. They will be judged to be looked at.
Intentionality has many layers to how you have to look at your intentionality. It goes back to two, not just your thoughts and feelings but something you mentioned, which is your words. There is extreme power in our words. I will never say, “I am a rape victim. I was raped.” End of the sentence. I don’t even use the word victim. Yes, anybody who has been raped is a victim. Saying I’m a victim keeps me an energetic feeling of suppression.
I want to be empowered. I can take charge of my life. Yes, I was raped any more than if somebody else said, “I was divorced.” It’s all these labels we put on people. Judgment is done if you have had this many marriages, you slept with this many people, you have not attended the same job for years on years, you jump churches, or you are not a member of a church. There are so many ways that we create what I call a black-label.
I’m going to get to the black-label thing and branding you are doing around that. What we skipped over a little bit and this is reverting to the rape, the woman, adultery, and what happens to the man, I want to know what happened to that man. This is jumping back a bit and we will go into the black-labeling branding that we got.
When I let my parents know what happened, they got church ministry people involved. There were two couples came up to the house the next day and had a meeting with me and my parents. The two ministers and my dad had a meeting with the man that raped me. I was never told what was discussed and how it went. I was told they had the meeting and they asked him to supply them with AIDS testing results, which he complied with. They asked him to never contact me again. He said he wouldn’t. That is the extent of what I know happened.
The reason more wasn’t done is it goes back to the crux of my parents’ belief that if anybody gets in your pants, you allowed it or you were doing something wrong. There was no taking him to court or legal action. There was nothing done because of that foundation. Truthfully, they didn’t look at the fact that I was raped. They looked at me having an affair with a married man.
For him, it had been adultery. For me, it had been fornication because I wasn’t married. I was seventeen and underage. They felt I was close enough to eighteen because it was the year I was going to turn eighteen. It was several months from my eighteenth birthday. In their look, I was old enough to know better and didn’t need to be any punishment.
They punished you for seven years. They gave you a sentence and it was horrific. You can listen to the TED Talk to learn more about that. I had never asked that question before. Were there any repercussions for this man that raped you and was 28 years older than you? You had zero support punitive life from your family.
All the rest of the time, I lived at my parents’ house, which was for another three and a half years, I was living out my sentence. I lived half of my sentence out, which is also part of the reason there is still a disconnect with my family because they don’t believe if I truly repented, I had any right to abandon my sentence and be let out of prison sooner.
That belief was something I dealt with for years. Not that I believed that their viewpoint was right but it still was a fact of shame. It was still a label over me, a suppression, and energy that fed into me not believing I was good enough or worthy even though I knew I hadn’t used goods like my mother said and her statement that no man would ever love me wasn’t true. Energetically, I wondered if it was true because why would these kinds of things happen to me?
I was taught in the verse that everybody loves to quote out of Deuteronomy. God says, “I know the plans I have for you. They are not to harm or hurt you.” I was harmed and hurt. How the hell is it possible that God gives a damn about me because he allowed this to happen? Those kinds of questions nobody in the church could answer. They have their cliché statements.
They wouldn’t even probably let you ask for the most part.
Women didn’t have a public role in the church. In private settings, we could have counseling with the men in leadership. They were not counselors. They were admonishes, advisors, and overseers. As women, we were told to seek them for advice if we wanted to change jobs or buy a car. We lived on our own, as I did. Many didn’t. Many were at families.
If you didn’t have a father, you were supposed to go to church leadership for guidance, wisdom, and advice. When I went to buy my first house, I have their approval to buy a first house. They look over my finances. I’m not saying it is not good to have mentors and advisors but when you are treating women less than you would treat men, culturally, that goes beyond religion. We still struggle with society. Though we talk about being equals, we don’t treat each other as equals. Women are still treated less than. I do not mean this to be mean.
I went to a networking group and there were nine of us there. Eight were men and I was the only woman. I was not given as much time as the men were to speak. I’m not mad. I don’t care. It is not a competition to me. I will still show up. It is in subtle ways that men do not open the gates for a woman to receive the same in every single way. Not just pay or support but time, attention, value, and respect. Men are still worshiped. They are still thought to be better and stronger than others.
My struggle with all that is, 1) I’m a woman and I have experienced it. 2) When you look at stories even in the Bible, the key people that changed a lot of circumstances are women. It was a woman who went to the grave and rolled away the stone. It was a woman who touched his robe. It was a woman who hid the spies.
I can give you a story. I’m getting chill bumps, even saying it. The impact of women to heal, nurture, and connect is why we, as women, have the opportunity to change men. We are the ones that are going to be the catalyst to open their eyes to understanding the role and the uniqueness we are and not look at each other as separate.
We are together. We are the same. We have different ways of looking at things. Like night and day, you need both. The earth cannot operate without both. The earth cannot operate without men and women. I’m not a woman’s movement kind of person. When the #MeToo Movement came out, I did a video and a blog post, “It needs to be a #WeToo Movement.” Men have been raped and abused too. You can’t segregate people. It is we.
You talked about the racing and I was like, ‘I’m a human racist. We are all in this together.” If everybody in a room picks their finger and flicks a drop of blood on the wall, you find yours. They are all red. It doesn’t have zero understanding or relation to why that is still an issue.
My point is whether it is racial, religious, or differences between men and women, everything is being done to separate. Separate you from God, each other, and truth. That is where I’m like, “If you and yourself can do the work inside of you, figure out what you believe and what is truth for you. Live it, breathe it, and be it. That is the way you are going to be intentionally creating the life you want. You will impact your communities, family, and generations to come by these choices.”
That has way more power than if you even are like me and did a TEDx Talk, or you are a speaker or preacher and have a big following. Do more culturally in your communities to make a difference. You can, whether it is a homeless person, somebody who is addicted, or the elderly that are long forgotten in a retirement home or a nursing home. There are so many ways to be the arms and feet of Jesus with skin on and live, breathe, and be your message.
The intentionality needs to be in every area of your life. Whether you follow the Ula guys with their seven F’s, Faith, Family, Friends, Field, Fun, Finance, and Fitness, Zig Ziglar’s Wheel of Life, or any other program out there of the balance of everything. Know who you are. To know who you are, you have to know your core values, what you believe, and why, even if your beliefs change.
There was a time for several years I believed wearing pants was wrong. It is what I have been taught. I held to it. I operated that way. I don’t believe that now. I may have new beliefs but might revert to old beliefs. I’m giving myself the loving grace to evolve and know that truth is going to be shown to me as I’m able to receive it. God does not give me more truth than I can absorb. The statement is, “When we know to do better, we do better.”
When you are enlightened, share that enlightenment with others so that they don’t have to go through the same catastrophes you went through and have a deep paradigm shift struggle for the rest of their life. Some of these things are cultural and where we live geographically. Expose yourself to different areas, cultures, communities, ethnicities, and lifestyles on every level, and decide what’s for you.
In dating, for instance, I went on a date with a guy who is into polyamory. I’m not. Having comfortable confidence in myself that is not something I want. I can say so. I don’t have to look at him as wrong or bad. I don’t have to be rude. It is not a value I hold. It is not something I want in my life. You can hold to those things as simple things as smoking cigarettes. I don’t want the smell. I’m allergic to it. I don’t want those people in my community. It doesn’t have to be like, “I think you are a bad person because you smoke.” It is like, “I don’t want that. I want to be free of toxins.”
Those are two examples but I don’t care where you take it. The food you eat. You don’t have to be labeled a vegan. Eat vegan and choose to eat vegan. You don’t have to separate yourself. “I can’t touch you. I can’t be near you. You ate eggs.” No. Live your life but be able to do it together. God says, “Be in the world but not of it.” In other words, be among everything but don’t be it. Be in it but it doesn’t have to consume you. Be authentically you. If you are a person that doesn’t eat meat, don’t eat meat.
We don’t have this thing about having to express it to the world. It is like drawing more attention to yourself. We don’t need to get into all that but that is part of it. It is identity.
It frees how we have been raised, not just in our homes but even through school. You get to second grade if you have five stars in first grade. You get from high school to college if you have a certain GPA. You get from college to get that degree and a high-paying job if you have a piece of paper. A lot of times, the piece of paper means nothing because you haven’t absorbed it. You crammed your brain with knowledge but you don’t know how to apply it to life.
It carries over then to buying a house. You have to make a certain amount of money and credit score. Don’t get me wrong. The human body has certain elements and levels. God created many white blood and red blood cells. Your labs will show that and there is a level within range. My ranges may not be your ranges. There is give and take.
Unfortunately, everything has been created with criteria, benchmarks, protocol, and format. To create a business, you do have to have some rules. This costs this much money. You can pay by credit card, cash, or check because we don’t accept crypto and bitcoin. You have your policies but that doesn’t make you better than somebody else and it doesn’t make your policies or beliefs necessarily right. They are right for you.
When we take a step back, we spend 40 years of our life being programmed that this is how we get to excellence. This is how we get to success. This is how you arrive. You are a good person if you have an 800 credit score. I know people that have great credit scores still have no savings accounts. They still have no resources to live their life. I know lots of people that make millions and billions but have nothing left. Their P&L shows nothing.
I don’t care how much money you make. It isn’t about how much money you make. It is what are you doing with the money. Are you happy earning the money you earn or are you stressed out and don’t have a relationship with your wife or your kids? You don’t have a quality of life and don’t get good sleep. I don’t care if you make billions. Sometimes the focus is put so much on getting you here to arrive. We forget to be intentional and live.
I want to touch on a few things. Your branding has been The Sassy Voice. We are looking at the black-label. Tell us about that in a few sentences because we want to introduce your coaching and how you can help. You want to help those that come across this show.
My brand is The Sassy Voice. The Sassy Voice came about after I cut my hair for the first time in 2014. People were shocked at how dramatically different I looked. Several people were like, “It makes you look sassy.” As I continued sharing my story through that transformational experience with Live Big and how much it transformed my life, it came through that process.
My brand is The Sassy Voice. On social media, I’m known under my name, Misty W Gilbert. I have been working with a coach to solidify my message and give it more power, clarity and focus as to what I’m trying to do, who I’m trying to help, and what the mission and vision are. Through that process are my concerns about how we view people and all these layers they have to go through to get approval, which is why people always think there is another something they have to do to be loved, approved, accepted, valued, and appreciated.
We don’t just accept people’s face value where they are. We may but there is that leveling up, “You got to do this, do personal growth development, and get out of your negative mindset.” We don’t love and accept people where they are at. The black-label also came because of the labeling put on me through my childhood experiences, traumas, and abuse I went through, the cult I was a part of, and being a woman.
There are many things I have been black-labeled. Some of those labels we can laugh at on my sabbatical journey when I was planning 45 days and ended up being 60. One of the times when I was first on the front end of the trip, got to San Diego, got out, and was parking on the sidewalk, these two older couples were walking along. They had seen me park with the top down. They were, “We have questions. Can we talk to you for a minute? It was fun to see a cute woman get out of the car. We expected it to be an old bold man.”
There are so many labels. We assume that in a geographical area, there is a shooting in Walmart where the dynamics are you are probably either an Arab, Hispanic, or a Black person. We label people like that. All these ways that we put labels on people, not even in bad circumstances like that. We label a woman who is a business owner and an entrepreneur but she is single so she must be too independent. We start all this trail. I call them black-labels. It makes people hide, feel shame, play small, and keep people not sharing their voices.
The black-label culture is going to be the branding, community, and culture I’m going to create because we need a community and tribe. There are people who feel they are the misfits, the excluded, the annihilated, the rejected, the abandoned, the unheard, and the black sheep. I don’t care what term you use. These people need a voice. They need to know they are loved for who they are.
Their experiences are very painful but that pain can be turned into power. How can we create the black-label you have had be a culture that utilizes your experiences and allows you to grow, become the person you want to become, transform in that process to be who you want to be, encourage you to open up, be real, raw and vulnerable?
It is a combination but The Sassy Voice is a fun name. It will remain my LLC and how I file taxes and corporate documents. The branding I will start being known under is black-label culture. There is a spinoff of that for the movie series we are creating. I don’t want to say the name out because it is liable to be a couple of years before this show is ready.
It takes time. Is your mom in your punishment? She told you that you were never going to get a man.
There were a lot of ways she black-labeled me and put purses on. She was like, “No man is going to ever want you. You are used goods. Your wedding dress is going to be black unless we feel you are repentant. If we feel you are repentant, we will pick the color. It will be lighter than black based on the level of repentance we feel you have gotten to but it will never be white.”
There was this labeling, “It could never be white because I was no longer pure. I was not a virgin. The lightest would be cream ecru color and the darkest would be black.” Part of my brand is how we put black dots on people. We ink them with black, even how we have to say, “Black Lives Matter.” All lives matter. Black people’s lives matter because of the fact that pain they went through. They need to be honored, respected, and shown they are valued.
Black people's lives matter because of the pain that they've gone through. They need to be honored, respected, and valued. Click To TweetI want people who have been marginalized, excluded, rejected, and abandoned to feel they have a space to share their story, work through their trauma and grasp these comments, these lifelong experiences and beliefs that are embedded into them that they don’t even know how to work through. They have changed their mind but they still feel like the fifth wheel, the ostracized child, and the black sheep excluded from the family. I want these people to know there is a culture for you.
You are offering an incredible gift, once a year, a free call with you to talk about whatever they need to do.
Sometimes people hear my story on a podcast or hear me speak. They want to ask more questions, “What happened to the man?” They have things that maybe didn’t get discussed or brought up in an interview. They can book a call with me and ask me those questions. They may want to share their story with me and have a voice they can be seen, heard, and understood.
There may be questions they have. They may have been somebody who has been through like-experiences and they want to know, “How did you leave the family? How did you deal with the comments? How did you deal with the relatives? How did you create a new circle of friends? Was it hard? What did you experience?” There are lots of questions.
I do give-back coaching sessions where I give my time and experience and where I have evolved in life as feedback for you. It is not necessarily something you have to do but I’m going to share with you from my lens what I have done. I’m going to answer your questions authentically. I will be open, real, raw, and vulnerable with you. I limit that to one person per calendar year because of the way the scheduling works. If you value me and the time, we need to work together.
You also offer a coaching system if they are ingrained with your message and they want to work with you further. They certainly can do that. MistyWGilbert.com has a Calendly link on it. That whole Calendly is a little tricky. MistyWgilbert.com is going to be where they can find you.
If they struggle with anything, tell them to send me a message. I will get you to the right place where you can book a call with me. I want to create a community. I want them to know there are people who love and support them in their journey.
I love we are transitioning out. I have always said, “Unconditional love. The harder people are to love, the more they need it.” My message is infinite love. There are no conditions for that. That is a message that most people can’t receive easily. They don’t feel worthy of that.
A coaching client said to me once. I use this because it impacted me when he said this to me. He said, “Especially in the Christian community, we don’t understand grace and mercy. Even though we intellectually have studied it, we can’t.” One reason I did my tattoo Just Love. Anytime I’m touching you, sending out energy, I want to remind myself, “Just love.”
How can we make a difference in the next person? My goal is if I walk in, I let my light shine to where they feel touched, even if they don’t speak. I walked through the airport. I felt that was going on. People want to be in your presence when they feel you have nothing. There is no agenda. You are not trying to get something. You are sending out the energy of love. Thank you very much for all of your encouragement to me. As I miss your Facebook posts and amazing stuff, I was like, “We didn’t get to the female Mr. Rogers.”
People want to be in your presence when they feel you have no hidden agenda. You're not trying to get something. You're just sending out the energy of love. Click To TweetHow can we create this as individuals? Mr. Rogers led an example. Each of us can be Mr. Rogers. The post I did was saying, “I’m going to be the female version of Mr. Rogers.” If each one of us, whether male or female, had that thought in our mind, “How can I be a community? How can I be your neighbor? How can I love you,” we will radically change the life and culture we live under.
We are going to do #FemaleMrRogers and get that out there. I saw that and I was like, “We are going to talk about that.” Thank you so much for joining me on The Charla Anderson Show, Collector & Connector of Fascinating People (and EVERYONE is Fascinating, especially YOU!). See you next episode. Same time, same place. I love you much. Always choose joy.
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I’m Charla Anderson, host of The Charla Anderson Show, Collector & Connector of Fascinating People (and EVERYONE is Fascinating!) on live TV, streaming, and podcasts. As a Ziglar Legacy Certified Trainer, a retired award-winning flight attendant, Olympic Torchbearer, a personal development junkie, an Inspired Speaker, a Published Author, and Your Courageous Coach, I want to share my passion for living life full-out, saying YES to intriguing opportunities, and encouraging YOU to do the same. Let’s jump on a discovery call and get to know each other. Find all things Charla at CharlaAnderson.com/links.
On The Charla Anderson Show, We discuss Mindset, How much Your WORDS matter, Princess to Queen energy, mantras, HOPE, Faith, Miracles, Overcoming, and much, much more, including learning from amazing guests.
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Important Links
- https://MistyWGilbert.com/
- https://www.Facebook.com/MistyWGilbert
- https://www.Facebook.com/TheSassyVoice
- https://Vimeo.com/836321202
- https://YouTu.be/G7lsLQnbvoU – The Art of Authenticity: How to Show Up as the Real You | Misty Gilbert | TEDxGunnHighSchool
- https://Calendly.com/MistyWGilbert/Transformational-Coaching-Give-Back-Session?Month=2023-06
About Misty W. Gilbert
In 1997, I made a very scary choice and took a huge risk to leave everyone and everything I knew in my hometown in order to escape a lifetime of repression, control, abuse, and limitation. I moved across the country, with limited funds, with no family and almost no community with an absolute commitment to live my life in freedom and choice.
In 2013, I experienced another traumatic event that was the catalyst to the transformational journey that created a dramatic change in my life. Through the process of working through my own struggles, pain, and fears I discovered the powerful positive person inside me who loves life, people, and God.
Most of us live life with fear, shame, guilt, and regret reacting emotionally to the circumstances of life not connected to our vision and who we really are at the core. We are unable to move forward out of the box that keeps us trapped from being our true selves, fighting to share our voice, allowing others to dominate, control and manipulate us to prevent us from accessing our own truth and God-given power inside.
I’m committed to sharing my story, life lessons, and helping others achieve amazing things regardless of the fear, pain, shame, or circumstances they may have experienced. As I share with you my own personal journey through abuse, rejection, fear, and inauthenticity, I boldly call you to take the steps to overcome your own story and have an abundant life.
