213. Embracing Radical Becoming with Irene Riad

Discover the transformative journey of Irene Riad, an ICF certified coach and co-author of "Radical Becoming the Superpower of Success," who shares her unique insights alongside the iconic Brian Tracy. Having lived in diverse cultures like Saudi Arabia, the UK, and Egypt, Irene's rich experiences offer a fresh perspective on leadership and coaching. Tune in as she narrates her evolution from a corporate talent development professional to a pioneering coach, driven by her passion for nurturing conscious leaders in a constantly changing world.

Peel back the layers of the human psyche as we dissect the ego, persona, and shadow, discussing their profound influence on our identities. Learn to build a healthy ego, recognize societal pressures that might distort our true selves, and bring to light the shadowy traits we often ignore. Highlighting the importance of self-awareness, we discuss practical strategies like reflection, somatics, and the artful pause between stimulus and response, enabling you to align your actions with your authentic self.

Engage with the deeply intertwined concepts of identity, community, and personal growth. Irene guides us through the importance of intentional living and the power of community in shaping who we aspire to become. Explore the concept of "human becoming" and the role of internal narratives in personal development. Finally, a special invitation awaits: connect with Irene for guidance on your journey of self-discovery, harnessing the tools and insights shared in this enlightening conversation.

🌐 Connect with Irene:
• Website: https://sightcet.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/irene-riad/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sightcet/

📚 You can purchase Irene's book on her website:
• Unlock Your Success Shadows: https://sightcet.com/unlock-your-success-shadows/
• Radical Becoming: https://sightcet.com/leader/

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• 18:07 [Ad] Business & Society with Senthil Nathan
• 18:55 (Cont.) 213. Embracing Radical Becoming with Irene Riad
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• 33:46 (Cont.) 213. Embracing Radical Becoming with Irene Riad

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:00

Are you hiding in your own shadow? Are you letting your shadow and your perception of societal expectations to prevent you from revealing your true self? In today's episode, I'm joined by the incredible Irene Riad. Irene shares with us key concepts from Jungian psychology on our true self, our ego, our identity, the persona we protect, on the world and how our shadow impacts the way we show up when we embrace awareness and intentionality, we can become the person we want to be. You are going to love this conversation. Hey, everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. I'm greatly honored today to be joined by Irene Riad. Irene is an ICF certified coach, an executive coach, and a coach that focuses quite a lot on organizational culture around a success mindset. She's also the founder of an organization called sight set, and I'm very pleased to announce that she's the co author of a book with the legendary Brian Tracy called Radical becoming the superpower of success. And what we're going to be exploring today is a little around that book and also about what it takes to nurture the next generation of conscious leaders. I'm very excited about today's conversation. I know that I'm going to learn a lot and get this great opportunity to follow my curiosity about this world. So Irene, without any further ado, I'd love it if you would say hello to the audience and let us know a little bit about your background and what inspired you to do the work that you do today?

Irene Riad: 1:47

Thank you so much, Mick. It's a pleasure to be on the show. Thanks for the beautiful introduction as well. Yeah, a little bit about me so culturally, because my work relates a lot to culture, I'm very fascinated about culture. I was born and raised in Saudi Arabia. Lived there 15 years, moved to the UK for around five, six years, moved to Egypt, which is where I'm originally from, moved back to the UK, lived in the UAE for 10 years, and now I'm in Albania for maybe the next 10 years. So I think gives you a little bit of the tour culturally that I had, and I love that because it has really colored my perspective, my curiosity and my interests, and how even my professional has evolved, and where the book even took a bit of each of these cultures and woven it into how I look at coaching, how I look at leadership development, yeah, and professionally. Background, I've been in the corporate world for 20 years, in the talent development area, moved around in different industries, but it was always around talent assessment, development, leadership, pipeline creation, succession planning, similar in each of the organizations that I worked with, and it was three years ago when I stepped out from then corporate world and founded my coaching business, where I realized that the past 20 years, my role in corporate was always bringing back coaching as an area that must be woven into every leadership development or even talent development. And I could go into the history of how coaching came about into my life, but we'll see how our conversation will go. But that's just a quick overview of my background and how i got interested in this work.

Mick Spiers: 3:51

Thank you, Irene and yeah, thank you for sharing that interesting background. There's a few things that are jumping out at me there when you said that bit at the end, to find your purpose is the what I'm going to say here, but to discover that it was kind of always there, but maybe you weren't fully aware of taking a step back and going, Oh, wow, I've actually been coaching people my whole life. I just didn't know it. How does that sit with you?

Irene Riad: 4:18

That lands perfectly, that resonates a lot. You took me back to my very first job. I actually studied in the University Marketing. So have a Bachelor of marketing, and I did mass communication as well. And my very first job was actually training to do training to support quality of hotels. So I got hired in a role that I didn't really study, but I felt Marketing and Communications had to do with promoting quality standards, and then training came in as helping people own. A job, applying the work. And I found myself, I did a bit of workshops, of I had to study a bit and kind of see how to put a training together. And my very first job, it was really quite overwhelming, but I enjoyed mostly what I did outside of those workshops, helping people on the job. And it was a bit of partnering with them. How are they actually applying the session that we took together, what's standing in their way, what seems to be a challenge to apply what we spoke about? And as you said, my purpose seemed to be somewhere already emerging in terms of that, supporting people applying knowledge that they took from a classroom or from something I delivered into the real world to apply. And that's, that's the actual development that takes time to embed.

Mick Spiers: 5:53

They're really interesting. Irene, there's, there's a few other threads that are appearing for me now that become common as well. When you think about marketing, what are we trying to do? We're trying to influenceand persuade human behavior. What are we doing when we're a leader? What are we doing when we're a coach? We're trying to influence and persuade human behavior. And in your case, decluttering and getting rid of interference. What's holding them back from taking the action that they actually know what theywant to do, I want to ask you a curious question with that really interesting background of yours, to go back tothe start no and all of those different countries that you have lived in and different cultures. I also know that you're a study of Carl Jung and Jungian psychology. The question that's always been burning on my mind is we talk a lot about psychology, psychological needs, about ego personas, about what drives human behavior, andthen we have this cultural lens, and the culture in Japan is very different to the culture in Australia to Albania, where you are now. But the human needs, the psychological and physiological needs, are they the same? And How does culture and physical, physiological and psychological needs blend to result in what we see in human behavior?

Irene Riad: 7:23

I love your question, and it has been on my mind for such a long time, and it's what led me to study Carl Jung and I started that study almost about the same time I started my business, maybe a bit earlier, so maybe five years now or so. So our psyche and as and I take my kind of way of understanding it from Carl Jung mainly, there are main components of it in everyone. So we all have an ego, which is a good thing. Actually, it's not a bad thing. Think society may label it that in many ways, but we all need an ego. We all have an ego. We all have a persona. So persona is what we portray to the outside world. So in society, I might be known with certain characteristics and traits. It's like the personality we come up with. We all have one the ego is the inner eye, the part of us that actually develops. In all cultures, it's what develops from birth and ongoing but the very first half of life, it's important that we actually develop it well, in a healthy way, because that's what gives us confidence. That's what gives us our sense of character. You want to help see a child and and nurture a healthy ego so that the person has self worth and all of that. And so we all have that in our psyche. And then we also all have our shadow part. Now that's where we tend to push away things that our culture or our society does not deem appropriate. And this is where I found working with different cultures, and me coming from different cultures, because I feel like I'm a mosaic of all of them. And I use that term in my book, and we can come to that because I feel that I and like everyone, we are a beautiful masterpiece of all these different pieces, some of them are hidden in the shadow unknowingly. So some of our shadow is generally subconscious.We're not conscious of it. Our ego does not really it doesn't help our ego to know more about it, because we want tohave a certain facade, for example, that very practical. As a girl growing up in Saudi Arabia, I put in myshadow standing out, so I tried to always blend in. I didn't want I felt it kept me safe. Many reasons. It was I had a little bit of a shy personality. I was also at the time, at the time in Saudi Arabia. Things were a bit different, where maybe I didn't have the feeling that I could speak up as much, so I kept my not standing out and not voicing my opinion, for example, that was in my shadow, and part of it in the Egyptian culture as well, and maybe women we are told to be polite, to be quiet and all of that. So that's in my shadow now, as I work with my clients and even with myself, understanding what's in my shadow has a lot to do with cultures that I've absorbed, their beliefs and their values and upbringing. And that's where, actually, when we look at ourselves, we start to realize from all the different countries and people that have influenced us, what belongs to me and what doesn't belong to me, and that's where our consciousness in the psyche, that's where we're all similar. We become aware of it. That's step one. But then step two is to start to integrate that, and that's a process realizing, how do we bring it back in a way where I'm intentional and maybe I improvise it a bit, but I do it with choice, so maybe, actually, I do not voice my opinion in this situation by choice, Not feeling that I can't, or have this anxiety that I can't, and that's another state altogether that's still it's in the subconscious, or something still triggering me. I'm not seeing. What am I afraid of, to voice my opinion.

Mick Spiers: 11:36

This is so powerful, Irene, I want to play back some of the key threads that I'm taking away from this and make sure that I'm getting it right. So firstly, I agree with you, ego is not a dirty word. It's become dirty through the word egotistical and when someone might be self centered and narcissistic, but in reality, all ego is is the senseof self. Do I have a sense of self? Then I'm hearing from you that a healthy ego is one that is internal, where I internally validate, but too often in society, we see people seeking external validation, particularly in anage of social media, I would say that this is increasing greatly. Then we start bringing in societal expectations, and that becomes our shadow that starts impacting our behavior, and our persona starts separating from our ego from our true self, we start being the person that we think other people expect us to be, and when we bring ourselves to consciousness, we start Making intentional choices about whether we're allowing those the shadow that's created, the limiting belief or the fear, whatever it was that is preventing me from bringing my true self to the table. If I'm aware of it, I can take an intentional choice, do I or don't I? And it really makes me think, I think it was Nitschke that was said this one, that the pause between stimulus and response is where freedom lives. And if we really take the time to process first and then respond, we're in control. We're making the decision. How does that sit with you?

Irene Riad: 13:20

Absolutely, and it's a practice we get better at, because in every pause, we're training our inner neurons or the wiring, we're retraining ourself to make a new meaning of what I am feeling in my body. And here I say so matics are really important in this process. It's not just mental, but yes, I get a thought, I get a feeling or an emotion, sensation, and it's in the pause that I start to take agency, and I listen intently. What's the voice in my head saying? What's the message am I hearing, and where is that message coming from? So that pause initially, there's a lot of studies that say even as little as six seconds, even if you're not trying to think of anew meaning, just pausing six seconds allows the initial kind of reactive impulse of saying something or lashing outor doing something one regrets diffuses, because it's just an emotion. And then within after the six seconds, you would need reflection time to process that. And the more we reflect, and reflection is an maybe it's an underused, understated kind of talent. It's essential for today's leaders with the complexity of things, to reflect often. It doesn't all have to be so deep, but to reflect in moments where we connect. What's that feeling telling me and. A lot of times I sense, also, on a practical level, I try to sense, is this feeling coming from fear, or is it coming from, you know, a passion. They're different. There can be it's some people even can describe fear as excitement towards something, but I get a little bit scared. It's different than, Oh no, I'm losing it, or so that's also a helpful differentiation. When you pause, yes, you allow that reactive impulse to diffuse a bit, and then it takes some time to process. And with myself, I start the process with. Is this message a one afraid or one with passion, and it's asking, pushing me to courageously, you know, do something. It's just different. And soI'm a little bit hesitant, but it's not scary thought of scaring me off.

Mick Spiers: 15:53

Yeah, really interesting, Irene. Once again, I'll tell you what I'm taking away from this. So the thought that it's an emotion that this when we're processing this response, we're getting these emotive responses in our body before we respond, and we get the opportunity to ask ourselves some questions about that. What? What is this emotion? Why this emotion? Why this emotion? Now? What is it trying to tell me? And then we can chooseto reframe it potentially. A good one that I do sometimes talk about on the show is there's many people that are very frightened and have a big fear of public speaking, and they get this sinking feeling in theirgut before they go on stage. But is that fear, or is it excitement, like you said, and we get to choose how we reframe that. How does that sit with your iron?

Irene Riad: 16:48

Yes, the narrative we tell ourselves is powerful. That story that runs with every emotion or every circumstance is the one running our life. So if we're not very attentive to that story, that message, we don't realize that our we're not leading our life. And I say story actually intentionally, because it's not real a sensation. We bothcould have the same sensation, but I have a totally different story to why I'm having it, and it's the way you said framing. And I began liking the word story recently because it allowed me to rewrite it, because it's not real. I can rewrite the story. I decide how the story ends, and it's not a facts. It also makes me remember these feelings and thoughts are not reality, not facts. They are data. What you do with the data? Like analytics,you get data from all this data, and you got to make an a story that's helpful for you so that we can move in the direction of our goal and dream.

Speaker: 18:47

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Mick Spiers: 19:32

Like a choose your own adventure. We get to hold the pen. We get to write the story. We get to choose if it's a positive story or a negative one. What I'm curious from there Irene, where confirmation bias might come in. So a story I I often think about, I just use the word story too. A story I often think about is like, if I convince myself the story I tell myself about myself and about others in my own head, if I convince myself that Irene really doesn't like me, and then we have a conversation, I'm going to hear all the things that confirm to me that you don't like me, and I'm going to ignore all the signals that completely a story that I made up in my head. So our confirmation bias kicks in and starts reinforcing the story. If we don't intercept, how does that sit with you there?

Irene Riad: 20:23

Yeah, and that's absolutely right. And how I've started to use this from a psyche mind, from a mental mind perspective, is that I notice what I'm projecting. So if I. Am expecting something bad to happen. I'm projecting that. I'm almost saying this is the future I'm expecting to find so where is and my brain is negative, biased, biased towards the negative. That's we all know from history and science that because of survival and how we had to, through the years and centuries, be attentive to what could kill us. Our brain is wired that way, so we would need to be very like adamant, to project, to think of the things we want to see. And that's hard, especially when reality is not showing it yet. Because if I want to be, if I use your example to public speaking, and I want to want to be able to speak well in a meeting and on stage in different ways, I'm going to have to project that first, and have to think of it, and have to think of what story I could tell myself to be, and really feelit, really see how true that is. Because if you could think of it like how they say, every idea, everything that has come to life, started as an idea. So if you could think, if you could see yourself doing it one day, so start make that one day today, even if you're not there yet, and help myself get to that identity. Who is that person that is actually me standing on stage? And I work a lot with identity, because that's a lot of how purpose kind of revolves around, who am I, and, yeah, who am I? What do I stand for, and who does that make me and so if I'm trying to be that person in the future, so what qualities does that person have? Okay, how do I, even if it's 1%. How do I take on that quality? I don't have to take it 100% it's a process. So how could I maybe walk more confidently, because that's how speakers walk confidently on stage. How can I say maybe, maybe I start in my friend's party and speak confidently for a minute or two where it's safe, or wherever you feel it's safe, friends, family, and it's that identity I build piece by piece and figure out what's holding me back, that fear again. Where is it coming from? Is it family culture? Because we know, I mean, we were born. When you look at kids, I have a five year old, he's really helping me with this work, because when I look at him, I say, oh, gosh, when I was your age, there's nothing I was really afraid of. And I'm very attentive to how me as a parent, oh, don't do this. Oh, don't do that. I'm very attentive how to protect but not scare him off from trying to do with exploration and making a mistake and being okay with it. So I'm very attentive that we all were born without fears, and it's the fears of just life really. It's nobody's mistake. Parent, I'm doing my best, but some fear will grow in us, and it's that we try now to bring out subcon from the subconscious, because we don't notice it anymore. We think that's normal, and we sit with it. We step into a greater identity. We gotta be larger than who we think we are, because we are we always think we're less human wise. I mean, there are the people who think they're everything in the world that's a different situation, naturally, we always think, I can't do this, and I'm not enough and all of that. So noticing the lies, noticing our projection, and really working with it. And it is work. It is work because we'll make mistakes. We'll not do it perfect. We'll never do it perfect. So let's not throw perfection out. We just do it better. Do it better. Do it better, and all of a sudden you're 100 times better than someone who's not even conscious that they're have an option to do it better, and you're doing you continue to practice. So 1% difference every day, 1% let's not push ourselves too much. How they set the story of a ship just 1% and your compass takes you to another country, another continent, another place.

Mick Spiers: 25:07

Yeah, really good, Irene. There's two major factors I'm picking up here. One is internal. It's the narrative, the inner narrative, the identity, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves, and I'm hearing things like, you could use sentences like, I'm the kind of person who and you get to choose how you finish that sentence. I'm the kind of person who enjoys public speaking. I'm the kind of person who makes smart choices when I go out for dinner. I'm the kind of person who takes the time to deeply listen to other people and care about them and to make them feel seen. The story that you tell yourself about yourself, what I love then is you then started to build it into building blocks, instead of just I'm the kind of person who is a public speaker. I'm the kind of person who walks confidently. This was really interesting. The second part was then the external. We came back to external again, you spoke about your five year old. How do we make sure that that it's not a reflection of the projection? Now bear with me here for a second. Like if you take your your five year old to the very first swimming lesson, it's a huge, pivotal moment in their life, and they're going to take these little sideways glances towards their loved one, their parent, their grandparent, whoever took them to the pool. And if the parent shows excitement, they're going to learn excitement. If the parent shows fear, they're going to go. Should I be scared of this? How do we make sure that we're not influencing our young in that way and starting to impose societal expectations of them, or our own expectations, our own projected expectations, on them so young.

Irene Riad: 26:51

Yeah, I think this is the inhumanity. I think we do this so as humans, it's our way of protecting our if I use this example, kids, my son, or anybody else, how I do it, how I feel, we all could do it is I have to get really present in my body. And this is where I come back to a bit of somatics. I know in my mind that maybe I actually don't know how to swim, to be honest, that's actually a reality. So I do. Have never had the option to swim. I was in Saudi Arabia. It was more desert. That's my story. So I'm very conscious that I'm present in the moment I noticed that I'm afraid, but I have to manage this. I would like to manage because, again, have to and need to. We don't want that pressure on ourselves. I learned to manage that emotion by saying it's okay for me to be afraid, because as a little five year old. Was afraid I didn't have that ability to swim. But I am not a five year old. I am now an adult, a mother. I need to parent my inner emotion so that my projection is neutral as much as I can. It's neutral. It's not trying to and if it is supportive and excitement, that's great, but it's, it's, it's support my my emotional feelings are managed by me. Instead of having my five year old try to manage my emotion, I'm the one who's afraid for him, and now he's taking that emotion, and I think it's a dance. We will never avoid it, because we're humans. We have passion, we have love, and it comes out in different ways, but to notice it, and the more we notice it, the more we realize how much are we actually influencing the situation. And what comes to my mind you when I work with leaders, how much does your presence influence what's going on in the room, just by how you sit in the room, how you respond, how you do a face, it's all the emotion that you're trying are you? How well are you managing your inner work so that you allow the best thing to happen in the room, in whatever discussion happening.

Mick Spiers: 29:25

So two really powerful things there, Irene and beautiful segue there, by the way, so people listening to the show, the story we just shared about the child at the swimming pool happens in meeting rooms and board rooms around the world, every single day, someone's presenting an idea to the boss, and everyone's taking little sideways glances. Is the boss happy? Are they unhappy? Should I like this? Should I not like this? You havea huge power there. You have a huge power. And with great power comes great responsibility tomake sure that your response is a considered, intentional response, just like you were describing. If you're in that situation with your five year old, Irene, you're really stopping and thinking about what is the right responsehere that's going to help the situation in the best way. So I want to go now. I want to double click on this six seconds that we spoke about before. How do we make sure that our shadow doesn't encroach on that decision? So we think about before that you're you're taking that six seconds before you respond. How do we make sure that we are then responding as our true self, and not through fear of what will people think of me? Yeah, just as an example of a common fear.

Irene Riad: 30:42

Yeah. Is that in those six seconds, trace so physically trace in your body. Where is that emotion? Where is the trigger? Because in those six seconds you are using a pause to connect with yourself, and the fastest way to connect with yourself is not to go to your head, to go to your body. That could be through breath. Maybe some people take a deep breath or just paying attention to your breath. You don't need to change your breath,but it's a way of just paying attention to you being here, because when we're triggered, something happens, and we need those seconds before we actually blurt out something. We need to be more present in the body, and that's what allows the mind to free up a bit. And if you're paying attention to your breath, most of the times when people pay attention to their breath, they can't think. We only think when we're not paying attention toour breath. If you're starting to pay attention to something in the body, and your attention goes to it, your chatter in the mind goes away, and then you notice most of the time, most likely, every time that fear trigger, that emotion diffused, it doesn't have to go away totally. It's still there because it has a message. Maybe it was a, you know, a warning message, take care message, maybe it's protecting you from some criticism, whatever. It's a good message. And that's another thing, once you've diffused it the training of the mind. Here you're training your the ego, who's coming in to protect you, to to find the good side of this message, and if we've had a lot of practice, we will then start to quickly see, when have I heard that message before in the past? Because our minds and our brains are memory like batteries. It has come from somewhere. It may have come from childhood. It may have come from adolescence, years. It may have come from family, culture. It has comefrom that message of protection, that message of careful or we're afraid of judgment, we're afraid of failure, we're afraid of so many things and the work, if we're paying attention to our inner work,part of it is to start to decipher like, when, when have these messages really taken hold in my mind to the pointthat I thought it was me, was just me going on my day, I'm I'm a fearful person. No, you're not. You may havefear. You are not a fearful person. And so we start to detach from the hold of it on our persona. This is thepersona I have to be.

Speaker: 34:15

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Mick Spiers: 35:02

That's another powerful reframing there. I'm not a fearful person. I'm experiencing fear or I have fear right now. That's a powerful reframing to do when you're processing this. I'm hearing a really interesting kind of learning cycle here, Irene, let me play this by you and see what you think. So when we are paying attention, we can learn. And the three things I heard in there three chapters of learning, the more aware I am, the more I'm paying attention, the more I understand what triggers me. So there's external influences that trigger some kind of response. The second one is to unpack it to go, what is my shadow? What are my limiting beliefs? What are my fears, and where have they come from? And the third learning cycle is to be able to pay attention that when I take an intentional choice and I act in a certain way, what outcome do I get? And if we're paying attention in this cycle, we can turn that into a virtuous cycle. How does that sit with you?

Irene Riad: 36:06

Absolutely and then that becomes actually a change cycle. Change is about turning fear based thought, limiting based thought. So. To the opposite one that is forward looking, one that is love based, excitement based, passion based, however you want to define love. And so we've cut that vicious cycle. We've cut it when we do that pause and we take our agency, we take command charge of how I need to think, how I want to think in this situation, so that I keep the end in mind, so that I influence a positive outcome for me. And even if Idon't have, maybe I don't have the decision in the company to make that decision. What I've done in that situation is at least on a personal well being, resilience level, I've kept my cool. I didn't let an emotion, you know, toxicate my body. I don't carry pressure. And so at the end of the day, I feel like I'm burned out, or this is too much to handle. So we release ourself from that emotional tension, because we've learned to separate from the emotion. I'm not the emotion. I have an emotion. And so when I have that emotion, I get curious about it. Curiosity is a very handy, let's say skill talent friend, because sometimes compassion, when I say compassion, allow, compassion, allow. Sometimes compassion is hard because we're still critical with ourself, bringing curiosity first, just start to get curious. And it's about understanding yourself.

Mick Spiers: 38:01

Yeah, I love this, Irene. I really want to get to something practical now. So we've been through a lot of discussion about our true ego versus the persona that we project, and how we might try to bring back into intentional control the way that we respond to stimulus around us and to develop this awareness. For some people listening to the show, they're going to be probably nodding their head, going, it sounds good, but how do I even start? You do a lot of work with helping leaders to become more conscious, to become more aware, to become more intentional. But how does someone start to develop the level of awareness that we're talking about here, to build some habits that help them on this journey?

Irene Riad: 38:49

Yeah, there are many ways. Depends on your preference of learning. If you're someone who does like to write, one of the very first things, because I like to write, one of the very first things I did, even typing, just if you like toget some thoughts on paper doesn't have to be pen and paper, is kind of looking at like, who am I in terms ofall my roles? What are my fears? What are my passions? If you're really wanting to start to take agency overthis sense of groundedness, I love the word equanimity, so you're calm even in those tough situations. It's really understanding who you are from a background level. Because, as we said earlier, culture is important. Sowhen you start noting, when I talk to people, I realize that there's so many cultures that they come from, whether it's mother's side, father's side, husband, that's helpful. Then writing our fears, what really scares us we are really detest. What do we really hate? What really triggers us? That was an exercise I did, to really sit with things and really write them, as much as I consciously know right now, what really could tip me off in a moment, or if something happens in the world, it really gets me angry, and I start to mindfully pay attention of these things the other things, what really excites me? Make a list. So make a list of all the cultures that I'm connected with. Make a list of the things that really irritate me, scare me, confuse me. Make a list of the things I'm really passionate about. My dreams. What am I really passionate about? What I wish I could accomplish if have no fear, if there is no fear, what would I do today? What would I do next year? And this is that just helpful lists to just bring some awareness. That's work that you could add on to the next thing, there are some simple questionnaires. One is on my website, if just three minutes. It helps you answer some questions, and it gives you, like a starting point. It gives you something, a template to look at. And it's, it's, it's based on Carl Jung's understanding of ego, Persona and shadow. I've done a so many psychometric. Not just that one. I've done so many given my work has been in talent development. Every opportunity that you have, free, paid any of it at work, even asking friends. I've asked my friends I've done this exercise, maybe every two years, I just send them a message and says, What's one or two things you like about me in terms of my character. What is it that you see I'm strong at and then what's one thing you would like me to do more of? So two things you really love about how I am? One thing you'd like to do more and I do it with a couple of friends. I don't send it to everybody that I know. That gives me a little bit of ah, these are things, because I sometimes don't notice what I do well. And when someone says, You know what I think you would do, you would serve better if you're more on social media, you know what you you could write some articles or put your stuff in smaller dosages instead of the big ones. Whatever it is, they tell me you reflect on them. So the exercise of you doing it yourself, asking friends, I've asked family as well, but I take it with a pinch of salt, because I know that they'll mother, father, sister, but it's good to hear. And then I balance it plus those psychometrics that you get from there's many online read through them, not that they're going to tell you any truth out there. It just gives you a perspective that you start to think about.

Mick Spiers: 42:50

It'll give you a reflection of the story, of the story you tell yourself. That's that's what it's going to be that at this moment in time, and if you do it again three years from now, it may give you a different story, depending on what work you've done. The powerful things that I took away there are in were the journaling. I think that's a great idea. I'm going to add to it, the curiosity that you spoke about before the journaling, coupled with asking yourself the right questions, challenging questions, and then to reflect on the answers about what is that telling you about your ego, about the persona you're projecting, and about your shadow, your limiting beliefs, your fears, the things that are holding you back from the persona matching the ego. And if we journal with the right level of curiosity will raise the awareness, and then you'll know what you're working with. How does that sit with you?

Irene Riad: 43:45

Yeah, absolutely. The list. Or the kind of the visualization, visualizations are very strong. So when I write, my passion ambition, even if it was just the My goal for the next three months, it doesn't have to be so huge, but, like, we have how many, like, almost three months till the end of this year. What do I want to accomplish at theend of this year? And I kind of park my logical rational, this is the only thing you can park that on. So I just give it a little break. I'll come back to it. So I'm very conscious that it keeps popping in my mind, because as I write like I want to publish a book, I want to get my I want to get maybe two more clients. I want to get two more friends. I want to volunteer at this place. Just dream a bit. You know, there's no harm from dreaming a bit. And I take that from kids, children you just imaginate. Imagination is very powerful, and it gives you me an idea of, ah, this is kind of like my ideal self, if I had no restrictions, if my ego is not telling me I don't have this resource, or this time, or this whatever, this is what I would do. How interesting. This is actually the stuff I would do. And that gives you just another lens, because that is you, that is a part of you. It's hidden, it's buried. It's, you know, with the rush and busyness and our requirements, and we all have things, and I would actually just find one of those things that really excite me and see what's going to happen, the ego, all the limiting beliefs, all the fears, will pop up. Expect that, and then the question is, what are you going to do? Are you willing to do the work? Because it's work. We're not saying it's going to be easy peasy. The question is, you can do it. Are you willing? And so willingness is something you need to have from inside. But because this work does take work, people could reach out to a friend to support them. You could share the idea if professionally you you could hire a coach would help you. But even just sharing the idea with a very one person, close friend. It already multiplies the commitment that you start to give to it, but it always comes back to willingness. Does it? Is it valuable enough whatever you've chosen? Is it valuable enough that you would go through the hurdles of that change? To reach it, because it would mean stepping out of your comfort zone.

Mick Spiers: 46:24

There's something really interesting there. Irene, I'm going to get a little bit meta here for a second. This is where a professional coach such as yourself could come in, because you need to break some of that inertia. And one of the things might be that you want to do these changes that Irene is talking about, but your own limiting beliefs are holding you back from even trying the change. What will people think of me if I try this and I fail? A professionally certified coach using frameworks like ICF can draw that out of you having that conversation, I agree with you. Irene, it could be with a friend. Get talking. Get talking about it, and answers willcome. A professionally certified coach knows what questions to ask you, to draw that out of you. How do we break that inertia? If someone wants to try all this, how do they get past their own limiting beliefs about whether it'll even work to do the change?

Irene Riad: 47:22

Inspired action. Inertia needs action. Less thinking, paradoxically so you made the thought. But more thinking is not coming from your higher self or deeper self, the one that has actually produced this idea. More thinking is coming from the ego, because over analyzing can paralyze us. We know that we can get into a free state and do nothing, and that's human, that's natural. So don't get angry at yourself. So we say just be curious, because the voice that is telling you is too hard. There's no time you're too old, you don't have this and that it's not your voice, it's the ego's voice, which is part of the psyche that is has a role to keep you safe, to keep you from thinking that you're gonna fail. Even the thought of failure is trying to keep you from it, protecting you. So when inertia needs just inspired action. And there was something around success, I can't remember who put thede finition. I might butcher it here. Success is having a goal is not about getting the success of the goal, it's the process. It gets you on. So I've maybe change that totally, but, but the goal, get you on the process, an your the process comes the goal, get moving. Just do any action.

Mick Spiers: 48:50

Yeah. This is really good. This is really comes down to the, I think they call it the zygonic effect of taking action.If you, if you stop and you think about it for too long, you probably won't do it. So just take the first step and we get the law of inertia then to work for us instead of against us. So the whole sentence of the law of inertia, abody at rest tends to stay at rest. A body in motion tends to stay in motion. Get in motion. Yeah. Beautiful. All right now, radical becoming the superpower of success, wonderful title, tell us more about what radical becoming means?

Speaker: 49:29

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Irene Riad: 50:15

Yeah, so that's my baby for the last three and a half years or so, really, what it comes down to is, I used my own experience the past, let's say, let's say 20, 30, years. I'm much older, but I've used that experience of having undergone my own personal and professional transformation, of being someone totally different. So to the person I am becoming. So I look at radical becoming as the identity of your highest self in evolution. We are not static. We are not just one person. We don't have just one persona. We have so many. We are all of them and so radical. Becoming is the process I talk about, a mosaic, integral leadership system internally that interacts with culture, other people and the world. World, how that system helps with the process, and that internal system is composed of the psyche. And I talk about how we pay attention to what's happening in our mind, how we connect it to our body, which is the other part. So the M in mosaic is mind, the O is the organization system, or the organization body. The S has to do with our soul. We maybe have not touched tha too much, but that's, that's who we are, truly, in essence, in my belief, we are soul and have a spirit. So s in soul and spirit, how does that? How do we listen to that? And passion and speaking from the heart. All comes into that. Then we look at, how do we align? How do we align and attune to the connections that are happening? How do we look at our identity, which is the I in its evolution? Again, it's not static. You are evolving, so that concept of who you are could change. You are not the same person you were 10 years ago. There's even a physically they say that your cells regenerate, I think, every every number of years, but you become a totally different physical person. And so is our mental capacity, emotional capacity, so our identity, in my belief, evolves, and it's either evolving by chance and with the flow, or we are evolving by choice, guided by the direction of how we want to show up fully, authentically. And the C is about community. We need each other. Yes, we can do so much on our own, and there are times where we need to be on our own. A flourishing of our gifts is done with others. So how we bring those gifts back in community with another friend. I talk aboutfriendship. I hold friendship, community and friendship. One of the very first books I got was a small book, and it had a friend. It was all the different quotes about friendship. And it friend, a friend, and looking at people as friends, genuine friends. And those could be just maybe a handful, maybe one. You would be lucky you have one really genuine friend. But looking at the world through friendship, looking at your inner self through friendship, befriending ourself, that's what puts the mosaic and concludes it kind of in the system. It is a concept, but in the book, I kind of bring down a bit. How do we how do we apply it on an individual leader level? How could we take organizations, but you will have to start at a leader level, but in a mindful that you could bring teams around it and bring a bigger culture around it. And that's how I kind of put it together as my own mosaic. I looked at how I applied it in my life and bringing it to the world.

Mick Spiers: 54:26

I love, the framework I love that it's based on your own lived experience. So you're sharing how you went through this journey, around the mind, around the organizational system, around the soul, around the attunement the identity and how the identity evolves over time. That was really powerful for me. You, you're not just who you are today. It's it's going to evolve. And then that last word, that community, that we're not on this planet alone, where then all of these identities that come together in a community, in a society, in a world, and we all interact with each other, our egos and our personas then interact with each other, and they then influence each other. It's really powerful. The one that I really resonated with me was the identity evolving, and this is what jumped into my mind. Irene, do you want to be a human being? Do you want to be a human doing, or do you want to be a human becoming? And the human becoming is the evolution of I'm not static. I'm not going to be the same person five years from now, and I get to choose whether that's a set of intentional actions that I take towards becoming the person that I'd be proud to be, or am I going to just leave it to chance and let societal expectations and external factors drive who I become? How does that sit with you?

Irene Riad: 55:54

That's so beautiful, you kind of put it all you wrapped it in the essence truly, because all these thoughts about human who we are, human being, and so much of our wiring and naturally, the achievement world is doing, we forget that who we are is changing. I mean, it's changing. Because sometimes we, after 10 years, you're like, I. God, who have I become? What has happened to if we're not if we're really not paying attention? How did I end up on this road? It's because life is dynamic and it's difficult now much more than our parents age and their grandparents age, so we have a lot to process and consume daily. So it's actually more essential, and even with the technology in the AI world coming, that we really take charge with intention to come out and become that person and know that we are becoming so we are being today, that person we're becoming tomorrow, so that we're not just future focused, but once you have a future, you have a vision, then today becomes clear. Today I choose that value of, you know, thinking of abundance versus lack, even when I don't have that much in my bank account, but I'm still thinking money is coming. Money is energy. Money is going to come when I'm able to do when I put my steps forward, like when I if it was something I'm doing at work or something I'm doing at business, if it's something I'm a hobby I'm doing, money will come if I pay attention, how much that's another discussion. But if it is around, you know, growing and becoming successful from even financial side, knowing that I have the resources that allow me to do it starts today, and that person will come.

Mick Spiers: 57:56

This has been so powerful, Irene, I feel like I could talk to you for 27 hours and we'd still be going. This has been amazing. Let's bring it to our Rapid Round. Now these are the same four questions that we ask all of our guests. So what's the one thing you know now? This is going to be really powerful with you. What's the one thing you know now that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Irene Riad: 58:18

That I am, there's so much. But I think what keeps coming to my mind that I am worthy beyond imagination, worthy beyond any mistake, worthy beyond any wrong direction. I am just by who I am right now, with all my mistakes and everything, I am super worthy. I am super blessed. And if I don't feel it just yet, I want that 20 year old to know she is so worthy, she is so blessed, she she is like a queen. Just if she can grasp that, if she can get her head around that. I would have loved, that she would know that so early on.

Mick Spiers: 59:04

With your permission, I'd love to project that to the audience now and say you are enough. If you're listening to the show, you are enough, and you don't have to rely on external validation to know that you are enough. Thank you. Irene, that was a beautiful shame. What's your favorite book?

Irene Riad: 59:22

It's called the kingdom within. It's by John Sanford. He takes a Jungian perspective with a spirituality perspective. He looks at the psyche from spirituality perspective. Yeah, and that highlights. That was a powerful book that highlighted that there is a kingdom within. We don't necessarily think of it that way. We may not go for years not noticing, but it's you have a whole kingdom within.

Mick Spiers: 59:54

Yeah, nice. All right, what's your favorite quote?

Irene Riad: 59:57

It's a quote by Carl Jung. It guides a lot of my work, and it's until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life, and you will call it fate.

Mick Spiers: 1:00:10

Wow, okay, yeah, that's powerful. I have heard that before, but a very long time ago, I'm so glad that you just brought that back into my life. It really could. And finally, there are going to be people that are blown away by our conversation today, and they want to do this kind of deep work. How do people find you, Irene, if they'd like to know more?

Irene Riad: 1:00:29

I would love people to get in touch with me directly, so they could email me at ireneriad@sightcet.com, and I'm available on LinkedIn. Welcome to connect with me. I love to connectwith people in person, and they can visit my website, sites, set.com, and there's a questionnaire there if they would like to just on their own, free to try it out, and if it sparks them interest to connect with me and I help them do it a little debrief, again without any fee. It helps me give back and it helps me meet people who are interested in the same work.

Mick Spiers: 1:01:17

Thank you so much. Irene, thank you for. Your time today, and for the gift of your wisdom and insights, I feel absolutely richer for having this conversation, and I'm immediately going to go away and do my journaling and reflect on the person I am becoming. Thank you so much, Irene.

Irene Riad: 1:01:35

Thank you so much, Mick. I loved our chat, I loved our discussion, and hope it was valuable for your audience.

Mick Spiers: 1:01:41

You've been listening to The Leadership Project so many amazing takeaways from that interview with Irene Riad. It really made me stop reflect and rethink a few things in my life. In the next episode, it will be a solo cast where I share my personal reflections from what I took from the conversation with Irene today, if you've been getting great value from our content, we would love it. If you would leave a rating and review on Apple podcast or your preferred podcast service. You can also subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel, where we bring you weekly video podcast, curated videos and our live stream show. Thank you for listening to The Leadership Project mickspiers.com a huge call out to Faris Sedek for his video editing of all of our video content and to all of the team at TLP. Joan Gozon, Gerald Calibo and my amazing wife, Sei Spiers, I could not do this show without you. Don't forget to subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel, where we bring you interesting videos each and every week, and you can follow us on social, particularly on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Now, in the meantime, please do take care. Look out for each other and join us on this journey as we learn together and lead together.