#84 Release Doubt and Remember to Smile

Transcript of Interview

Find Your Voice, Change Your Life Podcast

Podcast Host: Dr. Doreen Downing

Free Guide to Fearless Speaking: Doreen7steps.com

Episode # 84 Lesley Nase

“Release Doubt and Remember to Smile”

(00:36) Dr. Doreen Downing

Hi, this is Dr. Doreen Downing, I’m host of the Find Your Voice, Change Your Life Podcast. I’m a psychologist, and for years I’ve sat in my office, being with people who struggle with whatever it happens to be or showing up in life. Now in this podcast, I get to interview people. It’s not a therapy session, but I get to be with people in a deep meaningful way that has the listeners being tuned in to what’s it like for people to really face not having a voice and what did it take for them? I’ve had the pleasure, in my office, to listen to so many stories, but now I get to listen out loud, or share out loud. This is something that I am really pleased to be able to move into today with Lesley Nase. Is that how you say your name? Lesley, welcome today.

(01:38) Lesley Nase

Thank you. Thank you.

(01:40) Dr. Doreen Downing

There’s something about finding people on the internet and connecting. There’s something intuitive about it, something synchronistic about it. That’s partly how we met. Somebody knows me and somebody knows you and we went “Let’s connect.”

(01:59) Lesley Nase

Absolutely. That was how we met. It is a nice synergy when that happens as well.

(02:08) Dr. Doreen Downing

Yes. There’s something that connects everybody anyway. But it does seem like whoever thought about you and me as collaborative ways. I thought, let’s explore this. You sent a bio to me. And before we launch into talking about your story, I’d like to read that bio, so people have more of a sense of how brilliant you’ve you are. Yes, so here we go. Lesley Nase is creator and CEO of Intuitive Animal Healing and is a certified CORE communication coach for businesses. She is host of Books, Yarns, and Tais on Win Win Women TV, Apple TV, Amazon Fire, and Roku. Her podcast, The Client Whispers, is set to be released January 2023. I can’t wait to be one of the people that you get to interview. Her gift and her passions have allowed her to help people and pets access their innate healing abilities to get to the root of their imbalances and restore themselves to optimal health naturally and holistically. Sometimes I like to comment and as I’m reading your bio, but naturally and holistically feels like something that I want people to hear that healing can be natural and holistic and you have a lot to do with that because you guide others through insight and wisdom as an intuitive shamanic healing practitioner, frequency healing coach, and end-of-life specialists. It’s entrepreneurs who hire Lesley to get to the CORE of communication, because most fail to speak the language of their listener and are missing out on communications, relationships, and resolutions to maximize success. She helps break down communication barriers to leverage conversations for—here we go, I like this part—leverage conversations for collaborations. I’m going to say that again, collaborations and conversions so people who are in business— That’s what we want, more collaboration and of course, conversions. Then lastly, when Leslie’s not out walking or hiking with her dogs, you can find her curled up with a good book and her cat. Do we need to go on? It’s just like, “Hey, folks, let’s go look her up. She’s amazing.”

(05:07) Lesley Nase

You have that type of voice that just makes me want to lean in and settle down and listen.

(05:12) Dr. Doreen Downing

Lovely. Well, that’s my business is, drawing people in and drawing them down into themselves too. Let’s see, today is about finding your voice. I’m sure you have stories about what that challenge was for you in your life. Maybe we start there. Just dive as deep as you can into anything that you have to say when you think about, “What was my voice like when I was young?” What are some of the stories?

(05:48) Lesley Nase

I think one of my favorite stories is actually my mom’s favorite stories. She’s 93 years old, and she still gets a chuckle out of when I was a little girl. We were walking down the street hand in hand to go visit my dad. Usually I was this bright, energetic, outgoing child, she’d say. There was this point that I started scuffling my feet and stomping down. She stopped and she looked at me and I have this frown on my face and she goes, “What’s the matter?” I said, “I don’t like people staring at me.” My mother with this twinkle in her voice, just replied, “Did you forget to smile at them?” With that, I had a great big grin on my face and I started skipping down the road again. Those kind of words of wisdom are the things that we say to our children that get ingrained in us. This is part of the work that I do as a CORE communication person to help. They get ingrained. We’re a big computer, we got a hard drive, that’s our subconscious, and everything’s programmed in there. It’s on this loop, and it feeds back. For me, that was an important lesson.

For the listeners who are just listening and not visually seeing this, I have a port wine stain birthmark that runs in my head a little bit above my ear, and down to almost my heart. It just ends there. My disability has always been out in that world and that sense of curiosity for people with like, “What’s that on your face?” I get that from children still, but I get it from adults at times too. To be able to handle that with that ease and to disarm people in ways with that smile on my face is a silent way of communicating. It’s a silent way of having a voice in the world because when you smile, whether you’re talking with a smile or not, it comes through in your words and your language, and it disarms the other person. The soft smile can put somebody else at ease, and they kind of sigh and they’re with you, and everything’s okay. Once you satisfy that initial question, especially if the young children again, I never mind when some young child goes, “What’s that on your face?” I’ll smile at them. The parent might say, “Oh, quiet, don’t say anything.” Depending on how I read the situation, I most often might reply that that’s a birthmark. It’s just like your skin, but a little different color. I see you have freckles, or you have brown eyes, or blue eyes, or your skin is darker than my skin. Whatever it is that makes us all different, and all unique, and we all have that inner voice that wants to come out and be unique in many ways.

(09:26) Dr. Doreen Downing

What a lovely way to start our conversation lesson. That moment that was so profound for you in terms of a smile, and then you took it to the idea that a smile is part of the way that we express ourselves and expressing ourselves doesn’t have to be verbal. It could be nonverbal, and a smile is a voice. I never thought of it that way. I love that idea of a smile that is you voicing something and its energy, communicating good, positive energy outward. I see your little cat in the background with its tail wagging. That’s cute.

(10:08) Lesley Nase

Oh, yes. She’s on the chair and I got a dog at my feet here. Normally I disregard them when I’m here.

(10:22) Dr. Doreen Downing

Oh, I know, they’re here with you.

(10:26) Lesley Nase

They definitely are. The dog next to me is— She knows this is not a normal time in which I sit in the chair, so she always has to come and check out and see what’s going on. She comes and she’s satisfied. But when you are talking about the smile or the energy of something as an intuitive animal communicator and the shamanic healing practitioner part of that is that when I communicate with animals, they’re not in the room with me, they’re somewhere else. I see that. I see them in energy form, and so sometimes I have to pick up on the cues of their body language, or some of the energy that I’m picking up as a thought process because they don’t necessarily speak in words, but they do speak in emotions and feelings, and they shoot pictures back at me. All of that is a sense of communication.

(11:28) Dr. Doreen Downing

And when you talk about animals, I’m thinking about the little kids that you talked about, like little animals going, “Oh, look at this, this is different.” What society does is hold them back. They hold them back from their curiosity. That way of shaming or some way in saying don’t speak up, and don’t ask somebody because they look different. I just love the way you go, “Hey, kid, it’s okay.” You explain it in a way that is positive so that they get to— I think in a way, Lesley, it feels like you’re teaching when you respond in that way.

(12:24) Lesley Nase

Most definitely. I think that was some of my upbringing that there was always a story even when I was young. I do remember my older brother telling people what it was. But it was always the sense of a gift whether it was a gift of God, or I would say a gift from spirit. It is the gift that I carry with ‘being’ and when you talk about being visible, or having a voice, this is one gift that I can’t necessarily hide because it is visible, it does mean that I stand out in the crowd. There are many people who stand out in the crowd. I think I was really blessed with the family that I have. I was one of five, right in the middle. From my coming along in the middle and my younger brother who was born with spina bifida, and he’s a paraplegic. It was like a natural fit in this family that, okay, he fell down, he gets up, he keeps going. That’s just how we treated everybody with respect and moved on, so nothing stood out, it was okay, whatever it was.

(13:38) Dr. Doreen Downing

You certainly model acceptance, and it feels like what I just said, you teach acceptance. That’s what not only the people who have some kind of difference, you might say, in learning to accept that but those people around them who consider them different, learning more about acceptance, and inclusion. That’s what we’re talking about nowadays, inclusion and diversity. You mentioned something in one of our emails, you mentioned high school and doing drama, or I guess, theater. Say something about how that either helped to come out more or something about your voice.

(14:26) Lesley Nase

For me, when I found theater, and I was able to— I was lucky. I grew up in a small town. But what I was lucky about is that in junior high because it was a small town, you could be part of the high school productions, so in many years, because our teacher came, when I had like six years from junior high, till I graduated, to be able to do drama under his tutelage. He was our music teacher and he loved putting on plays or musicals and things. Quite often, it’s not a sense of hiding who you are, but it’s becoming a different character, and so when you’re on a stage and when you are performing, you are not the you that you see in the mirror, you are someone else, and you are captivating everybody in that audience on the stage. It frees you up as a person because you get to try on different hats. In one play, I was a blonde bombshell, complete with figure, got to say. In another play, I was a Baroness, a very rich character. That allows a sense of voice and trying out things. The other part that I probably didn’t mention in the email was that during those times, I often had laryngitis, and I would have laryngitis that would last a week to almost three weeks. I can remember one particular play that we were doing when I had lost my voice, and yet I had to perform, so here I was, behind stage with a big bowl of hot water, and at that time, it was Vicks Vapor Rub in the water, towel over my head, breathing all of this in trying to gain some voice. The magical part to me was that when I stepped on the stage that night, I had a voice, I had the voice of that character. Tt was almost like I had stepped out of Lesley as she is and stepped into that character as that character was. Just to me, it was like magic, like the first magic long before Harry Potter.

I love that sense of what you can create. That has carried on through adulthood, as well, and has helped me be on stage through the years as a storyteller. I’ve done that in aspects when I’ve been teaching, in shamanic workshops, when I used to do those in person, and up until the present time, and I’m going to go into the next little bit of what really helped me to stand out on the stage because no matter what we do, we look in that mirror, and reflected back at us sometimes is some of those tapes that we hear that we’re not good enough and who will want me for something. How do I stand up and be accounted for. There’s probably other talented people out there. What happened to me about a year ago, was I had a coach that she was part of a team, and she said to me, she says, “Lesley, Win Win Women TV show is starting, I think you’d be great at it. Here’s the person that you sign up with. You go and talk to them.” I thought when I did that, that this is going to be an interview. She’s going to look at me and determine whether I’m a good fit for TV or not, and I had convinced myself that I was probably not a good fit. She was a beautiful, graceful, all-inclusive woman, but when she said, “So when would you like to start your TV show?” I went, “What? Me? You want me as one of the TV hosts? Are you sure?” We doubt ourselves and that’s part of doubting our voice, doubting our ability. Again, it was like stepping onto stage and every week when I produce my show. I love it. I love interviewing people or better yet, I love teaching for at least half an hour, live every week. That’s what I’m really excited about The Client Whisperer because I can hone in on clients and what we need to hear.

(19:55) Dr. Doreen Downing

What you just said is important for people to hear. It was your vulnerability, when you doubted yourself, and you just didn’t pretend, “Oh, yeah, of course I made it.” You didn’t put on the exterior, tough girl stance. You became really vulnerable, and said, “Really? You want me?” I think that is so precious. It’s so real. It’s so authentic. It’s probably part of why the person said, “Yes, when can we start? When can you start?”

(20:33) Lesley Nase

I think so as well, and there are opportunities to say yes, not to hide behind whatever you think is going on in your head or in your body. I believe that if I can open up a billion hearts and touch that inner guidance for people that they find their own divine inner guidance, then that’s part of my job. That’s part of my mission here in life because we all have a voice inside, and we all have our own discernment as to what’s right for us.

(21:12) Dr. Doreen Downing

And learning to listen to what that is. I like that idea. It’s almost like a book title of reaching or touching, was it billion or million? Doesn’t matter.

(21:24) Lesley Nase

Probably for a billion. Life keeps going. A million is what I want to make but a billion, that’s how many people you want to touch, and you never know how many you’re going to end up touching in what way.

(21:37) Dr. Doreen Downing

Touch a billion, make a million. There you go.

(21:40) Lesley Nase

I love it. That’s great.

(21:43) Dr. Doreen Downing

Well, before we have to end, I’d like to make sure people know how to reach you, if there’s anything else you want to say about what you do offer.

(21:54) Lesley Nase

Yes, so Lesley@lesleynase.com, that email is probably one of the easiest, although there is intuitiveanimalhealing.net. That’s the website. Dot com is the email address. I’m on LinkedIn, you can certainly find me there and connect that way. What else did you ask me? Did I cover it all?

(22:20) Dr. Doreen Downing

We just really want to— People are probably excited about who you are, and some of the messages that they’ve heard today. And they said, “More. How do I find her? How do I follow up?”

(22:37) Lesley Nase

Especially for the CORE communication, following me on LinkedIn is great, because I do put events that I have coming up in that. I know that for Win Win Women, I’ll be speaking about actually Money Mindset in November. Then in December, there is a CORE communication workshop going on, so I have a free CORE assessment tool. CORE is an acronym, so you can find out what personality type, although I hate to use personality, because it’s more than that, it is your communication style. It’s all about finding out about yourself, how do you talk to somebody else, and knowing what to say, and how to say it in any given situation.

(23:27) Dr. Doreen Downing

What does the C, the O, and the R, and the E stand for?

(23:33) Lesley Nase

the C is for Catalyst, the O is for optimizer, the R is for the relator, and the E is for expert.

(23:47) Dr. Doreen Downing

Oh, those are the areas like the CORE energies or something?

(23:55) Lesley Nase

Well, no, those are the CORE areas. It’s a code to help you in the assessment you take. It’ll help you find out which one you’re stronger, and you can be strong in two but usually one is a little higher than the other. Then what I do is I usually talk to somebody after they take the assessment, we talk about what the results are, and how you might use that in your business, and how it’d be good for you. The upcoming workshop in December is actually a perfect time for that because the founder of CORE is going to be there to do some of the teaching. It was her brainstorming that she just went and took all kinds of personality tests and ripped them apart, put them back together again, and put it in the terms of Jane M Powers and she says okay, this is workable, this is doable. This is how I can help people with their conversation, with their relationships, and how you get to those collaborations and conversions.

(25:07) Dr. Doreen Downing

There we are. Full circle. Thank you so much, Lesley.

(25:13) Lesley Nase

You’re welcome. Thank you. I so appreciate being here, and I look forward to having you.