Pamela Van Nest is an emotional confidence coach who helps women over 50 be self-accepting and confident. She encourages positivity and helps women let go of negative messages. She uses open-ended questions and encourages empathy and self-trust. She also offers an app and an e-book that provide tools and exercises for mental wellness and stopping self-sabotage. Self-doubt, perfectionism, and judgment are common saboteurs. Pamela shares a case study of an artist who struggled with self-confidence but was able to overcome it through coaching.
Welcome to Change, community helpers affecting growth and education. Join us as experts and community helpers come together to share with you wisdom, tools, strategies, and ways that you can evolve into the best version of you. I am your host, Rebecca O'Rourke, behavioral expert and master hypnotist. I look forward to guiding you through all of these tools and strategies that will assist you to becoming the best version of you. Welcome to our next episode, and we are so grateful today to have emotional confidence coach, Pamela Van Nest.
Welcome, Pamela Van Nest. She is aspiring women over 50 to be outrageously self-accepting, putting aside perfection so that they can step into the next stage of their life with confidence and purpose. Welcome, Pamela. Oh, welcome, Rebecca. It's nice to see you. It's nice to be here. So, Pam, tell us a little bit about PVN coaching and how you're helping women and people in our community with change. Okay. Well, PVN are my initials, Pamela Van Nest. And there's a whole history and story behind that name.
But I thought, you know, if MK can do it, Michael Kors, why can't I? So PVN coaching. Perfect. Yeah. And tell me the rest of the question. Well, just tell us a little bit about what you're doing and how you're helping women and people change. Okay. Oh, yes, yes, yes. I'm an emotional confidence coach. So what do I mean by that? Emotional confidence is part of emotional and mental fitness. So it's being able to meet the challenges of life, usually the downs, with positivity instead of negativity.
Because we are, unfortunately, our brains are programmed to be on alert for that danger. And emotional confidence helps us to recognize that and then choose to shift to more positivity, actually to help change our brains. So I help women be outrageously self-accepting. The good, the bad, and the in-between. And trust themselves. And as I say this, it's, you know, people might ask, well, where did you come up with that? It's because I needed it my whole adult life.
And when I found coaching, when someone coached me, I realized the power of someone really listening to me. And she was able to see something and hear something that I was not willing to or not able to see. And that's what I hope to give to women through coaching. Because I ask, you know, open-ended questions. And I encourage them to be empathetic with themselves. And also get in touch with those strong parts of themselves, what I call their wiser elder self.
It's a very powerful exercise that I do with women. And I find that women that put the work in and keep going, they are able to let go of those negative messages that they've grown up with or that are in their mind. And replace them with more positivity. And I found this word, positivity resonance. I love that. Thinking we resonate with positivity. And that's how we can meet challenges. It's like a ringing sound, eh? Yeah. And whether you want to hear ringing in your ears.
I love that. Exactly. Exactly, yeah. So I help them. And I never know what it is I'm going to help them do. They bring whatever they bring into the coaching. And then we get really curious. And we take a look at it from, you know, from different perspectives. And then the client decides, what do you really want? So it's, yeah, I give them that permission. I give them permission to give themselves credit for what they are doing.
And permission to look in areas that may need some loving care. Awesome. Now, there's a saying I like to use quite often. And the saying goes, you can't read the label from inside the bottle. So, right? And you're so true. Like, you can't. You need somebody standing on the outside to kind of help give you the directions. Because we can't see the patterns and the things that we're doing for ourselves. Like, we've been doing it so long.
And it's just normal. But we need someone standing on the outside to kind of show us what's happening for ourselves. Yeah. So it's a very powerful thing. Amazing. Yeah. So you do mental fitness. And you have created an app and an e-book. And you've done some really amazing things with this. So tell us a little bit about that. Well, the app, I have to say, I didn't create it. But I am part of the positive intelligence community.
I'm a positive intelligence coach. And I am actually aspiring to be a certified positive intelligence coach. And the author of that, Shirzad Shamim. It's interesting how people, I'm going to use me as an example, show up in my life. I read his book back in 2013. And it really helped to shape my coaching. It helped me, you know, learning about the judge saboteur and the nine accomplices that are always trying to short-circuit us. But they're trying to protect us.
And then how to get in touch with that deep wisdom within. And so over the years, I'd get his e-mails. But it was just a year and a half, almost two years ago, that he was offering a course for coaches to take this eight-week course. And I took it. And I wondered why I loved it so much. I found it easy to do. Some people don't find it easy. I found it so easy to do. And it was based, he made an app.
And you check in every day. And you check in a couple of times a day. Because it's putting into practice. It's not just the theory of how we can change our mindset. But it is the practice. So I used that app. And then I offered that app to my client. So that's the app part. And, you know, our phones are with us all the time. And so why not have something positive for that phone to do? To remind us.
Be in the moment right now. And how can I, in the situation I'm in, how can I see it as maybe an opportunity or a gift? So that's that part of the app. So I'm very fired up about leading people through that eight-week program that uses the app. My e-book, though, I'm so excited because I just created this last week. It's the three steps to stop sabotaging ourselves. And when we stop sabotaging ourselves, we become emotionally confident.
We know that whatever we meet, we can face and we can get through. And I have a checklist of ten internal messages that you might hear. I certainly heard them in my mind. And then I talk about the three steps to begin to stop sabotaging yourself. And in that e-book, I also have a two-minute audio that will help us, help anyone that listens to it. Become in this very moment right now. And you get in touch with, just even for a few seconds, your deep wisdom stage.
So that's my e-book. I love it. Now, can you clarify for our listeners what you mean about sabotage? How do people sabotage themselves? What does that even mean? Oh, gosh. Yes. I almost, I couldn't say. I used to be an expert. I used to call myself the queen of self-doubt. And I would say self-doubt was one of the big ways that I sabotaged myself. It's when you have an idea and you start working on it. But then there's a moment where something inside of you says, What do you think? This isn't going to work.
Who do you think you are? And the doubt sets in. And you drop the trust that you might have had. And you start to second-guess. And maybe you avoid it. And you procrastinate. Or it's not absolutely perfect. And so you don't do it. Those kind of things stop us from appreciating what it is that we can do and what we are doing. And it might even derail us and take us away from what we need to do.
So perfectionism and self-doubt you would consider to be top saboteurs then? Two top ones. And, of course, the big one, the judgmentalism. Because judging ourselves or judging others or judging circumstances without knowing the whole fact, we can oftentimes make big mistakes. And it's called assuming. And then acting on that assumption. And then everything falls apart. And then the judge comes in to, for me anyway, that says, What are you doing that for? You should have known.
Should. Oh, that's a good one. The word should will sabotage almost anything. Or the question, Why? Why didn't you do it that way? That always puts me on the defensive. And that's another sabotage. So that's what I mean about sabotaging. It's doubting ourselves, thinking we're wrong, or thinking everybody else is wrong. Yes. And I'd like to add to that. A lot of times it's our emotions that sabotage us and lead us to those stories. A lot of times people not maybe having the tools and resources that they need to navigate their emotions or be able to have permission to release or move through the emotions.
So they've got to attach a story. And then they start believing the story, making decisions based on this story. So, yes, absolutely. Excellent. Now you have this book, this e-book, and I'm sure it's helping lots of people. Is there a specific case study or somebody that you can think of that you can share an anonymous story with us? I can, yes. This woman from years ago in a small town, she was a painter. I think she still is an artist.
And she loved what she was doing. She liked her work. She thought of herself as a painter. But when she came to coaching, she actually appreciated her painting and her work far more than she appreciated herself being able to do it. So she was intimidated by going into a room full of other artists because she felt that I'm not good enough. My work isn't good enough. They're better than I am. The internal dialogue. The internal dialogue again.
And it left her, she would go to these retreats and she would withdraw and didn't take part in the social aspect of it. And so I remember asking her, how would you like to feel? And I said, show me how you want to feel. So she stood up, I stood up with her. And I said, so how would you move your arms if you felt confident and you felt like you too are this artist among these other artists? And she right away, immediately flung her arms out to the side and said, ta-da! And it still gives me goosebumps to do that.
And there she was. And so she began practicing that. And by the time we finished our coaching period together, she'd gone on another retreat. She said she felt so much more confident. And then she met a couple of artists she would have never approached before and she started a friendship with them. So that was really powerful, going from that self-doubt to here I am. And then embodying it. Amazing. And how much different that must be for her in the way that her body works, the way that her life works, the way that her relationships work, even sleep, all of those things, that these things impact in our regular everyday life, whether we're moving through with confidence or whether we have this internal dialogue, self-doubt and end up in sabotage.
It makes a big difference. And I can tell you there's been lots of times that I've even helped people work with using the Superman or Superwoman pose. I think we've done that on Grey's Anatomy too, where before they go in for surgery, they stand with their shoulders back, their head high, hands on their hips, feet shoulder width apart, in this sort of powerful where you're most grounded, you're most strong and sturdy. And with your looking up, it actually brings you to a different center of your brain, which is pretty cool.
And so just even shifting your body to match, how do you want to interact with this situation? I can recall a time even having worked with somebody and doing a demonstration for them and walking into the room the way that they walk into the room and showing them how they kind of feel small and how they're sort of hunched forward and not taking up very much space, this shy antiponeness is really projecting. And then I show them how to sort of walk through the room with your shoulders back and how is this different to sort of see.
And then I had them do it for themselves so that they could feel how it was different. And then have them practice over and over and over again because we all know that repetition is the mother of all learning. And really it makes a shift. If you shift the body, you shift the mind. You shift the mind, you shift the body. But it really is, it's not one or the other. It has to be both. And to work with both together is really a powerful thing, absolutely.
Oh, yes, yes. You know, and I have to remind, I can see in my mind's eye a photograph of me in the yearbook. Now that's a long time ago. I won't tell you how many years ago, but anyway. I won't give it away. I won't give it away. And I am standing with my other friend and I realized my shoulders are forward, my chin is out, and I thought I was standing up straight. And I look back at her with compassion and with empathy.
And it's one of the things that I help clients do too, is, oh, I remember what was going on at that time, being 14, 15 years old. And I have a tendency to go forward and I have to remind myself, you know, pick myself up by my armpits, as my Pilates teacher would say, and pick up my head. And as I do that even now, Rebecca, it's like, yes, in this moment, I have everything I need.
Here we are. Yeah. So thank you for that reminder again. Absolutely, yeah. And, you know, whether, it doesn't matter what we're trying to do well at in life, we all need rituals in our life to sort of step into the right state of mind or the right mood. You know, I was working with a young girl who was an athlete yesterday, and, you know, we taught her sort of this idea of being able to create a ritual to get in, step into the zone, we call it, right, and to have a different ritual for practices that you have a different ritual for games, because they're actually different zones, right? So, you know, what she really wanted was to be able to just be totally confident and get out of the dialogue and the things that you're describing, right? And in the middle of a game, this is not a useful thing.
It's not useful very much anywhere in life, but it really gets in the way of her being at her peak performance. So, you know, we taught her some things that she can do, some rituals, and to, again, step into that state of mind, and the idea of being willing to practice it before every single game so that she's in the game zone, not the life zone, not the practice zone, because, you know, the game zone, there's a lot more trust.
Practice, it's, you know, we're programming ourselves. So, you know, we're working hard. We're making sure we do it right over and over and over. But when it comes to game time, we've got to just trust that we've programmed and it's just going to happen. And that's so right. You know, and then recognizing that, you know, I love that ritual idea, and that the inner, those internal messages, inner critics, the saboteurs, they're going to show up because, and I love this idea, they are our greatest strengths that are overused or abused.
And I like to think of my saboteurs are just trying to protect me, and so if I can name them, then it stops them in the track for me. And I've heard other people say that, too. I don't have to have a nasty name for it, but it's like one of mine is called... But you can. I can, if I want to. You wouldn't want to, but you can. No, yeah. I don't want to call it names, but it's like calling it out.
And in that moment, it's like, okay, Gertrude. And often, sometimes I've even said, okay, what are you afraid of? Because to me, it's just a lot of fear under there. And then I come to this moment, and then I've got a choice. Do I want to go back to that doubt? And if I do, then I can name it again. And I can choose something else. Like you were saying, I'll take a deep breath and stand up, and change my body, which will help.
So I often will share that with clients. Okay, what's the name of this saboteur? Even if you say, okay, saboteur, I see you. Not helpful now. Go into my wisdom phase. Yeah. So it's kind of giving things a space and allowing them to sort of have space and acknowledging them, but not letting them run your life. Exactly. Exactly, yeah. What a beautiful thing. Yeah. So this idea of having these rituals, you could use something like the Superman pose or some of the where your person just did, ta-da, here I am, right? So for me, every time I go into, say, the Women's Business Network meetings, or every time I go in to see with clients, it's different zones, different ways that I want to approach things, different sort of resources.
So I myself have rituals that I do that help me kind of shift from zone to zone. I remember when I was first training to become a hypnotist, and there's a lot of memorization, there's a lot of repetition, a lot of things that you need to learn and remember. And it's a different spot in your brain to be in the learning than what it is to be with people. And so for me, I used elements out of qigong.
I don't know if you've ever heard of qigong, but I would use just a few different qigong moves to sort of shift between reviewing all the material, trying to memorize it all, the smarty pants part of it, and then do some qigong to sort of shift and change that so that now I'm more being with people and I'm more other-sorted and where I need to be for that zone. So having, it doesn't matter really, truly, there's all kinds of tools and strategies for these rituals, but to have something in place and to be willing to see that different places kind of require different zones, and we can choose it.
We can choose it. Choose it. And that is a choice. I think that is huge. When I become aware of it, I can take care of it. I love that. Say that again. When you are aware of it, you can take care of it. Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So, you know, you've been kind of helping women over 50 sort of get out of sort of perfectionism and becoming outrageously self-accepting. So that is like probably one of the biggest changes, I think, that women are making in their 50s.
I don't know. I feel like 50, and again, there's probably science around this and I don't have it to show you or tell you, but 50 is almost like a different shift. It's a different stage of life where I feel like we sort of naturally go from putting pressure on ourselves, trying to build our life, build our family, you know, a lot of self-sacrifice in that age and stage, and then 50 is kind of like this time to sort of, okay, what do I do for me now? Let's take care of me.
Let's, you know, really nurture this body so that it can last me another, you know, 40 years or whatever. Yeah. Right? So you are offering a really important, amazing service that is needed at this stage of life, probably, you know, more so than at any other stage of life. And I don't want to say that because, you know, teenagers, adults, we all, everyone needs it. But all I'm saying is that at 50, it's naturally happening regardless.
So you might need some tools. You might need some feedback. You might want some guidance on how to navigate that because it's just part of human growth and development. And, you know, when we look at human growth and development, we think about, you know, infancy to childhood to teenage years, but we forget that that keeps going and keeps going and keeps going all the way up to, you know, the end of life. So it's human growth and development to have different natural shifts and changes and to, you know, need to operate in different ways.
So I think it's amazing that you're helping people make these shifts and changes and you're really getting them out of their head and being confident to learn by doing. Have the experience. Be in life. And, yes, and, you know, when I hit 50, I was still teaching and I knew I had long time ago and I said that I'm only halfway there now. But there was something about being 50, having these 50 years behind me, that was like, whoa, you know, with all this and all I'd learned, and I wasn't a coach at this time.
It's like, where do I want to go? And, you know, eventually toward my 60s is when, in the middle of my 50s, is when I began to look at coaching. So beyond 50, we have a lot of bad habits in our mental thinking. We may have gotten into the habit of doing too much for others. And it's okay to look at that and pull that back a little bit and, as you said, take care of ourselves so that we can keep going until our 80s and 90s and maybe even beyond.
I figure I'm going for 100. My relatives last a long time. And so, yeah, so it's keeping that in mind. And when we are, and not every woman is a mom, but those that were moms, often, as you said, self-sacrifice. They might have had to drop something that they loved to do when they were younger. Being 50 and older, you can now decide, maybe I want to pick that up again. Who would I be if I could, you know, experiment with that or look at that? So it's, yeah, because the transition over 50 are their physical, mental, spiritual.
They're relational. Some people lose their spouse. They lose their friends. Marriages don't always last forever. And so these major changes, if you can have tools and be more positive, looking for the gift and opportunity, then, as you said before, it's going to affect their well-being, their health. It's going to affect their, I call it efficiency. Some people call it performance. But I like the efficiency of whatever you do. And then it does impact the relationship. And I often think relationship is outside of me.
It affects the relationship of you within you and perhaps with, if you have any kind of spiritual belief, that relationship too. Yeah. So that's why I love this emotional confidence and mental fitness. Amazing. Cool. And it brings up a really great point. It's, you know, a mind-body-spirit. It's, you know, a trifecta. Yeah. And that's different for different people. And that's totally fine. Yep. That's great. Yeah. So, you know, there's all kinds of practitioners out there in this world that are helping people with various ways of change.
And, you know, that's one of the things that inspired me to create this podcast was that, you know, we all have different niches and specialties. We've all dedicated time and energy and finances to, you know, becoming a professional or a master in the areas that we are in. Yet I feel like so many of us are teaching some of the same things, just in different language. Yeah. And I feel like we all have maybe tools and resources that we can offer that are all moving people in the same direction.
So, you know, I'm not going to sit here and for one second think that I have all the tools and I have all the learning. So to be able to bring the wisdom and the tools and resources of other helping practitioners, of other change workers, and to be able to share that on this podcast and give that away, I think, is a really beautiful thing. So I'm so grateful that you were able to join us and share your e-book and the coaching programs that you have that are including apps and all kinds of amazing things that you've got going on.
So will you tell our listeners a little bit about how that they can get in contact with you and what you offer? Yes, you can get in touch with me through my website or from my e-mail, actually. It's probably the easiest. And it's my whole name, Pamela Van Nest at pvncoaching.com. So spell that for our listeners, just because Van Nest might not be... Mmm, you're right. It is just like it sounds, but... It is. P-A-M-E-L-A-V-A-N-N-E-S-T at pvncoaching.com.
Amazing. And before we end, I just want to acknowledge you for the generosity of heart that you just expressed, that you can see how many of us are sort of doing very similar things, but you being able to spotlight them and share that with a greater audience is very generous. Thanks, Rebecca. Yeah, no, my pleasure. You know, my clients getting their change and my community feeling supported means a lot to me. So however they do that is totally amazing.
And the more tools that they have, the better. So I'm so grateful that you have tools that you're offering and people can reach out to you at PamelaVanNest at pvncoaching.com. And they can really get in touch with you about different programs that you offer and different ways that you're helping people with change. Yes. So you can also add in the comments all of the ways that people can find links to find you, and they can find you that way as well.
Okay. Thank you so much, Pamela. It has been so wonderful having you on the podcast Change, and I wish you so much whatever it is that you want for yourself in life moving forward in your future. Thanks, Rebecca. We are so grateful that you joined us today. Tune in again next week where we have another amazing professional giving you tools and strategies for change. I am your host, Rebecca O'Rourke, and you can find me at Coorsahypnosis.com.
