Former Secret Service Agent Reveals How to Tackle Pressure Head On | Evy Poumpouras

what up guys i hope you enjoyed this episode brought to you by our sponsors thrive get 10 off when you go to trythrive.com women of impact with coupon code impact now enjoy the episode because even when i feel pressure sometimes fight is not the right thing to do it's not sometimes the right thing to do is to get up pack your and be like i'm out [Music] with over a million views the last time she sat in this seat my girl evie pomporous is back by popular demand with a masters in forensic psychology she was a former secret service agent and she worked complex undercover missions so i think it's safe to say she definitely knows a thing or 200 about controlling your emotions and staying calm under pressure and she is here today to show us how so please welcome the badass no bs greek girl from queens who is defending presidents and taking names they're freaking bad ass evie pompodas welcome girl thank you for having me back michaels you have definitely had many many pressures in your career um i know that you at the world trade center when um the planes hit so you want to talk about immense pressure and just other things that you have done when i think about how we can help the world in situations when they're feeling pressure whether it's they've lost their job or they're still stuck in quarantine family pressures you are to me the absolute freaking expert so i want you to help us break down how on earth you stay calm under pressure whether it's you find yourself at the twin towers or you find yourself being pushed by a seven foot chinese delegate it all depends on the situation because they're all so uniquely different like if you're talking about since you brought up 911 if you're talking about that that wasn't really just staying calm under pressure for me that was people are dying which they were and what can i do to help i would not have been okay with leaving because they were evacuating our offices and they were evacuating the area but for me intuitively like i couldn't leave like i wasn't comfortable with leaving you know this is how i feel like we're all like family on this earth while we're here and i was like my brothers and sisters are out there dying i'm where am i gonna go so that's i feel for me yes there was pressure there but that's where that came from so because of the passion i felt in helping other people i didn't really think about anything else and so that was dr my driving force so i think sometimes like what is your driving force so for me in that moment it was helping save another human being's life or save helping save other people's lives and so i just let my humanity guide me and i just stayed to to help also in the back of my head i'm like i'm a special agent why would i leave i'm like this is my job is to help protect people where am i going to go like i'm the last person that should leave there's pressure there but again like i let my humanity drive me with that one you know other people suffering and i was like i want to be part of the solution i don't want to leave now that that and of itself is pressure you could also look at other situations that are maybe not as extreme as september 11th like pressure you feel maybe you know your safety or your protection or protecting somebody else like in a physical way or fear or fear of threat when you feel those types of pressures i feel that it's really important to know like how you typically react and knowing what you will do when you're in a press a pressing situation like you have to know your i call it the f3 you have to know what your reaction is you call it the what's right the f3 f3 fight flight freeze right and so are you a person that when you feel threatened or pressured do you immediately want to fight do you want do you freeze up because you don't know what to do because you become overwhelmed or do you flee a lot of people flee bad situations when they feel pressured they they hide you know they go into the fetal position whatever it is they they retract so i think it's really important to know like which persona you you embody and you'll see you'll you you typically have a pattern that you have mine's always fight it's always been fight most people will have one yours is definitely fight it definitely there's a fight so this is when you kind of go at it so if i know that typically that's what i'm going to go into i use that to help guide me because even when i feel pressure sometimes fight is not the right thing to do it's not sometimes the right thing to do is to get up pack your and be like i'm out are there things in that allow you to identify in those types of pressures which act to do because you said your instinct is to fight but sometimes that isn't the right answer how do you then in that moment identify actually this moment of pressure doesn't mean i should fight it actually means i need to it depends it's like are we talking about threat 911 is a threat right that's a whole other thing i guess when i was thinking of 9 11 though i was thinking of it like in a moment where i i feel like the world is coming down around me obviously for you that was literal but the pressure of having to make a decision when you're scared right like in that freaking moment where you feel like the world's coming down around you where maybe you can't take a deep breath like how do you if you don't have a clear mind how do you make a clear decision okay there's two things we listen to we listen to our gut are that that that feeling that thing we have and then there's the logic so it's like you hear things from two places up here the mind right which is typically negative sometimes but it's a little bit more rational and then you hear things from here like where you feel that intuition that you follow 9 11 was complete intuition i didn't listen to this i listened to this and i let that guide me but it was very clear and definitive definitive to me like i i knew what i was supposed to do like it i didn't sit and debate it do i leave do i it was very clear to me despite the pressure now sometimes when we feel pressure whether it's an emotional pressure relationships work pressures it's like first can you can you figure out what's guiding you if you can feel this that that essence that guide that pulls you follow that but make sure it's not coming from here and also make sure it's not coming from like rage or anger sometimes when we go into our heads we become very negative we overthink over thinking stresses out more gives us more anxiety so when you find yourself in that space where you like oh my god this is happening oh my god that is happening that's your brain doing that and so finding proper coping coping mechanisms when i feel extreme stress i step away because i've got i've been in those moments where i can't i can't think right or i'm seeing red like i'm not i'm not immune to that i wanted me to meet a person who is immune to that but when i'm in that space when all i can see is red i can't hear i can't think i don't type it i don't text it i don't email it i don't call i do i do nothing i do nothing in fact my brother was dealing with a really stressful situation recently and he's like what do i do i'm like nothing do nothing because he wanted to respond to someone and he was so overwhelmed he took a sticky pad with a marker and he wrote do nothing and he pulled off the sticky back and he put it on his computer and he's like i'm gonna look at that for the next 24 hours because he felt so impulsive to react because he was under such pressure and he called me later he's like i'm looking at the sticky pad i'm doing nothing i'm doing nothing because we have to let that sensation that emotion over just let it run its course so you come from a place of tranquility if you're in an upheaval how can how can you how can you respond so that's the first thing i do 24 hours is minimum sometimes i'll wait a week before i respond to someone i i i put me first because just because it's your emergency it doesn't mean it's my emergency says who have you always been like that or did that develop over time developed over time because we feel instinctually this person emailed me this this person said this to me i have to respond why that's their emergency it's not yours how did you get to thinking like that then probably secret service broke me down quite a bit really because in the service you have people yelling or screaming or they're attacking or they're you're arresting someone or so many things are happening and you got to keep it together like you you can't just you just can't respond and not be thoughtful in it you they'll you're also taught to be quite decisive and that was one of the best things i think indecisiveness is a very dangerous thing and decisiveness causes us to look to others to give us advice it causes us to not make decisions in life and decisiveness keeps us paralyzed and decisiveness is bad for our self-esteem and our confidence being a decisive person is important i'm gonna do this right or wrong i'm doing this and then you learn from there and it really grounds you so that that was a key thing but as far as like pulling back and not responding that came from there it's like i can't respond the way other people respond like i would have if i was dealing with the public sometimes the public doesn't behave right i can't mimic that so if if somebody in the public is escalating i have to be very careful i'm like i can't escalate with them unless i strategically need to escalate with them because i'm in a position of where i can take another human life or i can take somebody's freedom away so i had to be very very in inc have composure but i also went through a really thorough screening process to get into an agency like that i went through a quite a bit of training so what they did is they put us in a lot of stressful situations and the mindset was if you can't control the stress in this controlled environment are you going to control yourself out on the street but you don't become this person overnight i didn't become this person overnight this is this is work it still is work there's still moments where i'm like what the you know and i'm like i will stop i'll put music in i'll go run i i i have my tool bag and i pulled from my tool bag and i'm like i'm going to do this to get me to stop or i'll listen to an audio book i'm a huge fan of audiobooks i'm going to take my mind and transport it somewhere else or i'll go surfing i'll go i i interrupt myself and we talked about it last time disruptors because so i can come back to a place where i'm not stressed out another thing i do is like i almost i call it like i bubble wrap myself from people because what you can do is you i can become really heightened and thrown off by somebody else's chaos and energy so if somebody is like all over the place and angry and freaking out what happens we we escalate with them and i recognize that i've been i've taught myself to recognize that i'm like they're escalating because they've got something going on up here don't go with them so i stay remember once i did this interview with this young man and i was interviewing him for a job actually i used to do the polygraphs in the u.s secret service to get the job you had to take a polygraph and you had to pass it and i gave him a polygraph and we got into the topic of i want to say it was either drugs or criminal history there was something he was hiding i believe it was drugs and we were talking about his experimentation and usage and the whole interview he's sitting there he's super composed and then the moment i got into this topic i started seeing his behavior shift and he started just rocking back and forth in this chair and then he goes rocking and then i keep moving into the the conversation asking more in-depth questions and he's working harder then i see him start scratching himself and i see all these blotches of red and i immediately noticed i'm like he's having some kind of breakdown right now because this is stressing him out it's likely stressing him out because he's about to lie to me or he lied on his paperwork because there is something there and i remember he jumps out of his chair and he starts ping-ponging back and forth in the room completely stressed out as he was talking to me at that point i stopped i remember like my chair had wheels on it and i wheeled myself back i didn't get up out of the chair i didn't mimic his demeanor because it would only escalate with him and i would also escalate myself i let him go through whatever he was going through i maintain my composure and eventually i was able to calm him down but this is with anything else don't i don't let other people pull that part out of me i decide when it comes out and so i'm just very mindful this person's having an emergency it's not my emergency it's theirs when we talk about pressure when we talk about self-esteem and sticking up for yourself like all these subjects i honestly think you're the freaking expert because you've got actual training and so this it's so powerful but then once you bring emotion in it right it becomes slightly different so but i also mess up i've messed up which i think is amazing that's the thing like i've i don't know how many times i've messed up and so but i it's when i've messed up that i'm like man i shouldn't have done that man i shouldn't have said that but i this is the the difference i choose to learn from it and i choose to make it a lesson whereas other people like yeah and then you wonder why you're messing up all over the place like i i i i look at things and i assess things and i'm truly honest with myself like every night i say to i say to myself one thing what could i have done better today what could i have done differently today because i take accountability and when i take accountability man i flow but when i i'm when i don't i hit walls i i i understand that i don't know everything and is that because you know yourself so well because what i love is and i think this is why we get along so well we think very similarly like i'm the same it's like what can i do better because it empowers me to do better but i know a world where a lot of people even asking that same question at the end of the day a lot of people in this space that i've also interviewed have said i always say like it's okay lisa what did you do great today and it's self-soothing and i actually understand that part of it but i'm like you as well i also have the other side that at the end of the day i'm like what could you have done better how do you use that to empower yourself and not to shame yourself for doing things wrong no i don't shame myself so then yeah tell me how is that absolutely i feel shame but you can be both you can be like what could i have done better and it's like okay i could have done this better i messed up and i will say to myself that's okay so what i do you can do you can be both you can hold yourself accountable be like i messed up who hasn't who hasn't and it's all right it's like all right you messed up move on yeah and there needs to be no shame yeah because it's so important the way you talk to yourself and treat yourself and speak to yourself like i wouldn't tolerate somebody else being like shame on you so why would i shame myself i understand and take accountability i messed up i shouldn't have done this i shouldn't have said this if i need to apologize to someone i will it's very rare now but i will own it i will own it like if you're going to a relationship like if i argue with my my significant other or even with my mom i go back and i'm like you know what in that moment i'd be like i was right and then five hours later i'm like no i didn't need to do that i'll go and i'll say i'm very sorry so i really think apologizing is good but then you also don't want to get into this mindset where you're constantly apologizing for how you feel and who you are apologize when you need to but that mindset and that language also pulls you back into this subordinate place apologies are important when you need to apologize but when you don't like if i argue with my significant other i'm like i'm not apologizing for this one not because i'm right but because it's not the situation isn't right and i want to address this with you i will hold it god i love that and i um i want to actually talk about verbal currency is what you call it i think verbal economics yeah verbal economics and because i'm so with you so even with my husband as well we literally have this language where he's he will say or i will say to him i'm sorry i've hurt you but i'm not sorry about what i said like what i said i actually still mean and if i apologize for what i said then it seems like i don't actually mean it now i'm sorry i hurt you and i'm sorry that like what words can i maybe change that didn't hurt you but my point is still the same and if i feel strongly in the point i don't want to apologize for it because then it seems like i'm kind of backtracking out of emotion right because oh i've hurt him so i'm sorry and i actually don't think that solves any issue no but i think what you're doing is right but you also have to acknowledge that you did something whether you like it or not whether you agree with it or not it upset him so it's not like well i didn't mean it that way well it doesn't matter how you meant it this is how i took it but sometimes i will apologize because i'll be like i'm sorry we fought or i'm sorry for what i said or i'm sorry for my behavior um because i i am hot-headed you know usually it's to the people closest to us that we will keep our composure out in public typically or with work and it's we lose it at home and that's no good either because that's how you lose people that's how you hurt people like we're not you're not meant to come home and dump on people and that's something to be very careful of so i came from a very high stress environment and even after i left the service working in television in the industry like there's so much stress i had to be very mindful of that to take that out on the people i go home to they're not there to be your dumping ground because at some point like you're gonna affect them and then you're gonna end up like where is everyone everyone left you because you're you're dumping all your stuff on them like they have a day they they're going through their everyone's going through something and so self-assessment is such a huge thing and i you know i go by like i'm not always right humility is a big thing like people need to have that i don't know where that's gone everyone knows everything everybody's super self-righteous like have some humility you don't know anything none of us do oh where did sacra it was socrates i believe said this he said i know i'm smarter than you because i know i don't know everything and that's how i feel and so when i feel people going going going like that self-righteousness or that like i know everything like tune out i'm like okay i do the head nod i'm like so great talking to you i'm gonna go do business healthy elsewhere i'm gonna go hang out elsewhere and i'm really like thoughtful about the inner circle i i keep because i want to grow as a human being and if i keep negativity and people who don't control themselves well and that's another thing as far as pressure be around people who who handle pressure well so you can learn from them i watch other people do you know working in the white house that was a huge like it was it was going to like school every day because i would watch the presidents the first ladies deal with serious pressures and i'd watch how they handle themselves and i'm like note to self yeah they would they would deal with horrible messages or emails or hate or all these different things and they would wake up and he president of the united states he still has to go to work he still has to run the country he can't just sit there and fall apart you have to keep yourself composed but at the same time they surround themselves by what other people who help keep them strong that's you have a cabinet and so i look at myself as like i'm not the president but in my mind i'm like i'm me who's my cabinet who are my cabinet members and who do i go to when i need help so if i'm about to like do something or say something i may call you lisa and be like lisa man i just had this business thing i know this is your space i'm like i'm about to lose my can i talk to you so i'll i'll do it with you so i don't do it elsewhere but i'm mindful of where i project that now i'm mindful not to dump on you but i'll go to you because i feel like you you're the you know the space teach me so i think that there's so many different outlets it's like assessing yourself surround yourself with strong people if you're around people who like lose their guess what you're gonna do lose your and don't mimic other people when they escalate don't don't don't follow the don't follow i get trapped in that all the time i really do i've noticed that about me i keep calm i keep calm i keep calm but then like after a ceremony like if someone keeps escalating i keep calm at least you're doing good you're doing good people escalate lisa it's okay you're doing good and then they just keep escalating at some point i freaking just like when you when you escalate what do you do do you yell do you what do you do yeah my my tone gets louder my voice gets louder i get harsher i mean don't get me wrong like i've been in spaces like that when i feel that i really remove myself i go i go i go quiet so you said something earlier like i go silent when i can't keep composure i go silent if i disappear from someone's life i'm done or i've gone silent like i'll remove myself or even the situation and i'll come back but if i can keep composure like i will assert myself like you have authority asserted and authority doesn't mean being a jerk authority doesn't mean being condescending and in fact authority is a strong influence tactic when you are perceived as an authority in something people will acquiesce to you more this is why we acquiesce so much to to doctors because we see them as authority law enforcement because they've got a uniform on financial advisors so many people acquiesce to them because we'd see them as an authority meanwhile like they could have graduated at last in their class and so when you assert yourself as an authority in body posture and voice in speech and how you present yourself people are less likely to mess with you so from the onset like i had to learn this a lot in the interview room when i would interview people who were criminals who would see me and be like oh man this is going to be an easy day because i worried about that initially but i controlled that from the moment i met that person from the moment i met them from the moment break it down what do you mean by that hi how are you i'm evie pomperis nice to meet you and if i wanted to throw in special agent i freaking would hi i'm special agent pam perez nice to meet you come with me now granted this was an interview environment but i set the tone now this person understands that i she's an authority here i establish myself as an authority and that's really really important so i won't be passive passive is no go because that that builds up and then you blow up on people but if i'm also dealing with someone who's like i'm sorry a buffoon i'm done dealing with you i will minimize my detailing my my dealing with you i'll deal with you via email if i have to i'll pull back i'll have my manager deal with you i'm like hey i don't want to talk to these guys guys at bozo i know i got to work with him can you handle him so i'm strategic i don't need to handle him all right guys let's talk about thrive now it's been five years since i've been struggling with gut issues 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from my one of my former colleagues lee who's a great interviewer negotiator and he said he we talked about language and he said he turned the coin because we talked about how important it is the words we use because we would be very mindful of the words we use when we talk to people because certain words can put people off and so you know make them shut down in other words can invite them in and make you appear more open and they communicate with you more so he would call it verbal economics meaning we live in a time where we think i have to say everything i'm thinking like i was mentoring this woman once she's like you know i talk really fast because i'm trying to get everything i'm thinking out of my mouth and i'm like why choose what you let out not every idea that pops into your head should you verbalize because when you do that you're not putting weight into your words so verbal economics means choosing your words thoughtfully and then what you're about to say think of it as money right and the more powerful and impactful the words the more money you're putting down it's currency that you're using with another human being and if those words you're using have currency have weight they're going to impact that person more but if you're just like spewing out everything you're thinking there is no currency there because nothing is really truly a value look it's going to happen where people and things are going to come out the wrong way are saying the wrong thing but when you can slow it down and really use this this mindset of verbal economics my words matter and they have weight that they impact another human being in some way and it can impact them in a positive or negative way and it can also impact me whether what i get from that relationship is positive or negative so how do you start assessing which are the high dollar bills and the low dollar bills it depends on the situation like with i talk about priming a lot in the book and priming is you can prime people to to be more open with you and it's actually good negotiators good people who do business before you do a pitch we used to have the saying even in the interview room you're opening line you should always write that thing down that should be rehearsed you should never fly by the city of your pants that opening line is going to be the defining the defining moment and how the rest of your conversation is going to go so like priming words you know hi i'm evie it's so nice to be here thank you for having me i can't wait to talk to you about the partnership and create an open relationship and an honest one where we can cooperate together now in there i threw in priming words open cooperative relationship so i'm priming you to want to work with me to create this open environment you can also do that with your environment as far as like having open space letting people not feel closed in you can prime situations and people talking to people uh man tables like i like i could teach people who do interviews or talk to people like and you do you're solid you have open space here but people do negotiations and they have tables between them biggest 101 fundamental never negotiate with somebody with a table between you two i i taught this interviewing thing for realtors and how to sell ballot better i did a speaking presentation and they worked so hard to like get people to connect with them to sell them like property and all this stuff and then they go to sit down to do paperwork and what do they do you worked all this time to build this rapport and the minute you sit down at the table you just killed it because now it went from an informal hey we're buddies to like all right sit down and do business and think about moments somebody sits down and does business what do everybody do you straighten up okay we're gonna do business now okay i'm gonna do my interview now i don't want that guy or gal i want the person before i want my buddy and you have a table i've heard you say hey when you can't actually see their body and the whole point is to really know body language oh yeah how can i read somebody's one tables work as barriers right so they are psychological barriers there's me and then there's you even i teach i have a podium i never stand behind my podium i come out from the podium i walk through the aisles of my classroom because i let my students know hey it's not me and then you right it's us i'm here with you are we doing dates wrong then because people go on dinner dates no for a date you don't know this dude or a guy like you want to have some space between you like me walking through the aisle and having a couple of feet between me is different when you're sitting at a table what are you talking about one to two feet not on a date like i would be super thoughtful especially if you don't know somebody like first dates especially using apps or whatever you really got to be mindful about who you meet public places the first few dates definitely have some space monitor that space like between you and that person don't give personal information don't have them come pick you up at your home i know i just went on a tangent with this but i have so many people ask me about this and i'm like you get a bit of you have to be really careful don't trust unconditionally like you don't know people i really like that because if you know that you're about to put yourself under pressure whether it's a day or whether it's a job interview whether it's something else having these tactics of like how far to sit from someone like i think about a lot of things i don't even think about that or like how that would impact you but i think about this is what happens when you're under pressure you think about who yourself and you that's all you're thinking about me me me i i'm under pressure i'm under this and you're not thinking about the person across from you one of the ways i deflect pressure to for myself is i'll think about that person i forget about me that i'm gonna present i'm gonna speak i'm going on camera and what i do is to relieve the pressure off of me i'm like what does that person want and so when i can focus on who the recipient is i forget about myself so that is truly another tactic like i just shot something project here and you know i wanted to make sure i did a really good job when we were shooting and i took it back to like i'm delivering something for the viewer someone something somebody's gonna see and so that's what matters so i took myself out of it i'm nervous i'm i want to do a good job me and i made it about them what do they need to see what do they need to hear so that it feels impactful and authentic and that takes that distracts me from me but if you're presenting something so to speak be prepared like a big part of pressure is not being prepared if you're prepared that's one less thing you have to worry about if you got on the right outfit that's one less thing you have to worry about if your hair and makeup are done in the same in the way you you feel confident that's one less thing you have you have to worry about so i look at it as columns let's say i'm nervous about something right i'm nervous about speaking because i'm just nervous and i the pressure of speaking so here's that column speaking i'm like all right here's where i have a struggle but what other columns can i control well i can control what i wear so i feel good and strong and i can control how i look and i can control how much i prepare and i can control my prior linguistics my voice my speech my rate i can so i'll check all these other boxes where here it's like all right here i'm still kind of flailing a bit but i control all these other things because you can go into a situation and thinking again going back to my previous career where we would go into situations have all these protocols in place but in the end i don't know how someone's going to respond or react or if there's going to be an attack or whatever it's going to be but i controlled all these other verticals i'm prepared i'm wearing i've got my gear on i've got my shoes on that i need to run or fight with or whatever my hair's pulled back i'm confident i got a good night's sleep whatever i need to do i checked all those boxes so that when something does break bad or there is pressure i'm good here i just got to worry about here i love that god every time i talk to you like the thing that always just screams so much is you just take ownership you take ownership over your actions you take ownership over the outcomes and i heard you in your book talk about taking ownership over the outcome and a lot of people give i like to say give away their power by saying but this person advised me this person told me to do this and so they're giving away their ownership over the situation but i've heard you talk about like no even if other people give advice it's on you um talk to me about that have you always felt like that how do you do that and how do you do that and not going back to the shame thing take ownership over it but not shame yourself i love what you just said because what you said is exactly right what a lot of people do is we'll blame other people because we think we're protecting ourselves i'm gonna blame this person because i don't want it on me but what you don't realize is in the long term you do damage to yourself because that becomes your default and now nothing is your fault and everything is everybody else's fault and then nothing's going to work out for you and you give your power away when i blame other people i do the exact same thing and i came from an agency where they're like i don't they don't they don't want to hear excuses save your excuses so i was also groomed like own your you make a mistake own it make a mistake fix it nobody wants to hear it find out what it is fix what it is and then that way you can move forward forward and excel you make yourself more insecure and you hit your own confidence when you do that when you blame other people because you're saying all these people have control over me i have no control over my fate or what happens i'm the captain of my ship so i'm gonna steer the direction it goes and if a wave comes and it knocks me over then i'm gonna fix my ship and steer another way i love that so much and that so i've been as you know been suffering with health issues for five years and for the first three years i was going to all the doctors waiting for them to fix me but over time i figured out what was wrong with my gut and there was abuse on antibiotics i was getting sick a lot and so i was blaming the doctors if the doctors thought they were giving me too many antibiotics i shouldn't have been having too many they were just prescribing it and i was then going to the doctors to fix me then the ownership thing came in i was like hang on a minute if i say that it's on them that cause this how can i then take ownership over fixing it but if i flip my mind and say lisa this was you the doctors didn't force antibiotics down my throat i swallowed them myself the doctors would say you know i probably shouldn't give you this many antibiotics never once did i say why never once did i sit there with google and go what is the worst thing that can happen if i take too many antibiotics and once i realized i was like wow this is all my fault and that's amazing because now i can fix it now i'm not waiting for the doctors to fix me and immediately i started going to biohacking i got like glucose level monitors and and since then over the last two years is when i've finally been able to make change do you realize that this is this is profound for me do you realize that you were taking these medications and not questioning anybody why authority yeah a doctor gave it to you yeah yeah he must know he must know well if he's telling me to take it and we don't question it's like oh okay doctor the doctor told me to do this the doctor told me to do that but you're choosing to put it into your body like we have no sense of like like responsibility over ourselves you are responsible like i am responsible for myself so whatever happens to me happens to me because i choose certain things to some degree like i choose like i have a choice and like i monitor that decision and if i choose wrong i chose wrong rather than like this person this if i could say one of the things that i don't want to say is the pet peeve but one of the things that disappoints me sometimes with folks it's like when i hear excuses and i'm like why are you blaming everyone else for everything like life is being done to you you're not you're not doing to life you're not experiencing life you're not you're not doing it it's being done to you everything is being done to you and it's so easy to get into that mindset right because a lot of the time excuses about like they're valid right if you were to come to me and you're like oh my god i just got robbed and you're like this guy he was like seven fur and i didn't see him coming and so all of these things like you know and let's say they rocked you but if you had said i put my oh god this is a terrible situation in fact i don't want to be victim blaming and i worry that i'm about to go down a whole victim blames things there's actually something called victimology really yes what's victimology uh victimology is when we look at people who have been victims of crime to see if there's certain patterns and there's there's certain things that make somebody either more or less susceptible to crime and lifestyle is one of them and so your lifestyle can impact you it's not about blaming it is lifestyle choices how do you separate the two then well it's about assessing so it's like if i go out and i get drunk and i'm with a friend and my friend leaves me i can either blame my friend for leaving me if something happens to me i could be like i went out i chose to get drunk part of that's on me because i didn't have a proper plan in place to make sure i had the right friend to make sure maybe i didn't go out and get drunk i growing up i avoided drinking i grew up in new york and there's a lot of bad things happening out but i wanted to go out and be young and experience a nightlife so i chose i'm like i'm going to choose to have my wits about me but i can still go out and so i avoided drinking because i wanted to make sure nothing happened to me that helped help me stay safe to some degree or you know working out at night like i i've expressed this to you i work out at night and i go running at night but i will make an assessment i'm like oh man it looks really desolate here tonight i'm not gonna go so victimology is about looking at patterns and then the findings in the research of victimization also show that if somebody's victim of one crime that they potentially are victimized multiple times so usually you're not victim once but multiple times and i think that's a really good thing to look at not just when we're talking about crime or something being happened to you but in life so if you see that you're constantly being victimized by people right this person took advantage of me then this person this person did this to me so if you're constantly in that victim space ask yourself what am i doing to let people think that they can do this to me there's something i am doing or not doing that lets people think that they can treat me this way that they can take advantage of me and then being honest with yourself to change that go i so freaking hope people hear that like i really do because if you can if if anyone that's listening or watching can take their their emotion out of it and just listen to what you're saying it's so empowering like it's so freaking empowering um and that's what i'm always about like how do we look at situations that can be seen or are freaking negative and go how can i use this to empower myself for next time so that i'm not a victim or you know that i can at some point right like you've said many times you can't control other people you can't control if someone's going to attack you but i've even heard you say about like a breakdown of attack where they look at people who have their guard down oh they there is a study done where they look at offenders violent offenders they ask them like how do you pick who you're going to target and they say oh i just body language i would just assess the person and they pick targets that look easy distracted on their phone not paying attention squeamish poor body posture you know not paying attention whatever it is if the person looks like they're gonna go down easy then that's who they pick they don't want a fair fight bullies don't want a fair fight they don't they're not looking for their equal they're looking for people that they can take over and abuse that's why children are constantly being victimized because they're the least able to take care of themselves and so that's why you see so much of that but that's what bullies and predators do fight back speak back walk away like you have choices you have choices you said in relationships as well that kind of threw me i was so thinking of you know um but people find themselves in really bad relationships and abusive relationships and they'll you know and they'll say i can't leave it's like i know i'm oversimplifying this but you have you're also making a choice to endure what you're enduring i'm not saying it's right no look this is one of those super sensitive subjects and the reason why i wanted to do the show right from the beginning is talk about the hard things not to make anyone feel badly but honestly to frickin empower them my end line to every episode right is be the hero of your own life and so while this is a very difficult subject for us to talk about i'm actually very um proud that we can talk about it and i really really do hope that people hearing and watching this see what we're trying to get to um i want to echo we are not victim blaming we are not but you are giving people strategies and tactics that i really freaking hope if someone watches this show today and they heard you every and because of that they make a change they don't get drunk in a situation or whatever it may be and you may have just saved them so it's important to talk about this so thank you thank you thank you yeah and i just want to be honest too like i'm not unscathed i'm not without scars like i've heard learned hard lessons as well like i'm not completely bulletproof i've had situations happen to me bad relationships happen to happen to me bad situations i was victimized too but i also like maybe made certain decisions or there was points where i could have chose differently or done something differently but and i chose i'm like i'm not going to be here anymore it's not an easy thing i'm not simplifying it but when i say this and i think what you're echoing is super important is like to give power back to that person it's like you know what don't let yourself be in that victim mentality know that you have power and when you feel power and you feel strong then you can make powerful choices but when you live in that victim space and when somebody pushes you to live in that victim's space like you have you can make the choice to say i'm not going to live here anymore in this way and how you go about it is up to you look training definitely enhanced that for me because i did come from a place where like people like i don't want to hear your excuses i don't want to hear you get get the job done like we don't have time for that and then also like i couldn't be that way because i was responsible for other people's lives like i had a huge responsibility whether it was protecting somebody's life you know jumping in front of a bullet to save someone i had to be capable and able and willing to do that whether it's arresting somebody being thoughtful in my actions and making sure i'm not causing harm to anyone but also protecting my environment and my people or even interviewing people you know it was just as important for me to get a confession from someone as it was to clear somebody's name who was being looked at for a crime that they didn't commit so that the wrong person doesn't get accused those are those held huge responsibilities and so i had to shed these blaming others the victim and that mindset very quickly and take ownership and once you can get into that space where you own yourself and your decisions you be you start to free yourself yeah i know and yeah it's easier to be like it's that person's fault or it's that person's fault have you found though it's easier but once you make the shift it's not like i would never give my power away now ever but i had to make the shift first to realize how powerful owning stuff is over blaming someone else i think i like i was very fortunate because i was in an environment for many years like i was in the service almost 13 years and that helped solidify my mindset because i was on around this is why influence is so important like who's around you i was around other strong people granted they were mostly men but you know what i succeeded on the same level you did so i earned my spot so and we respected each other and so because i was around other strong resilient people what did i become strong resilient and there's moments where i'm like up i'm i'm v i'm blaming somebody else you know even if that person is wrong it's like okay i can acknowledge this person not so good maybe i won't work with them again or do business with them again or have a friendship with them but but again i chose and even if it's a bad relationship i've had those where i'm like i choose not to be here anymore i have to choose that boom love that girl guys guys guys if you haven't got this woman's book i've read it three times that's how much i love it go get this woman's book becoming bulletproof follow her at every pampers there it is um guys if you're not subscribed click that subscribe button if you're not following me follow me at lisa billy and until next time guys be the hero of your own life peace out what up guys thanks so much for watching this video if you'd like another dose of bad or arsery make sure you watch this video right here or this one right here because i know you'll like them but hey also while you're here guys you might as well click that subscribe button down there so you don't miss any future episodes and until next time be the hero of your own life peace out you

Channel: Women of Impact

Views: 38,970

Rating: 4.9598393 out of 5

Keywords: women of impact, woman of impact, lisa bilyeu, tom bilyeu, impact theory, quest nutrition, motivation, inspiration, Evy Poumpouras, Lisa Bilyeu, Women of Impact, WOI, Becoming Bulletproof, control your emotions, staying calm under pressure, dealing with pressure, handling pressure, intuitions, instincts, prioritizing your needs, own your mistakes, own your decisions, verbal economics, authority, surround yourself, power of words, priming others, deflect pressure, take ownership

Id: B_vKbhb8U2w

Length: 47min 25sec (2845 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 18 2020