S1 E1: Do It Scared
In the very first episode of the Colorful Futures Podcast, I'm taking you on the rollercoaster ride that is the ups and downs of launching this podcast. I talk about how me and my old pals—imposter syndrome and that relentless fear of failure— decide to put our differences aside and launch this podcast anyway. Because why not? Life's an adventure and it's too short to not do things that make you excited!
I'll also be sharing how being neurodivergent, disabled, and queer has shaped my career journey. This isn’t just another podcast; it's the start of building a community where every one of us gets to be seen, heard, and celebrated for exactly who we are.
So grab your favorite snack and something to fidget with, get comfy, and join me in this new chapter of my very own Colorful Future (see what I did there). Buckle up—this is just the start of something amazing, and I couldn't be more excited for you to be part of it! 💖
Transcript
Speaker: Liora Alvarez
Hello my friend and welcome. If you don't already know me, my name is Liora Alvarez. I'm the founder of Colorful Futures. I'm a career coach and I'm a talent acquisition consultant. You are now listening to the first episode of the Colorful Futures podcast.
Now if you've been in my corner of the internet for we'll say at least the last four years, some of you probably have been around that long. But if you've been here that long, you know that I've had a podcast before. Back then it was revolved around more health and wellness and holistic wellness. And this is very much not that. We've changed industries, my friends. We've learned things about ourselves and now we're here. Now, if you're listening to this, then most likely it's now live. Podcast is launched. Hello, we are here.
Today is August 4th. It is a Leo new moon and I'm not a pro at astrology by any means. I definitely would say it's one of my hobbies, but it's not a special interest. I mean, it kind of is, but I'm not an expert. That's what I'm trying to say. But today is August 4th and it's a Leo new moon. And if you've been around long enough, if you've paid attention, you probably know that I'm a Leo sun. So it is Leo's season. My birthday just passed last week, not even last week. It was—this past Monday was my birthday, my 33rd birthday. And July turned over my first year of revenue in the business of Colorful Futures.So I thought it was a great time to bring this project to life and start working on it.
With the Leo New moon, there's a lot of manifesting power happening today. So I wanted to be a little bit intentional about how my day went today and about what I was doing and what I was thinking and just kind of the overall mood. And in addition to today being a Leo new moon, it is a Sunday. And I very recently like yesterday maybe listened to a podcast that was all about aligning your week like planning your week with planets with astrology.
So Sundays are the Sun Day and the planet that Leo is associated with, or ruled by, something like that, is the Sun. So big day today. The astrological energy of Sundays is about doing things that feel natural and comfy and doing whatever you want. Do some sort of happy activity, things that make you feel good. And this is also a chance to focus on your identity, on your confidence.
This is a good time to public speak. And in the podcast episode I listened to by spirit sis, Steffi. In this episode, she's talking about how it's a good day. Sunday is a good day to public speak, to do what makes you happy, do what feels natural. That is what I did today. I took all week off this past week from work, took the week off for my birthday. And if you've been following on my Instagram stories, you know that my wife Lauren and I have spent the last several months doing a lot of house renovation in our hundred-plus-year-old Philadelphia house. The past couple of weeks especially were really hectic. So while this past week I was really hoping to use it as a staycation to chill and do whatever I wanted for my birthday and relax. I kind of got that vibe, but mostly it's been a lot of cleaning the house, putting stuff back where it belongs, just catching up on life stuff.
You know, and so I'm going back to work tomorrow. I've been working a little bit this week, but I just wasn't available for my team or my clients or whatever. was like, whatever I had to get done is what I got done. So today is the day before I really go back to work tomorrow after having a little bit of time off. So I wanted to really utilize the power of Sunday, the power of the Leo new moon, and manifest and just really think about what I want from this podcast, what I want you to get out of this podcast. And I'm very excited for it. And that's really what I wanted to kind of talk to you about today.
I wanted to take this as a time to just talk about a topic that has come up a lot, not only for myself over the past two years, or my whole life really, but in my community, folks have been bringing this up and it comes up quite often.
As I mentioned before, I had a podcast in 2021 and I really enjoyed it. I had some solo episodes, my wife and I would record episodes together and it was a lot of fun and I loved doing it. And so when I founded Colorful Futures, I knew that a podcast would probably be in my future and several people over the last several months has brought up the idea of a podcast to me. So I thought, let's make it happen this year.
So I enter year two of business, let's make the podcast happen. I had thought about having a podcast for so long, even when I kind of stopped recording my wellness podcast, I was thinking about picking it up again, thinking about how much I enjoyed it, the feedback that I got. And then over the last several months, as my clients would mention, like, you need to have a podcast. Like when you have a podcast, let me know.
And so I was just getting all of this external feedback that was mirroring what I wanted to, which was to make this, what you are experiencing with me right now. I think that the idea of having a podcast for Colorful Features was so exciting that I made it out to be this huge thing that I wanted to do, this big goal. And in doing so, it grew and grew and grew in my mind until it was this huge milestone, this big project. And if you're listening to this and you've been on my pages before, work connected on social, you get my emails, or you're a
little familiar with my work, then you probably know that I have ADHD, I'm an auDHDer, I'm an autistic ADHDer is what that means. So we get excited.
My flavor of ADHD, I think it's coming among many, which is that when we have a project we get excited about, we are like, let's fucking do it. Like we are ready to go and we will put everything into it. And so that is, I would say, definitely a good thing overall. But what happens is that I get so excited about the idea and I get so like, I'm going to do it. Just like, I get hype that I start thinking about everything that needs to happen to make this project happen. And I start thinking about what could go wrong. And I start thinking about what I want it to look like and the quality and all this kind of stuff. And suddenly I've gone from this really awesome idea to this like production. I mean that literally, but also metaphorically, like figuratively, is that it just becomes this huge thing. And then the perfectionism kicks in. The imposter syndrome kicks in.
I've been thinking about this podcast, like I told you, for months. And I think that I've been planning it for months also. I really made the decision that it was time for a Colorful Futures podcast back in April, so that was about four months ago. And I'm just recording now. I wanted to start this back in July. I thought I would start recording at the end of June, and it's the beginning of August.
And real talk, what actually got me to hit record and start this is that I hired a video editor and they start in August. So I'm like, I guess I need stuff to send them. As I was thinking through this project, and this is where we could probably relate to this, I was waiting for the right moment. I was waiting until I had everything right. I was like, I need to check to see what software I'm going to use.
And then we're getting reno done in the house. So I'm like, I know what software I'm using, but I have to like, make sure my setup is correct. And so my office was deconstructed while we were getting floors put in. And I remember messaging my assistant and my good friend Kristina like a month ago when I was like, okay, cool. I'm going to start recording. It's July. My plan was to start recording in July.
And then I was like, Kristina, what am I going to do? I'm sitting in my living room. The acoustics are terrible. My view, like the way the camera looks is, I don't even like it for client calls, but I deal with it because I don't think that they mind. But for a podcast, like, I want to do this right. I don't want to just like, make this be messy or not sound good. So that was a legit reason to wait a while. But there were all these other things that kept coming up of like, my inner thoughts of like, what ifs, like what if I do it and I don't have any listens or downloads? What if these couple people that have been telling me to start a podcast are like the only people that want me to start a podcast? What if I put all this work in and it's not worth it? Like it's not worth the effort and the time that it takes. What if I pay to have someone edit the podcast and I don't end up earning that money to pay them? What if I can't stay consistent and I want to have guests on the show? And so I'm like, what if I can't get any guests? Like, what if I’m terrible at interviewing people?
And then I start thinking of like, but who am I? Like, who am I to talk about these subjects? And I just was really scared. I was even, I had this thought earlier, I was even scared to like, hand this off to the editor that I hired. And so I'm actually getting through this recording by telling myself that I'm just gonna edit this one myself. And the thing is, I've worked with this editor before as their coach. They were a client of mine. And I guess technically they're still a client of mine. And they were one of the people who said, start a podcast. And yet I'm still like, what if I suck? It's really bad. It kept me thinking about how I was putting things off and I was scared.
And I did have these inner thoughts of imposter syndrome type thoughts. And yet I still took steps forward.
If I really was super scared and I didn't want to do it, I probably wouldn't have hired an editor. I would have done the editing myself, but I knew something in me knew that this is what I wanted to do. I've been wanting this for a long time. And so I just had to do it. Even though there were voices in my head telling me, wait, wait, what are you doing? Don't do that. That's scary. I was doing it anyway.
And that's really how we cope with imposter syndrome and how you get through it is… it doesn't really go away. I don't even know that you get any less scared. You just learn to kind of do it anyway. I think a lot of it is that we're scared of the unknown. We're scared of success because I mean, I can speak for myself and maybe this will resonate with you too, but it's always been a struggle. I didn't know I had ADHD until I was like 28. No, I was almost 30.
I'm 33 now and I only started medication 10 months ago maybe. There's been a short window of time where I've actually known how my brain works and have been working more actively to support it. Medication is one of the many things I do to support it in addition to weekly therapy, but medication was a game changer as was just being aware of how my brain works. All that said, three decades, school, college, work of not knowing that my brain worked in a particular way that needed additional support, it was a lot of failure. So a lot of lost jobs, jobs I quit from being under-stimulated, overstimulated, jobs that I was let go from, fired from. School was a struggle, friendship was a struggle. It was all a struggle.
When I think about when I succeeded, it's like when I was in competitions, when I was in schoolI was in color guard, marching band, color guard . We did well. That was probably, like, if I think of success, that's like one of the things I think about. But success, like, I don't really know her. And so when I think about, like, reaching my goals and actually achieving them and getting where I want to go, that is totally unfamiliar territory for me. And I wonder if this resonates with you too. It's just like, it's so unknown and… we are scared of the unknown.
So we are scared of success because we don't know what that life looks like. And the thing is, was that when we set goals for ourselves and then we achieve them, we're going to set new goals. And I think this is really common with ADHDers because we want that novelty. We want to try new stuff. And at least for me, I want to test out new things, new skills, set new goals. It's just part of who I am.
And so with every time you achieve that and then you look to the next thing, that fear still comes up because now that next thing is unknown. So you really have to do it anyway. Do it scared. Take action even when you're scared. And one of the things that I think really made a difference for me personally was tying my goals, tying my vision in with my personal values. My name Liora means light for those of you who don't know that. And it's a given name as well as it's a chosen one. I was given this name by my mom and it's not my birth name. It's not the name that I went by for most of my life. So it was given to me, but at some point in my life, I chose to go by Liora day to day. My name, meaning the light, is a big part of my personal values as well. And especially after my dad died.
My dad died in November of 2022, it really threw me in like to come face to face with my personal values and really take a look at who I was and how I was living in that truth, how I was living in the truth, in the vision, in the values of who I was, who I am. And so when I think about my name and it means light and part of sort of that mission, that value is a bringing light to others, shining light in dark places, showing people light. That helps me push forward. Kind of being really in tune with how do I want to show up in the world? Who do I want to be? Allows me to push forward.
I hear those imposter syndrome thoughts. I hear the fear and the scarcity and the nerves and I hear the what ifs and who am I to do this and what if I suck? And I say…what if you suck? What if you suck, in your quest to bring light to others, to be a shining light in your quest to help others? What if you fail? If I look at it that way and I step away from it and I say like, in trying to do the right thing, in trying to show up for others, and trying to use your gift to better the world, who cares if you trip up or if you don't get it perfectly right?
Or if you have to learn some lessons in the process because if you know that where you're trying to go is deeply ingrained in who you want to be, how you want to show up in the world, how you want to show up for your community, it becomes a lot easier to ignore the voices telling you that you're not good enough. It's your values and your vision and your faith in yourself that gets you through. And if it helps, you can think of it like main character energy.
If it helps you can kind of separate yourself a little bit from your own being and just look at yourself like, “I am the main character.” Because you are the main character of your life. Main characters, they don't let that fear get in the way. They keep going despite it and they do it scared and they do it anyway. You can do it scared, you can do it anyway. I'm gonna do it scared, I'm gonna do it anyway. Right before recording this, my asthma started flaring up.
I keep having to pause and clear my throat and cough, but I knew I wanted to record this episode today. I wanted to just start, to just get episode one recorded in the books, get it going, because we're just gonna do it. We're just gonna do the damn thing. And that's what I wish for you to do, is just do it. And if it sucks, if it fails, if it doesn't go the way you thought or the way you hoped, if it's not perfect, then I'm in this with you too, my friend.
We are in this together because we're all gonna be out here taking messy action. Just doing our best to put one foot in front of the other, get through the day, get through the year, get through our Goals and achieve them and you've got this on a logistical note. I'm so excited to get this podcast going. What can you expect from the podcast? That's a great question. I have a lot of goals. I have a lot of ideas, concepts that I want to implement for this podcast. But I also know that things might evolve. Things might change. I plan to have guests. I plan to have solo episodes. Don't know how long they will all be at any given time. I think I'm aiming for kind of a mix of episodes between like 15, 20 minutes, maybe some longer 45 minute ones. So when we have a guest, it will probably be those longer ones.
But overall, you can expect to the seen and heard and validated and supported, and you will learn some shit. And this is a community for neurodivergent folks, disabled folks, queer folks. So we'll be talking about a lot of those themes of the intersection of being neuro-queer, of other intersectional identities and their experiences as they navigate careers and work and business.
And I would love to hear your feedback. So whether you're listening to this episode and it is September 2024 and it's the first episode, the only episode out and you are here with us on this journey as we get started, or if you're listening to this episode way in the future and you've come all the way back here to start from the beginning, thank you for doing that. I love you for that.
And if you're here on day one, I love you for that too because, yeah, I think like getting even just receiving support, feedback, compliments. I love it. I’m a Leo, hello. But it's also uncomfortable. So I love the support from the community. So thank you, thank you, thank you. Before I ramble on any further, I'm gonna just bask in the knowledge that I just finished episode one. So I'm gonna get going, get started with my Sunday evening, continue the Sunday energy of doing what feels natural and comfy. I'm going to watch some TV with my wife and I'll see you in the next episode.