Ep 68- Exposing Secrets of the Beauty Industry- with Confidence Coach Elyse Conroy

May 29, 2025

What if everything you’ve been taught about beauty, confidence, and feeling good in your body was a lie?

Today I’m joined by confidence coach and career advocate Elyse Conroy—who spent nearly 20 years behind the scenes of the beauty industry.

Elyse shares how her mission to help women feel beautiful was hijacked by corporate agendas and what she discovered when she finally turned inward.

We talk about:

• Why confidence has nothing to do with weight, makeup, or clothes

• How beauty brands profit from your insecurities

• The difference between true self-love and performative confidence

• Her 55-pound weight loss and how she finally broke free from binge eating

• How to stop attaching your self-worth to your appearance

• The “Confidence Trifecta” and how to use it to level up your confidence today

Transcript:

 Amber: Hello, confident Eaters. I'm here with a fun guest today who I'm so excited to have on, who is also working on confidence, and it is Elise Conroy, who is a confidence coach and career advocate. Elise, why don't you introduce yourself and share a bit about you.

 Elyse: Hello everybody. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you so much again for having me. So my name is Elise Con. And r and I am a confidence coach and career advocate, and my focus is really to help women build confidence from the inside out. And I do a ton of work with career because look, our life and business, it's all connected.

So a lot of people subscribe to this idea that we build confidence from the inside out, but truly confidence is an inside job. And that is what I'm here to teach women.

 Amber: So tell me about your story in working with all the beauty brands, because just has like I'm just obsessed with your story and how you got to this work. Because I came into this work after really struggling with my eating habits and having a very low self-esteem and lack of positive body image, and really just like hating myself.

And I'm sure that you kind of got into your line of work in a similar way. So go into all the things about your story.

 Elyse: Absolutely. It's so wild because I never imagined that I would be a confidence coach, but what's interesting is when I got into the beauty industry, it was because I had a goal to help him and feel confident. And I used to think that the way that we got there was through makeup, because as a kid I was bullied really bad and I found a lot of solace in my mom's makeup drawer, she used to sell Avon. So I would always mess with her little samples and I'd put on Fusia lipstick and I'd feel amazing about myself. And then I would wash my face, right? And I'm like, wait, hold on. Why don't I feel good about myself now? And I started thinking about after spending almost 20 years in the beauty industry, where is this condition coming from?

Because think about it, as we grow up as women, we get told, oh, you're having a bad day. Go put some lipstick on, you'll feel better. And I really believed that, and that was one of my biggest dreams as a kid, is look, if I could feel better from putting on these little Avon samples and if I could make these products, then I could really help women all across the world feel better.

And I did that for a very long time. But after working for some of the biggest beauty brands in the world, what ended up happening is it became about the dollar, not about the consumer. And a lot of brands I worked for were artistry brands, and they were about the consumer. But when I got to some of the bigger companies, we would sit around boardroom tables and have discussions about how to monetize women's insecurities.

And that was where the ugliness of the beauty industry came in. Because we're looking at retouching pictures and making dark circles worse, we're adding wrinkles to people's faces because we knew if we could tap into those insecurities that we could make more money. And that, to me, did not feel morally aligned because the whole mission from the beginning, from when I was a little kid was to help women feel confident not to trigger insecurity that's going to then generate money that felt so dark, right? So when I had a curve ball hit me in 2018 with my dad getting diagnosed with cancer, and it really empowered me to take a step back and really come home to myself and get honest with myself about, hold on, why did I start doing this work in the first place?

And when I got honest with myself and saw a lot of the truths that I couldn't unsee about the way that the beauty industry operated. I couldn't go back. So now obviously I'm on a mission to kind of right some of my wrongs because I know that so many women believe this lie. That if we put on more makeup, if we lose the weight, if we have this amount of money, if we do this thing right, that we're actually gonna feel good enough and our confidence will increase.

But that's not the way it works. And a thing that I tell people all the time is think about all of these multi billion dollar industries. If were taught as women to love ourselves, and that was the conditioning that we received. And if we were taught to look in the mirror and think that we were beautiful with our current weight, with our exact face with no makeup on, then these billion dollar industries will go outta business overnight.

Right. So that’s really powerful thing that we have to really see because once you see it, you can't unsee it.

 Amber: Yeah, absolutely And Totally aligned with everything I teach because how we know this is true too. Most women have an experience where they have lost the weight and they have gotten down to a different body size and they still didn't love themself, which I think, you know, everyone's put on a full face of makeup and felt really insecure.

Or I know for me, I would go to like these events, but I had binged earlier in the day and it didn't matter like how expensive my outfit was, like how long I spent on my hair and makeup. I would still feel like shit about myself because of all the thoughts that were going on in my head, but then also how I was showing up and treating my body through my eating habits.

I also saw recently a really interesting not really a study, but like someone was pointing out that a lot of ad campaigns, they did one where they target people after they delete a selfie on Instagram. So they'll post a selfie and then they're like, Nope, I don't like it, you know? And then they delete it instantly, and then immediately after that, you'll get targeted with.

Oh, buy this new face cream and buy this clothing and do this, and here's how to lose weight because they know that people are in that vulnerable state.

So tell us a bit more, like, I am just so fascinated about your experience in this beauty industry and like what goes on behind the scenes. So can you share some things that maybe people would find like really surprising about what kind of goes on behind closed doors and how beauty industries really work to target our insecurities?

 Elyse: Yeah, the first thing I will say is how you feel about yourself is not a coincidence because of exactly what you just said, Amber. These companies are so strategic and they know that moment where you are reaching for the food at a certain amount of time, it's like, oh she had a bad day at work it's probably five to six o'clock. Let's target her with these ads.

So none of this is a coincidence, right? They're tracking all of your behavior online. They're hitting you with the pixels, right? They're getting you in this space where they know you're buying behavior. So big beauty brands feed into that.

And it is so interesting because I look at influencer marketing, right? We all know beauty influencers, we know how celebrities have had such a huge influence in the beauty space. And there would be, this is like some major beauty that I'm gonna spell right now. I love spilling beauty, right? So we would work with these influencers that have audiences of let's say one to 5 million.

So the big top tier influencers, and they would send us lists of what their rates would be. So it would be $25,000 to say, oh he'll, we're mentioning your brand in here for 25 grand right?

Now, if you want us to speak bad about your competitor, that's 75 grand. If you want us to do a video that's highly edited, you know, focusing on this and that, that's gonna target these insecurities, that's gonna be a million.

So it is so intentional, and these are literally the dialogues that brands are having with people to generate money. So we have to know this as women because there is going to be a moment now that we've had this conversation and you heard us talk about this, or you're gonna be sitting there having this low, and all of a sudden you're gonna see an ad.

I want you to question why is that hitting you? Right. I want you, when you feel triggered and you see somebody who looks so perfect on Instagram, as you're scrolling and you start to go into compare and despair, I want you to think about how many layers of retouching has this image gone through? Because I will tell you, working with these insane, famous, famous people, they don't look like that in person.

And there were people who I would do the development of campaigns for, and they would come into the office. I'm like that's certainly not the same person. And even if we look at the top tier beauty faces in the world.

Let's use the Kardashians for an example, right? Think about what that has done in terms of setting standards for little girls right now, this is the epitome of beauty, but how much injections and filler and Botox are we looking at and much contouring has been done, right?

These standards that have been set for us of what we think are realistic. It's not realistic. We're looking at airbrush photos, we're looking at cosmetically enhanced bodies and faces, and no wonder why we look in the mirror and wonder what's wrong with us. So this is all strategic and this is all about money, right?

These brands are doing this to make money. So we need to really be so aware as consumers. That how we feel about ourselves can be changed. And like you said, it's all about the thoughts. So just notice those thoughts going in your brain of, oh, I saw this influencer post a picture. Ooh, my dark circles are worse than hers.

Oh, I feel bad about myself. Let me go buy this concealer. Stop right there, right in that moment. You've gotta stop right there and think, oh, how retouched are her? You know, concealer, I know I'm speaking to you right now and I have so many makeup products on my face, right?

one thing, is like we can learn how to feel good about ourselves without the makeup, but this has to be an intentional practice.

 Amber: So as you were talking about that, I'm thinking like, okay, if someone still loves makeup, how do we define when that's becoming, like from a place of like lack and insecurity versus like desire to do it. And I think the same thing could be true with like weight loss like when is it coming from this like, true, like, I, I do wanna lose weight versus like, I'm not good enough where I am.

And maybe, you know, even just me saying that, like it's that thought underneath. But what would you say is like the differentiator between I'm doing this because I'm insecure, versus oh, this is okay to do because I'm enjoying it.

 Elyse: Yes, that is such a good question. So I'll give you an example from my own personal lens, because I used to be the person that received a lot of praise growing up when I had makeup on. So in my brain, I was wired and conditioned and no surprise that I ended up in the beauty industry, right? To see that I'm only accepted, I'm only loved if I'm beautiful. So if I was even going to the mailbox, if I was going to target to just pick one thing up, I put on a full face of makeup because I was terrified to be seen without my mask on. So when I started doing a lot of my personal development work and really started trying, like trying to understand why do I feel this way about myself?

Why do I feel so ugly and so disgusting without makeup on? Why do I feel like I can't even be seen in public? I got to the root of this

was the conditioning that was handed to me, but that's not mine to carry. So I started actually doing intentional work on myself to see, okay. Today I'm gonna go out without lipstick on and let's just see how it feels.

And started just taking the products off of my face until the point where I got to a place of safety with myself, a place of love with myself, a place of acceptance with myself to where I could be in public without makeup on, but not feeling like that was a problem, not feeling like I was ugly. And it took a lot of work to unwind these beliefs that had been handed to me because.

Look, those weren't mine to carry. They were somebody else's thoughts that they said, you have to look like this in order to be beautiful. And then I re route the narrative for myself. So now obviously I'm sitting here with bright pink lipstick on, you know, I have full eyeshadow, I have full everything. I love makeup.

I will be a beauty junkie until the day I die. I find my, a face is my canvas. I love expressing myself through my makeup, but I also don't need makeup to feel good enough. So I think that's the biggest distinction. Right is you can love the artistry of it. You can feel so beautiful with it on, but also you don't have to need it to feel good enough.

 Amber: That is so good. I absolutely love that. And I think exactly what you were mentioning is like, if I took all this away, could I still feel this way about myself? And that's what I have realized with weight loss too, is. I've seen people, you know, maybe they even lost weight in a sustainable way and they're feeling really good about it.

But then they get to that point and they are terrified of gaining the weight. They are terrified of what happens if this all goes away? Like, what if I can't maintain this? What if I overeat once and then I slowly start to creep back up the scale. And because they're so scared of like, well, I could not feel this way anymore if I gained five pounds.

But what I teach people to do is to get to the place where it's like. I know if for some reason I woke up to tomorrow and I had like a crazy health condition and I gained 20 pounds, I would still feel confident because I've done the internal work to remove my self-worth from how my body looks.

And that's the exact same thing you're saying with makeup. It's like, yes, we can have these beautiful products and clothes and all of these things that can make us feel good, but if we take them away, do we still have the mindset that allows us to feel good without them?

 Elyse: Ooh, preach. Girl, you are taking me to church. Exactly. And it's the same thing. So all of those thoughts that you just said, same goals when it comes to our beauty standards, right? It's like if somebody took away all your food and you knew in that moment, oh God, I'm having that desire to binge eat. What do I do? What do I do? And you wanna feel confident about your relationship. It's the same thing. Ooh, I'm having that desire to leave the house with 10, 15 different products on it in order to be seen as beautiful. Hold on, pause. Why am I thinking this? Why am I telling myself the story, right? Like in that moment it's changing your dialogue and your relationship with yourself to rewire yourself to see, you know what?

It is safe to be seen with my bare face. And that's good enough. And it took a minutes for me and especially after so many years of working in the beauty industry where the conditioning there was, Hey, be perfect or don't show up at all. There were times that men that I worked with, the higher executives, because as much as women think that, or people think that beauty is a woman dominated industry. There is a lot of men at the top of the beauty industry, and they would stop me in the hallway and they would tell me, go put your face on before you walk into this meeting, and I would have to stop and go do my makeup. Right? We would look at job and candidates, right?

And people would ask me, is she on brand? Does she fit the beauty aesthetics, right? So there's so much perception that you have to perfect and I had to unwind that literally thought by thought, belief by belief, past experience, by past experience. And even going into thinking about like what we saw growing up.

We would watch movies where women would go to sleep with their makeup on. So their husband looked at them and thought she was perfect when she first woke up, or if she stayed over somewhere, she would run and do her makeup before the guy woke up. So this is the stuff that we were handed as kids. And I know for me when I saw a magazines growing up and thankfully this, you know, social media wasn't around 'cause I can't even imagine how much worse it would've been. But what I always saw was blonde skinny women. wore a lot of makeup. They had big boobs. Right.

So for me, growing up, I didn't understand, I don't look like that I'm a curvy brunette. I did not fit that standard. And my whole entire life, I was told that I was ugly and I was told that I was fat.

And so I had to unwind all of that.

And it was so confusing for me. 'cause while I was in high school, that was when Beyonce and J-Lo came out, and then later Kim Kardashian came out. Right? And now all of the messaging that I had received my whole entire life. Was the total opposite because now it's like, oh, girls that have that hourglass shape, or what's in demand?

Oh, you

Mm-hmm.

body. And I'm like, I'm so confused. And so when I started peeling back all of those layers, it gave me a blank canvas to start defining who I am at this point in my life. What do I wanna believe about myself? What do I want my own beauty standard to be? What do I want my relationship to be with my weight?

What do I want to define my perfect body as at this point in my life? Because I had a chance to rewrite that story for myself, and it looks very different than the story I told myself growing up, but that is why I have such a confident relationship with myself now is because I did that work to rewrite that narrative.

 Amber: Yeah. I love that question that you said of like, what is my beauty standard? Because I always think like the people I find most beautiful, it's because of their energy. Like they just give off this energy where I'm like, oh my gosh, like I feel like so attracted to them if like even in like in a non-romantic way, but I'm just like really attracted to their energy.

I think that also comes from like a layer of vulnerability and just like security in who they are, and that literally has nothing to do with their external appearance, but I'm like, oh my gosh, they just have like such a beautiful aura to them that just attracts me to them.

 Elyse: yes, you nailed it. It's magnetic energy and that's the thing about confidence. Confidence is magnetic and it's an energy that speaks for itself. You don't have to say a word. People will feel that confidence from you. And it was so interesting. I'm gonna totally out myself. I'm like a huge reality TV junkie and I was just watching Love Island All Stars.

And there's this girl on the show, her name is Kin Sue, and she's one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. And she came into the love Island house and she was level 10 confident, and I'm watching her. I'm like, that is a masterclass on how confidence is done. Just what she was exuding in this confidence.

And so I was telling my husband, I was like, you have to watch this girl. And so he came into the room and ironically, port Kin Sue had a major breakdown later on in the show and all of that confidence was just ripped away, and it was revealed that there was a lot of insecurity underneath that. And he's like, wait, this was the confident person that you were saying could teach a masterclass?

And I'm like, it just, this is what happens, right? Is we put on this projection of this confidence, but we all have these insecurity moments too. So we've gotta learn to bring ourself back to that place where that magnetic confidence is radiating.

Because what we wanna do is put on a facade. Because

that’s come to this repelling energy. When it, when I say confidence, right? Like people will try to fake it. You can't

A lot of times when people fake it, they'll come in and tell you how confident they are. A really confident person does not need to tell you how confident they are. You're gonna feel that confidence from them.

When I see people do that, I'm like, it's typically coming from a place of arrogance, which is rooted in insecurity, where they're trying to cover up the fact that they're insecure. No, we're all insecure. We're human beings. We all feel fear. We all feel self-doubt. We all feel that insecurity within us at some point of our lives, and we have to normalize that, right? Like we have to normalize that. That's just a part of the human experience. Because if we just think that we're gonna feel confident all the time, we're setting ourselves up for failure, but having the skill to bring ourselves back to that place of confidence, woo, my friends, that is the million dollar feeling that none of us were taught how to create.

I don't know about you. I didn't have a confidence teacher growing up, but what I'm.

 Amber: Yeah. So tell us, like, I'm more curious too about your, you had a big weight loss journey, you had struggles with food too that, uh, we kinda talked about a bit when I was on your podcast as well. But can you talk about like specifically with your body image, how the insecurities and confidence manifested with that?

And then also like what steps you took to start changing that.

 Elyse: Yes, as I mentioned growing up, I never felt good enough. I always felt like I was fat. I'd always been told by other people that I was fat. And then once again, going through that whole confusing process of, hold on, now my body shape is trending. It was a

a very weird thing to navigate because my story, my whole entire life was, I always needed to lose more weight.

I always needed to be skinnier, and I would set these unrealistic standards for myself and go through these crazy binges, right? I'm like, okay, I'm gonna lose 30 pounds in three months, and then I would either cut all my calories. Restrict myself, all the things that we think, you know, oh, let's do this.

Right? I was just. Get meals and it never worked. I might lose the weight temporarily, but then I would typically be like, oh, well, okay, I didn't do good today, so I'm gonna eat all my feelings, and then I would totally binge out for the next week. So it really had been a pattern my whole entire life where I was always just going all or nothing thinking, right?

Like going to the craziest bootcamp, going to hot yoga, trying to sweat my face off, right? Like nothing I ever did was actually sustainable. And when I got to the top of my career in beauty, I was flying a hundred thousand miles a year. I was under the most stress and most pressure as an executive. I had all eyes on me.

People were looking to me for so many decisions, so much leadership guidance, and I crumbled. And I would come home and I would reach for food and I would reach for wine. And I basically just tried to escape through food and alcohol. And it was. Really hard because I put on 55 pounds in that job. And when I was flying and I was flying first class as well.

So now here I'm in this first class seat thinking that this is supposed to be that box that I checked where I'm living my dream life, everything that I've ever wanted in my life has come true and I can't fit in the airplane seat. And I remember thinking to myself like. What would I do if I'm an economy? I wouldn't be able to literally fit in the seat. I couldn't get the seatbelt around me. And I would get into my car and I'd drive over a speed bump and I would feel myself jiggle. And I knew like, it was like, I felt like I was unhealthy from the inside out. Like I just had sludge inside of me. And I started thinking about how.

All my life, I had these unrealistic standards of how I was supposed to look, who I was supposed to be, what I was supposed to do in my life, what success and beauty actually was. And I stopped myself and I'm like, look, if I were to really paint the vision of myself, of what the most successful, confident, healthy meat would be. Who is that and what is realistic for me? Like I'm never gonna be the skinny blonde with the big boobs. That's never my body, right? I'm always gonna be a thick girl.

So I remember finding a picture of Kim K and it was like her natural body before. She had a ton of enhancements and I was like, you know what? I could achieve that. And I made that the screen saver on my phone, and I thought to myself, if healthy me was real and she was here right now, what would she be doing every day? What would she be thinking about herself? How would she feel about herself, what would she not be doing every day? And it gave me a script to kind of give myself a navigation point of how do I wanna show up for myself every day?

And so I started eating healthy foods. I remember I saw this meme going around where it was like, don't shop anywhere on the center of the grocery store, because that's where all the processed food is, right? You wanna go to where the vegetables are and where the, you know, proteins are. And I was like, wow, that's really life changing.

So I started shopping at farmer's markets and eating more food that was from the ground, right? And not processed and made in a laboratory and. I gave myself permission to not have a timeline when it came to losing the weight. And I asked myself, okay, I don't wanna go to these boot camps where someone screams at me.

I don't wanna commit to, you know, working out two hours a day. That doesn't sound fun to me. So what would feel fun? And I'm like, I wanna dance, I wanna hike, I wanna be outside.

I wanna Swim. I wanna have fun. I wanna ride my spin bike. Great. And I asked myself, okay, if you wanna do all these things, how can I break this down in a way to where it is a non-negotiable to where I will not give up on this goal?

And I said, okay, I don't wanna do an hour. That feels like too much. What can I do? I told myself, you know what, I can do 10 minutes. I can commit to 10 minutes. And so I committed to 10 minutes for a year, and I lost the 55 pounds. And it was the first time in my life that I didn't shame myself. I didn't beat myself up.

It didn't feel like it was a punishment. I didn't feel like I was restricted in any sort of way and I changed my mindset around food. So I gave myself a pass to say, you know what, 25% of the time. I'm gonna eat whatever I want. Like there's a part of me, I grew up working at McDonald's, so chicken nuggets are very nostalgic to me, right? So I’m like If I wanna go eat chicken nuggets, I'm gonna give myself permission to do that, and I'm not gonna shame myself. But that's not gonna be a daily reality how it used to be, right?

So 75% of the time, and this is still my model today, I eat so clean. I love to cook. I love being in the kitchen. I love creating with food.

Food is a love language for me, and I'm still a foodie, right? But I use food in a different way. It's no longer a tool to escape. It's a tool to nourish my body.

And I shifted this mindset of thinking I'm somebody who lives to eat versus now where I eat to live because I feel so different about myself.

And this really started with this thought of, if I get my mind right, my body will follow. And it did because I knew I had tried to change myself from the outside in, just like I started this conversation with, with the mistake that we all make as women. And it never worked. It never stuck.

And I made the shift in, I started in 2017 and I have never put the weight back on since then.

Once I lost it, and I'm so proud of that because only I could have done this for myself. I wanted everybody else to do it for me, but I knew if I could figure this out. This would change the rest of my life and it changed my whole entire lifestyle and this was a gift to my husband. Then he did it right.

It's now a gift to our son because he gets to get raised in an environment where food isn't an escape tool, right? It's

not somethings that we use when we had a bad day. It's something that we can use to enhance the experience, right? Or something to use to gift back to ourself. Like I look at. Food is such a gift now versus before where I would just stuff myself wonder why I felt like shit, and then just, you know, beat myself up and then eat more.

It was this vicious cycle that never ended.

So I am so proud that I finally broke the cycle.

 Amber: Yeah. So I'm curious, when you got to that place where you had lost the weight or like when you were in the process of it, did you feel like instantly more confident and like, wow, like I just feel like my best self. Did you do work along the way? Like did you know about this work of changing our thoughts to change our feelings?

Like what was that process like of how your body confidence changed throughout that and how you got to where you are now of like where you feel really good in your body because of the thoughts you've created?

 Elyse: Yeah, I think when I started on this, I didn't have the mindset tools that I had now, but I do remember one distinct thing that I would always tell myself. And I had started working with a healer in 2017, and she really helped to kind of show me what it was like to have a better relationship with myself.

And so, what I used to do before is, let's say I made one tiny mistake on my plan, then I would beat myself up. I'd be so nasty to myself, and that relationship with myself would spin me out, right? It's like, think of your best friend yelling at you every single day. Of course you're gonna feel bad about yourself,

So why I am talking to myself like that? So I would say to myself in the moment, Hey. I don't do that anymore. And it helped me to start self-identifying as somebody who loves herself versus somebody who was constantly tearing herself down. And in those moments, instead of tearing myself down, I would start building myself up. And then in 2019, I really went all in on figuring out mindsets.

Stuff. And then I became a coach in 2020. So it made it so much easier to then start practicing these tools in real time. But I remember learning the model, right? The your thoughts create your feelings. And I could not unsee that because it was in the moment I'm like, oh my God, I had this thought about food.

It triggered like a desire to go eat something, and then I would notice the whole actions and results happening and I could not unsee that way of operating. So I think it was a gradual build, but it really started with first the intention to just start seeing why am I doing this in the first place?

And start seeing how nasty I was with myself and then start being a cheerleader versus that negative Nancy that was living in my head. Who love to just beat me up and be so nasty to me. She was so mean, but, and that version of me still comes in and now I just give her love and I turn down the volume and the microphone

and my brain. right? I'm like, Nope, we're not doing that today. Sorry. I actually named my inner mean girl. Her name is Sasha, and she comes in real hot. I named her Sasha. Like Sasha Fierce. 'cause you know, Beyonce's alter ego hits the stage and gets wild. So I just turned the volume down on Sasha and I'm like. That's not the mindset I live in anymore.

I don't do that. I don't shame myself. That's not who I am.

So I think it was a gradual build, but ultimately it was all rooted upon the foundation of I'm desiring to love myself. I'm desiring to accept myself exactly as I am, even with the cellulite, even with the wrinkles, even with the stretch marks.

And then doing this before I had my son. Was honestly one of the biggest gifts I've ever given myself because on the other side of having a child, my body does not look the same and instead of

looking of my stomach and thinking that there's something wrong, I look at my belly and I just think, oh my God, this is a miracle maker like this belly like life and there's no negativity there. You know what I mean? As to where before it would be like, you're so fat. Oh my God, you have a pooch. Now it's just so different.

 Amber: I love how you said like this thought of almost a declaration. I don't speak to myself that way anymore. We're not doing this anymore. It's almost like all you have to do is just make this clear decision of I'm going to choose to stop being like a bitch to myself and beating myself up all the freaking time.

And when you start to like. Really, I recommend people to write out their thoughts for the day. So like write out literally on your notes app on your phone, like how many times are you beating yourself up? And write them out because when we hear them in our head, sometimes we don't think they're like that serious.

'cause they kind of just like float on by and we're used to hearing them. But when you start writing them out, or if people are in a coaching session with me and they tell me the thoughts out loud, oh, like I'm saying this about myself, I'm telling myself that I'm a fat, lazy piece of shit. Like when you say that out loud, it's like, oh my gosh.

I say that to myself multiple times a day. Like, no wonder I'm feeling so hopeless and discouraged. No wonder I'm not taking the actions I wanna take because I'm just beating myself down all day. And so I think almost making this zero tolerance policy for self-talk, like negative self-talk is so important because then you're deciding, i'm not gonna keep believing these thoughts and it's okay if they still come up. I think that's also really important that you mentioned is that just because we decide we're not gonna listen to these thoughts anymore doesn't mean we're gonna like feel great all the time. Like we all will still get these thoughts. I still get negative thoughts. I'm sure you still get negative thoughts about yourself, but.

Yeah.

We just choose to not give you, give them so much value anymore because I like to even like even laugh at my thoughts. I can just see them as like so funny and like not serious of like, that is so funny that my brain would tell me that.

Or one of my thoughts that I call out still is, I call it the never ending loop of I wanna lose weight because for most of us due to our societal conditioning,

Yeah.

are just unfortunately gonna have this loop of You need to lose weight. You need to lose weight. It's not good enough. It's not good enough.

Get skinny, skinny, skinny. Like it just autopilot in our brain sometimes. And I just like see it as a loop that society has put in. But just because I'm having those thoughts come up does not mean I need to say, oh my gosh, yeah, you're right. Like, how do I go lose five pounds and tone up this summer?

It's like, no, my body's fine. I'm eating in a way I wanna be eating. I feel healthy, I'm happy. Like that doesn't need to happen and we just need to have that space from the thought to see that that's not actually true, and that's just something we've been fed over and over again. We're still probably getting fed from our social media and all these other things that we talked about in the beginning of our conversation.

 Elyse: Yes, I call those the greatest Hits album, right? It's like the itty bitty shitty committee that lives in our head and loves to just offer us the nasties. And of course, we all have those thoughts. We have 60,000 thoughts a day, so our brain is gonna keep braining and our brain's gonna keep doing what it does and offering us those thoughts.

And I know for me, when those thoughts come up now, I'm like, oh, hi. There you are again. It's. That's, you know, the Greatest Hits album coming again. And I just let it float by like a cloud in my brain without attaching to it. And now those thoughts come in. And before it used to be so painful because I didn't yet have the skill of not attaching to them or not giving it meaning or not seeing it as true.

'cause before it was so true. It was like, oh my God, definitely fat. Look in the mirror. Here's all the evidence to prove that I'm fat. Here's all the conditioning that told me I'm fat. Here's all the people who have told me I'm fat. So my brain was rooted in seeing so much evidence to prove that to be true.

And now I just invalidate the thought. I'm like, not true.

Look at this beautiful people who are gorgeous and who are socially accepted. Now, look how the narrative has changed on body types. Look how so many more body types are being celebrated, right? Like things are changing, but that internal change has to start with us first.

And when I look in the mirror and those thoughts do come because they are habitual, I thought them for, you know, almost 30 years of my life before I started doing this work on myself, right? So when those do come, I'm like, oh, I see. See you. Oh, that's all programming coming back and I just let it go with love. But accepting myself came on the other side of actually doing exactly what you said, Amber, and writing down all of those thoughts, and then I sent them to myself in the mirror and it felt horrible And doing that exercise with myself, looking into my own eyes and literally character assassinating myself and saying those words out loud, it was so ugly. I literally went and washed my hands afterwards because it felt gross. Like I felt so gross and heavy, and I couldn't unfeel that feeling of me saying those things to myself. So for anybody who's listening. Go do that exercise. It's gonna hurt. It's gonna feel very tender. But what I want it to be on the other side is a powerful moment where you take your power back and make that declaration to yourself to say, you know what?

Today is the day where I'm no longer going to say those things to myself where I'm no longer going to cause self harm, where I'm no longer going to beat myself up for this beautiful body that I was given. And I remember going to a retreat. This was when I first started working on myself. It was in 2019 and it was like two years into it, I should say.

And so I went to this retreat and I was really struggling with a lot of body issues. I just lost the weight. I had some skin that was starting to hang, and the retreat leader was like, how can you work against something and hate something that's working so hard to keep you alive?

And I was like, oh my God. And even saying that now just gave me full body chills because that was what I was trained to do. I was just doing what I was trained to do. I was doing what I thought was right, because that's what I had seen from all of the women around me. Because think about it. Did we have confident, secure women teaching us growing up, A lot of us didn't, you know, I had a situation where I would see the women around me stand in front of a mirror and they would be like, oh, look at this. Oh, disgusting. Then they'd look at me and say, oh, don't say that about yourself. I only say that about me. And it's like, well, okay, do as I say, not as I do, but

This is an example you're setting for me.

So of course I'm gonna inherit that behavior. And I did. But I

also got to let go of that behavior because once again, that wasn't mine to carry.

 Yeah. So I have one last question for you. And that's what, if people are like listening to this and like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. Like feeling confidence and all that, but like, I gotta get to work. Like I gotta do the hard things. I gotta fix my body. Like what would you say to those people on why is doing this work on our thoughts and feeling confident?

Why is that so important for us to do in really all areas?

 So you can actually look in the mirror and love yourself exactly as you are without feeling like you need to do anything different. Right? To where you don't have to reach for more food, to where you don't have to reach for more makeup to where you don't have to restrict yourself to where you don't have to think that you need to be. Anybody else other than who you are. Exactly and you're perfect. You imperfectly, you right? We're perfect, but we're

imperfect. That’s human experience. And for anybody who's in that place right now who doesn't know where to start, I'm gonna give you a ninja hack to leave you with to really assess what your opportunities are to start building your confidence right now.

So I offer all the women I work with in exercise called the Confidence Trifecta. And this is gonna show you where all of your confidence building opportunities live in real time. Because for me, what I found teaching now thousands of women across the world, confidence is it really comes down to three things.

Your level of self-belief, your level of self-trust, and your ability to take action while feeling uncomfortable. So what I want you to do is write down those three categories on a piece of paper. Self-belief, self-trust, and your ability to take action, right? And I want you to just rate your current level of each from a scale of one to 10, one being low, 10 being high.

And just see where you're at. So you could be a six. And then I want you to ask yourself what needs to happen to be a 10? Because what is going to come from this exercise is it's gonna show you what your opportunity is to start feeling more confident in yourself right now. Because we can't change what we don't see.

And the thing is, until you break that pattern of thinking, oh, well I need to have the perfect body. I need to have the perfect, most beautiful face, I need to make this amount of money, whatever, it's right, you're still going to try to change yourself from the outside in.

We got to bring your power back and your control back because this is a hundred percent within your control.

And once you learn how to do that, this is a skill you will have with you for the rest of your life to where even if you are in front of the mirror, you can still believe and trust that you know what, I see myself as beautiful and that's enough, and I don't need to do anything else. Today. Right? And that might feel uncomfortable in the beginning.

Cool. Let it be uncomfortable once again, like this is why courage comes before confidence always. People think confidence comes first and they're like, oh, I'm waiting for the confidence to put myself out there. I'm like, no boo boo. It is courage first. And the byproduct of taking that courageous action is increased confidence.

So every time you do something courageous, whether that is putting on a bikini, when you think your body isn't perfect. And stepping out onto that beach. I had that moment after having my son. I was like, I'm gonna do it. And I did it, and girl, I felt so good. And it was because I had that high level of self-belief, a high level of self-trust that, you know what, even if somebody did yell, like, oh, it's a whale who just had a baby, which would never happen.

And if it did like f that person, right?

But even if that worst fear did come true, I could still continue taking action. Feeling momentary, you know, little bits of discomfort, and I'm still gonna go be my best self, right? It's not gonna shift me out and spin me out of who I am because I know who I am. And when you insecure in your own skin to where you don't need to change anything about yourself because your belief is high, your trust is high, and you're still taking the action and doing the damn thing, my friends, this is the magic sauce we are all looking for. So give that gift to yourself.

 Amber: That is so good. And not to mention too, like what came up for me was how much money you'll save and how much money you make. When you're feeling good enough, because one thing that I've done this year is I have a few like no buy rules because I just have like too many clothes, too many makeup products, like I think we all do to some degree.

And so I told myself, I was like maybe we'll need to buy like one mascara and one brow gel this year, but like I'm not buying anything else and I really do not need any clothes. I'll be fine. But I would not been able to do that. Had I still had these like underlying beliefs of like, I'm not good enough and I need a new outfit, or I need a new brow gel.

Well, I mean, I said brow gels on my list to buy because I use that often, but whatever it is that I'm buying because I don't feel good enough and I feel like this is gonna be the thing that makes someone love me, that makes someone want to come talk to me, that will make me feel good enough about myself.

It's like, wow, that's gonna save me so much money this year, not needing to go out and do all those things. And then obviously you coach on career confidence. So when you have that confidence to go out and just like be yourself and do those big opportunities like that exponentially increases your earning potential too.

And like, you know, beauty industries do not want you to know that, that not only are you gonna save money not buying their things, but you're gonna become your biggest, best version of yourself when you feel good enough as you are.

 Elyse: Yes. And like you said, when you have that confidence that's gonna magnetize everything towards you because you feel good enough. right? So you get everything you want on the other side of truly stepping into that confidence, right? And if you need a good mascara and you wanna save money, the essence Lash Princess, it's 3 99 best mascara on the market right now.

Go get it. I don't know what one of my developer friends made that, but I'm you. Y'all did God's work. That was the best mascara ever.

 Amber: Oh my gosh. I love that I am all here for those recommendations. So, Elise, tell us if people wanna get in touch with you or find more about you, where can they find you?

 Elyse: Yes. Come visit me every single week inside of my podcast, the Confidence Lounge. I drop new episodes every single Monday morning, and we talk all things career confidence, building leadership. Also, you can achieve executive and entrepreneurial success, so I would love for you to join me there. I also offer a ton of free resources on my website, soul makeup.com, so you can go get 10 a checklist of all these habits.

To build your confidence, how to work better in your career. It is all there for you. And if you want to connect with me, you can find me on LinkedIn at Elise Conroy. It's E-L-Y-S-E-C-O-N-R-O-Y,

 Amber: Thanks so much, Elise, for coming on today. It was such a good episode. I'm literally obsessed with you and I know people are gonna find so much value in this. So thanks everyone for listening, and I'll talk to you later.