Reclaiming Self-Worth Without Approval with Julie Vander Meulen - Part 3

What happens when your self-worth depends on other people’s moods, praise, or approval? In this episode, Aideen sits down again with empowerment coach Julie Vander Muelen to explore conditional self-worth, people pleasing, and the quiet habit of handing our power to external validation. Together, they unpack why a life that looks successful on the outside can still feel misaligned and how self-love, truth, and curiosity create a more stable foundation for confidence.

Julie shares practical tools for rebuilding inner security, including learning to receive compliments and noticing negative thought patterns, to gently retrain the mind toward supportive beliefs. This conversation offers a compassionate path toward steadier self-worth, healthier boundaries, and the courage to keep expressing yourself even when no one is clapping yet.

Key Takeaways

• conditional self-worth often develops through people pleasing and seeking external validation
 • learning to receive compliments helps rebuild self-belief and inner stability
 • the “pebbles” approach creates small moments of self-worth that build over time
 • self-love creates healthier boundaries and emotional wellbeing
 • expressing your creativity becomes easier when self-worth comes from within

Connect with Julie

Instagram: @juvdmeul

LinkedIn: @julie-vander-meulen-the-empowerment-coach    

Website: www.ownyourlife.academy

Newletter: Free Own Your Life Newsletter     

Quiz: Good Girl Syndrome Quiz

Articles: My articles on Good Girl Syndrome 

Booking Page: Work with Julie

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Transcript

Aideen Ni Riada 0:03

Welcome to the Resonate Podcast with Aideen. I'm here today again with Julie Vander Meulen. And Julie and I have been speaking, this is our third episode together. We've been speaking about the Good Girl Syndrome. Today we decided we would like to come back and speak with everybody again about this from the point of view of self-worth, self-love, and being truthful about who we really are. Julie is a phenomenal empowerment coach. She is based across the US and in Belgium. And we have had this conversation twice before, but there's always so much more to say. Welcome, Julie. Hi, Aideen. Hi, everyone. Thank you for having me again. So tell me a little bit about what self-worth can mean to a good girl.

Julie Vander Meulen 0:59

Um I think for many good girls, at least when they're starting out, right, before they do any sort of healing or anything, I think self-worth uh is conflated with um approval, other people's approval, right? And receiving a lot of praise. That like I will include myself in it. A lot of us feel that we have a sort of conditional self-self-worth. So if right now Aideen, you're happy with me, then little Julie, right, um, would have felt like I had a lot of self-worth in that moment, right? If I was connected with that. Um, but then you know, my self-worth would have gone in flames, right? Uh if the moment that you expressed any sort of what I would perceive as criticism, or if you were to what per what I would perceive, you would ignore me in some way, you would neglect me in some way, right? Um, if there was any of that, then my sense of self-worth would be gone. And so I would say that for a good girl, uh the reality is there is not much self-worth inside of us or inside of them, right? Um but it's it can be built, right? But originally there's not much self-worth. And what we perceive as having self-worth is actually um yeah, external approval is how I would perceive it.

Aideen Ni Riada 2:16

Yeah. And that's like handing over your power then to the circumstances and the people around you.

Julie Vander Meulen 2:23

Exactly.

Aideen Ni Riada 2:24

And we mentioned in in our previous episode how conditional love is more common than unconditional love.

Julie Vander Meulen 2:31

Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada 2:32

So people are looking at us through a certain lens, they don't always see the best in us, they don't always see our intentions are good.

Julie Vander Meulen 2:39

Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada 2:40

Um, and they don't always want for us what we want for ourselves either.

The Cost Of Chasing Praise

Julie Vander Meulen 2:45

Exactly.

Aideen Ni Riada 2:46

Um, so what is the cost of looking outside of ourselves for that self-approval?

Julie Vander Meulen 2:54

I think there's many. Um, I would say that the most, the one that you can see the most when you're feeling that way is that then most of the time you're not feeling well. Like in the beginning of this path, you think you found a sort of recipe to feel good about yourself by always being pleasing, right? But then in the process of that, you find that most people, unless it's the very beginning of a romantic relationship that's going well, where you're constantly praised, most of the rest of life is not constant praise. It's neutral most of the time, or like can be happy, but it's mainly neutral, and you do receive some feedback or like people get used to you, so they don't treat you as being special all the time. So one of the things is you can feel pretty miserable inside yourself. Um, the second thing is then if you constantly want that approval, what you're gonna do is you're gonna chase it. And so, in order to chase it, you will become increasingly pleasing and you will continuously over-deliver, right? You will be in this sort of push energy to constantly prove yourself to the external world because you want to receive that praise. It's like a drug, right? Um and I would say a third thing is you lose yourself in a process. If you ever had found yourself, right, uh, you will lose yourself in a process. And if you were raised like that, right, if you grew up like that, then you never really know who you are, because who you are changes constantly based on the feedback of others. And so instead of looking internally to what you want, what you need, you know, what's your path, you're constantly looking to someone else. And whatever path, you know, will give you the most praise, uh, which means you're basically giving what you were saying, that you know, you give away your power. I think that's a big way that you give away your power, is that you know, the cost is then you started, which is what happened to me, you you live a life that on the outside looks incredibly, you know, fantastic because you have all the diplomas, all the things, you know, you get the praise from your family, from people around you, you're such a good person, like all these things. But then inside yourself, you've built a life that does not resemble who you actually are, which I think to me is like a major cost, right? Living yourself as someone who you don't you you are not actually, you know, how you actually feel inside, I think is a pretty miserable way to live. Um to me, that's the biggest cost.

Aideen Ni Riada 5:11

When we think about this idea of being worthy, and we're if we are trying to take the meaning of that purity from an external people see me as worthy, to an internal belief that I am worthy. What are we basing that worth on if we're not basing it on our achievements and our, you know, what we've done, like things that we've externally done?

Julie Vander Meulen 5:38

Yeah. Uh I think there's a few ways to go about it. I think the first thing is to recognize, I think we talked a little bit about that in the second episode we did together, that like everything has worth. I don't know if you remember that, that we were talking about a tree has worth, like everything has worth. I think one of the things is that is to kind of view life and everything in life as like things, people, animals, everything has worth, regardless of what they do, right? The tree or the sun is there, right? It's just is worthy. It's beautiful as it is. We don't ask anything specific of it, right? Uh, tree the same, our pets the same, our kids often, it's the same. We think that they have worth. They don't have to be or do a specific thing for us to love them and to think that they are worthy. And so it would be one thing would be to apply that same logic to us is that our worth has nothing to do with actions to begin with. We're just worthy and worthy of being alive, therefore, right, just because we exist, right? And so I think to some extent, it's it's easier to accept that if you have some spiritual beliefs, right, of some sort of religious beliefs, because then you put a meaning to your existence, right? You think that something above you has chosen you to be here. Um, but if not, if the someone who listens to us does not have such beliefs, then it's just accepting that truth that like other things that you see are worthy of your time. That's how you feel. So you can just like kind of mirror that to yourself and find worth in yourself just because you exist, right? And then give like yourself, you give yourself the meaning of your life, which is I'm here, therefore I am worthy. You are allowed to do that, to create your own story. And it's a beautiful story to have. And I think another way of having worth is to there's this saying that a penguin's how they show love is like they give little pebbles, right? Little rocks to one another as a sign of love. And they keep giving more and more and more and more. And so when you think about love, like I see this a lot on the reels on Instagram and so on, that they say, like, if you have a loved one, you keep giving them pebbles. So I will say, A Dean, you're beautiful. A Dean, I'm so happy to see you. Like all of these are little pebbles. And I'm I'm smiling when I'm thinking of this because you can actually do that with yourself, which is that I what I just said about you, I can do this with me. So I can start saying, you know what, Julie, you know, I'm talking to myself, you know what, Julie, you're actually really beautiful. And like you are so, you know, it's you're so lovely to be around. Like I can give myself these pebbles. And these pebbles can be things that I have achieved, right? They can be, I can also, you know, give myself some pebbles to say, wonderful job today, you know, within this conversation with Aideen. That's fantastic. That's one type of pebble. But I can just give myself a pebble for being beautiful or for being kind or for being present with myself, you know, whatever it is. And I think that this slowly, slowly, there's like a stacking type of mechanism where you start feeling, you know, you start recognizing and noticing all the things that are beautiful about yourself. And that in itself creates some a form of self-worth and self-self-love, right? You start loving yourself and you start seeing that you are worthy of being here and you are worthy of being in other people's presence and so on and so forth.

Aideen Ni Riada 8:49

I love that. And it reminds me of a um a little story that I tell in my book, but my book is actually called Discover Your True Value.

Julie Vander Meulen 8:57

True.

Aideen Ni Riada 8:58

And one of my teachers said to me one time, Aidan, you're a kind person. And it was the first time anyone had said this to me. Um, and I didn't know what to think. I didn't know how to understand what the what my teacher was saying. I wasn't sure if it was true. I was wondering why he would say that. And it took me a while to kind of recognize my kindness because I would display kindness in many ways. I would, you know, ask people did they need something? Just always naturally. It wasn't because I was looking for approval, it was because I just would be, you know, I wanted to, you know, I like I like being a hostess. You know, I I worked for four and a half years as a cabin crew hostess, you know, basically bringing people to their seat, giving them their dinner, smiling at them and making them feel good, right? So there's a part of me just loves being there for other people's comfort, you know, like I get great joy from just being around people and and seeing that they're happy. And so that kindness was always there. And I realized um when I thought about this situation that we often don't believe those pebbles, right? We don't receive the pebbles from the penguin lover people that we have around us. Um, and in my book, I I wrote a little section about allowing those that feedback in, like to really take a moment to consider the truth of some of the nice things people say to you, yeah, and perhaps allow that truth to um to filter in through through you as a belief, a belief in yourself.

Julie Vander Meulen 10:57

Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada 10:58

Um, we don't always see ourselves clearly, and other people don't people don't always see us clearly either. But it if we get those um pebbles, if we disregard them, if we brush them aside, you know, I mean, women do it a lot. We're like, oh, this old thing, yeah, it's you know, I got this in the sale, you know, we or we diminish, you know, any compliment that we receive quite often. Um so that to me was a big eye-opener to start to allow some of these positive um words to really um to to hit home, to really receive them.

Learning To Receive Compliments

Julie Vander Meulen 11:42

Yeah. Yeah. To to receive them, and it's also to accept, yeah. I don't know how to because it's receiving something, but then it's also the act of like you with yourself accepting that this could be true, which is kind of what you said. It's like being, and it's about being curious about whether you could be wrong about your, you know, your critical assumptions of yourself, you know, you Aideen, but me, everyone who's listening to us, is that I think having a state of curiosity, when there's something we're doing and it's not working in our lives right now, I think that having a state of curiosity of like, how could I do this differently? And even if it's if it feels uncomfortable, you know, even though you know it's supposed to be nice, if it feels uncomfortable, that perhaps it doesn't mean that there's something wrong with this new practice. Perhaps you're just out of practice, right? You just don't know, like you said, you don't know how to receive, and is you have a hard time accepting that new things could be true about yourself. Um, yeah, it's a beautiful process. It's not easy, but it's it's a worthy process since we're talking about worth.

Aideen Ni Riada 12:46

Yes. There's a um, there's a nice phrase I learned um from one of the personal development things I was following, which was um even though I'm not sure if I'm a kind person, yes, I'm open to the possibility that I can see my kindness in the future, right? Right. So even though this situation right now is I'm not necessarily receiving the pebbles, I don't necessarily believe there's any goodness in me.

Julie Vander Meulen 13:19

Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada 13:19

I'm open to the possibility, and like you said, being curious, I'm curious that to see where I could be um better in that. And you know, sometimes we aren't our best, you know. So even though I I wasn't kind that day, for instance, I'm open to the possibility that I can be more consistently kind in the future because perhaps because as good girls we can be hard on ourselves. Yeah, we spoke about this a little before. We are amplifying the times that we didn't do our best in our heads.

Julie Vander Meulen 13:55

Exactly. Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada 13:56

Does that happen a lot for people who are who Yeah, it does.

Julie Vander Meulen 14:01

And I was it it's beautiful what you just said because how I I I have a now a good girl syndrome show, and I have people who ask me questions about their real lives, right? And I just recorded an episode a few days ago on that, on this specific topic, and I was saying to this woman, I was telling her that actually you have so much experience being self-critical that you have stacked proof. For me, I'm 34, so I have stacked proof of what's wrong with me, right? I have stacked this evidence for years and years and years and years. And I've been doing this work of like self-love and self-empowerment, all these things. I've been doing that for much less time. And so even if I'm very, very adamant, you know, and like I'm changing my ways, there's still much more proof inside of me of what's wrong with me, because that's what I was focusing on, right, than there is in what's right. And so things are becoming more and more and more um easy for me, right, to like receive things and so on and so forth. But if you were to um give me a compliment on something I'm not used to, to begin with, I'd be a little uncomfortable. And I would probably resist it without even noticing, just because my mind is biased in the way that it sees me. And it will need some repetition and some acceptance and receiving all the things we were saying, but also just simply repetition. Like having people around you where I can say, you know, Aideen, I'm gonna invent it's not what I'm of my issues. But let's say I have an issue with receiving that I am a kind person, because I don't know what I did in my past, you know, and now it's still with me. I have this bias. I could say to you, my friend, you know, every time you do you, do you mind? Like every time you see me doing something kind, could you could you remind me just to stack that evidence that like with repetition, if you say it 10 times to me, I'll start receiving it, but also I'll see proof in the actual world because you'll see, I'll say why. And you'll see, you know what, right now you're being very present with me. You're giving me all your attention, whatever it is. And I can start understanding what kindness means to me, how it looks like for me. And I think that makes it easier, right? It makes it easier sometimes to receive and accept things if we can understand, you know, how specifically it applies to us. Um, that's beautiful.

Aideen Ni Riada 16:12

That's absolutely beautiful. And it reminds me of an amazing strategy that I came across called affirmations.

Julie Vander Meulen 16:20

Tell me more with an O. I don't know.

Aideen Ni Riada 16:22

Okay, so this blew my mind. Okay.

Julie Vander Meulen 16:26

Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada 16:27

I was so used to affirmations. That's where you say something positive to yourself. So I I had my affirmations that I used to repeat to myself at night and in the morning was I am warmth, I am light, I am open arms. That was my my three that I had others like all is well, you know, but those were the ones that were like about who I am. I am warmth. And I learned about this from a money um mentor called Denise Duffield Thomas. And she has mentioned this in a number of her of her books and in some of her courses, but she kind of mentions it briefly. And unless you do like learn about it yourself, you're it's kind of you'd have to kind of dig in to find out. So an affirmation is an affirmation in the form of a question. Because what you said there was you when you someone shows you the evidence of your kindness, you understand why. You can give yourself a why. So this is why I really jumped into my mind. When we ask a why question instead of an affirmation. So if I ask, if I say to myself, I am warmed, and I ask it as a question, it would be, why am I warmed? Now, the interesting thing, this was invented by a guy called Noah St. John, and he wrote a book called The Great Little Book of Affirmations. Interesting. And he suddenly realized this because um he uh he was asking himself why the affirmations were weren't working because he didn't believe them. And he also had in his head this idea that ask and you shall receive.

Julie Vander Meulen 18:04

Yes.

Aideen Ni Riada 18:04

When he realized the power of a why question, a why is a presumptive that's the truth question. Why am I warmed is presuming I am already warmth.

Julie Vander Meulen 18:15

Yes.

Aideen Ni Riada 18:16

And why am I warmth is doing what you were mentioning there, which is showing you evidence, yes, that you are warmed. So I started this. There, this is great. Anyone who's listening, uh I'm sorry, I'm taking over here a little, uh Judy. But when I started it, I wrote out the 20 questions that I was asking myself that were fairly negative. Why is my husband so indecisive? Why can't I get along with my mother-in-law right now? Why is it hard for me to live in the US? All of these things, and I turned them into affirmations. Why is Mike so decisive? Why did I get on so well with my mother in law? Why am I starting to love living in the US? The funniest story that came out of this was um about Mike. I had was asking, why is Mike so decisive? And a few weeks after starting this process, I sat with him in front of the computer and we were talking about making a joint purchase. It wasn't even an expensive thing. And Mike pressed the button bye. And I looked at him, and in my head, I was thinking, why didn't he double check with me? And then I went, What? That was Mike being decisive. And then I realized that I didn't want him to be decisive. So I had to go away for a minute and give myself a little talkie to and go, okay, what's going on there? So it really opens up something when we ask these questions. And you hadn't heard of this, had you? No, so um two things.

Julie Vander Meulen 19:48

One, I I read some of those books because I love this woman too. Um, but uh I I thought I heard it, but I couldn't remember it when you said it. It completely escaped my mind. And in the Tony Robbins world, which you know I belong to, um, I they they we do something called a primary question. I don't know if you've heard about that. Um so the idea is since you were little, there's been a negative question that's been very, very present for you, right? You created it as a sort of survival mechanism to whatever you were facing in the moment. It can be a very hard thing, or it can be, you know, whatever affected you. And so for me, for example, my primary question that was uh ruining my life and like ruling also my life was what's wrong? What's wrong with the environment, right? So that I could anticipate and make sure that I was not endangered because I had some trauma in my childhood. And a uh a variant of that was what's wrong with me. So then I was always, like you were saying, I was always looking uh for proof that there's something wrong in my environment, which you can imagine made me very, very anxious as a person, always, you know, hyper-vigilant and so on, but also always very critical because all I was focusing on, and it's unconscious. I didn't do that on purpose, but that's what I was always scanning for. And so the idea of a primary question in a Tony Robbins world is we do what you just did. We flip it. So with one, the most, the predominant negative question in your life, right, that you're constantly answering to, which is how I could come up with uh I'm not good enough, I'm not loved enough, right? I'm not pretty enough. It were answers to like, what's wrong with me, right? Why would and you can apply to many different things. What's wrong with me that I can't have the partner that I want? What's wrong with me that I'm not appreciated or work? You can, you know, decline it in different ways. And so what you do is you flip it and you create a question that answers like whose answers you actually love and move you forward. So my new question, I've been through different ones. My new question is about being lucky. And so I I find, I ask myself all the time, how did I get so lucky? I ask it all throughout the day. And so what I find is evidence that I actually am lucky. So I've created a new bias. In my mind, right? Where instead of looking at all the ways that there's something wrong, I'm looking at all the things, all the ways that there's things that are going really, really well, right? Because I'm so lucky. And so I find it in everyone. I find it in my partner. How did I get so lucky that I have this partner, right? How did I get so lucky that I'm on this podcast? How did I makes me you see my face, right? It makes me so giggly and so happy. And it's transformed my whole inner world. So it reminds me of what you just said. Although yours had multiple questions, this one is like one primary question and it flips your whole it's so beautiful. It's a very powerful thing.

Aideen Ni Riada 22:33

That is amazing. And to kind of recognize that we are replaying questions in our minds. And the the thing about the question is a question requires an answer. Exactly. And when we're asking a question that's got a negative bias, like what's wrong, your brain will sub, it's almost like putting something into a computer and let and letting it work on it in the background. Because in the back of our minds, somehow we're still looking for that negative reinforcement for that belief that something's wrong. So when we ask the positive question, like, why is everything going so well? Or why am I so lucky? Um, even if you don't answer that, even if you don't have an answer for it in this moment, your brain will be like, Oh, here's an unanswered question. I need to try and figure out. Because our brain is wants, it's like it's yeah, it's like it's wanting to help us all the time, but we give it the wrong input. And then we get the wrong output. The wrong prompt, and you you have the wrong prompt, and the AI is a bad thing.

Julie Vander Meulen 23:41

I know that it's exactly the same. It's beautiful, it's really exactly there.

Aideen Ni Riada 23:48

I love that we are talking about this. Um, one step further from this idea of discovering our self-worth for me is discovering what it is you want to be expressing in the world. Like, where are you best placed to be your best self? Where is your highest soul potential? And I have a strong uh belief that possibly many people who are looking for external validation for uh for their worth may miss the things that they really their soul would love to be doing, or they may doubt that that is important because I know for me, like I love to sing, but I also know that most people in my life don't really care if I sing, right? That they they care that I'm happy. Like they they want, they want to see me do things I like to do, but they don't have a specific the way that I feel internally about my singing is like, oh my gosh, I just love singing. I love I want to be on a I want to sing for stay on a stage. And I mean, I have sung happy birthday for a few lines of it to people in my job my part-time job where I work as a restaurant, even though they don't really care. Um so like it's it's like a part of my identity and a part of what brings me joy that other people don't really mind whether I do or not. Yeah, so for me to actually pursue it requires me to believe that it's worthy of doing, even if nobody else cares, even if no one else likes it, even if no one else wants to come to my gigs.

Julie Vander Meulen 25:26

Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada 25:27

And that was a huge problem for me at the beginning. When people, when it was difficult to get people to come to gigs, I took that feedback as I shouldn't bother doing this.

Julie Vander Meulen 25:38

Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada 25:39

But there's a part of each of our souls that has an expression, like that has a unique expression that I think is worth considering uh beyond whether you ever get an external validation for that.

Julie Vander Meulen 25:56

Yeah. And and perhaps it's even like the when you from the example you gave, perhaps it's also the perfect test to know if this is really what your soul longs for. No, because I find that in the beginning, in anything, at least it's been my experience, perhaps there's some lucky breaks out there, right? Can happen too. But I find that whenever you begin something, it's never easy. There's there's some parts that are easy because you realize you have a gift for something, right? You're you're talented in some way, which is lovely. But then all the rest requires a lot of work and oftentimes a lot of lonely work, right? A lot of trying again and no one sees it and no one understands, and like all these lonely types of things. And I find that sometimes also on your path is something that we don't want to face in the moment, but afterwards, I don't know about you, Eden. But for me, in my life, when I see it now, I'm like, this is part of how I really know what my calling is. Part of why I know is because even in the midst of hardships, the logical thing would have been to give up on what I wanted to do. And yet I could not. I really did not want to, because it felt like I would be betraying myself. Um, so perhaps there's something there too, you know that like the test of like your passion, a passion or your calling, whatever we call it, that there's a test that comes with it at some point. And perhaps it's it's also worth it. That in a moment it feels very negative, you have a lot of doubts, but it's what makes you in the long run know that this is really what I want to do. And also what you said, it's who I really am. It's the truest expression of who I really am, um, which I think is really beautiful. And it to me, it's also very connected to another concept you talked about, which is being your best self. That like if your goal, right, if your goal is to be your best self, then your best self is not a specific title you have, it's not, it's nothing to do with that. Your best self is when you feel inside at your best and you're like as true as you can be with who you really are. At least that's how I perceive it. Um, and to me, there's no other way to do that than to remove from your life all the things that do not belong to you, right? And and to more and more and more invest in the things that actually, you know, are meant for you and you love and bring you joy and you know, alignment, whatever it is that we we call it. Um yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada 28:15

And it's it's so important to recognize that when we feel discouraged by others in something that we truly want, and it's happened to me numerous times. Um even one of my singing teachers said something like, Oh, there's an your your voice won't develop until like this far off day, you know, where I was like, Well, why would I, you know, and I just feel a little discouraged. And we we I remember that moment so clearly. Why? Why do I remember it so clearly? Because there was a part of me was recognized that that was not what my soul really would have wanted to hear, you know, and even you know, well-meaning parental figures saying things like, well, if it's not working, yeah, you should consider doing something else. And it's not that that we ever need to make a big decision to do something else entirely, like it may be that we do need to consider taking other work on as well as our passion project. Like there are ways to do things, but I really feel like the pain that I felt when I was discouraged became a kind of um, I call it now negative reinforcement. I understand that that pain is a sign that I still need to do it.

Julie Vander Meulen 29:42

Yes. Oh, interesting. You flipped it in uh interesting. Uh how how I see it nowadays, um, I used to be more of a fighter type of person, in a sense that like, you know, like a warrior type of archetype. So um, you know, you would say something to me, I would be really upset, and I would use it as fuel to prove someone wrong. You know, I had that type of mentality, which is not very elegant, but it is the truth. That's how I used to be. There's still a little bit of that in me, which is helpful for like survivor type of instincts, right? Um, but nowadays I have a more, I hope at least I have a more gentle approach to life and to people and you know, to things in general. And I find that um my belief nowadays, uh, that I've trained, I've really trained myself into this belief, is that if it's not working, it doesn't mean that it's not the right path. It just means that uh that like the way that I'm approaching it isn't the right one. Either I'm missing some information or I'm going about it the wrong way, but it has nothing to do with my purpose, right? There's a I made a decision and I didn't realize that when I was beginning on this path, that like a lot of it has to do with making a decision. And like this is what I want to do. Perhaps I'll change my mind in five years, right? But right now, for the next year, I make a promise to myself that this is what I want to do. And even if it's hard, even like I'll take it as a as a meaning that I'm going about it the wrong way, not that this is the wrong path, right? And I find that it's uh it's a slight distinction. It sounds very simple, but I find that to me and to many of the women that I coach, it makes a huge difference because then instead of taking everything personally and interpreting things in in specific ways, right, that make you feel discouraged, in sense uh instead it makes you more intelligent and wise, that you're like, huh. Like, how am I again? Primary question, right? Affirmations, like you were saying. Like, how am I, like, what in my approach needs to be changed? Not like, how does my purpose, you know, like do I need to let go of my purpose or anything like that? Like the the the way you look at things changes a lot.

Aideen Ni Riada 31:50

Yes, and it is about that perspective because we can be we can be very stuck in one way. I I certainly, unless I felt I was getting external validation, I would get easily discouraged in the past. Now I don't seek it as much, which is good. Um and it's it's really important, I think, that I'm doing what I love to do.

Julie Vander Meulen 32:16

Yes.

Aideen Ni Riada 32:17

And that I'm and and seeing everything as a form of testing, like market research. I say I say this to people all the time. You know, if you start something, it doesn't mean that it's the perfect way to do it. It's a way of researching what is the perfect way to do it, what is a good way to do it, because I think we we said this earlier, you know, there is no ness there isn't a perfect way necessarily.

Julie Vander Meulen 32:38

Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada 32:38

Um it's not gonna always you can do something the same way 20 times and it will work 19 times and not work on the 20th time, we don't know because we are surrounded by always different circumstances. Um things are always shifting and changing around us, but the internal wish and the hope and the joy that you have in doing something that you love, if that's not changing, then that's definitely an indication we gotta keep doing it to some in some way.

Julie Vander Meulen 33:09

Agreed.

Aideen Ni Riada 33:11

Yeah. What do you say to someone who's um been stuck a bit in the good girl syndrome, but they deep down have some you know, wish or dream that they are hesitating to take any step toward.

Julie Vander Meulen 33:31

Um there's many things I would say. The first thing that I would say, because this is really the things that I love the most. I love seeing people, like even you, you were talking to me before about the album that you would love to create, right? It's like the things that lit me up when people are doing the things they love and they go after their it's really, it's really a passion of mine. Makes me very happy. You were talking about how you love being kind to others and it lights you up, is the same for me with people and their their dreams. Um, I would say that the first thing to do is to really dream. Most women that I meet, they think they're dreaming, but they're not dreaming big enough. So they're dreaming in like in in a little box of like what they think is possible, what I think is reasonable, what they think like other people will agree with, you know. And so actually the real truth is that like if you dream big enough and you really allow yourself, give yourself 30 minutes, you go for a bath, I don't know, you go for a walk, like it's really just you with you, and you allow yourself, you learn to dream again like a child, there's we go back to the joy. We it's like there's a joy that comes in you, a form of inspiration that is beyond any form of motivation. Because motivation is I'm so motivated right now, I'll take some actions. But when I'm inspired, I don't know about you, but when I'm inspired and it comes from the dream and it comes from the joy of the thing, and I'm just lit up, I don't even have to have a list of tasks. I want to do 10 hours of this thing because I just adore it and I'm so, you know, so connected with a dream. So I would say number one would be the dream bigger, dream bigger, and you'll allow yourself to dream. Because a lot of the times we don't take actions because we're looking at the to-do list and the practical things instead of remembering just how much we want this, right? So I'd say that would be number one. Um, probably number two, um, also seems simple, but I would say move your body. That one of the main things that I keep seeing again and again and again is how people get stuck in their heads. And you probably see that a lot as a voice coach, right? But you you see that people like the fastest way to move things in from your mind, right, and to get into your heart is to move your body. If just you take 30 seconds, you just dance, you just jump around, you just go out, you do some sort of movement will get you out of your head and back into what's possible, right? You get back into movement, and somehow that movement also translates into what you actually do. So, and if you can do both at the same time, that's fantastic. Because then you come back to your office, first thing you want to do is like concrete actions that move you towards what you want, right? Um, yeah, I would say those two are quite positive. I'm gonna I'm gonna stick with those two. They're quite positive and very easy. Anyone can do both of these things, right?

Aideen Ni Riada 36:08

What I notice about both things as well is they are connecting you to your emotional energy or your joy.

Julie Vander Meulen 36:16

Yes.

Aideen Ni Riada 36:16

Um, because that visceral, visceral, like embodied feeling of excitement or passion, um, it is far more motivating than exactly um a very boring, you know, list of tasks, like you said, that you should do. Because sometimes, as well, I know that what we should do and that linear approach is not necessarily going to get us where we need to go because life works in magical ways sometimes.

Julie Vander Meulen 36:46

Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada 36:47

Yeah.

Julie Vander Meulen 36:48

And also because you're limited to what in the moment when you're feeling not so great and you're afraid and you're overwhelmed and so on, you are not very creative. Not I joke, don't just mean artistic, but your mind is not very creative in that, right? Your imagination isn't isn't kicking off like it can it can, right? And so when you go back into a different state and you embody joy, you embody all those things, you embody movement, there's a whole other range of possibilities that appear when you are optimistic. Then when I'm negative, I see one path ahead and it's gloomy. When I'm very positive and I've just had a wonderful time and I start dreaming, there's 15 options that two seconds ago I could not see, right? And I think this applies to pretty much everyone. Um, and so there's something to be said around that, that just like there's magic in what's happening out there that you don't know and you can control, but there's also magic in ourselves. Like you can reconnect to some sort of magic or possibility or whatever it is, to joy, however you call it. And that ignites by itself, it ignites new possibilities that exist somewhere in your mind, but you don't have access to when you're feeling gloomy.

Aideen Ni Riada 37:55

I love this from the point of view of as a good girl, we're not allowing that creative juice that is bubbling within us to fully be expressed because it's a scary prospect. We don't know what's going to happen. We don't know who's going to support us. We don't know if it's ever going to work in a way that we'd like it to work. But when we dream and when we imagine good things are happening, when we imagine that we're lucky, when we imagine that we have gifts and that we have something special that the world needs, um, when we imagine that there's value in anything that we do, um, and ask that question: why is it valuable for me to do something that I love? Yes. And I would talk about this a lot with voice, you know, clients as well, that even if the only thing that other people see is that it gives them permission to also do what they love, even if it's only that it inspires one other person to be braver in their life, isn't that even enough in that?

Julie Vander Meulen 39:07

It is.

Aideen Ni Riada 39:08

I am so sad that we're coming towards the end of our time. I would love to um just thank you for spending these three episodes with me on the Resonate Podcast with Aidan. And I'm really excited to hear more about your podcast and tell people about the title and how they can access that because I'm sure some people are going to want more and to hear more from you. I would love that.

Julie Vander Meulen 39:32

Thank you. First of all, thank you for having me for three episodes. I feel honored and privileged. Uh, it's been such a joy. And um, yeah, so I have created this, what I call the Good Girl Syndrome Show. So that's how you can find it. You can either go, it's on YouTube or on Spotify to just type the Good Girl Syndrome Show, or you put my name, but my name is harder to pronounce. Um, and so you'll find it there. You can just subscribe and you'll see that I post two episodes a week. Um, it's always to do with uh good girl syndrome. Every Wednesday I post around one question that I received from someone in my audience, a good girl who's facing a specific situation, and I unpack it for her. And every Sunday I talk about the same topic and how I apply it in my own life. And so it gives a dual perspective on a specific topic that relates to good girl syndrome, and it helps women, you know, move forward in their own in their own healing process without having to go to a coaching session by anyone, not me or anyone else, right? All of this is for free. Um, so yeah, I would love it if you if you want to come too, Aideen. Um, if anyone is interested in that, you can just go on YouTube or on Spotify and click the Good Girl Syndrome show.

Aideen Ni Riada 40:40

Yay, I'm so excited for it. Thank you. Uh is there anything you want to say to our listeners before we finish up today?

Julie Vander Meulen 40:48

You know what? There's one quick thing that I would say based on everything that we've talked about. I just had this idea while you were you were speaking, which is that I feel like everything we've talked about today is basically of making a choice of who you want to be. Do you want to be someone like who is the creator of their life and of their future? Or do you want to be someone who is a victim, you know, who's like who has to go through obligations, you know what I mean, that goes with whatever is coming outside and they have to live with it? Or do you want to be someone who from the inside out you are creating your own life? And I felt like that was kind of the through line of everything we've we've spoken about is making that kind of decision for yourself, which one feels better, and then move from there, right? And there's many ways as we talked about. But it's really about that is being a creator of our own lives, right? Our own internal world and our own external world. Like we have a choice that we can actually have agency and we can create that for ourselves. So that would be my invitation, right? As we end this year, I don't know how when they will listen to that. Perhaps in the beginning of the new year, you have a chance to start again, right? 2026. Perhaps you want to create your your own life uh on your own terms.

Aideen Ni Riada 42:01

I love that. Yes. And it is possible to start that anytime. Any new day is a new beginning.

Julie Vander Meulen 42:08

I love it.

Aideen Ni Riada 42:09

Um, and it's fascinating how our lives find a certain flow and a direction when we start trusting that internal guidance. Yeah. I certainly did not know that I would be four or five years into having my own podcast. I did not know that I would be, you know, voice coaching with people and dealing with issues that I never thought of before. I did not know that I would be, you know, still teaching mantra meditation twice a week online. And so we follow that internal impulse and somehow that creates a life that we feel more fulfilled living.

Julie Vander Meulen 42:58

Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada 42:58

And that to me is probably the ultimate goal is just that feeling of I'm doing something that I like. That doesn't mean that we're finished, there's always more.

Julie Vander Meulen 43:10

Yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada 43:11

Um, but um, that has been a great joy when I started trusting myself. So I would encourage anyone who's um feeling that they need to fit in, um, that that uh nobody's gonna really understand what you want to do. I would say that's true, but nobody really understands what you want to do. Um but that's uh not a reason to not do it. It's a a reason to do it so that you can really live a very unique creative life, as you said, Julie. Uh thank you so much for being here. Thank you to each of you who's been listening. We would love to hear from you. Please look us up, uh send us an email. Um thank you again from me, and we'll see you soon on the Resonate Podcast with Aidan. Bye. Take care. Goodbye.