Unlocking the Potential Within

Embark on a transformational odyssey with Anna Lang, who emerged from the shadows of inadequacy to illuminate the path for others seeking self-empowerment. Her candid narrative, a chronicle of ascending from homelessness to founding NetPS, an innovative online plant search tool, captures the essence of authentic alignment in both life and business. Through her testimony, we uncover the significance of self-realization and its irrefutable impact on every venture we undertake.

As Anna Lang's compelling story unfolds, we wrestle with the concept of mental "stuckness," a byproduct of our brain's instinct to protect us from risks by anchoring to the familiar. The episode delves into the challenge of reconciling our survival instincts with the yearning for self-actualization, offering a fresh take on transforming our inner critic into a nurturing voice through self-compassion. We also explore how reframing negative self-talk as cues from a frightened inner child can shift our perspective and propel us forward.

Wrapping up our conversation, we shine a light on the nuanced role of coaches in personal and professional development. Detaching from the idea that coaches should provide answers, I advocate for their role in facilitating clients' journeys towards their own revelations. Anna's brave share from the airport lounge resonates with an invitation to listeners to connect with her story. Our goal is singular - to reach out and uplift at least one person facing adversity, knitting a community of support and sharing inspiration through our social media channels. Join us and share in our quest to empower and enlighten.

Connect with Dionne Malush

• Instagram: @dionnerealtyonepgh
• LinkedIN: /in/dionnemalush
• Website: www.dionnemalush.com
• Facebook: /dmalush
• LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/dionnemalush

Connect with Dionne Malush

• Instagram: @dionnerealtyonepgh
• LinkedIN: /in/dionnemalush
• Website: www.dionnemalush.com
• Facebook: /dmalush
• LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/dionnemalush

Chapters

• 0:02 Empowering Transformation Through Adversity
• 9:39 Overcoming Stuckness and Self-Compassion
• 21:55 Navigating Business Ventures With Intention
• 26:31 Empowering Clients Through Facilitation

Transcript

Dionne Malush: 0:02

Have there ever been a moment in your life where you felt completely stuck? How did you find your way? Let's find out as we explore this incredible journey. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Shine on Success. I'm your host, Dionne Malush, and today we have a truly inspiring guest. Anna Lang has not only triumphed over personal adversity, but has turned her past struggles into a powerhouse of help and hope for others. With a history spanning 25 years as an entrepreneur and a journey from homelessness to helping others, anna embodies what it means to unleash potential and empower transformation. Join us as we dive into her remarkable story and the wisdom she has to share. Hi, anna, it's so nice to meet you. How are you doing wisdom? She?

Anna Lang: 0:45

has to share. Hi, anna, it's so nice to meet you. How are you doing? Well? I'm doing really well. Thank you for having me, gianna, and it's so bizarre when I hear these intros. I feel beyond grateful that that's how you perceive the story.

Dionne Malush: 0:58

Well, it's a pretty interesting story that I've been reading. Just you inspire me. I'm excited to just have this call with you because I feel inspired and this is the reason why we're doing this, so that we can help other people that, no matter what point they are in their life, that they can push through it. And adversity happens to all of us, right, oh amen, Some people more than others. It feels some days you know that there's just a lot. Life is a lot, but life happens right.

Dionne Malush: 1:28

It does happen all the time. So much better to be on the positive side of it. And if you have a choice, it does feel a lot better when you're. You know, you think positively and you push through it, no matter what happens. So let's talk about it. So tell me a little bit about you and about your journey.

Anna Lang: 1:45

All righty. Well, as you very elegantly said, my name is Anna. I've been an entrepreneur for 25 years. Not all of it has been a particularly glorious journey, as we'll call it and I did.

Anna Lang: 2:01

I spent quite a lot of my life being stuck, and what that looked like was when I was young, and I think so many people can relate to this right. When I was younger, I, for whatever reason, got into a mind space where I was not enough and that everyone else saw me as something that wasn't enough. And so I started that journey where you start stuffing the pieces of yourself that you think aren't enough. Until you've stuffed so many pieces of yourself, there's nothing really left. So you start trying on what everybody else is doing to see if any of that'll work, and I like to use the word sticking the landing. I did that for decades and obviously could not stick any of those landings, because none of them are mine, wow. So I went through that.

Anna Lang: 2:52

I went through that for decades until I found myself in a marriage that I didn't want. I found myself repeatedly building businesses that attracted customers that didn't want to work with me, and then I didn't really enjoy working with myself because I was building businesses meant for other people Cause that's who I was being when I built them Right and I ended up going down this beautiful. It was almost like a little toilet swirl, a little tornado of destruction, where, eventually, the only place that I could end up was without anything, because there was nothing left. There was nowhere left for me to go right, except to kind of start waking up and being like, okay, this is something I'm doing myself, this tornado, and in order for me to get out of it, I've got to step out of it, I've got to grow out of this, and so that's what I started doing. I've got to grow out of this, and so that's what I started doing.

Dionne Malush: 3:46

So how did that lead you to this journey of your business with NetPS? Is that correct? And a design company like these are, like they seem totally opposite. And so, and how many companies have you had?

Anna Lang: 4:07

Well, I've had. I've had eight different businesses, and net PS actually was one of the first ones that I started with a gentleman that I was working with. He was the C level marketing manager at the company I was with at the time and I was their graphics department and their art director and their every. You know, the one man show with all of the titles. That sounded very impressive, but if you actually look behind under the hood, it was one person. It was me, uh, with him managing me, which was pretty funny, but he wanted, he was a plant person, he wanted to start this thing and one part of me I think that never got quashed was there's this five-year-old inside of me and she is just driven by wonder and adventure and possibility. And so when someone's like, do you want to try this thing, she's like, yeah, let's do this thing I relate so much, but keep going, yeah, oh my yes.

Anna Lang: 4:59

So that's how I started off with that and, ironically, that company is the only company that persists to this day. That company is still going. It's now the largest online plant search tool of its kind and I believe they were saying there's I can't even remember how many millions upon millions of searches this thing gets, but it's a crazy number and it's really interesting to watch it and see it still grow. So that would be one of my success stories. I have many more that weren't quite successful the six manufacturing facility, bridal design company. So I decided everything I've ever done has been artistic in some way, shape or form. It's always been creating. You know, you look at art direction that's creative. You look at photography. I ran a photography studio and an entertainment company and always artistic and expressions, and that one was a bit closer to who I was, but it was still not who I was. I used to call that place my beautiful prison. Wow, wow, does that say something?

Dionne Malush: 6:02

Wow yeah, it's amazing, right yeah. Sometimes I feel like that Wow yeah, it's amazing, right yeah. Sometimes I feel like that, though, in my own life, in my own way, because I am creative like you. I'm a graphic designer. I went to Art Institute. I got out, knew that I was not meant to work for somebody and tried a couple little jobs and I was like nobody is telling me what to do ever. So then I created a graphic design business and it was amazing. And then I got into a partnership, crushed the whole thing, and now here I am, a real estate mogul, I call myself, with a creative side that's unbelievably enhanced at the moment.

Anna Lang: 6:37

So, yeah, I am a trained graphic designer. That was my college graduate with graphic design. That's what I did. That's so interesting, that's where I started and that's the 360, in a way, that I've come back to, because that's part of what I love is. I love my coaching, I love all the stuff I get to do, but I really love taking the psychology concepts out of the ether and making them tangible and beautiful. So, people, actually I have a page on my website. I call it personal development products made pretty.

Dionne Malush: 7:11

Products made pretty. I love that Right.

Anna Lang: 7:14

Because part of one of part of the things that make me very happy, that I find deeply enjoyable in Align, is the beauty that exists in all of these things that we don't typically see as beautiful.

Dionne Malush: 7:29

So there's something that really stands out to me is the I read something about you spent your career understanding the neuroscience of stuckness, right? So what insights can you share about the steps someone should take when they realize they want to make a change Like? Can you give us some tips on that, because I'm sure people are feeling stuck? Ever since COVID, things have changed so much, people are so different and there's a lot of people that are literally stuck, whether it's real estate, design, their mindset. They're so stuck. So can you help?

Anna Lang: 8:00

us with that? Oh, 100%, I can help you with that and I don't know if many people are going to really love the answer, but as we tend not to like the answer. But stuckness is really simple, it is super, super simple. Do you know Maslow's hierarchy of needs? Yes, okay, you know, at the very base of that hierarchy is food, shelter, is clothing, right, those are the basic things we need Now we have inside of us, and I'm going to give you a little bit of backstory. This is a little bit of the neuroscience so that you can understand what I'm going to answer.

Anna Lang: 8:34

Next, but your brain. There's three chunks that we're going to talk about in terms of stuckness. There's this top part, right behind your forehead. That's your thinking and purpose brain. If you think of Maslow's hierarchy of need, that's the top, that's self-actualization, that's purpose, that's all that stuff we're going to talk about the midbrain, which is where all your feelings live. It's called your limbic system. That's where feelings, emotions, that's where you have a lot of the triggers that will trigger your fight or flight are found here. And that's where the middle parts of Maslow's hierarchy, that's those middle zones. And then at the base you have, right at the base of your neck, just like at the bottom of that hierarchy. And that's food, shelter, clothing. That's your lizard brain, and that part of your brain has zero shits to give about whether you're comfortable, whether you're happy, whether you are in a loving relationship. It cares about one thing, and one thing only, and that is that you survive long enough to be able to do something, anything, whatever it is. Propagate, produce more use, right? Because that's if an organism doesn't live, there will be no more of that organism, correct?

Anna Lang: 9:47

Now, when we're stuck, that part of our brain is running, is driving our bus. That's what causes stuckness. Okay, well, sorry, there's two sides to stuckness. You're either having that part of your brain is driving the bus, and so it's keeping you safe. That's all it's programmed to do is keep you alive, and it does it by keeping you safe, which means it wants you to stay with the people. That will be your tribe, because people keep you safe. They give you better access to resources. They give you you can build more shelters, you have more knowledge, you have better protect all of that stuff that comes from your tribe. Staying in the known, because let's look at the statistical likelihood that you know how to cope with the known versus the unknown. Right it's higher. So your brain doesn't take chances, it doesn't gamble, not that part.

Anna Lang: 10:36

And then there's this thing that our brain does is called tagging, and this one you'll relate to if you've ever been stuck People out there. They can't. They're stuck where they are because their brain wants them to stay safe. That's it, and it uses tagging. Tagging and I'll be really simple with this it's how your brain catalogs every sight, sound, taste, feeling, touch, person interaction experience you've ever had. And then it uses that information to make knee-jerk predictions about everything in your future how someone's going to respond, what they're going to say. Oh, this person never does that. It screws you out of great relationships. It's called future casting. It messes up your job opportunities. It gives you stage fright for no reason, right? So those are the three ways. And then there's if you add fun to this, are you? Am I going too far into this? Am I going too crazy?

Dionne Malush: 11:31

No, because I'm interested to see how we get through this.

Anna Lang: 11:33

You're like, well, well, if we're safe and that part of the brain is satisfied that we're safe. Why are we unhappy? That would be an exological question, right I?

Dionne Malush: 11:54

mean you have, if you're right to think you're, you're happy as part of that right.

Anna Lang: 11:59

But yes, you should, but but but this part of our brain, our purpose brain, is never happy unless we are authentic, aligned and living purpose.

Anna Lang: 12:13

That's what it pushes us to do. It pushes us to self-actualize and to come to this understanding of who we are and our place in the world around us. And when we stop pursuing those things, or being authentic in pursuit of what this part of our brain wants, this part of our brain accesses the middle part that causes all those emotions and it says make them feel crappy. So they do something about this and they shift, and so then we feel crappy, but then. So then this part of our brain maybe gets a little bit happier because we start moving. Then we feel crappy, but then. So then this part of our brain maybe gets a little bit happier because we start moving. But then that triggers this part of our brain which then send signals to this middle part, says oh no, no, they're doing something bad. Make them feel crappy. So we have two programs fighting over the emotional systems of your brain, both of them wanting you to do the opposite thing. Wow, and that's where stuckness comes from.

Dionne Malush: 13:13

All right. So how do you fix stuckness? How do you fix?

Anna Lang: 13:18

it. Okay, a couple of things. And if I could say one thing to your audience that will make the biggest difference in their lives, and I'm going to ask you guys to take a leap of faith with me because this might sound radical the voices you ever had negative self-talk.

Dionne Malush: 13:37

Oh, a lot, and still yes. Okay, what does it look like?

Anna Lang: 13:41

It's ugly, it's ugly. It tends to be authoritative, for sure, you know, is it friendly?

Dionne Malush: 13:49

oh sorry, keep going. Not good enough, you're not worth it. Grew up in a trailer, your trailer trash.

Anna Lang: 13:55

You don't deserve success yeah, and this voice is big right, it's a powerful voice huge.

Dionne Malush: 14:01

It breaks, it takes you down. You're down a path that you don't even want to go. Yeah, what?

Anna Lang: 14:07

if I was to, or we were to, flip the visual and make that voice a really small, really scared child. You, sometime before you, were four years old and you were completely dependent on your environment. You had no sense of environment. You had no sense of agency. You had no resources. You could not do anything to get your needs met except twist who you were and shape how you saw the world and create a really specific set of rules so that you could get those needs met. You could survive that environment.

Anna Lang: 14:56

Can you picture that kid? For sure, that kid has been beaten down. They're terrified that their world's going to blow up, that someone's going to come at them, that if they take one step out of line that stuff, they're not going to get their needs met. And I want you to take that kid. That kid's still in you and I want you to, instead of saying that voice is this big, like intentional, smart, suave adult who's beating on you? It's a small child who has these rules and they're like wait a minute. If you do that, that's outside of the rules. You're going to get hurt, You're going to get punished.

Anna Lang: 15:33

What if it's a warning? What if it's not meant to hurt you? How does that feel? Yeah, totally different Now when we're stuck, and the reason I told you that story is because when we're stuck, we're envisioning our stuckness as the enemy. We're envisioning that we're in this place and part of us is bad or broken or needs to be changed or altered. We have to conquer something or beat something up or push something down, or not let those feelings in. What if it's the opposite? What if getting unstuck is simply coming back to ourselves and all of the parts of ourselves that we've refused to listen to for our whole lives because we're so scared of what might happen, and learning how to like, getting that part of ourselves into relationship so that they trust us again and we can move forward as a whole person.

Dionne Malush: 16:33

That makes sense and that's how you do it.

Anna Lang: 16:35

That's it, it is stop beating on the stuff that is only doing. If you're stuck, your systems are working. Hallelujah, You're stuck. There's a program in you that you have from your childhood that kept you safe. That worked. It worked, it was effective. It was.

Anna Lang: 16:53

You're smart as F. Love up on that part of you, Like that's really awesome. This kid figured something out. That was amazing, Awesome. This kid is not dumb or stupid or blind or whatever, or broken. No, this kid is a chameleon. This kid is amazing and this kid has something to say. What does this kid want to say? Oh, okay, so the steps are listen, identify like, name it. What is this kid saying? Put a name to it and then get curious about it from a place of empathy, from a place of self-compassion, and have that conversation and learn about what the message is. That is how you get unstuck, is you learn the messages that your own body is telling you about the rules that you've grown up living by. That's it. And once you get into relationship with those you can get rid of like you're not even getting rid of, because these things level up as you do I'm just going to throw that out there now but you create a relationship where your body stops not trusting you all the time.

Dionne Malush: 17:58

And so it doesn't matter how old you are right, you can be older, it just matters you doing the work. Yeah Right, doing the work, doing the work.

Anna Lang: 18:05

Yeah, right, doing the work.

Dionne Malush: 18:07

Doing the work. So you have something called a Permission to Shift Summit Series and you bring experts together. What are some transformative pieces of advice that have resonated with your audience? What is something that has been powerful for you?

Anna Lang: 18:20

Well, one of my guests and I love her, she was an ex-FBI agent and she used to be undercover Just a fantastic woman, and her name is Luray Kwai. Look up her book. She runs or she runs. She goes around and she speaks to organizations, to various events, and she talks about mental toughness, and one of the things she talks about is stop waiting to be saved, you don't need saving, you do not need to be saved, and that you know it in some way. And yet there's this messaging, especially for my generation, and I don't know, you're pretty ageless. I don't know how old you are, but for my generation, 55. Oh yeah, that's amazing and I don't know you're pretty ageless.

Dionne Malush: 19:09

I don't know how old you are, but for my generation, oh yeah, that's amazing. There's that Sweet. Well, I'm 47.

Anna Lang: 19:17

And I, yeah, and I remember the messaging that we got, and it was that that it's okay Everybody's one that we're broken in some way and that somebody's going to rescue us, there's going to be a relationship that's going to come rescue you, that people who are good for us just know what we need and that's such bullshit. People don't know what you need unless you tell them what you need. And if you don't know what you need, expecting someone else to know what you need is someone else to know what you need. It's impossible, yeah, impossible, absolutely. And you know it somewhere. Yeah, I'm sure you know it right, I it took a mental toughness coach on a podcast before it actually sank in. Holy shit, this is what I'm doing, this is what I have been doing. This is what I'm doing. This is what I have been doing.

Dionne Malush: 20:08

This is what I'm still doing Good Lord, girl Right, amazing, so oh, there's just so much. I could talk to you for hours. You're so interesting. So tell me about potential. Unleash seems to be a core theme in your work. Can you share a memorable moment when you witnessed someone realize their potential for the first time?

Anna Lang: 20:28

moment when you witness someone realize their potential for the first time. It happens in my group all the time and it is amazing. I remember last I want to say last August ish I had a. I launched a program and I had some founding members in there and one of the members suffers extreme social anxiety. No doubt, duh we nowadays, so many people, suffer varying degrees of social anxiety. It's everywhere, and no wonder, right Cause we're.

Anna Lang: 21:01

It was to the point where, standing in line at a Walmart to return something, she would panic because who is she? She's going to hold up the line, she's going to say something stupid. They're not going to understand her. She couldn't follow through on returning an item because that was the level of anxiety. Now she was due for an MRI. Do you think going into an MRI machine was even an option for this woman? No, no way. No. She kept rescheduling and rescheduling, and rescheduling and then she came into our group one day and she said you know what she said? I did it and she told us how she, using what I just talked to you about, that inner child, like having this conversation with herself and getting curious about that, instead of calling it this entity that was out to get her having and talking to her inner child. She was able to go to that MRI lay on that table, go through the process without running out of the room and then come out again. That was like three weeks in that's great, it's a big deal.

Dionne Malush: 22:00

It's a big deal. People like it's so much okay and it's insane.

Anna Lang: 22:04

It's insane the stuff you can do if you stop beating yourself into a tiny pulp and thinking that you've got to change who you are, or you've got to change or like, conquer, defeat. What's the other word? Discipline yourself. There are studies that show. I'm not even joking. There are studies that show with soldiers coming back from war, the ones who are able to move through and not develop like extreme, extreme ptsd have the biggest amounts, or the greatest amounts of self-compassion. They're able to look at themselves and their experience with kindness and their past. It is far more motivating than discipline and there are actual studies on that. Where are you from? Where am I from? I'm from beautiful Canada, right smack dab in the middle. From Winnipeg I'm just North Minneapolis.

Dionne Malush: 23:01

I could tell there's some little difference in your voice. I could figure that out. I love Canada. Oh, that's so fun. My husband and I got married in Niagara Falls in the Canada side, and we had. I loved it there. It's so beautiful, but it's cold and I like to be warm now. So as you get older and warmer, you definitely want to be warm, but I do love it there. I love it and I loved getting married there.

Anna Lang: 23:27

It was a wee eloped, so it made it kind of fun. I have never been to Niagara Falls and it is one of the things that I definitely get to do.

Dionne Malush: 23:31

It's called Niagara on the Lake. That's where you want to go. That's a really cute little town, a lot of little wineries, and I don't even drink, but it was in wine anyways but it was really a cool experience. So let me ask you one last question I think is important. So maintaining engagement, inspiration and multiple business ventures is no small feat, as we know. How do you keep your energy and passion alive with all of these different things going on?

Anna Lang: 23:56

I've stepped back my board duties on NetPS, so I'm a shareholder, obviously in the company, but mostly I just collect dividends. But I've gotten very intentional and very aligned. Here's the thing with businesses it doesn't matter how much you want the success. You have to actually want the business or it will not work.

Dionne Malush: 24:30

Oh, impactful. Wow, I want success so bad. I truly do. Yeah, just that. I want the passion too. I want both of them. You know, and I think that that's the reason probably you're on this call today it's just no coincidence that, you know, I feel stuck. I still do, and I'm, you know, I have an agency with 200, almost 200 agents and we are stuck as a company. We're stuck in a spot that we can't seem to move out of. But you know, and I look at what you're saying and it makes it makes a lot of sense to me, so I know we'll be talking again soon oh, I would love to go in deep with you on that.

Dionne Malush: 25:15

I'm just like so much yeah, I don't think everybody wants to hear it because we could be on here and I don't think they have like two or three hour podcasts because then they'll be in trouble probably with the podcast release. That was just teasing, anyways. So I love talking to you and hearing about your journey and the work you're doing. So how can our viewers get in touch with you?

Anna Lang: 25:37

Your viewers can find me at my website, which is wwwanalingca. They can find me on Facebook. I am under Analing76. They can find me under Permission to Shift on YouTube, on Instagram, on Facebook. Most of this stuff is on my website. You can figure it out from there. There's different things you can look at. You can get a really good feel for whether we'll be a good fit, because my website's a reflection of who I am. So if it doesn't blend for you, I'm not your coach and that's okay.

Dionne Malush: 26:12

And it's good that you say that, because people, just some people, are just not for everyone right. And I am at 55, I'm definitely at that point in my life. I am a hundred percent over it. So if you're not, you're not my person. You're not my person, I have not, I'm on the backside of my life. So I don't want to spend my time with people that aren't my people.

Anna Lang: 26:31

So yeah, yeah, and my people. I'm not here to get people anywhere. That's a. That's a really big misnomer. I see in the coaching industry where, oh, we're going to you know, I want to get my client. I'm like you're not here to get your client anywhere. Your client is here to walk themselves where they're meant to go, that's it. And you're there as a facilitator with really intentional questions and conversations. Anything else is a consultant and they didn't hire a consultant.

Dionne Malush: 26:55

Nope, they sure did not. So thank you for joining me from the airport today and sharing your journey, and if Anna's message resonates with you, don't hesitate to reach out through her social media. And remember to follow us on social media for more inspiring stories like Anna's, and don't forget to like, subscribe and share with Shine on Success with anyone you know that's going through adversity. If we help just one person, this podcast is a success. Until next time, keep shining bright.