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Hi there. You're listening to the Leading Lady podcast. I'm your host, Alison Loftus, and I'm a certified professional coach specializing in leadership and work-life balance. I work with clients to shift their limiting beliefs, insecurities, and self-doubt. This podcast will be filled with tools and strategies to help high-achieving women like you feel connected, empowered, and in the lead of your life, both personally and professionally. Let's transform your life starting now. Lead yourself. The rest will follow.

Hi there, leading ladies, and welcome to today's episode. I'm about to share something with you that I'm not particularly proud of, but in my defense, I have spent the last four days at home sick with a high fever, sore throat, body aches, sinus congestion. It has really not been a lot of fun. It was truly one of those stretches of time where I spent the entire time on the couch, either sleeping or watching television. I think I watched everything that was out on Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, Apple TV. I went through it all, and I found myself watching a movie that isn't in my norm. And so I'm almost embarrassed to share what movie it was. But it was such an interesting movie in that I was able to pull away some pretty big lessons that I thought would be valuable to share with you, my listeners.

So, like I said, I watched all of streaming television and found myself watching the movie Ricky Stanicky starring Zac Efron and John Cena.

The Premise of the Movie

This by no means is an endorsement for that movie. If you find yourself watching this movie, please don't take it under my recommendation. It's not a movie I would recommend. While I do love John Cena and I think he's hilarious in a lot of things, it's not a typical movie that I would watch. I found it to be, at times, very vulgar and just completely unrealistic humor. But nevertheless, there I was watching it. And if any of you have ever spent four days sick on a couch watching all of television, you know that by day four you've kind of run out of things to watch.

So there I was watching this movie. The premise of this movie is that three friends make up a story about a fake friend that basically gets them out of trouble. And it starts when they're children. They have this fake friend that they use as the scapegoat to get them out of kind of a big deal, and they end up carrying this character throughout their adult life and using him as an excuse to miss out on things that maybe their wives or significant others would want them to participate in.

So over the years, they've used the lie of Ricky Stanicky to get them out of pretty big things. The lie comes to a head when they have used the excuse of going to support their friend Ricky Stanicky, and they think that they're just missing out on a weekend of one of the wives' baby showers.

But she ends up going into labor and having the baby while they are away. And so, as you can imagine, this kind of blows up, and now everyone is insisting that they meet this friend, Ricky Stanicky. I'm going to start calling him just Ricky because Ricky Stanicky is kind of getting old saying over and over again.

So this friend Ricky. What they end up doing is they hire an actor to play this fake friend, and they actually have a quote-unquote Bible or playbook of Ricky's life that they give this actor, and he basically has to learn how to be this character. And he does the character very, very well to the point where he is everyone's favorite person. He's the man of the hour, and everyone's just so happy that this person really exists, except obviously the friends that created him. They just want the lie to be over with, and they want him gone forever.

So of course, because it's Hollywood, there's a huge uproar and the lie comes to a head, and now they're in this jam because to their wives, significant others, bosses, friends, everyone, they are caught in this pretty atrocious tale.

Now you're probably thinking, what the heck does this have to do with leading ladies? And here is where it gets kind of sentimental and where the movie kind of warmed my heart.

Lesson One: Changing Old Narratives

Basically, the first big lesson that I learned from this was from Zac Efron's character, where he was caught in this web of lies because of a narrative that he had developed very young in life that he could not trust the people around him. The people that he loved, he couldn't trust to be honest with them because they were either abusive or toxic or left him. So he didn't feel safe with people that he could be his honest, authentic self with. He never felt that he could be true.

And that comes from a seed that was planted in his young life that made him believe that he wasn't worthy of people accepting him for who he really was. And so he found himself in this movie in this amazing relationship with this woman he loves, and he doesn't trust that if he tells her the truth that she's going to stay with him.

And spoiler alert, she does stay with him. Obviously she's mad, but the lesson from that is it's never too late to stop narratives that no longer serve you. A lot of the narratives that we have were built out of protection of ourselves. They were coping mechanisms, and that doesn't make it okay. It just makes it what we were dealing with at the time.

And true maturity and self-awareness is when we can look at a pattern and say, "Hey, this is actually not helping me. It's not supporting the life that I want. It's a dangerous narrative that's blocking me from being my true, authentic self."

I think of all the times that I've worked with clients and even done work on myself as growing as an individual. We all have narratives that we have either inherited or were planted in us at a very young age where we believe something is true because it was true in that moment.

I think we all have experienced pain, maybe a negative experience that shaped us in drastic ways. Even as recent as today, I had a conversation with a high-achieving woman who's been in business nearly 35 years, and she was still reverting back to some habits of the quote-unquote good girl syndrome of feeling that she just had to oblige or say yes to things because she needed to prove that she was worthy of that, rather than just stand in the fact that she was an accomplished professional and she didn't have to go that extra unreasonable mile to prove anything. That she didn't have to be the good girl in that. And old habits die hard.

So to see that reflected in this movie, that something as simple as being your authentic self, telling the truth, can really be hard for people when they feel that their true selves will be rejected or even harmed.

So I got to tell you that that point resonated with me. I felt like that was a message that we all need to hear over and over and over again. Whatever narrative or scenario was planted in us in the past doesn't have to be the narrative that we carry moving forward.

Lesson Two: Believing in Yourself

The second big lesson comes from John Cena's character, where basically he didn't believe in himself, so he believed that his life was going to be that of a loser. To be honest, he didn't have real aspirations for himself. He was a struggling actor. The stuff that he participated in, I can't even tell you what it was about on my podcast because it's just so vulgar.

But he even called himself terrible names because he just didn't know how to believe in himself. He couldn't even imagine dreaming of a better life because he had resolved himself to believe that he was not worthy of a good life, that the life that he had was the life that it was always going to be, and there was nothing bigger to dream for.

But when he took this gig as an actor to pretend to be this fake character that everyone loved and everyone adored, and he did all these amazing things in the world, all this philanthropic work, and he was a successful businessman, when he took on the persona of that and started to believe in himself as this character, all of these incredible things were happening in his life.

He was making all these friends. He got this incredible job and then got a promotion, and he was nominated for this award. And he realized that he didn't want to just act that life. He wanted to have that life.

And obviously in the movie, it was just a series of hilarious antics that made absolute zero sense and probably wouldn't happen in the normal world. But the message is clear that you have to believe in yourself before the success even happens. You have to walk the walk and talk the talk of the life you want to have. You have to dream big.

And if your dreams seem like they're so far out there, that's okay. Just keep believing in them. Believe in yourself. Surround yourself with people that believe in that.

Which is so hilarious to pull that from a movie like this, but it's something that I say all the time. It's something I practice all the time in my own life. I look at the rooms that I'm in. Do the people inspire me? Do they believe in me? Do they have a growth mindset? Are they aspiring to improve themselves? Are they working to be the best version of themselves? Do they imagine a better version of themselves?

And I don't mean that coming from an achievement standpoint, but just a confidence standpoint that you are capable of anything you put your mind to. You're truly capable of it.

But it's not about whether or not you deserve it. I don't believe anyone truly deserves or is worthy of anything, good or bad. I think that what we put out into the world is what we get. And so if you believe in yourself and you do the work to better your circumstances and to better your life, and you surround yourself with people that can help you and support you, you can create the life you want.

So there you go. Point number two sold me. I found myself finding the movie very endearing. And maybe it was all the NyQuil, I don't know, but I just ended that movie thinking, wow, those were some pretty profound lessons for this totally crazy movie.

And I thought, I've got to share this on my podcast because these are lessons that we need to be reminded of every day.

Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset

Whatever narrative you are telling yourself, it doesn't have to always be that way. And if you don't like the narrative that you're telling yourself, then change it.

Change the narrative. You are responsible for your happiness. You are responsible for your character. And whatever narrative or whatever label or circumstances were before, you have the power to change that. And you have to have confidence in yourself to move forward.

You have to have a support system around you that also inspires you and challenges you to be the best version of yourself.

So that is my podcast for today. I'm still getting over this. I still have the fog brain, DayQuil, NyQuil alternating as I'm recovering from this. But I just thought that these were really powerful lessons that bring us back to a fixed mindset and a growth mindset.

If you think that something is what it is based on it just being that way before, that is a fixed mindset. A growth mindset is when we can look at something and say, "Does this apply to me now? Is there something I can learn from it? What do I want to know? What resources can I gather?"

When we start to get curious about our lives and about the stories that we've been told, either externally or even internally, because yeah, we've got our internal narrators as well, when we get curious about that and ask ourselves if that really fits the person that we want to be, that's when we step into that growth mindset.

And powerful, powerful things happen when you are curious about your own life, when you're eager to learn, and when you are willing to grow.

So I hope that this resonates with you. If you've seen the movie Ricky Stanicky, let me know just so I don't feel like the only weirdo that watched it. No offense to the creators of the movie. Obviously it worked, I watched it. But if you watched it, let me know just so we can giggle together.

And if these lessons resonated with you in any way, I want to hear from you. I want to hear if there's a narrative that you want to change, if you need support in dreaming big or having confidence in yourself. I do read and respond to every email, and I'm looking forward to connecting with you.

So until next time, take the lead!

Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the Leading Lady Podcast. You can find all of the links and information mentioned in this episode at LeadingLadyCoaching.com. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to follow the show so you don't miss any future episodes. And while you're there, it would mean the world to me if you would take a few seconds and leave me an honest review. This will allow me to help other high-achieving women find inspiration, connection, and develop strategies to live and lead with purpose and intention. See you here next week.

Author: AliceAnne Loftus

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