Singer, speaker, and author, Julianna Zobrist, stops by the studio to discuss her new book, “Pull It Off: Removing Your Fears and Putting on Confidence.” She chats with Father Dave about how to grow in confidence and exercise our courage.
In her book, Julianna talks about people “shoulding” us. “I was faced with the ‘shoulds’ very early in my life. But my first time really feeling it was when I became a mom and this woman was speaking to my baby passive aggressively. She was talking to me through my kid, saying, ‘Mommy, it’s late. I should really be in bed.’ Because it was late after a baseball game, and it just broke me because she was shoulding on me. And then I, in turn, began to should on myself. And all of a sudden, we’re just walking around in each other’s shoulds, and nobody knows what they’re doing because we are all just living for one another and not being the confident individuals we were created to be. So, chapter 2 of the book is, ‘Don’t Should on Me,’ which is basically addressing all of these opinions and preferences of people that are honestly just truly that — opinions and preferences.”
Father Dave points out that God does give us some shoulds, but sometimes we add unnecessary things to them. “Absolutely,” Julianna agrees. “The second part of the chapter is ‘But Then Again, Maybe You Should.’ I often say back your should up because our shoulds need to be addressed in the Word of God because that’s what God has given us to know what he desires for us. So, I believe that what he desires for us is within the word of God, and outside of that, that’s where we need to stop shoulding on one another and just be careful to allow one another to live in the freedom we’ve been given.”
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Julianna also addresses insecurities and how to grow in confidence. “Firstly, when you feel those insecurities don’t run from them,” she says. “The first step is to name them and look them dead in the face and say what it is and where it’s coming from. Then, exercise your courage. And I say exercise because fear lights up in the part of the brain called the amygdala, and simultaneously, there is a part of the brain called the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex. And that part of the brain functions more as a muscle than it does as an organ. So, you’re faced with fear and insecurity, and your brain is saying you have an opportunity for courage here. So, courage in and of itself doesn’t even exist without the presence of fear. When we can recognize that insecurities, fears, nervousness, those things are actually your gateway to saying, ‘Okay, I’m going to choose to be courageous right here.’ And that choice to be courageous walks hand in hand with our worth. What is it worth to you? Are you worth it to be courageous in that moment? Is whatever you’re going after worth being courageous to you?”
“I named my book ‘Pull It Off’ because that’s the question I would get all the time,” Julianna continues. “How do you pull it off? I could never pull that off? It was 12-year-old girls and older women into their 80s. I started asking them, ‘Well, who is telling you that you can’t? What is the hesitation here? Is it religion, family, time, finances?’ And nine times out of 10, they didn’t have an answer. They didn’t know. What I discovered is that we are all so much alike in that our greatest inhibitor typically is just simply ourselves.” (Original Air 9-17-18)
