Step into Your Moxie. Alexia Vernon
relationship with my razor until my midtwenties, when a couple of guy friends staged an intervention, my high school and college years were considerably less humiliating. (Although when I won the Miss Junior America Pageant at nineteen, I froze a little too long after hearing my name called because I was wondering, Are the cameras from America’s Funniest Home Videos here for a gotcha moment? It was that inconceivable to me that even freshly shaven I could win the one and only beauty competition I had ever entered.)
The Birthplace of Moxie
What I know from telling stories like these during my keynotes, and from sharing them privately with clients who are struggling with their own visibility, is that as wackadoodle as I can be, my inner monologues were not, are not, aberrations. They are actually the norm. Sometimes our worst visibility fears do come true. People laugh when we speak. Or tell us that we are wrong. That we’re not smart. Attractive. Funny. Or deserving of a seat at the table.
Whenever I speak with clients or audience members about their communication, I’m struck by how almost every one of them (even those like me who had a phenomenal education and a ton of privilege or who I know were the kids laughing at classmates’ speeches and gossiping behind so-called friends’ backs) has had a headgear or a hairy-beast moment. And as a result has slipped into a self-defeating narrative about who they are and their potential to use their voices in the world.
But can I let you in on the truly heartbreaking part?
Most people allow how they perceive their own voices to be determined by one or two moments in their histories. That moment when they spoke up and didn’t get the response they wanted. Or stayed mum and allowed something unjust to happen. Those fleeting moments have become the stories they replay, often unconsciously, over and over again. And I get it. I did, and sometimes still do, the same thing — despite the many moments in my life when I have been more than moxieful.
What story have you been carrying around about who you are as a communicator?
Give yourself an opportunity to sit with that question for as long as you need to. Journal on it. It’s an important one. For until you know the narrative that underpins how you talk to yourself, nothing I tell you about how to step into your moxie will matter — because it will be treating the symptom rather than going to the source of what’s standing between you and the consistent, empowered use of your voice in the world.
Then it’s time to assess your story. And I don’t just mean in terms of its validity. Whether your story is true, kind of true, remarkably untrue, or somewhere in between, ask yourself:
Is that story setting me up to show up, speak up, and be seen in the world?
I recommend that you go back to your journal and freewrite on this too. Because if your answer is anything other than an unequivocal holy yes, it’s time for a rewrite. For the way we communicate with ourselves fundamentally shapes the way we communicate in all facets of our life. I know, not rocket science. Which is fortunate, because as you also know, my hairy legs precluded a career in science.
Here, however, is the bigger story. The meat and potatoes — or for my plant-based friends, the kale and quinoa — of it all. It’s possible to shift your internal communication so that the self-talk that arises, moment to moment, sets you up to think, feel, and speak from a place of moxie. The problem is that most of us attempt to address our self-talk without doing the deeper dive into identifying the story (or stories) that trigger the self-talk in the first place. As a result, we might tell ourselves affirmations like:
My inner beauty creates my outer beauty.
I’ve got this.
I am the hero I’ve been waiting for.
I am a vessel for love.
My flatulence makes me powerful.
While these words in and of themselves are not necessarily flawed, they usually don’t stick. And sometimes, unfortunately, they actually prompt us to communicate and act in ways that undermine our moxie. They can make us want to puff up and project a confidence that is ego-rather than heart-driven. They can make us pursue external success, thinking if we simply check off more items from an achievement list, then moxie will finally be ours. As a result, we hustle harder for other people’s approval — losing more and more connection to our authentic voice along the way.
Let’s stop doing this, uttering words we haven’t created the context to believe, psychically stabbing ourselves for failing to believe them, and then abusing ourselves by going out and behaving in ways that don’t serve our highest good. Instead, let’s go deep — and delicious. Let’s identify and release the stories that are giving rise to the most important communication we do in the world — the communication with ourselves.
Find Your “Come to Jesus” Moments
Before we go any further, please know that what I’m about to ask you to do has as much to do with Jesus as Christmas often does. And please know, I love me some Jesus. And God. Our conversations have gotten me through some dark, complicated times — many of which I’ll invite you into as we continue our journey together. But if the Big J, God, or religion freak you out, or run counter to your beliefs, make what I’m suggesting work for you, and don’t scrunch your face up and get all hot and bothered over terminology.
When I invite you to consider your Come to Jesus moments, what I’m requesting is that you identify moments in your life that brought you to your knees, humbled you, made you surrender, and in hindsight (because during them you undoubtedly were miserable), you know played a role in cultivating your voice, strength, and resilience — even if you haven’t always (maybe not ever) seen these times this way. Whether you are Greek Orthodox, as I was raised, Jewish like my pops, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, agnostic, or anything else, I’m confident you’ve had moments that have tested your faith — at least in yourself. This is what I want you to mine.
Okay, no more disclaimers. Let’s do this. And seriously, do this, and all the other Moxie Moment exercises that I share. I want you to get the aha’s you picked up this book for! (If you prefer to download the companion worksheet, visit AlexiaVernon.com/MoxieBook.)
THE FIVE Rs
(Recall, Relive, Reframe, Release, and Reapply)
Directions: Identify three to five significant experiences (“Come to Jesus” moments) that have shaped how you think of yourself, your voice, your presence, and your purpose. First, in your journal (or in your downloadable worksheet), you are going to Recall these pivotal experiences. On the left side of the page, list them, naming each one so that you know what it represents. Next to this name, on the right, you are going to list some basic details of what happened as you Relive (or reexperience) the journey you went through — as I did with my current-events and Space Academy stories. Don’t worry; I won’t leave you in Relive for very long. But you have to go into your story to get through it and heal it.
Now that you have Recalled and Relived, you are going to pick the one or two experiences you feel are most relevant to you (who you are and who you are striving to become). For each, you will write your Reframe. This is where you will begin to shift from seeing what happened to you as something that happened for you — to help you learn, grow, and cultivate resilience. While I certainly wasn’t grateful for the embarrassing and diminishing moments I shared with you earlier in the chapter, I have reframed them and now see them as moments that prepared me for my work as a coach, speaker, and author. Identify how you can consciously see your experience so that it empowers your voice and presence — rather than undermining it (or you). And again, be sure to write it down.
To ensure that your Reframe for each experience really sticks, you need to now Release it. At this stage,