“In order to change your life, you have to change your life.” – Nicole Antoinette

Join us on The Art of Badassery Podcast as Chief Badassery Officer, Jenn Cassetta, sits down with the remarkable Andrea Owen. With bestselling books like How to Stop Feeling Like Sh*t and Make Some Noise, Andrea shares her journey from rock bottom to becoming a black belt in badassery. In this transformative conversation delves into personal responsibility, intuition, and the importance of self-compassion. Andrea’s insights offer a guide to unleashing confidence, mastering mindset, and magnifying courage. Discover the tools and mindset shifts needed to rewrite your story and step into the life you deserve. Tune in, make some noise, and let Andrea inspire you to transform your life.

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Make Some Noise: An Invitation To Change Your Life With Andrea Owen

Welcome to the show. I have such a special guest for you. I’ve been so excited to do this recording with the one and only Andrea Owen.

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Welcome, Andrea, to the show.

I’m so excited we finally made it. I’m so glad you have a show.

Thank you. A really quick bio. I want to share some of Andrea’s amazing accolades. Andrea Owen, in case you haven’t heard yet, is an author, global keynote speaker, and Professional Certified Life Coach who helps high-achieving women maximize unshakeable confidence, master their mindset, and magnify their courage. I love that.

She has a wildly popular podcast with over four million downloads called Make Some Noise. I was lucky enough to be a guest on that. Thank you. She is an author. You’re not the first guest to have three books in your tool belt. I can’t get over this. I need you to read these titles because you’ll understand right away why I love Andrea so much. They’re How to Stop Feeling Like Shit: 14 Habits That Are Holding You Back from Happiness, Make Some Noise: Speak Your Mind and Own Your Strength, which I’ve personally read and love, and 52 Ways to Live a Kick-Ass Life: Bs-Free wisdom to Ignite Your Inner Badass and Live the Life You Deserve. With that said, I know it’s probably asking someone to choose their favorite kid, but which of those three books is your favorite?

I like them for different reasons. It’s like significant others in your past. If you can maybe put them all together, they would create the perfect person. I like How to Stop Feeling Like Shit because it has made me the most money.

How many books has that sold?

Over 200,000, I believe. It’s been translated into nineteen languages, so she’s all over the world, even in places I’ve never even dreamed of being. It also was born from the work that I do with women and the ways that we try to avoid criticism, judgment, failure, and shame. We employ all of these habits, and that’s where it was born from. It’s a topic I still talk about all the time.

I love it. We are going to dive into all those topics.

Let’s do it.

In a minute. I always like to remind folks why I choose my guests for this show. It’s not because they’re wildly popular podcasts and three books. It’s because they are black belts in badassery. To me, a black belt in badassery means people who have overcome major obstacles in their lives, have come through it on the other side, and use that inner strength to help others. With that said, I dove into your bio a little bit more and a little deeper. I did read your book, Make Some Noise, and you share a lot about 2007, when you hit rock bottom. If that’s where this journey of becoming a black belt in badassery starts, can you walk us through that time in your life?

Yeah. I want to preface it by saying rock bottom, we often think of people who are using drugs or alcohol. I did end up getting sober in 2011, but that wasn’t my rock bottom. 2011 was me quitting drinking. I was letting go of the last and final vice that I had. My real rock bottom happened in 2007. I was married before. We had been together for over a decade and we were talking about conceiving our first child, as many people do.

My then-husband had an affair with our neighbor and got her pregnant. I was so devastated because I was 30 at the time. My friends were getting married and having kids, and I always wanted to be a mom. I was in the depths of despair, thinking, “I’m never going to meet someone. I’m never going to be a mother.” I thought my life was over, but I quickly met someone and fell in love.

Unfortunately, he had cancer. We weren’t sure if it was terminal. Sometimes, he would get better and he would get worse. It was this tumultuous nine-month love affair that was very intense. The long and short of it is I found out after being with him for under a year that he never had cancer. He had lied about it the whole time because he was an opioid addict.

I was humiliated, ashamed, devastated, and all of these things. I was pregnant with his child at the time. I always get DMs when I tell this story on podcasts. I will inevitably get a DM where someone’s like, “Did you end up having the baby? What happened? You cut the story off.” I did have the baby. We have no contact with his biological father. He knows this story. All that to say, I found myself on my bedroom floor in the fetal position like, “How did I end up here?”

Not to cut you off, but this is a theme that keeps coming up. Yours is the bedroom floor. There are a lot of bathroom floor moments.

It was a bedroom floor for me. I was on the phone with my sister and in the fetal position. I kept saying to her, “How is this happening again?” It was this failed relationship. He had gone to rehab. That’s when we broke up because he met someone in rehab and fell in love with her. That was the end of us. I was so abandoned and sad. It was awful. I felt so stupid. I’m like, “How could I have been so stupid?”

The long and short of it is it has taken me 16 or  17 years to realize I wasn’t stupid. I was in a pattern of ignoring my intuition, abandoning myself, severe codependence, and all of these things for so many of us that are the reasons that we stay in these relationships that aren’t great for us. It was that moment in 2007 when I felt terrible but also used it as an invitation to change my life.

My friend Nicole Antoinette says, “In order to change your life, you have to change your life.” She does long-distance hiking and things like that. It was one of those moments where I thought, “What do I need to take responsibility for?” This isn’t like, “Put all the blame on me.” We both brought things to the table in both of those relationships that were dysfunctional. I had ignored my intuition over and over again.

 

“In order to change your life, you have to change your life.” – Nicole Antoinette

 

I love that you say that a black belt in badassery, and if I had to wrap this up with a bow, is learning how to trust yourself enough that you’re going to be okay if you, for instance, walk away from a relationship that might look good on paper but your intuition is like, “This is bad.” It is learning to have hard conversations when you suspect someone that you’re with is using drugs and lying to you. It is learning to trust yourself instead of abandoning yourself over and over again. That’s one element of badassery.

In fact, in the Red Belt chapter, I talk about intuition a lot. It’s about going within, getting quiet, and listening to your intuition. I do share for the first time publicly in my book a relationship that I was in in my early 30s before I got married. The day I found out that he was cheating on me was three days before his baby was born. It’s a wild story.

I take it you were not the carrier of this baby.

I was not. I always think about that. I’m like, “That is something that really only men can do.” Only men can hide a child for nine months. Women physically cannot do that. I’m not going to go into the story here. Some of it’s in the book. I share some of those thoughts that I would have, the intuitive moments where the red flags were there and I ignored them.

For example, and I’ll share one and I hope to jog your memory to see if you can share any, but I have this moment of looking at his iPod. That’s what they were called. There was a playlist called Active Labor that he made for this woman.

It was a very specific phase of labor.

I wouldn’t have known back then. I barely know now what active labor means. In my head, somehow, there was that moment where I was like, “This doesn’t feel right. Something is off here.” I wrote it off as, “That’s a playlist for him when he is doing physical labor.”

Reasonable.

I have so many more of those. I was writing the book, thinking, “How can I be so stupid?” I’m sharing it publicly because it’s funny, but also, we do this as women. Do you remember any of those moments?

There are so many. I’m from San Diego and we were living there at the time. This is the boyfriend, not the husband. For the husband, I have so many stories. The boyfriend told me that his cancer medication was not approved here in the United States, but you could get it in Mexico in Tijuana. You can pretty much get anything you want down there, so we would go down there.

One time, it was really late at night and the legitimate pharmacies were closed. We pulled up behind this bar and there were these two guys standing out there. He was like, “Wait right here.” He walks about 30 feet away and asks them, “Do you know where I can get any oxy?” I convinced myself that it was obvious that he was using drugs, but I thought it was because he had cancer, not ever that he was lying about having cancer.

In my marriage, there were too many instances. There is one where every year, we would spend at least part of the Christmas holiday out of state with my parents. In this one particular year, my husband didn’t come. He told me he had to work. I’m like, “On Christmas?” He had a blue-collar job. It wasn’t completely ridiculous that he would work on Christmas, but he’d worked there for many years and that has never happened before. I was already suspicious that something was going on.

I flew home early to surprise him on Christmas day. I went to his work, and lo and behold, his car wasn’t there, so I called him. This was ‘06, so we weren’t texting quite yet as much. I call and I’m like, “Your car’s not here and you’re at work?” He raced into the parking lot a few minutes later and got in my face. He screamed at me, intimidated me, and told me he wasn’t cheating on me. It was that moment where I was like, “Either I’m going crazy,” because I thought I was going crazy for thinking that he was cheating on me, “Or he legitimately is cheating on me.”

We all have a different level of pain tolerance. How much BS and pain are you able to take before you finally have a complete moment of clarity? By complete moment of clarity, what I mean by that isn’t like the, “It could be that,” followed up with an excuse. It is like, “It could be that. If it is, regardless, I need to make a change.”

For my marriage, it was that I moved out. I said, “I know you’re still saying that you’re not cheating on me, but we need to separate and figure out what we’re going to do. Let’s make a plan.” In the relationship that I was in after that, I ended up confronting him and saying, “Are you on drugs?” He did admit it, but he stuck to the story that he had cancer.

You found out he didn’t.

I found out after I got pregnant. His aunt told me that he was lying about that and that I wasn’t the first person that he’d lied to and done that whole story. He was a con man. It’s one way to make a living.

Another topic you brought up, which I love that keeps coming up in these conversations, is personal responsibility. There’s the part of, “I saw these red flags. I feel so stupid.” On the other hand, there’s, “What can I take responsibility for at this moment?” Can you say a little bit more about how we can do that without blaming and shaming ourselves? Whether it be a relationship or you’ve been conned by someone or at a job, there are tons of examples of being betrayed by people, places, and things. It’s not just in relationships.

Many of us have stories of ignoring red flags or intuition, whether they’re in relationships, friendships, family member situations, or jobs. When everything hits the fan and we’re on the other side, and we’re telling the story regardless of the circumstances of how it turned out, we can have those thoughts of, “How could I have been so stupid? How could I have not seen it?”

I even see this on social media when stories come out, particularly with women as the “victim.” I’ll use that term loosely here. I see that in the comment section. It’s like, “How could she have not known? How could she have been so stupid to have fallen for that story? That’s the oldest story in the book,” and things like that. We can endlessly beat ourselves up for not seeing what was right in front of our faces.

I take a lot away from the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. One of those is taking inventory of what is your part. I’m always very careful when I talk about this because you can fall into a self-blame hole and never be able to get out. Women tend to be so incredibly hard on themselves and have these standards of perfection and strength that are not humanly possible. When I say it’s nuanced, what I mean by that is you really have to be careful in what you’re taking responsibility for.

 

Women tend to be so incredibly hard on themselves and have standards of perfection and strength that are just not humanly possible.

 

Anytime that we’re making mistakes, whether we are having an affair or doing things that we would never normally do, we’re trying to get our needs met. Most likely, we want to be loved, seen, and cared for. They’re these basic human things. Sometimes, when we know better, we don’t do better. I know I have. There have been moments where I’m like, “I probably shouldn’t do this, but I’m going to do it anyway.”

It’s incredibly nuanced. It is looking at what you really needed at that moment and were trying to get. It is having a little bit of compassion and grace for yourself and also thinking, “How can I do better next time? What did I learn from this situation?” When you’re in the weeds, you don’t want to be answering that question, but there is a time and place to be able to draw lines between what you need to take responsibility for and also moving away from blaming yourself to a point of beating yourself up and being cruel to yourself. We can all do that.

Grace. I love that word. I love the image it conjures up in my head. What does grace mean to you? Giving yourself grace, what does that look like?

Letting yourself off the hook but also not making excuses for yourself, knowing that you’re going to make the same mistake again, especially if it impacts someone else and it hurts someone else. In that particular situation, I vowed to never ignore my intuition again, but I found myself doing it again in another relationship. When that’s the case, that’s a whole other conversation around trauma in our nervous system and what our automatic thoughts and behaviors become. We become very scared in relationships and things like that. I went off a little tangent there, but grace to me means having a lot of compassion for yourself.

 

Grace means letting yourself off the hook, but also not making excuses for yourself knowing that you’re going to make the same mistake again.

 

I love that. There are ways that we can do that. I know there are words, but maybe writing letters to yourself, giving yourself some space, and taking yourself away. What does that translate to?

It’s a lot of inner work. A lot of it comes down to so many of our behaviors, our wounds, and our automatic habits that we do without even thinking. How many times have we said to ourselves, “I can’t believe I’m here again. I can’t believe I found myself in the same relationship with a different person or with the same boss. How is this possible?”

Any therapist will tell you so much of our behaviors and situations that we find ourselves in stem from our childhood. For some people, when they think about their childhood, they can’t put the dots together. Your teen years also. Many of us throughout adolescence and then into our teen years, and even young adulthood, our brains aren’t even fully formed until 25-ish. All of that time before then of being hurt, being rejected, being abandoned, being betrayed, and all of these things matter.

We don’t have a time machine to be able to go back and change things. This isn’t even about blaming your parents and things like that. It’s not your fault, but at one point, when you’re around 30, it becomes your responsibility to heal it. What does that look like? It can look like inner child work or inner teen work. Re-parenting is a big word in a therapeutic sense. I know you’ve had a couple of guests that talk about psychedelics. That can be a great help for certain people. Even talk therapy can be incredibly helpful. There’s also meditation and journaling.

I’m staring down the barrel of 50 and I have found that this is a never-ending journey. I am 48 and a half years old. There are layers. As soon as you peel back a layer, you think you only have nine left, but you have 11. You peel back 3 more and you have 27 more. This might sound really strange, but I almost look at it as a game. I’m like, “All right.”

That’s smart.

I’m like, “What am I going to play with today?”

Gamifying is big.

You might cross one thing off the list, but it doesn’t mean that it’s gone forever.

We are constant works in progress. I like to bring them out. I like to point out in these different interviews the different modalities that people use to overcome challenges to grow to magnify the point that there are many modalities. There are many ways to heal. After that rock bottom, you found yourself in this new relationship. That was a disaster. How do you become a coach? Walk us through that a little bit.

I had looked into it when I was married to my first husband and I found out about the career. It was a brand new career at that point. That was mostly executive coaching. Life coaching hadn’t taken off yet.

Can I ask what year that was?

That was the early 2000s. 2002 or 2003 is when I found it.

That’s when I did my health coaching. I felt the same. There were not many health coaches out there. No one knew what it meant yet.

In 2006, I worked for the American Council on Exercise. They certify health coaches. I knew that career was out there. I then learned about life coaching. When my life fell apart in ‘07, I was like, “Apparently, I like to burn everything down. When stuff hits the fan, I’ll do a total career change. I’m going back to college. I’m going to do this. I’m going to get remarried.” I completely turned my life upside down.

When I would tell my close friends and family that I was going to sign up for life coaching school, they were like, “You’re going to do what?” I know that they were like, “Poor Andrea. She has gone off the rails.” I quickly realized that I didn’t know this to begin with. I thought that I would go there and be trained on how to help people. I didn’t know how much of my own work I was going to be confronted with. I had to put it on pause for over a year. I was also having my son at the time.

I fell in love with it. It was such a great match, too, for my personality. I also was an early adopter, so I was able to build a personality brand fairly easily and quickly. A lot of success has to do with timing, and I got really lucky. This isn’t to undermine my talent or anything, but both were equal parts of my success. That’s how that whole thing started.

 

A lot of success has to do with timing.

 

You’ve been coaching since when?

2008.

That’s a lot of clients, I bet.

It’s over 1,600 hours or even more than that. I last calculated that a few years ago.

I’m sure. What I noticed in your book and on your website is you talk about the big five default behaviors that many high-achieving women have through your experience. Can you talk more about that?

Yes. If I’m not mistaken, they are people-pleasing, perfectionism, isolating, numbing, and control. Did I get it right?

Yes, you did.

Those are the most common ones I see.

Out of those 5, would you say there’s 1 or 2 that are most common for the women that you work with?

It’s pretty evenly spread because I do have a decent amount of people who really don’t struggle with people-pleasing or perfectionism. They’re more isolators, so they won’t reach out for help when they feel like they need it or they struggle with numbing out. They drink too much wine or are workaholics. The control part tends to overlap a lot with perfectionism. I call them stepsisters. There tends to be a lot of if you struggle with control, you probably struggle with perfectionism and vice versa. Those are usually connected.

 

If you really struggle with control, you probably struggle with perfectionism and vice versa.

 

Maybe we need to do a little bit of a deeper dive on each one. Can you go through each five? If you give examples, then people are going to be like, “That sounds familiar.”

For perfectionism, I’m certified in Brené Brown’s work and I like how she describes it. Some people think it’s binary or all or nothing. They’re like, “Either I’m a perfectionist or I’m a slacker.” That’s not the case. You can have a value around excellence. The question to ask yourself is when you seek out to do something, whether it’s to start a podcast, start a new workout routine, or go after your dream job, is your thought process, “What will they think of me if I do this?” or, “What will I think of me when I do this?” Perfectionism is very outwardly focused. Excellence is focused more inward on your own values and on how you want to show up in the world and be proud of yourself. That’s the difference there.

 

Perfectionism is very outwardly focused. Excellence is focused more inwardly on your own values.

 

I would like to say, because I feel like I’m in a session with you, I don’t think I’m a perfectionist because I put a lot out into the world and I’m not waiting for it to be perfect because I know it never will be.

I’m that way too. I am a quick action taker and I have a high propensity for risk. That is really great for entrepreneurship, but it’s terrible with drugs, alcohol, and men. It’s like, “Let’s see how this happens.” When we have that kind of personality, we tend to learn our lessons retroactively or retrospectively instead of prospectively.

Some people who are more methodical and logical want that certainty. They like to learn their lessons ahead of time instead of backward. It depends on your personality. People pleasers tend to have really poor boundaries. They often struggle with codependency. There’s also approval seeking in there. All people pleasers are approval seekers, but not all approval seekers are people pleasers. There’s a little bit of a difference.

When I talk about burnout in one of my programs, a couple of women call that approval whore. I always think of that term and I laugh because it’s so true. Would you say that’s also a spectrum? It’s not one or the other, right?

Exactly. Sometimes, it really depends on the situation you’re in. It might vary whether it’s at work, with their family, and things like that. It’s usually rooted in poor boundaries and a lot of codependency. For numbing out, I don’t think that I need to explain this very much. You use something, whether it’s a process, a substance, food, or something, to completely ignore your problems. You use some kind of distraction. For a lot of people, it’s their phone to not have to sit still.

It could be shopping.

It’s the sitting still that’s scary and not having anything to pull your mind away from your thoughts or from your own life.

I know someone does it with shopping. It’s like, “Everything is about shopping.” I’m like, “Okay.”

It’s dopamine.

Say more about that.

It’s the rush that we get when something feels good. Dating apps or any kind of social media are great examples of that. That’s why the algorithms work so well to keep us on particular apps, whether it’s YouTube, TikTok, or whatever it is. I’m there with you. I spend an hour scrolling on Instagram reels or TikTok. It’s so entertaining.

I have to say though, Andrea’s really good on TikTok.

I am pretty darn entertaining.

She’s very fun and funny to watch.

I have so much fun.

I don’t love it, but I’ll watch you on TikTok. As soon as I open up that app, I get the weirdest things. My algorithm is very weird.

You have to train it.

I don’t want to. That’s why I don’t spend time there. I’m on other stuff enough.

The makers of the app have got it down in terms of giving us that dopamine rush. When we don’t have it, we can drop into feelings of depression. Also, if anyone reading has ever been in that place of going through a really hard time, the moment you have to set your phone down, turn the lights off, and put your head down on the pillow, and you’re alone with your thoughts and maybe alone with your loneliness and the reality of your life at the moment, that can feel incredibly debilitating. That’s when some scary thoughts can come in. I’ve been in that place. I know that. It becomes easier to stay on your phone or online shop and read reviews on Anthropologie for hours.

I could do deep dives in the comment section. It’s a real rabbit hole. Can you go back to that low point in your life? You’re so good about sharing. I appreciate that because so many people, myself included, can relate to this. When we stop the distractions and fall into those deep dark places, what should we do? What do you do when you’ve been there?

I feel like there is no darker place than the places I’ve been in terms of going through an incredibly difficult time. I’ve had suicidal thoughts before. Trigger warning. That’s what we’re going to talk about. It scared me the first time I had a real one. It scared me to the point where I was like, “I need to tell someone.” The people that I told took it very seriously, which also scared me. I’m glad people cared about me enough that they cared. That was several years ago.

It happened again, and I remember lying in bed thinking, “I could do that.” I was going through all the options of what I could do. I was like, “I could do this. I could do that. I could also kill myself.” I remember thinking, “If I’m going to do that, then I’m going to need to write letters to people.” I started making a mental list of all the people. It was so matter of fact. It was almost like, “I’m going to write a book and I need to break it down by chapter.” I have a whole system for that, and that’s how my mind was working.

I was ticking off the people that I would need to write letters soon. I was like, “If I write a letter to my mom, then I’d have to write one to my sister.” Honestly, the emotional capacity it was going to take for me to have to write GD suicide letters was so overwhelming. I was like, “That’s too much work. I won’t kill myself.” I have to have a sense of humor about it. Please feel free to laugh, anyone that’s reading this, because it was funny. What a mom thing to say, like, “I got more on my to-do list.”

The next day, I told some of my friends. I said, “If this is what it must feel like, I feel like I’m dying. I feel like my soul is dying. That’s how bleak it is right now.” I’m a huge advocate for people asking for exactly what it is that you need. I have the luxury of having friends who ask me that. I know not everyone has that. Since I work in personal development, I have a lot of friends who are therapists, coaches, or mental health people. They ask me, “What do you need us to tell you at this moment?”

 

Ask for exactly what you need.

 

I overwhelmingly kept telling them, “I need you to remind me that this is temporary because where I am at right now, my mind keeps telling me there is no end to this path and this is how it’s going to be from here on out.” When you’re in that dark place, it can feel so crippling and hopeless and there’s no getting out. I don’t know for sure, but I wonder if that’s why people follow through. It’s because they don’t believe that it’s temporary. It’s still hard for me to talk about that place.

One of the things that pulled me through is I didn’t want my kids to be like, “Did you hear? She’s the one whose mom killed herself.” I know the impact that that can have on children. Knowing how it would impact them snapped me out. It didn’t exactly make me feel any happier, but that option was off the table. I say that because there’s a decently high statistic of women who are perimenopausal and menopausal because our hormones shift so much. I have felt that.

No self-help book and no amount of tools that we talk about here is going to help when your hormones shift and you have those deep, dark places. I want to make sure that people know that there’s nothing wrong with them if they’re like, “I heard this tool and it’s not working for me.” That low point is very specific. Also, I want people to know that you’re not the only one. We’ve all been there.

There are so many things that I want to point out with what you said. First of all, I want to acknowledge you. Thank you so much for sharing that because I know that can help so many folks, men and women, all genders. Humans go through these times. I bet having suicidal thoughts and ideations is way more common than we think. Most people won’t ever admit it. They’ll have the thought, put it away somewhere, and hope it never surfaces again. Thank you. It is scary.

Also, I love what you said about going to friends. If you don’t have those friends in your life who are into self-help or personal development, find someone. Maybe it’s a therapist, a counselor, or someone that you have to make an appointment with. Hopefully, there’s someone in your life that you can say exactly those words. Give them the prompt. For Andrea, it was, “What do you need to hear at this moment?”

They were like, “What exactly do you want us to tell you? How do you want us to show up for you?”

That’s so brilliant instead of having someone that’s going to try and fix or try and coach you out of it at the moment.

Exactly. I was having that conversation with a friend. We were DMing on Instagram back and forth. They were telling me that they were going through a really hard time. It’s a little bit of a newer friendship. My automatic thought was like, “I’m going to send them a funny reel or try to make a joke out of it,” and then I thought to myself, “I don’t know if that’s what they need,” so I asked them. I was like, “Please tell me how to show up for you. What does your owner’s manual look like?”

I love that. I’m flashing to my husband when I’m having a hard time. I’ll give him the words and say, “Can you tell me that it’s going to be okay and that everything’s going to work out? I need to hear that.”

You’re training him. I’ve had to do constant reminders, too, in my marriage.

I’m like, “Say the words. I’m giving you the words. Say this.” Maybe I have to find some other folks, too, that I can train them to say, “Everything’s going to be okay.”

Everything is going to be okay one way or another.

I want to bring us out of this a little bit because that was a deep topic. I’m so grateful. I want to go there. I want people to normalize these types of conversations. I need to know. Who is Veronica Vain, and why should we all know about her?

I love her. It has been several years since I retired, but I used to play roller derby. I went to a derby bout when I still lived in San Diego, me and a few of my girlfriends, and I was like, “I’m obsessed. How do I do this? I’m not going to be great at it,” because I hadn’t rollerbladed in the ‘90s. We moved to Utah, and I went out and about in Utah.

As we were buying tickets, some of the women who were in the league were selling the tickets. I was so scared and intimidated to ask. I asked, “Can I get some information about tryouts?” They were so nice to me and told me when to come. They gave me a flyer for the website and everything. I tried out, trained, and made it. My derby name was Veronica Vain.

I’ll say this really quickly because my heart belongs to Derby so much. A lot of skaters feel that derby names bastardize the sport and make people who don’t know the sport take it less seriously because it’s cheeky. A lot of skaters do skate under their real name, which I have so much respect for. Whatever you choose. It was meant to be entertaining many years ago. Players use it as an alter ego because they have regular lives. They run daycare centers. They are lawyers.

I had a literal rocket scientist on my team when I lived in Utah. She was a rocket scientist. It allows us to  have fun with an alter ego, and that was mine. Veronica Vain kicked ass out on the track. She also looked amazing while doing it. My hair was always curled. I had the winged eyeliner. I wasn’t great at it, let’s be honest. I wasn’t the best player, but I looked good. I had a spray tan all the time.

I love it. I need to see pictures. Is that another tip? Should we all have our own, like Beyonce?

Beyonce has one. I’m pretty sure even Taylor Swift has had one. I wrote this whole thing about how to find yours. I still call on mine sometimes. I have an affinity for Cha Cha DiGregorio from the movie Grease because she had so much confidence and people hated her for it, which is a whole other conversation for another time. Sometimes, when you’re having a hard time making a decision or having doubts about taking the next step into something that’s vulnerable, it’s like, “What would Veronica Vain do? What would Cha Cha do?

By the next time I speak to you, I’m going to come up with my alter ego name. If you don’t know, Beyonce’s alter ego is Sasha Fierce.

Do you know where I got that from, the question of, “What would Veronica Vain do?” It is from, “What would Jesus do?” when I used to go to youth groups. The WWJD bracelets that we’d have. No shade to any of the Christians out there, but I don’t ask, “What would Jesus do?” I ask, “What would Veronica Vain do?”

I bet you get some really good answers.

I do. She always says to go for it.

With that, let’s go for it. Let’s hit our Rapid-fire questions if you don’t mind. They’re four. The first is, what was your favorite food when you were a kid?

Probably SpaghettiOs and meatballs.

If you could have a drink with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be and what would the drink be?

I would probably love to have a drink with my maternal grandmother, my mom’s mom, where I got my green eyes from. She passed away twelve years before I was born so I never had a chance to meet her. What would the drink be? Probably coffee.

What is your favorite self-help slash personal development book that is not your own?

Probably anything by Brene Brown. I love all of her work. It has really shaped who I am.

Last but not least, what’s your favorite hype song? It’s the one you turn to when you need that boost.

Probably because I can use it for any mood that I want to get into, it is Sweet Emotion by Aerosmith.

I love it. That’s going on the playlist.

It’s a sexy song, too.

I want to thank you so much. I want everyone out there to buy your books and listen to your podcast, so please tell everyone where they can find you.

My podcast is called Make Some Noise. They can look for the episode that you were on on my show. I’m @HeyAndreaOwen on all social media channels. The website is AndreaOwen.com.

Make sure you watch her TikToks. They’re really funny. Thank you so much. You’re amazing. You share like no one else, which is being a black belt in badassery. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

To everyone else, thank you so much for tuning in. Please share this episode with anyone you know who could use a boost of badassery in their life. Thank you and bye.

 

Important Links

• Andrea Owen
• Make Some Noise
• How to Stop Feeling Like Shit: 14 Habits That Are Holding You Back from Happiness
• Make Some Noise: Speak Your Mind and Own Your Strength
• 52 Ways to Live a Kick-Ass Life: Bs-Free Wisdom to Ignite Your Inner Badass and Live the Life You Deserve
• Episode 472: Self-care series: Self-defense and the Art of Badassery with Jennifer Cassetta
• @HeyAndreaOwen – Instagram
• Facebook – Andrea Owen
• LinkedIn – Andrea Owen
• TikTok – Andrea Owen

 

About Andrea Owen

Andrea Owen is an author, global keynote speaker, and professional certified life coach who helps high-achieving women maximize unshakeable confidence, master their mindset, and magnify their courage. She has taught hundreds of thousands of women tools and strategies to be able to empower themselves to live their most kick-ass life through keynote speaking, her books, coaching, and her wildly popular podcast with over 4 million downloads.

She is the proud author of How To Stop Feeling Like Shit: 14 Habits That Are Holding You Back From Happiness, published in 2018, then updated and re-released in 2022 (Seal Press/Hachette Books) which has been translated into 19 languages and is available in 23 countries, as well as Make Some Noise: Speak Your Mind and Own Your Strength (TarcherPerigee/Penguin Random-House), and 52 Ways to Live a Kick-Ass Life: BS Free Wisdom to Ignite Your Inner Badass and Live the Life You Deserve, (Adams Media/Simon & Schuster).

Andrea is a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC) from The Coaches Training Institute, a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with the International Coaching Federation, a SHE RECOVERS® coach, as well as a Certified Daring Way™ Facilitator; a modality based on the research of Dr. Brené Brown.

When she’s not juggling her full coaching practice or writing books, Andrea is busy riding her Peloton bike, or hanging out with her two teenagers. She is also a retired roller derby player having skated under the name “Veronica Vain”.

Learn more about Andrea at andreaowen.com and join the fun and wisdom at facebook.com/heyandreaowen and instagram.com/heyandreaowen.