Episode 103: The Secret To Being Confident with Christine Ajasafe Transformation Queen & Soul Igniter
Podcast
Episode 103: The Secret To Being Confident with Christine Ajisafe Transformation Queen & Soul Igniter
“Your excitement is part of your magnetism, it's part of your magic.” — Chrissy Ajisafe
This week’s episode is focused on confidence and the power of knowing that it doesn't matter. I’m joined by Christine Ajisafe, self-love expert, business coach, transformation queen, and soul igniter.
Christine gives you permission to feel inspired by your own ideas, to be turned on, and to be excited! It’s your reminder that you have the key to unlock your own unique magnetism.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or on your favorite podcast platform while you cook, clean, or create.
What’s in This Episode:
Christine Ajisafe defines creativity as your connection with your turn on and emphasizes that many of the obstacles we face are self-imposed. She reminds you that true confidence comes from realizing these obstacles don't actually matter.
When you feel an idea taking shape in your body, that’s the energy to follow! Christine tells you about her creative blocks and how she moves them out of the way with commitments like going live for 30 days, even if it’s at one in the morning.
Showing up is how you move forward, rather than waiting for the day when you “feel ready”, Christine gives you permission to do it afraid, and you can do it alongside her in the Embodiment Experiment
Topics Covered:
Reframing creativity as your connection to your turn on
Giving yourself permission to BE excited
Dissolving self-imposed creative blocks
Uncovering your true confidence beneath perceived obstacles and insecurities
Committing to the practices that scare you and stretch you
What are you giving yourself permission to create, share, or do after listening to this episode? Leave a comment on Substack or tag us on IG @chefcarlacontreras & @christineajisafe to share with us.
xo Carla
PS: My mission is for you is to use your voice, share your work, and step into your fullest expression of who you already are through your content. Join Press Publish Club
Disclaimer: Always seek the counsel of a qualified medical practitioner or other healthcare provider for an individual consultation before making any significant changes to your health, lifestyle, or to answer questions about specific medical conditions. This podcast is for entertainment and information purposes only.
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About Chrissy Ajisafe
Self-Love Expert and Business Coach, Christine Ajisafe, is here to help women allow themselves to receive the love they deserve (especially from themselves).
Formerly an international bodybuilder, Christine shifted to coaching after healing herself from a 12-year journey with bulimia.
One night, on her knees in the bathroom after an especially harrowing day of binging and purging, Christine vowed that when she got through this, she would help women all over the world heal their relationship with their bodies and food.
Other fun facts about Christine: She serves as a coach in The Royal Shaman vortex AND for James Wedmore's Business By Design. Christine's favourite part about her life is her 6 brothers and 6 sisters.
She loves dancing and deep conversations about the miraculousness and expansiveness of the universe, self-love, diet culture, addiction, eating disorders, belief systems, and health.
FIND + WORK WITH CHRISSY:
Website: https://www.christineajisafe.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christineajisafe
Embodiment Experiment: https://www.christineajisafe.com/offers/YFdE5CtZ/checkout
Full Transcript:
Carla (00:01):
Welcome to Nourishing Creativity. The cycle of the last few years has left you and me feeling mentally, physically, emotionally, and creatively drained, nourish your very full life through interviews with creatives and entrepreneurs about how they create and move through their creative blocks. If you don't know me, I'm Chef Carla Contreras, a food stylist and content strategist. You can find me Chef Carla Contreras, across all social media platforms and more information in today's show notes. Episode 1 0 3. This was one of the ones that I listened to three times I paused, I rewound it and I wrote things down as I was absorbing the lessons from Christine Aja around turn on confidence and excitement. I can't wait to hear your thoughts. Christine, welcome to the podcast. We've known each other for years and I am beaming to have this conversation. Can you share with us who you are and how you serve your community?
Christine (01:21):
Hi, I'm Christine Agi and I work with mostly women to really help them tap into who they really are, tap into their courage that they've always had. We were so courageous as kids and we get older and we lose it in all of our stories so that they can make money in their business and not only make money in their business, but show up in their business in a way that feels authentic, feels like really them and excites them. I show women how to make money and feel turned on in their business. That's what I do.
Carla (01:51):
Heck yeah, you do. What was your last meal?
Christine (01:55):
My last meal was rice and stew, but like Nigerian stew. So it's different. I think that when western cultures say stew, it's a little bit different. It's just like tomato and onion based. It was like with lamb meat, you just mix it in with the rice and it was delicious. And then I followed it up with a Cadbury's Boost bar, which is an English chocolate and it's yummy as well. Oh, and I had with a can of Coke too. I love Coke.
Carla (02:20):
Delicious. How do you define creativity?
Christine (02:24):
How do I define creativity? I think this is such a great question and I had no answer until just now. Creativity is your connection with your turnon.
Carla (02:33):
I feel this. Can you tell us about how you embody the turnon? Because that's part of your work, right?
Christine (02:39):
Yeah, a hundred percent. So I think that as women especially, we've lost so much of a connection to our turnon because it doesn't feel safe, right? Our connection to our bodies, our connection to our yonis and womb, it feels disconnected because it doesn't feel safe to be that or be in it. I find when I am most is literally when I feel turned on and we've associated the feeling of turn on for only sex and sexual pleasure, and it's just not true. It's really at the heart of all creativity, that excitement and activation in your body. And I know that when I feel that activation, and I don't always feel it when I'm working and I can still be effective, but I know that when I feel that I'm on some fire, like a fire email is coming out, a fire post is going to come out, I'm going to say something fire because I feel that connection to my body.
Carla (03:29):
Can you talk about excitement and the permission to have excitement? Because as we dropped into this podcast, I was like, I feel excited to be here.
Christine (03:40):
I don't necessarily know what you're asking, but I'll respond to what came up for me when you asked that when I was a child. And maybe for you listening to this, and maybe for you, Carla, I would be excited about everything. Oh my gosh, I'm going to KFC with my dad. Oh my gosh, we're going to go shopping for toys. Oh my gosh. I would look through In England, we still have a store called Argos and they would have a catalog and I would look through the catalog and I just wanted everything in the catalog and it would just really excite me. And as I got older, I received people's feedback as I'm too excitable and that's not mature, or, oh, you are too easily pleased. And I became afraid of looking like I was too easily pleased. So I stopped getting excited about things or at least I closed off that connection.
(04:30)
And recently I realized that my excitement and your excitement is part of your magnetism. It's part of your magic. And I gave myself permission to be excited again about all of the things, even if it was something that someone might see was small. So your excitement can make you money. Your excitement is linked to your intuition, your excitement is exciting and it feels good no matter what you're excited about. The actual thing doesn't matter. And again, part of this excitement, I really believe is connection to your body. It's hard to feel excited if you're not connected to your body.
Carla (05:06):
What's your current relationship with creativity? I'm a content strategist. I see it. You're going live, you're writing newsletters. You are in a creative moment from my perspective. Can you talk about that?
Christine (05:22):
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, I see where you're going. I was living my life. There were things in my way. I want to have a six figure business. I want to have a seven figure business. But there was always a, but there are these things in my way. And then I suddenly realized that there was nothing fucking in my way. That's what happened when you realize that there's actually nothing in your way, and sometimes some of us are so afraid that we put things in our way to stop us. Oh look, oh my God, how did that get there? And I'm like, you put it there, but there's actually nothing in the way, and that's what has uncovered my creativity and my excitement.
Carla (06:02):
Can you share with us about going live no matter what time it is?
Christine (06:07):
Oh my gosh. I made a commitment. So in 2019, I told myself I was going to go live every day for a week, and I never did it, and I've said it over the years, but lives still scare me by the way. I was just too afraid and I let my fear mean don't do it. So about a month and a half ago, I made a commitment that I was going to go live every day for at least 30 days no matter what. This is actually how you can take this into your business. It's not a coincidence that my business has also expanded in monetary ways and non-monetary ways. There are new people coming into my business that I've never seen before. There are new people commenting on my stuff or DMing me that I've never seen before. So I decided that I was going to go live no matter what, no matter if I didn't know what to talk about, no matter if I was tired and it really brought out a new me.
(07:02)
So I have a baby, an adorable one and a half year old, and we sleep in the same bed so often when I'm putting him to bed, I fall asleep with him. So there have been many times where I've fallen asleep with him and woken up blurry eyed at 1:00 AM and I'm like, fuck, I didn't do my life today. It would be really easy to just go back to sleep and say, oh, nevermind. But I made a commitment to myself and I wanted to really carry out that commitment so I would get up and do the live no matter what. And there were a few times where I was so in my head about it that I had a friend who was watching one of my lives with me and she said later, what happened? The life just disappeared. I ended it. I was in my head, I was judging myself.
(07:40)
I'm like, do you're doing it all wrong? But there was a part of me that would not let go. So I restarted. I did that twice. And then the third time I was like, I'm not doing this. And the third time I started my live and I said, okay, I've done this three times. This is the one. Then we're going to talk about what came up with me and why I started my live again three times, boom. When you are feeling stuck in content, something that's really helped me is to just talk about what's happening because we all get stuck sometimes. We all have creativity things, but we want to, I don't know about you. For me, Carla, the thing that held me back in my business the longest is I wanted to appear further ahead than I was. I wanted to look like a six figure business owner, even though I was maybe making a thousand dollars on a good day. And that held me back because I wanted to appear someone I wasn't. And now I just use all of the shit that comes at me. If I'm feeling stuck, I use it and then I'm no longer stuck.
Carla (08:29):
Can you talk about confidence? You mentioned this during the experiment. We'll definitely put a link to the experiment in the show notes and you talked about confidence, and in that way you said that it doesn't matter. I'd love to expand on this because for me it was a game changer.
Christine (08:50):
It is a game changer. You guys, if you really listen to what I say next, it's going to change your life because we're all waiting to move When we feel confident, we're looking for ways to feel confident. We're looking for ways to feel fearless. And what you have to understand is actually the confidence doesn't matter, and that is actually true confidence, realizing that it doesn't matter. And because people always ask me how you feel confident? Where does your confidence come from? It comes from me knowing that it doesn't matter, and I'll go more into that. So you might say, I'm fat, I'm disgusting, I'm ugly, I'm not smart. I dunno what to say. I'm poor. Maybe I've got too much money. All of these things that we all have that we think is going to get in the way of us building a massive business, of us falling in love and us experiencing joy and us thriving.
(09:36)
And what you have to realize is that no matter those things, even if it's true, even if you're fat, even if you're disgusting, even if you're upbeat, even if you're broke, even if you have too much money, even if you're obnoxious, even if you are all of the things, there's someone who is all of those things and they have what you want, whether it's an amazing relationship, whether it's tons of money, whether it's a wonderful family life, whether it's thriving, living the life that you want. So what that shows you is none of those things matter. For example, I used to think that I needed to look a certain way, but it wasn't actually my body that was bringing those things in. It was my energy. So when you go out into the world and you think, oh my gosh, I'm not feeling confident, so I can't be effective, then you are not effective.
(10:20)
It's the belief that you are those things that makes you ineffective, not those things. It's not the way you look. It's not the way your body is. It's not the money. It's not all of those things that makes you ineffective. It's the fact that you believe you're ineffective because of those things that makes you ineffective. So when you realize that it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. I wouldn't show up on life because I was like, if I'm nervous, people aren't going to believe me. If I'm nervous, I can't make money. If I'm nervous, I won't be effective. If I'm nervous, I can't be wise, but I keep doing it and it turns out it's not true. It turns out that when I say I'm nervous and I stay in the nervousness and I stay on the live, I'm no longer nervous. But if I avoid the life because I'm nervous, then the thing that I'm afraid will happen because I'm nervous happens, and it wasn't because of the nerves. None of those things matter. That is the key to my confidence, realizing that it doesn't fucking matter. And when you realize that, it gives you a sense of freedom, which is actually true confidence. All of your buts don't matter. Every single one of them doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. That's the secret to confidence.
Carla (11:28):
This is so amazing. I love it. Thank you. We talked about your creative process because this podcast is called Nourishing Creativity, and how do you nourish your creativity? I'm curious because we got into the content creation of how you're creating through nervousness, through everything. We've mentioned this, and I know that you've mentioned this in your work. I'm not tech savvy to do it anyways because I hear this from many clients when I am working with them on content recreation, yet you, Christine, are showing up and figuring out Kajabi and doing your emails. Can you talk about that?
Christine (12:09):
Yeah. I'm not tech savvy at all. Carla knows that I've sent out the wrong emails to the wrong list. I've addressed the wrong people. I've done all of the things. Really short answer is it doesn't matter. Also, if you're not tech savvy, don't spend so much time. I don't make my landing pages. I hire someone else to do that. You can get a VA for not that much money. Don't waste your time doing a bunch of tech stuff that you're not good at and then getting frustrated at, I just hire someone else to do it. It doesn't cost that much. I promise you, you can afford it if you say you can't. It's just another way to keep yourself stuck, but with the rest of the stuff that you're doing, I like to send out my own emails. I like my voice to be in my emails, so I do that myself, and sometimes it takes me a little while, but I figure it out. I have a sense of humor about it. As Colin knows, I've sent out the wrong things multiple times and I'll just send another email out and I'm like, you're not following me. You're not on this list because of my tech skills. That's for damn sure. So it doesn't matter. Literally, your tech skills don't matter unless you're teaching people how to do tech. And then obviously this isn't a conversation for you, but it just doesn't matter. We put so much significance into our feelings and our emotions and our thoughts, and they don't matter.
Carla (13:22):
Christine, can we talk about actually sending out emails? Because I hear this, I actually heard this the other day in person at coworking. I don't want to bother people by sending out. Tell me,
Christine (13:36):
Oh God, okay. You know what really freed me from this? I gave fashion over my phone number and these motherfuckers, I thought I turned that off. We were just talking about tech, right? I went into my settings, I turned my notifications off, and apparently it still didn't work. I still don't know what I'm doing, but you're here, but I'm here. I was like, yes, Carla. Done it, done it. Patted myself on the back. Anyway, I gave my phone number to Bash Novas, and these motherfuckers text me every single fucking day, and that's when I was just like, why am I concerned? If you are bothering people, you know that they can unsubscribe and they will unsubscribe, but I think I get at least one unsubscribe every email. At least every other email. Doesn't matter. Again, it doesn't matter. Literally, we could actually sit here on this whole podcast and you could ask me a million questions and I could just say, doesn't matter,
Carla (14:28):
And I think that this is gold, and I do remember going to, it was a Buddhist workshop at a yoga studio in New York City, and the owner of the studio asked the monk, what is the meaning of it? Doesn't matter. And that was his response, and it was the most freeing, like you talking about confidence. It was one of those defining moments where I'm like, if anybody's listening to this podcast and takes anything away, it doesn't matter.
Christine (15:05):
Exactly. I feel like we all grew up watching movies and shows and the drama of it, and we brought the drama into our life. I dunno about you, but sometimes I'd sit in a car and it might be rainy. I was listening to a song and I'd imagine us in some music video, and we really dramatize our life, and it's fun too, and remember that you are the one who's putting the drama that doesn't actually have to be your life, that things don't matter that much, but we make everything mean so much because that's what we've seen. That's what we've learned, but it doesn't actually mean anything.
Carla (15:40):
Can we talk about creative blocks, and I feel like this threads through our conversation. You've shared with us how you do this personally. How do you support clients in doing this in your way?
Christine (15:54):
It depends on each client, but what I'm really good at is seeing people and we don't see ourselves. When I'm talking to a client, they might present a block to me and they're very invested in this block and very invested in it being a block, and I just hold up a mirror so that they can see that they're the ones putting the block there and then all of a sudden it dissipates. I'm a great coach only because I ask a lot of questions and because I see you, I just have an intuitive, this is the question to ask. Let's move some of this stuff over, but one of the things that will block you is your desire to be seen as good, and I mean like, oh, my work is good. Wow, she just hits it out of the park every single time. It will fuck you, right?
(16:40)
This desire for people to see your work and even yourself to see it as good. Sometimes you have to be Okay, yes, this part that's like, yeah, I want to be really turned on when I put work out. I want to be in touch with my body when I put work out, but that doesn't always happen, and I believe that it's better to put out things that you don't always think are fantastic because sometimes some of your best work you won't think is fantastic. There's been many lives that I posted on my feed that I was embarrassed to post. I was just like, oh my gosh, they're going to see that I'm not that great, and it's gotten the most feedback. It's touched people in this way. You don't actually know how good you are. One of my favorite examples I will always talk about and have always talked about is Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.
(17:23)
From my perspective, if I was Britney Spears and I heard Christina Aguilera sing, I would think, why am I even doing this? She's just so much better than me. Her voice is so much better than my voice. What is the point? But who was the mega? Mega superstar was Britney Spears. You don't know what good is. You don't know what's going to happen from you putting something out there and only putting things out there that you think are good. Again, it's going to fuck you, and it's to have you overthinking your stuff. Nothing's ever going to be good enough, and then you're just going to look up. It's been a month and two months and three months, and you haven't put any content out. You haven't done anything, and you are now feeling even more stuck. We have to let go of this desire to always be better than we were yesterday. It doesn't matter,
Carla (18:09):
And that is the underlying theme of this conversation. Christine, thank you so much for sharing your magic with us today. How can we find you? How can we work with you? How can we support you?
Christine (18:23):
You can find me on Instagram. That's where I'm the most active. It's Christine Ajai, like Agi a JI safe. It's spelled agi safe. You can find me on Instagram. If you are new into my world, I will be doing another embodiment experiment for entrepreneurs shortly, so definitely get on the wait list. This experiment will absolute change your life. It's a $77 and well worth it from what you'll get from it, especially if you are feeling a lot of fear in your life and business. If you are an entrepreneur or want to be an entrepreneur, it's perfect for you. You will be surprised at who you are on the other side of letting fear get in the way, and you can separate yourself from this desire of I need to be fearless and instead fearless.
Carla (19:10):
Thanks so much for tuning in to Nourishing Creativity. You can find me Chef Carla Contreras across all social media platforms and more information in today's show notes. While you have your phone out, please leave a review on iTunes or Spotify. This is how others find this show. I really appreciate your support sending you and yours so much love.