Episode 168: Manifest What You Love And Then Work Backward To How To Get There With Emma-Louise Parkes

Manifest what you love—and then build the path to get there. In this inspiring episode, Emma-Louise Parkes shares how she manifested a career she truly loves by working backward from her vision. From her early days as a flight attendant to the high-stakes world of air traffic control, Emma-Louise boldly transitioned into entrepreneurship with The Ambitious Introvert. She opens up about embracing career pivots, the importance of continuous feedback and professional growth, empowering strategies for introverts in high-energy environments, and the secret to building lasting confidence through consistent, aligned action. If you're ready to design a life and career on your own terms, this conversation is your blueprint.

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Manifest What You Love And Then Work Backward To How To Get There With Emma-Louise Parkes

Welcome to this episode of Breaking Beliefs, where I interview Emma-Louise Parkes. She's a former air traffic controller turned coach. Emma-Louise knows what it's like to regulate emotions and bounce back in an immensely stressful position. She self-identifies as an introvert while simultaneously breaking the mold of what an introvert looks like.

Bringing energy and empathy, focused questions, and unwavering belief in the power of quiet, Emma-Louise has worked with over 500-plus clients and touched the lives of over 100,000 people through her podcast. In her world, introversion is not a mark of shyness or fear. It is a clue into how someone recharges their energy. By showing ambitious introverts how to manage theirs, she's able to consistently and drastically transform how much they're able to achieve in their business or careers.

During our interview, we talked about her career in aviation, including her transition from being a flight attendant to an air traffic controller and eventually into entrepreneurship through her own coaching business. We explored topics such as the challenges of transitioning between careers, the importance of feedback, training, and professional development, strategies for introverts in the workplace, and building confidence through consistent action. I hope that you enjoy this episode, and if you do, please share it with a friend. We always appreciate the fact that you subscribe to this show and support the work that we're doing at The B3 Method® Institute. Enjoy.

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I'm excited to have Emma-Louise Parkes on. Emma, would you like to give us a brief background of yourself before we get into your story?

Amy, thank you so much for having me on the show. My brief background, if I can condense it, is that I spent 23 years in aviation, 17 of those I was an air traffic controller in the London terminal control area, which is essentially some of the busiest and most complex airspace in the world. That was me for 17 years, as well as training new controllers, which led me to become super interested in psychology, confidence, training, and coaching, which then led me to start my own coaching business. Six years later, I’m the Founder and CEO of The Ambitious Introvert, which is now a coaching and performance consultancy for founders and executives.

Building Confidence: How Early Life Shaped An Ambitious Introvert

I love it. I can't wait to get into that story. Why don't you start us off with where you grew up, what your parents did for a living, and what's your background?

I grew up about as centrally in England as you can get, near Birmingham, as far from the sea as you can get. The sea always seemed very exotic to me as a kid, even though England is not very big, granted. It's not like being in the middle of the States. I grew up on the outskirts of Birmingham, which is the second biggest city.

I would say we were a working-class family. My dad worked in a factory in a forge. My mum worked smaller jobs, like she worked in a pet shop, and she worked checkout at the supermarket, and there were three of us. Everything was always very busy. What was interesting was that I went to a bad school. I could see it now, looking back. They couldn't get teachers to teach there anymore. We owned our own house.

What kind of bad school?

Bad behavior. It was in a bad area. It was surrounded by a number of council estates, which I guess is what you would call projects or something like that. There were a lot of drugs, there was a lot of teenage pregnancy, truancy, and violence. We have a grading system here in the UK. If schools get good grades, more people want to go there, and teachers want to teach there. This school got the lowest grade in the area. Eventually, it closed down. I think I had an interesting background because we were stable financially, we weren't well off, but the areas surrounding us were quite run-down.

How did that affect you personally growing up like that? How did you navigate a school like that and make friends and everything?

I remember my primary school was much more sheltered and much more people from the area where I lived. We went to secondary school at 11 in the UK. I remember my first day of secondary school, which had kids from 11 to 18. It's a huge age range. I remember people were smoking cigarettes at break time and starting fights. I remember this absolute shell shock of before we broke up for summer holidays, we were playing hopscotch and freaking Barbies into school. Suddenly, that person is sniffing glue in the toilets. When I look back, that jump of needing to mature so quickly at that age to be streetwise and understand how not to get in trouble.

That's a big age range, 11 to 18. Was it the eleven-year-olds doing that, or was it the older kids, and then you're mixed in with them?

I would say it was the year above us and onward. Still, very young people.

People start shifting toward that in their first year.

Yeah. I think there's that shell shock in the first year, but then you did mix. There was one communal playground, like break areas and stuff for everyone. People had older brothers and sisters, so they would chat. You did mix. You didn't mix in classrooms, but there was a definite mix at social times.

Did you get pressure to do things that weren't in alignment with who you were?

That’s interesting because I never felt like I did, but I was also always pretty confident in going, “That's not for me.” That's not to say other people wouldn't have felt pressured. At that age specifically, you know what peer pressure is. Luckily, we didn't have social media or anything then, but it was still an environment where certain things were seen as cool. Even back then, I was very emotionally sensitive, and I think I was attuned to someone smoking a cigarette might look cool, but this guy, who's on a lot of drugs, looks ill. There's a level of difference here.

When you say you're emotionally sensitive, where do you think that came from? To an eleven-year-old brain, that's a lot. Did your parents talk to you about this or with your siblings? Where do you think you learned to be confident enough not to go with the group or the peer pressure?

The thing I put it down to is definitely not my siblings, because they're both significantly older than me. They were 12 and 14 when I was born. For all intents and purposes, a lot of my childhood, I felt like an only child because they were teenagers then and going off and doing their thing. Where I probably got the confidence, and this is a great question because I'd never made this connection, is that I performed from a young age. I did dance lessons from when I was 3 or 4 years old until I was 16.

I think that gave me the confidence. Not confidence as in, “Look at me.” It gave me something outside of the norms of school or family that I would go to. I knew that I had to act a certain way, and I had to be a certain way. Also, if I didn't feel comfortable doing something, if I didn't feel comfortable doing a move because my body wasn't ready to do that move, and say, “No, I can't do the splits,” or “I can't do this.” I think the speaking up piece probably came through dance, which is quite interesting.

It is interesting how those things we do, as far as performance, get you ready for other things, like practicing. Was dance something you were trying to achieve at where if you did something bad, it might get in the way of you being able to achieve your next goal with it? Did you have other things set in your mind that you didn't want to get in the way of?

I’ve always been ambitious, but I haven't always known where I'm going. No, it wasn't that. Dance was never something I saw as “This could be a career,” or anything like that, as much as I loved it. I think that's probably a limiting belief because of where I was from. I didn't see people going to be dancers from where I grew up. That's a whole other episode.

I think I had an understanding that things have consequences and things have repercussions, although I never had a dream job when I was in high school. I never thought, “I want to go to college and do this thing.” I knew I wanted to get good grades. I knew I wanted options. I never wanted to cut my options off because I was trying to hang out with cool kids.

Manifest: Things have consequences and repercussions.

What did you learn from the way you saw your parents work?

My dad worked very hard. He came home full of dirt, grease, and oil, and would have to go shower straight away. It was that very manual labor. My mom would work multiple jobs and was trying to be around my schooling. Sometimes it was evenings and weekends, but generally, she was trying to work when I was at school and stuff.

The biggest thing that came to mind when you asked that is my dad would get paid in cash because it was the ‘80s. He would come home with cash. My mom would try to work around school hours and then have dinner on the table. They worked for the family. It wasn't like, “Work is an enjoyable thing.” They didn’t say, “This is my dream job.” It was very much you do this, you go to work, you provide for your family. That's the important thing.

For you to be ambitious outside of that is your own confidence in what you think you can handle and what you want. As you went through school, how did you get to that next level, not knowing how you would get there?

I always concentrated on the things that I loved. I probably could have done a bit better at making an effort on the things I didn't love, like math, for instance. I had a natural ability that I could squeak through. Even the subjects I didn't try too hard, I passed. It was the bare minimum, but I passed. The things that I loved, I poured myself into, so English, drama, and music.

I was a great manifestor because I was pretty delusional. I would be like, “I like English and I like drama, so I’ll go and be like a journalist for theater or something.” It didn't cross my mind that it wouldn't be possible. I was like, “I’ll go and do something like that.” I was always daydreaming and having ideas. As I said, there's never one thing, but I knew what I loved to do. I found out that when I focused on those things, I did well at them and I enjoyed them.

Where did you end up after school?

From Sky-High Dreams To Flight Attendant Life: A Journey Begins

I ended up going to college, which isn't what you would call college, like university. It wasn't degree level, but I studied English, Media and Communication, and Psychology because those things interested me. I didn't know where that was going. After two years, I applied to universities because that was the standard thing to do. I applied to six, and I got accepted at five. When it came to making the decision of where to go, I went, “Actually, I don't feel like studying anymore.” I went and got a job as a flight attendant.

Why that came to be is because I wanted to travel. That was the thing. I was fatigued of learning. If I had had a specific job, like I wanted to be a doctor or I wanted to be a teacher, and it required this degree, I would have probably felt motivated to still go and do it, but I didn't. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I don't know if anyone does at eighteen, but I didn't anyway.

What I knew was that I wanted to travel, and I knew I had no money. The question I asked is, how can I travel and get paid for it? I reverse-engineered it from there. “I could be a cabin crew member. They travel and get paid for it literally.” It was one of the first times in my life that I wore makeup to the interview because I was quite tomboyish, like a skater girl, until that point. My big sister was like, “You need to look neat, and there's a look. There's a vibe. We need to paint your nails.” I was like, “Okay.”

Did you enjoy that job?

I did. I did that job for five years. I would say for the first two, I loved it. For the first one, I was like, “This is my life? This is amazing.” The novelty of everything wears off, and when there are places you've never been, it's great. When you've been to them ten times, it's okay. I realized that I didn't want to do it forever. That hit me quite hard, probably when I was about twenty. I'd been doing it for about two years.

I was like, “This is great, but I'm so sick of packing and unpacking a suitcase. I’ve been jet lagged, and this isn't the forever thing.” I don't know what the forever thing is, but I had seen a lot of the girls get stuck because it's easy to keep staying. I was like, “I have no qualifications, I have no degree. The longer I get stuck here, the harder it's going to be for me to do something different.” That was quite strong in my mind. I again started to get curious. I'm like, “What else could I do?”

What did you come up with?

I was talking to a girl one day. We had a big base. There were like hundreds and hundreds of flight attendants. You would fly with different people all the time. It wasn't like a small community. There was a girl who was on her last flight, so we had a bit of a celebration for her in the galley. I said, “What are you going to do?” She said, “I'm leaving to be an air traffic controller.” I was like, “That's so interesting,” because we went into the flight deck to deliver drinks and things. Sometimes we'd sit in there for takeoff and landing. I remember listening to the air traffic control radio and going, “That's gobbledygook. I could never understand what they're saying.”

She said she was going to do it. It was hugely expansive because, until that stage, I hadn't considered that I could do something like that. She was like me. She was doing the same job, she was around the same age, and she was like, “I applied, I got jobs, I'm going to go do the training course.” I went home to my then partner, who was a pilot. I said, “I think I'm going to apply to be an air traffic controller.” He went, “Don't bother. I applied three times and I didn't get in, so you've got no chance.” I went and applied, and I got in the first time, and then we broke up, and I went to do the job.

Mastering The Skies: The Intense World Of Air Traffic Control Training

When you applied, one thing I'm thinking right now is that this is so opposite from your creative side. It's math. I would assume it’s a lot of math. What I’ve heard is that it is one of the most stressful jobs there is. Did you have a reality of what you were getting into when you started it?

I did because you have to complete, or you used to have to complete, three different interviews. There were spatial awareness tests, verbal reasoning, math, and all that good stuff. There was an HR interview where they asked weird questions to see how your brain works, and a technical interview, in which they sent a pack all about aviation and the things to learn, so that they could test how well you could learn things, essentially.

Before you did all three interviews, you had to visit an air traffic control unit, or you couldn't take part in the interviews. I went into the radar center in Manchester, where I lived at the time. I expected it to be super high pressure. I thought everyone was going to be silent, and everyone is staring at screens, and it's like something you would see in a film.

I went after a flight because I arranged it with this guy. I was like, “I'm already at the airport because I'm landing off this flight that I’ve been working on. Can I pop in?” He said, “Yeah.” I walked in, and every single controller turned around to look at me because I stood there in my flight attendant uniform. I was like, “Shouldn't they be looking at the screens?” He was like, “No, it's fine.” They were chatting, and it was relaxed. I was like, “This is a little bit more chill than I thought.” I had an idea.

Tell me about what that was like to work as an air traffic controller.

To train as an air traffic controller was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. It takes three years. I didn't get to college as we've ascertained, but many people that I trained with, who even had Master's degrees, said, “This is harder than college. This is harder than any study I’ve done before.” They take you from day one, where you know nothing. You know nothing about aviation, nothing about airplanes. There's the theory side of it.

I had to learn meteorology, air law, aerodynamics, aeronautical engineering, and all of these different concepts, and then also to go on into the simulator. They're like, “This is a mockup of how you would control. We're going to teach you the skills. Each time you come in, we're going to make it a little busier and a little more complex and build up in that way.”

It ends with the last year or so of your training, where you're training on live traffic. You're training with a mentor in an actual airspace, but they have a button where they can override you at any time. If you make a mistake, they can instantly correct it. That's the only way. You can't just train someone in a simulator and then go, “You're good. Off you go on your own.”

It was very challenging. There was a lot to learn. There were a lot of exams, and there was a lot of feedback, which they always tell you when you've done something wrong, because you have to address that. You can't go around doing wrong things. It can feel like a slog. It can feel like I'm getting criticized day in, day out. It built my resilience. I don’t know why. I'm very grateful for it in that way.

The Art Of Delegation & Feedback: Lessons From Air Traffic Control

Before you move on, I was already thinking down this path because one of the things I see people struggle with in the business world is delegation. There's a process for delegation. What you described is a process for delegation. You watch, you take a piece, they watch, then you do it. There are steps to it, where so many times, people get frustrated in business that they give something to somebody, and they don't get it. They're like, “Why didn't you get it? I explained it.” What you're saying is that without me doing it, I can't even fully understand or comprehend. Even if I'm in training and I'm watching the videos and I'm doing all these things, I can't fully comprehend what they're saying unless I do, they watch, and they correct.

That can feel super scary. You're not confident at first because you're not doing the things. We always used to say that the knowledge of you is a big, thick manual, and you learn everything in it. Just because you can learn that and regurgitate it in an exam is completely different than taking it and implementing it. That is the only way. As you say, someone is saying, “Do it this way,” and then you adjust and you give it a go. That experiential learning was most of the training.

Manifest: You can study everything like it’s a big, thick manual. But actually applying that knowledge in real life? That’s something entirely different. And it’s the only thing that truly matters.

Someone had to take the time to do that with you. That's what doesn't happen a lot, people making the space as a manager or leader to be able to be there to correct or shadow. What was it about the feedback that was uncomfortable? I know you said it was negative, but was it the way they delivered the feedback, or was it something personal in you about how you were taking the feedback?

I was lucky with the people who trained me. Generally, it was delivered in a great way. It was delivered in a way because they want you to qualify. It's a job where they need staff, so they're like, “If you can do this, we want to help you get through.” It was very positive in that way. I think it was the pressure of it that you knew there was a set number of hours that you're expected to qualify in, and if you go too far over those hours, then the question starts to be, “Can you actually do this? Are you slow at picking some things up, or maybe you're not cut out for this?”

At that time, I think it was about 60% of people who didn't make the training. There was this very real pressure of, “I like this and I want to do this as a job.” I think the more constructive feedback that I got about needing to change things or do things differently or better, it built that pressure up in me of, “The clock is ticking and I need to get good at this.” My high achiever is coming out, “I need to sort this out,” because I understood that if I couldn't do that and I couldn't take what they were saying and produce something good, it could impact my career.

I think that's true anywhere. This is the hard part about feedback if you care about someone and you want them to succeed. That part where you said they're delivering it well because they wanted you to qualify, I don't think people say that enough when they're giving feedback, like, “I'm giving this feedback because we want you to succeed. We're not just giving you this feedback because we're trying to tell you what you're doing wrong. We're doing it to make you better.” You said you were also a trainer. How do you overcome the pressure that someone internally is feeling, so that they can even take in the feedback, so that they can qualify?

The interesting thing was that, as a trainer, sometimes you needed to give the feedback there and then because either you know it was a mistake that you're like, “No, you need to correct that because that's not safe, we can't let that on,” or sometimes, if you didn't give the feedback there and then, you know that if you give it to them an hour later and you're on a break, they're not going to remember that situation because it's fast moving. You have to balance that with not overwhelming someone who's trying to do the job at the same time.

That comes down to where the person is in their training, and me saying, “What capacity do they have right now? Do they have the capacity for me to point something out and say, ‘That thing, maybe try doing it like this,’” or you can tell when you've been training people for a while, or are they at capacity and I'm literally going to ruin their whole session of training if I try and get them to learn this thing. Now I can get them to learn it in an hour's time. We can talk about it away from the radar.

That's good advice. For someone with emotional intelligence, that might come naturally to be able to see that someone can't take it in. If I don't naturally have emotional intelligence, what would be the things that you saw that were like, “This person can handle it right now,” or “This person, I’ve got to find another way to have this conversation at another time?”

It was very much about tunnel vision. When people are getting to capacity, this stands for anyone in any pressure-driven environment or any kind of role. If I were talking to them, they might be nodding, but it's not going in. If I said to them, “What did I say?” They wouldn't be able to repeat it back to me. That's a good way. Has that person got the capacity to take in what you're saying and process it, and could they explain back to you what you've said? As soon as people start going for short nods and not acknowledge it, I'm like, “They can't take this. This is wasted on them right now.”

Manifest: Has that person got the capacity to actually take in what you're saying, process it, and explain it back to you?

Those are good verbal cues for people to watch if it doesn't come naturally to you, so that you create the time and space for the right feedback. Especially if you do want someone to succeed, to know when people are stressed. Once you've gone through that process, then what?

I had a weird six months because I had been training for three years and studying. I'd studied probably six days a week for the best part of three years. I had this feeling that I'm not going to fail because of something that I could have done better. It wasn't like math. It was like English and drama. I was all in. I was doing the study.

The day that I qualified, there were no more exams. I had all the knowledge. I'd solidified the knowledge. I had six months where I struggled to relax. I felt guilty for picking up a magazine. I struggled to switch off and enjoy my days off because my days off until then had been an opportunity to study and make sure that I was up to speed for the next exam or the next test.

That was interesting, and it's something that I know a lot of my clients struggle with. It was the guilt. “I shouldn't relax, it's bad to relax, I should be doing something.” It took my nervous system for a good six months to go, “I don't need to be doing anything. This is my time off. I can read a magazine or go out without feeling like, ‘I should do half an hour of study as well.’”

Post-Qualification Blues: Finding Purpose After Achieving A Major Goal

Can it also be that when you're driving towards something, it's giving you a purpose and a mission, and then you get it, and it's like, “That's it? I'm there?”

The day that you qualify, you do a practical, so you work on the airspace that you're qualifying on, and two people watch you, and then you have an oral exam. They ask a lot of questions to test your knowledge of things they didn't see. I remember they looked at each other after that, and they went, “You've passed. Well done.” My head went on the table and I didn't go, “Yay.” I went, “Oh.” It was almost a relief, which is odd because I never thought I'd have that reaction. Yet, as you say, you work toward something, all that stress goes away, and then it's like, “What now?”

“What am I going to do with my life, my time?” All of that. What happened with your career when doing it? Did you enjoy it?

I did. I loved it. I haven't controlled for over five years now, and I still miss it. I still miss the actual controlling because it used my brain in a way that I don't think anything else does.

Why is that? Is it different every day?

It's always the same airspace. It's always the same procedures. There are only so many actions that you can take because there are only so many ways of separating aircraft. It's a real big picture puzzle. You are thinking about things that are happening now that are about to happen, and that are maybe happening in fifteen minutes, and piecing it all together. Interestingly, a few years ago, I had someone on the podcast, and she did my CliftonStrengths, which I'd never had done before. My top one was strategic, and when she explained it, it was pretty much the way brains work in air traffic control. I went, “That makes so much sense.”

What is that?

It's the big picture. It's pattern recognition. It's looking at the options, seeing what might happen, what might not happen. Different ways of connecting the dots.

Did you ever have anything happen that freaked you out in that role?

No, it didn't freak me out because it becomes apparent quite quickly that aircraft do have issues. They have issues fairly regularly, and there are procedures for that, and 99.9% of the time, nothing comes of it. An aircraft might say, “We think we've got a problem,” and then they go, “No, it's fine. We've sorted it out.” I think that I could have been more freaked out if I hadn't had the level of training to know what to expect and to know that I was probably 99.99999% of the time, nothing happens.

Also, there's something very humbling about sitting in front of a radar, and you can look at the whole of the UK and a little bit of France as well. You see all of these aircraft, hundreds of aircraft, day in, day out, 24/7 for years and years. You go, “Wow.” There are so many people flying all the time every day. The actual percentage of things going wrong is so slim that it's amazing. It's incredible.

That's nice to have that sense of, “I got this,” where there's a sense of calm. I’ll say this to my kids a lot too, or even to myself there, but when they were young, they were in cross country, and before their meets, they would get nervous. I'm like, “Trust the training.” Before the race, don't worry about the race itself. You've trained for this moment. There are so many things in life where it's like you're nervous about you finally got to that experience, or like your exam, but trust the training. I'm not going to let my head get out of control because I’ve done the work to get to this spot.

A great story to illustrate that is the week before my certification. I asked if I could take two days off. We used to work a six-day cycle, and I asked if I could take the last two days off because I was a little tired. I wanted to try to relax before it. I remember my training manager said this to me, and it's such good advice. She said, “Yeah, that's fine. You are not relying on two days of training to pass. You've trained for three years. Two days isn't going to be the difference between you passing and failing. Go and have an extended set of days off and try to relax.”

Navigating Career Transitions: From Controller To Coach

You have to trust all that time that you've put into it. Why did you decide to transition out of this?

Many small reasons that all add up together. They were mainly health-related. I had a couple of slipped discs in my neck. I had some physiotherapy, got okay with it, would flare up every so often. A few years ago, I woke up one morning and couldn't move. Essentially, I trapped a nerve. I had all kinds of issues. I had a couple of surgeries with it. The job itself is very demanding on the neck because I have about 6 or 7 different screens that I'm constantly moving my head looking at. I was finding that I was in pain so much.

There were a lot of pain medications that I couldn't take because it's a licensed role. I was spending my days off having physio or something to get in enough shape to go back to work. I think anyone who has experienced chronic pain for a long period of time knows that. I was like, “Something has got to give. I could transition out of this and potentially feel a lot better and have my health.”

The day that I handed in my resignation, I cried my eyes out. Even though I knew it was the right thing, there was still that sense of the end of an era. A lot of people find entrepreneurship because they leave jobs that they hate, or toxic workplaces, or are miserable. That wasn't the case for me, but that's a good thing. I’ll take going out, being happy.

How did you make that pivot? Why did you decide to be an entrepreneur instead of going into another corporate job or finding something else in the airlines?

I found a transition role, which was a freelance consulting role with another air traffic service provider that would give me maybe a week each month of work, but the free time to be able to build up my coaching practice. By then, I'd done a coaching certification. I'd gotten interested in performance and mindset. I was like, “I think I want to build something with this.”

I'd built some money up before I left, but that was like, “I’ve got this job that I can do a week or so every month or six weeks that will pay the mortgage and all of that.” Except I started that job in February 2020, and it was in Switzerland. I think I did four days, and then they closed the borders, and I had to fly home because of COVID. Best laid plans. At that point, I had no job, and I was stuck in my house. I'm like, “I guess I'm going all in on this business stuff.”

What did you decide to do?

I knew already it was coaching, but I was building up. At that time, I joined a program that was about social media. I started building up social media. I started my podcast and had to learn how to market, had to learn how to sell. These were skills that were completely new to me, and again, followed the joy. What was I enjoying at that time? It became apparent that I enjoyed supporting other introverts and that's where the brand got its got its name and the direction that I ended up taking, working with the quieter and more sensitive amongst us.

Introvert Superpowers: Thriving In An Extroverted World

Do you consider yourself an introvert?

Absolutely.

Why is that?

Huge introvert because as much as I'm a sociable person and I love people, I need my time alone to recharge. I feel it. It's like a switch goes, and I'm like, “The battery has gone, and now I need no one to talk to me. I need to be in my own energy to recover.”

How do you work with introverts, or what are you doing to help?

I work with them on many things that come under the umbrella of performance. I say that because so much as an introvert impacts how we can perform. Obviously, our confidence, the boundaries that we set for ourselves, and how we recharge our energy, because a lot of introverts don't understand the importance of that time alone, or don't understand how their energy impacts them.

If they're not using it wisely and they're taking on too many things, saying yes to too many things, they run out of steam so much faster than extroverts. If they're trying to use that extroverted standard of success, especially in the workplace, where people are doing a lot of networking and chatty and all of that, which a lot of introverts are like, “This is so hard.” They're trying to work at a high level and keep up a facade that doesn't suit their social battery.

You've been a person who has found confidence within yourself being an introvert. I have a lot of accountants who tune in to this show, so there's a high level of introversion. One of the things that has come up about being put on the spot to answer questions is that they want more time to think of an answer in a meeting, and so forth. When they don't, they might feel like they didn't show up well. How do you suggest people handle those things where they need a moment and they're not an instant-answer person?

What you've described is so common. Someone once said, and I thought this was a great quote, but I can't remember who, so I'm sorry. I can give them the tips. “Extroverts speak to think, but introverts need to think before they speak.” It's a different way of processing. Extroverts will brainstorm, they'll throw ideas out, they'll verbalize things, and they get to their good ideas in that way.

Introverts go inwards, and they need to think before they say something because they do process more deeply. If you're in doubt, over-communicate. This is the advice I always give to clients because most people are either extroverted or they are holding everyone to extroverted standards of what they expect. Maybe they expect a quick answer. Overcommunicate that. Be like, “I want to sit with this because I’ll give you a better answer. Can you come back to me at the end,” or “Can you give me a heads up before the meeting of what are we going to be talking about, because then I can make sure that I’ve given it some thought and I’ll be able to give you my best ideas?”

Manifest: Most people are either extroverts or they hold everyone to extroverted standards.

It's reframing it as, “This is how I operate and this is how I can do best in my role,” or “This is how I can give you what you want in the best way.” Ivy Gustafson in ImpactEleven is one of the coaches. She's a huge introvert, even though she's super bubbly like me. Her favorite thing that she says is, “Let me take this for a walk.” If a client asks her something, she doesn't want to answer on the spot because she knows that there'll be a better answer once she processes it a little bit. She'll say, “Let me take this for a walk,” and she knows that she'll come back with something better.

I think what you're describing is mindfulness. It's getting present so that you can be in the present moment, assess the situation that you're in, not evaluating it on the past or the future. It's something extroverts have to work on as well because, as you said, when we speak too fast, a lot of times later, we're like, “I should have said this.”

Yeah, because you've spoken out as you're thinking it. It's not a fully baked idea. You get that regret of, “Why did I say that?”

It's when your brain processes later, you're like, “That was a better idea,” or “I could have said that instead.”

It's the same mechanism. Introverts have probably kept it quiet before they present it. People usually go, “That's good.” They've been through the same process. They've just been through it silently.

I think people should look at that as a superpower as well. It's not always a bad thing not to process right away. Sometimes, the people who don't speak up as much, whenever they speak, you're like, “They have something good to say.”

You touched on before, like leaders and taking time to support people and give feedback, and see how people are doing, because we all want the best. We all want everyone to succeed. That's a great way for managers and leaders to understand if it's going to take this person a little bit longer to formulate their idea. It's not that they're slow or it's not that they're nervous to speak up. They just want to present the best thing that they can. Also, on the flip side, don't judge the extroverts on the first thing they said because they might come back and go, “Actually, scrap that. I think this is better.”

They're just processing. Many great lessons in your story. Thank you so much for sharing it. I like to end with some rapid-fire questions. You get to pick a category. Either family and friends, money, spiritual, or health.

Health.

I'm putting an introvert on the spot.

Yeah. Unprepared.

Things or actions I don't have that I want with my health.

I want a more consistent exercise routine. That is something that I do not have that I want.

Things or actions I do have that I want to keep as far as my health.

I'm in a good place with my nutrition at the moment with my food. I am feeling great. I want to keep that.

Things are actions that I don't have that I don't want.

I don't have to put it into words. I must get a vision of it. This lethargy of like a lack of energy. It is almost like collapsing in front of the TV and not having any drive. I don't want that. I don't have it. I don't want it.

Things are actions that I do have that I don't want, that I want to get rid of.

Procrastination about making a consistent exercise routine.

You did it with your nutrition.

I did. This is true. Small steps.

Is there anything that we didn't cover, or that you want to make sure to leave the audience with, or reiterate that we covered before we end our discussion?

Action Over Doubt: The Ultimate Confidence Builder

To take it the layer underneath everything that that we talked about, we had a fun conversation and I'm sharing the high-level overview of the story, but there were many times during school, college, air traffic control, all of it where I doubted myself and I had beliefs that that weren't necessarily helpful, and that's normal.

It's easy to look at people sometimes and go, “It was easy for them. They did it. I couldn't do that. They were confident.” There were still those moments of doubt, and there was still, “Can I do this, and am I doing the right thing?” I never let that win the conversation. I always keep going and choose to think, “What an interesting thought. Let me acknowledge that and then ignore it and carry on.” It doesn't mean that they're not there. It's not about the absence of doubts or negative thoughts. It's about recognizing that every single person has them. You can still take action anyway. You get to ignore them.

Manifest: It's not about the absence of doubts or negative thoughts. It's about recognizing that everyone has them, yet you can still take action.

How did you learn to do that?

Lots and lots of practice, and that action is the greatest confidence builder. A lot of people think, “I’ll sit at home, and when I'm confident, I’ll do this thing.” Go and start doing the thing because that will build your confidence much faster. The more confident you are, the easier it is to ignore.

Thank you so much for being on. It was great to have you, and thank you for sharing your story.

Thank you so much for having me.

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Mindful Moments: Reflecting On Emma's Inspiring Interview

Now for my Mindful Moments with this interview with Emma. It was such a great interview. Many fascinating stories that she shared. The first one is about her growing up and moving from an elementary school that was similar to her background, to transitioning into her school that had such a big age range of 11 to 18-year-olds. That was immediately a different atmosphere socially, and how she navigated herself through that.

We talked a lot about why she didn't succumb to the peer pressure to do the bad things that she was seeing around her every day. The reason was that she felt an internal confidence not to do it and did not want anything to happen to her or her future by doing any of those things, and having that in her mind. I think it's important to always have that vision. We talked about the importance of manifestation and the fact that she did manifest that she wanted to be successful and do things later on in her life, and was ambitious to do those things. I think it was important to get her through some of our hardest times growing up.

We also talked about how, after she went to college, instead of going to university in her country, what she did was decide, “What is it that I want to do?” Again, coming back to visioning and manifestation, she loved to travel, which got her started as a flight attendant. She worked backwards into coming up with what job or career she wants based on what she would love to do or what would bring her joy, and getting curious about what work that would be.

She stayed in that curiosity until one of those flight attendants was leaving to become an air traffic controller. That got her curiosity going again about, “What is that? How do you do that? Is that something that I would be interested in?” We talked about the process of becoming an air traffic controller and learning to be an air traffic controller, which is a very challenging, highly skilled job. Also, you have a lot of pressure on you to make sure that you have the right training, so that you do no harm.

We talked about the importance of making space to train and how important her training was, and the feedback that she received during her training, and also how to receive that feedback in a way that she could internalize an action. She learned a lot about what feedback she could take in, or if it was too much to take in, where she would have to give herself space and time to be able to evaluate it.

It is important to understand that, and especially when there's pressure in a role, I think all of us go into jobs to be successful, so we don't want to fail. When we feel like we're failing, even if it's not the case, our mindset can get in our way. We talked about how important her mindset was at the time to stay focused on this three-year process to become an air traffic controller, and all the tests that she had to take and the learning that she had to do in order to become an air traffic controller.

Also, understanding what worked for her, so that when she became a trainer, she understood how to have her message heard. When people get to capacity and can't take any more information, she's not able to train them further. She had to give them space. I think that's important. We talked about the things that you can notice if you don't have that emotional intelligence. When you notice someone repeating exactly what you said, or can't repeat exactly what you said, they're not internalizing it or comprehending, or understanding it. They might be saying yes so that they don't look like they don't understand, without qualifying what it is.

We talked about how important that is to get that feedback from someone that you're training, so that you know what you're imparting on them is how they're hearing you. We also talked about making that space between when you pivot in a role. We talked about a couple of pivots when she pivoted from passing and becoming an air traffic controller, and how hard that was to even celebrate or get her life back together after she had worked 3 years, 6 days a week, 7 days a week, sometimes. She was always studying and never relaxed, and getting herself to do that.

I think we talk about that so much in the workplace with work-life balance, which is where you set your boundaries and make sure you're the most productive and not feel guilty to take time for yourself, because we show up better when we do make that time for ourselves. She had another transition when she realized that it was too hard for her to do this role with some chronic pain that she was having, and transitioned into having her own business. Again, looking within and understanding what would bring her joy. That was to coach and be able to help others find their confidence.

One of the things that we talked about is her as an introvert, the things that helped her, and what she coaches people now so that they can find their confidence, that they know they're not alone, and up their performance level by setting boundaries to reset their energy for the things that they need. I think there were so many lessons in this episode. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did and also found her career so fascinating. I want to thank all of you for tuning in and supporting the work that we do at The B3 Method® Institute. Remember that our energy is contagious, so make sure to be intentional about your energy so that you can show up in the way that you want for yourself and for others.

Important Links

• The Ambitious Introvert

• Emma-Louise Parkes on Instagram

• Emma-Louise Parkes on LinkedIn

• The B3 Method® Institute on LinkedIn

About Emma-Louise Parkes

A former air traffic controller turned coach, Emma-Louise knows what it’s like to regulate emotions and bounce back in an immensely stressful position. She self-identifies as an introvert, while simultaneously breaking the mould of what an introvert ‘looks like.’