Episode 257 Transcript: Are You Giving Your Power Away And Calling It Growth?
[00:00:03]
Nancy Levin
Welcome back to the Nancy Levin show. I wanna begin today with something simple, but I want you to really let it in. No one is above you. No one is beneath you. And no one deserves to be placed on a pedestal. Not your coach. Not your therapist. Not the author whose book changed your life. Not the teacher whose words you have written on a sticky note and kept on your mirror for the last three years. Not anyone. Because the moment you elevate someone else beyond their own humanity, beyond the messy, uncertain, still figuring it out, humanness that every single person on this earth carries, you shrink yourself in the process.
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And that shrinking is so subtle, so gradual, so wrapped in the language of growth and devotion and inspiration that most people never notice it’s happening. Until one day they realize they’ve been living someone else’s answers to questions that only they can actually answer. That’s what our conversation today is about. I have spent years inside the self-help and wellness world. Not as a student in the audience, though I have been that too. But behind the scenes, producing events, standing in the wings, watching what happens before the lights come up and after they go down.
What I’ve witnessed in those years gave me a perspective I could not have gotten any other way. It showed me the gap between what we project onto the people we admire and who those people actually are. And it showed me again and again what it costs us to close our eyes to that gap.
[00:02:00]
So when you attend an event, the kind where there are thousands of people in a room, when the energy is almost tangible… something happens. The lights are designed, the music is chosen, the temperature in the room, the staging, the timing of everything. It’s all crafted to create a particular experience. And then the teacher walks out on stage and the room shifts and you can feel it.
That collective intake of breath. The wave of recognition and excitement and hope. And what you see from your seat is someone who appears to have it all together. Confident, clear, certain in a way that feels almost otherworldly. It is easy. It is so easy to believe that what you’re seeing is the full picture.
[00:03:00]
That this person standing on stage has crossed some threshold that you haven’t. Has arrived somewhere that you are still trying to reach. Has figured out things you are still struggling with. But I lived behind the curtain. I saw the green room before the keynote. I saw the quiet moments in the hallway. I saw the phone calls and the conversations and the very human experiences that happened just outside the frame of what the audience could see. And what I can tell you is that without exception, every single person I worked with, every teacher, every speaker, every author, every celebrated guide is human. Fully, completely, sometimes even messily human. They had fears, they had doubts, they had relationships that were complicated, they had health concerns that scared them. There were days that they couldn’t access any of the wisdom they were known for teaching.
[00:04:00]
They had moments, many of them, where they were just people. Not icons, not gurus, not the version of themselves that existed in their audience’s imagination. They were just people. One experience in particular has always stayed with me. Because for years I would stand beside Louise Hay. After events, when she signed books, sometimes for hours, and people would come to her and I mean, they would really come to her with tears in their eyes, with the weight of everything they were carrying. And they would say, “Louise, you changed my life.”
And she would look at them, really look at them, and she would say, every single time, “I gave you the tools. You changed your own life”. She said this every single time. She never accepted the power they were offering her.
[00:05:00]
She gave it right back, and I watched that happen hundreds of times. Every time I saw the same thing, the person offering their power often didn’t even know what to do with it. Once it was returned, they wanted Louise to hold it. They wanted someone else to be responsible for the change they had made. And I began to understand that this was not just gratitude, it was also relief.
The relief of believing that someone else had done it. That the change had come from outside. Because if it came from outside, it could also be taken away. And if it came from outside, they didn’t have to trust themselves with it. This is the pedestal problem and it is much deeper than it looks. So why do we do it?
[00:06:00]
Why, even when a teacher like Louise is actively and explicitly returning power to the people in front of her, do those people keep trying to give it away? I have thought about this for a long time, and here’s what I believe.
It feels easier to believe that someone else has the answers. Not just easier, but safer. Because if someone else has the answers, then you don’t have to do the terrifying work of finding your own answers. If someone else is more evolved, more healed, more spiritually advanced than you are, then you’re off the hook. You can be the student indefinitely. You can consume the teachings without ever having to embody them. You can follow the program, read the books, attend the events, and still always have someone further ahead of you who’s responsible for knowing more than you do.
[00:07:00]
It is a very seductive position. And I say that without judgment.I have been in it. There is a comfort in devotion. There is a comfort in having a guide whose authority you don’t question. There is comfort in the simplicity of “They know and I am learning.” But that comfort comes at a cost. And the cost is the moment you give someone else your power, you disconnect from your own authority. You stop trusting the voice inside of you that has been trying to guide you all along. You start measuring your instincts against what your teacher would say, what the program recommends, what the framework suggests. You begin to outsource the most important relationship you will ever have: the relationship with your inner knowing.
Once that relationship is outsourced, everything becomes dependent on the external source. So what happens when the teacher says something that doesn’t resonate?
[00:08:00]
What happens when the program doesn’t work the way it was supposed to? What happens, and this is the one nobody talks about, when the person on the pedestal falls off? Because they do fall. Not always dramatically, not always publicly. But they’re human, and humans are inconsistent. They contradict themselves. They change their minds. They have blind spots and wounds and limitations that no amount of wisdom or success eliminates. And when someone has been on a pedestal, when someone has been holding your power for you, their fall doesn’t just disappoint you. It destabilizes you. Because the authority you were counting on was never yours to lose. You had already given it away. So I wanna be direct about something here with you.
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Every person I have ever worked with, every teacher I have admired, every leader I have learned from is navigating their own unfinished business. Every single one. They’re working through their own wounds at the same time they’re helping others work through theirs. They’re practicing the things they teach, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. They are, in their private life, doing the same messy, uncertain work that their audience is doing in theirs. And this is not criticism. I wanna be super clear about that. I’m not saying this to diminish anyone. I’m saying this because it’s a liberation in fact. Because when we allow the people we admire to be fully human, when we stop requiring them to be perfect, to have arrived, to never contradict or stumble or change, we give ourselves permission to be human too. We stop making our own imperfection evidence that we’re not ready.
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Not worthy. Not as far along as we should be. The problem is not that we have teachers. The problem is when we turn teachers into untouchable idols. When we take someone’s good work and build it into a methodology. When we take someone’s insight and make it into a doctrine. When we take someone’s presence and make it into a substitute for our own. No teacher, no matter how gifted, no matter how clear, no matter how genuinely transformative their work is, can do your inner work for you. They can point. They can reflect. They can offer frameworks and tools and language for things you are already experiencing but couldn’t articulate yet. But the actual work, the turning inward, the honest reckoning, the choice to change that, has always been yours.
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So how do you hold this? How do you remain open to learning? Open to being moved and expanded and genuinely helped by others while keeping your own authority intact? Here is the distinction that changed everything for me. There is a difference between being inspired by someone and outsourcing your power to them. And it is a meaningful difference.
Inspiration expands you. When you are genuinely inspired by a teacher, a book, a conversation, an idea, something inside of you activates. Something that was already there gets ignited and illuminated. You recognize something, you remember something, you feel the click of resonance that says, “Yes, this is true. This is mine. This is real.” That is inspiration, and it is a beautiful thing. But outsourcing is different. Outsourcing looks like turning to the teacher before you turn to yourself.
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Measuring your experience against their framework before you let yourself feel what it actually is. Silencing your own doubt or disagreement because surely they know better.
Outsourcing is when the teacher’s voice becomes louder than your own. And it can happen so gradually that you don’t notice it. You start by learning. You find a teacher who genuinely helps you feel less alone, more supported, more oriented. And then without quite meaning to, you stop checking in with yourself and start checking in with what the teacher has to say instead. You stop asking, “What do I actually think?” and you start asking, “What does the teacher say I should think?” That is the moment to pause. Because your inner voice is not something to be replaced. It is something to be refined. Strengthened through practice.
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Clarified through experience. Trusted through evidence you build with yourself over time.
No teacher can build that for you. So here’s what I wanna offer. Three things to hold onto as you navigate the world of teachers and teachings. First, remember that everything you are seeking is already within you. No teacher is giving you something you don’t have. They are reflecting back what is already there, and that means the resonance you feel is not evidence of their power. It’s evidence of yours.
The second is to practice discernment. Not everything someone says, even someone you genuinely admire, even someone whose work has helped you significantly, is your truth. You’re allowed to take what resonates and leave what doesn’t. You’re allowed to love someone’s work and disagree with part of it.
[00:14:00]
You’re allowed to be grateful for a teacher without being bound to everything they believe. Discernment is not disloyalty. Discernment is self-respect. And third, stay connected to your own inner voice. Especially when it contradicts what you’re being taught. Especially when it makes you uncomfortable. Especially when it would be easier to just go along with that voice. The one underneath the noise. The one that doesn’t get louder when you ignore it. It just gets quieter. That is your greatest guide. Not because it’s always right, not because it never needs refining, but because it’s yours. And no one else can hear it. And no one else can follow it. Only you. One of the most powerful ways to stay out of the pedestal trap is by doing the work of building your own authority from the inside
.[00:15:00]
That work is inseparable from boundaries. Now, when I talk about boundaries here, I don’t just mean the conversations you’re having with other people. I mean the internal boundary. The line between your own experience and someone else’s interpretation of it. When you have a clear internal boundary, you can sit in a room with the most compelling teacher on earth and still know the difference between what is true for you and what is true for them.
You can be moved without being swept away. You can be taught without being overwritten. That is what a strong internal boundary protects. And it is built the same way all self-trust is built. Through practice. Through small repeated moments of choosing your own knowing. Even when doubt is present. Even when someone more credentialed, more experienced, more celebrated than you is saying something different.
[00:16:00]
You can hear them. You can consider them. You can let their perspective sit alongside yours and see what it illuminates. But you do not have to abandon your own. And here’s what I wanna say clearly. You can admire someone without losing yourself to them. You can learn from someone without becoming dependent on them. You can genuinely be grateful for a teacher’s impact while still standing fully in your own authority. These things are not in conflict. In fact, that is the relationship with a teacher that actually serves your growth. Not the one where you’re always the student and they’re always the authority, but the one where their teaching helps you become more of yourself. Where you leave the book, the event, the conversation, more connected to your own voice, not dependent on theirs. That’s the measure.
[00:17:00]
Does this teaching make me more myself or does it make me more reliant on the teaching? There’s a moment, and if you have been doing this work for any length of time you may have felt it, a moment that can be both terrifying and quietly thrilling. It’s the moment when you realize no one is coming to save you. And more than that, no one needs to. Because you are capable. Not of having all the answers. Not of never needing guidance or support or community. But capable of standing in your own life as the primary authority on your own experience. Capable of making choices without waiting for someone else to tell you they’re right. Capable of trusting what you know. Acting on what you feel and living in a way that is guided from the inside rather than managed from the outside.
[00:18:00]
That is a different way of living. And it requires something. It requires you to stop waiting. Waiting to feel ready. Waiting to have more certainty. Waiting until you’ve absorbed enough teachings, attended enough events, done enough work to finally feel qualified to trust yourself. That moment never comes. Not because you’re not ready, but because readiness is not a feeling you arrive at. It is a choice you make. And self-trust, the real kind, the kind that holds when things are uncertain, is not built through gathering more knowledge. It’s built through action. Through making a choice before you have complete certainty. Through following your own knowing, even when you can’t fully justify it. Through discovering again and again that you can navigate your own life. Not perfectly, not without mistakes, not without moments of genuine uncertainty where you reach out for support.
[00:19:00]
But fundamentally. At the level that actually matters. You can do this, you always could. And the teachers and teachings that have served you most, the ones that have genuinely changed something, I would be willing to bet that what they actually did is remind you. They reflected back a knowing you already had. They gave language to something you already sensed. They pointed toward a door that was already open. You walked through it.
Now I wanna offer something before we close. A permission. Let your teachers be human. Not as a resignation. Not as a disappointment. But as a gift. Let them evolve past what they once taught. Let them contradict what they said five years ago.
[00:20:00]
Let them make mistakes privately, publicly, on a scale that might even shock you. And let that be okay. Not because it doesn’t matter, but because their humanity does not cancel their contribution. And it does not cancel yours. When you let them be human, something else becomes possible. You get to let yourself be human too. You get to stop holding yourself to the standards of the person on the stage. The lit up, curated best of the best version that you’ve been measuring yourself against. You get to be someone who is still figuring it out, still growing, still contradicting yourself sometimes, still getting it wrong and trying again. Still in the middle of the story, not at the end of it. That is not a failure state. That is a human state.
[00:21:00]
And the goal, the real goal, underneath all the frameworks and teachings and growth work is not perfection. The goal is presence. Presence with your own life. Awareness of your own experience. Alignment with who you actually are. So here’s what I invite you to take away from today. Not as a concept, but as a practice. Notice where you have been placing someone above you. Not with judgment, just with honesty. Where have you been outsourcing your knowing? Whose voice have you been listening to instead of your own?
Where have you been waiting for permission that only you can give yourself? And then begin to shift. Not dramatically. Not by dismantling every relationship or teaching that has mattered to you. But by taking your power back. One small decision made from your own authority.
[00:22:00]
One moment of trusting what you know instead of checking what the teacher says. One honest acknowledgement that the wisdom you’ve been seeking outside of yourself has always been inside of you, waiting.
You are your own greatest authority. Not because you have all the answers, but because no one else has access to your life the way you do. No one else is living it. No one else can. And that means no one else can tell you how to live it. Not ultimately. Not at the level that actually matters. You are the one. You’ve always been the one. I’m so glad you were here with me today and I look forward to being with you again next week.