Dawn Damon: Hey, Bravehearts, it's wonderful to be with you again today. My guest today has a passion for empowering audiences with practical tools to create freedom, time, energy, and wealth. And she's all about embracing transformation at every stage of life, encouraging women to see the midlife season as a powerful rebirth, and you know, we love that. Here at the BraveHearted Woman Podcast, this is a time to release limiting beliefs, reconnect with inner wisdom, and step boldly into the next chapter of life with confidence and grace. Please welcome my guest today, Dr. Nona Javid.

Hi, Dr. Nona!

Dr. Nona Djavid: Hi. Thank you for having me. What a great introduction.

Dawn Damon: You're so welcome. We've been excited to have the conversation with you because I love how you say, you know, this is a rebirth season for us here in midlife and beyond, and you yourself have had some very powerful, brave moments. So tell us about your story. Tell us about one that has the most change, impact, or put you on a different trajectory.

Dr. Nona Djavid: Yes. And as you may imagine, the one that has had the most impact in my life and completely pivoted the way that I see my life, my business, my family, love, relationships, myself, all of those things happens to be the one that has brought the most amount of pain as well. And you know, as it always is, right?

Yes. That's how it works. That's how it works. It's wisdom wrapped up in pain and struggle. And so early in my life, I was the go-getter, the A-plus, the high achiever, doing all the things to sort of prove my worth and accomplish what was defined as success. You know by the world, right? So, somehow in my early mid-twenties, I had gotten a degree from Berkeley, I got my doctorate, and started a business. I had 13 employees. I got married. I was about to start a family. So I checked off every single box that everyone says, you know, is the definition of success. I remember one day I walked myself into the walk-in closet and I shut the door. I shut down the lights, and then I just sat against the wall of the walk-in closet, and I held onto my knees, and I started sobbing.

Mm-hmm. So I was faced in that dark moment with this life that I had built, literally brick by brick, and I'd created. I had become a slave to this life that I had technically put together and designed and accomplished, and, you know, made happen for myself. And yet here I was completely unfulfilled, lost, and had lost my purpose in life.

And while I was following, chasing what other people had defined as success for me, and I think a big step, or like a big component in this process, was also how much time. I was spending myself in my business, even though it was a great, successful business, but I'd become a slave to that business. And there was this level of overgiving in my marriage that wasn't being reciprocated.

So there was a lot of overgiving and overdoing in every area of my life without the right level of value exchange, both inside of my personal experience, and of course, then in my business and in other categories of life. And I had what I call a God moment in that closet space where I was shown a vision. It wasn't the first time that I experienced this vision. I've had fragments of that vision when I was a young child, a young girl, probably about six or seven. But the vision was familiar, and I was shown the vision of the kind of life that I was designed to live, and the kind of impact that I was designed to have out in the world, and the way that my message and my life, my life, would be the message.

And I remember from where I was sitting in the closet, that Vision Dawn was completely insane and crazy, and you know, now I call it unreasonable. It definitely was. Against, you know, all the ways that I knew myself or all the ways that I thought I was capable of doing, creating, or experiencing. However, I made a decision that I was going to commit to that vision of life. And the vision of life was really juicy. It was like, you are gonna be in love and you're gonna travel the world, and you're gonna live between the US and Europe, and you're going to have a, a much bigger impact than you are having right now out in the world and into your community. And, uh, you're going to bring in more ease and you're going to bring in more freedom, and you're gonna teach people how to bring in more ease and freedom into their lives.

And as I said, it was completely unreasonable. But I did make a commitment and a decision to say yes to that vision once I walked out of the closet, day in and day out. And the key is I said yes when I woke up depressed. I said yes when things weren't going my way. I said yes. When I was motivated. I said yes when I was tired. I said yes when I was sick. So those little yeses along the way have kind of. From the pathway of getting to where I'm at now and the way that I serve people.

Dawn Damon: That's really powerful because I think that's so key in us. We're not living by feeling, we're living by intention. Are you saying? Yes. I see the vision.

I love that because I believe that without a vision, we perish. We just bounce off of walls, or we're like a tumbleweed in the desert, just blowing from here to there. But you had a vision, a true north, you said yes to it, and you began to follow it. So, did that mind shift? Is that what helped you walk away from a business successful on paper, but very misaligned for you?

Dr. Nona Djavid: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I walked away from a lot of different things, and I like to say this when I share my story that this wasn't an overnight process, right? I want people to know that it took a while to get to what I have now, and of course, then what I'd like to experience in the future. Because I don't like giving the falsehood that this is, you take a magic pill, and then this is what happens.

I will say that you could say that the decision was made overnight. You could say that the mindset shift, you know, started to happen in that closet space. But ultimately, it was the day-to-day, the moment-by-moment commitment to this unreasonable vision that I had that made the changes. And not only did I walk away, but I didn't initially walk away from my business; part of my vision was creating more freedom in the existing business model. So, my idea at the time, my vision at the time, was to create a part-time seven-figure business, and so I transitioned into that. Then I had my vision expanded. I started three other weight loss businesses at the time, into multiple seven figures, while creating passive income, and raising a couple of kids.

So it just kind of continued to expand and take a different shape and a different model. And ultimately, that journey led me to, you know, have this ability and the experience to teach other wome,n specifically, but also anybody can learn in this process. How to create more of that freedom and bring in more of that joy through the vision.

Dawn Damon: Yeah. That's incredible. Wow. Because women don't always take the leap as you did. They don't always believe in themselves. They think that this is the life I've built, and I'm stuck. I have to stay in it. What are some other big myths that women in midlife still believe along those lines?

Dr. Nona Djavid: Well, I think we can name 10 of them that we hear from girlfriends or clients or people that we meet, especially when it comes to female leadership.

I think underneath every single one of them is that I am not worthy, that I'm some level, there's some level of lack that exists here, and I tell my students all the time, or I'd like to remind them, it's not new information, but I like to remind them that. The only thing that determines whether you are worthy or not is whether you woke up this morning or not.

So if you are here and if you woke up, then you are worthy. And I know that doesn't really change your nervous system, and it doesn't change all these old patterns of behavior and of thought, and of the emotions that we've grown up with, that we've carried along the way, and maybe even from past ancestors we're carrying, don't necessarily take that away logically.

As you could say, yes, I am worthy, and yes, I'm gonna do the things, and I am gonna walk away from the business, from a toxic relationship, from this and that and the other. You could say it logically. Oftentimes, we're not necessarily moving in that direction because the patterns are so heavy. And I find that if you can come up with a vision and you can get super crystal clear about the kind of vision that God has created for you, the seed that he is planted in your heart, for you to actually get to that next level, if you can just surrender to that vision and continue to say yes to it, ultimately the old patterns of I'm not worthy. I'm not enough. Those patterns are going to fall away because more of your emotional frequency is in the new vision and less of it is in the old patterns.

Dawn Damon: Yes. And I agree. While you know, our repetition can shape our identity, so it is good to have those affirmations or say those things, while at the same time, I believe what you're saying, I have a vision.

It's my journal, actually. I have my vision written on the front of my journal that I do in my morning routine every morning, and I look at it every day, and I remind myself, this is where I'm going, and this is what God has put in my heart, and this is what I'm believing. Four and today I expect to see God moving in my life.

I expect to see myself moving closer to this than I was yesterday. But yeah, that didn't happen overnight for me either. It was after maybe my crisis and difficult storms and things that happened in my life, where I had a decision to make, much like what you were saying, I'm gonna curl up in a ball and say, This is it for me.

It's too late for me. I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy. I'm inadequate. I don't have what it takes, or I'm gonna start believing you. Talk about helping to guide women to connect with that inner wisdom and what to do when fear and doubt show up.

Dr. Nona Djavid: Yeah, and one of the ways that I do that is through expanding the identity.

You sort of touched on this is one concept that I teach often, and has been pivotal in my own transformation and evolution to becoming the highest version of myself has been this idea that your identity drives your behavior. Right? So we're talking about how we show up, and we have this list of patterns and emotional hooks.

You know, addictions and things that we are just kind of participating in. Well, those happen to be part of our identity, and we will only behave as we believe that we are. So if I believe that I'm a fit person, like I use my, my best friend Lonnie, she's just, she's a gym rat. She would tell you that she's a gym rat.

She just finds time to go to the gym. She eats super healthy. And she doesn't have to try to do that. She, she, I've never seen her. She's my best friend. I've never seen her in her journal be like I am, you know, every January I'm going to the gym three times. She just finds time, and she's always at the gym.

It's just her identity. And so me on the other hand, if I don't identify and I don't, these are facts about me. I don't identify with being a gym rat. So every January, guess what I do? I'm gonna go to the gym three times a week. I'm gonna eat healthy, and then there's gonna be this gap or this resistance to doing the behavior because it's not part of my identity.

And most often, women, we think that we're gonna do the thing first and then we become worthy, or we'll end up losing the weight, or we'll end up in the right marriage, or we'll end up taking our marriages to the next leve,l or our relationship or businesses to next to the next level, careers to the next level.

However, we don't recognize that the flow goes from identity to behavior. It doesn't go from action or behavior into identity. So, how do you expand your identity? Well, who are you in your expanded state, right? The next version of you, and there are actually tons of neurosciences behind this. The next version of you, a future version of you who is in the next level of marriage.

Who is more faithful, who has more certainty and confidence, who is, has a six pack, or maybe is at the right weight that you wanna be. Maybe it's healthy; it feels wholesome. That version of you. Who is she? How is she behaving? Who is she surrounded by? What are the thoughts that she's having? What are the habits that she's experiencing on a daily basis?

The first part of the process is to, from a left-brain perspective, just jot down and describe her. Mm-hmm. Just jot down and describe her. That's not going to change you. You're not gonna wake up and be the next version of yourself, but what it does is actually give you a foundation of something to practice on a daily basis.

Then you can show up. As that version of you, as you drink your coffee, as you journal, as you show up on a podcast, as you go into a meeting, as you sit down with your children to play Legos, so you can practice embodiment of a future version of yourself. Because ultimately, we're all born with no fear and unlimited potential.

So if you can teach your body and your nervous system to show up as that. Ultimately, you're being true to how you were born, and you're letting go of all the ways that you have held onto the traumas and the emotional addictions and stepping more into your potential.

Dawn Damon: I do that often. As a speaker and I'm stepping on a platform, or I'm stepping on the stage because I've done something similar to that process that you're talking about.

I know what it looks like. I know when I stand on the stage that I'm not supposed to be. I. Don't nervously rattle my papers or I don't, 'cause I, in my mind, I know with that confident speaker who's ready to pour out and engage with the audience, I've seen her, I know what it looks like. And then when you stop it in that moment, at least your nervous system or your brain, it's like, oh, I've been here.

I get this. I know how to do this. It’s very, very helpful. Same with the gym. You know, I'll tell you this, Dr. Nona, this might be close to what you're talking about, but for years I was watching people learn how to water ski because I was told when I was young, I'm not at. Athletic, I'm not strong enough.

And then I ended up in a marriage where that message was repeated. You're not strong enough. You're, you can't, you can't. So, I knew that I could ride in a boat and I could help with the rope, but I was listening to the instructions all the time. And so as I learned that, I began to picture myself doing it, I began to say, what kind of person, what's the identity?

Well, she's not afraid of water. And she, all the things, I was 52 years old, I decided to. To try it. I was in a new marriage, I was in a new situation, jumped in the water. My husband's like couldn't really believe I was getting ready to do that. He's like, are you sure you, you know, don't get? And I said, yeah, no, I got this.

So I got up on skis for the first time, went all the way around the lake, never fell. I forgot to learn how to dismount those. So that was pretty gnarly. But,

Dr. Nona Djavid: But I love that. What a great example of an identity shift, or like expanding your identity in the moment.

Dawn Damon: I did. I had to because what you're saying is true.

I kept seeing myself in this place, and it was like, why are those the parameters? Why is that the narrative? Why is that my lot in life? No, that's a lie. I'm living small. So what does living brave mean for you now, and how's it different from, you know, how you defined courage in your earlier years?

Dr. Nona Djavid: Yeah. I think for me, living brave is to go inward.

Trust a big, unreasonable vision, right? Even though you're scared, even though you have the like, regardless of what's coming up and regardless of what the situation is, what the 3D world is presenting itself as, right? Regardless of all of that, for me, living brave means to commit and surrender to that unreasonable vision that's in my heart.

So find it first. Then commit to it, no matter what, day in and day out.

Dawn Damon: Absolutely. You found it in a moment of brokenness. You sat in a closet, you shut everything out. How do you suggest or encourage women to find that big, unrealistic, unreasonable vision? Mm-hmm.

Dr. Nona Djavid: Yeah, and like I said, that wasn't the first time I found the vision, but it was very clear and very loud in those moments.

And then ever since then, we're talking over a decade. But ever since then, I found ways. So that I don't have to go through the dark closet to find pieces of the next unreasonable vision, then, you know, you figure out how do you design the next level? My suggestion to people? It depends on where they're starting.

So oftentimes, usually three types of people, right? The first category will say, I have no idea what I want. I don't know what my vision is. I've never had a vision. Okay. There's a second category that'll say, Hmm, I have some things in place, and then there's a third category that'll go, I know exactly what I want.

Okay. If you know exactly what you want, then you're in the easy group. So expand on it. Make it juicy. Add the things. Add the visuals, add the sensations, tell stories about it. Build that into your nervous system. Super easy to do. Second, the middle category, who's like, Hmm, I know the things, some of the things I want, I, I know parts of it.

Then I say, okay, all you need to start with is like three to five bullet points. So if you already have that in the middle category, then you just need to expand on it a little bit. You just need to, if you just put down, I want a house. Okay, well, tell me what kind of brick. What kind of wall color, what kind of, so just expand on what you currently have, sit with it.

And this, again, is a process that takes time. It's that inward contemplation that is really important here. Now there's, I'd like to speak to the first category, sec or the third category, I guess, that says, I don't know what I want. Okay. And I want to bravely encourage you to think about maybe the possibility.

That you know exactly what you want, but perhaps you're afraid of claiming it. Because I think oftentimes when we sit in the, I don't know, we, we know how powerful that vision can be, and so we choose to sit in, I don't know, so that we can be comfortable instead of stepping outside of our comfort zone and into our greatness.

Dawn Damon: Mm. Such wisdom and so true. I am afraid to claim it. I'm afraid to hear myself speak it, or I would never tell another soul that. How do they claim it? Put it on paper, write it down. Be willing to walk on the wild side for a minute and just dream, release your imagination. Just say yes to it. Mm-hmm. Be willing to go there.

It's been so great talking with you today, and I just would like to hear from you what is some final piece of encouragement. So we have a woman, she's listening, she's standing at a crossroads. She wants that vision. She wants to learn how I feel the call of something more. What? What do you say to her?

Dr. Nona Djavid: I think I'd like my final words to be.

A consideration of a concept that is super simple but so powerful. Probably the most quoted for this, for this one. A couple of sentences I'm about to say, but it's this idea of, you know, if you are looking to experience something different than what you are experiencing in your life right now. If you want a different life, if you want a different kind of relationship, if you want a different kind of business or career, whatever that might be, you're gonna have to consider doing things that are wildly different than the things that you're currently doing.

So what you have done so far, maybe it's brought you incremental growth. Maybe it's brought you the life that you have currently. So you're gonna have to depart, and I mean, depart. From your current identity to become the next version of yourself, that is going to take wildly different actions. So again, in summary, if you're looking to create something wildly different in your life, you're gonna have to do something that is wildly different in your life. And to do that, you're gonna have to become a wildly different version of yourself.

Dawn Damon: Great words. Dr. Nona. Thank you for being with us. I see we have many ways that women can get a hold of you, and we'll put that in the show notes. Once again, we appreciate your time with us. I wonder, bravehearted woman, as you're listening, if something resonated that you've heard today that it is time to take a brave moment.

It's time to go ahead and embrace a new season and say, This is the time for my rebirth. Make sure you check her out. Visit her there at those websites that we're gonna provide for you. And I'm gonna leave you bravehearted women like I always do. Is this your moment that you need to find your brave and live your dreams?