Vanessa Echols enjoyed a 30 year career as a television news anchor, earning a number of awards and accolades, including 3 regional Emmy Awards and a 1st place award from the Florida Association of Broadcast Journalists. She was also the host of an award winning podcast, Colorblind: Race Across Generations. After being diagnosed with breast cancer, Vanessa founded Compassionate Hands and Hearts Breast Cancer Outreach, which served the Central Florida community for 15 years, providing financial assistance for breast cancer patients.  

Most recently after retiring from the news business, Vanessa is the author of the recently published book, We’re In Heaven, And I Have Some Questions.

HERE ARE 3 TIPS TO HELP YOU ON YOUR ROAD TO SELF-EMPOWERMENT

1. Don't be burdened by fear
2. Don't be afraid to take a chance
3. Don't be afraid to fail

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If you'd like to move from self-loathing to self-love as Beverly did, stay tuned for today's episode that is Sure to help you take on the world. And now here's Beverly. Enjoy the show.

To self empowerment on the inside and out so they can confidently take on the world. Today. I have these questions for you. Do you ever feel afraid? Are you ever consumed by it? Does fear get in your way? My guest today is Vanessa Eels, who is going to talk with me about how fear can deter us from life and personal goals.

Vanessa enjoyed a 30 year career as a television news anchor, earning a number of awards and accolades, including three. Regional Emmy awards and a first place award from the Florida Association of Broadcast Journalist. She was also the host of an award-winning podcast called Colorblind Race Across Generations.

After being diagnosed with breast cancer, Vanessa founded Compassionate Hands and Hearts Breast Cancer Outreach, which served the central Florida community for 15 years, providing financial assistance for breast cancer patients. Most recently after retiring from the news business, Vanessa is the author of the recently published book Where in Heaven, and I have some questions.

There will be mention. Some things religious in this episode, so please take them in a spiritual context. If you want to feel empowered, ready to take a look at fear, head on and are excited about your journey. Listen to our conversation. Hi Vanessa. Thank you so much for being my guest today. It's so good to have you here.

And lived here until I went away to college at the in-state rival school, the University of Alabama. So it really isn't full. Yes, yes, I know. So relatives and friends still at some stretches of the year do not talk to me about football. So I have returned home and. Have the joy of being around two great parents.

My father is 90 and my mom is 85. So I'm able to kinda help them navigate through this season of their life. So the personal life and the professional life have kind of intertwined at this point.

And looking back on it now, I'm like, Boy, I should not have been such a scary cat. In some instances. So I think as I've gotten older, I really have grown to just embrace fear. Not run away from it, but to recognize it and embracing it, which is really a difficult part of the life journey. But once you reach that point, It really is

Absolutely. I think there's two kinds of fear. I think there's the rational fear, and I think there's the irrational fear and what we're talking today I think is about the rational fear. Correct?

It is the fear that keeps us from being harmed. It is the fear of me personally. I have this great fear of snakes, so for me, I'm like, that is not a rational fear. That is a rational fear, not a fear, rational fear, but yeah, so you really do have to learn to distinguish between the two.

I should have just taken a chance to ask a question or to go after a job. Especially earlier in my career when there were opportunities where I was thinking like, Oh, I'm not prepared for that. I, that's, you know, too big of a root. Too big of a dream. No, it's not, because as I look back on it now, what's the worst thing that can happen?

You go forward and you don't get it. Okay. Life goes on. Do you

And maybe it's just because we are natural te desire to protect, you know, family, friends, right? If you have children, parents. Grandparents, you know, the people in your life that may be a part of it.

I think what it does is it stops us from realizing so many of our goals, and it causes us to look back on life with. And that is such a burden that people carry, especially women, to look back on all the, you know, whata, coulda, shoulda have kind of moments. So fear holds us back from being our authentic selves.

Wow. And it holds us back from. Meeting the challenges that come with life.

And learn how to deal with it. I don't care who you are when you hear the words you have cancer, that is a very frightening moment. And so like everyone else, I have this, this brief moment of, Ooh, this is cancer. This could kill me. Am I going to die? But I made up in my mind that very moment, I'm not going to let fear rule this journey.

Speaking as a person of faith, I was always the one who was encourag. Family and friends, when tough times came like, God's gonna bring us through this. Everything's gonna be great. You need to have a positive attitude, have fake, blah, blah, blah. Well, then when this happened to me, I realize, Oh, okay. These people now in my life are looking at me like, Okay, she's done all this big talk.

Let's see if she fools in the face of fear with this journey. And so I was just determined not to. And so my fear in. Moment of hearing the words you have cancer probably lasted about 30 seconds, and after that I was like, Yeah, I'm not going out like this. I am going to. Fight this, and if I don't win this battle on this side of heaven, I'm gonna go out fighting.

So my focus from men on was not fear. It was, what do I need to do to get through this to reach the finish line, which was heaven. A doctor say, you're cured. Wow.

I just grew tired of letting it hold me back and I grew tired of looking back with regret on, you know, I could have done that. I could have been there, I could have asked that question. I could have had that opportunity if I had not been afraid. And finally I was like, Okay, quit being a scary cat and just do.

Do you think that fear plays a bigger role in younger women's lives than in yours and my life?

You know, everything is wonderful. And I think young ladies in their, you know, late teens and twenties are trying to live up to those unrealistic standards. But I think as you get older and you have more life experience, you finally reach a point where it's like, Yeah, we know most, most of that is fake or much of it is fake.

And we also have this attitude of, I don't care what people think.

And I think when you reach that, that is a level of success,

It's time, it's being able to look back. I got so worked up over, you know, fill in the blank when I was 20 or 30 and now you look back and like, ah, that was such wasted energy. I am just going to live my life now and doing things that I wanna do, not be afraid. And. If I fail, okay. I get right back up and keep going.

Whatever. I always say questions. I think that's how I ended up in the news business because I was a curious child and a curious teenager and a curious young adult. So I've always been asking questions, but it really started as I just learned more in my walk of faith and think about. All these things that we learn when we grow up in structured religion in church.

And I always had a lot of questions and a lot of times no one could answer them . And when I thought about, I was like, Okay, somebody needs to be answering my questions because I have a lot of them. What I thought about some of the questions I have, I just started writing and as I wrote, it just became this book.

And I think humor is what's missing. And so much of our lives. Yes. So I wrote this book, but I was like, I don't want this to be like some heavy religious book. Right. I wanted it to be funny. And it is. So the book is about the premise of we get to heaven and we get to meet people that we read about in the Bible and some of the hilarious questions that we would have for them.

And so it's a humorous take, but also at the end, I, So I profile 40 characters from the Bible. Ok. But at the end, There are scripture references so that people can go back to the Bible and read the full actual story, and then there are pages for you to journal your thoughts. So questions that you might have or just anything that you think about when you are reading the book.

And so one example is I mentioned my fear of snakes and everyone who knows me, the people who watched me on television, they all know that whatever we would do story about snakes, I would look away and people would tease me about. So when I wrote the chapter with Noah at the end of that, my final question to him was, when God said animals two by two, do you really think he meant snakes as well?

So, so it's, so with stories like that and. Much of them have, you know, a, I tell you, a modern take. There's one where I talk about someone sending Jesus a message. I said he knew what was going on. Somebody sent him a text message or something was on social media. So it really is just a humorous look at real stories from the Bible.

But just to get people to laugh.

And so most of the time people are like, How can it be? All of that? But when you read it, you'll see what. Okay.

And how does it, how does fear impact her success?

And I always tell people, it is not too late know I wrote this book now I am 61 years old, and so I wrote this book and people are like, That's kind of old for a young offer. I'm like, Well, no it's not. There's somebody out there who probably wrote a book when they're 80 or 90, right? When you're a hundred.

It is as long as you are living and breathing and can function and think for yourself, it's not too late for any of those goals.

I'm afraid I'm not good enough, I'm afraid. That so and so is prettier than me or has this over me. What advice do you have for that irrational fear?

It's like we have this fear of, Oh, I'm not prepared for that job. No, You might work in a company where there's an opening for vice president of the company and you're thinking, Oh, I would love that job. I know I'm qualified, but they probably aren't going to pick me. Maybe I can't do the job. What's the worst thing can happen?

The worst thing that can happen is you prepare, You apply for the job. You blow 'em away in the interview and you don't get the job, okay? What have you lost? Not really anything where you think about it, because you got the experience you prepared, you knew you were qualifying, but most of all, you succeeded in staking taking that step of applying for the job going forward, right?

So the worst thing that happened is you didn't get the job. Well. If you didn't apply for it, you would not have prepared, You would not have been able to take that. And then the next time it's like, Oh, I can do this cuz I've done this before. So I think it is just, you just have to make up in your mind, recognize, I have these fears.

Don't try to say like, Oh, I'm not afraid. Admit it. Admit it to yourself. I'm scared, right? But I'm going to do this even though I'm scared.

And if I listen to other women, what I find is that so many women do, and one of the tools that I've used is. Affirmations when I'm afraid of something about myself to talk to myself in a more positive way than I usually do, because sometimes I find I talk to myself in a negative way, and if I talk to myself in a positive way, that helps me get through the fear in addition to my

Absolutely. And I think it also helps if you have a circle of friends. Who will discuss their fears as well. But you can authentically say, Okay, here's what's happening. And I'm really afraid of, you know, fill in the blink. If you have friends who will say, Well, you know what, I faced something similar, maybe not that exact same thing, but something similar.

I was quaking in my boobs, but here's what. So I think we can openly and honestly have, and it's a tough conversation because we wanna appear strong and we have it all together, but sometimes we need to have people in our lives with whom we can be really vulnerable and talk about that. Yes. I think one of the absolutely the things we see in the workplace is sometimes women are afraid to speak up.

Because they think no one's going to listen to my suggestion. Yes. And there's all these scenarios of you stay silent, and then the man in the room speaks up and it's like, Oh, I should have said something. Or you speak up and your ideas are kinda like, Eh, the man speaks up and says virtually the same thing, and all of a sudden they embrace his idea and you just sit there.

Maybe that's the time for you to say, That's a really good idea. That's what I just. And I had personal experiences with that a lot of times in our newsrooms where I worked and we'd be discussing, you know, story ideas or editorial content. I would ask a question and then the man in the room would just go off and talk about something and I've let him talk and I'm thinking a particular instance where this happened.

Let him talk and he must have talked for what felt like an hour. I'm sure it was gonna hold five minutes, but it felt like an hour. And at the end of that, I looked at him and I said, That wasn't my question, and the room was silent. And from then on, whenever I had to say, , he was the first person to speak up to say, Okay, Vanessa, what do you think?

Wow. Wow. It's often not, you know, you don't have to be the raving lunatic, you know, speaking loudly and all that. It was just simply, I simply looked him in the eye and I said, That was not my question. And so sometimes that is very effective.

I wasn't afraid of him or afraid to speak up, and he respected that.

Wow.

And there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with, I'm going to do this. I am shaking in my boots, but I'm going to do it anyway. And I think the third thing is don't be afraid to fail. Yes. People have this whole thing of failure of like, I failed at this, therefore I am a failure. You perhaps, I don't even like to call it, and you failed at this, but let's just use that for the sake of argument.

You failed at this. That doesn't mean that you are a failure. This simply means that whatever you went after didn't work out the way that you wanted it to, or you didn't perform the way that you wanted it to, but you learned from that. So learn something from your failure, and that's what will help you move forward.

We ourselves are a success and I think that's just beautiful advice.

That's beautiful. Well, Vanessa, how can our listeners find you?

The Vanessa e Echos, I think, or the V, but just search for my name, . Okay. By me. And also on Facebook as well. So Vanessa e Echo's, writer on Facebook.

I hope you can see the direct connection between walking through fear and empowerment. I love connecting you with women that can provide actionable steps for you to take. To gain support for your journey, you can join me at the Her Self-Expression Sisterhood Group, where you can find the knowledge, support, and insight to help you on this journey.

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