‘The Superstar Paradox’ In Interview With Overachiever Executive Coach Keren Eldad
The Destiny Awakening Interviews is a podcast with Andrew Wayfinder and his guests.
Every week (sometimes more) we have a short focused interview with an expert, author, speaker designed to bring you powerful insights, inspiration and ways to break free, live life by your vision and values, and make a difference in our changing and challenging world.
Listen to the podcast at: https://www.andrewwayfinder.com/blog/DA0025
Andrew Hryniewicz
Hello everyone, and a very warm welcome to another edition of the Destiny Awakening Interviews.
I’m Andrew Wayfinder Hryniewicz and I’m joined today by Keren Eldad, executive coach for overachievers, TEDx speaker and podcaster.
And a very warm welcome to you Keren. Where are you hanging out today?
Keren Eldad
Thank you so much for having me, Andrew. I’m hanging out in Austin, Texas today.
Andrew Hryniewicz
Reminds me of a line, “All my exes live in Texas. That’s why I lay my hat in Tennessee…”
Keren Eldad
That’s fantastic. Well, luckily for me, I have zero exes in Texas. So, here with no baggage and a happy, happy life.
Andrew Hryniewicz
You like tacos?
Keren Eldad
I love tacos. I’ve come to appreciate Tex Mex since moving here.
Andrew Hryniewicz
I can imagine. Yeah, it’s a great, great city.
Keren Eldad
Yeah, for food for sure.
Andrew Hryniewicz
Okay, so on to you and your work.
Keren Eldad, Coach Keren, is the founder of “With Enthusiasm Coaching” at kereneldad.com.
An American personal and executive coach, who works internationally with world class leaders and major corporations such as LVHM, Salesforce, Estee Lauder, Deutsche Bank, and many more.
Her TED talk “You Don’t Know, What You Don’t Know” has over 200,000 views.
And her work on “The Superstar Paradox”, which we’ll be talking about tonight, has been featured on CNBC, Harvard Business Review, Cosmopolitan, Oprah Magazine, Huffington Post, The Today’s Show, and Forbes, to name just a few.
Keren’s mission is to spread the message of her TED Talk, that “Curiosity” and “Open Mindedness” can and will change anyone’s life.
She offers signature coaching programs on leadership, business development, being a co-founder and other topics.
And is also host of her podcast, “The Coached Podcast”. As she says, she lives in Austin with her husband Ryan, and they’re four pets: Waffles, Moose, Nollie and Layla.
So thank you, Karen, for your time today.
Keren Eldad
Thank you, Andrew, that was the best introduction I have ever heard anyone get for me. I think my mother will be particularly pleased with that one. Thank you.
Andrew Hryniewicz
Well, that actually reminds me I’ve got a friend who’s a composer. And he has quotes on his site, from various dignitaries and famous people. But the last one is, “I like Francis’s work but I prefer Beethoven.” — His mother.
Keren Eldad
That’s an excellent one. And that sounds a lot like my mother. I love it.
Andrew Hryniewicz
So as I said, we’re going to be talking about your title, “The Superstar Paradox: Looking Good, Feeling Bad”. And Karen’s going to unpack that idea for us in six questions.
So the first question is, who is your ideal client? And what’s the transformation you help them achieve?
Keren Eldad
My ideal client is a former version of me… I believe that many practitioners are like that… you understand the former version of yourself, because you’ve really walked in their shoes.
You know the predicament, especially when it comes to “The Superstar Paradox” or the superstars that I coach.
I coach overachievers because I like to say, “I am a recovering overachiever”.
I am an achievement oriented, status-oriented, hustler in my former life, who was losing herself in the pursuit… In the hamster wheel race… In the monotony of just chasing for things and for achievements and ultimately feeling deeply dissatisfied.
And that’s what the paradox is…
The paradox is about your life looking fantastic from the outside or on Instagram.
The systems of your life technically working, but you feeling a deep dissatisfaction and a disconnection…
In particular, with where you are. Between where you are, and where you want to go. They’re just in different places.
And today, I specialize in helping people bridge that gap. So they can come to the other side a lot faster than I got here.
Andrew Hryniewicz
Okay, so what’s the transformation? What would be the before and after?
Keren Eldad
The before is a very easy thing to understand. If you have ever gone through anything that has radically exposed to you, that you are operating on false premises.
It’s like falling in love, right?
And suddenly understanding what love is, in comparison with the shallow depth of infatuation. It’s exactly the same when we are, when we have not done any type of mindfulness work, by the way, from coaching to therapy.
Whatever genre fits your behavioral style the best. We just don’t know; we really don’t know…
And there’s no other way to explain it, then to say you go from feeling dissatisfied, angst. Questioning many of your choices. And living in behavior that is primarily reactive.
Just putting out fires all the time… to calm, collected, systemic, and at peace.
That’s what the transformation looks like.
Andrew Hryniewicz
Okay, so what’s the biggest challenge they’re facing when they come to you?
Keren Eldad
Their biggest challenge? Most of the time they come to me — and this is such a funny and ironic and charming thing — they come to me, to supersize their performance.
They’re asking for more of the garbage that is making them very tired, and very dissatisfied, and burnt out, and overwhelmed.
And they will. They will supercharge their performance. Just not the way they think. And they’ll get a lot more than they’re bargaining for.
When we get a system for thinking, or real philosophy for life — something that you and I share, Andrew — you get a really strong spine. And as a result, everything else appears with much greater ease.
So, the way I like to say this is, instead of asking to be a better slave to the systems that are enslaving you, you get freedom.
Andrew Hryniewicz
Okay, great. So question number three, what’s the number one insight you would share with the audience at this point to help them, that find themselves in that situation?
Keren Eldad
Well, one of the most valuable insights is really a concept.
And it’s the discovery of the concept of ‘vulnerability’… The discovery of the concept of “Vulnerability” is a life changer.
The understanding that we are human, and everyone around us is human too That we deserve compassion.
And that only compassion will get you exponential results.
That vulnerability is there for, not weakness, but courage.
Not only to stand as who you really are, but to inspire other people. And the ability to reach equanimity through that vulnerability. And then I’m not constantly in attack mode, or defense mode.
Just open and human is one of the most, I think, profound insights that people can start to reach for today. Without any coaching, through the works of incredible thinkers from Rene Brown to Youvall Noah Harare.
There is no one who does not dance around this topic: the topic of vulnerability, of our humanity, of a growth mindset. Of the expansion that will really lead you to different experience of this life.
Andrew Hryniewicz
Reminds me of, I think it’s from Buddhism, “The conditioned mind attacks and defends, and the unconditioned mind gets curious.”
Keren Eldad
Exactly.
That’s precisely, and you know, before we had a delightful conversation, you and I. And we were talking just about this, we were talking about books like “Think Again” by Adam Grant.
And what I dedicated my TED Talk to… if you asked me what I would like to give to humanity, it’s “Unknowing”.
Unknowing, get out of this stance of “I got this!”. Get out of the stance of “I know this already”.
No, you don’t. And certainly not over the arc of history, or in a historical perspective, we know nothing. And to know nothing, is to insist on nothing, which is a much more open stance, it’s a nicer stance.
I don’t think for a second that what I know today, the breadth of my work today is representative of all that is coming.
Andrew Hryniewicz
Okay, so that’s a perfect segue to number four. What concept, book, program, talk or experience has been most impactful in your development?
Keren Eldad
Look, I am kind of a nerd. So it’s really just an incredible stringing together of enormous amounts of work. I have 26 different coaching accreditations, for example.
But if we go to the root, the heart of the matter that started getting me obsessed with human potential… with cognitive behavioral therapy… with the ideas that really impact our mindset, which influences our behavior…
There are two things. One may be a lot more surprising than the other.
The first is the first ever self-help book I reached for, and that is “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey.
If anybody out there read it 20 years ago — and I’m sure you did — read it again. It’s a really, really insightful, very impactful book that today I just keep around me. It’s all dog eared, with lots of great ideas just to pick up and wire yourself right.
And the second is, the television sitcom from the 90s, “Frasier”.
I loved those characters not only for their obsession with psychology, but also for their decency, their humanity, their curiosity.
And the arc of the characters, who by the end of the show become good grownups, really learnt about themselves and succumb to their own vulnerability.
So I think those two, in combination, had profound, huge, immeasurable impact on my life and my career,
Andrew Hryniewicz
Well that actually, brings out something that, is outside of the purview of the show. But the form of… this long form storytelling, that we’re seeing with these shows that go on for 6, 7, 10 years. It is a new art form.
Keren Eldad
And it’s not a basic art form, either. You and I have discussed our love for “Seinfeld” and for “Friends”, also sitcoms of the 90s.
I’m sure there are lots of parallels. They absolutely are, especially if you see them in their full form.
Andrew Hryniewicz
Okay, question number five, what free resource would you like to share with the audience, to help them on their journey?
Keren Eldad
Well, I could offer a lot of free resources. And many of them are, like my success templates, for example, or productivity mastermind, which are available on my website on the homepage.
But I think that the best thing that anybody can do is reach for the podcast. “The Coached Podcast” that answers people’s questions.
And really, there’s such a breadth of questions, that I’m sure you will hear what you are looking for, in other people’s questions.
Somebody asked it, and somebody received the answer. And I think that, that’s my personal version of giving a gift to the world, was creating this podcast.
It’s for anybody who, cannot do this work, isn’t fully invested in doing this work or can’t afford it, frankly, because executive coaching, especially at the level that serves Salesforce and Deutsche Bank is not for everybody, right?
Is a wonderful thing to reach for, that I hope will really change people’s game.
Andrew Hryniewicz
Okay, so those will be in the show notes.
And Question number six, the last question. What should I have asked you that I didn’t ask you?
Keren Eldad
I love that question. Because it kind of allows you to talk about what’s on your mind right now. And the question would be what is on your mind right now?
Has anything happened in the last 30, 60, 90 days, that’s really reverberating?
And for me — because of the onset of COVID and its really long term repercussions — I’ve become far more focused on feminism and the rise of women.
This is not something, to be very honest with you, that ever crossed my mind that much. I grew up in the 80s, with the movie “Working Girl”, assuming that things were cool.
And that I didn’t really have to think about this very much, unlike the Gloria Steinem first wave of feminism.
This year, the United States has gone back to 80s levels of participation in the workforce of women, with a million women leaving in just one month, for example, over the last few months.
And that’s had me starting to think, first of all self-actualization, about systemic inequities, and about how to solve these things for the “Female Superstar”. And from that perspective, that’s been very, very much on my mind lately.
And, it’s not a full form thought yet, but it’s going somewhere.
Andrew Hryniewicz
Well, that’s interesting because the bulk of my clients are corporate executive women, which is weird because I’m none of the above.
But most of them come through the door with some form of bullying, glass ceiling, power dynamics in the workplace, that is fueled by a trauma history. And, that’s why they’re resonating because I have a big trauma history that I’ve done a lot of work on.
So, at one point I just looked and “I don’t understand why I’m working with these particular people?” until I traced it back and said “Ah, there’s the…”
But some of the stories — you know them better than I do — but it’s staggering what women put up with…
Keren Eldad
And you know something so strange, Andrew, I don’t think I… because of my invulnerable stance in my former life, my “Go get him”, my “Figure this out”, my “Superstar Stance”. I really ignored that these things happened to me too.
It never registered as a story, that the first time I walked into my first C-suite job, because I’m a former C-suite executive.
The guy who was working for me, was sitting in the boardroom, he looked at me and said, “What, did you go to like, fashion school or something?”
That is an act of complete deprecation. And I didn’t even register that.
And then through the stories of women, especially in the last year, who were making these basic calculations, should I stay, or should I go?
I started to realize, “Wow, there’s a lot going on here. There’s a lot going on here”.
And we can really overcome it. But the only way we can ever overcome anything, as you know, as a trauma survivor, is by facing it. Not by skirting it.
Andrew Hryniewicz
Yeah, well, time to skirt the end…
That was perfect. Keren, thank you so much for your time.
Keren Eldad
Thank you so much.
Narrator
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