Mindfulness, Self-Compassion, and Modeling Positive Behavior: Insights from Tiffany Hardin
In this episode of the Practice Dirty podcast, I interview Tiffany Hardin, CEO of Gild Creative Group and Represent, an influencer marketing agency that supports BIPOC creators. She’s also the founder of Conscious Hustler.
Tiffany and I talk about her personal journey and how mindfulness and self-care intersect with her everyday life. We discuss the importance of setting boundaries, being bold, and living inside out. Tiffany shares her experiences in the music and advertising industries, and emphasizes the need to prioritize oneself and one's own needs.
Tiffany also shares how she finds mindfulness in her everyday life through the power of breathwork in order to maintain a connection to herself, and a higher power. She encourages women of color to stop negative self-talk and to recognize their own worthiness. She also emphasizes the importance of self-compassion and modeling positive behavior for others.
More About Tiffany
Gild Creative Group: https://www.gildcreativegroup.com/
Conscious Hustler: https://www.theconscioushustler.com/
Tiffany on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiffanymariehardin/
More About Macala & Practice Dirty
Download the Practice Dirty 30-Day Mindfulness Guide
Read The Full Transcript
Macala (00:05):
Hey everyone, it's Macala and I am back in the new year with a new episode of Practice Dirty. So this season, guys, I'm going to switch things up. I've done some stories, some q and a, but then I've also done a lot of the self-guided journey through nutrition and mindfulness with you. But this season I'm going to talk to some really amazing women of color and or people that specialize in working with women such as ourselves about just their personal stories and their journeys and how mindfulness and self-care interweave into their everyday lives.
Because let's face it, many of us are busy. We do all the things, maybe too many things, and we're just learning to step into ourselves and put ourselves first. So to kick off this new series, I am sitting here with Tiffany Hardin and I'm going to let Tiffany self-introduce as I usually do because no one can tell her story and who she is better than her. So Tiffany, can you please introduce yourself to the audience and tell them who you are?
Tiffany (01:41):
Absolutely. My name is Tiffany Harden, and I like to say German born southern bred and found myself in the north and moved back down to the south. I'm from many, many places and nobody can ever keep up. I mean, I can't keep up either, really, but a large part of who I am is rooted in who my parents are, and that is being a hard worker and found myself as a creative kid growing up between the south and the Midwest, fascinated with music and creative identity and decided instead of me pursuing that professionally, commercially, I was going to explore the business of music.
And so I started my career in the music business, and then I went into advertising all by accident a little bit and found a lot of what I would consider myself to be a genius at, which is people and relationships and believing that relationships are the ROI and intuition is a skillset, and that really was made plain by being in creative marketing. I'm the CEO of Guild Creative Group and represent, all of the work that I do is really meant to help amplify big ideas through relationship and connection. I think that goes back to my upbringing growing up in different places and having to build community and relationships quickly as a means of survival because we're tribal as a pupil. But I think my career has really just been a reflection of living inside out, so to speak. It's a little bit about me.
Macala (03:48):
Tell me a little bit more about living inside out.
Tiffany (03:51):
You know what I took that from, actually, I took that from my mom. So she had this bible that she writes in the margins in, and she passed it in 2020 unexpectedly. And I was reading, just looking through her Bible, just thumbing through because I think when you're in grief, you just want to see something that reminds you of your person. And seeing her handwriting just makes me feel warm. I think it's in Ephesians, a passage in the Bible spoke to her and she wrote “Live Inside Out.”
And I really resonated with that because living is an inside job. It is being in touch with self. It is understanding how you perceive things. It's understanding how you emote and how it makes you feel, how it makes others feel, how you relate to the world around you. And there's a saying that people hurt. People hurt people, and it's like, well, loving people love people.
So there's always the opposite. And I think if you live inside out, you're able to honor yourself first and know who you are. The more you're able to have compassion, empathy, respect for others and also for yourself. You can tell when someone's like, oh, that's a confident person, or that's an interesting person. Or you can tell when a light walks in the room because they're living inside out. I think it's something we should all try to do.
Macala (05:40):
I love that. One of the things that resonated with me in a recent interview that I heard with you is that you actively encourage women of color to be hungry and to be bold. What's your advice for showing up, being seen, and not being afraid of being almost the label of too much? How do you navigate that in your day to day?
Tiffany (06:05):
Man, the label of being too much. I feel like the labels are going to be there no matter what you do. The best you can do is always going to be not enough for somebody else. And there will always be some level of judgment. And I think that there's an opportunity for folks who recognize that and are saying, am I doing enough for myself and am I doing enough?
That puts me in integrity with myself. That is the goal. And then everything else is icing for everybody else. And I think for folks who want to stay hungry and stay bold, it's taking position. And I feel like there are so many ways in which it benefits others to have you be in an inferior position.
Not even the macro sense, but even in the micro sense, if I can get you to believe that your voice isn't as good as mine, as powerful as mine, if you and anything that you show up as isn't as good, then I own you and you don't need to be owned.
Your mind does not need to be owned. That generates anxiety and self-doubt. If your mind is not fortified, you'll continuously back into a position that causes you to believe that you don't need to step out and be bold. You don't need to take that risk, you don't need to. And that's a part for me that really befuddles me because I think there is that book in you.
There is that song in you. There is that business in you. There is that hobby in you that you've always wanted to take up, but you're like, “What are people going to think?” I think that as long as we continue to be hungry for our own lives and the brilliance of our own lives, the HD version of our lives, then that's enough for us to be bold.
I think that what social media has us a little messed up in is thinking that it has to be out loud and for everybody to see you got to do it for you. I have a friend who literally just bought a horse and a new car, and she did it for her. She didn't do it for the gram. I love looking at people like that as part of a North star because what they're also signaling is they're living inside out. They're doing what they want to do.
And there's so many of us that are like, “Ooh, I don't know.” And we need more of those friends, more of those people around us that it's like, man, if they can do it, I can do it. And it doesn't have to be this wild big thing. It could be that they self-published their book, girl, they redecorated their office, which I decided my present to myself is going to make my space feel great to me and designed for me. All those little things that support being hungry and being bold, it's again, goes back to living inside out.
Macala (09:51):
What I am hearing in that from the inside out, is deciding to live in a way that's meaningful to you. So it doesn't have to be what commonplace society says. So if you want the horse in the truck, the house, cool. But if you're someone who’s like me, prefers to be a little small and nomadic, your little tiny house in the middle of nowhere is okay too. How did you, Tiffany, find what your true north since it is a little counter indicative to what mainstream society says that you should want to have?
Tiffany (10:28):
If the question is how did I find it? I think I found energy before I found the thing. The energy was freedom. I knew I wanted freedom, and as long as somebody else controlled my time or had expectations, I wasn't going to be free. And so that was the North star. How can I get free?
Macala (12:20):
It sounds like that the desire for freedom started the process of setting boundaries on your time. How did you do that and how can others start to think that way?
Tiffany (12:34):
I mean, it takes time because I feel like in work it feels a little bit easier for me versus my personal life. I'm just such a people pleaser when it comes to that. But with work, we don't call it people pleasing. We call it just having a hard worker and high integrity, a hustler. That's what we call it when you don't have boundaries at work. But at work, it took some time because I was also in a system where you had to pay your dues, so you had to,
Macala (13:09):
Yeah, we both were in music. So I know what you're saying
Tiffany (13:12):
“Pay your dues” is part of the process. And so I was willing to pay my dues, so to speak, but then there was a point in which I was not willing to, and there was a point in which I said, you know what? I can do this better, faster, stronger in the way I want to do it, and I won't have someone breathing down my neck or constantly trying to undermine my process. And so I think for me, I started to build unconscious boundaries.
But the problem with that was that whenever they were stomped on, I would have an attitude and not be able to communicate what was happening. I was just like, “Fuck this, I'm out.” And I think what I've learned over time, and especially running a business, is communicating my boundary around my time and what is possibly not possible when I am on let's say PTO, who gets to have access to me, it's like, if you really need me, really need me talk to my assistant so she can help me out.
Macala (15:56):
So you've said that communication is part of your value system. What are some of the strategies that you have that you feel could help other women that maybe are having issues and communicating their needs in their workplace or at home so that they can start to effectively set up some boundaries, but maybe change the way that dynamics are working so everyone can be served and they're not always on the giving end, they're also on the receiving end. This
Tiffany (16:23):
Is tough because this is work, because it's work and it's uncomfortable. There's an incredible book called “Find Boundaries, Know Peace” by Dr. Major Webb. It's so good. And I think because we're on as people who are relational to others, we have, we're on the receiving end and we need to be also on the giving end. Someone will tell you their boundary and then you also will have to tell somebody they're yours. I think there are some scenarios where you can try to do things to stay in your power.
Where in your life can you place a boundary for yourself, even say, “I no longer accept things that I ordered that are not meeting my expectation based on my previous experience here?” Start small there and help yourself by finding language. Everything for me has always been around words and language. And I find myself the most frustrated when I have an emotion and don't have language for it.
And so therefore can't communicate because what communication is a part of my value system. And so when I'm not able to communicate, I feel like I'm abandoning. And so that is never a place where you want to be. If I'm not communicating, does self-abandoning my values make me a better person? No, quite frankly, it creates resentment. And if you're not careful, you end up resenting someone else. Or worse, you might end up presenting yourself. And that is something you can't do, you can't live with.
Macala (19:32):
We've talked about boundaries, values, and dialogue as developing dialogue and is there a point where if something can't be communicated, boundaries can't be established, that it's just time to give yourself the grace to walk away?
Tiffany (19:52):
That's going to be the hardest thing that you're going to do. It's hard to give grace to yourself, but self-compassion and it's required. It's required or else you're going to be living an angry life, a bitter life with everyone else and yourself. And so when it comes time for making a decision, because you've seen patterns to make a decision to walk away from a circumstance, a relationship, a job, a whatever, allowing yourself to your point in grace, but also allowing yourself to process through what made this not tenable in your life and what value system is it connected to so that you're able to actually move forward with peace. The goal is peace. People do this thing where they have some sort of, it's kind of like rebellion.
Macala (22:13):
And what I find interesting in there is that “maybe it's not them, maybe it's you”. And I think that there's two sides to that coin. Maybe there's a piece that you do need to work on, but have you in your own journey kind of ever come to a point, and I can't make this a super specific question, so bear with me in my articulation of it, but where you're like, you've done great work, you've gone deep, you've kind of dug into the discomfort and the pain and the working on becoming a better communicator, working on better setting boundaries. And then you've realized that there's something in you, related to your value system, where you're like, “You know what? I know if I kept working on this, I might be able to achieve X. But then on the flip side, I don't want to do that.”
It's not coming from a place of a wound, it's coming from a place of wholeness. So because I'm unwilling to change this about myself and in order to accomplish something that maybe would be better for someone else, but not for me, that you gave yourself the grace to say that. Maybe it's a case of, I know that if I were a little softer and I coddled this one influencer a little more, they'd be a part of our agency. But man, that is exhausting and takes a lot of my mental energy and my physical time. So I can't nurture someone in that way because it's really appeasing the ego and it's not serving myself.
Tiffany (23:59):
I have definitely been in a position where I've had to make those calls and make those calls for myself. And what's also interesting is when you make the mental decision, the energetic decision, things start to just happen anyway. I think that's probably one of the largest lessons that I've learned now in a business relationship.
In a business context, clients get fired, it happens. I've had to have conversations with a client where it wasn't always the friendliest expression. And I was like, “listen, you're not going to talk to my team that way.” And we had an understanding. I think that in a business context, when you have to have the conversation that this client is no longer working for our business, this client is exhausting, this will be the last you make a decision, this will be the last time we accept this type of client.
In my case, what we did was we took literally wrote traits out of the clients that we wanted, what they acted like how we want, how we knew we wanted to feel in the relationship, and what watch out signs, what yellow flags and red flags we had with some other clients and said, alright, when we are engaging with folks and they already have this sort of flag, this sort of beware sign for us, these traits that are like beware, we already know probably not going to be the best fit for us.
And by the way, I don't care how much the money is because it's not going to be worth it at the end of the day to stress. And by the way, if I'm stressed out, my team is stressed out, it starts from the top. It's like if I'm on their butt because I know this client is extra and ridiculous, then they're going to feel pressure and not pressure to perform because they're performing in excellence, but pressure in a different kind of way in a micromanaged kind of way. And that's not the position I want to be in, and that's the position I want my team to be in energetically. It's not the highest level of our performance or energy. So I've been there, I've seen both sides personally and professionally of letting folks go.
Macala (27:36):
And what came after that? I mean you can even speak in terms of energy because when you refocus your energy, so many amazing things can happen pretty quickly. Even with a loss of a client that was worth big dollars or the loss of a really significant personal relationship, and after you kind of went through it, what kind of happened once you cleared that space?
Tiffany (28:04):
Once the space is cleared, one the lightness, it's like you feel something coming off of you. There's a weight that comes off of you. But also I would say there's an element of if not this better, God show me how good it can get. And in that energy, I love that. Show me how good it can get because with that energy, it's like you're able to say and able to be available to see the opportunities. One of the prayers that I always see is God giving the vision to see the opportunities in front of me and the discernment to not be distracted by nonsense.
That is something that when you're going through that process and you've already made a decision because you've been clear, when you've cleared that and you've made that decision, it's like the universe is saying, thank you for clearing that. Here's all this other stuff we wanted to bring to your attention.
Macala (30:57):
So what do you do to maintain your center? Whether it's a daily ritual or a weekly practice, how do you bring yourself back to the present moment?
Tiffany (31:08):
Breathwork. Going into my breath and centering into my body automatically. There is something that happens with the prior contact in. I think it's your sympathetic nerves and it all just expands for you and just calms your body down. But also there's an opportunity for you to be able to say, “Hey, I need to be able to clear this space to think.” And so for me, when I'm frustrated or energetic, it's very, very hard for me to think. I'd rather be angry than frustrated. Because when I'm frustrated, I don't think I'm just in a zone of anger.
My practice has always been in breathwork, coming back to my breath. I am a child of God, and so I genuinely am very, very keen on speaking to God. I think I told you I lost my mother recently. So I am very keen on speaking to my mother and asking her to show me my blind spots as she's always been able to do. And I think between those few things, it's allowed me a sense of peace to know that it's going to be okay no matter what the circumstance.
Macala (34:51):
Tiffany, what is your advice to the women listening that they can stop doing right now?
Tiffany (35:09):
I like to say stop the negative self talk, it does not serve anybody. Also stop playing so small, don’t say “my little business, my little side, my little speech, my little,” ain't nothing little about any of the things that you're doing.
It is a privilege and believing that you're not worthy. Whatever color you are, whatever size you are, whatever job you have, whatever age you are, whatever friends you have or don't have, you are worthy. You are worthy. And the only one that doesn't believe it is you. So stop it.
Macala (36:21):
And I always like to end by asking, is there anything that you want to share with someone else that I didn't ask you or we didn't talk about today?
Tiffany (36:30):
Well, if I had to share something else that we didn't talk about today, I think it would be just for women, especially creative women, that are trying to live a good life and be a good friend and be a good sister, and be a good wife and be a good this and be a good that. Just imagine what you would say to someone else when you're not feeling it.
Have some self-compassion for the stage in the season that you're in right now, because you are modeling something for someone, whether that is in how you behave, how you handled something, how you work, how you play, how you whatever. But you're modeling that for a friend. You're modeling that for a child. You're modeling that for your coworkers. And I think when you continue to have some self-compassion, you can also realize that you're not just living this life for yourself.
You should please yourself, of course, but know that we're all connected. We're all connected, and when we're all connected, and when you're able to realize that, you're able to also say, when you think about legacy, you can say, you know what?
I can leave this world knowing I was loving, I was kind, and I did my best, and trust and belief. People feel that, see that and know that. I think just remembering that you're good. You have to have that self-compassion as we go through this. You're modeling that every day. You're modeling things every day. Yeah.
Macala (38:17):
Well, that reminds me of Dr. Maya Angelou's statement of, “People will forget what you did for them, but they'll always remember how you made them feel.”
Tiffany (38:26):
I live on that. I live that.
