How to Trust Yourself More Than Other People’s Opinions with Rosie Milsom

I am so excited today because we have a special guest all the way from the UK. Her name is Rosie Milsom, and she is so aligned with everything that I do. Everything that she does is around self-worth, showing you how to trust yourself, how to stop guessing, how to take actions and move your life and your business forward. And she combines neuroscience, which you know I also love, psychology, and practical coaching.

Welcome to the Unblocked Woman podcast. I'm Amy Sanders. For years, I believed the next level of my life and business would come from a better strategy, working harder, figuring out that perfect plan. But eventually, I saw the real truth.

The biggest ceiling in our lives is not strategy, it's identity. The patterns we don't see, the subtle ways we play small, the version of ourselves that we keep defaulting back to even when we know we're capable of more. This podcast is where we bring you and bring those patterns into the light. We talk about identity, leadership, growth, and what it actually takes to become the woman who can truly hold the life and business she wants.

No fluff, no performance, just honest conversation about stepping fully into your power. So go ahead and subscribe and follow the show. And remember, the moment you see the pattern, you can finally break it. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Unblocked Woman podcast.

I am so excited today, because we have a special guest all the way from the UK. Her name is Rosie Milsom, and she is so aligned with everything that I do. When we met, we were like, our first conversation was like, my, we couldn't, because whatever I said, she's like, me too, that's exactly how I feel. That's how I coach.

And she's all about helping you with your self-worth. She's a success coach, and she also has her own podcast. Her own podcast is called the Self-Worth School Podcast, which I love. So everything, everything that she does is around self-worth, showing you how to trust yourself, how to stop guessing, how to take actions and move your life and your business forward.

And she combines neuroscience, which you know, I also love psychology and practical coaching. So Rosie, welcome to the Unblocked Woman. We are so excited to have you here and just have you share your knowledge and wealth of wisdom. Thank you, Amy.

It's lovely to be here. Thanks for having me on. Yes. So Rosie, tell us what landed you here, your backstory, and a little bit about what you're doing now.

Yeah, will do. So I was a fundraiser by trade. That's what I, that's kind of my other world. So I work as a fundraising consultant and trainer in the, you know, the nonprofit sector.

And when I was about 31, I started trying to have children with my then husband. And it basically wasn't working out. And it ended up being kind of a 10-year journey to have children. And we didn't actually have children.

And we didn't actually get our kind of happy ending in terms of having a child. But what it kind of sent me to, in the midst of, I can't remember if it might have been after my first round of IVF, maybe my second, I'd, you know, tried everything physically I could do to have children. And I thought, if I'm doing everything physically and ticking off and it's not working, I'm going to see what else might work. And I came across the world of personal development mindset and particularly law of attraction.

And I think I thought, well, if I can't do it this way, I'm going to try and manifest my baby. And obviously, you know, spoiler alert, that didn't work. But I believe what worked out, what was meant to work out. But discovering all of these principles and the power of like your mind to create a reality.

And it just gave me a sense of like power and purpose that I'd not had for, you know, quite some time. And with all of this going on, it really helped me to deal with what I was going through. But when it started to, become clear that, you know, I probably wasn't going to have children. It made me question, okay, well, if I'm not creating my legacy or I'm not leaving my legacy, you know, three children or the way that I thought maybe I was leaving it, what do I want the rest of my life to be about?

What legacy do I want to leave? And I'd always kind of unofficially coached like my friends, they would often come to me for advice. You know, I really enjoyed kind of training. I'd already become a trainer by that point.

I really enjoyed doing that kind of stuff. And, I took an online course around identifying your purpose, doing a lot of self-awareness and discovery work, which, you know, I know that we both really love. And it directed me towards becoming a coach. And so I found a certification online that was aligned with how I wanted to coach people.

So a mixture of that kind of neuroscience, belief reframing, but also an element of spirituality as well. And I've gone on to get kind of various coaching diplomas since. But yeah, I found one, launched, you know, studied, got certified, launched my business on social media a few months later and got my first paying clients, you know, one-to-one about six weeks after that. Eventually went, you know, I launched that as a side hustle.

And then as I started to see that there was, you know, legs in this business, you know, I went part-time in my charity job. And then in the beginning of 2024, I went full-time in both my coaching and as I say, still do a little bit of charity consulting on the side. And when I first started, I thought about becoming a coach and I was certifying. I thought I was going to be maybe like a purpose and career coach.

And that is an element of what I do. But what I noticed through the practice clients that I worked with as part of my certification and my first paying clients, no matter what they came to me for, whether it was that they wanted to find, you know, the love of their life or they wanted to take the next step in their career or they just wanted to feel better about themselves and their lives and get a bit more direction. At the root of the problem that was keeping them stuck was I'm not good enough on one level or another. Obviously everyone's got their own nuance to that.

And that's what made me think, oh, do you know what? I feel like if you can address this problem with self-worth and pretty much every single woman I'm seeing now and hearing about and working with has it, then that kind of unlocks everything else. And so that's why I decided to niche down into self-worth coaching. And then over the years, that's developed into a business.

And I think that's what I've been doing. I've worked into kind of specifically working with either female founders, creatives or change makers, women, perhaps maybe in the nonprofit sector or anybody that's maybe got a mission to make the world a better place. Those are now the people that I work with. Basically very much like a lot of us, a lot of coaches do working with who you used to be and helping them to really live their purpose, to close the gap between their actual potential and how they're showing up so that they can make their dreams happen.

Because I truly believe that self-worth is the missing link between what women dream of and what they actually do. And if you strengthen your self-worth, then you can make the kind of the dreams that you have happened, the impact that you wanna make, the income that you wanna make and the legacy that you wanna leave. So yeah, that's how I got to where I am today. Well, thank you.

That was a lot. You have been through a lot and that's what's so fun is that, we're always here in this space because of our past, right? Like this didn't work, why? Or that did work, let's go show the world why it worked.

Yeah. So today I know that we are going to talk about how to trust yourself more than other people's opinions, which a lot of women struggle with. But before we dive into that, why do you think, what is your take on why women, especially women, think that we're not worthy? Like, what is it?

What is the thing that's making us think this? I think obviously everyone's situation is different and it comes up for different reasons, but I think there's a combination of things. One of them will be kind of general societal messaging about how women are supposed to be, what they can expect. You know, there's statistics that show that women that have the same qualifications and experience as men, to say they got like the same degree, same work experience, whatever, up to up until a certain point, will have expectations for themselves that are 50% lower than those of men.

That's like a hardcore programming of, you know, what we're told that we're able to expect. You know, women aren't, you know, strong leaders. And if you're seen that way, then you're, you know, a card hole. But there are so many kind of societal messages that are there.

But I think that there's part of that, there's that conditioning and how we're kind of brought up to, you know, be the good girl, help others. You know, we're kind of said, these are the qualities that are really desirable in women. And these, these are the qualities that are really desirable in men. And then there's things that, you know, we go through, usually in childhood that, you know, experiences that we have that tell us that, you know, we're not good enough.

And it can be anything from, you know, a teacher saying something to you at school about, you know, not very clever or, you know, something along those lines. Or it could be, you know, being bullied and therefore thinking that you're not likeable. And a lot of my clients don't realize when we dive into this stuff, how much they're, you know, they're so surprised because I'll just ask them what seems like a few innocent questions about when did you first, you know, notice a problem with school? When did, you know, when did these stories come up?

What, and they'll go like, well, there was this one time when this happened or this happened and then we kind of unpick the pattern and the pieces. And then they, they're like, wow, I didn't realize how much, you know, or their parents said this, or this is what they saw happen to their parents. And they're like, wow, I didn't realize how much my, my childhood had like instilled this, you know, belief in ourselves. So yeah, usually I think it's either things that we hear or things that we experience and that can be different to different people.

But generally I find it makes women fall into two camps. Either I'm not liked or lovable enough, or I'm not kind of smart, clever, capable enough. Yeah. It makes me so sad because women are amazing.

You, men are amazing. You're amazing too, but I really feel like if women stepped into their power. Yeah. The world would be totally different.

Yeah. And it wouldn't be like, you know, crazy feminist driven world, you know, in a bad way, not that there's anything wrong with feminism whatsoever. But yeah, there's just so many positive things that women could be given back. So many amazing qualities.

And that's like a big part of what drives me to do what I do and help women to bring these things to life. Because like you say, imagine what the world would be like. Imagine how much less pain and struggle and how many more like amazing things, services. I dunno, just how the world would feel.

Yeah. One of my favorite things is literally interviewing women. I love it. Like as part of my work, I'm like, it's kind of my favorite thing.

When I get to talk to someone who feels similarly as I do, and we just get to like, to bounce ideas off each other and stuff. Okay. So coming back to our topic today. Why is it that you think that women also struggle to just make their own decisions?

I mean, at the root of it is a lack of, you know, self-trust. Like the clue is kind of in episode title. Yeah. Because knowing what you want to do, isn't the same as actually trusting yourself to do it.

And I think this is where people get stuck or women, you know, women get stuck. They don't trust their own opinions enough. they don't trust their own expertise enough i ran a visibility challenge last week with a big group of female founders and we had a whatsapp group in order to share all of our insights in it and the same kind of ones were coming up again and again you know people feeling like if i'm you know what if i say this thing and people judge me or they say oh she doesn't know what i'm doing or actually it does work and they come in and i don't end up delivering and there's such a gap i think between the reality of how you know how good these women are and how much they're fearing judgment of other people or kind of trusting what these other people are thinking and even though they have this evidence that that actually you know they are extremely capable they can do the things that they want they're kind of waiting for other people to tell them that they're good enough that their ideas are good enough before they kind of do things and they follow through i'm sure it's you know patterns that you see a lot of the time as well you yeah so with you in your life i mean i know that yes i'm a coach yes i do a lot of this work but i find myself falling short all the time or i didn't say that very well i find myself falling short or seeing myself in the oam loop and of course it's great because i have the tools to get myself out yeah but obviously i'm imperfect and i'm always learning and growing how are you finding yourself in this work and where has it been for you and how are you like your week so i'm i'm doing a lot of stuff and i'm doing a lot of stuff and i'm doing a lot of wrong so i'm still doing a lot of more so i'm doing a lot of things but i'm still doing a lot of things and i'm still doing a lot of things have you seen yourself grow if that yeah absolutely so I think yeah like you said we're only human and I always say to my clients as well like I do not expect and I do not want you to expect from me that you are just going to be like 100% you know confident always moving through your ideas because that's not really what self-trust or self-worth is it's more no matter what happens I am worthy I am good enough and self-trust is that idea that you can make a decision follow through and then you're going to handle it whatever happens like that's self-trust and that you're not going to make it mean something about you or something negative about you or give it like a permanent meaning or definition that says you know this this is why we can't do these things and so you know and this is something that I've you know been guilty of in the past myself you know when we don't kind of trust our kind of opinions our ideas our expertise quite as much as maybe we should that's when we're you know asking three people for their opinion before we make a decision. Whether that's a business decision or a life decision you know self-trust falls across so many categories but it might be kind of overthinking it might be like brainstorming with Chachi BT like 10 million times to try and say but what about this thing but what about that thing you know we could kind of whilst AI can be super helpful in some ways I think you can also fall down like quite a rabbit hole especially you know if it's kind of trying to people please you a little bit but you know the one of the biggest reasons women stay stuck is is that they don't trust their opinions or decisions and so they don't trust their opinions or decisions and so they are trying to outsource them to kind of someone else to say yes you should choose that one or you should move forward with that or yes you should wear this or this is you know the offer that you should go with next and like I say I definitely experienced that to a degree you know when I'm thinking you know what do you know what do women want what what are the you know the things that my clients want in fact I got into a bit of a loop not that long ago in terms of thinking about what freebie I wanted to give next to you know offer value and bring you know value to the new people into my world and when I was on a call with my own coach and when I was also applying the things I kind of know and say myself and often you know that there is that moment where you need to do that it's like well if you just make a decision trust yourself to make a decision follow through get the evidence you know to otherwise and like I say trust that no matter what happens you've made that decision you follow through you've got the results and then you kind of you know tweak it and eventually when I thought about it I wrote I wrote down like five things that I could have done so sometimes it's like trying to just stop stop trying to come up with the perfect answer because I think ultimately that's that's what we're trying to do right we create that sense of certainty of like I do know the right answer because if I choose wrong or it all goes wrong then it's going to prove you know fill in the blank here you know that I don't I'm not clever enough or people don't want what I want or I'm not going to be able to make it and so you know and we're trying to get those answers or opinions of someone else or we're trying to finally come up with an answer that we're like we're 100% within our gut that's what we're looking for we're looking for that this certainty that it's not going to fail that I don't need to be scared and and that certainty is never going to come you know if you're waiting for it it's never going to come what you need is that self-trust to say I know enough to make a decision or have an opinion and I trust myself to handle whatever comes next after I make that decision yeah I started laughing when you mentioned AI because it's what so many of us are doing right we go to AI and ask them or ask AI whatever and I started laughing because of just my situation last night so last night I'm in my bed and I get on chat so I am running the Sydney marathon in a few weeks however and I just ran a half marathon on Friday and searched as part of my training but I also have been healing from a sickness and a hamstring injury now the reason why I'm telling you all this is because my training has not been normal and so I went to chat to figure out like a training plan that will get me through the finish line but I'm not going to be on my best like it's I'm not going to do performance and that's okay anyway my whole point here was as you're saying this I'm giggling because I knew what runs I needed to do this week I did not need chat to tell me however I got in like a fight with chat last night because it was telling me what I should do and I knew that it wasn't right for me but I was like trying to listen and finally I'm like guess what I actually know what runs I'm supposed to do this week why am I dependent on this AI and so and the reason why I'm saying that is because we do that right and we do know what's best for us if we'll just stop long enough and pause and listen and chat can help us other people can help us but it's when we don't decide for ourselves which is what I was getting so frustrated about just last night yeah I think that's such a good observation actually because like you say a lot of the time if if it's giving you an answer whether it's chat to bt or actually even if it's somebody else you know like an actual human that you've answered if whatever answer they give you is like I wish they'd given me the other one or you know like you're not on board with it then that suggests to you that actually you did already know the answer you just were trying to shortcut it or like you say you weren't kind of trusting it and if whatever comes up whether it's chat to bt whether it's somebody else whether it's your coach like your mom whatever if you're feeling really resistant to that I mean there is always that resistance of if it's something that is putting you outside of your comfort zone or something that you don't want to do then obviously that that's a different kind of resistance but if actually you kind of maybe gave it a couple of options or you gave it a bit of information and then whatever it comes back with that you're like no I don't think that's right I don't think that's right that's actually what I'm saying I don't think that's actually what I want to do I want to do more of this then that's probably a sign that you do know and you're perhaps just not really listening to yourself yeah and with AI now I feel like we need to be even better about making our decisions use it to help us sure it gives us really great ideas but at the end like we do know if we'll listen okay so you also talk about though and about why self-trust creates freedom you dive a little bit deeper into what that means I think I think a lot of us when we are looking to create something whether that's um like a business some kind of creation there's something else that you're wanting to do in your life I think what a lot of us are looking for is that sense of freedom or or certainly you know a sense of peace and I think peace often comes with that sense of freedom and I think that's a really good point I think that's a really good point and that can mean like freedom in terms of your life I think sometimes you can feel very free when you are doing something that is very aligned with your values with your purpose you know that's bringing you a lot of joy um or you're you know you're creating a life around your business say for example for me my sense of freedom is you know not ever having to ask anybody for time off you know being able to build a life and a business around like the time and hours that I want to choosing the work that I want to actually do that to me is a lot of freedom but also being able to go and travel all of the time so there's that side of freedom but there's also that kind of without sounding cheesy about it like that that kind of inner freedom because when you don't trust yourself you kind of put yourself in a in a bit of a cage like of your own making you know where you are constantly at the mercy of these um you know these thoughts these fears these questions about do I actually know best or do I need to defer this to somebody who knows more than I do or or whatever you know putting yourself in this cage it costs a lot it costs a lot of you know opportunities that you might go down it costs you a lot of confidence because you know if you don't have that that self-trust and and you don't trust yourself to make your own opinions and you're constantly outsourcing your confidence and people realize I never like to assume sometimes when you're in this world you can make a lot of assumptions about what you think people know and don't that you know that confidence often comes and that self-trust comes from following through as opposed to feeling like you know everything before you move so it does cost you that confidence because if you never are following through or you feel like you do lose momentum and all that you can't trust your own decisions and opinions then you're not going to feel very confident and then you're going to lose momentum and potentially then you're going to lose money because you're not going to feel very confident because you're you know holding off on launches or applying for the you know the role or whatever it is that you want to do or make the investment you know whatever um and you're going to miss out on joy as well because every time you're ignoring your intuition you're kind of keeping yourself in this little cage of saying I can only do things when I know enough I'm good enough etc etc but then you're also giving yourself a benchmark of somewhere that you're never going to be able to reach and at one point you have to say well who knows what you're going to do better than me who knows my thoughts better than me who knows my opinions better than me who knows my values better than me who knows my mission better than me nobody does nobody knows that more than you and each time you ignore your intuition and instead try and get that confirmation from you know other people you teach yourself not to trust it not to trust you every single time um you know when you choose to ignore the evidence that tells you actually you do know enough you do have the qualifications you do have the experience you have got the you know client recommendation testimonial you know colleague recommendation on linkedin whatever it is that you do you know you have got all of these evidence you've got evidence that you've made decisions before that you have been brave that you've shown up um you're just choosing not to make it count and you're choosing you know other people's opinions or kind of outside results or attaching results to like meaning to other results as something that you're going to like validate or put over your own opinions yeah which just keeps you from the trust exactly and then you end up in that little loop you end up in that little loop i know i just like to like in just even less words if we can make the decision and then trust if it's the wrong like say we make a mistake yeah that we can now make okay we made a mistake and it's okay i'm still alive nothing happened to me i'm still here it's okay i'm still here i'm still here i'm still here i'm still here and now i'm going to make another decision like just just that you know and as we do that we breed confidence but if we do the opposite then we take ourselves away from the self-trust from the confidence and the and essentially your own self-worth your own love yeah yeah absolutely the more you put off those decisions rather than like you say being able to make it and say you know whatever happens like you say i've you know i've got my back i'll use it as as data rather than a stick to beat myself with if it doesn't work out and you know we're talking a lot about how it might not work out and i think that's because you know our brains have that negativity bias we're always thinking about what could go wrong rather than what can go right because we're we're trained to avoid pain more than we're trained to chase pleasure so it makes sense to a degree but another one of my values is optimism um you know i'm a absolute pain probably less so to my clients but maybe to my family and friends you know how much i pushed the optimism agenda because i truly believe the way in which you kind of experience and and view the world and optimism is a you know it's a learned behavior it's something that you train it's not something that you're you either boy you know i'm either an optimist or a pessimist it's not it's not part of your personality trait or dna it's it's something that you choose it's a behavior that you choose so yeah we don't always need to be thinking about well if it goes wrong i trust myself but that's probably where the like the second momentum is going to come from is saying i'm going to do it i believe that i know enough to to make this decision i trust myself to make this decision and i trust myself to use the result in a way that is going to support me and the work that i'm working towards yeah i'm laughing i always have thoughts come up as i interview people about different things and i'm the same my family laughs they they almost make fun of me about my optimism when it comes yeah and it's fine it's i don't care i actually think it's great but we we i'm laughing about it it's not funny one of my aunts died like just about a week and a half ago and it but it was time for her was it was a good thing for her obviously we were all sad and i got to see technically she's not my blood aunt but she was like my aunt because of how our lives were you know she helped raise me etc and and so her kids all of us are in the room as she passes and i was like well hey guys at least we all get to be together right now at least we all get to hang out i haven't seen you in forever you know and they just like my sister's like of course that's what you're saying right now but i'm like even in those moments you can find the you can be optimistic right like yeah it's like when we're in a room with someone that's just passed but i do love that you said it it's something that you can train because your brain can always be rewired yeah absolutely always it can always change neuroscience is the thing that's the thing that's the thing that's the thing that and your thoughts don't have to be something that we keep holding on to we can continually change yeah choose to let them go yeah choose to let them go okay so in closing i know we've talked about a lot of things what is something that you want to lead the audience with in addition to what do you believe an unblocked woman is for you okay so first thing that well the thing that i would like to leave them with is that i think that i think that i think that i think that i is really that that message that i spoke about at the uh you know at the beginning in terms of self-worth and how much it's key because self-worth and self-trust go you know hand in hand and that is if you are somebody that is struggling to make decisions to you know struggling with consistency momentum you know needing that reassurance second guessing yourself let's say the self-worth work is the thing that is going to to change that your self-worth is the the missing link between what you do and what you're doing and what you're doing and what you're doing and what you're doing you don't need more information or strategies that you know similar to what we were just saying there self-trust is a choice you know it's a choice that you have to make over and over again but like say it's not it's not something that is reserved for you know people that have done 10 years worth of work or that have always had perfect decisions or anything like that it's a choice that you can start making literally later today and it's a series of small choices every time that you follow through every time that you can start making a decision that you're going to keep your word to yourself every time you choose to listen to your voice instead of someone else's you are building that self-trust like a muscle so self-trust is a choice if it's something that you struggle with then self-worth work is the key for you um and then in terms of what an unblocked person um is or what that means to me is i guess you know somebody that has the awareness of what has blocked them in the first place and someone who is either either ready or doing or has done the work to strengthen their self-worth so that they can achieve the kind of purpose that they want to do because i really believe that is the foundation that you know all women need for a happy and successful life and if you want are unblocked it means that you've you know kind of removed the stuff that is making you feel like your self-worth is negotiable it isn't there and when you're unblocked so much flows in and out of your life and and that is across like relationships business work health whatever that is so you know an unblocked woman is is someone that has taken off those blinkers you know put down that rucksack of rocks um you know moved those filters that you are experiencing the world through at the moment and let's say she isn't necessarily you know 100 perfect confidence 100 of the time but she's unblocked to the point that the you know the real kind of purpose and joy um everything else that she's meant to experience moves through her a lot more easily yeah i love it we're not perfect but being blocked just means that you are being authentically you you're rising above the conditioning that has been that you've been taught is real that's not yeah yeah absolutely well thank you so much for being on the podcast it's been a pleasure having you is there any last anything else you want to share before we end in addition to of course we want to know all the things on how to get a hold of you and and what you're working on yeah absolutely um nothing but say in terms of messages um you know if it's resonated with anybody today you know do you want to share anything else with anybody today come say hi i tend to hang out on instagram and linkedin i'll share that info with with amy you can come along come and see um what i do larger with women either through my confidence cult membership um or one-to-one coaching also do some in-person coaching and workshops but generally over in the uk so yeah if anybody wants to either just drop me a message and let me know what resonated with them or is interested in finding out more than they can come say hi okay perfect we'll have those show notes below so make sure you check her out and you connect with her on instagram and all the socials and with that guys so we will be back here next week with another episode on the unblocked woman thanks for tuning in we'll see you next week bye okay before you go don't let this become another episode that you listened to loved and then did nothing with take what came up for you today and bring it into the mirror bring it the decision that you're overthinking the conversation you're avoiding the pattern that you keep running through your mind and then bring it into the mirror and bring it into the mirror repeating or simply say here's what's happening help me see what i can't see the mirror knows your patterns your enneagram your human design and it remembers the work you've already done so the reflection is personal to you find the mirror in the show notes or at amysanders.