Never give up on yourself. Stay with self. Learn to self soothe, nurture and inspire yourself. Understand that you are responsible for your experience. Take ownership of it. That is how you take your power back. As you can begin to take your life back.
The Fear of Failure is one of the most common restraints that holds people back from pursuing great ideas. Imagine if we could become totally free from the fear of failure. Imagine what we could then manifest and create. In this interview series, we are talking to leaders who can share stories and insights from their experience about “Becoming Free From the Fear of Failure.” As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Rev. Patty Ferreira.
Meet Rev. Patty Ferreira, also known as The Awakened BossLady Coach, a highly experienced mentor with over 30 years of experience.
Patty is an African Latina from Harlem and grandmother. Her mission is to empower women to break free from derailing behaviors, tap into their inner power, and create a life of true abundance and fulfillment.
Patty’s approach draws on her diverse background as an intuitive priestess, channel, breathwork facilitator, energy healer, and business strategist. With this unique blend of strategy, mindset, and energy work, she provides powerful methods and practical tools that help her clients tap into profound transformation and quantum success.
Her favorite clients are highly conscious, accomplished boss ladies ready to elevate their lives, businesses, and relationships to an even higher trajectory.
Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’?
I was born in Harlem in the mid 60’s. My parents were immigrants. Didn’t know much English when I was very young.. Imagine being your parents translator at age of 7 or 8. I think it’s safe to say I grew up real fast. Which made me choose very early that I was going to make something out of myself.
My decision and a few underlying family messages sharing their expectations of me created the over achiever that ran the first phase of my life.
She got herself out of Harlem into corporate America and up the executive ladder.
The turning point came way into my 40’s. When I started to realize I had climbed all the way up the wrong ladder. I understand today how my early life was already fueling my current passion to work with women leaders.
I know what it’s like to climb the wrong mountain, feel unsatisfied and contemplate just settling. I want women to believe that starting over does not mean starting from the beginning and understand that they can have both success and fulfillment. Especially when they are passionate about their professional identity. That is a key reason for my Awakened BossLady Success Circle.
Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
Early into entrepreneurship I learned that many of the skills and knowledge that made me successful in corporate were not the ones that would necessarily accelerate my growth in entrepreneurship.
The employee mindset was not going to cut it.
My first takeaway was, the value of a soul inventory and assessment of my strengths, weakness and opportunities — Identifying the skills that were transferable
– The behaviors & beliefs that required unlearning and relearning
– And defining the best way to bridge the gaps.
I understood very early on that it was not as much about mental intelligence as it was about emotional intelligence.
Entrepreneurship is a very internal trajectory. It’s more about what you’re made of than what you know. I’ve learned that strategy does not drive mindset or energy. It’s the other way around. My work is about introducing women to the Power Trio of Success and helping them add the missing pieces to their success plan and start from the inner build
1. ��Align their energy
2. ��Master their mindset
3. ��Perfect the strategy
4. ��Navigate with agility
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Self Awareness — A teacher years ago taught me about the three realms of knowing as human beings. 1. We know, what we know — The list of things you consciously know.
We know what we don’t know — The list of things we consciously know we don’t know. For example, I know I don’t speak Japanese. I know it’s a language and know I don’t know it.
Then he went on the share. Have you ever thought about the things you don’t know, you don’t know? The things I’m completely blind to. That moment I knew I wanted to be an open minded, eternal student that is forever in self discovery and expansion. This leads me to ask questions like.
How is this happening for me?
What am I meant to learn from this?
How can I see this particular thing differently?
What am I missing or what am I not seeing?
This supports vulnerability, empathy, equanimity, innovation, and many other traits essential to success. I think there is a quote “ when you stop learning, you stop growing” and self awareness is the initiator to self development in my eyes.
Self Acceptance & Authenticity — I’ve experienced first hand the damage comparison, competition and low self esteem can create. Leadership is about going first and becoming what you want to attract. Early in my adulthood, I believed my competitive personality was my edge. Wanting to beat the next guy was fuel. Then when I came into entrepreneurship I quickly learned how it was kryptonite. Because I was built to win at someone else’s game I never took the time to discover who I was and what made me different and much less love those parts of me. As an entrepreneur being ok with who you are directly impacts your bottom line. How you value yourself, the things you’ve lived and your imperfect-ness is empowering, inspiring and a magnetic approach to leadership and success.
Self Trust- This one is the clearest leadership skill for me. There is a direct line from your level of self trust to how you lead and navigate others. I know first hand how this is one of the highest pitfalls in women. Second guessing ourselves, conditioned to find the answers outside of us. Seeking others thoughts, opinions and feedback. Self trust is about congruence, self sponsorship, agility, resourcefulness. Knowing that you’ve got your own back, because you’ve proven it time and time again. This is what taking risks is made of.
My Body of work around self love emphasizes awakening these traits in us because they are instrumental to getting to our unique version of success.
Ok, thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. We would like to explore and flesh out the concept of becoming free from failure. Let’s zoom in a bit. From your experience, why exactly are people so afraid of failure? Why is failure so frightening to us?
I think it’s the meaning we’ve given failure. And the irresponsible projections and judgments we make on those experiencing what we perceive as failure. Failure is something understood to be the end. The place you never come back from.
I believe it is only a failure if you give up or don’t learn anything from it. Because failure in any other regards doesn’t exist.
When you keep going you will find that the once perceived failure was a precise piece of your path, with deep meaning. Failure offers so much light and wisdom, when we get out of society’s construct of it and instead dig in and learn from it. At that moment it stops being failure.
What are the downsides of being afraid of failure? How can it limit people?
Fear of failure is the biggest thief of all time. It robs you of your birthright, your inspirations, your life force. It takes away your worth, capabilities and confidence. Because of our fear of failure we hand over all our power to others.
This is a mindset hurdle and proves how our mindset work needs to be a key piece of our plan when we are working toward a goal. This is why mindset is a key pillar to Awakening to Abundance one of my upcoming workshops. Because the quality of your mindset is directly connected to the quality of life you offer yourself.
In contrast, can you help articulate a few ways how becoming free from the free of failure can help improve our lives?
This is what I like to call our highest self. Sovereign, Self Actualized. It doesn’t necessarily require us to be free from fear of any kind. Failure especially. What you tap into is the decision to do it with fear. Knowing that both fear and perceived failure are part of our journey. The person you become when fear no longer has power over you is unstoppable. Befriending your fear and enrolling it into your plan is the self mastery that turns our trajectory into grace and ease instead of suffering and sacrificing.
We would love to hear your story about your experience dealing with failure. Would you be able to share a story about that with us?
At this age I’ve had many perceived failures. In many domains of my life. To just mention a few. My first marriage, Bankruptcy and foreclosure back during the recession in 2009–2012. What I know today is that all failures have been threshold moments from death to rebirth. These are moments that have offered me the most courage and belief in myself. Because I didn’t give up. It wasn’t easy. I went through some on my knees experiences, but I stayed with myself and took the best care I could of my human while waiting to be shown the way. I look back on those moments and many more that were deemed failures and realize how they were not.
This wisdom and these lived experiences is what helps me usher a woman through dark moments. Hold her to higher standards and shed light on the truth.
How did you rebound and recover after that? What did you learn from this whole episode? What advice would you give to others based on that story?
Never give up on yourself. Stay with self. Learn to self soothe, nurture and inspire yourself. Understand that you are responsible for your experience. Take ownership of it. That is how you take your power back. As you can begin to take your life back.
What are 5 steps that everyone can take to become free from the fear of failure”?
This is an easy question. I wrote a book about it. The answer is Self Love. The steps are Awaken your codes of Self Love .
1. Self Awareness
2. Self Acceptance
3. Self Care
4. Self Trust
5. Self Actualization
Each step helps a woman remember her power, come back home to herself, and step into sponsorship of herself.
The famous Greek philosopher Aristotle once said, “It is possible to fail in many ways…while to succeed is possible only in one way.” Based on your experience, have you found this quote to be true? What do you think Aristotle really meant?
Yes I totally think it’s true. The only way to success is LOVE. Self Love & then Love of others. Becoming what you desire is the answer. Self Love is the driving force through all the pitfalls in life. Self Love holds the key to every trap when you understand what true self love requires of you.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the greatest amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Awakened Bosslady — it’s a term that allows for a woman to be all that she is made up of. The feminine and the masculine. It also stands for the Awaken Self Love and desire to contribute that a woman has the capacity and bandwidth to do.
You see there is only one of us here and your ability to love yourself is a direct correlation to your ability to love me.
We are blessed that some very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them 🙂
I can think of two. First is Gabby Bernstein. She was my first teacher when I was lost, in the middle of an identity crisis, asking some profound questions about my existence. As I love it when my students share everything our work opened up for them, I’d like to offer that moment to Gabby.
The other is Oprah. I’d love to thank her for being her. There is a saying “ what one woman does for herself, she does for every woman” And there are so many ways in which Oprah has made this quote true. Letting her know how it was super soul sunday that started me back on my feet when my church community rejected me after my divorce. Sharing with her how I first learned about a course in miracles after one of her guests shared. Or how I did my first meditations with her 30 day series of meditations with Deepak. Back when we had to order the CD in the mail. I believe it’s important for her to know her impact. And I’d love to offer that to her.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
www.awakenedbosslady.com or instagram @awakenedbossladycoach
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!