Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Women Road Warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Takaro from the corporate office to the cab of a truck. They're here to inspire and empower women in all professions. So gear down, sit back and enjoy. Welcome. We're an award-winning show dedicated to empowering women in every profession through inspiring stories and expert insights. No topics off limits on our show.
We power women on the road to success with expert and celebrity interviews and information you need. I'm Shelley.
And I'm Kathy.
Do you struggle with self-doubt or a lack of confidence sometimes? Many women can and do. There are ways to bridge the confidence gap. Simone Canego is an expert on confidence. She summited Kilimanjaro, raised six children, and is a two-time TEDx speaker and co-host of her Unshakeable Confidence. There isn't much this lady hasn't taken on.
She gives women incredible insights on building themselves up with her signature real method. A two-time TEDx speaker and award-winning author of The Extraordinary Unordinary You, as well as her new book, Real Confidence. Simone's work's been featured on ABC, NBC, CBS, Entrepreneur, and Yahoo News.
She co-hosts the Globally Ranked podcast, Her Unshakable Confidence, along with her daughter, Olivia, creating cross-generational conversations about self-worth, courage, and connection. She encourages conversations about identity, motherhood, and personal leadership for women who quietly struggle with second-guessing themselves.
Simone talks about the unseen ways we lead every day that we don't honor ourselves and how the jokes we make about ourselves quietly erode our confidence. Kathy and I wanted to tap into her insights, so we invited her on the show. Welcome, Simone. Thank you for being with us.
Thank you so much for having me here today.
This is so exciting. I'm tickled pink. I'm like, like, you know, women like you inspire women around the world, not just women. You inspire people around the world. And to have you on as a guest today is phenomenal. So thank you for joining us.
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Chapter 2: What challenges does Simone Knego face in building confidence?
I failed organic chemistry basically twice. And so that was kind of the end of med school for me. I went on to become a CPA because I was good at math. and did many things over my life. I flipped houses. I worked in medical sales. I went back to school to be a teacher. I did all kinds of things really trying to find my purpose and my passion.
And I actually came across it by doing volunteer work and understanding that I had a story to tell. And so now that's what I do. I write, I speak, I podcast, and I love every minute of it. And so for everybody listening, it is never too late to change your mind.
I love this. I've always maintained, I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I love to be able to explore all the opportunities. It's so exciting. How did you get into talking about confidence?
So I am someone who really struggled with self-doubt for the majority of my life. I had an abusive boyfriend in high school. And of course, looking back, that was my realization of that's how I started down that path. I feel for many of us, we've had
something that has happened, whether it's comments by somebody or, you know, just life beating us down, that we kind of get into this mindset of that we're not good enough and we're not capable enough, we're not smart enough, whatever it is. And that was me for a very long time. And I put up a facade. It didn't matter that I had six kids. I really struggled. And I
It actually took climbing Kilimanjaro to kind of help me realize what I was capable of. Now, I'm not saying go out and climb a mountain, but it's that making a commitment, following through and, you know, doing something completely uncomfortable for me that helped me realize that I'm capable of whatever I want. I have to put in the work and I have to want it.
So what did you realize when you summited Kilimanjaro?
I didn't need to worry about what anybody else was thinking about me. I needed to figure out a way to quiet my what-if whisperer. That's what I call the voice inside my head, also known as Sally, but what-if whisperer. And that I'm more than enough as I am. I think for a long time, I really felt like I needed that external validation.
But what I realized is that I needed that from myself, not from anybody else. Because if I'm not telling myself that, that I'm an amazing human. Why would anybody else telling me make me feel any differently? I have to do the work from the inside.
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Chapter 3: How did climbing Kilimanjaro change Simone's perspective on self-worth?
And that's exactly what she did. She became a physician. Her whole life, she was told that she was working in a man's world and that her voice didn't matter. But it did. I mean, she changed lives. And I think the way I look at everything now is that we don't need to worry about what anybody else is thinking. I think there's like probably three things to why we still struggle so much.
One is the societal pressures. Two is social media. And three is that we're constantly worried about what everybody else will think. Will they judge us? Will they do this instead of living our best possible lives?
It's so hard. Well, and of course, when you think about it, we grow up, we watch advertising, which basically always portrays women as having to be perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect. You don't have a bunch of gunk men have to put on their faces to feel pretty to walk out the door. But we're taught Before you even leave the house, you have to look different than you already are.
I mean, that right there erodes our self-confidence, our self-respect. How do we stop that? I mean, I know high achievers struggle with this. I think all women, even if maybe they're not high achievers, have these issues.
I think absolutely most women struggle with this. And it's interesting because I used to feel that way too, that I had to, you know, really chase perfection. There's no such thing as perfection, right? We're all unique. We all have individual things that we struggle with. And for me, I just stopped doing the things that I didn't want to do, right? We used to go to galas and I'd have to be
dressed all fancy and that's just not me right I mean I'm happy to go support someone if they ask me to come do it I'm a jeans and t-shirt kind of girl I mean that's that's me I was invited to this event after COVID and the woman who invited me is literally the fanciest person I know she has amazing clothes her makeup is always you know everything's to the nines and I said to my daughter I don't know if I can do it and she's like why I'm like because I'm going to wear jeans and
And a jacket and sneakers. And she said, get out the door and go. And I did. And I have little mindset hacks that I use when I'm struggling, when I'm all up in my head about stuff. And I use that to kind of get through that moment. And when I walked in, so many of the women said to me, oh my gosh, I love the fact that you're wearing jeans.
One woman said to me at the end, and this was something that will stick with me forever, is I would have worn jeans, but I didn't know we were allowed to. So a great reminder that we don't need permission to be ourselves, but we need to show up as ourselves every day. So when I record the podcast with my daughter, most of the time my hair is in a ponytail. There's no makeup on.
When I walk out the door half the time, I don't have makeup on. I'm not worried about what anybody else thinks anymore. when I do dress up and I do those things, I do it for me, not anybody else.
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Chapter 4: What is the REAL method for building confidence?
If you've ever found yourself second guessing your decisions or downplaying your own achievements, you're not alone. And today's guest is here to change that. Simone Canego has lived a life that most people only dream about, from summiting Mount Kilimanjaro to raising six children, all while becoming a leading voice on confidence for women everywhere.
But what makes her message so powerful is how real it is. Her real method isn't about perfection. It's about recognizing the strength you already have and learning how to own it. Simone is a TEDx speaker, co-host of the globally ranked podcast, Her Unshakable Confidence, and the author of The Extraordinary Unordinary You.
Let's get back to the conversation because what she shares next might completely shift how you see yourself. Simone, in our last discussion, we were talking about being ourselves. So many women struggle with that. They have to have permission. They think they have to have permission to be themselves. We're so worried about what everybody else thinks.
But people are so worried about being judged and what other people will think that they say, oh, if this person's doing it, then I have to do it too. I read this great study where it was women, evaluating women when they go out to eat with friends or maybe even people they don't know that well, that if the other women at the table will order a salad,
That person will order a salad too, even if she wanted something different because she doesn't want to stray away from the norm and have people say, oh my gosh, she ordered the chicken wings. Oh my gosh, what's wrong with her? So I thought, well, okay, that's a crazy study that we don't even eat what we want to because we're so worried about being judged.
Yeah. And we're still stuck in junior high. Oh, yeah. You know, we're an adolescent wanting to do what all our peers are doing rather than what we really like to do because we want to fit in. Yeah. Instead of creating our own path. So you also talk about how we make jokes about ourselves from self-deprecation to self-respect and how these jokes really erode our confidence and It's true, we do.
I don't know if guys do that, but I think what we have, our subtext, what's inside our heads, really does dictate how we interact.
I agree with you 100%. I feel like, would you say these things to your best friend? Would you say negative comments all day long to someone you really cared about? Okay, you really care about yourself. We should not be saying these things to ourself. And so all of these little comments that we make where we think it's not a big deal are it builds up and it becomes a really big deal.
There's so many things I used to say to myself, especially when looking in the mirror, right? Oh my gosh, you gained weight again. You can't control yourself. What's wrong with you? Your hair is frizzy. I mean, constantly just negative things about my appearance until one day my daughter walked in the bathroom. She was a young teen at the time.
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Chapter 5: How does self-deprecation affect women's confidence?
And she said, first of all, you're beautiful. Second of all, you need to stop. You're giving me a complex. How can you expect me to love my body when you don't even like your own? And that just knocked me back because I didn't realize how much the things I was saying to myself were affecting the people around me.
Very wise daughter at a very young age. No kidding.
Like mom, stop. And I don't think I even realized I was doing it, right? It was just, it's such, it's part of my routine or it was part of my routine. Now I do the opposite. I say all the great things to myself because there is so much science behind it that what we say to ourself is how we live our life, right? What we say to ourself is what we believe.
And so it's so important that we flip the script.
We really have to be careful about the thoughts we think and the words we speak. And the world needs you to be who you were made to be, you know? You've got to be you.
Yeah. I mean, I once heard this on a playground where a little kid was trying to copy... exactly what this other little boy was doing. And the nanny finally said, okay, you need to be John because Jimmy's already taken, right? Like you need to do your own thing. Do not try to copy every single person, every single thing the other kid is doing.
And I thought that was such a great reminder too, right? We're supposed to be unique. We weren't born to be exactly like every other person in the room. That would make a really boring world if everybody was exactly the same. So it's a big reminder of like, yeah, be you.
Yeah, we weren't built to be clones.
No, for sure not.
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Chapter 6: Why do women often wait to be chosen instead of taking initiative?
Yeah.
Yes, you talk about what your six kids taught you about identity and belonging. And you got an understanding of unconditional love and letting go of control. Because when you think about it, there really is all of that. The unconditional love, the bond between a mother and her children, and letting go of control. You really don't have control always when you've got children you're raising.
I mean, it really is like patience. You have to remind yourself, right? Right.
It's herding cats a lot of days. Herding cats, yes. So we adopted our youngest three children. And so our son Noah, who is from South Korea, he's 19 years old now. But when we adopted him, he was a baby. He was four months old. And I had this whole idea in my head of how everything was going to go and how the return flight was going to go coming back from Korea.
And he cried 16 out of the 18 hours on the flight from Seoul to Chicago. Oh, yeah. So I had no control. And I questioned everything about myself at that point because, oh, my gosh, I thought I knew what it was to be a parent because I already had three children. And no, I had to learn how to be his parent. And so that was also such a great reminder for me of that.
Everything, everybody's unique and you got to figure it out. And everybody is getting through the day trying to figure it out.
Very true. Sometimes life feels like an experiment. Or were Thomas Edison, how many times he goofed up and had to do it again and again and again until he got it right. Sometimes you kind of feel that way too.
Yeah, I would say that my older kids would say that, yeah, they I experimented a lot on them. So the younger ones have it much easier. Thank you so much.
So something else you talk about is why waiting to be chosen is holding you back. Do you think women wait to be chosen?
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Chapter 7: What role does social media play in shaping self-esteem?
Right. And I'm jumping up and down. The girls from the class are jumping up and down. The trainers, he's on the radio. Can I marry you? You're a smooth operator.
Right. Smooth operators. Sade.
So that day, like that feeling was so overpowering because all of a sudden I knew and I believe that I could do it. And the transformation, it was I can't even begin. It was life changing, life altering, because as I'm walking home from that class that day, I knew that my whole life, 42 years of being told how stupid, how useless, how fat and ugly and
never amount to nothing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that it was all somebody else's opinion. And it was so life-altering for me. I can't even begin to tell you that from that moment on, when I knew that I could do this and everything was a lie, well, then nobody else, nothing else has ever affected my decision-making. You know, I didn't depend on somebody else. Well, what do you think?
You know what? No, this is what I think. This is, you know... And yeah, so empowering. Just that one thing, learning to believe in myself.
Yeah, and it is not easy. But that's why I truly believe we have to get out of our own way and get out of our comfort zone. So by you doing something completely different, and most people would say, oh, that's a man's world, right? I mean, that would probably be the outside view in. And no, like you did it and you did it for you. And by believing in yourself, that was how you accomplish things.
And It's about not backing down. I can tell you that same story with my Kilimanjaro story. You know, it was really about, I had to believe it for myself. How many people asked me, do you really think you're going to make it to the top? No, I think I'm going to make it halfway. That's why I'm doing it. What? Like people love to put what they struggle with on you.
And then we start internalizing it, believing that's true about ourselves.
People you surround yourself with can say, well, that'll never work. It's like can't. The word can't. It's a bad word.
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Chapter 8: How can women redefine their self-worth and identity?
Simone's been featured everywhere from ABC to Entrepreneur, but what really stands out is her ability to connect across generations, especially through her work with her daughter, Olivia. Together, they're opening up honest conversations about self-worth, courage, and what it really takes to trust yourself.
And coming up, we're diving deeper into how these small everyday thoughts can quietly shape our confidence in ways we don't even realize. Let's jump back in. Simone, in our last segment, we were talking about how we can have self-limiting beliefs, the use of the word can't, and how it really programs the brain. I hate the word can't. You know, as a child, I never liked the word no.
And if you told me I couldn't, I'd prove you wrong. Yes, I can. Yes, I can. Watch me. And I think that as children, we may be more inclined to have that inclination. But as we go through life as adults, we tend to back down and maybe have more of that self-doubt. And when you talked about social media being one of the culprits, I'm not sure that's so good for teenagers and kids to see.
Oh, I don't think so. I think that it's very hard to see someone else's highlight reel and compare it to your life. And that's what these kids do. I was even with a friend recently. We were sitting around the dinner table, and this goes back to that self-deprecating comment.
She said, I read something or I saw a video that said that when you make fun of your girlfriends, you tend to be happier and you stay closer. And I was like, did you see that on TikTok? Because that is BS. That is not true at all. Do you really want to hang out with people that are saying mean things about you? No, you don't. I was so caught off guard by that one.
And then when you look at our younger kids, I mean, my daughter who is 18 now, fortunately, she's really smart about things. And I'll always say, you know, that is not true. That is fake right there. That is completely fake. She's like, I know. I get it, Mom. I get it. But I think a lot of parents might not have those conversations with their kids to say what you're seeing isn't reality.
There's not one person that doesn't struggle with something that is a highlight reel and a highlight reel only.
Yeah, because what you're going to have are kids growing up to really question themselves. How do parents actually protect their kids or educate them that social media is, like you said, it's not real? And the messages you are getting, you really have to question.
Yeah, I completely agree. So when I look at my kids, so I created, I call it the real method. It's really for women, but parts of it I use with my kids because they're human and they They need to understand how to build confidence, how to build that self-esteem. Confidence is a skill and you build it from the inside out. It's not something that everybody else has and you don't.
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