The Case for Being Selfish with Naketa Ren Thigpen

george grombacher 0:02
Naketa Ren Thigpen is a balance and relationship advisor getting the lazy overachiever to self actualized wholeness by being intentionally selfish with micro spectacles and relationship bliss without sacrificing success. Welcome, Nikita.

Naketa Ren Thigpen 0:18
Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.

george grombacher 0:21
excited to have you on. Tell us about your personal lives more about your work why you do what you do?

Naketa Ren Thigpen 0:27
Yeah, so I am personally I am a woman, a wife, a mother, a G. Bonnie, when the grandbabies are able to say, gee, gee, Bunny, they are five and four. My oldest literally at the time of this recording just turned 27 on the 27th. So there’s something magical about that. We’re still waiting for that to show up. And my youngest, just graduated college in May, this year at the time of this recording, and is 22 going on 23. And minister I love all things reading and nerding out and personal development, self improvement, self care, self love. I just love love all together. And I have a lot of fun. I’m very silly. Sometime in this conversation. If we’re, if the microphones can handle it, I will shake my maracas because I love music, and everything in between workwise so my foundation background which all of these things I still hold as certifications and licensees because if you work for them, it’s very, very hard to let them expire. I am a trained licensed clinical social worker, psychotherapist and trauma specialist by foundation for 20 plus years, then I started to age into understanding how trauma, you know really impacted people’s relationships. So dove deeper into the relationship expertise part of my human behavior, background and evidence based research and all that good stuff. Then added sexology to the pot. All of that before my husband and I started our company this year is 12 years in this entrepreneurial space, we are efficiently teenagers and about to show our behinds, we’re about to act out. But when we started, we decided to start a personal development company. And the reason is because your license is bound by the state that you’re licensed in. And I really felt called to a global audience. I didn’t want to necessarily just be local, although there’s nothing wrong with that. We need local professionals, I need local professionals. But that wasn’t my calling. I felt very much pulled forth as an activator, which is who I am internally as a healer and an activator. Beyond all those titles and certifications. I really wanted to help those other analytical creatives, the architects and catalysts of this world to self actualize. So they can, in layman’s terms break generational curses, but the cutesy language that we use all over our website is really to self actualized, wholeness, wholeness, so they can leave these new multi generational imprints and just do something different by simply being different than what they were expected to be by whoever expected them to be it. So it’s a lot of love a lot of play, my favorite thing to do is work with potent humans and power couples. So sometimes, the potent human who may be male or female wants to come and do the work and their forever lover isn’t quite ready, which is why we work with them individually. But when we get to work with them as a couple, and we say power couples, not because of the money, but because of the impact that they are creating the the work that they do on the world and the way that they show up. We, you know, we’d like to help them with their intimacy from the bedroom to the boardroom, because we know that you in your personal self shows up and your leadership, self, whatever that looks like, organization or entrepreneurial. So I have a lot of fun doing what I do. It’s a lot of play a lot of seriousness to manage some of the traumatic, unresolved issues that are there, even though people aren’t coming necessarily at their lowest low point. Some of them many of them are coming saying I’m good. I’m in a good relationship. I have good business, but I want to be great. I want to do more. I want to go deeper, I want to amplify and that’s typically our sweet spot is yes, we can handle the not so good parts because I’m trained and licensed and the people that work with me, I pour into them all of those tools, but we really want that, that middle child, if you will, the child that feels like they you know yes, my parents learned a lot because they messed up with the first kid. They didn’t over spoil me like the baby kid, but the middle kid that relationship, that aspect of your life or your business that feels like you’re at this almost monotonous point. You’re almost a roommate with your lover even though you are good and you communicate fairly well, but you want juiciness you want deliciousness you want bliss and even If you’re not in that partnership and you crave it, you might feel like you’ve maxed out the success you want to do by yourself and you’re ready to share that with someone else. So that’s a lot of my work.

george grombacher 5:10
I love it. I think that that is awesome. I appreciate everything you said congratulations on graduating kids college and grandbabies like that. That’s an incredible thing. What does it mean to self actualize?

Naketa Ren Thigpen 5:25
I mean, we can go Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which is really where the term comes from. Once you’ve had your safety and your security, you know, housing, food, shelter, all those things all the way up through belonging, you’re you have relationship you feel like you belong in this world, you have those social networks, which might just be one or two people, it could be if you’re an extrovert, 50 plus people that you have, all the way through you being in this space where you feel peace within yourself, you’re no longer trying to prove anything to anyone else, you have noted accomplishments that were a part of your journey, but they were more about you learning how you could pour out more than they were about you. Learning what you could get validation for from the world. So for me, self actualization and beyond the Maslow’s kind of clinical definition of it is really when you feel whole with yourself, and you’re not looking for external validation, and you’re not listening to you might not even have too much of, although you’ll have some because we’re human, too much of the chatter that’s in our head that makes us sit in these analysis paralysis loops, where we’re constantly ruminating on all of our faults, and not necessarily celebrating and reflecting the lessons that we learned from those trying times those storms and hurricanes. I literally call it the shit. It’s an acronym, not a curse word, storms, hurricanes into roles, that’s the eye and tsunamis is the T. Because we’re people and we have this unless you come from another world which we understand that aliens have been documented now. Unless you’re from some somewhere else, we all experienced it. No matter how much work you’ve done on yourself, no matter how much therapy you’ve been in how much spiritual counseling, no matter how meditative you are, and you feel like you are just so centered, life is lifing for all of us. And when you are at a space of self actualization, you can see the beauty in the pain of that process, and not get sucked into the bubble of why me every time I look around, why is this happening? You know, those words and those phrases that all of us, including me, are guilty of saying to ourselves, because there is a such thing as negativity bias, where we’re prone to get 100 compliments, but we’ll focus on the one that wasn’t so great. That maybe was constructive criticism, or even worse, it was just plain nasty. And even though we got 100, it’ll be the one that keeps us up at night. And when you’re at this place of self actualization, which I feel all of us should be on a journey to do one way or another when you’re ready to accept that you can grow and you don’t have all the answers no matter how well trained you are. When you’re at that place and spacing yourself. You can say you know what? This was a crappy day, or a crappy moment. But the next moment I’m ready for I’m ready to receive the abundance I’m ready to receive the blessing I’m ready to give to someone else because sometimes that little oxytocin boost that we selfishly get from giving to others that naturally happens in our body chemically, is exactly what we need it so pull ourselves just a little bit higher up out of whatever low vibration we were in. And that’s what I hope to give to the world and want to edify. That is my gift, my biggest gift beyond my nerd brain and all the things is I can edify an ant to move a mountain

george grombacher 8:56
which is a really powerful thing. Sure, there’s many reasons why it is that we human beings fail to self actualize. I don’t understand or I have no idea that it’s a possibility. Or I’m, I want to hold on to that negativity because I kind of like it because it’s mine. Or I don’t want to be selfish. Are these

Naketa Ren Thigpen 9:21
that old school definition of selfish you know, I had to bring that up the old school definition of selfish and I say old school because it’s in the dictionary, which hilariously is the Webster’s Dictionary, which is my maiden name. Don’t tell anyone. And I promise I didn’t put it in there. That word got into our lexicon around the 1600s by Pentecostal Bishop I can’t even remember his name, Archbishop Williams something and the word got into our lexicon. After or so the many texts read. A group of women parishioners came up and asked for permission for how to tell their husband to know, when they were basically accosted constantly for sex, we want the right to be able to say no. And the bishop told them that you are lucky to be married. That is your duty as a wife to lay with your husband unless you’re on your menses or you’re pushing a child out of your body. Other than that, you’re selfish. So the word was really there to belittle, to hold to shame, a population of people that happen to be women, and then eventually, that were started to shame in various different ways. Mother’s two sons, sons, two brothers, brothers, two sisters, and then sisters, the sisters, now women shame each other with that word. So when I found that out, the nerd in me, the feminist in me was like, oh, yeah, thought so. So I redefined it, I want it to take the power back that we lost through generations. And we didn’t even know that we lost it. Because we see the text, we see the script, I am a minister, the word selfish is in the Bible that you should not be selfish. But it’s also how it’s been transcribed, and re transcribed over and over and over again, and it’s lost the original meaning of it. The reality is, the selfishness that you need to be for me, as a Christian woman is very much like Jesus, he was selfish when he went to the mountain and said, y’all stay here and pray for me, because I’m going over here to get my alone time to be by myself to power myself up, and do everything I need to do. That moment that he stopped walking through people that could touch him and be healed. That moment, when he stopped walking into houses and filling people’s, you know, vessels with oil, that moment when he stopped actively doing all of those miracles, was technically a selfish thing to do. Because he wasn’t working, he decided to rest and refuel and recalibrate for the bigger work ahead. And that, for me, is what the new definition of selfish should be about. So I’ve kind of framed it as being intentionally selfish, just to kind of separate from the Oxford and Webster dictionary word. I redefined it as a personal intimate gift to create joy your way, it is that time for the spaciousness you need. So you don’t do something and then resent it. Because who wants who wants to do that? And when we do, it’s really hard to self actualize when you are being a martyr when you’re doing all of these things. So other people say, oh, yeah, that’s what Nikita is known for. That’s what Georgia is known for. That’s, you know, ABC. So uh, yeah, right on that they would not do themselves that they hope you do instead of them. And then you’re sitting there drained, burnt out, having all these stress induced illnesses in your body, potentially dying early, or living a long suffering life. And my prayer is always for a long, high quality life. Like that’s what I want. I don’t want to be here for 120 years suffering, because I’m a people pleaser, and I’m over giving, I’m giving until I go emotionally broke. That is not self actualizing just because someone or someone’s will come to my funeral and say, how great of a giver I was. But I didn’t get to actually enjoy my own life. Because I was expending all these gifts like a faucet that won’t turn off. And that’s not okay. That’s not in balance. And when I say be imbalanced in order to self actualize, for me, it’s a formula. It’s t like Tom Overby, like boy like a fraction, T Overby. It’s admitting the truth. That’s the T of what you really want out of this life. There’s one life that you get in this one lifetime. And for those that believe there are many other lifetimes, that’s fine, it’s still this one lifetime. So admit the truth of what you really, really want now in this life, and then create the boundaries, that’s the B, that you need to achieve that truth as your reality. So when you are focused on what it is you want to do, if you want to be a philanthropist, if you want to be a mogul, if you want to be the best. Stay at home, mom, and then in grand mom and then great grand mom and however your life lives, then your boundaries have to reflect that that means when your good college girlfriend or girlfriend, your homie calls you and says, Hey, I’m getting married for the fifth time and it’s out in New York and you live in Arizona, and that flight is long and it’s gonna be a whole weekend thing and you actually have some other things that are more aligned with your truth. Then you need to say sorry, do sorry, Sis, I will send you a gift. Let me know your registry. Be happy to spend some time with you. When I come. I plan to be on the east coast in the summer, or whenever that is so we can have some intimate time. I will not make it that is hard for people to say I know it’s easier said than done. But it is an answer to you not going and then wishing. Sitting there at the party wishing you were somewhere else hoping that these people don’t want you to go to the after party and the After After Party and all the things instead of placating and trying to keep other people from being upset with you. It’s easier if you say, I have to be aligned with my truth. And then if you have to work 80 hours that week, because your truth includes an audit, you know, at work or a major project deadline, that 80 hours is so much easier than the 20 hours you spent doing something that you really didn’t want to do that was out of alignment. So for me, that’s what all that is connected to. And to answer your question, a lot of it is people still believing in that frame of, you know, I don’t want to be selfish, I don’t want to be seen as that person. Do you want to be seen as the person who’s a liar to themselves? Who’s out of integrity with themselves? Who is pretending you want to be somewhere when you really don’t? When you show up for me, George, I want you to want to be there. I want complete presence in the 10 minutes, two minutes or 30 minutes that we have. Not yet Nikita is on my list today. So let me check this box. Because then I don’t feel heard or seen. And selfishly in the new way. I want our time to matter together, even if it’s only a minut amount of time. And if people start to really just consider all I’m asking because I don’t believe in trying to convince anyone just consider that it’s possible for you to have a new way of being without the burnout without the imposter syndrome without these constant reactivated toxic relationship deja vu loops that we keep entering back in with a new human with the same issues as the last human that we finally evicted out of our lives, we would be in a different place, and more. So if we could let go all of those expire expectations that just don’t align with who we are, in this moment of arrival, because we’re evolving and expanding and arriving again. And it’s okay. It’s more than okay, it is hopeful and hoped for that we do continue to evolve and expand. And I’m not the same Nikita that I was in my 20s or 30s or 40s, right? Like I’m just not that same human. And all of that was beautiful. And I don’t deny it. But it was all a part of my self actualization journey, which I am still one, let me be very clear, I am not perfect, Patti. I have made many, many, many, many mistakes, and many of them have informed my good decisions today.

george grombacher 17:25
Well, that is really powerful. Thank you. I love everything you just said. I love to learn about the origin of words. So that was super, that’s very interesting. It makes sense. I love the time that to Jesus from moving from from doing to being I know that I have a hard time moving from a human doing to just being and that doesn’t necessarily always make sense to me. But the way you describe it really does resonate a lot. And I love the the T over b. So thank you for all of that. Did your background as a psychoanalyst and a social worker? That did that beat the try to convince people to change out of you?

Naketa Ren Thigpen 18:15
Oh, yes, I would say probably before then I was already getting burned out from it. Because I’ve been a a natural, safe space for people. I realized that very early in my life, that I was a safe space. You know, you’re the person I’m sure many people listening to this relate where you’re sitting on a subway or walking down the street and you met someone which would have been a two second interaction but turns into a 20 minute, you know, their whole life story and their social security number and everything, you know, in between and without judgment, because you really did enjoy having the conversation, you really did hold space for them, you were grateful that you had the privilege to be in that moment at that time for them. That’s been my entire life. And it took a long time, George for me to realize that, although that was wonderful, and it was a great gift. It wasn’t in reciprocity. And I was missing outside of my forever lover who I’ve been friends with since 13. And we’ve been together since 17. He’s still married today, outside of him, and a couple of pocket of like really good friends that I’ve also been friends with for a really long time. I didn’t have that safe space. And even with certain friends, there’s the friend you talk to business about that’s not in business. And then there’s the friends, we talk about spiritual, you know, crises with. And I needed that, that place to be holy me and outside of my husband, which again, still has its limitations, because if I’m not filling him that day, I don’t want to write like I don’t want to give him all my thoughts. So I needed that space. And I just realized that that was something that was a slow burn on the background for me that I didn’t know knowledge for many years.

george grombacher 20:02
I appreciate that. Well, this has been awesome. Nikita, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you?

Naketa Ren Thigpen 20:11
Yeah, I think the best thing to do is go to fig pro.com which is our website. I’m sure the link th it GPR O will be below. We have the balance, botley for ambitious women in business and a few brave men podcasts. So please listen to that. And depending on when the release of this episode is the lazy over achiever is my new podcast that I’m recording in this hour and will be released by the end of 2023. So really exciting, but you can get all those things right on pic Pro.

george grombacher 20:46
Awesome. Well, if you enjoy as much as I did, show Nikita your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to think proz.com th igpro.com. Check out everything that Akita is working on. Check out the podcasts and the new podcast the lazy over achiever coming out before years end. Thanks again and thank you, George. Till next time, remember, do your part by doing your best