Be The Best You: Lilian Garcia On Connecting With Talent, Shifting Perspective When Doubting Yourself (Exclusive)
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Lilian Garcia was kind enough to join WrestleZone’s Dominic DeAngelo for a candid interview regarding the excellent work she does on Chasing Glory. Lilian’s podcast has only been around since 2018 and was already nominated for two categories in the Digital Hollywood Podcast Awards.
Something that is extremely impressive with Lilian’s interview style is she is very genuine and understanding for the personal history of the people she talks to, whether they are a wrestler, athlete or fellow artist. Being so understanding in the conversation makes it easy for the conversation to open up and after DeAngelo brought up examples like Tommaso Ciampa and Toni Storm, Lilian had the following to say about the special connection that was able to form because of her conversation with Toni Storm, who shared in her history of cutting.
“Toni Storm had never shared about the fact that she did a lot of cutting in her life and what was wild was Rhea Ripley had just revealed that for the very first time weeks before and then they knew each other, for years they’ve known each other. They’ve been co-workers and they didn’t know that about each other. So when it was revealed, when Toni revealed hers, when we got done with the interview, I said, ‘Have you ever talked to Rhea about this because she just revealed the same thing a few weeks ago?’ She said, ‘No! I didn’t even know that about her,’ and she goes, ‘Oh my God, I have to talk to her,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I think you guys are now going to be a really good support system because you understand why you get to the point of wanting to cut yourself and so if you ever get to those doubting moments, cause even, let me just tell everybody out there, that once you make it as a Superstar doesn’t mean that all your troubles go away. Sometimes it magnifies even more because now you are under the spotlight and now you want to be even better, you want to also, you start judging yourself at times too – ‘How strong is my storyline? How many times am I out there?’ and then if they don’t start using you, ‘Oh my gosh, does that mean I’m not good enough?’ It’d just the self-doubt like almost never stops until you really start doing this work, although I’ll be honest with you, I’ve been doing this work now as far as mindset and shifting perspectives and perception and all of that for ten years now and I still deal with it. I still battle it so I don’t think it’s ever going to go away, you just never have doubt ever in your life. No, but you know how to manage it and how to shift it and that’s the major thing.”
Lilian says what’s truly important in assessing self-doubt and criticism is being able to shift the change of perspective.
“So how many times have we’ve been able to look at someone and see something that they’re doing you know, like sabotaging themselves, and being able to point it out so quickly, and also being able to be like, ‘Well this is what you need to’ and being able to spill out a solution, right? So many times because you’re on the outside looking in. So what self-help does, it allows you to step outside of your own self, to be able to look at yourself and then makes the tweaks and the changes as to things that are not supporting you…”
“It’s funny cause just yesterday I did a post about, ‘Remember to always be yourself and trust that it’s enough.’ and I had some people actually go, ‘Well what if I don’t like myself?’ And in the post, in the body of the post, I literally said, ‘The thing that you need to do is not try to be anyone else because you’re losing the magic.’ I’m mean you’re here, you are the only you how special is that? Nobody can copy you whatsoever so stop trying to copy someone else because you can’t copy them either and why would you want to, right? But instead, try to be the best version of yourself.
“So somebody said, ‘Well, what if you don’t like who you are?’ and that’s why I said, ‘That’s when you do the work – to be the best you.'”
“And there was even another comment, somebody said, ‘Well, what if I’m a racist and that’s what I don’t like?’ I said, ‘Well, that’s okay identify what made you be a racist, what was the behavior that you picked up on? Maybe it was just observing other people be a racist so you thought growing up, ‘Oh, okay, well I guess this is the norm, I’ll be a racist.’ Once you can identify why, then you can turn that around and try to figure out with help, figure out how you can get deprogrammed cause everything is programmed. With Chasing Glory, that’s why we dive into these stories as to what was life for you growing up because so much get implemented into us, even below from 10 under, a lot even from five under!”
Lilian actually narrated an impactful documentary called Perception: Seeing Is Not Believing which touches on the very matter. You can get more info about seeing the movie at Powerful-U.com and see the trailer at this link.
Lilian also speaks about her current announcing work with the PFL, going through the difficult times in life and much more, but you can listen to the entire interview below:
(Transcription credit should go to @DominicDeAngelo of WrestleZone)
You can also watch Lilian’s latest episode of Chasing Glory in which she interviews former Dancing With The Stars pro, Artem Chigvintsev: