Erika Gerdes is an Authenticity Advocate, Speaker, and Coach. She’s also a former Googler and high achiever, and like most high achievers, she spent many years collecting gold stars in a highly successful and prestigious career at Google. But after a life-changing family event, Erika went on a transformational journey to find her truest authentic self and now helps her clients to do the same.
Topics Discussed:
- What it means to be authentic
- The signals that show you’re not being authentic
- Adapting vs being inauthentic – how to separate one from the other
- What you must remember when it comes to other people’s feedback
- How to find the answers you seek within yourself
- The steps you need to take to make any real change in your life
- The 3 first steps to becoming more authentic and making a life transformation
- How to let go of your past identities
- Identity testing – how to do it and why you should.
- The one action you need to take right now to uncover your truth
Words of Wisdom
On life’s challenges
We forget the cyclical nature of life. We can look out into nature and see that there is a peak and there is a valley, there is a summer and there is a winter. But we forget that those things happen in our own lives as well, and that they both have meaning and are necessary in order to have growth and then destruction, in order to have more growth.
On wanting more
I had a lot of guilt and shame around, who am I to want something more, maybe this is as good as it could be, what if I’m leaving the best it’s ever going to get, so many people have it worse, why should I think I deserve anything better than this. It takes a lot for us to have the courage to look at those things that we might label as selfish and say, I do deserve this.
I think the more we create the lives that we truly want, the more we show others what’s truly possible for themselves. We owe it not just to ourselves but to the world.
On always learning
I really believe that every single one of us, we have experiences that are intended to prepare us for what’s to come in our lives.
On being true to yourself
We don’t lose ourselves in any one decision and we don’t find ourselves in any one decision. We lose ourselves in the habitual micro-decisions that take us further and further away from ourselves.
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