Meet Diondra Filicetti

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Diondra Filicetti. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Diondra, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?
Confidence is simply an outward measure of how much you believe in yourself. So in order to develop my confidence I first had to figure out why I didn’t believe in myself. The truth was that it came down to comparison. I was comparing myself to other people thinking that I wasn’t as smart as them, I wasn’t as skilled as them, and I wasn’t as capable as them. All of this comparison had be overlooking my own strengths. Once I realized this, I very deliberately shifted my focus to my strengths, reminding myself of all the things I was good at.

I’ll never forget, someone told me a quote that read, “Someone’s healing is dependent upon you becoming the best version of you.” I thought whoa… it’s not just about me anymore… I need to be the best I can be to help all of the people that I am meant to help. That moment made me realize the immense value that I had to offer with the skills and knowledge that I already had. So instead of focusing on what I didn’t know, I went ahead and took action, believing that I would figure things out and knowing that I would learn and grow on the way. This decision and mission transformed my confidence and self-esteem.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
My business is called, Driven By… Co, where we build engaged, motivated and high-performing teams and individuals through our personal and professional development workshops, courses and team building programs.

Our mission is simple yet profound: to inspire, educate, and empower individuals and teams to discover their true potential and thrive in both their personal and professional lives. We believe that every journey to success is unique, and our role is to guide, facilitate, and support you on that path.

My favourite part about what I do is hearing the success stories about how a workshop I facilitated or a team building I conducted or a speech that I delivered, empowered somebody to take action and change their life. I have heard stories of people starting businesses, people fixing complicated relationships with their parents, people getting the job that they wanted and even writing books after having worked with me!

I also just launched a brand new self-awareness activity journal called “Illuminate Your True Self | Self-Awareness and Reflection Journal” which is now available on Amazon. This journal contains quizzes, writing prompts and self-assessments, with a new activity for you to complete every single day in order to develop your self-awareness. I have heard such incredible feedback about how this journal has helped people identify patterns they had that they were not previously aware of and it has allowed me to reach people who have not had a chance to attend a workshop with me.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
The 3 most impactful qualities that you need to be successful on any journey are:

1. Resilience
2. Communication
3. Confidence

Inevitably, you will experience hardship and difficult challenges, and it is in those moments that you need to demonstrate your resilience and resourcefulness in order to make it through. If you don’t, you will get left behind.

Communication is THE most important and most universal skill. We communicate every single day, and our effectiveness at communication is intertwined with the results we get. How effective you are at getting people to understand you and understanding others will determine whether or not you can collaborate with others and work as a team. So many teams and people fail, simply because of poor communication.

And finally Confidence, as we touched on before, is very important in being able to demonstrate the value that you have to offer. We all have value, however when we lack confidence, we lack the ability to share that value with others. Just think about a job interview… you may be the most qualified person in the world, but if you lack the confidence and ability to communicate that value in the interview, you might not get the job. The same applies in our every day lives and our businesses.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?
Reading the book, Start With Why by Simon Sinek completely transformed my approach to life and business. In the book Simon Sinek explores the concept of the “Golden Circle,” advocating for a shift in thinking from WHAT a company does or HOW it does it, to WHY it does it.

People don’t care about the “what” they care about the “why”. Simon Sinek explains that successful leaders and organizations that start with a clear understanding of their purpose or “why,” inspire loyalty and engagement from employees and customers.

This concept can be applied to our communication of anything that we do. There is a power in starting with “why”.
For example, let’s say that I told you I started a business selling candles. This is WHAT I am doing. You might say something like, “Oh great, thats good for you.” However, what if I told you that I started selling candles that are made with 100% nontoxic materials in order to help people have better air quality at home and reduce lung cancer. On top of that, I am donating 10% of my proceeds to a lung cancer foundation. All of a sudden, you are more inclined to learn about WHAT I am doing because I told you WHY I am doing it.

This even applies to our personal lives. People are more inclined to help you if they know WHY you are doing what you’re doing. For example, I recently interviewed strangers (for YouTube videos) to test their self-awareness as a way to market the Illuminate Your True Self journal. When I first began to ask people if I could interview them, most people said “no”. I was asking, “Hey would you like to do an interview to test your self-awareness!?” People were hesitant and ultimately declined the request.

It wasn’t until I stopped people and explained that I had just launched a journal and I was looking to interview people to help me with marketing, that people started to say “yes”. All of a sudden, people were enthusiastic about the launch of the journal and wanted to help out because they knew WHY I was doing what I was doing.

So from this book, I’ve made it a priority to start with the why and the purpose behind all that I am doing, and I have seen just how much of an impact that can have.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Please credit Jay Kana at Modern Mississauga for Photo: IMG_5251.jpg Please credit Donato Rinaldi for Photo: DiondraHeadshot_Photographer-DonatoRinaldi.jpg Please credit RougeBony Media for the photo: workshops.jpg

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