Meet Sabrina Avellán

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

Sabrina, so great to have you with us and we want to jump right into a really important question. In recent years, it’s become so clear that we’re living through a time where so many folks are lacking self-confidence and self-esteem. So, we’d love to hear about your journey and how you developed your self-confidence and self-esteem.

In order to develop my self-confidence and self-esteem, I first needed to debunk everything I thought I knew about self-confidence. Because self-confidence isn’t taught to us like learning how to read or ride a bike. We absorb its meaning through what we see represented to us in the media, our social circles, and communities at large. So the idea of what a self-confident person looks like was flawed, to begin with.

We’ve been taught that confidence looks like a size 0 white woman working in the corporate environment who wears a power suit. Why? Because if you Google “confident woman”, this is what you’re going to see come up. We also think that a confident woman looks like someone epically dressed and strong walking into a room and commanding everyone’s attention. Why? Because this is what is represented to us in the media. Confidence as it’s shown to us somehow gets wrapped up in what we look like, what we dress like, and what our jobs are. But true self-confidence and true self-esteem don’t come from claiming how great you are in the way that you dress and talk, they come from acknowledging, owning, and embodying all of the ways in which you are great. And no matter what size or what color or what industry you’re in, your internal greatness makes you inherently worthy to be, feel, and exude confidence.

But how? Confidence and self-esteem really come down to one formula. Your belief in your self-worth plus your belief in your capabilities equals your level of self-confidence. The common denominator here is “belief”. Your confidence doesn’t come from how you dress or talk. Your confidence comes from your beliefs.

So in order to find that deep resilient self-confidence and self-esteem, I needed to rewrite my belief systems. And while my belief systems are mostly internal work, external factors play a role. But let’s focus on internal first.

Your reality is created by the actions you take. The actions you take are dictated by the thoughts and the feelings that you have. The thoughts and the feelings that you have are inspired by your belief system. In order to create the reality of owning my confidence, I needed to reverse engineer that process and re-write what I believed self-confidence to be.

Here’s what that means. If I’m going to embody self-confidence, the actions I would need to take would be trusting myself to make decisions and create boundaries around my time, energy, and the way that I allow people to interact with me in relationships. And I would also need to forgive myself for all the mistakes I’m going to make along the way. Now in order to take those actions, I would need to feel worthy of having healthy relationships. I would need to feel love and compassion for myself. I would need to think that I am entitled to all of those things. And in order to have those thoughts and feelings, my belief system would need to be that I am worthy of respect and adoration in my relationships. I would need to believe that I was capable of taking all of those steps.

That internal work is really challenging. After you’ve kind of done the reverse engineering of “what belief systems do I need to have in order to be the confident person I know I’m capable of being”, you need to recognize and release all of the belief systems that have been holding you back.

So the majority of my internal work was unveiling the belief systems that were holding me back. For example, I believed that having boundaries meant that I was letting people down or being mean. I had the belief that people who had achieved the things that I wanted to achieve somehow knew more than I could ever know. I also believed that I needed to gain certifications and degrees in order to validate my skill set and my knowledge. There was also that deeply rooted belief that because I didn’t graduate college I would be stuck at entry-level jobs. All of these limiting beliefs were holding me back from showing up and owning all the greatness inside of me and everything I had to offer plus all of the ways in which I could help others.

Once I recognized the beliefs that were holding me back, I used a combination of talk therapy and spiritual practices to release them. Specifically journaling and the Ho’oponopono prayer. The Ho’oponopono prayer is an ancient Hawaiian practice that’s really beautiful and was the gateway for me to release a lot of these limiting beliefs. And after releasing them I created space to start infusing the beliefs of empowerment, self-worth, my capabilities, and inner greatness.

After the internal work came the external work. Externally, who you surround yourself with absolutely matters in terms of your self-confidence. There are people who depress your self-worth and there are people who encourage and inspire your self-worth. Identifying what category these people in your life fall into is extremely important.

After doing the internal work to build up my self-worth, it made it a lot easier to really take inventory of my relationships and see who was taking from me and which relationships had no reciprocity. And I essentially started cutting those relationships out of my life or creating strong boundaries around how much time I gave to that person and how much I allowed that person to influence me. And as I limited the time and energy I gave to those who depressed my self-confidence, it opened up space for more relationships to come into my life that really supported my self-confidence and self-esteem. I started to meet people who were doing the same internal work as me and who were showing up in the world in the ways that I was inspired to show up in.

So if I had to break it all down into a little road map it would be step one, redefining what self-confidence looks like. Step two would be finding the tools to excavate the thoughts and belief systems that are self-critical, self-judging, and suppress the inner beauty and self-esteem that so badly wants to come forward. Part three is to replace the limiting beliefs with thoughts that acknowledge all of the ways in which you are great, and then from that perspective take inventory of the relationships around you. From there, you literally cherry-pick the people that support you and help to bolster your confidence, and say goodbye to or create boundaries around the ones that don’t. This creates space for even more nourishing relationships to come into your life. And with the internal and external factors created to support your self-esteem, your belief in your self-worth and capabilities are bound to flourish and lead you to a more empowered and self-confident you.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I’m a sought-after speaker and coach who empowers women to enter their Self-Love Era by learning how to trust themselves, embody self-esteem, treat themselves with the compassion that they show others, and create sustainable and true-to-you self-care practices. I’ve developed multiple frameworks that transform your relationship with yourself and guide you to a deeper sense of self-knowing and unwavering self-love.

​I found early career success as a Systems Strategist but struggled with burnout working in a capacity that fulfilled my needs, but not my passions. I’ve always had a message in me that needed to be shared, but it was shadowed by self-criticism, self-doubt, and false beliefs of how I “should” show up in the world.

After losing my father in 2022, I realized just how precious my time here was. I decided to take a spiritual sabbatical from business to shed the “identities” I had acquired or had pushed on myself in order to truly discover and align with who I knew I was and what I was meant to share.

Through extensive research, mindfulness practices, and daily self-care rituals, I transformed my relationship with myself and created an approach to life that honors who I truly am, what my gifts are, and my birthright to joy, ease, and self-love. In doing so, I can wholely show up for myself, my family, and my clients.

I now teach these methods in my coaching containers, podcast, and speaking opportunities where I inspire others to boldly enter their Self-Love & Boundaries Eras.

I’ve also taken this approach to business coaching. Whereas most coaching has been centered around sales and scaling and building a brand, I approach business growth by acknowledging that every entrepreneur is a whole person who often can’t separate their business from their identity. And that’s ok! But in order to avoid or cure burnout and stay in love with your business, it’s essential to approach your business goals with boundaries, systems, and self-care. So I’m revolutionizing the way that we coach entrepreneurs and doing it from a whole-person perspective.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

The three qualities and skills that were most impactful to me on this journey are compassion, resilience, and the belief that I am capable.

Compassion is crucial on any journey. You are going to make mistakes, you’re going to feel embarrassed, and you might even feel guilty or ashamed on any journey you’re on. And the main difference between you and the person that you’re looking up to on this journey is that they have the compassion for themselves that allows them to move forward. Without compassion, you get stuck in self-criticism. You get stuck in judging yourself. And you get stuck in a victim mentality.

When you can look at yourself and compassionately forgive yourself for not getting things right or for making mistakes or for being stuck or whatever it is, when you can forgive yourself, you can move forward. That may be the number one skill set that’s going to take you to your next goal. It’s confidence and compassion together.

Resilience is right there with compassion because being able to get up and keep moving forward when life gets lifey is a non-negotiable on your journey. The process isn’t smooth and it will never look like what you planned or expected. But it will be fruitful as long as you have the resilience to keep moving forward.

And lastly is your belief in your capabilities. Even before I started helping women on their journeys of self-discovery or business, even before I took on my first client, I had to know that I was capable of it. So that’s an essential quality on this journey as well. Believing in yourself is crucial.

The best way to improve on these skill sets is to devour information like nobody’s business. Search for different tools, practices, and resources and trust the ones that resonate with you and leave the ones that don’t. There is no one thing or trick or tool that is going to work for everyone. We are all so different so what works for me may not work for you. But the more that you explore and learn, the more you’ll be exposed to and the more you’ll see what works for you and what doesn’t. So always expand, explore, and learn.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

Collaboration and Community are top values for me. I’m currently collaborating with women on an in-person retreat. I consistently collaborate with business owners and experts through my podcast, and I’m always interested in building a stronger community of like-minded people who are on their journey of self-discovery and self-development. So if you’re into self-empowerment, or you run a business and you want to learn more or teach more on boundaries, systems, and self-care I would love for you to reach out and collaborate with me. Whether that means we’re hosting something together, I’m having you on the podcast, or we’re creating something completely new, I’m always open to exploring ways of getting our messages out to more people who can benefit from them.

More specifically I collaborate with women entrepreneurs who are in the wellness and self-development space. I work with women who are interested in creating boundaries either in their personal life and/or work, and those who are interested in self-empowerment.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sabrinaavellan.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sabrina_avellan/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabrina-avellan/
• Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5vFKCAf9ieQ8X1Jq7lUwl6

  Podcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iagreewithmyself_podcast/