Neena Perez

Hey there. This is Neena Perez and this is Straight Talk - No sugar added. Thank you so much for being here. This show is created to discuss life topics to grow, challenge and transform your thinking. And as you know, I like to go around the planet to find some amazing human beings to bring on here to discuss how we can transform our thinking. And today I found on the other side of the world, Bruna De Palo, and she is an ICF certified executive, a leadership and career coach who helps senior executives activate their sense of aliveness and becoming authentic leaders by unleashing the power of their greatest asset which is their brain. And as you guys know, I am an NLP practitioner, and I love neuro stuff. So, this is going to get fun Bruna, how are you today? 

Bruna De Palo

Very well. Thank you so much for having me. 

Neena Perez

I'm really glad you're here. I like to start the show off, literally just by you introducing yourself a little bit more. So, I give a little bio for who is Bruna? 

Bruna De Palo

Thank you so much. That's my favourite topic. Actually. I'm Bruna. And as you can guess from my name. I'm Italian. I live in London. I've been living in London for nine years and I'm from what is known to be the most beautiful city in the world. So I am from Rome, and yes, I am a certified coach. 

You know, there are millions of coaches in the world, but what really differentiates me from all the others is this approach. Which I call neuroscience based and what that means is that the way I help people think and act differently is by understanding how their brain works. 

So, in my approach, not only I help them through coaching, shift their mindset and achieve certain goals, but I also teach them how it all works. Because at the end of the day, we've been told many times that this is super powerful, but no one gave us the instructions. So, neuroscience translated into actionable strategies and practical language can be a kind of instruction and that's what I give my clients and so when they are empowered, by understanding how they function, everything becomes much easier. And they're much more in control of their lives.  

That's, that's, that's me in a nutshell. 

Neena Perez

Yeah. I mean, that's wonderful. Right? I love it too. I have gotten into self-development maybe in the last five years or so, and went to take courses on neuro-linguistic programming and stuff and I fell in love, fell in love with the brain, the neuroscience of it all. It's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful field to get into and you're right. When you start to get into that you really can't transform people's lives. It's powerful, isn't it? 

Bruna De Palo

It is Nina, because at the end of the day, everything that we do, every behaviour or even simply the fact that we're often stuck in certain situations. It all comes from the use that we make of our brain. So, what I noticed with my clients is that sometimes they're stuck in very unpleasant situation, either in an unfulfilling career or maybe with their boss or in their relationship. And they think:

 “That's me, It's because I'm not confident or I am not assertive enough” or “I am not, I am not.”  

That's not true, very often that “I am not” means “I am not making the best use of” that. So, when they understand that the reason why they're stuck is because perhaps they produce a certain amount of cortisol that creates a certain imbalance and doesn't allow them to see things clearly. They stop thinking that they are not good enough and they start applying techniques, either NLP techniques or many others that will make them see things clearly so that they can take proper action.    

So, it is very practical, at the end of the day it is about, as I say providing instructions, which naturally make them feel more confident because, our especially as women, but of course, not only, our natural tendency is: 

“ehh it’s me, ehh I’m not good enough”

Maybe you are not good enough, but not as a person simply as a human being who's not good enough at using, making the best use of that brain like that's, that's more realistic.

Neena Perez

I love that, I love that and that is more realistic. And it's fantastic when I learned that. That changed a lot of aspects of my life too, because it broke a lot of limiting beliefs and that's a very powerful thing to have. And we have a lot of those don’t we Bruna?  Like we are more geared towards the “I can't” statements than we are towards “I can do anything”, right? We were just, we're just like, wired that way. So, and it's the brain, right? Protecting us from things that we're afraid of, changes things, you know, things that we have already put in our brain that is. That is making a pattern, a certain pattern. 

So, I want to know a little bit more about Bruna and why did you even get into this? How did you get into doing coaching and why get into the brain? What, What? What caused all of that in your life? 

Bruna De Palo

Okay, that's my second favourite question. So, thank you for asking it because the neuroscience approach hasn't been immediate hasn't come immediately. So, to keep it short, but what happened is I've been stuck for a very long time, like nearly 20 years in the wrong career, and it was really draining and I know this is a very, very common problem. Which now finally with COVID has, you know, come to the surface and a lot of people are, you know, hiring coaches to help them change career.

But at that time I was in Rome, I didn't know coaches existed. And you know when you're in a country like ours, which of course is stunning, but it's all a bit behind in terms of personal development. When you have a job and when you have a steady salary, it's already good enough. So, thinking about changing career is not an option.

"You’re lucky if you have a job and that's the common belief that then became my belief."  

So that's the reason why I moved to London. To, to break free from that mentality, which was keeping me stuck. And I thought that this you know, by going in a much more open-minded country, I could immediately be more open minded myself and guess what? It didn't happen, right. 

So, it's been a long journey, a long, long and with lots of mistakes that I made because I didn't change my mindset, those limiting beliefs. I took them with me. Why? Because I didn't know how to use the brain. I didn't know any of the things that I know now. 

But anyway, to cut the story short, at one point, I realised that these things like coaching existed, and when I discovered I said wow!  That's me. I had no idea what else I could do or what I was good at. But when I realised that this thing existed, I really felt it, so I moved into coaching. 

It hasn't been easy because of course, you know, you come from a history of employment. It's a completely different mindset having your own business. So, leave aside the mistakes that I made. Suddenly, I had to find my niche as a coach. And I said, yeah, but what should I help people with? And then it hit me the choice of what kind of people you could help best. It's not a decision that you may use. You sit on the table, pen and paper and then you try to understand what you can do, it's not about that. It is about who you are;  the right career for you. What I understood in my journey is it's about who you are. 

Now, who I am is a person, I am a person who suffered from so many years, being stuck in an unfulfilling career. And if I look at this from now, I can see that there was a gift in there. Of course, I didn't see it that way at that time, but in that journey, we know those mistakes and ups and downs. I've learned so much, it’s actually part of who I am, everything that I understood about human behaviour in that process; it's a gift! 

So, I would say that in this, I've turned my poison into medicine, and I wanted to use this medicine to heal others as well. So, the niche became very clear. Career coaching and particularly helping people figure out what they are supposed to do and then transit to that career, avoiding all the mistakes I've made. So, the process started in this way. So, I'm still doing career coaching and I'm loving it. But throughout the process, I realised that there were so many other career coaches out there, and I really felt need from a business and from a personal perspective to differentiate myself. 

And then as well how can I get how can I differentiate myself, okay, pen and paper sit down, but nothing was really coming out. Then it hit me again, the right path for me is the one where I can bring who I am into what I do.

So, what is about makes me me? What is that comes really natural to me, that is a gift of mine that people tend to recognise.  And that is my passion in studying how the brain works, and the ability to turn those complex concepts into actionable strategy. People were complimenting me about these. Again, this is me comes natural to me. So maybe that's why I'm so passionate about it. And so that's how it came to the surface that I could have push on these and that naturally became a differentiator, with all the other coaches.