knix CEO and Founder Joanna Griffiths and Jenna discuss how self-acceptance and positive self-talk enables us to feel mentally lighter and increases our energy and ability to achieve our goals.
We chat about the mindset shift that changed Joanna’s life, how deciding to fight for something bigger than herself made her “a woman on a mission,” and why our ability to make an impact begins with the courage to live our truth.
Highlights from the Transcript
- On inclusivity: “We are creating intimate products that ideally have a positive impact in women’s daily lives. Logically, it just makes sense to feature real people in our marketing and to share their stories…When you can have a relationship that involves trust, an open dialogue, and a safe place where people feel included, you’re doing something right.”
- On becoming lighter: “We’ve photographed over 500 of our customers, real women, since we launched five years ago. Over the years, something changed in me where I began to like myself a lot more and let go of my negative self-talk. I feel so much lighter now. All of the energy that used to be spent being hard on myself I now have available to put to use in other areas of my life…I so firmly believe that the world needs phenomenal women and that we have the capacity to change the world. I think we need to let go of all of the things we are hard on ourselves for to realize our full potential.”
- On self-love: “We recently shared a quote: If someone asked you all of the things that you love, how long would it take you to list yourself? When I saw that, I realized it wouldn’t even be on my radar to put myself on that list. Another one I like to reference is: Imagine if you said the things you say to yourself out loud. It would never happen. You would never look at your best friend and say: ‘You’re not good at this’ or ‘You look terrible.’ You’d be a supporting, loving, and kind person. That’s how we are trained to be in every day life. Yet, we are so hard on ourselves. When you start to let go of these things, that’s where this lightness comes from.”
- On living your truth: “The earlier we can learn to be our authentic selves the less course correction we have to do…When you can be true to who you are, you can have a profound impact on the world.”
- On overcoming impostor syndrome: “When things really started to go well for the company, I found myself almost being hesitant to things going well, like I didn’t deserve it or it was going to get taken away from me. I had worked so hard for so long that I was living in a state of fear that it could disappear at any time. I made a decision to change my mindset. Instead of asking: Why me? Who am I to run a huge company? I started shifting the narrative to: Why not me? Why couldn’t I be the one to do this? Why can’t I be the person who leads a brand that changes the way that women feel about their bodies? When I started to shift the way I thought about things my whole life transformed. For me, it was a moment of: Change your mindset. Change your life. It worked. We are so much stronger and resilient than we give ourselves credit for…We can be paralyzed by fear or open to the possibilities.”
- On being your authentic self: “I had sort of convinced myself that to be a leader or to be successful I had to be someone other than myself. I had to play a different role. I had a crazy view of what a female leader looked like and it didn’t look a lot like me. I made a commitment that instead of trying to be someone else, I would try to be myself and see how that went. All of the energy that I had spent trying to be someone else was free. Pretending to be someone you’re not is exhausting. It’s basically acting. And, acting is a job. People get paid a lot of money to act. So, if you’re trying to add that on top of your daily responsibilities and relationships, it’s just not sustainable. Everything started to get better when I decided to just be me.”
- On finding and fighting for your why: “When you’re an entrepreneur, people are going to ask for things all the time and you have to ask for things all the time. I had a really hard time with that and wasn’t standing up for myself and the business as much as I should. One of my mentors told me that I needed to take myself out of the equation and connect myself to a mission that is bigger than me. So, when you’re being pushed or you’re asking for something, you’re not asking for it for yourself or for the business. You are asking for it for the larger mission. I took the advice and everything got so much easier. The really crappy days, when things aren’t going well, and you don’t want to get out of bed. I wasn’t getting out of bed for myself. I was getting out of bed for the mission. It gave me so much more fight and energy. I think it is a great way to live your life. Find something you’re really passionate about, assign a purpose to it and use it as your body armor to help you be better, stronger, and more resilient.”
- On grit: “The number one characteristic that you need to have is resilience. Resilience is a muscle that you build every day. The only difference between successful people is that they didn’t quit. Dig deep. Don’t quit. And, keep going…Now I’m just a woman on a mission. It’s who I am now. It’s been a lot of work building that muscle. You take chances. You get comfortable in your ability to make decisions, accept that not everything works out and that’s okay. It takes a lot to make me flinch now. You just become this force.”
- On relationships: “I try surround myself with positive people who are a great influence on me. They say you become a byproduct of the five people you spend the most time with. Surrounding yourself with people who are resilient and don’t let things get them down is really important.”
- On asking for what you want: “My best friend Nikki’s life tagline is: ‘No hands. No cookies.’ It’s the idea that no one is going to just walk around and offer you a cookie. If you want something, you have to ask for it.”