#170 Finding Freedom in Letting Go of Perfection

Today, I interview Liz Sweet, who spent years feeling the pressure to be polished and perfect, even when it left her exhausted. Growing up in Los Angeles, she was encouraged to use her voice, but only her polished side was welcomed, while her vulnerable self was seen as “too much.”

As she built her career leading trainings around the globe, Liz created a confident persona that looked successful on the outside but drained her on the inside. Her turning point came when she discovered a presence-based approach and realized that real confidence comes not from performance, but from connection.

In this conversation, Liz shares what it meant to drop the mask, move through discomfort, and find the deep freedom of being seen as her whole self. She shows how presence—not polish—is what allows your true voice to shine.

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Liz Sweet is the founder of Connected Speaking, where she helps professionals find real confidence in their voice and leadership. With over a decade of experience training nonprofit and philanthropic leaders, she knows how easily the pressure to prove yourself can take over—no matter your role.

Liz also knows this struggle personally. For years, she battled speaking anxiety, relying on performance and polish to get by. Her turning point came when she discovered a presence-based approach that helped her move beyond fear and perfectionism into genuine confidence and ease.

Today, Liz leads supportive group programs and coaching that go deeper than surface-level techniques. She guides people to feel at home in their voice, connect more authentically, and lead with greater impact.
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Find Liz here:

www.ConnectedSpeaking.com 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethasweet/ 

Transcript

Transcript of Interview

Find Your Voice, Change Your Life Podcast

Podcast Host: Dr. Doreen Downing

Free Guide to Fearless Speaking: Doreen7steps.com

Episode #170 Liz Sweet

“Finding Freedom in Letting Go of Perfection”

(00:00) Doreen Downing: Hi. Welcome to the Find Your Voice, Change Your Life podcast. I am Dr. Doreen Downing, psychologist. What I originally thought about doing here on my podcast was to feature guests who felt like somewhere along the line, their voice wasn’t heard, or they didn’t even have one. Somehow, there was a way in which they didn’t feel like they could be fully seen and expressed.

What I do here is explore that backstory. Most of the people who show up on my podcast today have coaching programs, have written books, are usually quite successful. However, they didn’t pop out just like that. They took a journey. And this journey is what we’re most curious about, because that’s how it relates to you, the listener.

If you find yourself in a situation where you’re challenged about speaking up, listen to these stories and be inspired. Today is Liz, my wonderful friend I’ve known for quite a few years. Liz Sweet has her own story, and we’ll be exploring that.

When I first met Liz, she was working for a company, a corporation, where she was probably doing wonderful work. But in a way, she wasn’t lined up with her true self, her true voice. And we get to hear a lot about that today. So, hi Liz.

(01:39) Liz Sweet: Hi Doreen. So good to see you.

(01:42) Doreen Downing: Wonderful. I have a bio, and I’m going to read what we’ve got here so that people get a good sense of who you are today and what you’ve been up to.

Liz Sweet is the founder of Connected Speaking, where she helps professionals develop more confidence in their voice and leadership. After more than a decade leading trainings for nonprofits and funders, Liz understands the pressure many leaders at all levels feel to prove themselves, especially in moments where they want to make a strong impression.

For years, she battled her own speaking anxiety until discovering a presence-based approach that helped her move beyond fear and perfectionism into real confidence. Oh, that word—real confidence. Right now, I just feel like that’s vibrating with me, because that’s really what carries our messages and our sense of self into a room. Real confidence, not put-on confidence or performance techniques. So, how is that to hear your bio?

(03:08) Liz Sweet: Great. I absolutely had a wonderfully confident persona, and nobody would know on the outside that inside I was exhausted from perfecting and performing. I did the confident persona, and I did speak a lot at work, but it was exhausting.

For me now, to be able to lead and support others in this journey that you’ve really been such a big part of guiding me through to where you can show up and really feel real ease and confidence. It’s my dream, really.

(03:48) Doreen Downing: Yes, you’re living your dream. And there we go again: real ease. Even when you said that phrase, my body responded.

I think we’ll get into talking about how the way we speak not only helps people relax, but if we’re really working on transformation, the way we speak helps them come into themselves and do the kind of change that lasts. I look forward to talking about that aspect of our work. But first, I always go back, because the real story started way back when you popped out into a family. What was that family?

(04:40) Liz Sweet: I grew up in a very stable, loving family of four in the heart of Los Angeles. I had my parents, a younger brother, and everything felt pretty easeful, very safe and stable in many ways.

And yet, of course, with all families, there were challenges. Interestingly, I was actually encouraged to use my voice pretty early on in a number of settings. I still remember the poem I memorized in second grade to share with the school. I was also a lector at our church.

But growing up in image-conscious LA, I really learned there was a “right way” to show up. I got a lot of positive feedback. “Oh, you really enunciated, you were so clear, you projected, you had confidence.” Speaking became this thing I got recognition for. But I also learned that if there’s a right way, then there’s a wrong way. That was part of growing up: things had to be polished.

(05:58) Doreen Downing: Oh, my goodness. It feels like there was a suit you had to wear. Maybe like a costume. I haven’t really thought about our inner selves being costumed, but that’s what it sounds like.

You weren’t someone who said, “I was terrified of speaking.” Instead, it was, “Okay, I can do this—I just have to put on whatever this costume is so I can perform it.” It feels more like performance.

(06:39) Liz Sweet: Yes. I have this vision of myself in second grade on stage in a pinstripe suit that was far too big for me, which I kind of love.

But I also learned there were only so many aspects of me that were really acceptable. This is probably generational, but when I showed my sad, vulnerable, or insecure side, especially as a pre-teen, my parents didn’t have the skills to embrace that part of me. Instead, it was often met with a slammed door, anger, or frustration.

I learned that only the good, polished parts were welcome. Those other parts—don’t bring them forward. They’re not good enough. In fact, no one can deal with them. They’re too much.

(07:44) Doreen Downing: The message you got feels like what we do in our own development: we take in that message and then monitor our own expression. “This is right, this is wrong. I better not.” That’s a lot of energy going into managing who we are in our expression.

Did you find that it was also with friends, that you had this persona?

(08:20) Liz Sweet: Absolutely. I think especially around that age when we’re building identities in middle school. I have a 13-year-old daughter now, and I love to see how she is who she is. But of course, there’s a lot of self-consciousness at that age, and I definitely had it to a pretty extreme degree.

Like most people, I went through periods where you’re rejected by a group and suddenly cast out. You experience what it’s like to not belong. The initial ghosting. Your best friend just stops talking to you and you don’t know why. Things like that make you go, “Oh gosh, what’s wrong? Am I okay? What do I need to do here to fit in?“ I definitely felt that.

Within my family, too, when I spoke up—I still wasn’t afraid to speak up, I did it—there were times, like this one story. I said, “I don’t think this is quite right, this concerns me,” around some of the image and eating issues in our family.

And I was told, “No, no, no. There’s no problem. In fact, you are the one with the problem. Nothing’s wrong here. We’re going to go to family therapy to work this out, and we’re taking the money from your allowance because you’re the one causing the problems.”

My parents have since apologized and recognized that maybe that wasn’t the best way. But I really learned that what I said and how I showed up—my real ideas and my voice—maybe I wasn’t saying the right things. I would create problems by speaking up. On the one hand: Go speak up, you’re good at this. On the other hand: Say exactly the right thing, or you’ll cause problems.

(10:20) Doreen Downing: What a lot of pressure. And when I read your bio, you talked about the pressure for people in companies to show up and perform. That feels connected to what you learned early on in your family. It’s like the same thing that goes on in businesses.

(10:50) Liz Sweet: Oh, sure. I think we recreate our nuclear family experiences in the workplace—with our supervisors and colleagues. I’m not a psychologist like you are, but it’s easy to bring that same sense of, “Is this going to be okay? Can I be myself in this interaction? Can I bring all my ideas and my voice and have it be okay? Or do I just bring the polished version, or not speak at all?”

(11:22) Doreen Downing: You’ve used the word polished a couple of times today, and I would say our society does value that. People like you, and also myself, have put that up as a false way of showing up.

I’d like to get into that now. You were saying, “Okay, if I’m not polished, who am I? I’m this rough thing nobody wants around, or I’m going to cause trouble.” What was going on with that inner conflict that you had to come to terms with or recognize?

(12:11) Liz Sweet: Hmm. I think I forced myself to work on it because I was really attracted to, and chose, work that had me up in front of the room as a trainer. I did a lot of trainings around the world for nonprofits and then for funders. I was almost forced to confront it.

For a long time, I just did the thing where I prepped, and prepped, and practiced, and planned for every contingency. If somebody asked a question that wasn’t what I planned, it could throw me off. I felt like it had to go this way, or it wasn’t safe.

For a long time, I muscled through. And in some ways, I enjoyed parts of it. Once I got in, if I felt comfortable and it felt safe enough, I could establish my polished authority in front of the room. I really loved interacting, and actually providing a safe space for others to speak up was something I always loved. But in the end, it was too exhausting.

Finally, I said, If I’m going to keep doing this work, I need to find a way to do it that feels like I don’t have to hide, or polish and polish and polish, until it’s just a reflection and I’m not even there anymore so much. That didn’t feel good. 

That’s when I found you back in 2017, and went to my first Speaking Circle, where I learned about just being present with one person.

(13:56) Doreen Downing: You were reaching for real, and there was something about what I either said or radiated that caught your attention. Just like today, folks listening, we’re here to catch your ear, your eye. To say, “There is something else possible for you, something much more positive.”

It’s about being present. We’ve got all these P’s—polished, present, not polished—but I think presence is the true gem. The one that’s bright and shiny.

So, when you think back on what drew you to this work I was presenting, what were the words or the sense?

(14:56) Liz Sweet: Yeah. For me there was this sense of freedom. It was moving through discomfort. What I loved was that you were teaching an approach that was concrete, something I could understand and do right away, but it was also deeply healing.

It wasn’t techniques. It was very much about this unraveling of all the Be this. Do this. This is the right way. It was very much learning to let that go and to still feel safe.

I don’t think it’s polish or presence. In some ways it can be a little bit of both—as long as the presence shines through and the polish isn’t overtaking your presence.

(16:02) Doreen Downing: Right. Well, if we think about polishing stones, we could make them shiny, but the stone is still the stone. It’s still the original material. I think what you’re saying is that polish is fine, as long as it isn’t the only value.

(16:26) Liz Sweet: It’s the dips and crannies and differences in the stones, the unique things about them, that make them interesting. Anything can gleam with enough polish, but really, people want to know you and hear your ideas through you, rather than through some perfected version.

(16:53) Doreen Downing: There’s another P—perfection. That’s a big one.

I’m going to take a brief break, and we’ll be back. I have some questions about the journey you’ve been on around becoming somebody who now has a business called Connected Speaking. Ooh, connected. Connected to what, folks? We’ll be right back.

Hi, we’re back now at the Find Your Voice, Change Your Life podcast. I’m Dr. Doreen Downing, and I’m meeting today with Liz Sweet from Connected Speaking. We’ve been talking about her past, some of the polishing she valued and that her family valued, and growing up in Los Angeles, an area where there’s a lot of glitter and emphasis on image.

What Liz has done is a personal transformational story to get at what’s real and genuine inside of her, and she’s talking about that today. We’re back now on your journey to be more fully the truth of who you are. 

What would you say about this inner journey? Because it is an inner journey. You didn’t put on more costumes. You took them off and went through an inner exploration to be more powerfully you.

 (18:30) Liz Sweet: Thanks for that question. I feel right away the emotions when you talk about that journey to becoming more you—with others, in communication, and in interactions.

For me it was healing and emotional. It was about sitting through the deep discomfort of having people see all of the nooks and crannies, and then learning through that, even the emotions that weren’t okay.

That I could share the emotions, and the ideas, and the thoughts, and just that deeper part of who each of us is when we’re simply present without an agenda. And that could be seen and appreciated.

It was an emotional, deeply healing journey for me, and it took time. In some ways it was immediate. “Wow, there’s another way, this is possible.” And then there was so much to unwind. It really took time and practice.

(19:50) Doreen Downing: I love that wow moment, where you go, “There. It is possible.” And the wow to me is seeing what I call the essence. We can call it spirit, we can call it the real you, the sage. I don’t know. But the point is, it’s in there.

The question is, “How do I get there?” I need a guide. That’s partly what you do in your work with professionals, how to guide people to this wow inside themselves. But first, they have to see it, and then they have to be willing to do some of what you just said: moving through fear gently, slowly, so that fear dissolves along the way. 

Then you gain not only more confidence, but you get to the inner strength that’s… I was going to say that’s always been there. But do you think the inner strength has always been there? It just occurred to me to ask that.

(21:09) Liz Sweet: Sure. I think it’s there even when we’re nervous. I think it’s always there. It’s that part of us that’s untouched by the challenges and the things that can diminish it. It’s there.

I call it the connected you. You asked about what connection means. For me, it’s the journey to feeling like, in any setting, you can be connected fully with yourself. In that way, you can be fully connected with others. That’s my deepest value—connection, what I want most in the world. I think it’s something that can be a real gift of this practice.

(21:57) Doreen Downing: How does connecting with yourself relate to connecting to others?

(22:02) Liz Sweet: I just read a quote by Daniel Kingsley, who also learned and teaches this relational presence work. I’m going to paraphrase, but it was something like, “If you’re not connected to yourself, there’s no you to connect with others. There’s nothing there to really grab a hold of.”

A simple example is, I’ve worked with a lot of amazing leaders. Some of them still read from a script. I had this one wonderful CEO—powerful, great communicator—but she would come to staff meetings and read a script, and you can’t connect with that. There’s very little there.

So, I think being connected to yourself, being connected to this moment, enables you to connect with others and for your message to land.

(23:02) Doreen Downing: Yes, I just got it. Words are just words, but connection has depth. I’m squeezing my fingers right now. There’s a richness, a dynamic…a dynamism, if that’s a word. There’s energy. That’s what it is. Real energy.

Connecting with that feels like people then connect with us. Because what I’m exploring here is the idea of: what is it about being connected to ourselves that helps people feel like they can connect with us? You’re right. I just got it.

(23:46) Liz Sweet: Well, and in some ways—

(23:48) Doreen Downing: No, I just got it. What you said about Daniel Kingsley. “Here’s a self. I’m here. I’m in this now moment. I’m energized. I’m alive.” That creates magnetism. People can more easily connect with me because I’m energized in my energy.

 (24:11) Liz Sweet: I think for our work, helping people with their communication, when we’re not connected with self, where are we? At least for me, I’m in my thoughts. I’m worrying. “What do you think of me? Am I going to say the right thing? How am I going to get through my agenda?”

So, to connect first with self—using breath, being with one person at a time, listening for what’s here, to drop down, to find, as we do in this practice, that stillness, that place where we’re listening out of presence. That’s where we can feel connection.

I also think, as a facilitator, I learned you balance content. We all want to have good content and deliver good content. But you balance that with the process. Are we staying on time, is everyone heard? And you also balance that with relationships. It’s content, process, and relationship.

Most of us—me included—think about content, or the process of staying on time. I’m the one looking at the clock, making sure we’re on time. But if we don’t center the relational piece, if we lose that, no one hears the content. The relational piece is what brings us into connection and presence.

(25:38) Doreen Downing: I love it. And I love the idea of relational being really in this now moment and relating to everything in this now moment, whether it’s an audience or even one other person, like us today. Being open, being curious, and being with each other.

Well, we’re moving right along. You pointed to time, and it is time to bring this to a close. Before I do, I’d like to keep it open, always. The closing is the opening, right? You’ve heard that phrase.

How would you like to bring this together for our listeners today, in whatever way feels right in this shared moment? What would you like to leave our listeners with?

(26:36) Liz Sweet: I guess I want to leave you with a sense of ease, and a sense that it is safe to be you at work. It’s safe to speak up, whether you are presenting, or you just have a question in a meeting. It’s safe to make a toast, or to really be present with your family.

There are so many ways we navigate life that can feel like pressure, or hard to show up. We can hide, or we can polish. But I want to leave you with the idea that there is deep freedom, and there are ways to move through that so you can have your voice.

You get to navigate your work, your days, your meetings in a way that feels lighter, but also makes you a stronger leader. You have so much to offer. This allows you to offer what you already have without unnecessary angst, challenges, or feeling held back. That’s what I’d like to leave with.

(28:02) Doreen Downing: Beautiful. I don’t want to add anything. I just feel like you rang a bell and it’s still ringing. Thank you so much.

Liz Sweet: Thank you, Doreen. I so appreciate you.