Episode Transcript
Hello, my name is Aziz and I'm the son of a divorced mother. She is really my superhero. That's why it's important for me to support women to share their uniqueness, their personalities, perspectives and emotions about life. Too many women in this world feel alone. They worry about the judgment of others and they struggle with their mental health but when they listen to the Rare Girls podcast where empowered women share their voices and tell their stories, many women will feel inspired to live a life of freedom and to overcome all insecurities they will feel. It is a safe space to find their confidence, to remember their unique beauty and to feel their self worth and they will connect with a sisterhood of Rare Girls who encourage their success and support their dreams. That's what this podcast is all about. My guest today is Amelia Davidova. Amelia is an 18 years old student at University of California Davis. She is majoring in psychology with a focus on coaching and relationships and participating in the choir club, the baking club and doing volunteer work. And her future goal is to get a PhD in neuropsychology. Amelia really enjoys singing, reading, going to the gym and traveling. She is originally from Russia and she lived in Dubai throughout high schools so she has an interesting range of cultural backgrounds. Amelia, nice to meet you. I'm happy to have you here. How are you today? Hello, I'm really great today. I'm happy and honored to have you here. Very curious to know much more about you so I'll start with this nice question, especially you as a psychologist student. You might have a good answer for it or have done some introspection which is if you could or your friends could describe your personality, what would they say about you? I would say that my friends would say that I'm really easy going because I usually focus on all of the situations like with a bright mind and looking at it from positive perspective so I'm like it's okay, it will work out. And I guess also my friends would say that I'm pretty ambitious because coming from Russia and then moving to Dubai and then I'm in the university in America and going to the university in the US was always like my dream and my goal. So I guess all of my friends would say that I'm really ambitious. And I think like I'd say three things so the last thing would say that I'm very caring so I'm always there for my friends and sometimes they ask, they need help. I'll always be there to support them, help them and like give advice. So yes, I think that's it. Thank you. I appreciate that very, very much. And to ask you about your optimism, there are many girls who struggle with anxiety, with overthinking, with worry and they cannot find it within their possibility to be optimistic or to expect the best to happen. And that limits their life a lot. Did you deal with this before and in general, what is your coaching advice to those girls so that they can push forward and find that positive mindset? I believe that every girl at least once in her life like experience anxiety or stress about herself, about her goals, about like everything she does in her life because I was always a high achiever and I always studied well and I always like got good grades. But every time a test was coming up and I felt I'm not ready, I was always worrying about myself. I was also always focusing on like improving my body shape, improving my overall how I look and it also was pretty stressful but I overcame it by thinking, okay, like I should love myself before anyone else can love me. And I was always focusing on becoming better and better at everything like step by step. And I believe my advice is to just like calm down, stop for a second and think like what do I want from myself? Like what good things I feel about myself and then start focusing on the things that I want to improve. For example, yes, I can do singing well or I can do writing well or I can do cooking well. But what is something I'm not really good at that I want to become good at and focus on the good things but then step by step start improving like the things that you feel you need to improve on and just like don't give up. Don't ever feel that you're not doing enough because each small step is moving you closer to your goal. That's what I'd say. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. And to ask you about your ambitious and overachiever side. Well, there are people in this world, even some psychologists who say that the core and the spark for ambition and for being an overachiever is something that you're born with. And then you grow it with other practices while other people, even if they're not born with it, it will take them a lot more years to discover their ambition to grow into it. What do you think about yourself? Were you born with a huge list of goals and ambitions or did you cultivate it or how did it work? I don't really feel that you can be born with like ambitions and with specific like specific goals in your mind. I think that each person just has to find the spark in them. The thing that makes them want to achieve something. Maybe for someone, it's a loved one. For example, like they want to like help their parents. They want to work with their significant other and so they work in order to like support their family. Maybe for some person, it's like a dream. Like they want to become a professional sportsman or they want to like professionally big or they want to professional sing. And that's what they focus on. I believe that just like each person who doesn't have any ambitious, they just haven't found this specific spark in order to work for it. So I believe that you can be born with a spark. I always had very supportive parents and I believe that this is one of the reasons why I am ambitious because my parents, they gave me like a really great life. And I believe that the only thing that motivates me, one of the main things is that I want to live a life myself that my parents like gave me before. So I don't want to live worse than I live with my parents and I want to work and I want to strive for better and I want to like earn a lot. I want to have a great career. I want to have a great family just like how it is in my family. And this is what motivates me to become better every day. Thank you so much. I appreciate you for that great answer. And it makes me wonder why psychology? What motivated you to begin going into this field? Many say that psychologists, they start because they want to focus first on themselves to help themselves to understand themselves first and then help and other people becomes an expansion of them working on themselves through psychology. What to you? What was the motivator and why is coaching and relationship psychology such an interesting part that you're focusing on? Okay, there were actually two reasons why I decided to go into psychology. The first reason, as I said, I was always a very caring person. And all of my friends for some time, since I was very young, even like 12, 13 years old, they were always coming to me and like telling about their problems, asking me for help, like psychological mental health. And I was always supporting them and helping them out. And one time, like one of my friends told me that, oh my God, like, I don't really know you well. But for some reason, I feel like I can tell you anything. And it won't go out. And I feel like at ease when I talk to you. And after that, like many years later, I heard many people say the same thing that I'm a very comfortable person to talk to, like they feel like they can share their problems with me and they understand that these problems will not go out anywhere else. And I was like, okay, this is something I can focus on. And then when I was like 13, 14 years old, my mom, she went to get a third degree in psychology and she went to the university and she was bringing all of this like materials, all of the lecture stuff inside our house. And I was reading it. I was helping her with her homework. I was reading it and I got very interested in psychology. And I was thinking, okay, I work well with people. I love talking to people. I love helping people. And maybe this is something I might do in the future. This is something I want to do. I want to focus my career on something where I can communicate with people and help them out at the same time. So this is why I decided to choose psychology. Thank you for that answer. I appreciate it very, very much. And you as a girl who lived in Russia, Dubai, and now in the US, those are very different cultures. Did you go through a period of culture shock? How did you adapt to new places to make new friends? Or are you because you're an overachiever in such a routine of achieving that it makes no difference where you are. You are constantly learning, studying, and therefore you could be in any location in the world. It doesn't matter because you are in your bubble. How does it work? Well, I wouldn't say that I had a cultural shock. I would say that I was just like very overwhelmed with the new things which came my way at school. When I moved from Russia to Dubai, the school was much harder than it was in Russia. And I had to focus a lot on studying, on catching up with the students. And this was really overwhelming. And I was really sad for the beginning of the school year. But then I found really great friends back in Dubai. And it helped me to motivate myself and to focus on my work and to become better. But in the beginning, yes, I felt a little bit down. And in the US, I guess I also got into the routine of studying. But it's also a bit different because back in Dubai, you still have Russian speakers there. You still have people you can talk to in your own language. You still have communities of Russian people. And here in my university, there are no Russian people at all. And it is a bit hard for me to always speak in English, always talk to English people. Also they have different, for example, different views on different stuff. And it's also hard for me to sometimes adjust to them. But I feel like I'm adjusting step by step. And I believe that I don't have a very huge cultural shock, but it's still overwhelming a little bit for me. Thank you so much for that. And then I'm wondering about your hobbies, such as volunteering, the choir, what you're singing and baking. What do those give you? Is it the emotion of almost meditation where you let go of the stress of studying and all of the exhausting life and reality? Or is it, for example, it helps you connect with your feminine side because you need to be so much in your masculine to achieve? Or it just break from the routine, like some people go to the cinema or play video games. It just gives you a small mini vacation before you return to the hard work. Or what do they add to your life that makes you give time to those activities? While as an overachiever, you might think, well, I should study even more and harder since I'm so ambitious, but you're giving them space. So what are the benefits? Okay, I believe the benefits are actually just to relax, just to connect with myself, because most of the time, most of the things I focus on are like working, studying, going to like different places where I can like show myself, show how smart I am, show how great I am and stuff like this. But then I'm singing. It's like a different thing. I'm a different person because I enjoyed singing from like the day I think I was born. It was like something I really loved. I love music. I love singing. And I felt like it's just but I didn't want to focus my career on singing because it's something I really, really enjoy. And I felt that it's a great hobby for me to just like get away from all of the routine to just sing for myself, sing for the people, let other people listen to me sing and enjoy it. And baking, I guess I was always I cooked from the age when I was like seven years old. I was very young when I started to cook and I always enjoyed cooking and baking as well. So in the university, they don't really have any kitchens to cook and they don't have any cooking classes or cooking clubs, but they have a baking club. And I felt that this is like one of the clubs I want to join because I really want to cook sometimes. I really want to make something sometimes. And yes, this was one of the reasons why I joined the baking club. And the last thing is volunteer work. I believe that when I focus on my studying, I don't really for now, I don't really help people as a person. And I really enjoy helping people and volunteer work is something which actually helps me to connect to other people to see other sites and to help them out. I also really enjoy working at dog shelters because I really enjoy working with pets. I really love pets. I have four dogs of my own back at home. So I really love dogs and volunteering at dog shelters and helping dog shelters is also something I really enjoy doing. Thank you so much for your answer. And I'm also wondering because you mentioned something, which is that you are working on developing your body and that caused at some point some anxiety. And I know one of your hobbies is going to the gym. There are many girls who are growing up in the age of social media where there are AI generated women, photoshopped women, women who look in a way that they cannot look normally because plastic surgery and all the things that they do. And that crushes the self esteem of many girls where they feel ugly because they cannot look like those girls. Plus, if you are in the gym, focusing on the gains, you're constantly looking at yourself and therefore very critical, even more of your body because you're constantly looking for the gains. Well, what did you deal with before related to this? Did you compare yourself in looks and in body shape to other women? And what is your advice for girls who might be struggling with this in order to find and feel their unique beauty? Okay, I believe yes. I think everyone like focused on someone else, why they were trying to improve themselves or why they weren't looking as good as they wanted to look. When I was younger, I really had a lot of problems with like accepting my body with working on my body because I even like didn't eat much when I was younger because I thought that yes, I should be skinny. Yes, that's how it should be. But then one time I was just like I stopped and I was thinking, okay, when I tried to achieve something from like causing pain to myself, like harming my body, like not eating or something like this, I'm actually doing worse things for myself because I will feel good right now looking at myself. But then a few years later, I will feel bad because my health will be really bad. And then I was like, okay, what can I do in order to achieve my goals, but actually not do anything harmful? And then I started thinking, okay, I can focus on my diet. I can like eat less sweets, for example, or like eat less bread, for example, but don't like take it out of my diet at all because I enjoy eating some of these foods. I try to eat healthy all of the time. I try to eat vegetables like me, all of the healthy foods. But then, for example, I want an ice cream and I will go and buy myself an ice cream because that's what my body is craving. I will not like sell myself, oh, no, don't eat ice cream. You will get fat because of ice cream. Or we'll get like bad skin because of ice cream. No, that's not how it should work. You should always like feel in sync with your body. You should focus on it. And of course, I go to the gym and I always I tried a lot of different things at the gym. I tried running. I didn't enjoy running. I tried like lifting weights. I didn't enjoy it as well. But then I found yoga. I started doing yoga. I started doing strength yoga. I started doing stretching and I also do a lot of cardio. And these things, they don't make me feel burdened. They don't make me feel bad about myself. I don't feel like, oh my God, I have to go to the gym. This is like so hard for me. I have to work out again. No, I found myself something which I enjoy doing at the gym. And I can do it like every day. I'm so happy to go and do it. It makes me feel really well about myself after I finish it. So I believe that you should find yourself something while you enjoy doing like working out. For example, maybe you enjoy playing basketball. Okay, go and play basketball. Maybe you enjoy, I don't know, doing yoga or dancing. Go and dance and never feel like you don't look beautiful because every woman, she is beautiful in her own way. There is no such thing as beauty standards because each person, he or she, they have their own beauty standards. They know how they want to look like. And you should just look at yourself and find some good things about yourself. And then again, think about what you want to improve. Find yourself something you enjoy doing at the gym. Find yourself some foods you enjoy eating and then try to make them healthier. Maybe like add vegetables to something you want to eat or like just eat this food and then eat something healthier for dinner, for example. And just find yourself a routine which will help you to improve your body but also will not like take out anything from your everyday life. Like will not feel burdened and you will enjoy improving your life. That's how it should be. Thank you for that answer. That was very interesting and wise. And why are you planning in the future? Why is it your big goal to focus on having a PhD in neuropsychology for two reasons. One, to do a PhD that will take you at least a decade before you begin doing a lot of practice and working in earnest in order to give yourself the lifestyle you said that your parents gave you and you don't want to live worse. That's one. And two, you can do a lot of coaching and relationship work without much neuropsychology. So what interested you in the field and fascinated you enough to dedicate to it a decade of your life after you finish your graduation? Okay, earning a PhD is something I want to do after I like stabilize myself. Maybe like in a few years after I graduate, after I earn money, after I work so that it will not burden me and I will not focus like solely on studying throughout my life. I believe it will be like in my maybe 30s or 40s something like this, maybe late 20s when I finished like university and when I know that I'm like I achieved most of the stuff and I want to focus on neuropsychology. The focus of neuropsychology is something like pretty personal and important to me because in my family, there are a lot of kids, for example, like my nieces and nephews and like my cousins, little cousins who are bilingual or just have like problems with their speech. And the neuropsychology is actually the science which helps children like this with the speaking problems of developmental problems and people who also have like speaking and developmental problems. And I believe that this is something in the future that I want to focus on that I want to do in my life because neuropsychology isn't that developed of a field. And in Russia specifically, we don't really have that many places where you can get help. And if you can get help, it is really expensive. So for example, some people I know, some kids I know, their parents could never afford going to a neuropsychologist because it's really expensive. And I believe that I want to globalize this field. I want to step by step put this field into many different countries, open many different clinics in the future, like maybe invest in neuropsychology clinics so that children like the kids I know, like the children from my family or like my close friends, they will not suffer as much. And all of these kids will have an opportunity to get all of the needed treatments for their conditions without like spending a lot of money or waiting a lot of time or traveling to other countries where neuropsychology is better. So I want to actually globalize it. And I want to be the person who helps all of these children in the future. Thank you so much for that. That's absolutely glorious and great. And I applaud your heart for that desire. And to finish this, there are many girls in this world who have big dreams and visions, that they worry about failing, about disappointing their parents if they're not good enough, about trying and then thinking, wow, if I fail, I'm not a good person. I'm not smart. And therefore they stop themselves from going after their big dreams and go for the easy goals because they think at least I will not fail. And then they don't live to their potential. What's your advice to those girls so that they will go and build the life that they dream off and the good things that they deserve? You know, I heard a quote recently. We've said anything worth doing is worth doing badly. So if you feel that it is something you really want to do and you have a goal set for yourself, you shouldn't focus on the bad side of things. Yes, of course, there is no success without failure, as they also say. How can you achieve something from the first time? It is basically impossible. Like when you started to learn how to read when you were a little kid, have you read like straight up from the first minute you opened up a book? No, you learned. Then, for example, did you become a professional at your sport, like from the first moment? No, of course, it is a lot of work. It is a lot of dedication. Did you, for example, I don't know, learn how to cook from the first time? Of course not. You also had to learn all of this step by step. You had to be taught by your parents or you watched like YouTube videos or you read books in order to learn. And I believe that you should never focus on the bad side. For example, oh, my God, like this is something I've never done before. Or this is like a far away goal from me. Like it will take me a few years. No, I cannot do it. Of course you can. Of course you will fail a few times. Of course you will feel bad about yourself a few times. You should also focus on your goal. Set a goal for yourself and think, okay, maybe I failed one time, but I have like a long life ahead of me. Maybe I can try a different strategy or maybe I can do it again and like think about the mistakes I made before. Never focus on the bad side. Like anything, as I said, anything that you feel is worth achieving. Anything you feel is worth working for. Anything you feel is worth making you feel good about yourself. Always focus on like what you feel, what you feel is good, what you feel will make you feel good, what you feel will make you great. And even though like, yes, it will always be worrisome. Like think about your parents, think about people outside, think about everyone around you who will tell you, oh, no, like you cannot do it or you're like, you won't do it because we don't approve of it. But if you feel that it is worth it, you should focus on it and don't feel think about failure. And even if you fail, well, you still have more chances. You still have more things to do. You still have more different, like different professions, different sports, different strategies to work on. And maybe if you don't work out like one time, you can try 10 years later when you have like more wisdom, more knowledge and more skills to apply for like this particular field. So like never give up, work on yourself, like find people who support you. For example, like if you have people around you who always disappointed you and who tell you like, oh my God, you cannot do it. Oh my God, you're a failure. Oh my God, you don't look good enough. Just change these people. Like don't don't talk to these people who always make you feel down. Find the people who will appreciate you because there are always people around you who will love you. It's just like you're not in the right place. You're not with the right people. If you always feel down, you should always have a person you can turn to who will support you. And this is one of the things I would advise. So yeah, never give up, work on yourself and like do all of the things which you feel are worth it. Thank you so much, Amelia. It was my privilege and my honor to have you here to share your wisdom, your voice and your experience. I wish you to achieve all of your goals, to make all your dreams come true. Keep going. And thank you again for participating. Okay. Thank you for giving me this opportunity. Thank you.
