Fatima Bey: 0:04

This is MindShift Power Podcast, the number one critically acclaimed podcast where we have raw, unfiltered conversations that shape tomorrow. I'm your host, fatima Bey, the MindShifter, and welcome everyone. Today we have with us Lilia Bogoeva. She is a beautiful young woman out of Alabama. She's a musician and a comic book author, and this woman has a lot to say. I cannot wait to have this conversation. How are you doing today, lilia?

Lilia Bogoeva: 0:40

I'm doing great. It's a pleasure to talk to you here. I'm really excited for our conversation.

Fatima Bey: 0:44

Me too. Let's dive right into it. So tell us today why are you on this podcast? Why should we listen to you?

Lilia Bogoeva: 0:51

Well, I discovered this podcast and it was about mindset for youth today and that really speaks to me because I really want to give youth the kind of wisdom that I wish that I knew back then. You know, like a lot of adults, I'm like, oh, if I only knew then what I knew now. So I just want to help to give youth the kind of wisdom that was very difficult for me to learn and the kind of stuff that I wish that I had known earlier to learn and the kind of stuff that I wish that I had known earlier.

Fatima Bey: 1:29

And I love that you. I love that you do that, but I also love how you do it. Tell us a little bit about what makes a lot of people talk about mental health, and they give advice and they talk about what people should or shouldn't do, but what's different about how you handle it?

Lilia Bogoeva: 1:43

Well, what sums up my approach to mental health is just do something. Any damn thing Doesn't matter who cares, just do something. Well, and that's because I do feel like the biggest inner demon of them all is not depression, it's not imposter syndrome or low self-esteem. I feel like the biggest inner demon of them all is analysis, paralysis, so one that makes you go like, oh, should I do this? I don't know, that's not cool. I should do that. Is that going to help? No, no, no.

Lilia Bogoeva: 2:15

But then I heard this other podcast that said that that is not good. And then I saw this meme on social media to say to do this. And I saw a motivational speaker who said to do that. And then my favorite artist is doing this and they're like, ah, what should I do? What should I do? Oh God, I don't fucking know. I don't fucking know. So I just like just pick something and roll with it.

Lilia Bogoeva: 2:36

So what I do is I help people improve their mental health awareness and their actual mental health itself through active and creative methods. Being active and being creative. So I have a music therapy coaching program called Harmony Healing. That's where you figure out the best ways to use the music that you love for your own personal empowerment, and that's not something where it's like, oh, you have to listen to this kind of music. I mean, I've gotten into debates with people before and I try not to debate this too much. I'm like you have your opinion, fine. Well, some people are like, oh no, it can't be metal music, it can't be rap, it can't be rock, it has to be spa music or classical or meditation music. No, it's whatever speaks to your soul, whatever music that you feel like is the voice of your soul. That's the kind of music that you should use for your emotional healing, your empowerment, your growth. Or you can even discover new music. You can improvise. I find it so therapeutic. Just improvise on piano or guitar, just like I said before, anything, any damn thing, just pick something, just go somewhere. And related to that, I also have a coaching program I call Rhythmic Release and that is based on dance therapy and it's the same idea like just tapping into however your body wants to move, to express yourself, to develop a really strong mind-body connection. You can feel how your mindset affects your body and how you could use your body to improve your mindset.

Lilia Bogoeva: 4:18

And I also do create comic books. My series is called Lilia the Inner Demon Crusher. I've so far made the first installment, which is called Workaholism vs Food Porn, and that is a big analogy of workaholism. That's pretty clear, our ambitious drive for greatness, but how that could become self-defeating. And then food porn is this big analogy for the things that we try to do as a fast escape from all the struggles that we feel in real life, all things that give us pain. But then just trying to do a sweet escape that's an empty pleasure can actually cause more pain and can cause those inner demons to leech on your dark feelings even more. So I have an online course and a personal coaching program I call Superhero Self, and that is about comic book therapy, literally like how you can use stories and visuals as a way to reflect on yourself.

Fatima Bey: 5:24

And I want to kind of piggyback off that a little bit. I'm always preaching therapy on this podcast and in all that I do, and I do believe that people should get therapy. But I also recognize that therapy doesn't just come in one form and it doesn't just come in a traditional form, and traditional therapy just isn't available for everyone and it's hard to find a therapist who's not a plastic robot. So sometimes other forms of therapy do work for us and I love that you are offering a different form of therapy. Listen to what you have to say. Because you do it through heavy metal or because you do it through a comic book, there's certain people who are going to absolutely be turned off by that, but there's certain people who will absolutely cling to it because it's something they can relate to.

Fatima Bey: 6:14

And I try to have people on here who are all who all approach it a little bit differently. And you know, I have people on here who approach things traditionally, but I also like people like you who approach things more artistically, because there are certain people that are just going to be drawn to that, and I love that you use your gifts and talents to help others. I think that says a lot about you.

Lilia Bogoeva: 6:33

Thank you. That means a lot to me too.

Fatima Bey: 6:36

Oh good, now let me ask you this really specific question question. Most people see ambition as the path to success, but you describe it as destructive obsession that nearly killed you. Take us to that moment when you realized that your greatest strength was also your most dangerous weakness.

Lilia Bogoeva: 6:57

Yeah, there were lots of moments here and there, and that fits under the umbrella of things I wish I knew then, that I know now, but learned the very hard and painful way. Yeah, so ambition in itself is neither good nor bad. It all depends on why you are doing it and what you're going towards.

Fatima Bey: 7:17

So, ambition.

Lilia Bogoeva: 7:17

For me it has been very healing and empowering and it's also been extremely toxic and destructive and nearly killed me. It all depended on why I was doing it. So that's an analogy that I explore in my Inner Demon Crusher comic book and you see that in the beginning this character in the book I did the modeling and character design. I modeled that after myself. It's like a parody of my own life story, mainly my life story in the context of being a musician Didn't go through my whole life story in this graphic novel, but in the beginning my character is very driven to become a musician so that she gets a good reputation, so she earns wealth and recognition.

Lilia Bogoeva: 8:02

There's a scene that goes you, you, you, you're gonna love me, and she's all desperate to be accepted by the others. And then she is going through this really unrealistic to-do list every day, every single day. I have to practice for six to eight hours Every day. I have to promote myself on every social media, I have to make new videos, I have to play shows, I have to book new shows, I have to give interviews, I have to feed my pets Fluffy and Scruffy, and it is, you see, in the beginning this very unrealistic daily to-do list and just grinding it out and wondering why she is so tired and feeling unfulfilled and empty and you see the inner demons keep leeching on her darkest feelings, and that's because the motivation of why my character was so ambitious in the beginning of the story is because she was using that constant drive to bury some emotional wounds that she has like.

Lilia Bogoeva: 9:05

There are these things that have hurt me in my past and in my present. There are these dark feelings that I don't want to feel. I wish I didn't have them. I wish that I could just be an emotionless robot. And she's using that constant work like a robot to try to become that robot that we can never be, because we're humans and we're not rocks or robots.

Lilia Bogoeva: 9:29

So then, the arc that it goes through in the story is that she has to battle these inner demons directly, and in the story they are actually illustrated as these evil demonic creatures. One of them is a scary monster with claws and teeth, and then the other one is a leech that just goes and sucks her lifeblood dry. And there she is battling these demons, and then at the end, she realizes that the passion for music is not a place just to grind it out, to avoid feeling things. The passion for music really can be my greatest weapon if I'm using it correctly, and that's if I am doing it out of passion and doing it to fulfill my own passions and doing it to give the audience something that they can relate to and have a good time with, give both myself and the audience something that really helps us see ourselves honestly and then brings people together.

Lilia Bogoeva: 10:29

Because in the beginning of the story, music was isolating this character. She's like I'm going to lock myself up for eight hours and just practice, practice till I'm perfect. I got to make it to the top, but at the end she's thinking of it more as a group unity. I'm making music to express myself and to bring people together and show everyone that it's okay to express themselves too. And that's the difference that we see in both the beginning, middle and end. She's all ambitious. In the beginning, the reasons are totally different compared to the reasons at the end.

Fatima Bey: 11:09

I want to point out a really key thing that you just said, but I'm going to reword it. So you just said that she used music to express herself, but to me, the key point is the second half of what you said. She used it to bring others together. When we seek to do good outside of ourselves, that's when we do greater things.

Lilia Bogoeva: 11:34

Yes, it is both. I feel like that's a loop. You know, some people these days get into this mindset where feeling like you are expressing yourself and doing what you like is selfish, because you should be always trying to help other people. But it is to me a feedback loop you can do something good for yourself, then other people can see that and they can connect to it. They can help themselves. There are different ways.

Lilia Bogoeva: 12:03

And then it helps you back again seeing their reaction to it. There are different ways. I think it constantly goes in a cycle.

Fatima Bey: 12:11

When we truly express our real selves our real selves, not our real selves it's always there for a reason and it will help people in one way or another. Sometimes it's through example, sometimes it's through the act itself. You know, there's healing that can happen through music, there's deliverance that can happen through music. There's a lot of different things and different, not just music, but other forms of media. And yeah, you're right, it's the key principle that I find that you teach throughout your whole comic book and we can see it throughout your entire website is the key principle of balance. And this is why, when you say being ambitious is great but being overly ambitious is bad because it's when you take a good thing too far that it ends up being bad it's when you take a good thing too far that it ends up being bad.

Lilia Bogoeva: 12:58

Yeah, it could be, and the reasons that you're doing it. I feel like, when it comes to ambition, you really got to check with yourself about the motivation, because I feel like society gives a lot of this. It kind of praises when people feel driven just to prove their worth, like feeling as if you don't have inherent worth as a human, but you only have worth if you achieve something really big and impressive. And then, of course, that's a trap, because when you approach your work with so much stress, it makes you anxious, makes you fearful. It's all kinds of fear, training, it's all fear driven. What can come out into the world is something very artificial and forced.

Lilia Bogoeva: 13:42

So in the context of, music, when your motivation is to achieve fame and fortune as a musician, so that you feel worthy as a human being. Then you see these artists who are labeled as quote sellouts, because you can tell that they're doing a kind of music and image just to try to sell a lot to the masses. Like, oh, they're just trying to either be really politically correct or the opposite, they're just trying to make controversy just for attention. It becomes very artificial. People don't get that genuine expression that really helps them through life. They don't get the healing of music from an artist who's constantly trying to do it just to prove their worth as a person and just being competitive like that. So that's where that two-way feedback loop comes in.

Fatima Bey: 14:38

You're right. I can think of artists right now, and Pink in particular comes to mind. Actually, for some reason, I'll be really honest with you and listeners might not know this about me, but I'm really not that much into American music, even though I'm American. Most of what I listen to comes from an island, or Africa comes from an island or Africa. I like Chinese traditional music too, for some reason, but Pink I remember her talking during an interview about this and it always stuck in my head when her first music, when she first started her career very, very different from her recent music and the reason is is because she was satisfying everybody else at first and then she said screw this, I'm going to be myself and she's done even better and she's.

Fatima Bey: 15:25

You know a lot of people like her, a lot of people like her, and I don't know everything about her, but I do like what I see about her and that she's strong and stands up for what she believes in. And that's one of the things that she says no, just I decided to make music the way I want to make it, and she still has a strong following because of it, and I think that that's a principle, like you were just saying. That is true in life when we are our true selves whether it's on stage or not, we're our true selves. That's when we attract the right people and it's more fulfilling and stronger than anything else.

Fatima Bey: 16:03

I have another question I want to ask you. I'm going to switch it around a little bit because the audience doesn't know this about you. You say you never did rehab or traditional recovery programs because that was not the message you said. That was not the message I heard from God. That's a powerful statement. It is yeah. What did you find in your own mind-body harmony that the entire traditional recovery system couldn't offer you.

Lilia Bogoeva: 16:34

Yeah, so in context, when we're talking about recovery, it was from lots of things. So first, my early teens actually, the first major mental health struggle I had was with anorexia. So that was an eating disorder for which my parents and the doctors told my parents and myself that I had to go to a rehab facility or be in a hospital. And that felt so wrong to me because the thing it felt very dehumanizing, because it felt to me like the attempts to get me motivated to gain a healthy weight and recover were all about that I have to weigh a certain amount on the scale. I felt like the summary of on the scale. I felt like the summary of myself as a human being came down to a number on the scale which is very counterproductive to the kind of mindset you should instill in someone who's trying to recover from an eating disorder. Like this person poked too much focus on their body image and weight. So you got to get this person to focus less on their worth, their body image and weight. So they said, oh no, you're not. You're not a good person when you're skinny. You're a good person when you're a little bit heavier and I'm like, either way, my worth is being determined by the number on the scale, and I knew that that was not the intention of them, but that's how it came across with my perception back then. I know that that's not what they were intending, but when I battled anorexia it was in the mid-2000s and back then the whole system around eating disorder recovery was very archaic. Doctors and psychologists didn't understand nearly as much about the psychology behind it as they do now. So back then they were just talking oh, you girls just want to be skinny because you're shallow and selfish and that's what you want, and you just need to look like a normal person instead of being skinnier and all that stuff. And that was not my motivation behind it at all. My motivation was more out of perfectionism. I wanted to have what I felt was a perfect body, and I also started to feel very ashamed of myself for wanting things.

Lilia Bogoeva: 18:48

I was reflecting on how, when I was 10 or 11 years old, I wanted to eat lots of food. I wanted to go to a buffet. I was never overweight, by the way, because I was a gymnast, so I used a lot of energy. I was a gymnast and a dancer, so I ate to fuel. But somehow by the time I was 12, I started to get so ashamed of myself for wanting things for myself. I didn't want to want pleasure. I thought that that was weakness and selfishness. So that's part of where the self-servation behavior came from. Also, the fact that I was a frequent severe migraine sufferer. So that got me used to throwing up my food and not being able to eat a long time because I was getting sick, naturally.

Lilia Bogoeva: 19:37

And the whole recovery process, though, felt very dehumanizing. Just going to weekly therapy, I already felt like either they were just trying to label me as a number on the scale, or sometimes I got a therapist who wasn't experienced with eating disorders and was just kind of guessing, and I was like, oh shit, this person knows just as little as I do about this and I'm 13. So that sucks. I felt like nobody could help me. So you know, my option was either I wanted to kill myself or wanted to recover my own way.

Lilia Bogoeva: 20:16

So at one point, when I was just turned 14, I really made this clear decision to kill myself. Okay, I was not just thinking about I was past, just thinking about. I made a decision today, but I had this kind of vision and voices. I hear voices in my head and I see things and you know, I just imagined myself recovering while staying true to myself and then eventually continuing with being true to myself and doing something that the rest of the world will value. I was like, wow, that is cool. Because when I was thinking about things that would make me want to live, I was like, well, I don't see myself surviving, I don't know how I'm going to recover from this. And I was thinking about, oh, money and career status and social status and all that stuff, and none of that motivated me at all. I was like who gives a shit, we're all going to die. All of this will vanish anyway. My corpse don't care about it when I'm dead. But what I imagined myself just came to me as a vision Imagine myself being authentic and doing something the rest of the world will value. That, I felt was worth sticking around for.

Lilia Bogoeva: 21:33

And that was a really big turning point for me, because later on in my life I did struggle with the trauma I had from that anorexia process and I did get into bulimia. I got into alcohol and drug addiction too. So it wasn't this one big kaboom moment, my aha moment where everything is all OK and good. It was a moment where I recovered from one thing, but then I had a lot of pain in myself because I was also worried that I had recovered in a really selfish way, because I didn't do it the way that other adults around me wanted me to do it. I struggled a lot with that.

Lilia Bogoeva: 22:18

I struggled a lot with feeling ashamed of myself when I was in phases where I was extremely depressed and hurting and I had the effects of the trauma affecting my body, like making me feel sick to my stomach and extremely exhausted, and then I thought, oh, I'll just sleep it off, but then all my dreams are about dying. So I feel ashamed of feeling bad, and so that's what made me want to get into drug abuse later on, just trying to take some chemical that would make me feel happy and energetic and then, when it's too much energy, another chemical that would make me come back to a mellower level. So that's something that I battled a lot. Those are my inner demons, and the biggest one of them all was the feeling ashamed about feeling bad. So shame. And also the analysis paralysis, because a lot of time I would get into. Oh shit, what's the right path for me to take Like, okay, well, I want to pursue music and storytelling, but then I feel like I should do something more safe and more. Maybe I'm being immature for wanting to make a career based out of expressing myself through the arts. So it was all these back and forths.

Lilia Bogoeva: 23:44

So then, what I realized later on, when I started actually going to church and thinking more about Jesus and God, really hearing the voice of God and understanding that I really started to feel like I actually have worth as a human being, because I am a person. It really resonated with me, because I grew up in California and I was not Christian back then. Because I grew up in California and I was not Christian back then. But when I moved to Alabama in 2020, a little before then I was just gradually getting more interested in learning about that. And then here, I started learning about it more and I really resonated with it.

Lilia Bogoeva: 24:34

It's not just something that's being forced upon me, because there are these Christian 12-step programs that kind of force you to become a Christian. But I did not do one of those because, again, I felt like healing does not happen in structured steps, in a straight line. I feel like healing goes in cycles and waves and there's a lot of feedback loops. So for me, even doing a Christian 12-step program did not feel right at all. I felt this big repulsion like, no, don't do that. No, keep on pursuing what I do with my art and with my teaching other people so that I knew was the right path, even though it might have been longer and more painful than going through some sort of a structured program where I get surrounded by a room of people who have cheerlead on the thing, and the message that I like to give is that you heal through action. Action creates clarity. Do something, any damn thing, just even a stupid thing. Even do a shitty thing is better than being paralyzed and doing nothing.

Fatima Bey: 25:51

Yeah, you just said a whole lot. You just said a whole weekend seminar worth of stuff. I absolutely love that you are giving out that message that, okay, these traditional stuff didn't work for me, Because it's not just true for you, it's true for a lot of people. There are a lot of people who agree with you, but they only know the traditions that are put in front of their face and when they don't work, they think that nothing will work. And the truth is you just have to try stuff until you find what does work. And to me, what matters is that you get results, not just today, but lasting results.

Fatima Bey: 26:33

You know, sometimes, those programs, those structured programs this is the way I put it those structured programs you're right, Things do go in cycles and we're not robots and we're not one, two, three. However, those structure I think the structure helps people to understand those cycles. You know it helps you to understand what you're dealing with. But you have to have enough room to allow yourself to naturally cycle, which is not going to be a one, two, three, your robot kind of step for most people. Anyway, some people it does, but and some people just helps them to get the right mindset so that they can do their own cycle.

Fatima Bey: 27:11

But I love the fact that you're teaching people to do things differently and that it's actually okay, and what I'm hearing is that you're teaching people to be balanced about it, because that's the key thing that's missing, whether you use a traditional structure or not, is often people are not balanced in how they teach people how to deal with stuff. So I want to ask you this, because I think this is a key thing. You said, and I quote life depended on healing anyway while establishing my career. End quote that's a reality for so many. They have to heal while still showing up for school, for work, as a parent, whatever. What is the very first, smallest step a young person can take today to start building that mind-body harmony without putting their entire life on pause?

Lilia Bogoeva: 28:03

Yes, it's to realize that you don't have to choose between your personal health and your career, because they feed each other. So you need to be healthy and right with yourself to be able to show up well in your work, whether that be a career or homemaking or school, whatever that is and then at the same time, you do need to feel good about your work, at least decent about your work. You don't have to absolutely love every moment of your work, but at least feel decent about it to then also feel motivated to heal yourself even more. So the internal and the external worlds do go in a feedback loop and as far as developing a mind-body harmony, it's really important to get in tuned with how things affect you physically. So let's say, if you are stressed after work a very common scenario, we all get stressed at work sometimes or school. Yeah, tune into, how is that affecting your body? Is it making your stomach turn or is it making your heart rate rise? Is it putting some other kind of dark thoughts into your head? Sometimes stress about one situation sets us on this painted black mentality where you start to feel dark about other things in life too that are unrelated to that original stressful situation. So I just start to be aware of that and then, once you get the awareness, it can be tricky because, okay, so I'm aware that this is really affecting me.

Lilia Bogoeva: 29:45

Maybe you have a really toxic environment at work and then you're like, what do I do? Do I try to tolerate it or do I quit and do something else? The truth is, there is no one right answer to that, but when you see how much and in what ways it affects you, then you can start to determine if this situation is so bad that you really can't stay here, that I have to leave and I need to get something better. That can apply to career relationships, whatever it is. Or is it something where maybe the outside situation is redeemable? Maybe it's just that you need to approach it with a different kind of attitude, or maybe you need to take care of yourself differently.

Lilia Bogoeva: 30:35

We see that a lot in performing musicians. Some people really struggle with the whole self-care kind of thing while they're traveling and playing how do I eat well, how do I get enough sleep? And then they feel like, oh, maybe I should just quit. Well, you don't necessarily have to quit. You can strategize and come up with a good routine on how to eat well, sleep well, rest enough and then be energized enough for your performance, and then maybe you also have to look into just how much you perform. Instead of doing tours for months on end, maybe you could do it in shorter periods. So it all starts with awareness, though.

Fatima Bey: 31:19

I agree and I think people should just do a whole episode on just what are the physical effects of stress, because I think people don't recognize the physical effects of stress that migraine headache that you can't explain the reason why your eye keeps twitching all out of the blue, and that leg pain that you're having and the doctors can't figure out what's wrong. It might be stress, because stress doesn't express itself in the same exact way in everybody.

Fatima Bey: 31:47

you know it just. But there's always physical effects from stress, and it might not be work, it could be school, you know, and people who are in college and even just in basic high school sometimes can be stressed out for different reasons, and you know that that matters. You really do have to look at that. I love that you said that. So let me ask you how can people find you?

Lilia Bogoeva: 32:10

Hey, the best place to start is my website. Place to start is my website, liliademoncrushercom, because there you see a range of things that I do. If you want personal coaching and harmony healing, music therapy or rhythmic release, dancing therapy, or if you want to check out my comic books with the Inner Demon Crusher series that are about mental health-related topics, made fun and exciting, you could check that out there. You could also check out the music that I make with my band Carcasa. That's K-A-R-K-A-Z-A. If you want to just research that on Google or any social media platform. But my website is the best starting point.

Fatima Bey: 32:54

All right. Well, lilia, I really enjoyed having you on here. It was really kind of the hardest part about this conversation is to not let it go on for six hours, because you have a lot more. There's a lot more that I know that you can say, but I really appreciate you just coming on and being honest about your struggles and your solutions and giving people a different, non-traditional take that I think people are desperate for.

Fatima Bey: 33:22

So please continue to go on podcasts and go on other platforms and let more people hear you, because there's a lot of young, there's a lot of young women especially, who need to hear your voice. So I'm just giving you one opportunity to hopefully let that happen. But please continue to be a different kind of voice that people can relate to. So I thank you for that and I'm really glad that you came on.

Lilia Bogoeva: 33:53

Thank you. One more thing I forgot to mention is that I do have a free demo of my comic book, so that'll be available on my website. There's a little pop-up that invites you to get a free demo of the Inner Demon Crusher comic book, and also in the show notes I've sent a link to get that free demo. So if y'all are curious to check it out, you can see that, how we crush our inner demons in color, and it's been a really great opportunity to be on this show. I mean, it means a lot to me when people like yourself, fatima, want to hear my voice about it. Absolutely, thank you. Thank you too.

Fatima Bey: 34:35

And now for a mind-shifting moment, I want to point out something that Lydia talked about in today's episode. What worked for her for therapy wasn't traditional recovery and therapy methods, because she was determined she figured out a method that worked for her, and so I want to turn that back around on you. Traditional therapy does not work for everyone I wish it did and it's also not realistic, not realistically available for everyone. So is there something that you need to get over that you know you need to overcome? There might be another way for you to try. If you've tried traditional therapy and it hasn't worked for you because the cookie cutter, boxed up clinical setting is counterproductive for you, which is true for a lot of people then find a way that works. And here's the thing what works for one person might not work for another.

Fatima Bey: 35:42

For some people, traditional therapy does actually work. For many others, it does not. Listen to those who have gotten over what they were once under and find out how did they do it. And I don't mean get on a substance, don't drink and drugs to get over something, because all you're doing is burying yourself underneath it and pacifying the problem, but I mean really listen to Lilia and other people like her who have been able to get over what they were once under through non-traditional means, because maybe the therapy that didn't work for you might not be because you're a failure. It's because it doesn't work for you. Find something that does, because we all need some form of therapy. You've been listening to MindShift Power Podcast For complete show notes on this episode and to join our global movement, find us at FatimaBeycom. Until next time, always remember there's power in shifting your thinking.