October 31, 2018 • 43 mins
Creator of the Playing Big leadership program for women, Tara Mohr says being an arrogant idiot is the right answer.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
I'm not a believer in trying to become confident and
making your inner critic go away, because it's connected to
your safety and thinks that's not going away. And I
need to know that if I'm taking emotional risks, I'm
going to hear from it loudly, and i can allow
it to be there and hear it and name it
for what it is, but I'm not going to take
direction from it. Yea, Hey, thanks for listening. This is
(00:33):
you Turns podcast that talks about change. Today. We're talking
about change, but sometimes our shifts are a little too small.
There's shifts that happened today. We want to take it
to the next level. I'm Lisa z and I'm Jill
Herzig and we are joined by Tara Moore's so happy
to have you with us. Tara, thank you. I'm so
happy to be with you. Thank you. From San Francisco UM.
(00:57):
Tara is the author of Playing Big, Practical Wisdom for
Women who want to speak up, create and lead, and
she has a leadership program for women also called Playing Big,
and it you know as it sounds, it's it's all
about helping women reach their full potential. Um and you know,
(01:17):
as Lisa was saying, we talk about change and life transformation,
and those are moments when I can attest to this.
You sometimes want to curl up in a ball and
make yourself as small as possible and plot you know,
a way to deal with this that will just kind
of get you out of her little steps, you know,
measuring your life out in tea spoons and tea spoons. Um,
(01:38):
but you're you argue for a way more expansive, um
ambitious approach. Tell us about that. Why at a time
of change, would it be a good time to play big? Right? Well,
whether that time of change came because of an external circumstance, right,
Sometimes it's a layoff or a change in family situation,
(02:00):
and or sometimes the change comes because we can just
feel the old shoe no longer fits. It really is
getting tight and uncomfortable and has to change. Right. That's
a time I think to really look inward, to listen
to our own longings, desires, dreams. It's like it can
(02:20):
be a beautiful blank canvas time to ask ourselves afresh,
what do I really want? What do I know brings
me the most joy and meaning? And how can I
start to build my life or my work more all
around that it's a very big questions coming. I think
(02:41):
sometimes that can be those big questions can be scary, um,
And you offer some great tools for for making the
questions themselves a little less overwhelming. Yeah. I think a
great place to start is with something that I call
the inner mentor, and you know, especial for us women.
(03:01):
Most of us have been encouraged to find really great mentors,
and the idea there is that right the right mentor
can give us the answers for where we're going next
and can help us solve those practical dilemmas and about
what what direction to take next. And sometimes we find
a mentor who we can have those really special conversations with.
But I find that women say, most of the time,
(03:24):
you know, I never found that mentor that could show
me really what direction was right next for me, um
and uh. And often they know what's right for their
journey but not for mine. And so there's a tool
we use in the playing Big model called the inner mentor.
And the idea is that you can start to get
a sense of who you want to be twenty or
(03:44):
thirty years out in the future, and then relate to
that figure like a mentor, and it's such a powerful way,
so in terms of making this practical if you're in
a transition point, and sometimes even when the inner mentor
is just reinforcing what we already knew, she can do
it in a way that like it gives us a
(04:05):
new space to accept the answer or really start to
feel its truth. And then other times there is a
huge perspective shift, And this happens all the time for women,
UM that I'm working with, where you know, they feel
the answer to something is super unclear, or they feel
a problem is really complicated, and then they make contact
with and all we're doing when we make contact with
(04:25):
our inter mentor, we're getting in touch with our own
clearest wisdom. Really it's she's just kind of a metaphor
for that. And often there is a huge perspective shift. Oh,
the answer was actually so simple, you know, once I
heard it from that place sent me or I have
now there's clarity around something that I didn't have clarity
around before. Um, and should we should we do a
(04:47):
little bit of this visualization now if you want to
do this visualization and meet your future self, we'll have
it at the end of this episode. It's a bonus.
So there are some style details to my future self
that I got kind of stuck on. One is that
she was wearing a jacket that I wear now that
I really love. And I think it's because like, that
(05:10):
is so me two in twenty years be still owning
and wearing the same green army jacket totally as such
a fabulous wardrobe. I imagine it would be totally updated,
you know what. That jacket will still be there. Some
things won't, but that jacket will still be there. I
come from a long line of people who hang on
(05:32):
to the things that they love, and so but I
think the other it's not so much the answer that
I got. It was just that this um, this future
self was just so nice to me. You know. There
was no like shake you by the shoulders. There was
no come on, Jill into gear. You can do it.
(05:52):
She has your in her mentor not you're inner critic. Well,
you know, I guess we should move on to the
inner critic because that comes up in your book. But
you know, there was a sense of it's actually okay.
The way you're handling this right now is actually okay,
and and think things will come of this, even if
(06:13):
it doesn't seem incredibly clear. And I am somebody who
has sort of marched through twenty five years of a
career just sort of following, you know, with one offer
following the next, and um, it's been you know, sometimes
I feel like I've been kind of dragged behind the
truck of my of this career and now it's set
me loose and and I'm just kind of walking along,
(06:35):
exploring and figuring things out. But I've doing that visualization,
and as I've said before on this podcast, I'm not
terribly woo woo person, So it sort of surprises me
that this, um, that this stuck in this way. But
I feel like she was saying, you're actually you are
moving forward. It's you're moving, you're moving towards something, and
when you get to be where I am, you're gonna
(06:57):
kind of you're going to kind of shake your head
and how much you worried about this? Yes? Yeah, yeah,
And that is also a theme we see a lot
with the inter mentor. It's a very calm voice, it's
a very loving voice, and um, there's a lot of
serenity often and what's as you're saying, you kind of
can feel the serenity, whereas if someone else on the
(07:17):
street side to you, it's going to be fine. You
know this, just just don't worry about it so much.
You'd be like, that would not affect your state, right,
But there's something about meeting at right and you can
feel it and I and actually sometimes it makes my
heart rate go up, and they're like fine. The other
thing I hate is I can't wait to see what
you do next. People say it's out of such a
(07:40):
good place. I can't wait either. Actually be great when
we can both see it. And I will ne to
add about the style details because for anyone listening who
is doing that with us, you probably also you know,
maybe there were some whatever, some earrings that caught your attention,
or why was she wearing those shoes or whatever, and
you can really interpret this almost like a dream, you know,
(08:03):
where the imagery has meaning. So for that green jacket,
it sounds like it has some really rich meaning for you,
whether in terms of holding onto things you love, or
your family legacy you mentioned, or however you feel in
that jacket or whatever qualities you'd associate it with. And
as a symbol, we then say that tells you about
(08:24):
where what wants to come out from you more. And
so when you're looking at that more authentic, actualized inter
mentor self, you know that enter, whatever that green jacket
is associated with for you is part of the energy
of where you're headed. Okay, So so then now let's
talk about the inner critic, because she comes up in
your book a lot, and she is not as nice,
(08:46):
not as nice, and the inner critic is, you know,
in many ways for me where this work started because
ten years ago I had started UH coaching women and
I didn't know what the focus of that coaching would be.
I just knew I wanted to work with women around
their inner lives and how their their beliefs and their
(09:07):
inner work could impact their leadership in the world. But
very quickly I saw this pattern that was so distressing.
And the pattern was that all my clients were what
I call brilliant women, you know, capable, hard working, insightful.
They were all so conscientious and ethical, like these were
the kind of people that we all want to see
(09:29):
in charge, right, and that we all would benefit so
much in our world, would benefit so much if they
were in charge. And I was so inspired by how
awesome and capable they were, and yet over and over
again I was hearing from them, well I'm not ready
yet to take that step. Or if that was a
good idea, wouldn't someone else have done it? Or why
would they create that job for me? Or um, I
(09:52):
need to get a PhD. Before I can say anything
on that topic. You know, all these kinds of inner
critic narratives, and so I got really interested and what
is that inner critic voice? And why do we have it?
And then most importantly, what can we do about it?
All right, well, after the break, I want to let
me know that last part great. Before the break, we
(10:20):
just started touching on the inner critic and before we
delve into what to do about it, I actually do
want to talk a little bit about where it comes from,
because literally, I think almost everyone has it to one
degree or another. It's not just your brilliant women clients.
And I think there's some evolutionary advantage from millennia to
(10:41):
stop us from just acting on impulse all the time.
Because the way we were we survived is that we
were societies, and the way that you interact in society
is to have certain guidelines and modes of behavior, and
when you're going to step outside of those expectations. The
people who had those straints survived and didn't get cast
(11:01):
out of the group or stoned or whatever. So the
end of critic I think evolved from a survival standpoint.
But surviving isn't necessarily thriving. So I just wanted to
explore that a tiny bit too exactly. We think about
it very much the same way in the Playing Big model.
So we talk about this safety instinct that we all
(11:23):
still have, right, that is a very ancient, primal part
of us that doesn't want us to come to any
risk or harm. And that instinct was originally developed in
us to ensure our physical safety. Right, so it's watching
out are their threats on the horizon? Is there a predator?
And and because of that, it's very useful for that
(11:45):
safety instinct to be very hyper vigilant and very conservative.
If there's any possible danger, it wants us to, you know,
go into fight or flight, make sure we don't come
into contact with it. The problem is we still have
that safety instinct even though we don't face most of us,
thankfully don't face many physical dangers on an everyday basis.
(12:07):
Like that, we need to be hyper vigilant about right,
and that safety instinct still fires when we encounter an
emotional threat. So an emotional threat is is it brings
those same feelings of fear and vulnerability. But what's at
stake is not are we going to be eaten by
a predator? But am I going to feel embarrassed? Am
(12:28):
I going to feel the pain of rejection? Am I
going to be ostracized from the group or criticized in
some way? And the safety instinct will do everything in
its power to try and get us to not take
emotional risk. But how can you have a life and
career you love without taking emotional risk? How do you
even ever raise your hand in a meeting and share
(12:48):
an idea that no one else has said yet? Right?
How do you make a change? All those things involve
emotional risk. So the safety instinct is trying to get
us to not take emotional risks. And and I believe
that the inner critic is just a strategy that our
safety instinct is using. In other words, if you're saying Jill,
maybe you're saying, Okay, I'm really going to go out
(13:10):
of my comfort zone and I'm going to go a
whole new direction in my career and you know, go
into a new industry safety instincts like, I don't like
that idea very much. Right, that could bring some painful moments,
but you might not listen to your safety instinct if
it was that transparent, And so instead it puts on
this sophisticated costume of your inner critic, and instead we'll say,
(13:32):
who do you think you are? You don't have any
relevant expertise, what could you possibly have to bring for that?
It's way too late to make that change. All these
more intimidating narratives that are much more likely to get
the safety instincts goal met. Right, have you shrink right
back into the comfort zone? So yes, I think it
has a lot to do with survival safety fear, and
(13:54):
that difference, as you said, Lisa, between just surviving and
avoiding what is perceived as emotional danger versus really thriving
and fulfilling our potential. Because she's so sneaky and tricky
and isn't coming right out and saying don't do this
or you will die, which would be easier to look
at and say, oh, don't be ridiculous, way easier. How
(14:16):
do you deal with in a sneaky, manipulative in our critic. Right, Well,
the first thing is you become aware in this way.
And I think every everyone on the planet, but especially
women and girls, we need an inner critic one oh
one training. We're like, oh right, everyone has this voice.
This is what it is. So we can be conscious
about it because I can't tell you. You know, as
(14:37):
I go out and do my work, how many women
raise their hand and they're like, that's not my inner critic,
that's me. That's the way my brains fell. So we
have no consciousness of this or that's reality. That's how
reality sounds. So we can learn, Okay, it's one voice
in me, it's not all of me. That's a big
point in itself. Even if it's taken over for now,
it's just one voice. It is rooted in the safety
(14:58):
and staying it's not going away. We can talk about this,
but I'm not a believer in trying to become confident
and making your inner critic go away, because it's part
of it's connected to your safety instinct. That's not going away.
So it's not going to go away, and I need
to know that if I'm taking emotional risks I'm going
to hear from it loudly, and I can allow it
(15:19):
to be there and hear it and name it for
what it is, but I'm not going to take direction
from it. You say, is a detail that you should
actually name this inner critic? Lady? It can be really
fun to think about, Okay, what is your inner critics say?
What are the some of the things. And for some
people it's a male that you know they associate with
a male figure or some female, But think about what
is the inner critics sound like in my head? What
(15:41):
do they say? And then if I were to personify
that in a character, what would that character be and
what does yours look like? Well, I have a few
and this also happens like in different domains of our lives. Right,
so I've definitely got like a stay at home mom
who you know, think that to be a good mother
(16:01):
means you find every aspect of parenting like infinitely joyful
and interesting down to like every diaper change. And so
she's always, you know, got a narrative going about why
don't I, you know, why don't I love packing lunch
every day? Or whatever? And then I thought I would say,
like an ivy league professor. One. You know that is
(16:25):
because I came from a more in many ways a
more left brain traditional educational environment. There's always the one
that's like, that's too woo woo, or that's naive. You know,
it's policing me in that way. Um, so there's yeah,
there's a couple. But what's so powerful then about having
that character is it really gives us, in a visual way,
(16:46):
a sense that this is not the core of me.
This is a voice that invades my thinking, it's not me.
And then also it can add some humor and lightness, right,
because once you see sort of the ridiculousness of how
this character shows up and and and kind of how
they appear, you can start to take the voice a
little less seriously. I Mean, sometimes you're up against big
(17:09):
societal criticism, big societal um expectations, norms, limited views of
who you are and how you fit in. Um, those
are not in our those are outer. Any thoughts about those, Yeah,
A couple. So one. Um, what I've found is that
(17:29):
we all have an inner critic, but our culture and
our specific biography impacts what the inner critics says to us.
So if for example, from your from your outer you know,
your your culture or your family, you've been given the
message of a good daughter, is this or a good mother?
(17:51):
Is this? That will impact what your inner critic says
to you? So you can look at how did the
outer voices impact this inner critic? What have I internalized?
And that can be um really helpful as well. And
we know from you know, all the research on stereotype
threat that the messages that we get in the culture
(18:11):
do affect how we hear, how we feel about ourselves,
and then how we perform. So for example, if women
are asked to just check a box of their gender
before they take a math test, they will perform far
worse on the math test than those who didn't have
to chest the box of their gender because being reminded
of their gender right activates that inner critic voice around
their own ability as a woman at math. So there's
(18:34):
a lot of um kind of you know, back and
forth relationship of how those external um influences shape what
the inner critics says. But what I found is we
all have it doesn't cause the inner critic that the
cause is how we're hardwired and the safety instinct. It
just shapes how the inner critic might manifest for each individual.
(18:57):
You two terms that I have no idea what they mean.
One was pshad and the other pod. I can't even
pronounce it. And how do you pronounce that one? Yeah?
So Pa and Ira and you say we should be
run less by POD and more be more comfortable with Yeah,
(19:20):
what is that mean? Are we talking about? Yeah? So
these are two words. They're actually ancient Hebrew words. They're
Old Testament terms. And and there are a few a
few different words for fear in the Old Testament stories,
and these are two of the terms, and their definitions
(19:40):
are so relevant in a contemporary context, it's pretty amazing. So, Pachad,
the definition is it's the fear of imagined things or
projected things, like when we project the story of what
might happen, when we imagine the worst case scenario. Right,
And this is the kind of fear we've been talking
about um with say they instinct. It tends to be overreactive.
(20:02):
It can really mislead us. Um. It's it's always anticipating
something about the future. And so we do want to
be less run by that because it does tend to
not be grounded in the best analysis of the truth,
especially when it comes to those emotional risks around making change.
Ura has three definitions. It's the feeling we feel when
(20:25):
we are inhabiting a larger space than we're used to.
It's what we feel when we suddenly have more energy
than we normally are in possession of. And it's what
we feel in the presence of the sacred, sort of
a three part definition. So this is actually when Moses
is at the burning bush. This is the word just
used to describe how he feels. So as a coach,
(20:46):
when I read that, it was like, oh, well, that's
the moment you know in any great coaching session, that
moment where your client is like really in touch with
their own truth that's sacred, when they're stepping into what
they love. They have a lot more energy than they
normally have, right like we all do when we're practicing
our passions and doing what we love. When we're taking
(21:08):
up more space in the world or maybe having a
bigger job or having more visibility, there's this exhilaration and fear,
and so it's very powerful to just start to separate
the two kinds of fear in your life, Like and
you can both think about what are the things you've
done in your life or career that brought that feeling
of your like a huge infusion of energy, of spaciousness,
(21:29):
of sacredness, and we don't want to pull away from that,
and we don't want to confuse it with regular old
fear because it's actually really precious and telling us like,
go more in that direction, go more in that direction.
M hmm, fear. It's good. We keep hearing it, like,
snuggle up close to a certain kind of fear. We
keep hearing them on this podcast. Yeah. Yeah, it's a
(21:49):
it's a guide post to help you figure out what
direction you need to head in. I like that you
also leave some room for your readers and community members
and the people you coach to do what you call
recover and restore that it's not all out there all
day every day in that your raw place, because you
(22:12):
just you fry right, absolutely, I really believe in that.
You know back and forth, and I think I very
much try and live that too. Of you do some
of the things in your day that stretch you and
that make your adrenaline you know, course through your veins
and that um you sort of have to gear up
your courage for. But then you also get cozy and
(22:36):
what's your favorite Netflix? Saying with your favorite comforting, warm beverage, right,
and just recharge and nodding. It's really that's you know,
And I think sometimes especially for women's self care kind
of gets conflated with like getting a pedicure, manicure things
that aren't really actually that recharging for all of us.
(22:59):
So all of us to think about, like what does
really recover bring recovery and restoration for you and to
do those things and give yourself permission. You said something
that it's a little perplexing to me because something I
struggle with. Um, you say there's no such thing as
self discipline or will power. Now I don't have a
(23:20):
whole lot of self discipline or will power, but I
thought it existed. Why do you say there's no such thing. Well,
it's interesting when you read and you just actually study
the history of the concept of self discipline. It's more
of a literary history than a scientific history. In other words,
there was, you know, the idea. So the word discipline
(23:43):
comes from the same root as disciples. It has to
do with the idea of a you know, a teacher
and a student. A very clear hierarchical relationship that that
you know existed between people, right um, and then um,
that there was sort of in an invention, like an
imagined idea of self disciplining, of creating a teacher and
(24:04):
a student within ourselves, that one part of ourselves was
going to direct the rest. But that concept wasn't grounded
in scientific research. It was more of like an imaginative invention,
like a moral, you know, moral idea. And Americans say
that the number one reason that they aren't fulfilling their
(24:26):
goals is a lack of self discipline and willpower. That
it is it is almost universal that people feel they
lack the willpower they're supposed to have. So that's another
clue to us that this idea we have that there's
this thing called self discipline that is supposed to allow
us to accomplish whatever we set our minds out to,
(24:46):
there's something wrong with that idea. And the more we
understand about the brain, the more we know there's a
lot of competing impulses and motivations and different parts of
us that come from different parts of our evolutionary history,
and they kind of fight it out with each other.
There's really not one boss in charge as everyone knows
because we've all with our conscious mindset. I'm gonna stop
(25:07):
eating sugar today, I'm gonna, you know, um, stop checking
my phone obsessively today. And we find we don't have
a boss in our head that can control all of
our our impulses and actions. So I'm really a fan
of like, drop that narrative and instead start asking yourself,
what do what? What are all the supports I need
(25:29):
to set up for myself and in my life to
make a change that I want to make. In other words,
if let's say you want to cut out sugar, to
really look at like, what are all the things I
truly need to do that sustainably? And if it fails
one day, then all you know from that day is
I guess I didn't have everything in place I needed
to do that sustainably. And that might be support people,
(25:50):
it might be what's in and out of your house,
it might be the supplements that you're taking. And we
could look all right, all at all the different forms
that support could take. But if it's not working, let's
be kind of um. Let's let's put on our lab
coats like and look with a curious lens at like,
what more needs to be here then for that to work?
Instead of simply blaming ourselves and throwing this blanket will
(26:13):
will power term over it when for most of us,
you know, I think most of us could say we
always feel like we're lacking in willpower, like most Americans do,
and when we look back at what helped us achieve
our goals, we're never like, Yep, it was the willpower
that did it. So true. True. We're going to take
a quick break when we were at them. Before the break,
(26:41):
we've been talking about willpower. Now we want to switch
gears a tiny bit and talk about something a little weird.
You you talk about being an arrogant idiot, but in
a positive way. You're encouraging to kind of take the
song as a challenge be an arrogant idiot? Now, this
is how can this be good? Right? Right? This is
(27:05):
one of my ten rules for brilliant women is be
an arrogant idiot. And of course it's a little bit
tongue in cheek, but we can trust that we're not
going to become arrogant idiots. I think that, uh, you know,
there is a there is a really really strong tendency
among brilliant women to underestimate themselves, underestimate their knowledge, just
(27:26):
as you know also documented in the research that women
really tend to underestimate their capabilities and men do the opposite.
And so I say, you know, just slide a couple
more inches in the arrogant idiot direction. If you're doing
what you think an arrogant idiot would do, you're probably
like just moving a little bit more in the reasonable
range stuff. It's totally in a reasonable range. You're just
(27:49):
really trusting your voice, your ideas. And I just see
it so commonly that, um, you know, women, you know,
we now are We're outperformed. Girls are outperforming boys in school.
Women's spend more years in school than men, we have
more advanced degrees. And part of the pattern that's emerging
is that we're really good students and we like being
(28:11):
in student mode and we're comfortable being learners. And so
women will often feel like, I need to do more
research and more research and more research, right boring into
their blue eyes. You know, I see it or I
see this all the time even after like women colleagues
and I will get a book contract, and they got
the book contract because of their voice and their work,
(28:32):
and then they think what it means to write this
book is to go to the library and read everything
that anyone else has written on the subject. And it's
like that's not what they wanted. They wanted to do, right,
or entrepreneurs saying, you know, I gotta I gotta study
every single other thing that's out there before so to
really feel more ready. I think that's part of the
you know, the arrogant idiots just like, oh yeah, I
(28:52):
already know what I'm talking about, and I'm going to
walk in here and tell everybody what's what. So we
want to scoot a little bit in that direction. We
have plenty of room to lean that way. It's funny.
It reminds me in in my job search, I had
this interesting encounter with UM, someone who's uh, who's known
me for years, and I was asking her to introduce
me to someone, and she said, you know, I have
(29:14):
an idea for you. Instead of just sending me a
link to your LinkedIn and your resume, why don't you
put together a one sheet like this, And then she said,
don't throw up when you see this. This is something
that's been making the rounds um in my company and
everybody thinks this guy is amazing and we should bring
him in and talk to him. Anyway, He's just a
(29:36):
he's just a straight up photographer. There's nothing impressive about him.
But he's made himself this This is a nude picture
of himself. Yeah. Well it was a a picture of
himself for sure, nice and big, but it was also
this just incredibly you know, hyper spun version of his accomplishments.
(29:56):
And she basically my arrogant idiot Yeah, I mean that
was really arrogant idiot stuff. And she said to me,
if you go ahead, make a one sheet on yourself
like this, it's a little more sort of fast and
loose and condenses everything down, um, and stick a picture
of yourself in there. And no matter what I promise you,
it will it will not be a tenth of as
(30:17):
obnoxious as this guy's one sheet is, but it will
it will get more notice here. So I did it,
and it did get more notice, and I did, you know,
end up getting a bunch of interviews from it. But
it was such an uncomfortable thing to do. I mean,
I know, I know why you're coaching this, because I
needed to be I needed to, like flog myself through
(30:40):
the process. Yeah, and one of the things that we
talk about as well as replacing the words self promotion
with the word visibility, because for most women, the term
self promotion just sounds so repugnant and they don't want
to do that and they don't want to, you know,
play the politics. But we know that if you're not
aware of making your good work visible, it doesn't get
(31:03):
the attention it deserves. So I find for a lot
of women they find the term visibility a lot more
comfortable to think about who do I want my work
and myself to be visible too? And then what would
I need to do for it to be visible? And
then also sometimes thinking about the purpose, like your your why,
who do you want to serve? Who do you want
(31:24):
to impact for the good? And remembering ultimately I'm putting
together this one sheet because there's something I want to
do in the world or communicate that I think is
for the good, and this is in the service of
that that can help us a lot. When it just
feels like, oh, this is so yeah, this is making
my skin crawl to have to promote myself in this way. Yeah,
(31:44):
I mean, we're living in a weird time of a
weird sort of Instagram universe, and it is. It does
make it sort of hard. It's hard to think to yourself, Yeah,
I want to take that on and I want to
Well that's why she talked about as the leading because
otherwise you would resist and you were just resist and
sometimes you just have to jump off the cliff, right. Yeah,
(32:07):
And when we talk about um leaping in the playing
Big Courses, we're talking about this very specific thing. That's
a great way to go through a transition process too,
which is to break things down into one to two
weeks actions. Actions you can take in that period of
time that you call a leap, and a leap you
always are going to treat as an experiment. So if
(32:27):
for example, you are gonna, let's say, do three informational interviews,
that's kind of your leap for the next two weeks. Normally,
what we would do is say, you know, that's going
to be successful if the people like me and have
opportunities for me, and it's not successful if it's not.
But how can you frame that as an experiment? So
what are you trying to find out? Maybe I'm trying
to find out is this a direction I like more
(32:49):
is this um, are are people in this industry feeling
like a good fit for me? You know, chemistry wise
and culture wise. So you're always successful in the leak
because you framed the goal as learning something, and you
will always come back without learning. And you can even apply.
You know, you could apply for jobs and say this
experiment is, do people like my resume? Format it this way?
(33:12):
If you then if you find out the answer was
a resounding no, You're like, now I learned that important thing.
Now I'm going on to the next revision of my resume.
So that framing can make every step along the way
an important learning milestone and a success. Yeah. I mean,
I can actually see applying this advice to, you know,
women who are newly single or single period and getting
(33:34):
and dating. Like I keep when I'm talking to my
single friends, sometimes they I feel like they are seeing
every day to re encounter with a guy as a
referendum on their attractiveness and their wantability. And I think,
you know, I always want to say to them, well
did you like him? I mean, was he interesting? What
(33:57):
did you think? Did you did you do some thing fun?
Did you get to do something fun? Um? You know,
I wonder if that's kind of similar. I've never called
it anything, but that's absolutely yeah, yeah, absolutely well. I
think your whole concept of playing big, and we talked
about this earlier is equally applicable in our personal lives
as our professional lives. I think a lot of women
(34:18):
focus on their professional lives and lives and put themselves
out there, but then in their personal lives shrink and
like you're saying, with these dating these are high powered
women and executive physicians who suddenly become little girls when
they are meeting new people and going out on dates
and give all the power to have the side of
the table to make them feel good or bad about
(34:39):
how it went. So living big is the universe about
all areas of your life? Yeah? Absolutely, And you know
all the same tools can be applied. So how does
your inner critic come up when you're getting ready for
a date, like the emotional risk right that your inner
critic does not like about you going on a date,
and then how what's you know, giving that voice a
character and letting it be there it knowing it's just
(35:00):
the inner critic or you know, can you go on
a date, like can you walk through the whole thing
as your inner mentor would approach it. Right, your inter
mentor is definitely asking whether she likes the guys, whether
right they like her guys or gals. Yeah, so all
the tools apply, and we you know, it's always neat
to see like a woman will come into the course
(35:22):
for her profession. But then I always think a one
woman who her father went into hospice right when she
went in the course, and she said, I'm using every
single one of these tools to advocate for him because
I have to constantly speak up in the medical system
and in this facility, and I need all of these
same tools. So it absolutely you know, runs through every
(35:45):
aspect of life. Yeah, I mean, I would say the biggest,
the biggest leap I've seen my sister take is when
she adopted my niece tira Um from Ethiopia. And you know,
for she had wanted to become a mom for years
and years, and the relationship piece of it just wasn't.
She couldn't she couldn't unlock that box. And and so
(36:07):
she wrestled also for years with should I become a
single mom? Do I have the bandwidth? Can I do it?
And you know, ultimately we as her family members rallied
around her. But first we questioned a lot, I have
to say, And I look back on it and I think,
oh my god, how could we have questioned this because
she's such a terrific mom and tears in our life
(36:28):
and she's a miracle for all of us, and you know,
it just um it was. It was a fantastic thing.
Once once she silenced her in her critic who was saying,
maybe I'll be a bad mom, maybe I you know,
maybe I I can't handle this, maybe I'll get too
stressed out. And also, frankly, her freaking family, who was worried.
(36:49):
I mean, we did it from a place of love.
We were really worried for her. We thought it might
be too much. Um. Once she shut us all up
and went and I went with her, and we picked
up Tara, and I remember distinctly watching her hold Tira
for the first time, and um, I think it's possible
that that Amy was the first white person Tira had
(37:09):
ever encountered. And she was hysterical crying. She'd just been
taken away from her caregiver, who who would care for
her all all six months of her life there and
he just was such a natural from the first second,
first time holding her baby, you know, like just such
a natural. And um, I noticed that while Tara was wailing,
(37:32):
I mean really wailing, she was also clinging to Amy
like with everything she had her like little hands were
all caught up in her hair and her sweater, and
I just thought, this is gonna be fine, This is
gonna be good. And it has been. It really has been. Yeah,
and it I mean that story illustrates such a beautiful
point around um that often other people cannot understand are
(37:58):
playing big dream or the vision that has come to us.
So this is what I want my future to look like.
A lot of times our family and even friends are
not supportive and don't really get it at first and
might react with a protective well intentioned but often with
maybe some fear in there that that kind of right. Yeah,
(38:20):
So um, I think that again is it's one of
the reasons it's powerful to have have the tools to
kind of hold on and then the vocabulary like in
our mentor like in our critic, to hold on to
where you're going and kind of have a map of
that journey for yourself. Because it's very common that the
people around us don't you know, they don't stand up
(38:42):
a standing over here, and when we make the announcement,
they don't get it for a long time. Yeah, when
is sometimes ever? Yeah, well, thank you for being so
creative with these tools. I think that they're they're pretty
mind blowing. And thank you for being with us today.
Thank you, thank you so much for everyone listening. If
you want to follow and connect with Tara More on Twitter,
(39:02):
you can do that at Tara Sophia and at Tara
More that's m o h r dot com and connect
with us at you turn the podcast and let us
know your stories of living big. Well, we're going to
(39:35):
just jump right into the experienceial here, so we could
all close our eyes for a moment and just imagine
one of your favorite places in nature, So a place
that you love to go, place that you find beautiful
or calming, and just give yourself amn it to imagine
(40:01):
yourself strolling along in that beautiful place and then notice
that somewhere in your view you see a little little home,
a little dwelling place, and imagine for a moment that
(40:31):
yourself twenty years in the future is waiting for you
there and you can make your way to the door
and see as that older self comes to greet you
(40:56):
and she's so happy that you're here. OK. And then
if you're in a transition right now, or maybe you're
thinking about a transition, there's probably a lot of questions
on your mind, and just go ahead and ask her.
(41:19):
One of those questions might be should I do saying
he or thing B, Should I stay or should I go?
Whatever the question is, go ahead and ask her and
(41:44):
she might answer you with words or just with a
facial expression. And then see if there's anything else she
really wants you to know as you're moving through this
transition and the when you're ready, you can open your eyes.
(42:15):
So how was that for you? What happened for you?
You both? It's pretty It was really powerful exercise. I
have to say. Yeah, I kept wondering what kind of
haircut I would have in the future. I don't I
don't want to bun like my grandmother. I don't want
really board. It took me a while to adjust to
(42:35):
the visual of my future self. Yeah, and what did
she present with? Kind of the same hair, just a
little bit shorter trim, but yeah, yeah, did she give
you any different flavor or take on the question you asked,
(42:56):
then you would have otherwise had Um. Probably not, because
I think I think we all it's a great exercise
for taking us to a place where where we may
not have been open or honest with ourselves. But it's
not an answer that we don't know is coming. I
don't think they are ever like huge dramatic surprises, like
(43:20):
you know, should I marry this man? No, he's a
disaster because you kind of it's inside you, right, it's
kind of been nagging there underneath the surface. Um So No,
she it wasn't. It wasn't. It wasn't something that I
wasn't expecting. Yeah. It's an interesting point because for some people,
they'll do this and they'll hear a message that reinforces
(43:41):
what they maybe have heard in a whisper as you're saying,
or they knew in some level at their in their gut,
but they weren't listening to, or they were rationalizing away,
or they weren't comfortable accepting. Tara, thank you so much.
It was really fascinating and I'm glad to enjoy that
I'm not a believer in trying to become confident and
making your inner critic go away, because it's connected to
your safety and thinks that's not going away. And I
need to know that if I'm taking emotional risks, I'm
going to hear from it loudly, and i can allow
it to be there and hear it and name it
for what it is, but I'm not going to take
direction from it. Yea, Hey, thanks for listening. This is
(00:33):
you Turns podcast that talks about change. Today. We're talking
about change, but sometimes our shifts are a little too small.
There's shifts that happened today. We want to take it
to the next level. I'm Lisa z and I'm Jill
Herzig and we are joined by Tara Moore's so happy
to have you with us. Tara, thank you. I'm so
happy to be with you. Thank you. From San Francisco UM.
(00:57):
Tara is the author of Playing Big, Practical Wisdom for
Women who want to speak up, create and lead, and
she has a leadership program for women also called Playing Big,
and it you know as it sounds, it's it's all
about helping women reach their full potential. Um and you know,
(01:17):
as Lisa was saying, we talk about change and life transformation,
and those are moments when I can attest to this.
You sometimes want to curl up in a ball and
make yourself as small as possible and plot you know,
a way to deal with this that will just kind
of get you out of her little steps, you know,
measuring your life out in tea spoons and tea spoons. Um,
(01:38):
but you're you argue for a way more expansive, um
ambitious approach. Tell us about that. Why at a time
of change, would it be a good time to play big? Right? Well,
whether that time of change came because of an external circumstance, right,
Sometimes it's a layoff or a change in family situation,
(02:00):
and or sometimes the change comes because we can just
feel the old shoe no longer fits. It really is
getting tight and uncomfortable and has to change. Right. That's
a time I think to really look inward, to listen
to our own longings, desires, dreams. It's like it can
(02:20):
be a beautiful blank canvas time to ask ourselves afresh,
what do I really want? What do I know brings
me the most joy and meaning? And how can I
start to build my life or my work more all
around that it's a very big questions coming. I think
(02:41):
sometimes that can be those big questions can be scary, um,
And you offer some great tools for for making the
questions themselves a little less overwhelming. Yeah. I think a
great place to start is with something that I call
the inner mentor, and you know, especial for us women.
(03:01):
Most of us have been encouraged to find really great mentors,
and the idea there is that right the right mentor
can give us the answers for where we're going next
and can help us solve those practical dilemmas and about
what what direction to take next. And sometimes we find
a mentor who we can have those really special conversations with.
But I find that women say, most of the time,
(03:24):
you know, I never found that mentor that could show
me really what direction was right next for me, um
and uh. And often they know what's right for their
journey but not for mine. And so there's a tool
we use in the playing Big model called the inner mentor.
And the idea is that you can start to get
a sense of who you want to be twenty or
(03:44):
thirty years out in the future, and then relate to
that figure like a mentor, and it's such a powerful way,
so in terms of making this practical if you're in
a transition point, and sometimes even when the inner mentor
is just reinforcing what we already knew, she can do
it in a way that like it gives us a
(04:05):
new space to accept the answer or really start to
feel its truth. And then other times there is a
huge perspective shift, And this happens all the time for women,
UM that I'm working with, where you know, they feel
the answer to something is super unclear, or they feel
a problem is really complicated, and then they make contact
with and all we're doing when we make contact with
(04:25):
our inter mentor, we're getting in touch with our own
clearest wisdom. Really it's she's just kind of a metaphor
for that. And often there is a huge perspective shift. Oh,
the answer was actually so simple, you know, once I
heard it from that place sent me or I have
now there's clarity around something that I didn't have clarity
around before. Um, and should we should we do a
(04:47):
little bit of this visualization now if you want to
do this visualization and meet your future self, we'll have
it at the end of this episode. It's a bonus.
So there are some style details to my future self
that I got kind of stuck on. One is that
she was wearing a jacket that I wear now that
I really love. And I think it's because like, that
(05:10):
is so me two in twenty years be still owning
and wearing the same green army jacket totally as such
a fabulous wardrobe. I imagine it would be totally updated,
you know what. That jacket will still be there. Some
things won't, but that jacket will still be there. I
come from a long line of people who hang on
(05:32):
to the things that they love, and so but I
think the other it's not so much the answer that
I got. It was just that this um, this future
self was just so nice to me. You know. There
was no like shake you by the shoulders. There was
no come on, Jill into gear. You can do it.
(05:52):
She has your in her mentor not you're inner critic. Well,
you know, I guess we should move on to the
inner critic because that comes up in your book. But
you know, there was a sense of it's actually okay.
The way you're handling this right now is actually okay,
and and think things will come of this, even if
(06:13):
it doesn't seem incredibly clear. And I am somebody who
has sort of marched through twenty five years of a
career just sort of following, you know, with one offer
following the next, and um, it's been you know, sometimes
I feel like I've been kind of dragged behind the
truck of my of this career and now it's set
me loose and and I'm just kind of walking along,
(06:35):
exploring and figuring things out. But I've doing that visualization,
and as I've said before on this podcast, I'm not
terribly woo woo person, So it sort of surprises me
that this, um, that this stuck in this way. But
I feel like she was saying, you're actually you are
moving forward. It's you're moving, you're moving towards something, and
when you get to be where I am, you're gonna
(06:57):
kind of you're going to kind of shake your head
and how much you worried about this? Yes? Yeah, yeah,
And that is also a theme we see a lot
with the inter mentor. It's a very calm voice, it's
a very loving voice, and um, there's a lot of
serenity often and what's as you're saying, you kind of
can feel the serenity, whereas if someone else on the
(07:17):
street side to you, it's going to be fine. You
know this, just just don't worry about it so much.
You'd be like, that would not affect your state, right,
But there's something about meeting at right and you can
feel it and I and actually sometimes it makes my
heart rate go up, and they're like fine. The other
thing I hate is I can't wait to see what
you do next. People say it's out of such a
(07:40):
good place. I can't wait either. Actually be great when
we can both see it. And I will ne to
add about the style details because for anyone listening who
is doing that with us, you probably also you know,
maybe there were some whatever, some earrings that caught your attention,
or why was she wearing those shoes or whatever, and
you can really interpret this almost like a dream, you know,
(08:03):
where the imagery has meaning. So for that green jacket,
it sounds like it has some really rich meaning for you,
whether in terms of holding onto things you love, or
your family legacy you mentioned, or however you feel in
that jacket or whatever qualities you'd associate it with. And
as a symbol, we then say that tells you about
(08:24):
where what wants to come out from you more. And
so when you're looking at that more authentic, actualized inter
mentor self, you know that enter, whatever that green jacket
is associated with for you is part of the energy
of where you're headed. Okay, So so then now let's
talk about the inner critic, because she comes up in
your book a lot, and she is not as nice,
(08:46):
not as nice, and the inner critic is, you know,
in many ways for me where this work started because
ten years ago I had started UH coaching women and
I didn't know what the focus of that coaching would be.
I just knew I wanted to work with women around
their inner lives and how their their beliefs and their
(09:07):
inner work could impact their leadership in the world. But
very quickly I saw this pattern that was so distressing.
And the pattern was that all my clients were what
I call brilliant women, you know, capable, hard working, insightful.
They were all so conscientious and ethical, like these were
the kind of people that we all want to see
(09:29):
in charge, right, and that we all would benefit so
much in our world, would benefit so much if they
were in charge. And I was so inspired by how
awesome and capable they were, and yet over and over
again I was hearing from them, well I'm not ready
yet to take that step. Or if that was a
good idea, wouldn't someone else have done it? Or why
would they create that job for me? Or um, I
(09:52):
need to get a PhD. Before I can say anything
on that topic. You know, all these kinds of inner
critic narratives, and so I got really interested and what
is that inner critic voice? And why do we have it?
And then most importantly, what can we do about it?
All right, well, after the break, I want to let
me know that last part great. Before the break, we
(10:20):
just started touching on the inner critic and before we
delve into what to do about it, I actually do
want to talk a little bit about where it comes from,
because literally, I think almost everyone has it to one
degree or another. It's not just your brilliant women clients.
And I think there's some evolutionary advantage from millennia to
(10:41):
stop us from just acting on impulse all the time.
Because the way we were we survived is that we
were societies, and the way that you interact in society
is to have certain guidelines and modes of behavior, and
when you're going to step outside of those expectations. The
people who had those straints survived and didn't get cast
(11:01):
out of the group or stoned or whatever. So the
end of critic I think evolved from a survival standpoint.
But surviving isn't necessarily thriving. So I just wanted to
explore that a tiny bit too exactly. We think about
it very much the same way in the Playing Big model.
So we talk about this safety instinct that we all
(11:23):
still have, right, that is a very ancient, primal part
of us that doesn't want us to come to any
risk or harm. And that instinct was originally developed in
us to ensure our physical safety. Right, so it's watching
out are their threats on the horizon? Is there a predator?
And and because of that, it's very useful for that
(11:45):
safety instinct to be very hyper vigilant and very conservative.
If there's any possible danger, it wants us to, you know,
go into fight or flight, make sure we don't come
into contact with it. The problem is we still have
that safety instinct even though we don't face most of us,
thankfully don't face many physical dangers on an everyday basis.
(12:07):
Like that, we need to be hyper vigilant about right,
and that safety instinct still fires when we encounter an
emotional threat. So an emotional threat is is it brings
those same feelings of fear and vulnerability. But what's at
stake is not are we going to be eaten by
a predator? But am I going to feel embarrassed? Am
(12:28):
I going to feel the pain of rejection? Am I
going to be ostracized from the group or criticized in
some way? And the safety instinct will do everything in
its power to try and get us to not take
emotional risk. But how can you have a life and
career you love without taking emotional risk? How do you
even ever raise your hand in a meeting and share
(12:48):
an idea that no one else has said yet? Right?
How do you make a change? All those things involve
emotional risk. So the safety instinct is trying to get
us to not take emotional risks. And and I believe
that the inner critic is just a strategy that our
safety instinct is using. In other words, if you're saying Jill,
maybe you're saying, Okay, I'm really going to go out
(13:10):
of my comfort zone and I'm going to go a
whole new direction in my career and you know, go
into a new industry safety instincts like, I don't like
that idea very much. Right, that could bring some painful moments,
but you might not listen to your safety instinct if
it was that transparent, And so instead it puts on
this sophisticated costume of your inner critic, and instead we'll say,
(13:32):
who do you think you are? You don't have any
relevant expertise, what could you possibly have to bring for that?
It's way too late to make that change. All these
more intimidating narratives that are much more likely to get
the safety instincts goal met. Right, have you shrink right
back into the comfort zone? So yes, I think it
has a lot to do with survival safety fear, and
(13:54):
that difference, as you said, Lisa, between just surviving and
avoiding what is perceived as emotional danger versus really thriving
and fulfilling our potential. Because she's so sneaky and tricky
and isn't coming right out and saying don't do this
or you will die, which would be easier to look
at and say, oh, don't be ridiculous, way easier. How
(14:16):
do you deal with in a sneaky, manipulative in our critic. Right, Well,
the first thing is you become aware in this way.
And I think every everyone on the planet, but especially
women and girls, we need an inner critic one oh
one training. We're like, oh right, everyone has this voice.
This is what it is. So we can be conscious
about it because I can't tell you. You know, as
(14:37):
I go out and do my work, how many women
raise their hand and they're like, that's not my inner critic,
that's me. That's the way my brains fell. So we
have no consciousness of this or that's reality. That's how
reality sounds. So we can learn, Okay, it's one voice
in me, it's not all of me. That's a big
point in itself. Even if it's taken over for now,
it's just one voice. It is rooted in the safety
(14:58):
and staying it's not going away. We can talk about this,
but I'm not a believer in trying to become confident
and making your inner critic go away, because it's part
of it's connected to your safety instinct. That's not going away.
So it's not going to go away, and I need
to know that if I'm taking emotional risks I'm going
to hear from it loudly, and I can allow it
(15:19):
to be there and hear it and name it for
what it is, but I'm not going to take direction
from it. You say, is a detail that you should
actually name this inner critic? Lady? It can be really
fun to think about, Okay, what is your inner critics say?
What are the some of the things. And for some
people it's a male that you know they associate with
a male figure or some female, But think about what
is the inner critics sound like in my head? What
(15:41):
do they say? And then if I were to personify
that in a character, what would that character be and
what does yours look like? Well, I have a few
and this also happens like in different domains of our lives. Right,
so I've definitely got like a stay at home mom
who you know, think that to be a good mother
(16:01):
means you find every aspect of parenting like infinitely joyful
and interesting down to like every diaper change. And so
she's always, you know, got a narrative going about why
don't I, you know, why don't I love packing lunch
every day? Or whatever? And then I thought I would say,
like an ivy league professor. One. You know that is
(16:25):
because I came from a more in many ways a
more left brain traditional educational environment. There's always the one
that's like, that's too woo woo, or that's naive. You know,
it's policing me in that way. Um, so there's yeah,
there's a couple. But what's so powerful then about having
that character is it really gives us, in a visual way,
(16:46):
a sense that this is not the core of me.
This is a voice that invades my thinking, it's not me.
And then also it can add some humor and lightness, right,
because once you see sort of the ridiculousness of how
this character shows up and and and kind of how
they appear, you can start to take the voice a
little less seriously. I Mean, sometimes you're up against big
(17:09):
societal criticism, big societal um expectations, norms, limited views of
who you are and how you fit in. Um, those
are not in our those are outer. Any thoughts about those, Yeah,
A couple. So one. Um, what I've found is that
(17:29):
we all have an inner critic, but our culture and
our specific biography impacts what the inner critics says to us.
So if for example, from your from your outer you know,
your your culture or your family, you've been given the
message of a good daughter, is this or a good mother?
(17:51):
Is this? That will impact what your inner critic says
to you? So you can look at how did the
outer voices impact this inner critic? What have I internalized?
And that can be um really helpful as well. And
we know from you know, all the research on stereotype
threat that the messages that we get in the culture
(18:11):
do affect how we hear, how we feel about ourselves,
and then how we perform. So for example, if women
are asked to just check a box of their gender
before they take a math test, they will perform far
worse on the math test than those who didn't have
to chest the box of their gender because being reminded
of their gender right activates that inner critic voice around
their own ability as a woman at math. So there's
(18:34):
a lot of um kind of you know, back and
forth relationship of how those external um influences shape what
the inner critics says. But what I found is we
all have it doesn't cause the inner critic that the
cause is how we're hardwired and the safety instinct. It
just shapes how the inner critic might manifest for each individual.
(18:57):
You two terms that I have no idea what they mean.
One was pshad and the other pod. I can't even
pronounce it. And how do you pronounce that one? Yeah?
So Pa and Ira and you say we should be
run less by POD and more be more comfortable with Yeah,
(19:20):
what is that mean? Are we talking about? Yeah? So
these are two words. They're actually ancient Hebrew words. They're
Old Testament terms. And and there are a few a
few different words for fear in the Old Testament stories,
and these are two of the terms, and their definitions
(19:40):
are so relevant in a contemporary context, it's pretty amazing. So, Pachad,
the definition is it's the fear of imagined things or
projected things, like when we project the story of what
might happen, when we imagine the worst case scenario. Right,
And this is the kind of fear we've been talking
about um with say they instinct. It tends to be overreactive.
(20:02):
It can really mislead us. Um. It's it's always anticipating
something about the future. And so we do want to
be less run by that because it does tend to
not be grounded in the best analysis of the truth,
especially when it comes to those emotional risks around making change.
Ura has three definitions. It's the feeling we feel when
(20:25):
we are inhabiting a larger space than we're used to.
It's what we feel when we suddenly have more energy
than we normally are in possession of. And it's what
we feel in the presence of the sacred, sort of
a three part definition. So this is actually when Moses
is at the burning bush. This is the word just
used to describe how he feels. So as a coach,
(20:46):
when I read that, it was like, oh, well, that's
the moment you know in any great coaching session, that
moment where your client is like really in touch with
their own truth that's sacred, when they're stepping into what
they love. They have a lot more energy than they
normally have, right like we all do when we're practicing
our passions and doing what we love. When we're taking
(21:08):
up more space in the world or maybe having a
bigger job or having more visibility, there's this exhilaration and fear,
and so it's very powerful to just start to separate
the two kinds of fear in your life, Like and
you can both think about what are the things you've
done in your life or career that brought that feeling
of your like a huge infusion of energy, of spaciousness,
(21:29):
of sacredness, and we don't want to pull away from that,
and we don't want to confuse it with regular old
fear because it's actually really precious and telling us like,
go more in that direction, go more in that direction.
M hmm, fear. It's good. We keep hearing it, like,
snuggle up close to a certain kind of fear. We
keep hearing them on this podcast. Yeah. Yeah, it's a
(21:49):
it's a guide post to help you figure out what
direction you need to head in. I like that you
also leave some room for your readers and community members
and the people you coach to do what you call
recover and restore that it's not all out there all
day every day in that your raw place, because you
(22:12):
just you fry right, absolutely, I really believe in that.
You know back and forth, and I think I very
much try and live that too. Of you do some
of the things in your day that stretch you and
that make your adrenaline you know, course through your veins
and that um you sort of have to gear up
your courage for. But then you also get cozy and
(22:36):
what's your favorite Netflix? Saying with your favorite comforting, warm beverage, right,
and just recharge and nodding. It's really that's you know,
And I think sometimes especially for women's self care kind
of gets conflated with like getting a pedicure, manicure things
that aren't really actually that recharging for all of us.
(22:59):
So all of us to think about, like what does
really recover bring recovery and restoration for you and to
do those things and give yourself permission. You said something
that it's a little perplexing to me because something I
struggle with. Um, you say there's no such thing as
self discipline or will power. Now I don't have a
(23:20):
whole lot of self discipline or will power, but I
thought it existed. Why do you say there's no such thing. Well,
it's interesting when you read and you just actually study
the history of the concept of self discipline. It's more
of a literary history than a scientific history. In other words,
there was, you know, the idea. So the word discipline
(23:43):
comes from the same root as disciples. It has to
do with the idea of a you know, a teacher
and a student. A very clear hierarchical relationship that that
you know existed between people, right um, and then um,
that there was sort of in an invention, like an
imagined idea of self disciplining, of creating a teacher and
(24:04):
a student within ourselves, that one part of ourselves was
going to direct the rest. But that concept wasn't grounded
in scientific research. It was more of like an imaginative invention,
like a moral, you know, moral idea. And Americans say
that the number one reason that they aren't fulfilling their
(24:26):
goals is a lack of self discipline and willpower. That
it is it is almost universal that people feel they
lack the willpower they're supposed to have. So that's another
clue to us that this idea we have that there's
this thing called self discipline that is supposed to allow
us to accomplish whatever we set our minds out to,
(24:46):
there's something wrong with that idea. And the more we
understand about the brain, the more we know there's a
lot of competing impulses and motivations and different parts of
us that come from different parts of our evolutionary history,
and they kind of fight it out with each other.
There's really not one boss in charge as everyone knows
because we've all with our conscious mindset. I'm gonna stop
(25:07):
eating sugar today, I'm gonna, you know, um, stop checking
my phone obsessively today. And we find we don't have
a boss in our head that can control all of
our our impulses and actions. So I'm really a fan
of like, drop that narrative and instead start asking yourself,
what do what? What are all the supports I need
(25:29):
to set up for myself and in my life to
make a change that I want to make. In other words,
if let's say you want to cut out sugar, to
really look at like, what are all the things I
truly need to do that sustainably? And if it fails
one day, then all you know from that day is
I guess I didn't have everything in place I needed
to do that sustainably. And that might be support people,
(25:50):
it might be what's in and out of your house,
it might be the supplements that you're taking. And we
could look all right, all at all the different forms
that support could take. But if it's not working, let's
be kind of um. Let's let's put on our lab
coats like and look with a curious lens at like,
what more needs to be here then for that to work?
Instead of simply blaming ourselves and throwing this blanket will
(26:13):
will power term over it when for most of us,
you know, I think most of us could say we
always feel like we're lacking in willpower, like most Americans do,
and when we look back at what helped us achieve
our goals, we're never like, Yep, it was the willpower
that did it. So true. True. We're going to take
a quick break when we were at them. Before the break,
(26:41):
we've been talking about willpower. Now we want to switch
gears a tiny bit and talk about something a little weird.
You you talk about being an arrogant idiot, but in
a positive way. You're encouraging to kind of take the
song as a challenge be an arrogant idiot? Now, this
is how can this be good? Right? Right? This is
(27:05):
one of my ten rules for brilliant women is be
an arrogant idiot. And of course it's a little bit
tongue in cheek, but we can trust that we're not
going to become arrogant idiots. I think that, uh, you know,
there is a there is a really really strong tendency
among brilliant women to underestimate themselves, underestimate their knowledge, just
(27:26):
as you know also documented in the research that women
really tend to underestimate their capabilities and men do the opposite.
And so I say, you know, just slide a couple
more inches in the arrogant idiot direction. If you're doing
what you think an arrogant idiot would do, you're probably
like just moving a little bit more in the reasonable
range stuff. It's totally in a reasonable range. You're just
(27:49):
really trusting your voice, your ideas. And I just see
it so commonly that, um, you know, women, you know,
we now are We're outperformed. Girls are outperforming boys in school.
Women's spend more years in school than men, we have
more advanced degrees. And part of the pattern that's emerging
is that we're really good students and we like being
(28:11):
in student mode and we're comfortable being learners. And so
women will often feel like, I need to do more
research and more research and more research, right boring into
their blue eyes. You know, I see it or I
see this all the time even after like women colleagues
and I will get a book contract, and they got
the book contract because of their voice and their work,
(28:32):
and then they think what it means to write this
book is to go to the library and read everything
that anyone else has written on the subject. And it's
like that's not what they wanted. They wanted to do, right,
or entrepreneurs saying, you know, I gotta I gotta study
every single other thing that's out there before so to
really feel more ready. I think that's part of the
you know, the arrogant idiots just like, oh yeah, I
(28:52):
already know what I'm talking about, and I'm going to
walk in here and tell everybody what's what. So we
want to scoot a little bit in that direction. We
have plenty of room to lean that way. It's funny.
It reminds me in in my job search, I had
this interesting encounter with UM, someone who's uh, who's known
me for years, and I was asking her to introduce
me to someone, and she said, you know, I have
(29:14):
an idea for you. Instead of just sending me a
link to your LinkedIn and your resume, why don't you
put together a one sheet like this, And then she said,
don't throw up when you see this. This is something
that's been making the rounds um in my company and
everybody thinks this guy is amazing and we should bring
him in and talk to him. Anyway, He's just a
(29:36):
he's just a straight up photographer. There's nothing impressive about him.
But he's made himself this This is a nude picture
of himself. Yeah. Well it was a a picture of
himself for sure, nice and big, but it was also
this just incredibly you know, hyper spun version of his accomplishments.
(29:56):
And she basically my arrogant idiot Yeah, I mean that
was really arrogant idiot stuff. And she said to me,
if you go ahead, make a one sheet on yourself
like this, it's a little more sort of fast and
loose and condenses everything down, um, and stick a picture
of yourself in there. And no matter what I promise you,
it will it will not be a tenth of as
(30:17):
obnoxious as this guy's one sheet is, but it will
it will get more notice here. So I did it,
and it did get more notice, and I did, you know,
end up getting a bunch of interviews from it. But
it was such an uncomfortable thing to do. I mean,
I know, I know why you're coaching this, because I
needed to be I needed to, like flog myself through
(30:40):
the process. Yeah, and one of the things that we
talk about as well as replacing the words self promotion
with the word visibility, because for most women, the term
self promotion just sounds so repugnant and they don't want
to do that and they don't want to, you know,
play the politics. But we know that if you're not
aware of making your good work visible, it doesn't get
(31:03):
the attention it deserves. So I find for a lot
of women they find the term visibility a lot more
comfortable to think about who do I want my work
and myself to be visible too? And then what would
I need to do for it to be visible? And
then also sometimes thinking about the purpose, like your your why,
who do you want to serve? Who do you want
(31:24):
to impact for the good? And remembering ultimately I'm putting
together this one sheet because there's something I want to
do in the world or communicate that I think is
for the good, and this is in the service of
that that can help us a lot. When it just
feels like, oh, this is so yeah, this is making
my skin crawl to have to promote myself in this way. Yeah,
(31:44):
I mean, we're living in a weird time of a
weird sort of Instagram universe, and it is. It does
make it sort of hard. It's hard to think to yourself, Yeah,
I want to take that on and I want to
Well that's why she talked about as the leading because
otherwise you would resist and you were just resist and
sometimes you just have to jump off the cliff, right. Yeah,
(32:07):
And when we talk about um leaping in the playing
Big Courses, we're talking about this very specific thing. That's
a great way to go through a transition process too,
which is to break things down into one to two
weeks actions. Actions you can take in that period of
time that you call a leap, and a leap you
always are going to treat as an experiment. So if
(32:27):
for example, you are gonna, let's say, do three informational interviews,
that's kind of your leap for the next two weeks. Normally,
what we would do is say, you know, that's going
to be successful if the people like me and have
opportunities for me, and it's not successful if it's not.
But how can you frame that as an experiment? So
what are you trying to find out? Maybe I'm trying
to find out is this a direction I like more
(32:49):
is this um, are are people in this industry feeling
like a good fit for me? You know, chemistry wise
and culture wise. So you're always successful in the leak
because you framed the goal as learning something, and you
will always come back without learning. And you can even apply.
You know, you could apply for jobs and say this
experiment is, do people like my resume? Format it this way?
(33:12):
If you then if you find out the answer was
a resounding no, You're like, now I learned that important thing.
Now I'm going on to the next revision of my resume.
So that framing can make every step along the way
an important learning milestone and a success. Yeah. I mean,
I can actually see applying this advice to, you know,
women who are newly single or single period and getting
(33:34):
and dating. Like I keep when I'm talking to my
single friends, sometimes they I feel like they are seeing
every day to re encounter with a guy as a
referendum on their attractiveness and their wantability. And I think,
you know, I always want to say to them, well
did you like him? I mean, was he interesting? What
(33:57):
did you think? Did you did you do some thing fun?
Did you get to do something fun? Um? You know,
I wonder if that's kind of similar. I've never called
it anything, but that's absolutely yeah, yeah, absolutely well. I
think your whole concept of playing big, and we talked
about this earlier is equally applicable in our personal lives
as our professional lives. I think a lot of women
(34:18):
focus on their professional lives and lives and put themselves
out there, but then in their personal lives shrink and
like you're saying, with these dating these are high powered
women and executive physicians who suddenly become little girls when
they are meeting new people and going out on dates
and give all the power to have the side of
the table to make them feel good or bad about
(34:39):
how it went. So living big is the universe about
all areas of your life? Yeah? Absolutely, And you know
all the same tools can be applied. So how does
your inner critic come up when you're getting ready for
a date, like the emotional risk right that your inner
critic does not like about you going on a date,
and then how what's you know, giving that voice a
character and letting it be there it knowing it's just
(35:00):
the inner critic or you know, can you go on
a date, like can you walk through the whole thing
as your inner mentor would approach it. Right, your inter
mentor is definitely asking whether she likes the guys, whether
right they like her guys or gals. Yeah, so all
the tools apply, and we you know, it's always neat
to see like a woman will come into the course
(35:22):
for her profession. But then I always think a one
woman who her father went into hospice right when she
went in the course, and she said, I'm using every
single one of these tools to advocate for him because
I have to constantly speak up in the medical system
and in this facility, and I need all of these
same tools. So it absolutely you know, runs through every
(35:45):
aspect of life. Yeah, I mean, I would say the biggest,
the biggest leap I've seen my sister take is when
she adopted my niece tira Um from Ethiopia. And you know,
for she had wanted to become a mom for years
and years, and the relationship piece of it just wasn't.
She couldn't she couldn't unlock that box. And and so
(36:07):
she wrestled also for years with should I become a
single mom? Do I have the bandwidth? Can I do it?
And you know, ultimately we as her family members rallied
around her. But first we questioned a lot, I have
to say, And I look back on it and I think,
oh my god, how could we have questioned this because
she's such a terrific mom and tears in our life
(36:28):
and she's a miracle for all of us, and you know,
it just um it was. It was a fantastic thing.
Once once she silenced her in her critic who was saying,
maybe I'll be a bad mom, maybe I you know,
maybe I I can't handle this, maybe I'll get too
stressed out. And also, frankly, her freaking family, who was worried.
(36:49):
I mean, we did it from a place of love.
We were really worried for her. We thought it might
be too much. Um. Once she shut us all up
and went and I went with her, and we picked
up Tara, and I remember distinctly watching her hold Tira
for the first time, and um, I think it's possible
that that Amy was the first white person Tira had
(37:09):
ever encountered. And she was hysterical crying. She'd just been
taken away from her caregiver, who who would care for
her all all six months of her life there and
he just was such a natural from the first second,
first time holding her baby, you know, like just such
a natural. And um, I noticed that while Tara was wailing,
(37:32):
I mean really wailing, she was also clinging to Amy
like with everything she had her like little hands were
all caught up in her hair and her sweater, and
I just thought, this is gonna be fine, This is
gonna be good. And it has been. It really has been. Yeah,
and it I mean that story illustrates such a beautiful
point around um that often other people cannot understand are
(37:58):
playing big dream or the vision that has come to us.
So this is what I want my future to look like.
A lot of times our family and even friends are
not supportive and don't really get it at first and
might react with a protective well intentioned but often with
maybe some fear in there that that kind of right. Yeah,
(38:20):
So um, I think that again is it's one of
the reasons it's powerful to have have the tools to
kind of hold on and then the vocabulary like in
our mentor like in our critic, to hold on to
where you're going and kind of have a map of
that journey for yourself. Because it's very common that the
people around us don't you know, they don't stand up
(38:42):
a standing over here, and when we make the announcement,
they don't get it for a long time. Yeah, when
is sometimes ever? Yeah, well, thank you for being so
creative with these tools. I think that they're they're pretty
mind blowing. And thank you for being with us today.
Thank you, thank you so much for everyone listening. If
you want to follow and connect with Tara More on Twitter,
(39:02):
you can do that at Tara Sophia and at Tara
More that's m o h r dot com and connect
with us at you turn the podcast and let us
know your stories of living big. Well, we're going to
(39:35):
just jump right into the experienceial here, so we could
all close our eyes for a moment and just imagine
one of your favorite places in nature, So a place
that you love to go, place that you find beautiful
or calming, and just give yourself amn it to imagine
(40:01):
yourself strolling along in that beautiful place and then notice
that somewhere in your view you see a little little home,
a little dwelling place, and imagine for a moment that
(40:31):
yourself twenty years in the future is waiting for you
there and you can make your way to the door
and see as that older self comes to greet you
(40:56):
and she's so happy that you're here. OK. And then
if you're in a transition right now, or maybe you're
thinking about a transition, there's probably a lot of questions
on your mind, and just go ahead and ask her.
(41:19):
One of those questions might be should I do saying
he or thing B, Should I stay or should I go?
Whatever the question is, go ahead and ask her and
(41:44):
she might answer you with words or just with a
facial expression. And then see if there's anything else she
really wants you to know as you're moving through this
transition and the when you're ready, you can open your eyes.
(42:15):
So how was that for you? What happened for you?
You both? It's pretty It was really powerful exercise. I
have to say. Yeah, I kept wondering what kind of
haircut I would have in the future. I don't I
don't want to bun like my grandmother. I don't want
really board. It took me a while to adjust to
(42:35):
the visual of my future self. Yeah, and what did
she present with? Kind of the same hair, just a
little bit shorter trim, but yeah, yeah, did she give
you any different flavor or take on the question you asked,
(42:56):
then you would have otherwise had Um. Probably not, because
I think I think we all it's a great exercise
for taking us to a place where where we may
not have been open or honest with ourselves. But it's
not an answer that we don't know is coming. I
don't think they are ever like huge dramatic surprises, like
(43:20):
you know, should I marry this man? No, he's a
disaster because you kind of it's inside you, right, it's
kind of been nagging there underneath the surface. Um So No,
she it wasn't. It wasn't. It wasn't something that I
wasn't expecting. Yeah. It's an interesting point because for some people,
they'll do this and they'll hear a message that reinforces
(43:41):
what they maybe have heard in a whisper as you're saying,
or they knew in some level at their in their gut,
but they weren't listening to, or they were rationalizing away,
or they weren't comfortable accepting. Tara, thank you so much.
It was really fascinating and I'm glad to enjoy that
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