June 30, 2025 • 33 mins
Activist, author, and mother of five Shannon Watts joins The Bright Side today to talk about her new book Fired Up: How to Turn Your Spark into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age. Shannon breaks down her inspiration for the book, the key elements to finding your fire, how to go after it, and reminds listeners it's never too late to start living your desires.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Today on the bright side, I hope you're ready to
get fired up, because today on the bright side, Shannon
Watts is here after founding one of the most influential
grassroots movements in the country. She's letting us in on
our biggest secret that purpose doesn't have to come all
at once, and that it's never too late to do
something that matters. She's got the match, the message, and
(00:23):
the momentum to help us all light that spark and
go after everything we want in life.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Middle aged women in my mom's generation were expected to
just sort of fade away and be invisible in their
forties and beyond. I just don't want any woman to
get to the end of their life and feel like
they didn't burn.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
I'm simone voice, and this is the bright side from
Hello Sunshine. There can be a lot of pressure to
figure out your life early. We celebrate the overnight successes.
The thirty under thirty lists the youngest to ever do
such and such. It just seems like the world is
obsessed with the world who's figured it all out by
(01:02):
this imaginary expiration date. Right, Well, let me tell you
a little bit about Shannon Watts, our guest today. She
found the love of her life. At thirty seven, She
started her massively influential grassroots movement, Mom's Demand Action. At
forty one, She climbed Mount Kilimanjaro at forty five, She
started grad school at fifty, and she wrote her second book,
(01:25):
Fired Up, at fifty four. This new book, Fired Up,
How to Turn Your Spark into a Flame and Come
Alive at Any Age, is part memoir and part invitation
to rethink what your prime really looks like. You probably
already know Shannon as the founder of Mom's Demand Action.
It's one of the largest grassroots movement on gun safety
(01:47):
in the history of this country. And yes, this conversation
comes during Gun Safety Awareness Month. But today's episode isn't
about partisan politics. It's about passion. It is about deciding
to show up in your life even when it's absolutely terrifying.
It's about listening to that little internal spark and trusting
that it's not too late. I've always been a go getter.
(02:09):
I talk about ambition a lot on this show, and
I have felt fire in my life, but I admit
that I do have moments sometimes even very recently, where
I feel like it has been hard for me to
find my spark. That's why I was so relieved to
come across this book and talk with Shannon. And let
me tell you, after this conversation, I certainly do not
(02:30):
have it all figured out, but I definitely feel that
spark coming alive again, and at the very least I
feel the drive to go out there and find it.
So get ready to get fired Up, y'all. Here's my
conversation with Shannon Watts. Shannon Watts, Welcome to the bright Side.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Oh my gosh, thank you so much. I'm so thrilled
to be here.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I am so thrilled to have you because I absolutely
love your book, Fired Up. This is your third book,
because you've already written extensively about your work leading the
largest women led nonprofit in the nation, Mom's Demand Action.
So with this book, what's the message that you had
to get down on the page and why?
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Now you know, I stepped back from Mom's Demand Action
in twenty twenty three after eleven years of being a
full time volunteer, and I thought I'll take a break,
and instead what happened was I was on my treadmill
one night and my phone starts ringing. I look down
and it says Maria Shreiver, and so of course I
jumped off the treadmill and answered that call, and she said, look,
(03:36):
I have a book imprint. I want you to write
something for me. And I asked her, you know what about?
And she said, what you have learned about working with
women in your career and in activism. I really wanted
to boil it down to what I had seen hold
women back, whether it was in their personal lives, their
professional lives, their political lives. Over and over again, it
(04:01):
was that women are taught to fulfill their obligations and
men are taught to fulfill their desires. And so I
want women to think differently. I want them to have
always at the top of their mind this question of
what do I want? And that's really the crux of
this book.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
I love the topic of desire because it's honestly not
something that I had really taken the time to think
about until I reached my thirties. I want to get
to desire later, and I want to start with your
personal story, because in the first chapter of this book,
you're candidate about the fact that you were so unhappy
(04:38):
in your first marriage that it actually manifested in physical,
physiological symptoms that you actually broke out into a full
body Eggsamma rash. Is that kind of where this story
started for you, this story of becoming fired up?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
It? Did you know? I found myself in my late thirties.
I was in a marriage that didn't fulfill me. I
was in a career that didn't fulfill me. I was
a very young mom of three kids at the time,
and I was sort of an autopilot. I just had
so many obligations and so many shoulds in my life
(05:15):
that I wasn't able to think about what it would
be that would light me up. And I think even
when we hear those things, they can trigger feelings of
guilt or shame inside us, like who are we to
ask ourselves those things? It seems selfish? And it is
what society has taught us, right, it is the way
the system is set up. You know what would happen
(05:37):
if women thought more about their desires. Institutions would topple,
governments would fail, family systems would fall apart. Right, it
all is set up in this way for us to
maybe even believe that our obligations are in fact our desires.
And so for me, it was the realization that I
(05:57):
needed to get out of my marriage, I needed to
get out of my career, and not really knowing what
to do, and that is how I ended up in
the emergency room. You know, exema doesn't sound that serious,
but when I say I was covered head to toe
and exema that I could not get to go away,
I mean it prevents you from focusing during the day
and being a good parent. It keeps you from sleeping
(06:18):
at night. And this doctor just sort of, you know,
did a mind meld with me. He was talking to
me about the stressors in my life, and the more
I spoke, the more I realized I was at a crossroads,
and I just began to journal my way out of
these feelings that I was experiencing. That journal ended up
(06:39):
being a roadmap to help me figure out what I
call the Fire formula, and fire is very much the
metaphor of this book, because living on fire is living
in a way that you're constantly looking at two different things.
What is holding me back and what is calling me?
And this formula that I have learned and I have
(06:59):
seen play out with thousands and thousands of other women
through Moms to Men action is being able to identify
your abilities, your values, and your desires, and when those
things are married, it's like alchemy. That's how I felt
when I started Mom's to Man Action and when I
was leading it. And I really want women to realize
that we can prioritize our desires over our obligations.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Were you thinking of someone in your life in particular
when you wrote this book? Who? Did you write it for?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
The middle aged women that I had worked with who
would come into Mom's to Men Action, And often it
was because their child had had to endure a lockdown drill.
You know, middle aged women in my mom's generation were
expected to just sort of fade away in their forties
and beyond, and they were so shaken by that experience
(07:49):
that there could be a shooting in their child's school
that they decided they had to get off the sidelines.
And these were women from all walks of life, with
a whole different variety of backgrounds and skills. And you know,
I'll just give you an example. It could be a
woman who was an accountant and she became a Mom's
Man Action data lead and when she was surrounded and
(08:10):
uplifted and supported by hundreds of other women who saw
her values her abilities, her desires. Then she could really
become fully who she was. And sometimes that meant running
for office. Sometimes that meant asking for promotion, getting out
of a difficult, problematic relationship. That was the woman that
I was talking to to say, you don't have to
(08:32):
cross all the tea's and all the eyes before you
try to start a fire in your life. But what
I've learned, and you know, I teach a lot of
college classes, I will have young women come up to
me and say, I'm on this path and I don't
know if it's right for me. Or I will have
young moms say to me, I want to do something different,
but I don't know what to do because I'm so overwhelmed.
(08:54):
Even if I was thinking of a woman like me
who found herself feeling like she was sort of I
met in her life, you know, in my mid thirties
and forties, I think it's for everyone.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
You know, it's funny you mentioned that idea that young
women are kind of questioning the path that they're on,
because I was just talking to a friend of mine
who's a therapist in New York and she's been working
with a lot of young women in their twenties even
and maybe early thirties who were saying, you know, I'm
on this path and I'm just realizing life isn't what
(09:25):
I thought it was going to be. Or I'm in
this marriage and I I have the kids, and I
have the house, and gosh, life isn't what I thought
it was going to be. What are the circumstances or
the beliefs that you think we buy into that get
us to that point again?
Speaker 2 (09:43):
The system is set up for us to have these
expectations of ourselves. And we don't fear our fire because
we're weak. It's because we're wise. You know, we know
that it is going to be difficult, that we will
experience blowback when we live differently. I give this example
in the book because I doubt anyone will experience the
(10:04):
same kind of blowback that I did when I started
Mom's de man action. You know, I immediately started receiving threats
of death and sexual violence to me and to my kids.
And I tell the story of seeing that there were
people driving slowly by my home and I called the
local police department because I wanted them just to keep
an eye on the neighborhood. And the officer said to me, well, ma'am,
(10:28):
that's what you get when you mess with the Second Amendment.
And I knew in that moment that I was either
going to back down or double down. And what I
realized is if I lose my children, I have nothing
left to lose. And so I decided I would double down.
And I think that we have such a fear again,
(10:51):
the guilt and shame that can get triggered when we
decide to live differently. I call these in the book extinguishers.
All the behaviors that go along with that. Whether it's
the desire to disappear, or becoming a perfectionist, or a
fear of failure. They're all these standards that we hold
ourselves too, and it gets in the way of again
asking ourselves constantly, what is it that I want.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
I really liked that part in your book where you
talk about falling into the trap of purpose anxiety, this
idea that we are supposed to be chasing a specific purpose,
perhaps one that was laid out for us, that we
don't even want, instead of actually living on purpose. What
is the difference there?
Speaker 2 (11:33):
They're what I call false fires. We have bought into
this idea that somehow if we pursue happiness or busyness.
I'm incredibly guilty of this. I spent a lot of
my life really busy and producing nothing. Or if we
find a purpose that we will ultimately feel fulfilled. I mean,
those are lifelong journeys that may be fruitless. You know,
(11:56):
all of those things are somewhat ephemeral. And this idea
we were born and we have this one purpose, and
if we don't figure it out and we don't bring
it to completion, that we have failed somehow. I mean,
that's an incredible amount of pressure. As you said, quoting
(12:16):
me from the book, Are we living for a purpose
or on purpose? I think it is better if we
look at this as fulfillment. And that's what I consider
a fire. Yes, I led Mom's Demand Action for eleven years,
but I don't want that to be my whole life.
There's so much more that I want to do, and
so that is why I step back after eleven years.
(12:37):
And this book is the fire after that, and there'll
be something after that. So I think looking at it
as fulfillment and not feeling like it's this huge, amorphous
thing that we have to achieve takes a lot of pressure.
Off well.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
I also love how freeing it was to read that
your fire, your passion, even your desires can shift over
time time I've often had a hard time allowing myself
to do that. How do we give ourselves permission to
create space for evolving desires.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
It was really in twenty twenty two when I was
in the Rose Garden and President Biden signed the first
bipartisan federal gun safety legislation and a generation to pass
that I felt. You can call it an inner knowing
or a voice, but I just knew that it was
the bookend to my activism and that I needed to
hand the torch over so to speak to the next
(13:33):
leader and move on to something else. And what I
really liked about the way the book turned out is
that it is full of exercises, and it is full
of journal prompts, and it is also part of I
have something called Buyer Starter University, where in a community
of hundreds of other women, we can practice these things.
Because when you don't have a lot of power, you
(13:57):
do want to hold on to it and it can
become your idea identity, but it restricts you from doing
and trying other things.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
More from Shannon watts after this shortbreak. So in order
to allow ourselves to try other things, you have created
this roadmap called the Fire formula, and I want to
break that down. So fire is this metaphor that courses
through this book, and I really had never thought about
(14:26):
feminine power through that lens before. So I love the
way that you present it because you talk about the purification,
the rebirth, the renewal that fire brings and how we
can have a taste of that in our own lives
through these various exercises. And this formula that you've created
is broken down into three distinct layers. Let's start with desires.
(14:48):
I didn't even realize there are different types of desires,
but you actually say there are different ways that we
can paint desire. What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Often when we're talking about desire and women, it has
a sexual kind of If you look at the fire triangle, right,
we all learned in eighth grade, like what does it
take to create a fire? And it takes fuel, oxygen
and heat, And so if you substitute that for you know, values,
abilities and desires, then it's the same thing. Right, they
(15:17):
come together and it creates a fire and the desire
piece of it, I think is the most important piece.
You know, we all have dormant desires, wants, needs, and
those can be personal, they can be political, they can
be professional. But I think that women have to get
more comfortable with this idea of desire and the fact
(15:39):
that we are allowed to have them and we are
allowed to act on them. And it is kind of incremental,
like taking baby steps, and the book really walks people
through how do I figure out what I want, what
my desires are, how do I act on them, and
how do I understand that it will be a difficult,
maybe even arduous process and keep going until I get
(16:02):
through the other side. Again, the obligations, the shoulds in
our lives often override the feelings of desire, and it
really does take paying attention to it and writing about
it and discussing it and thinking about it and always
keeping it front of mind. And I think that's the
important part of this book, right. You could read it
every year and maybe your desire would be different. People
(16:26):
so often say to me, oh, it must be so
wonderful to know what your life's work is, thinking that
it was gun violence prevention, and what I realized during
my time as an activism wasn't that, you know, I
was desirous of being an activist, although it certainly lit
me up for a long time. But I'm really passionate
(16:48):
about summoning the audacity of other women and that can
come in many forms, and that can last through my
whole lifetime. It doesn't have to just be as the
leader of mom's demand action. So who I was in
twenty twelve when I had young kids and I started
an organization as much different than who I am as
a fifty four year old woman who has written this book.
And it's much different than who I will be, you know,
(17:09):
after this book comes out and whatever comes next, And
it is really about at the end of the day,
living from the inside out and not the outside in.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Next up in this fire formula is values. Is it
fair to say that while desires change, values stay the same.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
The values are really about what you hold dear. What
is your north star when you are deciding to engage
in a project or maybe to volunteer, or the job
that you're choosing, or the partner the friends that you're choosing.
It is an important part of the triangle because when
(17:50):
they all come together, that's how you start a fire,
and so to know where you are in your life
right now, what is important to you, What things do
you hold dear that will guide you toward whatever your
fire should be. But also, just as importantly your people.
You know, that is a big part of building a fire,
which is creating a community that will support you. And
(18:11):
it is important to have like minded values to share
those values. When we had Moms to Men Action volunteers,
we would ask them, you know, what were the things
that made them stay. It's not that hard to get
volunteers to come into organization, it's very hard to get
them to stay. And they would say two things. They
felt like they were winning, and they felt like they
found their people. And because even in you know, the
(18:33):
reddest of states, working on an issue that can be
very polarizing, they found and shared like minded values with
other people and those are lifelong friends even when they
left the organization. As I said, when I started Moms
to Man Action, my values were very much about protecting
my family and my community. Now that I'm an empty nester,
sure those things are important to me and they don't
go away, but I really value wisdom and mentorship and
(18:56):
being able to create community. I'm just in sort of
a different place. So I think all of these things
will evolve during your lifetime.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
So completing the fire formula triangle is abilities. What are
some of the abilities that we tend to downplay or
dismiss that are actually worth celebrating on this journey.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
I think this is also something that women really struggle with,
is knowing and celebrating their abilities, being proud of them,
because we downplay our abilities so often we've had to,
and we forget first of all, that being a mom,
being a partner, being an employee, all of these things
(19:40):
require specific skill sets that make us capable of doing
a lot of things. You know, I have spent a
lot of time in state houses, and I will just
tell you know, if you are carrying, compassionate, concerned you
would make an amazing state lawmaker. These are not rocket scientists.
They're average, everyday people. And yet I think that we
(20:00):
forget that the things that we're doing in our daily
lives actually qualify us for a whole host of things.
That is the beauty of coming together in community. You
realize that you have abilities. Maybe they're innate, maybe they're acquired,
but these abilities make you stand out, And I think,
what's great about doing an audit of your abilities? And
I suggest in the book asking other people what they
(20:22):
think your abilities are so that you can see yourself
more clearly. Is that if you don't have the abilities
you want, you can go get them.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
You know.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
I talk about in the book how I was not
the person really anyone would have pointed to and said, oh,
that person she should lead Moms to Men Action. I
have severe untreated ADHD that I had my whole life
that prevented me almost from graduating from middle, high school,
and college. I had a debilitating fear of public speaking.
(20:53):
In fact, if I had known Moms to Men Action
would require public speaking, I probably wouldn't have started it.
I didn't know much about gun violence prevention, organizing or
the legislative process right. And yet it turns out this
neurodivergent Mamma five from the Midwest was exactly the right
person for the job. And it was only because I
(21:16):
decided to take the leap. And I talk about this
metaphor of flying the plane as you build it. If
I had waited to cross all my teas and do
all my eyes when I knew everything, there was to know,
and I felt fully prepared. I still wouldn't started moms
to my action this many years later. And there is
that fear of failure that we have to get over.
(21:38):
That we look at men in the society, everyone from
I would say Beto or Rourke to Elon Musk, you
know they have a lot of public failures and that
they continue to rise within society, they continue to get
more opportunities. And so the best way for women to
not feel like they have to disappear when they fail
is just to keep trying and to get comfortable with
(21:59):
those fears lengths of failure.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
As you were speaking, I was thinking about this question
that I wanted to ask you, which is like, what
gave you the courage to become this woman, become this
founder of Mom's Demand action, even though on paper you
weren't that woman at all. But then as you were speaking,
I realized that maybe it's not about summoning this impossible
level of courage, it's about developing it over time incrementally.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yes. Yes, In fact, I believe incrementalism leads to revolutions.
I have seen it in activism, that it is a
practice and a discipline, just like hope right. You wake
up every day as an activist and you decide to
be hopeful. And I think what this book is about
is that you wake up every day and you decide
to ask yourself what do I want? And the women
(22:46):
I interview in the book are such amazing examples of this,
you know, everyone from a woman who had been rejected
from law schools twenty times. After she graduated from college
in twenty sixteen, she decided to go back and not
only did she get in, but she became the first
black woman president of her law school. And now that
is her fulfillment, that is her fire, and she gets
(23:09):
other women of color into law schools across the country.
I interviewed a woman who her whole life wanted to
be an author, but in order to pay the bills,
she became a teacher. She loved that career, but when
she retired, she taught herself how to write a book,
how to create dialogue, how to write chapters. She decided
that she did not want to self publish. She deserved
(23:30):
to be published by a company. She was rejected two
hundred and eighteen times. On the two hundred and nineteenth application,
she got a book deal and she became a published
author in her seventies. Right, So there's all these stories
of women at all ages who kept trying over and
over again. It's this practice.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
As I was reading her book and as I'm hearing
you talk about these women, it seems like they all
believe that it's never too late.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
That's right here. I am at fifty four with my
new book, and so so I just don't think it's
ever too late. I feel like I could achieve anything.
I have the wisdom, I have the energy, and now
I'm grateful to live in a society that allows me
to do that. And so I think we just need
more examples of how we need to read about how
that happens. The fact that when you live differently you
(24:18):
will get blowback. Here's how you survive that. And you're
not going to necessarily get threats of death and sexual violence,
but you may have someone make a snarky comment in
the pickup line at school, like why did you miss
that soccer game?
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Right?
Speaker 2 (24:30):
How to get through the messy middle to the other side.
How to build a bonfire of your people that will
sustain you and provide community, and then how do you
wind that fire down? And start another one in your life.
How do you make this a practice that you do
again and again so that you don't have any deathbed regrets?
And this is an interesting topic of conversation. When I
(24:53):
interviewed all of these women, I asked them all, what
are you afraid your deathbed regret will be? Almost all
of them who were mothers, said that spending so much
time figuring out what I want will have a detrimental
effect on my kids. Right, it's all about am I
a bad mom for going after what I want?
Speaker 1 (25:13):
That's their biggest fear on their deathbed.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Yes, that's what they are afraid their biggest fear will be.
And I'm on the other side of that chasm. Right,
My youngest is a grown adult. They're all adults now,
and they don't say to me, now, you know, mom,
you were so busy with mom's man action. I can't
believe you didn't go to that soccer game in two
thousand and six, or I can't believe you didn't watch
the third showing of my play at school. What they
(25:38):
all say is two things. Thank you for having other
things to focus on them besides just me, because that
was a lot of pressure and also thank you for
giving me an example of how I can go after
what I want as an adult. It's really important that
they have that example.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
That is so heartbreaking to me to hear that for
a lot of moms and women and their number one
fear is how their passions and pursuits would negatively impact
their kids. I think that just goes to show how
deep the conditioning is for us as women. We are
so trained to think about everyone else's needs at the
(26:15):
expense of our own. Like, I love my kids, Shannon,
They're literally my world. But I do feel proud of
myself that I feel like I'm at a place in
my later thirties where I'm able to let go of
a lot of that mom guilt and embrace my desires
and embrace my ambition in new and exciting ways.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yeah, I mean, mom guilt is part of that external
pressure that we feel, and we can internalize that so much.
And I also interview doctor Eliza Pressman, who's an amazing
child psychologist, who says it's so important that moms have
other things to focus on besides their kids. It makes
(26:54):
them happier and better moms. It makes happier kids who
are learning by their example. It's just a really important exercise.
And look, no one should feel guilt or shame if
they're not doing that too right. It's not to add
on to that, it's just to give them permission to say,
why don't.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
You explore this? More from Shannon Watts after this short break,
and we're back with Shannon Watts. This book really impacted
me in a profound way, Shannon and I it's the
kind of book that I'm going to recommend to all
the women in my life. I think the reason why
(27:30):
it impacted me is because I kind of feel like
I've lost my spark, because I can remember feeling that
fire when I found my calling as a journalist in
college and feeling that like sense of yes purpose. But
then I got into that job, at the highest levels
of that job, and just realized that I was hamstrung
(27:51):
in a lot of ways that I could never have anticipated,
and unfortunately realized that the kind of impact I wanted
to have was just not possible in today's media landscape.
And I think this is just something that happens as
you get older in life. Life's events can tend to
humble you right and send you on that journey of
(28:14):
rediscovering what that spark is. So while I know this
book can be really instrumental for someone who is finding
that fire for the first time, what would you say
to readers like me who are looking to find a
spark again?
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Well, it is there, right, and it is about figuring
out what are my abilities, values, and desires that fire formula.
And I would love to hear what happens when you
go through the exercises. I'm so excited to know where
you come out on that because that spark that you're
talking about, and I'm guessing that spark comes through in
(28:53):
this work that you do now because it isn't super dissimilar, right,
I mean you are still changing and minds and you
were still having a profound impact by having these conversations.
So I would wonder what more is it? Is there too?
What you want to do when you go through the exercises,
when you do some of these prompts, Because if you're
(29:17):
a young mom and you're busy with all of the
shoulds and the obligations, that may be what is tamping
your spark right, and you are there abilities that you
want to acquire that you don't have. Are there values
that you're not living. Is there a dormant desire inside
you that you haven't pursued, And I think this book
will help you find that way, and I really do
(29:39):
want you to tell me what that is. I'll report back.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
I think another aspect of it is just the hopelessness
that I feel right now. And that's kind of hard
to admit because I host a show called The bright
Side and were we want to provide a sense of
hope for our listeners and want to provide an escape.
But just being completely honest, there are days where the
(30:05):
hope is really hard to conjure. And I'm sure you
experienced that leading mom's demand action. What did you do
on those days to feel a sense of hope?
Speaker 2 (30:18):
This is such a profound question. Look, I believe, as
we talked about earlier, that hope is a discipline, that
it is a practice that you wake up every day
and you almost have to decide to be hopeful, even
in the midst of feeling hopeless or helpless. And the
reason is because what I have seen, particularly in gun
(30:41):
violence prevention activism, is that cynicism can become an excuse
for an action, for staying on the sidelines right, and
Alice Walker says, activism is the rent I pay to
live on the planet. None of us can afford to
live on the sidelines. In this country and in this world,
especially right now, we are all called to bring our values,
(31:03):
our abilities, and desires to the table. And I don't
mean that you have to become an activist. I'm just
saying that what the world needs right now are more
women who have come alive in all aspects of their life.
And I do think that that is part of the solution.
But also, when you live this way, you find your people,
(31:24):
and your people will make sure that you don't feel
that way either. Right. It is community that can engender
hope and make you feel like you can keep going.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
To bring this conversation both to a close and full circle, Shannon,
journaling is that path to a liveness, and in this
book you provide several journaling prompts to help in that process.
One of my favorites says to write down a list
of twenty things that you wish that you could do
with your life. Another says to write down a list
(31:53):
of all your accomplishments. What's one prompt that you'd like
to leave our listeners with today.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
I think that everyone should write down their abilities. You
brought up that prompt, But when you write this whole
list of all the things you've accomplished, and I give
parameters for it, you will see that you are such
a capable person, that you have so many skills that
could be used in different ways, probably other than the
(32:23):
ways that you're using them.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
And so I just think when we start to write
down all of our capabilities, all of our abilities, and
it becomes this laundry list, it is there to remind
us every time we start to doubt ourselves, we can
go back to it. We can realize that we are
much more capable than we think. And the other prompt
I love is asking people to tell us what our
abilities are. It is not only eye opening to realize
(32:48):
what other people think our skills are. It's such a
compliment to see what other people think about who we are.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Shannon Watts, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Shannon Watts is an activist, author, public speaker, and firestarter.
Her book Fired Up, How to Turn your sparkan to
a flame and come Alive at any age, is out now.
The bright Side is a production of Hello Sunshine and
iHeart Podcasts and is executive produced by Reese Witherspoon and
me Simone Boyce. Production is by ACAST Creative Studios. Our
(33:23):
producers are Taylor Williamson, Adrian Bain, and Darby Masters. Our
production assistant is Joya Putnoy. Acast executive producers are Jenny
Kaplan and Emily Rudder. Maureen Polo and Reese Witherspoon are
the executive producers for Hello Sunshine. Ali Perry is the
executive producer for iHeart Podcasts. Tim Palazzola is our showrunner.
(33:44):
Our theme song is by Anna Stump and Hamilton Lighthouser.
Today on the bright side, I hope you're ready to
get fired up, because today on the bright side, Shannon
Watts is here after founding one of the most influential
grassroots movements in the country. She's letting us in on
our biggest secret that purpose doesn't have to come all
at once, and that it's never too late to do
something that matters. She's got the match, the message, and
(00:23):
the momentum to help us all light that spark and
go after everything we want in life.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Middle aged women in my mom's generation were expected to
just sort of fade away and be invisible in their
forties and beyond. I just don't want any woman to
get to the end of their life and feel like
they didn't burn.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
I'm simone voice, and this is the bright side from
Hello Sunshine. There can be a lot of pressure to
figure out your life early. We celebrate the overnight successes.
The thirty under thirty lists the youngest to ever do
such and such. It just seems like the world is
obsessed with the world who's figured it all out by
(01:02):
this imaginary expiration date. Right, Well, let me tell you
a little bit about Shannon Watts, our guest today. She
found the love of her life. At thirty seven, She
started her massively influential grassroots movement, Mom's Demand Action. At
forty one, She climbed Mount Kilimanjaro at forty five, She
started grad school at fifty, and she wrote her second book,
(01:25):
Fired Up, at fifty four. This new book, Fired Up,
How to Turn Your Spark into a Flame and Come
Alive at Any Age, is part memoir and part invitation
to rethink what your prime really looks like. You probably
already know Shannon as the founder of Mom's Demand Action.
It's one of the largest grassroots movement on gun safety
(01:47):
in the history of this country. And yes, this conversation
comes during Gun Safety Awareness Month. But today's episode isn't
about partisan politics. It's about passion. It is about deciding
to show up in your life even when it's absolutely terrifying.
It's about listening to that little internal spark and trusting
that it's not too late. I've always been a go getter.
(02:09):
I talk about ambition a lot on this show, and
I have felt fire in my life, but I admit
that I do have moments sometimes even very recently, where
I feel like it has been hard for me to
find my spark. That's why I was so relieved to
come across this book and talk with Shannon. And let
me tell you, after this conversation, I certainly do not
(02:30):
have it all figured out, but I definitely feel that
spark coming alive again, and at the very least I
feel the drive to go out there and find it.
So get ready to get fired Up, y'all. Here's my
conversation with Shannon Watts. Shannon Watts, Welcome to the bright Side.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Oh my gosh, thank you so much. I'm so thrilled
to be here.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I am so thrilled to have you because I absolutely
love your book, Fired Up. This is your third book,
because you've already written extensively about your work leading the
largest women led nonprofit in the nation, Mom's Demand Action.
So with this book, what's the message that you had
to get down on the page and why?
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Now you know, I stepped back from Mom's Demand Action
in twenty twenty three after eleven years of being a
full time volunteer, and I thought I'll take a break,
and instead what happened was I was on my treadmill
one night and my phone starts ringing. I look down
and it says Maria Shreiver, and so of course I
jumped off the treadmill and answered that call, and she said, look,
(03:36):
I have a book imprint. I want you to write
something for me. And I asked her, you know what about?
And she said, what you have learned about working with
women in your career and in activism. I really wanted
to boil it down to what I had seen hold
women back, whether it was in their personal lives, their
professional lives, their political lives. Over and over again, it
(04:01):
was that women are taught to fulfill their obligations and
men are taught to fulfill their desires. And so I
want women to think differently. I want them to have
always at the top of their mind this question of
what do I want? And that's really the crux of
this book.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
I love the topic of desire because it's honestly not
something that I had really taken the time to think
about until I reached my thirties. I want to get
to desire later, and I want to start with your
personal story, because in the first chapter of this book,
you're candidate about the fact that you were so unhappy
(04:38):
in your first marriage that it actually manifested in physical,
physiological symptoms that you actually broke out into a full
body Eggsamma rash. Is that kind of where this story
started for you, this story of becoming fired up?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
It? Did you know? I found myself in my late thirties.
I was in a marriage that didn't fulfill me. I
was in a career that didn't fulfill me. I was
a very young mom of three kids at the time,
and I was sort of an autopilot. I just had
so many obligations and so many shoulds in my life
(05:15):
that I wasn't able to think about what it would
be that would light me up. And I think even
when we hear those things, they can trigger feelings of
guilt or shame inside us, like who are we to
ask ourselves those things? It seems selfish? And it is
what society has taught us, right, it is the way
the system is set up. You know what would happen
(05:37):
if women thought more about their desires. Institutions would topple,
governments would fail, family systems would fall apart. Right, it
all is set up in this way for us to
maybe even believe that our obligations are in fact our desires.
And so for me, it was the realization that I
(05:57):
needed to get out of my marriage, I needed to
get out of my career, and not really knowing what
to do, and that is how I ended up in
the emergency room. You know, exema doesn't sound that serious,
but when I say I was covered head to toe
and exema that I could not get to go away,
I mean it prevents you from focusing during the day
and being a good parent. It keeps you from sleeping
(06:18):
at night. And this doctor just sort of, you know,
did a mind meld with me. He was talking to
me about the stressors in my life, and the more
I spoke, the more I realized I was at a crossroads,
and I just began to journal my way out of
these feelings that I was experiencing. That journal ended up
(06:39):
being a roadmap to help me figure out what I
call the Fire formula, and fire is very much the
metaphor of this book, because living on fire is living
in a way that you're constantly looking at two different things.
What is holding me back and what is calling me?
And this formula that I have learned and I have
(06:59):
seen play out with thousands and thousands of other women
through Moms to Men action is being able to identify
your abilities, your values, and your desires, and when those
things are married, it's like alchemy. That's how I felt
when I started Mom's to Man Action and when I
was leading it. And I really want women to realize
that we can prioritize our desires over our obligations.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Were you thinking of someone in your life in particular
when you wrote this book? Who? Did you write it for?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
The middle aged women that I had worked with who
would come into Mom's to Men Action, And often it
was because their child had had to endure a lockdown drill.
You know, middle aged women in my mom's generation were
expected to just sort of fade away in their forties
and beyond, and they were so shaken by that experience
(07:49):
that there could be a shooting in their child's school
that they decided they had to get off the sidelines.
And these were women from all walks of life, with
a whole different variety of backgrounds and skills. And you know,
I'll just give you an example. It could be a
woman who was an accountant and she became a Mom's
Man Action data lead and when she was surrounded and
(08:10):
uplifted and supported by hundreds of other women who saw
her values her abilities, her desires. Then she could really
become fully who she was. And sometimes that meant running
for office. Sometimes that meant asking for promotion, getting out
of a difficult, problematic relationship. That was the woman that
I was talking to to say, you don't have to
(08:32):
cross all the tea's and all the eyes before you
try to start a fire in your life. But what
I've learned, and you know, I teach a lot of
college classes, I will have young women come up to
me and say, I'm on this path and I don't
know if it's right for me. Or I will have
young moms say to me, I want to do something different,
but I don't know what to do because I'm so overwhelmed.
(08:54):
Even if I was thinking of a woman like me
who found herself feeling like she was sort of I
met in her life, you know, in my mid thirties
and forties, I think it's for everyone.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
You know, it's funny you mentioned that idea that young
women are kind of questioning the path that they're on,
because I was just talking to a friend of mine
who's a therapist in New York and she's been working
with a lot of young women in their twenties even
and maybe early thirties who were saying, you know, I'm
on this path and I'm just realizing life isn't what
(09:25):
I thought it was going to be. Or I'm in
this marriage and I I have the kids, and I
have the house, and gosh, life isn't what I thought
it was going to be. What are the circumstances or
the beliefs that you think we buy into that get
us to that point again?
Speaker 2 (09:43):
The system is set up for us to have these
expectations of ourselves. And we don't fear our fire because
we're weak. It's because we're wise. You know, we know
that it is going to be difficult, that we will
experience blowback when we live differently. I give this example
in the book because I doubt anyone will experience the
(10:04):
same kind of blowback that I did when I started
Mom's de man action. You know, I immediately started receiving threats
of death and sexual violence to me and to my kids.
And I tell the story of seeing that there were
people driving slowly by my home and I called the
local police department because I wanted them just to keep
an eye on the neighborhood. And the officer said to me, well, ma'am,
(10:28):
that's what you get when you mess with the Second Amendment.
And I knew in that moment that I was either
going to back down or double down. And what I
realized is if I lose my children, I have nothing
left to lose. And so I decided I would double down.
And I think that we have such a fear again,
(10:51):
the guilt and shame that can get triggered when we
decide to live differently. I call these in the book extinguishers.
All the behaviors that go along with that. Whether it's
the desire to disappear, or becoming a perfectionist, or a
fear of failure. They're all these standards that we hold
ourselves too, and it gets in the way of again
asking ourselves constantly, what is it that I want.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
I really liked that part in your book where you
talk about falling into the trap of purpose anxiety, this
idea that we are supposed to be chasing a specific purpose,
perhaps one that was laid out for us, that we
don't even want, instead of actually living on purpose. What
is the difference there?
Speaker 2 (11:33):
They're what I call false fires. We have bought into
this idea that somehow if we pursue happiness or busyness.
I'm incredibly guilty of this. I spent a lot of
my life really busy and producing nothing. Or if we
find a purpose that we will ultimately feel fulfilled. I mean,
those are lifelong journeys that may be fruitless. You know,
(11:56):
all of those things are somewhat ephemeral. And this idea
we were born and we have this one purpose, and
if we don't figure it out and we don't bring
it to completion, that we have failed somehow. I mean,
that's an incredible amount of pressure. As you said, quoting
(12:16):
me from the book, Are we living for a purpose
or on purpose? I think it is better if we
look at this as fulfillment. And that's what I consider
a fire. Yes, I led Mom's Demand Action for eleven years,
but I don't want that to be my whole life.
There's so much more that I want to do, and
so that is why I step back after eleven years.
(12:37):
And this book is the fire after that, and there'll
be something after that. So I think looking at it
as fulfillment and not feeling like it's this huge, amorphous
thing that we have to achieve takes a lot of pressure.
Off well.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
I also love how freeing it was to read that
your fire, your passion, even your desires can shift over
time time I've often had a hard time allowing myself
to do that. How do we give ourselves permission to
create space for evolving desires.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
It was really in twenty twenty two when I was
in the Rose Garden and President Biden signed the first
bipartisan federal gun safety legislation and a generation to pass
that I felt. You can call it an inner knowing
or a voice, but I just knew that it was
the bookend to my activism and that I needed to
hand the torch over so to speak to the next
(13:33):
leader and move on to something else. And what I
really liked about the way the book turned out is
that it is full of exercises, and it is full
of journal prompts, and it is also part of I
have something called Buyer Starter University, where in a community
of hundreds of other women, we can practice these things.
Because when you don't have a lot of power, you
(13:57):
do want to hold on to it and it can
become your idea identity, but it restricts you from doing
and trying other things.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
More from Shannon watts after this shortbreak. So in order
to allow ourselves to try other things, you have created
this roadmap called the Fire formula, and I want to
break that down. So fire is this metaphor that courses
through this book, and I really had never thought about
(14:26):
feminine power through that lens before. So I love the
way that you present it because you talk about the purification,
the rebirth, the renewal that fire brings and how we
can have a taste of that in our own lives
through these various exercises. And this formula that you've created
is broken down into three distinct layers. Let's start with desires.
(14:48):
I didn't even realize there are different types of desires,
but you actually say there are different ways that we
can paint desire. What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Often when we're talking about desire and women, it has
a sexual kind of If you look at the fire triangle, right,
we all learned in eighth grade, like what does it
take to create a fire? And it takes fuel, oxygen
and heat, And so if you substitute that for you know, values,
abilities and desires, then it's the same thing. Right, they
(15:17):
come together and it creates a fire and the desire
piece of it, I think is the most important piece.
You know, we all have dormant desires, wants, needs, and
those can be personal, they can be political, they can
be professional. But I think that women have to get
more comfortable with this idea of desire and the fact
(15:39):
that we are allowed to have them and we are
allowed to act on them. And it is kind of incremental,
like taking baby steps, and the book really walks people
through how do I figure out what I want, what
my desires are, how do I act on them, and
how do I understand that it will be a difficult,
maybe even arduous process and keep going until I get
(16:02):
through the other side. Again, the obligations, the shoulds in
our lives often override the feelings of desire, and it
really does take paying attention to it and writing about
it and discussing it and thinking about it and always
keeping it front of mind. And I think that's the
important part of this book, right. You could read it
every year and maybe your desire would be different. People
(16:26):
so often say to me, oh, it must be so
wonderful to know what your life's work is, thinking that
it was gun violence prevention, and what I realized during
my time as an activism wasn't that, you know, I
was desirous of being an activist, although it certainly lit
me up for a long time. But I'm really passionate
(16:48):
about summoning the audacity of other women and that can
come in many forms, and that can last through my
whole lifetime. It doesn't have to just be as the
leader of mom's demand action. So who I was in
twenty twelve when I had young kids and I started
an organization as much different than who I am as
a fifty four year old woman who has written this book.
And it's much different than who I will be, you know,
(17:09):
after this book comes out and whatever comes next, And
it is really about at the end of the day,
living from the inside out and not the outside in.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Next up in this fire formula is values. Is it
fair to say that while desires change, values stay the same.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
The values are really about what you hold dear. What
is your north star when you are deciding to engage
in a project or maybe to volunteer, or the job
that you're choosing, or the partner the friends that you're choosing.
It is an important part of the triangle because when
(17:50):
they all come together, that's how you start a fire,
and so to know where you are in your life
right now, what is important to you, What things do
you hold dear that will guide you toward whatever your
fire should be. But also, just as importantly your people.
You know, that is a big part of building a fire,
which is creating a community that will support you. And
(18:11):
it is important to have like minded values to share
those values. When we had Moms to Men Action volunteers,
we would ask them, you know, what were the things
that made them stay. It's not that hard to get
volunteers to come into organization, it's very hard to get
them to stay. And they would say two things. They
felt like they were winning, and they felt like they
found their people. And because even in you know, the
(18:33):
reddest of states, working on an issue that can be
very polarizing, they found and shared like minded values with
other people and those are lifelong friends even when they
left the organization. As I said, when I started Moms
to Man Action, my values were very much about protecting
my family and my community. Now that I'm an empty nester,
sure those things are important to me and they don't
go away, but I really value wisdom and mentorship and
(18:56):
being able to create community. I'm just in sort of
a different place. So I think all of these things
will evolve during your lifetime.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
So completing the fire formula triangle is abilities. What are
some of the abilities that we tend to downplay or
dismiss that are actually worth celebrating on this journey.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
I think this is also something that women really struggle with,
is knowing and celebrating their abilities, being proud of them,
because we downplay our abilities so often we've had to,
and we forget first of all, that being a mom,
being a partner, being an employee, all of these things
(19:40):
require specific skill sets that make us capable of doing
a lot of things. You know, I have spent a
lot of time in state houses, and I will just
tell you know, if you are carrying, compassionate, concerned you
would make an amazing state lawmaker. These are not rocket scientists.
They're average, everyday people. And yet I think that we
(20:00):
forget that the things that we're doing in our daily
lives actually qualify us for a whole host of things.
That is the beauty of coming together in community. You
realize that you have abilities. Maybe they're innate, maybe they're acquired,
but these abilities make you stand out, And I think,
what's great about doing an audit of your abilities? And
I suggest in the book asking other people what they
(20:22):
think your abilities are so that you can see yourself
more clearly. Is that if you don't have the abilities
you want, you can go get them.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
You know.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
I talk about in the book how I was not
the person really anyone would have pointed to and said, oh,
that person she should lead Moms to Men Action. I
have severe untreated ADHD that I had my whole life
that prevented me almost from graduating from middle, high school,
and college. I had a debilitating fear of public speaking.
(20:53):
In fact, if I had known Moms to Men Action
would require public speaking, I probably wouldn't have started it.
I didn't know much about gun violence prevention, organizing or
the legislative process right. And yet it turns out this
neurodivergent Mamma five from the Midwest was exactly the right
person for the job. And it was only because I
(21:16):
decided to take the leap. And I talk about this
metaphor of flying the plane as you build it. If
I had waited to cross all my teas and do
all my eyes when I knew everything, there was to know,
and I felt fully prepared. I still wouldn't started moms
to my action this many years later. And there is
that fear of failure that we have to get over.
(21:38):
That we look at men in the society, everyone from
I would say Beto or Rourke to Elon Musk, you
know they have a lot of public failures and that
they continue to rise within society, they continue to get
more opportunities. And so the best way for women to
not feel like they have to disappear when they fail
is just to keep trying and to get comfortable with
(21:59):
those fears lengths of failure.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
As you were speaking, I was thinking about this question
that I wanted to ask you, which is like, what
gave you the courage to become this woman, become this
founder of Mom's Demand action, even though on paper you
weren't that woman at all. But then as you were speaking,
I realized that maybe it's not about summoning this impossible
level of courage, it's about developing it over time incrementally.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yes. Yes, In fact, I believe incrementalism leads to revolutions.
I have seen it in activism, that it is a
practice and a discipline, just like hope right. You wake
up every day as an activist and you decide to
be hopeful. And I think what this book is about
is that you wake up every day and you decide
to ask yourself what do I want? And the women
(22:46):
I interview in the book are such amazing examples of this,
you know, everyone from a woman who had been rejected
from law schools twenty times. After she graduated from college
in twenty sixteen, she decided to go back and not
only did she get in, but she became the first
black woman president of her law school. And now that
is her fulfillment, that is her fire, and she gets
(23:09):
other women of color into law schools across the country.
I interviewed a woman who her whole life wanted to
be an author, but in order to pay the bills,
she became a teacher. She loved that career, but when
she retired, she taught herself how to write a book,
how to create dialogue, how to write chapters. She decided
that she did not want to self publish. She deserved
(23:30):
to be published by a company. She was rejected two
hundred and eighteen times. On the two hundred and nineteenth application,
she got a book deal and she became a published
author in her seventies. Right, So there's all these stories
of women at all ages who kept trying over and
over again. It's this practice.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
As I was reading her book and as I'm hearing
you talk about these women, it seems like they all
believe that it's never too late.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
That's right here. I am at fifty four with my
new book, and so so I just don't think it's
ever too late. I feel like I could achieve anything.
I have the wisdom, I have the energy, and now
I'm grateful to live in a society that allows me
to do that. And so I think we just need
more examples of how we need to read about how
that happens. The fact that when you live differently you
(24:18):
will get blowback. Here's how you survive that. And you're
not going to necessarily get threats of death and sexual violence,
but you may have someone make a snarky comment in
the pickup line at school, like why did you miss
that soccer game?
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Right?
Speaker 2 (24:30):
How to get through the messy middle to the other side.
How to build a bonfire of your people that will
sustain you and provide community, and then how do you
wind that fire down? And start another one in your life.
How do you make this a practice that you do
again and again so that you don't have any deathbed regrets?
And this is an interesting topic of conversation. When I
(24:53):
interviewed all of these women, I asked them all, what
are you afraid your deathbed regret will be? Almost all
of them who were mothers, said that spending so much
time figuring out what I want will have a detrimental
effect on my kids. Right, it's all about am I
a bad mom for going after what I want?
Speaker 1 (25:13):
That's their biggest fear on their deathbed.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Yes, that's what they are afraid their biggest fear will be.
And I'm on the other side of that chasm. Right,
My youngest is a grown adult. They're all adults now,
and they don't say to me, now, you know, mom,
you were so busy with mom's man action. I can't
believe you didn't go to that soccer game in two
thousand and six, or I can't believe you didn't watch
the third showing of my play at school. What they
(25:38):
all say is two things. Thank you for having other
things to focus on them besides just me, because that
was a lot of pressure and also thank you for
giving me an example of how I can go after
what I want as an adult. It's really important that
they have that example.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
That is so heartbreaking to me to hear that for
a lot of moms and women and their number one
fear is how their passions and pursuits would negatively impact
their kids. I think that just goes to show how
deep the conditioning is for us as women. We are
so trained to think about everyone else's needs at the
(26:15):
expense of our own. Like, I love my kids, Shannon,
They're literally my world. But I do feel proud of
myself that I feel like I'm at a place in
my later thirties where I'm able to let go of
a lot of that mom guilt and embrace my desires
and embrace my ambition in new and exciting ways.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yeah, I mean, mom guilt is part of that external
pressure that we feel, and we can internalize that so much.
And I also interview doctor Eliza Pressman, who's an amazing
child psychologist, who says it's so important that moms have
other things to focus on besides their kids. It makes
(26:54):
them happier and better moms. It makes happier kids who
are learning by their example. It's just a really important exercise.
And look, no one should feel guilt or shame if
they're not doing that too right. It's not to add
on to that, it's just to give them permission to say,
why don't.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
You explore this? More from Shannon Watts after this short break,
and we're back with Shannon Watts. This book really impacted
me in a profound way, Shannon and I it's the
kind of book that I'm going to recommend to all
the women in my life. I think the reason why
(27:30):
it impacted me is because I kind of feel like
I've lost my spark, because I can remember feeling that
fire when I found my calling as a journalist in
college and feeling that like sense of yes purpose. But
then I got into that job, at the highest levels
of that job, and just realized that I was hamstrung
(27:51):
in a lot of ways that I could never have anticipated,
and unfortunately realized that the kind of impact I wanted
to have was just not possible in today's media landscape.
And I think this is just something that happens as
you get older in life. Life's events can tend to
humble you right and send you on that journey of
(28:14):
rediscovering what that spark is. So while I know this
book can be really instrumental for someone who is finding
that fire for the first time, what would you say
to readers like me who are looking to find a
spark again?
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Well, it is there, right, and it is about figuring
out what are my abilities, values, and desires that fire formula.
And I would love to hear what happens when you
go through the exercises. I'm so excited to know where
you come out on that because that spark that you're
talking about, and I'm guessing that spark comes through in
(28:53):
this work that you do now because it isn't super dissimilar, right,
I mean you are still changing and minds and you
were still having a profound impact by having these conversations.
So I would wonder what more is it? Is there too?
What you want to do when you go through the exercises,
when you do some of these prompts, Because if you're
(29:17):
a young mom and you're busy with all of the
shoulds and the obligations, that may be what is tamping
your spark right, and you are there abilities that you
want to acquire that you don't have. Are there values
that you're not living. Is there a dormant desire inside
you that you haven't pursued, And I think this book
will help you find that way, and I really do
(29:39):
want you to tell me what that is. I'll report back.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
I think another aspect of it is just the hopelessness
that I feel right now. And that's kind of hard
to admit because I host a show called The bright
Side and were we want to provide a sense of
hope for our listeners and want to provide an escape.
But just being completely honest, there are days where the
(30:05):
hope is really hard to conjure. And I'm sure you
experienced that leading mom's demand action. What did you do
on those days to feel a sense of hope?
Speaker 2 (30:18):
This is such a profound question. Look, I believe, as
we talked about earlier, that hope is a discipline, that
it is a practice that you wake up every day
and you almost have to decide to be hopeful, even
in the midst of feeling hopeless or helpless. And the
reason is because what I have seen, particularly in gun
(30:41):
violence prevention activism, is that cynicism can become an excuse
for an action, for staying on the sidelines right, and
Alice Walker says, activism is the rent I pay to
live on the planet. None of us can afford to
live on the sidelines. In this country and in this world,
especially right now, we are all called to bring our values,
(31:03):
our abilities, and desires to the table. And I don't
mean that you have to become an activist. I'm just
saying that what the world needs right now are more
women who have come alive in all aspects of their life.
And I do think that that is part of the solution.
But also, when you live this way, you find your people,
(31:24):
and your people will make sure that you don't feel
that way either. Right. It is community that can engender
hope and make you feel like you can keep going.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
To bring this conversation both to a close and full circle, Shannon,
journaling is that path to a liveness, and in this
book you provide several journaling prompts to help in that process.
One of my favorites says to write down a list
of twenty things that you wish that you could do
with your life. Another says to write down a list
(31:53):
of all your accomplishments. What's one prompt that you'd like
to leave our listeners with today.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
I think that everyone should write down their abilities. You
brought up that prompt, But when you write this whole
list of all the things you've accomplished, and I give
parameters for it, you will see that you are such
a capable person, that you have so many skills that
could be used in different ways, probably other than the
(32:23):
ways that you're using them.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
And so I just think when we start to write
down all of our capabilities, all of our abilities, and
it becomes this laundry list, it is there to remind
us every time we start to doubt ourselves, we can
go back to it. We can realize that we are
much more capable than we think. And the other prompt
I love is asking people to tell us what our
abilities are. It is not only eye opening to realize
(32:48):
what other people think our skills are. It's such a
compliment to see what other people think about who we are.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Shannon Watts, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Shannon Watts is an activist, author, public speaker, and firestarter.
Her book Fired Up, How to Turn your sparkan to
a flame and come Alive at any age, is out now.
The bright Side is a production of Hello Sunshine and
iHeart Podcasts and is executive produced by Reese Witherspoon and
me Simone Boyce. Production is by ACAST Creative Studios. Our
(33:23):
producers are Taylor Williamson, Adrian Bain, and Darby Masters. Our
production assistant is Joya Putnoy. Acast executive producers are Jenny
Kaplan and Emily Rudder. Maureen Polo and Reese Witherspoon are
the executive producers for Hello Sunshine. Ali Perry is the
executive producer for iHeart Podcasts. Tim Palazzola is our showrunner.
(33:44):
Our theme song is by Anna Stump and Hamilton Lighthouser.
Host
Simone Boyce
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