Fear Is Not Your Friend with Mary Marantz

In this engaging conversation, Kathryn speaks with Mary Marantz, author of 'Underestimated', about her journey from growing up in a single wide trailer in West Virginia to attending Yale Law School and ultimately choosing a career in photography, podcasting, speaking, and writing. Mary shares her insights on overcoming fear, the importance of accountability, and the power of gratitude. She emphasizes that fear is a boring liar that keeps us from pursuing our dreams and encourages listeners to take action, even when scared. The discussion highlights the significance of recognizing the voice of fear and the impact of storytelling in empowering women to embrace their true potential.

00:00 Introduction to Mary Marantz and Her Mission
02:18 Growing Up in a Single Wide Trailer
04:48 The Journey to Yale Law School
10:40 Overcoming Self-Doubt and Fear
19:30 Transitioning from Law to Photography
26:21 The Writing Journey and Underestimated
30:35 Fear as a Creative Enemy
33:03 Understanding Fear and Its Impact
36:40 The Power of Neuroplasticity
39:34 Building Resilience Through Hardship
42:03 The Importance of Accountability
48:56 Embracing Self-Acceptance
51:34 Reflecting on Personal Growth
54:37 Encouragement to Overcome Fear

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to the Heart and Soul Podcast with Catherine Banco.
I'm on a mission to celebrate breakthrough, empowerment and shameless
living in the lives of women everywhere. Join me and
let's live unashamed together. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back
to Heart and Soul today. I am joined by Mary Morantz,

(00:23):
who kind of made it her purpose, her mission to
encourage women to stop playing small and to share their
powerful mindset shifts. And she's done that through one of
her newest books, which is called Underestimated, The surprisingly simple
shifts to quit playing small, name the fear, and move

(00:43):
forward anyway. Mary, I know there's so much more to you,
and we're going to get into all of that, but
thank you so much for joining me this afternoon. I'm like,
I know, we don't even know, like this day has
been crazy.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
This afternoon, well, Catherine, thanks so much for having me.
I was saying before hopped on. We had to do
some rescheduling because I got COVID. So I'm feeling much better.
Although you might hear me, my voice just occasionally get
a little it lingers, just like a month ago.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
It's it's crazy because I feel like after the pandemic,
we were like, oh, like COVID's gone, but like then
it's like people get it still and I'm like, oh,
it's like still a thing. Like it's I guess always
going to be.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, especially in the summer, I think like the heat
and the yeah, peopul together whatever. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah, you are also a podcaster, and I can tell
that you are a legit podcaster because you have like
a mic handle which if YouTube but like if you know,
you know, that's like leveled up podcasting. So super jealous
of that. It looks amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Thank you, thank you. I feel like the thing now
is like to handhold it, which makes me feel like
I think I'm gonna stay where I am. I know,
I just feel like I drop it a thousand times.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
I am still like podcasting is not my job. I've
been consistent at it for years. However, I like, it's
not like where I make money or anything. So for me,
I'm like I haven't invested, which is probably why ID
awing money, because I haven't invested in like the great
equipment or anything like that. I'm just like still sitting

(02:14):
on my desk like with the.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Same when it weren't the same, you know. So there
you go.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
It works. You look legit, So okay. So Mary, why
don't you start by telling my listeners a little bit
more about who you are and what you do.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah, so, I think kind of like I always say,
like the elevator pitch version of me, if you're just
meeting me for the first time, the important stuff to
know is I grew up in a single wide trailer
in rural West Virginia on the top of a mountain
cock Planwak Mountain. I always like to emphasize and underline
that part single wide, Catherine, because I think sometimes people
can imagine like a really nice double wide with a
permanent foundation, like whatever stock photo of a dilapidated trailer

(02:50):
you have in mind right now, that's pretty much it.
And if you want to see it for real, you
can go to the book Dirt dot com, which is
the website for my first book, Dirt, and the of
that book is an actual photo. My husband, Justin took
the trailer the first time I took him home to
meet my family. My dad went to work as a
logger in the woods when he was twelve. His dad
was a logger. His dad's dad was a logger eight

(03:11):
generations deep of loggers and some coal miners in our family.
My mom came home when she was fifteen and found
a note from her mom that said, you're old enough
to take care of yourself, now build her pay through
the end of the month. There's some can tomatoes and
macaroni shells in the cabinet, good luck. And the two
of them got married when she was just seventeen. And
we're living with my grandparents for a couple of years

(03:33):
before they wanted their own place, so they bought this
trailer on credit, moved it to the backyard temporarily of
my grandparents yard, where it sat and to this day.
And so that's where I kind of grew up. That's
the story I came from. And then when you fast
forward in the story, this is a very tall building
for this elevator pitch. When you pass forward in the
story a little bit, you find out and I find
out that I end up at Yale for law school,

(03:55):
which is a super whiplash moment. It's not the usual
kind of outcome we typically expect, but it's also at
the very same time an underdog trope we're very familiar with.
We've seen that movie. We read that book, you know,
and so it is both an unexpected, you know, gift
of a story, and it's also a story I have
been reckoning with my whole life because, like I say

(04:15):
in one of the last chapters in Underestimated, the underdog
is a role of a lifetime. And what I mean
by that is, if you're not careful, you could spend
your whole life playing that part.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
So much to unpack there. I want to go back
to the single wide trailer, because I do know the difference.
I have some family who live in double wides and
they're kind of nice. Honestly, single wide is a whole
nother ball game, and I want to kind of dig

(04:46):
into how you grew up, if that's okay with you. So,
did you have siblings as well? In this single wide No.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
I'm an only child, Okay, child, which I mean, you know,
an interesting way is probably a major contributing factor. I
don't want to say that. Obviously, parents who have multiple
kids in those circumstances couldn't have them break out. But
I think my parents were able to focus all their
resources on just one.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, so growing up This was a follow up question
of that growing up in that type of I guess economy.
Would you say that you realize that or were you
just like kind of blinded by love? And you know
what I mean, like did you understand your environment or
were you were kind of naive to it? And as

(05:33):
a child.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Yeah, I love this question because one of the cool
things that's happened from releasing Dirt. There are three books
in the series now for everybody who's meeting me, Dirt
is number one. Slow Growth Equals Strong Rates is number two,
and then I've just released Underestimated, which is number three.
But after Dirt came out, I started having a lot
of people who also grew up in trailers and grew
up like that, send me, you know. They would DM

(05:53):
me and they would always include a photo of where
they grew up. It's I actually have a whole folder,
secret folder on my phone of the trailer the trailers,
and most of the people I talked to who email
me or DM or they come to a workshop or
do coaching with me, they will say things like, and
we never knew we were poor, and that is not
exactly my story. I think like it probably ramped up

(06:16):
once I was in junior high in high school, and
I saw, you know, a lot of the people who
grew up where I grew up didn't have a ton
But my best friend was probably one of the wealthiest
people in our entire class, and so she had a
really nice house and where her parents did, and got
the car when she turned sixteen, and would drive two
hours to Charleston, the state capital, to go school, close shopping.

(06:37):
But I, even from a young age, felt like, no,
I feel called to more. And I think people who
grew up like that. There's two levels of that more
that there's both that we feel very soaked in purpose
and like we're being taken somewhere beyond these circumstances, and
you know, we're set apart for a reason and we're

(06:59):
going to be a break in. There's this you know,
generational tree, family tree, like you know, the chains that
have kept our family bound. There's this really big like
sense of set apart purpose. And then there's also I
I never want to live in this trailer again, and
so I would actually sit in the yard with a
little blue spiral bound notebook making these drawings of how
we could build a roof over it and put walls

(07:21):
around it and thereby transform it and therefore me into
kind of a real house, a real girl, a real story, whatever.
And one of the things that hit me, like about
a year ago, Katherine, I was on a podcast and
I was just kind of, you know, spontaneously, it's temporaneously
talking like this, and it hit me like a bolt. Wow.
I never once drew the blueprints or what it would
look like to tear that trailer down first. It was

(07:43):
always about putting up the facades around it, right, the
pretty walls on the outside so that people couldn't see
the trailer inside. So I would say, I'm somebody who knew,
even from when I was little, that I wanted different, better,
more however you want to fill it in, And it
got more pronounced once I was in junior high in
high school and had friends who had real houses.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
Yeah, I imagine there was probably some goodness to not
living in the age of social media as a senager
in that time. But still, like you live in the
world and you're gonna like your best friend, like you said,
was from a wealthy family, and you're just gonna fall
into that comparison, which I sometimes referred to as like comparison,

(08:30):
like paralyzing, like it paralyzes you to next it like
it kind of makes you feel stuck. But on the
other hand, for you, it seems like it catapulted you
to chase after more, which I want to dive into. Now.
Did you always want to go to Yale one day?
Or how like? What?

Speaker 2 (08:49):
Like?

Speaker 1 (08:50):
I don't know about you, and you probably haven't seen
this show. But when I think of you, I think
of like Rory gilmart and I.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
Of course I live in Connecticut, are you? It's a
fun all tradition.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
Yeah, same like I have the amount of times I've
watched like every season of that show. It's such a
comfort show. But you know Rory who although Laura I
came from a family that was wealthy, she kind of
broke away from them and had Rory young and they
grew up simple. You're right, it was in Connecticut, So

(09:22):
you does your town look like stars Hollow? I just
need to know, you.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
Know it kind of does it? Kind of? Does? You know?
Star Shallow is not on the what we live where
Justin and I live. We were able to buy a
little eighteen eighties to fixer up er right on the
Long Island sound beature. You know, at two thousand and nine,
bottom of the market and it was in foreclosure and
there had been a pipe burst flood, so it was
a real hot mess. But we for fifteen years we've
gotten to look out at the water. But other than that,

(09:46):
our little community is very stars hollow, and we have
little meetings every month above the firehouse and they're all
the kind of stars hollow characters, a little Taylor Docie's
sort of character, and everybody fights and it's amazing. And yeah,
we're so of the self dubbed Luke and lare Lie
of neighborhood.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
That's incredible.

Speaker 2 (10:05):
Although the older I get, the more Emily I've become.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
No, Like, the older I get, the more I realized
that like Emily was it like she was? She really
had she made it, you know. Anyways, like Rory, though
always knew she wanted to go to Harvard was her
goal and then she ended up going to Yale, which
I would say, same, same, But was that something that
you always knew you were gonna go to an Ivy

(10:30):
League school or have not come about?

Speaker 2 (10:33):
No, not at all. Okay, So there's two levels here,
which is really interesting, and I want to break them apart.
And you have honed in on them perfectly. The first
level is there is something that I think that happens
to people who grow up without a lot, some of us,
not everybody's. There's a subgenre of us where it's like
a survival mode switch gets flipped and we don't know
how to turn it off. And in Dirt and Slow
Growth both there's a scene where I compare it to

(10:56):
the Girl in the Red Cape running through the deep
dark woods. The big Bad Wolf is ripping at her.
She runs because she knows if it catches her, it
just might kill her, you know, leave them like pieces
of her behind, like breadcrumbs, to remind her where she
comes from. And then, finally, breathless and at last exhausted,
I look over my shoulder and I can finally see it.
I am the girl in the Red Cape. Oh but
I'm also the wolf. And the voice in my head

(11:17):
telling me to run and not stop running, that voice
is my own. And so in Slow Growth I revisit
the scene, but this time from the perspective of the wolf,
and it says, the big bad Wolf at a certain
point is now afraid of us, because if we can't
stop sprinting towards success to try to escape our story.
Then the big bad wolf can't stop chasing us. So
we learn how to twist the thorn in its pod

(11:37):
and keep it roaring back into fight or flight anytime,
you know mode, anytime we need it to. So there's
that side of it. And if you think about you know,
an Oprah or a Tyler Perry or Dwayne the Rock
Johnson or Rory McElroy, there are all of these examples
of people who grew up with really humble beginnings, and
it just flips in us this really strong drive to

(11:58):
prove people wrong, you know, to to change our circumstances,
to be the break in the family tree. There's a
really interesting book I quote in Underestimated that was actually
written by two of my YEA law professors. It's called
the Triple Package. Three Unlikely Stories that determine characteristics, traits
I guess they say that determine success. And so two
of them are very paradoxical. One of them is this

(12:19):
feeling of superiority. And I don't like that word superiority
because it sounds like it's better than someone else. But
when you hear them describe it or read it how
they describe it, it's really talking about the sense of
being called up to greatness, being called up to more
like you feel like there's something more to your life,
and a lot of people know that feeling, but it's
sort of rubbing up against at the very same time
a deep in security and a chip on your shoulder

(12:41):
and a need to prove yourself, and the tension, the
friction between those two paradoxical, seemingly opposing forces create a
forward momentum, which is drive. And then the third character
traits just to close the loop is a willingness to
delay instant gratification for future rewards. So that's sort of
that one level. But the level building off that deep

(13:01):
insecurity I just mentioned is this belief, you know, I
say I've been saying as I've been going around talking
about underestimated. This book is for the person who feels
like they are being called up to greatness, they're being
called up to more simultaneously at the very same time
believing that someone like you will never get there because
it's you. And so I almost didn't even apply to

(13:21):
go to WVU from my undergrad to West Virginia University
because I was convinced I was going to fail out
because they had twenty two thousand students, and my whole hometown,
if you brought everybody down from the mountains, had barely
two thousand and one stoplight. And I equated that if
you start small in life, you stay small in life.
So I when it came time to apply to law school,

(13:42):
I thought I was going to move to Connecticut, but
I thought it was going to be Yukon, which is
a great school. But never in my wildest dreams that
it crossed my mind it would be an Ivy League.
And it was actually a friend who sent in the application.
And going back to just one last note about the
Yale Harvard thing. Fun fact, Yale in law school is
actually number one.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
Let's go, Let's go. You better be proud of that.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
El Woods got a little bit wrong.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
Yeah, move away, Elwoods. I'm taking over. So your friend
sit in an application for you. That's right, that's a
good friend.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
My friend at the time, still friends now, Okay, did
a reading at our wedding was also applying applying to
law school at the same time. And I had the grades,
and I had the LSAT score. But every application we
sent him at the time, I don't know if they
didn't exist yet, or if we just didn't know about
any of the like fee scholarship, you know, I fee
waiver scholarships you can get now. So I was sent
in one hundred dollars to every school I was applying

(14:33):
to you, and that's a lot of money when you
don't have any. And I'd already sent into like twelve
schools or something like that. And so the friend slash
boyfriend was like, hey, you are within all of the
metrics of getting into Yale and Harvard, Like are you
going to send it in? And I was like, why
don't we just light one hundred dollars bill on fire?
That would be just about as helpful, you know. And

(14:54):
so he ended up sending it in. I think he
sent it into both, and I got the acceptance to
deal first, and I really knew I wanted to go there,
you know, between the two of them. So I withdrew
my application from Harvard and that was it.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
I think that what that kind of tells me is
sometimes we can be like our own like worst critic
or biggest barrier, like a person almost let like a
false story in our head, like a false narrative just
kind of define our future, and it sometimes does take
someone you know advocating on your behalf and like calling
you up and into hire for you to like believe

(15:30):
that about yourself as well. So if you're listening to
this and one you feel like you're not enough, that's
a lie. And two, if you have someone in your
life who feels that way, like maybe you're that person
to advocate on their behalf and like call them higher
and like remind them of what they're capable of and
their worth and their intelligence and give them that extra yeah,

(15:53):
kick in the booty to that dream.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yeah. Two things. The cover of the book, in teeny
tiny letters above the main title, it says, because the
person counting you out the most just might be you.
And then the other thing is there's a bunch of
studies that say if a kid is growing up in
really humble beginnings, like things aren't great at home, if
just one adult will take an interest in their life,

(16:16):
it can change the entire trajectory of where they're headed. So,
like your attention, you were, you know, calling them up,
you're demanding them to give their best effort. You're speaking
life into them. Putting labels on them that speak life
not death, can make the whole difference.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
Absolutely. So you go to Yale, which like have got
to be a little intimidating, like moving from one's not
lifetown and then going, well, I guess you went to
West Virginia first, you said, Okay, so you kind of
had like a college experience, so that's forget what I
just said. But you go to Yale, and just intimidating

(16:52):
in general is just like the word Yale for me,
Like I went to the University of Oklahoma, So I
feel very like, eh when I'm talking to you, like
I don't even know how the word.

Speaker 2 (16:59):
Do you know? Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, Like,
let's just pause right there, because I will tell you this.
I was actually about to say this, like when we
were talking about I was talking about the application story
a second ago. I found myself getting really like hot
and sweaty even telling that story, because it's just such
a weird story to tell out loud, especially when it's like,
oh my gosh, that's actually about me. That's really weird.
And I know that that's the thing, right, I know

(17:21):
that it's like, oh, okay, well, you know, yeah, you
grew up in a trailer, but you went to Yale.
So like everything else that you're gonna say after I
can't even like apply to my life because like I'm
missing that piece, right, But like I promise you that
never did I ever doubt myself more, never did I
ever play smaller in my life than the day after
I got that acceptance letter then the day after I graduated.

(17:42):
Right like that, we think there's this moment of arrival
or this switch that flips, but like I spent twenty
years after that self doubting, counting myself out, feeling like
not enough of something, like feeling like I still didn't belong,
still don't have the shiny, shiny, perfect hair of the
like Martha's vineyard set, whatever, And so that really actually
doesn't go away. And like my heart is to never

(18:03):
ever have somebody feel intimidated by the facts. I'm not
sure that they don't see themselves in it, because this
is for all of us, I promise you. Like the
lies I hear, the lies you hear, and vice versa.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah, And I think that's what makes everyone's story relatable,
especially women. I feel like we kind of listen to
the lies a little bit more, Like I don't know
if that's like the nurture compassion, compassion in us just
how we were created. But anyone listening to this has
a lie that they're believing, and also like it's really
hard to break free completely from that liar in your mind.

(18:38):
Oftentimes it's just like finding the tools to combat it
as it, you know, tries to creep up and rear
it's ugly head. So which is why I'm like, very
very glad that this is your third book that you've
written on a topic of you know, just like breaking through.
So so you go to Yale, you graduate, Did you

(18:58):
become a lawyer?

Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yeah, great question. So I had law firm offers in
London and New York. I'd spent my summer the summer
after my second year, so your the summer. The traditionally,
the way it works is the summer after your first
year you interned a nonprofit to get a taste for that,
and then the summer after your second year you swing
to the other, total opposite extreme to get a taste
for that. We were getting paid a couple thousand dollars

(19:22):
a week all these perks. They were, you know, renting
out the London Eye and the you know Tower of
London to put on an opera. We got to go
see Spam a lot in New York, all sorts of
like wild stuff, very very very different than you know, Fenwick,
West Virginia. And so anyway, I had done my internship
after the second year, and then when I'm graduating, I
have these offers for you know, one hundred and twenty

(19:44):
thousand dollars at either law firm, moving benefits, signing bonus,
you know, all these other perks and benefits. And my husband,
who I'd met after my first year of law school
and he went to photography school. We had been building
a photography business together while I was in law school,
and Wes decided to leap and go full time with photography.
And so we've been full time photographers for the last

(20:05):
twenty years. And we actually just launched a brand new
website for that. If you want to go to Justinanmary
dot com. If you're on mobile, the forwarding's a little weird,
you might need to go to justin Moransmarantz dot com.
But you can kind of see all of our work.
So I've had a whole other career even before the writing. Wow,
So you contin multitudes, Katherine, You've.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
Got stories girl. Man, So you did photography for twenty years.
Are you still doing that?

Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (20:31):
Okay, so you do that as well as writing.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah. I took about five years, really hard pause from
twenty twenty to twenty twenty five to get the first
three books out into the world, to like get a
feel for what is demanded of you to write and
launch books. And then we just relaunched the website. But
we did we you know, scale back photography, but it
never went away.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
And know, it's this question just popped into my head.
What is something you feel like you? How do I
word this?

Speaker 2 (20:58):
What is wrong with you?

Speaker 1 (21:00):
It's a problem, I forkidding, No, what is something that
you feel like had you not gone into photography and
accepted that incredible offer from that law firm. What is
something that you feel like you would have never known
about yourself had you not taken this path.

Speaker 2 (21:19):
Yeah, I mean I think like just the grit that
were capable of and the grit muscle that's built being
an entrepreneur for twenty years. I wrote a post not
too long ago that said, you know, I went all
the way to Yale Law School just to become a
wedding photographer. I started from the very bottom as a
photographer and built a business all the way up to
the very top of the top of the top of
the industry. We're literally named legends of Light. And as

(21:40):
soon as it was at the peak of that, I
pivoted again to become a full time author. And none
of it is wasted. None of it is wasted. You know.
I use the law stuff in contracts all the time,
literally about to sign a contract when I hop off
this call, and that will come into play all the
visual elements of the photography. We incorporated the photography into
slow growth, equal strong roots, the email list, the audience
follow you know, when we just unveiled the new website,

(22:02):
it was so fun to see all the people who
only knew me as an author now, because that was
like a big concern when I was pitching to publishers.
As they follow you for photography, will they follow you
as an author? And now there are people who only
know me as that and they know all the people
who said, I've been following you for fifteen years for
the first of the photos and then the words, and
now both you know, and I think, like that is

(22:23):
such a beautiful example. I really did kind of a
feeling a little fired up post that was like, do
not let anyone tell you you can't have a both
in life. Don't let anyone tell you have to choose
between your gifts, or that one dims the other, or
that you have to cut off this piece of you
in order to be taken seriously in this other, brand
new part. You get to carry it all with you.
And so I think that might be for somebody listening

(22:46):
right now.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
Absolutely, and every experience you have, whether you used your
law degree or not, every experience you had at Yale,
the people you met, the things you learned, like those
all play little baby parts into who you become as well.
So I like that no time is time wasted. I
used to always say that about breakups, like, well, I

(23:07):
didn't waste my time right because I learned something like
I had to justify it, but it is so true.
I remember in college I was deciding what to do
with one of my summers and reached out to a
mentor and I was like, I have the opportunity to
travel abroad to Africa, or I can work at this
camp that I love and like I grew up going

(23:30):
to and it means so much to me, and the
person said, well, it seems to me like you can't
really make a wrong decision. You just got to make
a decision. Yeah, And I was like, that was so
good freeing for me to hear. It's like, you can't
make a wrong decision. You just got to like go
full force and see what you learn. And if you
want to pivot back, you can pivot back kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I love that sailor alert too. I ended up doing

(23:50):
both nice, both both alert and that. It was like
fifteen years ago. But but do.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
You know what you said earlier is so true And
that is one of the number one fears I list
in this book. So for everybody listening, the premise of
the book is like, fears are really boring, liar. It
goes through a bunch of scripts, just like in rant
form that fear uses on us just to kind of
get like prove my point, and then chapter by chapters
all the different masks that fear puts on perfections and procrastination,
people pleasing, imposter syndrome, overthinking, even a fear of success.

(24:19):
Fourteen in total. But one of the biggest fears I
see that keeps people stuck is this is all just
gonna be a waste of time. I'm gonna try, I'm
gonna do the work. I'm gonna, you know, get all
the I get myself together and get up the hill,
and it's all just gonna fall back down. And then
I'm gonna have wasted my family's time. I'm gonna waste
I've wasted my family's resources. I'm gonna have time away
from my kids and it's not gonna work out, and

(24:40):
I'll have nothing to show for it, and I'm gonna
be so disappointed. So I may as well. I'm not
start yet anyway, And when we say it out loud,
like this will all be a waste of time, so
I may as well let more time pass before I start.
We can kind of realize, oh, wait, the time passes
either way, you know. So true, and you hear it
and you're like, oh, that is actually not really strong

(25:00):
argument from fear, but it is one of the biggest
ones that keeps people stuck.

Speaker 1 (25:03):
Yeah, And even I mean, I'm just thinking back to
like big decisions I feel like I've had to make
in my life, and even if something didn't work out,
it still wasn't a waste of time because I again
learned something, had new life experiences, met people that connected
me to different things in the future. So it's it's
never a waste of time. Okay, So you had written

(25:26):
two books and then you were like, why not write
a third?

Speaker 2 (25:30):
Are we are?

Speaker 1 (25:31):
We gonna write forever?

Speaker 2 (25:32):
We're writer now?

Speaker 1 (25:33):
We love it?

Speaker 2 (25:34):
Oh yeah, we love writing. I wanted to be an author.
Well I don't even know if I knew the word author.
I wanted to be a writer since I was five.
So the trailer I grew up in, we had family
the next county over, and to get to their house,
we would drive right past the birthplace of pearl S Buck,
who was a Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize winning author of
eighty five books. And there's a little like for you know,
a little homestead and a little signed birthplace brick tricker,

(25:56):
something like that Steiding's stricker Buck. I felt at a
very young age that I just kind of got this
message of you're going to be not only you're going
to be a writer, you're going to be a writer
who brings honored to West Virginia. So I sort of
have always known that's where the train was headed. And
when I signed with my publisher, and I signed in
twenty nineteen. My first book, Dirk, came out in twenty twenty.

(26:18):
I actually signed with them for five books, which has
now become six books, and so they are at least
three more. But I hope to do it until you know,
I hope. I'm on my deathbed and I'm like, wait,
what more? Saying break this down?

Speaker 1 (26:28):
Yeah, that's amazing. So tell me, let's dig deeper into Underestimated,
your newest release. What can my listener if they were
to buy that book, what are three things? What are
the three things that they will definitely get out of
reading it?

Speaker 2 (26:48):
For the three teams, yeah, I think the first one
we've kind of like touched on a bit, which is
that idea if fear so boring? So I mentioned the rant,
I'll just do it now because everybody's going to find
themselves in it. The short backstory is that I'm also
coach women who want to write books and want to
have a podcast and start businesses all that. And there
was a season a couple of years ago where I
had all these coaching calls, like back to back to

(27:10):
back to back, and they were all it was like
eerie Catherine, like the copy and paste mad libs scripts
that were coming out of their mouths, and Fear was winning,
and that was making me really mad. And then I
noticed that it was happened in my life, happening in
my life as well, And so I got on my
phone one day with no introduction, and just basically said,
it's all been done, it's all be done better, it's
all been done by somebody in the world actually wants
to pay attention to. I can't start until it's perfect.

(27:31):
I can't start until I'm perfect. What if I start
and the critics come. What if they say, who does
she think she is? What if I try and I
fail and I prove all the people who said I
could never do it that they were right about me
all along. What if I start and I don't have
the bandwidth for it. What if I can't stay consistent
with it right now? What if my voice doesn't really matter?
What if I don't really matter? What if it's already
too late and I said, fear is not your friend,

(27:52):
start anyway and start now. And that back experience of
making that video, which gets included in Underestimate, led me
to this moment of two dots connecting in a way
I'd never quite seen them connected before. Which is what
if fear attacks creatives in particular? By that, I don't
mean you're really good at painting, but that you are
going to put good things into the world and call
them good. What if fear attacks creatives in particular because

(28:15):
it's jealous that it itself is not creative at all,
sort of being able to throw its voice to sound
like you, because if it sounded like Morgan Freeman and
the Shawshank Redemption, we could catch it every time, and
to be able to shape shift in among all these
masks of the chapters that I already mentioned, you catch
perfectionism coming in the front door, and it's a slippery
enemy coming in the side doors, overthinking. So it's not

(28:36):
a very creative enemy, but it is a slippery enemy.
And then I took it a step further and I said,
you know, fear is not this very creative guy, right Like,
it's only got these few gifts, so it must have
been its whole life attacking those of us who do
have something to offer the world. But it is a
very busy guy, and like any good productive overachiever, it
has to learn how to prioritize. So if you're already

(28:56):
hiding in plain side, or playing small, or doing work
that is not what you're truly called to do, Fear's
mostly going to leave you alone. But if you show
up and you start to do work that matters, that
might actually help people, that might actually change this world,
you better expect fear to show up teeth beard and snarling,
because you're gonna see just how far that mask can slip,
and just how venomous that enemy can actually be. And
so we can actually use that weakness against it. Because

(29:18):
most of us go, oh, I've got all these fears
running through my mind. It must mean now it's not
the time, or I'm not the one to do this.
But what if it's actually the opposite. What if fear
just showed up, it must mean good, You're about to
do work that matters. Yeah, so that would be the
first big you know pillar. And I'll pause there because
that was a lot.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
I love that because I'm a Christian and like something
I often think about is whenever I'm doing something that
matters for my faith is when I always hear like
lies of what I call the enemy or yeah, the
devil and it's because I'm about to enter into something

(29:55):
that is good, do you know what I mean? So
he's trying to stop it, and same thing with fear.
It's like trying to cut cut your legs out from
underneath you before you even get walking. Yeah, just because
it's going to be a good thing. So I love
that you How do you explain that? So it's so true?

Speaker 2 (30:13):
Yeah, I'm so glad you said that, because that means
we can now kind of go to this place, which
is you know, if we think about for those of
us who are believe that we were created in the
image of an ultimate creator, one of the very first,
the very first forward facing character traits we learn about
God is that of creator creating something and calling it good.
And we, being made in that image, are inherently creative,

(30:33):
even if we don't feel like it, even if we're
you know, spreadsheet filler outers and data punchers or whatever.
We have that ability to create our world and our
lives with our thoughts, to create those labels that speak
life for death that we put on other people. There's
all sorts of creative forces in us, and so it
only makes sense that the opposite of that, the absence
of that, the enemy of that would not be particularly

(30:56):
creative at all.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
Yeah, right, yeah, that's so true. I love that. I
love how you worded that. It's so it's so good.
I'm going to like clip this and share it to
the way that was so good. Okay, So you write underestimated?
What has been the what has been some of the
feedback or maybe testimonials that you've received from people who

(31:21):
have read.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
It so far? The number one result, or you know,
the thing that I hear is could you please stop
reading my mail? Could you please stop reading my diary?
Could you please get out of my head? It will?
It will, you know, maybe knock the wind out of
you just a little bit. And just how you know
these thoughts you think that are you're the only one

(31:41):
having them, or you're the one who's only the only
one who's ever felt that way. Like I did a
thing when I was first launching the book on Instagram
where I was like, tell me the fear that keeps
you stuck the most, and I'll tell you what page
in this book it's on. Because not because it's just
a good marketing technique, which it is, but because I
want you to know that the lie that you think
is so specific to you and so particularly to you,
and nobody else is felt that way. It's actually such

(32:02):
a boring mad lib script from fear that is already
accounted for in the pages of this book. Yeah, and
so kind of like you know, referencing the pillars, another
really big pillar, important pillar that goes along with that.
The whole first one about fear being boring is that
when I can get you to be able to notice
in real time exactly what fear's doing. Right, there's this
great quote that says, the fish don't know the water's

(32:23):
toxic because they're already so submerged in it. And so
because fear uses our own voice and it feels just
like a running monologue, it's really hard to catch it
in the act. But we know that humans learn best
from story and really unexpected visual metaphor, and so all
throughout this book is I'm literally you know, I'm just
sort of we call it like the toe to toe
chapter by chapter systematic takedown of fear we've been waiting for.

(32:46):
I'm going to give you these really photographer influence. Nothing
is wasted, not in the sense that they're themed photography,
but just that I see things visually very unexpected metaphors.
So chapter four, for example, is second guessing is a
missing handbook, Catherine. There's not a hard story person I
know in real life who has not set at one
point or another. I feel like I just missed out
on getting this handbook for life. All these other kids

(33:07):
seem to have just dropped in their lap when they're
eight years old. One night, sitting around the dinner table,
you know, Chad passed the mashed potatoes. And by the way,
make sure you understand compound interests, we did not get
the manual, you know, and so we feel like we
never got all the information. Someone is always more informed,
better equipped, so we second guess that we're the right
people for the job. And so there's a whole section

(33:28):
in that part where I say where we feel like
we're walking around the world without all the pertinent parts,
like Edward scissorhands dropped down right in the middle of
some color coded pastel suburban hell, where the name of
the game was always blending in and keeping up with
your neighbors. And when we inevitably break the rules because
we did not know the rules, somehow we are the
ones who die death by a thousand cuts. And so
now the next time Fear is saying, oh, you should

(33:49):
second guess yourself. I don't know if you actually have
all the information. Are you the right person for this?
Somebody else's better qualified. You can go handbook Problem or
Edward Scissorhands, and you can cut Fear off mid sentence.
And I was on that This Changes Everything podcast with
Sarah Rice and she said, yeah, it's like pulling back
the curtain on the great and powerful, terrifying Wizard of
Oz just to see it's this little tiny man behind

(34:10):
the curtain.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
And I said, yeah, snake oil salesman. He's trying to
sell you on this grift that given the choice between
creating nothing and creating any kind of failure at all,
it will be better to go on creating nothing and
another year goes by and the clock goes on ticking
and the world is worse for your absence. Yeah, so
that would be Pillar too.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
I love that because it's almost like recognizing a trigger
for you, Like if you had like a trauma in
your past, like and you've done the work to you know,
you've gone to therapy, you've tried to heal from it.
What you probably have learned in that is there are
things that trigger you, and those triggers can become debilitating

(34:47):
or paralyzing. As I said earlier, But once you recognize
what the trigger is, and you can also come up
with a game plan to combat it and say no,
like not today, Satan.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
You know that's right, So do you have.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
It's a similar mindset to what you just said to
know the voice, what the voice of fear sounds like,
means that you can stop it before it goes deeper.
And it will try to go deeper, but you can
stop it. You can cut the snake off, the head
off the snake immediately.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
Yeah. Love that. Yeah, And I would say that actually
brings me to the third pillar I would want your
people to know is that there's something really beautiful about
how God wired our brains that allows us to make
these updates in the programming. So a lot of people
know about you know, neuroplasticity, and that we can actually,
you know, science now tells us throughout our lives we
can rewire our brain. This whole teach a dog new

(35:39):
tricks thing is no longer applicable. The neurons hebbsloss has
the neurons that fire together wire together. So the more
you repeat a thought, the more likely that will be
your default go to right. That's Heebs law, and so
in underestimated. In the Overthinking chapter, overthinking is an orange
safety cone. That's chapter seven. I talk about something called
basing in brain theory, which is more commonly known as

(36:00):
predictive brain theory, and what it means, essentially, in the
simplest of terms, is that our brain is an incredible
prediction machine, like take this thing to Vegas. It's going
to give those kind of odds, and it knows with
great accuracy before we ever begin a thing whether we
will succeed at it or not. And it's basing those
predictions on what has always worked before, what has always
been true before. And so when we sit down to

(36:21):
try something new and the prediction machine looks at all
the data and goes, oh, no, we're not people who
try new, hard, scary things like alert alert, it will
do something called an amygdala hijack, like a record scratch
ninety degree turn away from the hard thing, and it
will have you go do something to instantly feel better,
immediate mood repair. So, if you've ever marked something on
your to do list, just that you've already done, just

(36:43):
to cross it off or cleaned out a junk drawer
instead of writing that chapter or whatever. That's what's happening.
The very cool part, though, is that the prediction model
is constantly updating, and so when we are willing to
sit in front of the blinking cursor and stare it
down and do hard things and sit through the edginess,
not immediately having the answers or knowing all the next
right steps, small but important commitments we keep to ourselves,

(37:07):
something I talk about in the shift section of this book.
When we keep those commitments to ourselves, when we do
the hard things, we're like dropping quarters in the piggy bank,
little inputs into the prediction model that's constantly updating. And
so when you say to your brain we can do
hard things. Are we are people who can do hard things?
Look at us, It will go okay, cool, and it
will update the model so that it becomes fifty percent
likelihood of success or sixty or seventy, and it will

(37:30):
not immediately hijack you away from the most important hard
work you are trying to do. So that the more
we do hard things paradoxically, the more we are then
able to do hard.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
Things absolutely, and then the more you continue to say
yes and do the hard thing, the easier it becomes
to do the next hard thing because you've given to
yourself that I can do hard things. It's like, what's
exact Like the hardest heart for people who are starting
off at my gym is showing up for the first

(38:00):
time because it's not a consistent theme in their life
to show up and work out, and there's intimidation and
fear gets in the way, and like all of these comparison,
like I'm not going to be as fit as this
person working on next to me. But the thing is
like nobody cares, Like nobody's looking at you while they
are exercising. They're thinking about their exercise, right, And so

(38:23):
I always tell people, like, if you can come for
one month, I promise you'll start to fall in love
with it. So get yourself out of bed for that
first month, and like, come anyway, even though you're tired
and it's early, Just come and you'll start to fall
in love with the process of how you feel the endorphins,
how the consistency really rewires your brain to be like, oh,

(38:46):
I actually think I like exercise, which is something I
thought I would never say, right, and not because it
makes me aesthetically look a certain way, but because I
feel better, Like I just it's a good thing.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Yeah, Which is one of the powerful things about hiring
a coach is now you're accountable to someone else. You're
not just letting yourself down, You're letting somebody else down.
And for a lot of us, it's a lot easier
to keep in the beginning commitments to other people while
we learn to keep commitments to ourselves.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
Yeah. One of my fears that I hear all the
time is with my particular career is well, there's so
many workouts online and like so many, like the market
is so oversaturated, and you can go on Instagram and
find a whole circuit training on a reel and do
it at your house. But then what I keep going
back to is, no, I still have a career because

(39:34):
people won't do it on their own, like they need accountability,
they need a coach. And that's something that I don't
think will ever die. Like I don't think that's something
that's like social media is gonna like nail.

Speaker 2 (39:45):
Right or AI, Yeah, you know.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
Yeah, like the human to human accountability. I don't know
any other better word for it is just unmatched, which
is great why you wrote this book because you can.
I'm sure the amount of dms you get in the
messages you get, like you probably become like a coach
and some extent to people you've never even met, and

(40:09):
like you get to be their accountability coach without ever
meeting them is such a cool gift as a writer,
it really is. Yeah. And podcaster, I'm sure you have
people who listen to your podcasts, you know, every week
that you've never knew their name, and then one day
they'll slide into your DMS and be like, I know,
I hear this, and yeah, it's rewarding.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
And by the way, if you're listening right now, like
tell the people, Tell the people, like, send a message
to Catherine and let her know how much the work
she's doing matters, because you know, when we're doing this
work over here. I always say, there's a reason that
word passion also means suffering, Like what are you willing
to kind of suffer in silence for to birth out
into the world, whether that's writing a book or slogging
through recording podcasts week after a week. You have no

(40:51):
idea how much even just one message can go. Okay,
this is making a difference.

Speaker 1 (40:55):
That's so real. I mean, like not even just talking
about myself. But if I do get a DM, which
I rarely do, I'm not like an influencer, so it's
not like I have people flooding my dms. I read
them all, you know, and don't get lost in them.
But when I do and it's just one person that said, oh,
I listened to your episode from three weeks ago, When
I like, look at the downloads and I'm like, did

(41:15):
anyone really listen or care to hear that, I'm like, well,
I got to record another episode next week. Like there's
one person who was touched by something that was said
on on the podcast. So yeah, keep keep doing what
you're what you feel called to do, because it does matter,
even if even if you know Instagram tells you that

(41:36):
you're not doing enough or whatever. Social media is evil
but evil and great and great like but also evil.
So no, no, that know the difference between the two things. Okay,
So what is I could I mean, I told you
at the beginning of this this will be a thirty
minute episode, and here we are. But what I'm gonna

(41:57):
I have four questions that I ask every single guest.
I'm gonna kind of rejigger them for you because I'm curious. Okay,
so maybe i'll ask five. But I didn't tell you
ahead of time on purpose because I want it to
be very just authentic.

Speaker 2 (42:11):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
First question is what is something that you're currently obsessed
with right now?

Speaker 2 (42:17):
Okay, So I would say just a couple of different
TV shows. We really liked the show Fu Bar on
Netflix and they just came out. It's Arnold Schwarzenegger and
Monica Barbero. I hope I'm sitting her last name right.
She was Phoenix in Maverick, which I'm also super obsessed with.
I think we've watched it like ten times at this point.

(42:40):
And yeah, the whole first season is just incredible. They
turn out to be a father daughter combo who didn't
realize the other one was also in the CIA. So
it's on Netflix and season two came out and it
was also enjoyable, but season one is definitely much better.
So I any kind of just like I feel like,
and I mentioned earlier about having these different facets of
your gifts, and I think the umbrella of mine is storyteller,

(43:03):
and so whether that's I am obsessed with the movies.
I call them the talkies. I speak in fluent movie quote.
I've been the book. I for sure speak in fluent
movie quote. And you know that. And good TV shows,
good books. Obviously, it's just anything that pulls me into
a story and makes me fall in love with these
characters I've just met. So we've rotated among a few,

(43:23):
but I'll mention food Bars the current one. Yeah, we're
working through.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
I just binged the show or season three of Ginny
and Georgia.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
What's nice.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
Yeah, I don't know, have you seen it.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
I've not seen that one, but I have seen what
I assume is in the similar genres because they're always
sort of like recommended together, like Sweet Magnolia Virgin River
like that. I don't know. I saw that. They're like
in a trial on the season Georgia.

Speaker 1 (43:49):
It's similar vibes in that it's like cheesy and like
predictable to an extent and like but it's very It's
like Gilmore Girls because it's like about a mother daughter
duo who are just like trying to survive and like
they're they're for each other no matter what, even through crime.
Oh okay, but like the Jenny or not Jenny Georgia

(44:11):
the mom is kind of like this anti hero like
lover because she'll do she's reckless for her family and
for the people that she loves. But then you're like,
why did you do that? Like that was so.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
Hear you the way you are.

Speaker 1 (44:25):
Yeah, yeah, it's a good show if you like storytelling
and especially if you like No More Girls, So you
should try that.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
Yeah, it was the top question. What are you obsessed with?
Was that? Okay? Okay, so we'll say all of that
got a little got a little down a sidetrack there
about Okay, So here's a here's a more direct answer.
Ursa major skincare obsessed with it? Golden Hour Recovery cream
is when I tried first this, I want to give
this to like every person I know. It's like sunshine

(44:51):
and a jar and it makes you like like it's
creamy and it smells like honey. It makes you like
be lit from within. And then from there they got
me into the green slate scrub, Green mountain slate scrub,
something like that, and then I just now got the
forest hyaluronic serum.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
That's all the right.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
I'm telling you, every single one of these products is
the best kind of that product I've ever tried, So
I do not tell it. I do not have an
affiliate URSA.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
Major URSA Major.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
I think it's like the stars, you know, do you
ever fign?

Speaker 1 (45:21):
Like I went to Sephora today actually with my baby,
so it was a short trip, but I was like,
going to test out this brand because you know, they're
always They're always promoting new clean brands that you're like,
I want that, And then I go online to see
if there's like any deals, and I'm like, how come
every time I get new makeup or new skincare or something,
I'm at least spending like two hundred.

Speaker 2 (45:42):
Bucks Like yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
But then I'm like, it's so worth it for the
way it makes you feel like you feel so much better.

Speaker 2 (45:49):
Yeah, I will say URSA Major, they are clean products,
and they just change their packaging to be more like recyclable.
And I would say that most of the products I've
gotten from them average around like forty five to five.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
Yeah, and they last longer too, if it's a good product.
So right, Okay, next question is what is something that
you're really looking forward to in the rest of twenty
twenty five.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
Mm, well, I actually have my next manuscript do in
two weeks and two days as we're recording this, and
so I am both very much looking forward to handing
that off and then also very much looking forward to
seeing how it all comes together in the finished products,
and then just having like a slower summer after that.

Speaker 1 (46:30):
Yeah. Wow, writing to me is like so insane, like
you cause you're here, you are promoting this book, but
you've already written another one, Like do you ever get
the themes mixed up? We're like, wait, was that on
this book? You know? I've written so much.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
Yeah, normally I will say I'm on more of a
two year cycle, so normally I would not. So I
released this one this April. This one will come out
next April. I normally don't do that, But the next
one is a direct follow up to Underestimated, so they're
coming out closer together.

Speaker 1 (46:57):
That's exciting. Yeah, yeah, that is really exciting. And then
to have the summer of like no Stress would be
that's great ideal. Okay, next question is I'm going to
two part it, but what is something that you really
love about yourself.

Speaker 2 (47:10):
Right now, I really am loving the I don't really
care what somebody has to say about it anymore. I think, like,
I think there's a long history in my story of
I wouldn't even call it full people pleasing, but more
like wanting to get the gold stars and the approval

(47:30):
from people, and always wanting to like do it right
so that other people would approve of it. You know,
I went through a version of this one I decided
to become a photographer instead of using a very expensive
ye A law degree, and there was a lot of
you know in the hometown about that, oh the golden
girls not so golden anymore kind of feel, and so

(47:51):
part of that, you know, we use that like jet
fuel to say, Okay, we're not just gonna build the business.
We're gonna build the best business and just watch me go.
And I feel like I'm coming on to another version
of that with like launch three books in five years
and you'll just sort of, you know, exhaust any kind
of caring what other people have to say about it
you have left in you, And I think, you know,

(48:11):
age helps with that. It just turned forty five, so
that really helps with that, and so you know, bring
in the photography brand back, Like, oh, are people going
to think I'm like I had to go back to photography. No,
we just really wanted to bring it back. I'm still
very much being an author and I just don't care
what you think anymore. Yeah, I'm gonna do what I
want to do both in this life, you know. And
so I think that I'm very proud of Mary, grown

(48:33):
up Mary, who you know, they really talk about your
forties is like you run out of the feelings to give,
We'll say, and like those kind of feelings. Yeah, and
it's nice. Yeah, okay, yeah, we're tracking. We're tracking. You know,
it's pretty fun. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
I'm thirty six, so still a little younger, but I
love getting older like not yeah, but you know, like
my hip actually has like a lot like yeah, literally
wake up and like what's that? But I love the
I have zero fomo now, like I don't like, I
just don't care as much in like a good way,

(49:15):
not in like a I don't care about people. But
it's so freeing to be like that doesn't even matter. Yeah,
like it doesn't even matter.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
My second part was you kind of touched on to
that question, which I don't usually ask, is but because
of your story, I want to what would younger Mary
living in that single wide trailer, what is something that
she would say she is proud of? And older Mary?

Speaker 2 (49:41):
Yeah, gosh, I love that question so much. A couple
of years ago, I read an article from Viola Davis
in People magazine and Viola had a hard childhood as well,
didn't grow up with a lot and interview at that point.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
I love her to me too.

Speaker 2 (49:56):
See that's another It's another one of these characters you
know that sort of like grow up with a lot,
and then they go on and they just go and
go and go, and I just feel very drawn to
these people. And so anyway, the interviewer said, hey, what
do you feel like you're kind of healing younger Viola?
And she said, are you kidding me? She's healing me
because I picture her running around in our in my
house now, jumping up and down, being like, look at

(50:17):
our refriger writ think, are you kidding me? And I
think about that on a daily basis. So right now,
as we're recording, Mary obviously has a whole bunch of
other dreams that have popped up along the way. And
also right now as we're recording Mary, every single dream
that little Mary had has come true, every single one.
I live in Connecticut, I have golden retrievers. I'm an author,

(50:40):
you know, like I have a marriage that's incredibly redeeming.
When you know, I with my parents' marriage, I was like,
I'm never getting married. So they're all sorts of really beautiful,
beautiful things that have come true. And I when I
sit in my office, I can literally point to a
hundred things I prayed for, just blinking in neon vivid
living color. And so I feel like the Little Mary

(51:01):
reminds me daily how far we've come.

Speaker 1 (51:03):
Yeah, one of the things that I try to do,
I should do it daily, but I try to do
when I'm like feeling I don't know, not enough is
to think of all the things that I'm grateful for.
And the way that I do that is by remembering
prayers I used to pray that are just true now.
And like sometimes when you're in the day to day,
you don't realize that prayer has been answered because you're

(51:24):
just so busy and distracted and you're just going, going, going,
So that's just a way to like refresh your mind
and like fill it with gratitude of like, wow, I
prayed the I prayed for this, like the husband thing,
like I prayed for I waited a long time for
my husband and I prayed and I prayed and it
was worth the way and like what I answered prayer?
You know, Yeah, that's so children as well. Like it's

(51:47):
just there's little and there's little things throughout throughout your day.
Like you know, I prayed that I would one day
drive a new car, and I got that last year.
I had never done that, Yeah, or I got that
this year, not last year. So anyways, think about prayers
that have already been answered, small or big, and that
just will immediately change your perspective on what's currently grinding
your gears, you know. Yeah, Okay, next question, and my

(52:10):
final question is if they if you could leave my
listeners with like a post it note of a short
encouragement that they can put on their mirror or on
their computer today, what would that be.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
Yeah, I'm gonna go with that voice in your head
that's telling you not to start, that voice of fear,
that voice is terrified of the day you realize pre
Perfect records were never a prerequisite for purpose. And we
never asked you to be perfect. Yeah, we just asked
you to show up.

Speaker 1 (52:40):
Yeah, just show up, y'all. Do it?

Speaker 2 (52:42):
Do it? Scared waiting?

Speaker 1 (52:43):
What was the can you go back to before I
wrap up? So I can just know that I remember,
fear is not my friend? And fear is a boring
What was it? Fear is a boring Yep, fears a
really boring liar, boring liar.

Speaker 2 (52:55):
Fears not your friends. Start anyway, Start now? Otherwise another
year agoes by, the clock goes on ticking, and the
world is worse for your absence.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
Am Okay, Mary, what is the best way for my
listeners to connect with you and consume your things?

Speaker 2 (53:10):
All the things, all the things. I think a really
great place to start is if you go to name
the Fear dot Com, which is taken from the subtitle
name the Fear dot Com. We actually have the whole
first chapter up there free for you that you can
grab and download and start reading right away. You can
get a really good feel from our writing style. It
sort of sets up the whole trajectory of the book,
and I think you're gonna love it. And then while

(53:30):
you're there, if you want. You can either order we
have all the places linked up on the website, or
you can go order it anywhere books are sold. And
then we also have something really fun. It's both on
that website or you can go directly to achieverquiz dot com.
Achiever quiz dot com, we have put together a quiz
that's based around what I've identified as the five achiever types.
And based on your type, you are going to play

(53:53):
small in different ways, and you're gonna get stuck in
different ways, and you're going to need different things to
move you forward. So we have the performer who's always
on the toes needs to show both themselves but also
other people for sure how far they've come. The tightrope
walker could care less who's clapping, but they need higher
and hire death defying feats to feel the same amount
of good. The mass graader hides in plain sight because
they don't want to let either themselves or anybody else down.

(54:15):
The contortionist is our classic people pleaser. They can torch
because it is easier than to be criticized, and are
illusionist in the distance. Believes that all the conditions to
begin and they themselves must be perfect before they can
even start. And so if you go to achieve requiz
dot com, it takes about two minutes to take the
ten question quiz ten minutes if you really overthink it.
The questions are super light and easy and movie quote referencing,

(54:37):
and in true Mary fashion, the results go super deep.
I get a lot of emails that are like, why
am I crying reading these results? And so, yeah, that's
at achiever requiz dot com. And then you can come
over to Instagram. I'm at Mary Moran's mr Antz. Let
me know which type you got.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
I'm going to take that quiz. I'm excited. I really
love a personality quiz too.

Speaker 2 (54:56):
Is there one that made you think that you might
be when I was describing it?

Speaker 1 (55:00):
Okay, so there was the masquerader, the contortionist, the what
was the people please?

Speaker 2 (55:06):
The illusionist in the distance is kind of our perfectionist, I.

Speaker 1 (55:09):
Would wait, the illusionist was what.

Speaker 2 (55:11):
The sort of the perfectionist?

Speaker 1 (55:13):
I would say, I'm probably a mix between that and
a people pleaser, although becoming less of a people pleaser
as I get older, nice like we just talked about.
But I'm gonna I want to take it and find out.
I love personality tests. Yeah, okay, Well, listeners, I will
link all of that in the show notes and so
it'll be easy for you to buy her book, connect

(55:35):
with her on Instagram, take your quizzes, and do all
the things. Mary, Thank you so much for being on
the podcast today. I had a great time speaking.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
With you same. Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
Yeah, and listeners, I will be back next week for
a pop culture podcast with Melody Wise Men. So tune
in next week to hear from Melody. I'll talk to
you soon. Bye. Thanks for listening to Heart and Soul.
If this episode and encourage you in any way, please
leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get

(56:04):
your podcasts. Talk to you next week.