Elise Loehnen - On Our Best Behaviour - The Innovation Show

Episode Transcript
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Why do women equateself-denial with being good?
We congratulate ourselves when we resistthe donut in the office break room.
We celebrate our restraint when we

(00:45):
Hold back from sending an email in anger.
We put others' needs ahead of our own.
And believe this makes us exemplary.
Our guest today explains that theseimpulses often lauded as distinctly
feminine instincts are actually ingrainedin us by culture , lust, gluttony.
Greed, sloth, wrath, envy,pride, and maybe sadness too.

(01:10):
They're the so-called seven deadly sins.
Eight, if you count sadness.
And they've been used by the patriarchyto control women throughout history.
For instance, a fear of gluttony drivesus to ignore our appetites, and an
aversion to greed prevents us fromnegotiating a better salary at work.
It might sound familiarto a lot of our audience.

(01:31):
So what would happen if you, ifwe, stopped trying to be good.
That's the question she asks.
And it's a pleasure to welcome theauthor of the Instant New York Times
bestseller on our Best Behaviour.
Elise London, welcome to the show.
Thank you.
Excited to be here.
Elise has a magnificent podcast as wellthat I'll link to in the show notes.

(01:55):
But let's start with a momentthat I am so sure many of our
audience have experienced.
It was a panic attack for you becauseit seems that this is a common problem
with many people trying to live up tosome ideal that's usually not theirs.
Yeah.
I opened the book with an eventthat's unfortunately become quite

(02:17):
common, less common maybe in thelast few years of breathlessness.
I am a chronic hyperventilate.
A lot of people have what I have anddon't actually know that it's, that
it has a name, but it's this feelingthat you just can't take a deep breath.
And it's not the panic of breathinginto a paper bag that we see on tv.

(02:40):
It is, it comes.
With a tremendous amount of fatigueand you're yawning and you just
feel like you're solely suffocatingand dying it can go on for months.
So, and it's, it's really no way to live.
And I had been with my therapist,this is probably in 2019, 2020, and I

(03:03):
was having one of these events and Iwas trying to sort of put an image to
the perception, the way that I felt.
And at this point in my life, Iwas a seasoned media executive.
At the top of my career, Ihad just filmed a TV show.

(03:26):
I was married and happily married,and I'm still happily married.
And I have two wonderful kids.
And in so many ways, like you would lookat my life and say, that's a woman who's.
it, and yet I just felt like I wasdying drowning, literally asphyxiating.

(03:48):
I think like probably many people wholistened to you, I had been running my
life, I was approaching my 40th yearand I had been running my life as though
there was some sort of there, there that,a finish line that I would reach and
cross where I would say I'm good enough.
done well enough.

(04:09):
I'm a good daughter, I'm a good mother,I'm a good coworker, I'm a good boss.
And and, and this pressure that Ifeel this slow asphyxiation will
go, I'll be safe, I'll be secure.
I'll, I'll be in the, the promisedland and in the car, you know,
at the, the height of when I wassupposed to be feeling I'd done it.

(04:35):
I, I felt I felt.
Terrible.
And it was sort of this like anaha in some ways of like, this
is not a sustain, this is not asustainable charade, like kabuki
theater program that I'm running here.
But it was also a deeper reckoning withmyself both what is this chasing me?

(04:58):
Like what is this that istelling me that I'll, I'll, I'm
not good enough, I'm not kind.
I haven't done it in some way.
What is this?
And so that was sort of the beginningof like, I've, I'm being pushed
up against a wall by my soul hereand I've got to I've gotta learn.

(05:20):
I've gotta stop running and turnand understand what's driving me
how does this end
miserably?
it's, it's so important.
It is, it's so important because Idon't think, , I'm sure you told this

(05:41):
story from your perspective and thenwere overwhelmed with how many people
res it resonated with so many people.
And I think it's one ofthese things that is global.
It's everywhere.
It's ingrained in our culture, whichis, which is really what I want to
share, is that this is passed on.
And until we actually challenge itand speak about it and put it on the

(06:02):
table and actually challenge the ideathat it's been culturally ingrained
in us, it's not gonna get any better.
And I just wanted to share.
To set you up.
'cause I'd love you to tell usupfront why you did this and what
your mission is with this work.
And then we'll dive into, inparticular, the history of how
we got to where we are today.

(06:22):
But there was this key line I pulledfrom the introduction you wrote, that
we are, we all struggle to be knownto express the truest, most tender
parts of ourselves, to feel safeenough to bring our gifts to bear.
We wonder, who am I?
What do I want and need?
How do I find my purpose and serve?
Our greatest imperatives are tobelong, to love and to be loved in

(06:45):
return, yet life gets in the way.
I thought that was such a powerfulparagraph that I just pulled
and it might set us up then totalk about what your mission is.
Yeah.
No, thank you.
Yeah, I think that isthe imperative, right?
And yet it's very rare to meetanyone in our culture who is

(07:06):
like, who isn't being run by fear.
And And part of this is biological, right?
We're constructed.
It's, it's just sort of hardwired into us.
This is how we surviveand how we have survived.
And you could think about our forebearersand say, well, the ones who really
learned the game are the ones whowere alive to pass on their genes.

(07:29):
Sure.
But.
The reality that sort of, thatfear, even though we're not being
hunted by, you know, 300 footeagles anymore, is still in us.
I think depending on where youexist in the power structure of
the world, it's more pronounced foror it shows up in different ways.

(07:53):
And For women, you know, that'sthe core thesis of, of, on our
best Behaviour, is that women areconditioned and programmed for goodness.
And I put that in quotation marks toperform our goodness in the world men
are conditioned and program for power,and to perform that power in the world.

(08:16):
And both are incredibly insidious.
Men I think are
a, a, it's a devastatingmandate, I think for men.
And we, and we can talkabout sadness at some point.
But the way that this shows up for, forwomen is that, uh, goodness, which is,

(08:38):
I'm not talking about sort of the internalgoodness that belongs to all of us.
That's sort of our birthrightand, and who we are.
Really believe in the goodness of people.
There's a lot of shadow.
We can talk about that too, butI, I believe we're all wholly.
Good.
But I'm talking about sort ofthe externally mediated and
adjudicated idea of goodness.

(09:00):
A good, a good woman
never tired.
A good woman sort of serves her family andtheir needs tirelessly and eKyndrylessly.
She's definitely not gonna sort ofsit on the couch and you know, grind
in there and watch four hours of tv.

(09:20):
A good woman is, doesn'treally have any wants.
She subjugates what she wantsto other people's needs.
That's, that's what it, what it takes.
A good woman needs no praiseor affirmation or attention.
She's happy to flow the praise toother people and or the credit.
She doesn't wanna be seen or celebrated.

(09:42):
That's un unbecoming.
A good woman doesn't talk about money.
Money's not really for her.
It's it's base, it's unspiritual pluslike, if she gets more, someone gets less
and there's already too much inequity.
A good woman is small and constrained andincredibly disciplined about her body.

(10:04):
It's like it's gonna conform.
She's gonna spend a lot of energy makingsure that she has a good body and that
she's not tax on the healthcare systemor unruly or out of control, right?
And a good woman is sexy, but not sexual.
A good woman is desirablebut not desiring.

(10:28):
She's an object.
She is not a subject.
And a good woman is nevermad about any of this.
She might get upset on behalf of otherpeople, but never on behalf of herself.
That is, that's, that is thepicture of what a good woman is.
I think recognize it.
code does not apply to men, right?

(10:51):
And this is why, this is whywomen are so susceptible to
reputational harm in our culture.
You just have to say, someone's bad, abad mother, a toxic boss, a bad coworker.
There doesn't even have to besort of anything that actually
happens that's concrete.
It's a vibe, right?
A vibe of badness, and that woman is done.
She'll often just disappearherself, but often other women

(11:13):
take her down, et cetera.
Whereas a man can do anythinganything bad on the record, bad,
reprehensible, horrible, harmful.
It's cool.
We like, as long as we perceive themas powerful, we will venerate them.
And a man who we perceive as weak,feminine, dependent in any way, which

(11:37):
is sort of, these are core, basicqualities that man is in trouble.
And it's, you know, it's a,that's a terrible legacy.
We look at these wounded boys whobecome wounding men in our culture, and
it is, it is the patriarchy's fault.
Right.

(11:58):
So anyway, so I don't evenremember what you asked me.
I just like decided to givehim mini Ted talk, but,
um
perfect.
Okay.
It's perfect.
I, I, so
cultural story.
It's a cultural story.
It's not, it does notcome from inside of us.
It is an external, other orientedway to behave in the world..

(12:19):
why I find it so interesting is.
We talk a lot about strategyon the show, and you talk about
how we got to strategy today.
So strategy, the way it was donein the past is no longer fit for
the way the world works today.
And I see this as exactly the sametemplate in that we got to this point
and the people who made it up made upthe culture and the way things are done,

(12:43):
did it for a time that no longer exists.
And actually we're stuck with thatlegacy and we're stuck with that legacy
so much that it's, it's in our genes.
It's epigenetically passed on andyou wrote that the late visionary
anthropologist, Ashley Montaguetalks about humans as having
first nature and second nature.
Our first nature is who we are atour root, our most whole, our unique

(13:06):
genetic design and natural instincts,but it's our second nature, this
cultural programming that actuallyis at fault for where we are today.
And I'd love you to take us on awhistle stop tour of how we got there.
How we got there.
Yeah.
Ashley Montague, he was amazing.
And he wrote, I think the book was calledThe Natural Superiority of Women, and it's

(13:28):
about, you know, like women outlive men.
This is in the fifties.
So, and it was just like, guys this,this we're, we're constructed on a,
our whole culture is constructed ona myth of sort of the fragility of
femininity and it's not accurate.
So, and we know this more and more,but this again, this is how culture

(13:50):
is created and then passed down to usand we, we think about something like
patriarchy and we say, well, this is howit's always been and how it always is.
And, and women are these sortof feeble cave dwellers who were
nursing babies while men wereout there being valiant hunters.
And like, this is just fact.
And as scientists continue to dotheir work is that that's not fact.

(14:16):
Actually we were way more affiliative,which makes complete sense, right?
You're trying to survive able bodiedadults are out there gathering calories.
Grandparents are taking careof children and foraging.
Right?
It makes complete sense.
But yet this is the storythat we get, man, the hunter.

(14:37):
There was a symposium,I think in the 1960s.
Where scientists presented of this idea.
And it just, it fit the culture at themoment, which was right out of the 1950s.
And and then it stuck and wehave just imbibed it as nature,
but it's really culture.

(14:57):
And as they've gone back into theevidence, it's like, I'm gonna slightly
butcher these, these statistics, butit's like in, 80% of, or six 80% of
tribes, like women were hunters as well.
We often, we didn't throw like whenthey look at wear, wear patterns and
bones, the men were, were throwingspears and the women were using like

(15:22):
knives rods, it's rocks, et cetera.
But we were out there as well.
We have more endurance actually than men.
Uh, you see this in long distance running.
And I just read about thiswoman who I think she.
She Irish, she might be Irish, butshe won this, like one of those mega

(15:47):
mega marathons, like the 260 mile race.
And the next person waslike 14 hours behind her.
She was already home and she didit while breastfeeding her baby.
So women, but, but when you look at longdistance swimming, long distance running,
women actually win like vast majority ofthose races, which we don't know, right?

(16:09):
Like we, this never breaks throughto mainstream, consciousness.
But, but yeah.
So back in the day.
We were just doing life.
And when they look at like the remainsat Cattle Hayek which is in Anato,
modern day Turkey this is a Paleolithicsite and this is more recent evidence.

(16:31):
Men and women are the same size.
They have the same amount ofsoot in their lungs, the same
wear patterns on their bones.
So meaning like women weren'tin the kitchen and men were not.
And when you talk about things likeepigenetics and you think about
even the size difference betweenmen, men and women, and obviously
we're, we're biologically differentof course, and we have different
functions, but even this idea thatwomen are smaller has potentially just

(16:58):
been bred into us over time, right?
As a cultural ideal or desire and notnecessarily a biological inevitability.
So it's really interesting when youstart like thinking about, oh wait.
if that's not whathappened, what happened?
So that's, that's the one big myth ofthis, sort of like the domain of the

(17:19):
feminine and the domain of the masculineand never the two shall meet, which has
definitely lodged in our modern psyches.
It's like such an infection.
And again, I think it's, I think womenprimarily because of economic and
desire, of course, have been workingout of the home for a long time.
Like the seventies here in the UnitedStates, a single income, middle class

(17:44):
existence was no longer a reality.
So women have been out there in the worldbalancing between sort of their masculine
and feminine energies for a long time.
I think for men, story is even moreinsidious, that somehow they're betraying
their, you see it all the time thatthey're betraying their ancestors by
like being less of a man not, you know,keeping their wife at home by the hearth.

(18:10):
But there's enslaved to a myth.
It's not who we are.
that's the ancient history.
And then is it helpfulif I talk about where the
sins came
Yeah.
No.
Well, well, as, as you're saying this, I,I was thinking about even my upbringing
and do you remember like, those movies?
And you'd see these movies and it'dbe like, prehistoric man, and it was

(18:32):
always like the guy hunting and stuff,and we didn't even hunt like that
And, you know, the, the woman in thosemovies, like I remember as a kid was
dressed in like sexually clad, you know
bear skin or something.
And it just, it it, it gets intoyour mind, it gets into your culture.
And you go right back to the origin ofall this and you say, we all know the

(18:54):
story of Curious even and the apple,the serpent and the tree of knowledge.
Many of us can recite the 10 Commandmentsand some of us, the 600 plus laws
or mitzvahs of the Old Testament.
But there are more subtle scripts aboutbad Behaviour that have taken firm
root in our culture, continuing tocircums scribe our lives when it comes

(19:15):
to a mythology that has capped women.
From the truth of who we are, thereis no better map than the set of vices
that are considered the gateway toimmortality, the seven deadly sins.
This is a key understanding, andas you say, it actually comes
from, it wasn't even the Bible.
It comes from the eighth
Isn't
thoughts.
And what's so important about thisis that, you know, I was raised, I'm

(19:41):
from Montana, which is a rural state.
And my father's Jewish.
My mom calls herselfa recovering Catholic.
I was raised, they're veryprogressive and, and feminist.
And I was raised outside of any of thisculture, and yet these sins are in me.
I didn't, you know, I wasn't.

(20:02):
They weren't deliveredto me in Sunday school.
I just took them as sort of like part andparcel and synonymous with, with religion
and then thought I was immune becauseI didn't subscribe to those beliefs.
But they're so insidious and that listof like the qualities of a good woman
that maps to these seven deadly sins.
So when I started, when I realized that,when I was like, oh, sins, like this is

(20:26):
it, this is this punch card of goodnessfor, and I am, these are in my mind that
I, I'm trying to fulfill these ideals.
I went to look for them in theBible and they're not in there.
So which is wild and blows people'sminds, which is hilarious to me.

(20:48):
But no, they do not showup in the Bible as a set.
Ever.
And their history isactually quite fascinating.
They emerged out of the, the Egyptiandesert in the fourth century acetic Monk
named IUs Pontus, who is also credited asone of the early fathers of the Enneagram.

(21:12):
And he conceived of them as these eight.
thoughts, but Daemon having avery different meaning there.
The meaning being sort of distraction.
These are, these could keep you out ofprayer, out of your relationship with God.
That's how they were conceived.
And so he wrote down this littlechat book, and he named these eight

(21:32):
thoughts, including sadness, whichI include in the book which was
really a type of homesickness anda longing for people that you love.
and so that was the context for them.
And then they made theirway around the Bible.
They were passed from desert father todesert father, and they had these little
bits of scripture that you could use.

(21:53):
And they had different,slightly different meanings.
Like sloth wasn't about Netflixand chill, it was about apathy
and not engaging with life.
Ex, for example.
So pride wasn't about expressingyour gifts in the world, it was about
thinking that you didn't need Godor that you were bigger than God.

(22:15):
And now it has sort of likea very different modern
hold on our consciousness.
So this chatbook made its way around,and then in five 90 ad Pope Gregory,
the first was giving a homily.
this is a very famous homily for women,whether they know this history or not.

(22:38):
But Mary Magdalene is theoreticallyone of the most prominent women
in the New Testament, eventhough she's barely in there.
But there's an incrediblegnostic the Gospel of Mary, which
is very, very beautiful and.
Now there's, you know, Dan Brownand everyone's like, wait, Mary
Magdalene was kind of major, buthas been largely sort of erased.

(23:00):
Well in the New Testament andpeople who care about this.
I do.
I think it's important.
Mary Magdalene in the New Testament is theone to whom Jesus resurrects in the tomb.
She is there to get his first teaching.
that's what's in the Gospel ofMary, which was destroyed and
then recovered in recent history.
But really it kind of makesher the first apostle, right?

(23:22):
Not Peter, we,, we can't stand for that.
So in the New Testament, that's inthe New Testament, and then also
this reference to her as the onefrom whom Jesus cast seven demons.
Again, different meaning.
And he was exorcising people all the time.
And some theologians think thathe was balancing her chakras.

(23:44):
And I like that version of it.
in this homily.
Pope Gregory, the first in 590says, Mary Magdalene is the, had
the carrier of these seven demons.
These are the seven cardinal vices.
She's the carrier of these vicesand oh yeah, she's a prostitute.
She's a penitent prostitute.

(24:06):
He conflates her with the woman whoanoints Jesus's feet with her hair and he
turns both of them into the same personand then defines her as a prostitute.
That's where this all happens.
Then he also lifts the ban on iconography,which is one of the 10 commandments.
And so you start to see this, allthis religious art and people sure

(24:26):
love to paint mary as a penitentprostitute in red clutching at Jesus
Christ as he ascends, so she wore thatreputation, one of the most prominent,
the virgin mother and the whore.
She wore that reputationfor until I think 1980.
They were like, oh, wekind of messed that up.

(24:48):
She wasn't actually a prostitute.
And then in 2016, Pope Francis made herthe apostle to the apostles, but we know
about like reputational harm in women.
that's where it started.
Mary Magdalene, carrierof the seven Deadly Sins.
That whore
wild.
Right?
It's wild.
I Can't remember who said this, but itwas like, you are who Google says you are.

(25:10):
And it's like a modern day version,but like when you look at even the
state of misinformation today andyou go that, , that's a product of.
Too many outlets, too many, youknow, the internet, social media and
misinformation can spread like wildfire.
But when you think about, well, theoriginal information could be highly

(25:33):
edited and highly controlled, which itwas, and I love what you say, the Bible
is the product of centuries long game, acenturies long game of telephone edited
by men according to their preferences, andalso their control preferences and what
suited the narrative and their status, andlots and lots of information from that.

(25:54):
And for people who are religious, thisis not an attack on the Bible at all.
I don't want anybody to think that.
If you just get above that and go, thiswas a control of information and the
information has been passed on and isin our culture, it's in there and it's
very, very difficult to rewire that.
Yeah.

(26:14):
I think for people, and I have comein my later life to love Jesus.
I love, I'm unaffiliated, butI am a deeply spiritual person.
And it's important to remember.
Jesus didn't write, spoke, he, hiswords were written down a hundred years.

(26:35):
They think it's like 90 yearsafter he died is the first, the
first scripture was written down.
This isn't like, and thenthere's a great theologian.
He's at Princeton Bar Iman.
He wrote, he writes books likeMisquoting Jesus and whatnot, fascinating
books, but essentially about likethis belief and the word of God.

(26:57):
And he's like friends.
He used to believe thatin his, in his upbringing.
He was like, there are moremistakes in the New Testament
than actual words because thisis passed on and hand translated.
And people are like, I like, youknow, there's some famous, famous
mistranslations, for example, evenwith Mother Mary, I can't remember the
original word, but it's like buehle.

(27:18):
And then it was trans, it'smeans young, young girl, but
it was translated as virgin.
There's like sin and EU and like pooreu, I can't remember the exact words,
but one is sin and one sexual sin thatwas an in that was introduced into the
Bible in a mistranslation, for example.
So I, also am a person of faith and,but I find like going and actually

(27:44):
interrogating as close to theoriginal intent as possible is far
more interesting and helpful and,
and, important.
It's so, so important to question things.
And you know, this is one of thethings I loved about the book is the,
the que the need for questioning.
And if anybody doubts that, like Ialways just go look at Netflix, look

(28:07):
at a foreign language episode ofsomething on Netflix, and look at the
English translations and be sure that.
Are miles off what theperson's actually saying.
I speak fluent French and I seethis all the time, and I, go, I'll
often be that, I'll be that guy whogoes, that's not what they said.
yeah.
but you go, well, if that's in themodern day with the technology and
the understanding we have when you'replaying this game of telephone, you're,

(28:31):
you're bound to have gotten it wrong.
Yes.
I wanted to bring it back to a really,really, I thought, so important
thing we spoke, Elise and I spokeoff air and we're talking about
epigenetics and how fear can be passedon from generation to generation.
And I thought of that when I read aboutwhat you wrote about the witch trials,
which is it's, I'm so saddened evenreading it and this, you can see if you

(28:57):
read, I'll just read this little paragraphto set you up and go, well, how does this
infiltrate culture today,and particularly women.
So under extreme torture,women betrayed each other.
Friends turned on friends daughters turnedon their mothers and they came to learn
that glancing contact can be dangerous.

(29:17):
It's best to keep to your own.
And Elise says, I have to wonder ifthe emotional sediment of this is one
of the reasons women today can be waryof each other and are often willing
to watch each other get cut down.
And this trauma is in our DNA.
I suspect this fear is one ofthe reasons we self restrict.

(29:38):
We continue to to hold the line, enforceour own smallness and struggle with
the idea that we'll be called out putback in our rightful place or blamed.
And that's not.
That's not just thrown out there, thatwe have absolute evidence for this.
If you're from an area that hadexperienced disease in the past, Robert
Sapolsky told us this in the show,you'll be more xenophobic because you're

(30:02):
not open to people coming in becausethey could be bearers of disease.
So absolutely this can be passedon from generation and generation.
And then culturally, it's emphasizedthat this is the way to be.
Yeah, no, and I think about sort of whereyou live and different parts of Europe.
You know, we talk about the Salem witchhunts and 25 people died, but in Europe,

(30:26):
100,000, they still don't quite know.
There were, you know, you'll hearpeople say a million that's too
high, but a hundred thousand mostlywomen, mostly older women were
murdered and hunted and burned.
that is wild.
These witch grazes.
And we see this, this sort ofscapegoating mob contagion.

(30:47):
We were talking about thework of Rene Gerard earlier.
This, this scapegoat mechanism hasexisted in our, in, in our DNA forever.
But this was such a very specificpointed attack against women
and somewhat exceptional women.
You know, often it was widows whowere at, you know wise women healers.

(31:09):
And there were sometimes sort ofcapitalistic concerns for this.
Like they wanted to essentiallytake the property of these women.
Men started to take on,wanted to be the healers.
The priest wanted to be the healers.
So some of these women were threats tosort of patriarchal power, This idea,
like the word gossip, for example.

(31:30):
the etymology is, is godparent, right?
So it was this, again, going to thisidea that we used to live communally,
pass information share with each otherquite openly as a means to survive
and build community and belonging.
And that's how we, that's howwe got through life, right?
That's how we are wiredto get through life.

(31:51):
You think about the loneliness epidemicand the lack of connection that
we're, we're, we're, it's killing usright now, even though we have all
the creature comforts we could want.
Gossip became sort of an indicator.
Women talking was an indicator of like.
Witch witches.

(32:12):
And so, yeah, I think we becameincredibly nervous of each other,
both that like your reputationcould imperil me and my loved ones.
And I, I have to imagine that this ispart of the reason that there's so much
women on women hate and how quicklywe are the ones to sort of like, get

(32:34):
the stakes and go after each other.
And I write about this at great lengthin the chapter on envy, which is
always the, the chapter that womenreally, really wanna talk to me about.
But I think, and, and I, I justwanna say it's so fun to talk to
you because I have talked to so fewmen about this book in part because.

(32:55):
I don't wanna believe that.
It's not that men arenot interested in women.
I think that they are.
And this book, I think is men say tome is like there, that it describes
the psychology of women in a way thatthey didn't previously understand why
their partner might be like, the houseneeds to be this way or whatever.
These, these, theseBehaviours that we insist on.

(33:15):
I gotta be the perfect mother.
Like, they just didn'tunderstand where that came from.
I just wanna say that, but also I thinkthat men are, have been scared of my book.
Because they think it's a bookthat's sort of a blaming men.
If men were not the problem, if we had amatriarchy everything would be different.

(33:36):
And yes, I wanna see equity in culture.
I wanna see an affiliativebalanced government with equal
participation from women.
I don't think that we actually, whenwe say like, we want a matriarchy, I
don't think anyone really wants that.
I don't want a dominance based,oppressive structure with women
at the top and men at the bottom.
Like, same thing, different day.
Right.

(33:56):
And this book too is like I had todo a really honest accounting of
like, when I blame and shame and I'msort of like, men are the problem.
That is not accurate.
There are.
Of course very, a, a great numberof highly patriarchal, problematic,

(34:16):
dangerous and damaging men.
There are also a lot of verypatriarchal damaging women.
what I want with this book is thisan act of responsibility of we are
participating in this culture andcreating it and promoting it, and

(34:37):
consistently not only taking it on forourselves, but pushing it on each other.
We're not only just modelingit for our daughters and our
nieces and our friends' kids.
We are enforcing it.
We are policing ourselves, andwe are policing other women.
And if we can become consciousto what we're doing, I think that

(34:58):
would be greater progress thantrying to convince Donald Trump.
to be such an asshole.
Sorry.
Not to bring not to invoke politics, butlike, uh, that I think it's much easier
to control yourself than other people's.
Another way of putting it.

(35:19):
Speaking of politics, I didn't wantto go there either, but like when you
look at the mechanic of a witch trial,you actually see, well, that's what
an authoritarian state is as well.
When you punish The truth speakers,or even just the shoot, the messenger.
It's the same thing.
We won't go there.
We'll come back to the book though.
'cause we, we, you mentioned envy.

(35:39):
We'll get to envy.
What, what if we did a, a high level ofeach of the sins or the the deadly sins.
And we will get to sadness as well.
We'll cover that.
We'll give a it.
It'll be really difficult forme, Elise, to keep it short by
the way, because I have so manynotes in front of me here as well.
But slots was really important and slots,slots came to mind in many ways that.

(36:04):
I, I do try and be an empathetichusband or partner where I, I try
to see the other side be instead ofkind of going, why is she that way?
Or Why are we so different?
Or et cetera.
And one of the ways I I became moreempathetic, I hope than, than before
was during COVID, because duringthe pandemic you saw a side of

(36:25):
your partner that you wouldn't haveother seen when she started becoming
extra caring of her elderly parents.
And you see it with thatsandwich generation that.
What I saw most was the emotionalweight that she carried to think
of, oh, I hope my brothers are okay.
I hope my parents are okay.

(36:46):
And, and I was like going, youcan be damn sure your brothers
aren't thinking the same thing.
No.
They're not thinking, they're noteven thinking about this at all.
And this weight is incredibly heavyand it, it adds to the already
very busy lives that you have.
And you talk about this in the slothchapter, the busyness that controls
women and has them on the hamster wheel.

(37:08):
And it's not just women aswell, but it does seem to be a
heavier weight on women than men.
Yes.
And some of that is self-created.
And, or, you know, we're sufferingunder the burden of, again,
being a good daughter, right?
Like, that's such a cultural idea.
I mean, I, I promote thatwhen I, I have two boys.

(37:29):
I'm like, who's gonna take care of me?
Right.
There's this, just this idea of like,of course, because women are, are the
caring and nurturing ones, they holdthat side of what it is to be a human.
And, and so much of that is bs, right?
Men are caring and nurturing as well.
We are just don't, we're alwayschiding women to be more like men.

(37:51):
Meanwhile, it's like men need to be morelike women and let their feminine come up.
That's also like one of the onlyways we'll ever achieve equity,
because women are exceptional andwe're overburdened by all of these
things that you just mentioned.
And then some of it is that you laborunder these external standards of being

(38:12):
a good mother and a good partner and,what that needs to look like which
is so onerous, but also self-created.
And, for my husband, for example.
So for context, we both work full time.
I'm the primary breadwinner.
But we are a two income family andhe's a great dad and very engaged.

(38:34):
But of course I do.
70% of it.
He might dispute that, but it's true.
I'm the one thinking about everyone'sdoctor's appointments, including his
and know, he just, he's at home visitpicking one of my kids up from camp.
He's back with his mother and he's like,oh, my mom is asking who should be the

(38:55):
power of attorney, but probably not me.
Right.
I'm like, obviously not you,it's your sister or it's
me, you know, but, and we're
I'm sure, I'm sure you booked thesummer camp, by the way, right?
Oh, yes.
And did all the packing.
And then I got there and then they werelike, he needs to pass a swim test.
This is a camp my husband went to.
And he's like, like, you didn't tellme that he needs to pass a swim test.

(39:20):
And he failed his swim test.
And Rob was like, well, Itold him like a few days ago.
I was like, that's not helpful becauseanyway, I mean, I could go on and
on and, and this is what's really.
Important is that I am keeping this storygoing in our family by by staking a lot

(39:46):
of my identity and my value on being thatsuper mom who takes care of everything.
And I had this revelation, this isn'tin the book, but it happened shortly
as the book was at the printers.
I fell off a horse a couple years ago andbroke my neck and I was completely fine.
Which is a miracle I didn't evenknow I had broken my neck for a week.

(40:08):
'cause I'm a doctor's kid and Iwas like, I'm not, I'm not nauseous
and my hands aren't tingling.
And you know, I'm in a lot of pain.
But another, a story for another day.
when I finally.
Went to the doctor andthey made me get a, i i i.
They were like, you were unconscious.
Like you could have a brainbleed like you're an idiot.

(40:30):
I was like, well, I'm nottaking I'm not taking Advil.
You know?
I was like, I'm not, whatever.
It's insane.
But anyway, I had a broken neck and Ihad to wear a neck brace for, for six
weeks and I wasn't allowed to drive.
I wasn't allowed to lift anything up.
So all the things you would expectwhen you have broken your neck, I

(40:51):
had to sit on the couch and I couldstill type and I could still read.
But it was really interesting tobe present with myself and to be
incapacitated and to not be able tounpack, to not be able to do laundry,
to not be able to make dinner, to notbe able to drive my kids to school.
And my husband took care of it.

(41:11):
And, but I was like, I was souncomfortable not running the show, not
having control, not proving my virtuenot, not cook, not feeding my kids
these like balanced, nutritious meals.
And I, it was really fascinatingto, to realize like none

(41:32):
of this is coming from him.
There's no expectation frommy husband that our house be
spotless and our fridge be full.
This is all me and I am laboringto meet some external standard
that I have established.
I and wow, look what happenswhen I can't do things.

(41:54):
He does them and without even asking,he doesn't do them as fast as I do,
but he unpacked and did the laundry.
And so I just started to like, recognizeif I slow myself down, if I don't insist
on responding to every school emailwithin four minutes, I'm not gonna
maybe be the default parent anymore.

(42:16):
And they'll call him when someone needsto be picked up because they're sick,
and he'll have the logins, he'll have theinformation to go in and order hot lunch.
And I am creating a pattern that Iam perpetuating and keeping running
because it shores up my identity.

(42:36):
And then when I slow myself downand I say, what's happening?
Why am I so anxious aboutnot having control here?
What am I so scared of happening?
What I realized I was reallyscared of happening is that I be?
Why would anyone keep me around?
What value do I have if I'm not makingeveryone's life So nice and easy?

(43:02):
is like very sad work, honestly, likepainful work to be like, oh, I've
staked my entire identity, all myrelationships on proving my utility to
other people so that they will love me.
And again, I don't think myhusband married me because he

(43:23):
thought I would make his life nice.
I think he married me because he loves me.
And yet I have been trying to sustainthis story about what it is to be a good
woman and worthy of belonging and love.
And it's hard work, honestly.
But that's, that's sortof what's happening here.

(43:47):
And I could be mad at him and blamehim until I realize like, I gotta
take accountability for myself.
This is me.
This is like what I have hung my ego.
And it's gotten really, really farin life and it has an incredibly
high cost, and I don't know if I'mwilling to pay that price anymore.

(44:10):
Amen.
Amen.
But as a husband, I, I, I know like mywife's high standards and I sometimes,
I think is, is it a little bit likedelegating and you're, you've got a new
person working for you and you're like,I know I'll do it better myself , and
you, but it's not even that you'll do abetter self, you'll just do it your way.
And until you let go ofthat, you can't grow.

(44:33):
Like, even as a company,you need more people.
That means that it's notgonna be done your way.
And, you know, I, I, I'mprobably like you, I work.
For myself.
And I like that.
And I like being in control of stuff.
If something drops a ball,a ball drops, it's my fault.
I, you know, I, I own it.
But having other people meansI have to manage those people.
And it's a little bit likethat in the home as well.

(44:56):
And if there's, if there's a willingnessto do the work, like that alone is
a, is a start to do the work, butyou're never gonna do it to your
standard 'cause it's you, you knowthat that's always what I think.
It's like, I'm, I'm never,because her standard's like
crazy high and I'm like, I'll, I,
will do a good job.
But like, to your point, Iwould rather have her and.

(45:19):
Watch something on Netflix.
Not like for four hours,but one something.
And actually be present in that moment.
Then have to be constantly doing thingsand I struggle by the way, myself,
Elise, I saw this in myself when youwere talking about, you're sitting
there watching something together andyou're like hitting off a few emails
or whatever, trying to do some work.

(45:41):
I'm sure half our audience do that samething instead of actually the need to
relax and the need to lean into sloth,if you want to even call it sloth.
yeah.
no, I mean, it's, it is multitask that,that I need to, I can't just sit and watch
this movie, like I'm gonna, I'm gonnawrite a board deck and execute a memo.

(46:06):
You know, it's just that instinct in me.
I'm gonna take care of allthese things on my to-do list.
I just realized, you know, as I was,I was like, I don't remember the
last time I watched a whole movie.
Like, it's never occurredto me to do that.
And, you know, I'm, I, I still do this.

(46:27):
I was just, I am going on vacationtomorrow and I am actually like, maybe I
need to leave my computer because I can't.
I can't control myself fromstill ranking my productivity.
Like, did I read enough books andda da and and then I, it's like I
berate myself on vacation and thenI also don't really take a vacation.

(46:50):
But it's so deep.
It's so deep.
And, you know, and I think part ofit and I write about this in the
book, I think that busyness keeps ourexistential anxiety at bay, right there.
Feels like there's very little thatwe can control in the world right now.
But I sure can control my planner and Ican even write down things that I did so

(47:14):
that I can cross 'em off and like, lookat me over here, master of my domain.
But I think part of the process ofreckoning with this is saying, I'm just,
I'm so uncomfortable, I'm so scared.
And what does it look liketo just be present with that?
To process what's, what's happeningin me and recognizing it's a feeling

(47:38):
it's not permanent, rather than justthen rushing to the next thing so
that I don't have to think about life.
There, there's a blaze Pascalwho, who wrote this line?
All man's worries come from his ininability to sit quietly in a room,
and it's about that like that, untilyou turn it off, all the noise,

(48:01):
all the busyness, you're nevergonna actually question anything.
And this leads us nicely to the next one.
You're never gonna actuallyrealize what do you truly want?
And I loved what you said about envy.
It's not a moral flaw.
It's a directional signalpointing to our unmet desires.
But women are taught to suppress ordeny envy to maintain social harmony

(48:23):
and avoid the jealous woman stereotype.
Yeah.
setup for envy.
Yes.
Okay.
So this is my favorite chapter.
In fact, when I was working on,on, I was like, I should just
write a whole book on envy.
And my brother was like, nobodywants to read a whole book on Envy.
My brother is a book editor.
And I was like, fine, I'll put it in here.

(48:43):
But this is the gatewayto all the other sins.
And what's funny about thischapter is that I sent it to my
editor and I was like, this is it.
Like, this is the sort oflike heartbeat of this book.
This needs to go first.
Sloth is actually the first chapter, butshe was like, I, I hate this chapter.
I don't have any envy.
I don't relate to this at all.

(49:04):
I don't, it was so triggering to her.
I was like, okay, sit with it.
I'm gonna keep moving through my process.
I will make this chapter last and Iwill spend the entire book proving to
you that envy, if we can resolve ourenvy and understand what it signifies.
A lot of this.

(49:25):
A lot of stuff would resolve in turn.
And 'cause she was like, Idon't, I don't have this.
I don't feel this, da da da.
And, and sure enough, as shelet it settle into her psyche,
she was like, holy shit, Elise.
It's all over the place.
I, you're right.
in a Triumph Envy is the second chapter,and it's the chapter that everyone

(49:48):
wants to talk to me about, women wannatalk to me about because it really is
primary source of the women on womenhate that we experience in our daily
lives and see all over our culture.
And it started with I don't know ifyou've had her on your show, but Lori
Gottlieb, who's a psychotherapist,who wrote this book called, "maybe

(50:09):
You Should Talk to Someone".
And she used to be a TV writer.
She's just a great, she really canlike, tell us, tell an incredible story.
And is about sort of the,the lives of several of her.
Patience.
But there's this small aside, it's noteven a theme of the book, but it's just

(50:29):
one of those sentences that stuck inmy head and I, I couldn't shake it.
And it was that she always tells herpatients to pay attention to their envy
because it shows them what they want.
And I had two reactions to it initially.
One was, gross envy.
I don't have any growth, which I'vedone enough therapeutic work in my

(50:53):
life to recognize like, oh, I need toactually look at this because my feeling
about this idea is so intense, right?
Like I, I, I had such a visceralreaction to the idea that I might be
envious of someone, and then the nextrevelation, which was, was really sad.
But it's also been confirmedin my conversations with women.

(51:15):
I didn't know what I wanted.
I could not tell you what I wanted,and this is back when I had, you
know, my high powered full-time job.
But if you said, all right,Elise, write down what you want.
Like many women, all of my wants would'vebeen triangulated through other people.
I really want my husband to find likea creative expression for his gifts.
I really want Max to like, toget a haKyndryle on his A DHD.

(51:38):
Like, we gotta get a haKyndryle.
You know, it was all triangulatedthrough other people, and I
could not identify what I wanted.
And so I sat with what Lori Gottliebhad written, and I was like,
okay, let me work with this energyand understand what's happening.
And this gets into sort of like classicJungian shadow projection work, but people

(52:00):
definitely understand this mechanism.
What I realized is
For women envy, which is unconscious.
We can't look at it.
We can't own it.
In my experience, men are much morecomfortable being like, I want that.
I'm envious of him.
Like, I'm gonna get that.
I use my, my irritation toward otherwomen as a guide for, oh, I, I have en

(52:28):
that's actually envy and I want that.
So when I would find myself judginganother woman in the culture and I would
say things like, I just don't like her.
She rubs me the wrong way.
I really don't thinkher book is that good.
How is that book a NewYork Times bestseller?
Oh, her voice is annoying.
Why do people like her podcast so much?

(52:49):
I don't think she was very good at it.
You know, when I would find myself sayingthese things about other women, either
to myself or out loud, it was like.
Oh my God.
That is your envy.
person has something that you wantor is doing something that you want,
and because you're envious and youare repressing and suppressing it
because it's so uncomfortable and yourefuse to own it or look at it, you

(53:12):
are projecting it onto the woman andmaking her bad and wanting her to go
away because she is making you feel bad.
And so now I understand, oh,I can interrupt that process.
The minute I have that feeling, I'mlike, what is she doing that I want?
What does she have that I want?

(53:32):
What is she getting away with?
What I, that I wouldnever allow myself to do?
Why am I drawn there?
There is information for me.
It has nothing to do with her.
And I'm gonna use thatto back into what I want.
So I'm criticizing this womanfor having a bestselling book.

(53:54):
I want to write a bestselling book.
I'm criticizing thiswoman for her podcast.
I want that level of success.
I want my own podcast,and so on and so forth.
And you're like, wow, soulknocking on this door, showing
me what I want for myself.
Thank you.
Like if you can reverse engineer it,suddenly as a woman you're like, I am

(54:16):
starting to understand what I want.
want to be seen andcelebrated for my gifts.
I wanna sit in a corner ofmy bedroom and write books.
Like that is what I want.
And that's an amazing exercise becausewhen I go and do work with women, I
don't know if you've had this experienceand it's like, what do you want?
Women just go blank.

(54:38):
Like they cannot it.
And I now have exercises forhelping people get there.
But we start literally in like onecorner of the map with one tiny want.
And by the end we have likecrossed the globe to much
deeper and more fertile terrain.
And what women want is glorious andwhat women want is all very different.

(55:03):
Envy's interesting too becausethis wanting it, it dovetails
it sort of Venn diagrams withpride and greed and scarcity.
Because what also happens for women
we, with pride, it's like whenwhat we do to public and visible
women is at a certain pointwe decide they've had enough.
We sort of celebrate them on theearly rise, and then we destroy them.

(55:26):
You just see this all over culture.
I mean, it's hard to think of a, a publicwoman who has not experienced this.
It's actually very difficult.
put them back in their place.
We, you know, tall poppy in a poppy field.
I know this hap we were talking aboutthis as like an Irish phenomenon too.
We cannot stand it.
It's like you have had enoughattention, enough admiration,

(55:48):
you are being knocked down.
And so, but pride is veryclosely related to envy because
that's part of the mechanism.
It's like, I don't wanna be so,so celebrated and so seen, because
then I'll inspire someone'senvy and they will destroy me.
So they're interlocking.
And then the other thing that happenswith envy is because of scarcity and

(56:13):
this feeling that women have, which isagain, informed and confirmed by our
culture, but certainly not our destiny.
There's only room for one.
There might be one woman on that board, ormaybe there's tokenism, maybe there's two.
There's one woman who hasa top high ranking podcast.

(56:34):
So because she has it, in order for meto have it, she needs to be destroyed
I need to replace her and displace her.
Versus men who are like.
Oh, I'm gonna do what he's doing and, andlike have the same success and there's
like plenty of room for all of you.
Men are, in my experience, are not atall ruled by scarcity in the same way.
Whereas women are like, if someonelistens to her podcast, they're

(56:56):
not gonna listen to my podcast,therefore she needs to be eliminated.
This is, again, not necessarilyconscious, but a lot of this
is what's happening women.
It's like we get very tight and veryconstrained by scarcity of like,
if she has it, I can't have it too.
Meanwhile, the reframe is becauseshe's doing it, she's showing me

(57:19):
what's possible and I can do it too.
I am as good as her.
I am as gifted as her.
I am gonna do, I'm gonna use her as aguide she's showing me what's possible
and I am gonna, I'm gonna join her.
I love that reframing and itwas something that I really
wanted to emphasize with that.
Okay.
Envy is not, it doesn'teven feel good to have envy.

(57:43):
Schadenfreude sometimes feels goodAnd maybe we'll touch on that as well.
There's a quote I pulled, Idunno if you've heard this.
It was Carol Dweck, theStanford professor in mindset.
She said, your failures and misfortunesdon't threaten other people.
It's your assets and your successesthat are problems for people who derive
their self-esteem from being superior.

(58:04):
I thought that was just,
one.
isn't it good?
Oh my God, it's, , and particularly,and this is why I mentioned René
Girard and Luke Burgess to youearlier on, particularly if it's in
your area or your field, or as yousaid, and by the way, I see this
with guys all the time, same thing.
If it's something they want to do,but maybe they haven't just got off

(58:26):
their ass and did anything aboutit, but somebody else has done
it, they'll be extremely critical.
Or as you say, they'll kind oftear that person down in some way.
But really what I, what I loved aboutthis was that you can be the person who

(58:46):
gives little fragments, little, almostlike breadcrumbs to go, look, this part
is possible, and I'd love you to sharethat because I really love that concept.
Yeah.
This is part of there's a womannamed Lacy Phillips who actually like
pairs neuroscience and manifestation.
She's like big in big in Los Angeles.
Her program is called To BeMagnetic, and she has this

(59:07):
beautiful term, which is expanders.
And its this idea of like, take thesepeople who are doing what you want
or have what you want, and you putthem on your mood board in your brain
or physically, however you wanna.
Think about it, and you study them andyou say, how did, how did they do that?
Where did they come from?
What degrees do they have?

(59:28):
What prior workexperience, whatever it is.
And you use them as a map what's possiblein a way to sort of refine and get better.
And, and what's also important isthis idea of fragment expanders,
which is that someone might be holdingone part of your destiny or what you
want or what you're driving toward.
You don't have to say,I wanna be Jeff Bezos.

(59:50):
Like I, that's, he doesn't needto be your expander, but there
might be one part of what he's donethat is a fragment of your goal.
And, and so it's mining, like lookingand just, I'd say paying attention to
yourself and where you get activated.
Richard Schwartz is thisincredible therapist.

(01:00:11):
He, he developed this system calledInternal Family Systems, which is this
very deep, beautiful, psychological work.
These people tor-mentors, which I love.
So like, who are your tor-mentors?
Those people are, are teachingyou something even as they're
activating you and a braiding you,you know, like sand on a pearl.

(01:00:35):
But they're somethingthat they have for you.
so I think the more you can createthis mental map of I want that and
I want that, and I want that, andlike, how do I bridge this together?
And that's I think what we'retrying to do as, as potent
creators in the world, right?
Like, we're not trying to mimiceach other wholesale, we're trying

(01:00:57):
to sort of bring our gifts tobear, but we need some plot points.
We need some ways to even groundourselves in, what's possible.
Because It's all feedback and youknow, is the tormentors the like
the Carl Jung thing, like what yousee in others that you don't like
is what you're trying to learn.
Okay.
I love it.
projection.

(01:01:17):
Like, it,
Yeah.
AA term, like you, youspot it, you got it.
Yeah.
can't, you can't, you can't betriggered by someone unless they're
sort of holding your shadow, really.
Like you can only recognize itbecause it's part of you, even though
it's so threatening to your ego.
Those parts of us that we've decidedusually from culture or family of origin

(01:01:42):
are, are, are threatening to our ego.
They go into our shadow and thenwe recognize them in other people.
Like when I wrote this book and mynext book is about Shadow and, and Carl
Young, the one I'm writing now, but Iwrote this book, even though I see a
Jungian therapist and I'm obsessed withCarl Jung, friend who's a Jungian had

(01:02:03):
to say to me, you know, this whole bookis about the cultural shadow of women.
And I was like, oh yeah, duh.
It's everything that women havebeen labeling bad and repressing and
suppressing and trying to get as faraway from our psyches as possible.
But as we know, like these arebasic human instincts and urges,
and they're part of all of us.
And there's a lot of freedom and spacethat comes from saying, yeah, I'm envious.

(01:02:27):
Oh yeah, I am lustful.
Oh yeah, I have hunger,appetite, and desire.
You know, this is whatit is to be embodied.
If you take that Jungianidea and the tormentor and
then add envy is information.
Yeah.
It really helps it triangulatesit and kind of goes, okay,
well there's information therefor me if I flip it around.

(01:02:47):
Yeah.
How are you doing on time, Elise?
I'm doing fine.
Okay.
I
Are you okay for another 10 15?
Yeah.
Can I, I
Okay.
and your work with men and envy, solike, is it, is it conscious for them?
Like, do they, can theyrecognize, do you find that it's
No,
But I mean, I've seen it myself andlike I would, I would hope that I'm, I

(01:03:09):
like that idea of the fragment expander.
I really hope to do that with theshow to go, look, this is possible.
There's a different way that's possible.
You don't have to follow the pathways thatlife tells you, you know, get a job and
stay in that job for X amount of time.
I don't think that, Ithink that world's over.
it is
but I think that sometimesI've, I've spotted where.

(01:03:33):
When I've, when I've reinvented myselfthat others will kinda go, oh, well
he doesn't have the right to do that.
I've been doing this for 30 years,or whatever, and you're kinda go, but
like you, you've done it in the sameway everybody else has done with it.
And one of the things I, I'd love to askyou about is, one of the things I love
about reading a book like this and thenmixing it with your own experiences.

(01:03:56):
I really found that it's only really whenyou accept who you are, flaws and all,
and do it your way that's uniquely you.
Do things start to happen in the world.
Yes.
Isn't that true?
And yet it's so scary, right?
This work is so threatening to whowe think we need to be in order to

(01:04:16):
be safe and, and all these thingsthat we've been talking about, right?
To, to have, get approval.
That's really how women are, are wired,is like, I need to be, I need approval.
I need to belong.
Like social ostracism exclusionis, is paramount to death, right?
Even as like I. Here in the US at least,more and more women are like, wait,

(01:04:38):
actually I don't have to get married.
Like, I don't, I canchoose something else.
Like I can choose to be excluded fromsort of like the primary, traditional
social and I'm fine, which is shocking.
On that though, as a man, I find womenwho have chosen that path a lot are,
are sometimes apologetic about it or,or will address it before you do or

(01:05:02):
might think you're thinking about it.
I think that that needs to changeas well, that they, they shouldn't
feel to be almost apologizing fornot following the beaten path.
Yeah.
No, I know.
Well, and I think that when you do,when you choose that or when that's
what you're living, you are yeah.
You feel probably, I'm surethat you've, there's parts of

(01:05:23):
you that feels like a Paraih.
I mean, I'm one of those people who.
I'm middle aged now, but when I, I spentmy twenties largely single and really
thought I would never get married becauseI lived in New York and I dated everyone.
You know, you'd go to a dinner and itwas like, oh, you wanna a date with him?
Did that like weird thing happen?
I mean, it was, that was my reality.

(01:05:46):
but the stories that I had aboutthat and that other people had
about that, like, what, there'smust be something wrong with her.
And like what's, like thediagnosing, I think that happens
to women less, far less to men.
It's like completely understandable topeople why men would choose to just, you

(01:06:07):
know, have a lot of partners and have fun.
Which has seemed like , a badge of honorfor a man, and, and, and even by women.
I think you know, that, thatthey would appreciate that.
Obviously they don't overdo itand they stopped doing it when
they chosen you, but it seemedalmost like a, a popularity thing.
The really interesting one I thought,I just thought I'd share with this, it

(01:06:27):
came to mind was with women, I learnedFrench and one of the things I thought
I'd never, this would never be useful,but we looked at the origin of a lot of
nursery rhymes and Little Red Riding Hood,and the whole idea of Little Red Riding
Hood is actually one of the stories.
They're very, very violent.
The original stories and the, the wholestory was be a good little girl and

(01:06:49):
stick to the path, the well worn path.
Don't wander off the path 'causeyou'll be eaten by a big bad
wolf or abused in some way.
That, that was kind of the, thenarrative that was driven and you,
you thought about it, how we, we toldthese stories to children at the time
of, of the day when they were mostsusceptible or most subjective to

(01:07:10):
open to information when they're inthis theta wave zone and you just go,
it's no wonder we perpetuate these
Oh my
into culture.
Yeah.
And I write a bit about fairytales.
I'm obsessed with fairytalesand old wives tales.
'cause so many of them were sort ofthe provenance of women and passed
down and, and there are lots of reallybeautiful ones, but the ones that like

(01:07:33):
the grims made famous and collectedand collated of course it's always the
men like commercializing the work ofwomen are very violent, very scary,
very dark, and often involve rape.
And also evil Stepmothers,witches, the evil older woman.

(01:07:57):
I think a lot of them, originallyit was the mom, but then they,
it turned into the stepmother.
But it's pretty, it's pretty weird whenyou actually start, and I know people
have started thinking about a lotof these stories and been like what,
what are these archetypal ideas thatwe've been passing down about that?

(01:08:19):
That's, and again, it goes to thisidea of witches, but like, we're so
terrified of old women in our culture.
No one wants to be one.
Whereas men sort of the patriarch,the wise professor, priest judge,
and yet there's no archetype for oldthe crone, that's what we call her,
which with etymology is Karrion.
So is that the origin of Karen?

(01:08:41):
Exactly right.
It's a whole nother thing.
But yeah, there's no archetype.
There's no they've been sort ofturned into these like violent
towards younger generations,fearful of losing their beauty.
I mean, they're, it's all there.
It's just all written for us.
If we were rewriting that today,it wouldn't be a stepmother or the

(01:09:02):
mother would be the mother-in-law.
mother-in-law.
Exactly.
It's hilarious.
I, love to get to sadness, but sohow about we'll just do pride and
I recommend people read the book.
It's so important to read this bookand just hold a mirror to yourself,
whether you're a man or a woman.
Like this book is useful inevery aspect, and I don't mean

(01:09:22):
just for a man to help you.
maybe be a better partner or abetter dad or a better son or
whatever, but actually for yourself.
So this, I think this,it goes beyond gender.
The book actually goes beyond gender andit makes you question a lot of stuff.
A lot of stuff is, is regardlessof gender, very, very useful.
Thank

(01:09:42):
And pride is such an important thing.
'cause I was saying this be beforewe came on air, I do believe in
Ireland we're very, very, keepthe head down, say nothing.
And we, I was telling you, weliterally have a saying like,
say nothing, say nothing.
And it's like, it's almost likedon't put your head above the parapit
because maybe you'll get shot down.

(01:10:04):
And you talked about, well, thatliterally happens for women.
And I thought about, and I wanted toreally just share this one because
I'm sure so many of our audience arewomen and they work in the workplace.
And you.
say confident women are labeledas arrogant or unlikable, while
modesty keeps them invisible.
And this manifests in the workplace witha bias against women who self-promote.

(01:10:27):
Yes.
I thought that was so important because Isee that so much, Elise, where I will say
to somebody, a woman who has a brilliantthinker, and I go, you should write more.
You should write a book.
You should start a podcast andgo, oh no, I couldn't do that.
And I would go, why?
Because you are brilliant.
And I even see it, Elise, when I, andI'll share this with the audience.

(01:10:49):
The show's booked out for years.
Elise and I had, we contacted herself.
We were in touch a year ago and the,the show's booked out for years.
But oftentimes when I ask brilliantwoman to be on the show, brilliant
author, she'll go may I ask whyor where did you hear about me?
Or, you know, what's,start asking questions?
What's the size of your audience?
And all this kind of stuff.

(01:11:09):
You ask a guy, he is like going, sure.
What time?
Yeah.
And you know, so you have a totallydifferent leaning into that promotion,
even when it's something like, you'vewritten this brilliant book and I just
thought that needed to be addressed.
And no better person to ask than you.
Well, thank you.
Yeah, no, and I think it's reallyinteresting to think about it as,
again, like cultural country narratives.

(01:11:31):
And we were talking about how in Australiait's like the tall poppy syndrome is
very real and that it's probably, it'slike a self-protective mechanism, right?
Like, don't tax us, we're justdoing our own thing over here.
It's not that good.
Like, don't, don't pay attention to us.
Which I think is so, such aninteresting expression of it.
But yeah, I mean like.

(01:11:55):
There was a certain set of books,I feel like it was such a theme and
culture around when the inequityand pay gap started to emerge, which
is obviously far more nuanced thanit was initially presented to us.
It's really like a mommy.
Like the, the women who reallystruggle with pay gap are, are moms,

(01:12:16):
women of color in the us, et cetera.
But, and, and also, I mean, the wealth gapis, is far greater and, and more scary.
However there was a wealth of, ofcontent essentially suggesting that
the reason that women are not achievingthe promotions and aren't bridging

(01:12:40):
this, this pay gap is really on usand a dearth of confidence that we
just need to be more confident andwe need to assert how great we are
and flex our achievements, et cetera.
And.
I hate these books becauseit is not a confidence gap.

(01:13:00):
I do not believe that women reallystruggle with imposter syndrome.
I, I don't.
I'm sure some do.
We all do.
To some extent.
It's not a lack of confidence.
It's that women understand that that isnot how we get our needs met in the world.
We cannot be overtly flexy demandingand fierce in our negotiations.

(01:13:25):
We have got to be somewhat manipulativeto make it someone else's idea,
et cetera, to find someone tochampion us in the workforce.
Because of the studies show men andwomen do not respond well to women who
put themselves forward in that way.

(01:13:45):
And flex we are punished for it.
know this.
So we spend a lot of energyand time figuring out, how do I
excel, how do I express my giftswithout being punished for it?
And is it.
Again, it might not be a totallyconscious for us, although I

(01:14:08):
think for many women it is.
But it's so infuriating and I feel likethere's been a a lot more attention on
this in recent years, sort of settingthis record straight when it's like,
well, it's on you guys to sort ofexpress how great you are and how worthy
you are, and then you'll be rewarded,but you're just not negotiating.
Well, it's like, no, actuallystudies suggests women are better

(01:14:31):
negotiators on behalf of other people
on behalf of businesses, et cetera.
And, but where.
Where we struggle is negotiating forourselves and not because we don't
think that we deserve equal pay, butbecause we're, we're negotiating with

(01:14:55):
a world that has a very strong feelingabout a woman who stands up for herself.
So I think with, as we becomemore conscious of that, maybe
it will start to change.
But I think that this is where I feellike as women, we can do a lot just
by even being, and I've experiencedthis in my, as a manager and where I'd

(01:15:16):
be like, oh, so uppity, you know, Iwould catch myself having that response
to people who would come to me forpromotions and then I would have to check
myself and be like, what is happening?
There's also sort of this like, Imean, it's not even epigenetic 'cause
it's more recent, but like the hazingcycles of like, this was hard for me,

(01:15:37):
so why should it be any easier for you?
I didn't have paid family leave.
Why?
Why do you get it?
And we also have to get over that.
And recognize like it, it's aresponsibility to make things
better for future generations.
. Suck it up buttercup.
You, you know, that whole idealike yeah, it's ter terrible.

(01:16:00):
The thing that came tomind was the Oprah quote.
I wanted to this, Oh thisquote is brilliant and ju just
on, on what Elise said there.
Just, so, if you're ever, ever going fora job and a promotion or negotiating pay.
Elise reminds us, a HR director sharedthis, that most women won't actually

(01:16:21):
go and negotiate for themselves.
They won't go, actually,I want more, or whatever.
So next time, do it.
Because this HR director, youwere saying, Elise, wanted to tell
people, please ask me for more.
I actually can give youmore, but you gotta ask.
I can't promo, I can't suggest it to you.
So that really annoyed me.
Oh my God, that annoyed me.

(01:16:43):
But this Oprah quote,this Oprah quote, is gold.
Playing dumb, weak, and sillyis a disservice to yourself and
to me and to the whole world.
Every time you pretend to be lessthan you are, you steal permission
from other women to exist fully.
Don't mistake modesty for humility.
Boom.
I love that.

(01:17:03):
yeah,
Absolute
yeah.
Gold.
Thank you.
I mean, Oprah.
, Brilliant role model, a fragmentexpander, if there ever was one.
Many fragments.
Let's get to sadness.
I'll wrap sadness for you really quickly.
I, and it's funny, it was a debate withmy editor because, you know, she was like.
It's not on the set, it's not about women.

(01:17:24):
I'm like, yeah, but it's part of the set.
And then it was discarded.
It didn't make the cut.
And I think that it lodged mostand pernicious in the minds of men.
And I think we're seeingthat play out in culture.
And this is this idea because it'santithetical to this idea that men are,

(01:17:46):
are programmed for power and controland sadness is anything but Right.
It's feeling sort of defeatedand depressed and mournful
and extreme empathy and yeah.
Powerless in the face of life.
And yet one of our core realities.
Right?
And so the chapter on sadness.

(01:18:08):
Is, it sort of addresses thatquestion, what about men?
And I'm not a man, I can't speak tothe psychology of men, but in what
I've observed in my partner and andmen around me, it's the way that we
disconnect and sever boys from theirfeelings is playing out in our culture
repetitively and, and compulsively.

(01:18:30):
That feelings are dangerous exceptunless it's anger, , or the sort of
more powerful ones where you're allowedto express that and little else.
And it's our, our inability togrieve, our inability to feel our
feelings fully is a symptom of asort of overly masculine culture.

(01:18:52):
And I write about women in this contexttoo, in the same way that this is sort
of beyond gender, is that I think formany women, this has happened to me.
That e I've been extended in my MAs sortof overly masculinized out there in the
world, like in, in beautiful ways too.
And I, sort of write about the archetypalqualities of masculine and feminine and

(01:19:12):
the ma the healthy masculine is beautifulstructure, order, truth the container,
you know, and then the structure, the beauthe sort of balanced, feminine creativity,
nurturance care, again, like two partsof what it is to be a whole human.
But in my own life, as I've becomesort of overly masculinized and I

(01:19:33):
really work hard to try to bring morefeminine into my life, I too, it's
like I've lost the ability to cry.
It's that like I can't cryin front of other people.
I can't appear weak.
I need to keep it together.
Like this happens to all of us.
And then we get really disconnectedfrom these emotions which are
present and stored in our body.

(01:19:55):
We can't process them.
And I think that right now we are.
A wash in cultural grief.
There is so much tomourn and so much loss.
And so, and you can't without loss.
And until we get reconnectedto that, kind of screwed.
Ways it's like the chapter aboutsort of the collective more than

(01:20:18):
any other, but how, how desperatelywe need to feel our feelings again.
The story you told about one ofyour friends who was a lawyer, I
think it was, and she was so busyand she clocked in by the hour that
she held in going to the toilet.
And some she didn't evennotice, but she ended up getting
bladder cancer or bowel cancer.
I thought about that as a metaphorfor sadness, that you hold it

(01:20:40):
in, it doesn't go away, you'rejust bearing it down somewhere.
And that is absolutely something, andI think it's the same thing you're
saying about if I'm a man and insociety suggests that I should be
this powerful kind of Gordon Geckotype leader and then I show up.
Promoting things like lovein the workplace, and I mean

(01:21:00):
actual just , a whole paradigm.
There's a show we had on theshow called leading through,
leading through different values.
It's by Kim Erin and Jonathan Clark.
And they talked about this paradigmof leading through people, not
looting over them through power.
And we talked about this, that theshift in the societal value attributed

(01:21:24):
to particularly a man leader.
So if, if a man's there, peopleexpect him to be tough and kind of, we
don't want this weak emotional leaderwho's talking about values like love
that they talk about in the book.
And I was saying that, that thattakes a huge shift in society
to kind of go, that's actuallythe type of leader we want now.
We don't want this kind of toughhit the desk type of leader.

(01:21:47):
And then similarly that shift.
To your very point as a man, as well aslike going, well, I can't be seen to be
weak and be crying in front of my kids, orI need to be seen as the kind of, I got,
I got all my shit together, kind of guy,and that's there, there, there's where
the programming for me has created a storythat even if you have a few outliers,

(01:22:12):
start to change that story, it takes abigger, bigger shift and we need some real
fragment expanders to lead that charge.
well, you need to write honorand best Behaviour for men.
No, I mean, the, some of themen you read this book were
like, can you write this for for
Yeah.
I would love to, except I don't, Idon't, I'm not, I don't know if I like,

(01:22:35):
understand the psychology, but like, it's
Hmm.
needed.
What this, this, like this.
the way that men have been conditionedto express power and control, it's not
only fracturing them, it's fracturing us.
And you look at sortof the chaos, the pain.

(01:22:57):
It is, it's these wounded boys whoturn into wound wounding men who then
here in the U.S. kill, murder us.
You know, it's like, it's, it is createsa cultural and it's a source wound.
It's a cultural wound.
And we're doing it to our boys and men.

(01:23:21):
We're, we are.
And in the same way that women, I thinkwe can take, we can take responsibility
for what we're perpetuating.
Men need to take responsibilityand it's not more masculinity.
That's what's really terrifying.
And you see this with women too.
It's like the trad wifemovement and stuff.
It's like the antidote is notsome regressive idea about

(01:23:43):
what like women were doing.
And in the same way that like thismore masculinity whatever these
men are promoting, that's not it.
letting, it's like being whole people,letting your feminine come up, like
you're nurturing, loving, creative, being.

(01:24:06):
Who cares deeply about theworld and the people in it.
That's what's missing.
It's not a dearth of masculinity.
what I loved about what you said is,I agree with is it's an energy that
you embrace and don't suppress it.
The energy that masculineand feminine energy.

(01:24:26):
And that energy has different,it, it manifests differently.
Like creativity needs a hugeinnovation, needs a huge amount
of feminine energy, and we don'thave enough women in innovation.
It's, it's definitely changing.
We haven't traditionally, and yousee that even in the books that go
back, like it was so dominant, male,dominant background in those places.

(01:24:50):
But anyway,
read you one quote 'cause you, we started
please.
off mic with James Hollis, butjust to put a thread on this, he
writes, both genders face the twintasks, nurturance and empowerment.
Empowerment does notmean power over others.
It means that we experience and can drawupon our own capacities to choose our

(01:25:12):
values and our mode of being in the world.
beautiful.
That's something to live toward.
Beautiful.
James Hollis.
I tell you, I'm after him.
I've reached out to him on hiswebsite to get him to cover
that book, the Middle Passage.
I, I've pulled Elise a line that I'dlove to quote as my final message.

(01:25:32):
While I'm doing that, I'dlove you to think about what
your final message as well.
And before I even do, I just wanna promoteyour new book, which came from this
idea of, well, this is the challenges,but this is what you do it about it.
And it's just come out on Amazon hereover this side of the pond choosing
wholeness over goodness, a processfor reclaiming your full self.

(01:25:53):
I'll link to that as well.
You can get it on Amazon.
For those of you watching us,Elise is holding up a copy of it
there, right in front of us so youcan see what it looks like and.
I'd love you to share before I sharethis line and then you finish the
show, is I loved the idea of Bahaifate prophecy, and about how the 21st

(01:26:17):
century is the moment we're in here.
I probably butchered how to saythat, but I'd love you to share that.
I'd love that concept.
Yeah, this is the i, this is this prophecythat essentially we've been a bird flying
with sort of the masculine wing extendedand the feminine wing sort of broken.
And because of that, we've been flyingin these sort of like tight concentric

(01:26:39):
circles and unable to really take flight.
And that the prophecy is that inthis time, that feminine wing extends
and we reach some sort of balanceand are really able to move forward.
I think it's such a stunning visual , forthis moment that we all feel is near if

(01:27:02):
we can sort of bridge our way to that.
but I think there's so much reliefand freedom that comes from a
different way of being in the world.
And extending that wing as well.
So , I have this little quote and thenI'm gonna pass to you to give your final
message and call to action for audience.

(01:27:23):
You wrote.
The good news for all of us is thatthe feminine, the goddess in all her
forms does not enjoy suppression.
She invariably rises.
We are feeling this now.
Patriarchy taught us to valorizethe masculine to see it as
the redeeming force as divine.
These qualities in our culture havebeen horribly overdeveloped with

(01:27:44):
devastating consequences for all of us.
It is imperative that women reclaimour precious energy so we can bring
forward the feminine principle, thedivine feminine, with the full force
required to rebalancesociety's ills right now.
The resurgent energy of the feminineis required to bring our culture's
toxic masculinity into balance.

(01:28:06):
It's an energy dedicated to nurturingand tending what's already been created
rather than extracting more and more.
I love that
That's beautiful.
Yeah.
Well, wow.
No, I'm just kidding.
I guess what I would leave people withis sort of what's to be gained from

(01:28:29):
doing this work and a lot of the workthat we were talking about, which is
this self-examination process liketormenting, owning, reclaiming those
parts of ourselves that we've haven'twanted to see but, but that are our
path to wholeness rather than goodness.
And this is a quote from Robert Johnson,is a really great youngian writer.

(01:28:52):
And this is from owning your own shadow.
He writes, generally, the first halfof life is devoted to the cultural
process, gaining one's skills,raising a family, disciplining
oneself in a hundred different ways.
The second half of life isdevoted to restoring the
wholeness, making holy of life.

(01:29:12):
One might complain that thisis a senseless round trip.
Except that the wholeness at the endis conscious while it was unconscious
and childlike at the beginning.
And I think that that's such a beautifulimage of going and reclaiming those parts
of ourselves recognizing that they, they,they can come out of the shadows too.

(01:29:36):
Absolutely beautiful.
I, I love it.
And Elise, for people who wanna.
Reach out and find you.
Where's the best place
the book we've been discussingis on our best Behaviour.
As mentioned, the follow up ischoosing wholeness over goodness.
Come and listen to my podcast pullingthe thread, and I have a substack
that's the same name, pulling the threadif you like, this type of content.

(01:29:57):
And I'm on Instagram at Elise Loehnan.
Author of On Our Best Behaviour?
Elise Loehnan., Thank you.
for joining us.
So fun.
thank you to our sponsors,Kyndryl, the Kyndryl Institute
has just dropped their very firstedition of their biannual journal.
It features a collection of articlesfrom some of the world's most forward

(01:30:19):
thinking executives, policy makers,and academics designed to help business
leaders gain actionable insightsand perspectives around things like
ai, global trade and transformation.
You can find the journal on theapp store or at www dot Kyndryl.
Dot com forward slash institute.
See you next week.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Elise Loehnen - On Our Best Behaviour