How to Quiet the Voice That’s Holding You Back

24:45And we're looking for any excuse. And so I'm not ready is like a nice vague one that we can always use. It's a really nice vague one. I mean, it's really interesting because I feel like for so many women, they are working hard and showing up and delivering and still not stepping forward, you know, still not putting themselves in the right situation to be able to take advantage or whatever might be next, because it's just so much going on that actually we're stopping ourselves from doing. Do you believe in that idea of like, we just have to get out of our own way? Is it that easy? Is it ever that easy?

25:19Well, I would say with a lot of compassion because it can be quick to go from there to kind of like, well, what's wrong with us? And everything that women are doing around feeling self-doubt or trying to stay safe has a really good reason, right? So we have to remember, we're still getting a lot of messages, all kinds of cues from the culture that somehow women aren't really leaders or we're not quite qualified or the right fit. And a lot of us have absorbed those messages. So I feel like I'm working with the inner legacy of our history. And so in that sense, it's not just like we are in our own way.

26:01It's more to me like this is a really interesting transitional moment in history where we're coming out of a past, right, where women didn't have financial power, legal protection, political power, the opportunity to lead in so many ways. And that left a very strong imprint in our psyche as well as in our world. And now we all have this strange, like, unlearning to do. Like how, I say strange in the sense of like, how do we do that? How do we really unlearn those deep patterns? So we're doing that on behalf of, like I call all of us in this moment, we're all on the transition team. We're all in the transition.

26:42We're all in the transition together. And so much of what I write about is like understanding it is a transition. Like that is part of it that we have to understand there's a lot of work to be done here. When you think about unlearning some of that stuff, like what is a practical thing that someone can do today to start kind of moving themselves forward towards working towards that thing before they're ready? Well, I would say picture yourself doing the thing, like really picture it and then notice all the fears and objections that come up. Because sometimes until we really play the movie, so it's like, let's say I want to start the business, but I just noticed I can never find time.

27:19I can never quite get myself in motion. I come up with a lot of reasons why this isn't the right year, all that stuff. Picture, really play the movie in the most vivid way you can in your mind of I'm doing this. Like, or what if I imagine taking a bold step towards it tomorrow? And then fears are gonna come up. Like, and usually it's not gonna go well or people aren't gonna like it or what if nobody responds? And then we gotta get out our pen and paper or talk to a supportive person and really get into like, what are those fears exactly? Let me look at them in the light. And what would my wisest, most loving self say to do about those fears?

28:00The woman I want to be, how would she work with those fears? When we really get quiet and ask ourselves that, like there's amazing answers always waiting for us. Amazing answers. But it's often so hard what comes out on that piece of paper, right? That can be really hard to reckon with because what you realize is like so much of it is internal. It's stuff that you need to work through. And as you quite rightly say, it's patterns. It's things that creep up in other parts of your life. But to me, the writing down of everything is the most useful part. Absolutely. It is completely different to write something than to try and think about it.

28:38First, you are completely right. Like in the back of my book, I put a bunch of pages just for people to write notes because when these things come up, it's so easy to dismiss them as well because it's hard. This is not easy work that we're talking about. It's like just meeting yourself in the mirror and going, ah, this is really old stuff that I don't want to deal with. This is really difficult stuff that I don't want to deal with. But there's something about the act of writing it down and then putting it away and then bringing it back out and saying, okay, like I am ready to face some of these things now.

29:09I'm ready to do things differently because at the end of the day, you just want to, you know, you want to be able to get to where you want. We're talking about women being able to live the life of their dreams and do what makes them happy. And so what's on the other side of that is just so, you know, so gratifying in so many ways. I wanted to talk to you about guilt, one of my favorite, one of my favorite subjects. And I feel like it's such a default emotion for so many women. We can feel guilty about our ambition. We'll feel guilty about our kids, what we're not doing, what we are doing, certainly guilty about wanting more.

29:43And I wondered where the idea of guilt fits into everything that you know so well and all the work that you've done. You know, again, I would say guilt is often about what we're afraid of being or what we're afraid of being perceived as. So all of these, like, I don't want to be the selfish lady. I don't want to be the too ambitious lady. These are often things that two women will say. I've just got really comfortable with those two things. I'm the selfish, ambitious lady. Like literally, give me a sticker, a little badge. I'm with it. I love it. I love it. Like, I don't want to be the selfish, greedy, like girl, but it's like, I have for a long time, I will never, ever forget early in my career, I switched jobs and my first day at the new job, you kind of go in to meet the boss or whatever.

30:31And he knew my prior boss. And I was like, oh, I hope you had a good conversation. He said, yeah, yeah. She told me you were very ambitious, you know like this and I was like well in a new job like isn't that a good thing but I knew it wasn't meant to sound or to you know it wasn't praised yes and so it's one of those things that sticks with you it's like oh she's very ambitious and I was like yeah I am like I'm going to be ambitious for you I'm going to be ambitious for this company and you're welcome you know it's just so interesting you know when we surveyed women in our community we asked them how many of you have been given the feedback in a professional setting that you're too aggressive too direct or too abrasive.

31:11And then we also asked how many were given the feedback that you're too quiet, you're too passive or you lack executive presence. Literally every person that is listening to this right now just put their hands up like for either one or the other. So between the two of those, right, we're at 95%. That's all of us. Yeah, got us down. And then for 20 % of women, it's both, right? So those women are like, where do you want me to be? In limbo land, totally. So there's all those, yeah, all those projections put on us. And there's a lot of, you know, the other piece we often don't talk about enough, I think, with the kind of feedback women get at work is that the research shows that feedback is much more personality driven than it is for men.

31:52Oh shit. Is it really? Yes. This is actually documented. Kieran Snyder did a great study looking at performance reviews in corporate and tech companies. And first of all, women were getting more negative feedback than men. But when they got negative feedback, 70 % of the time, it involved some kind of criticism of their personality. And for men, that number was 2%. Wow. That's extraordinary. What a gap. It is a huge gap. And so then again, it's like, we don't have to wonder, why does feedback feel a little scary to us? Well, it's often more personal. It's kind of shaming, right? Like that is a shaming thing to say you're, you're too abrasive.

32:31you're too aggressive, that for most women, oh my gosh, we're like out here trying to be relational and kind and also get something done at the same time. It's already impossible. It's a massive takeout for anybody listening. And actually it's even made me think, you know, if you're in a position of power, if you're in a position of leadership, thinking about how you assess the men in your organization versus how you assess the women and how much of it is personality driven, that is a moment to take a step back and go, what is happening and are we okay with that? Because even as you say it, the 70 % to the 2%, that's insane.

33:04It's literally not okay. And so I would say to everyone to just stop for a moment and really look at that because that's a statistic that you just could not. I mean, if that was happening in any of my companies, I would be mortified. Because again, if that's the message and the signal that we're giving to women, we're essentially saying, do you know what? you need to be a people pleaser to get ahead in this organization. You need to be likable. And to me, who is like the most results orientated person ever, it's like, I don't want a bunch of assholes running around in my office. But by the same token, I don't want all of my female staff to think that they need to think likability is a factor to them being successful in the organization because it isn't.

33:48It's like, it's a big difference between being liked and being somebody that is respected and can work well with other people and all of the rest of it, right? Right. No, it's a huge thing. And this is called the double bind in research. And it's this phenomenon that women are often perceived as either competent or likable, but not both. And that effect is just as strong when women are looking at other women. So absolutely think about how you're evaluating people. I also always say, people think about how you're thinking about and regarding your bosses. Because women will do this thing of the mean woman boss and the meanest boss I ever had.

34:26And some of that is, you know, there's complex dynamics there. But I think often we're holding those senior women to a very different standard of the kind of niceness and people pleasing we would expect. That's very hard to maintain while you're also making difficult and controversial decisions and you're trying to get real things done. This is one of the reasons for so many people, this whole thing that I call unhooking from praise and criticism is so important because a lot of times we are getting feedback that is informed by some of these biases and kind of unfair boxes that we're putting women in.

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37:29So talk to me about the unhooking. How do you unhook from that type of feedback if it's there? Well, first of all, just knowing, like when you gather a group of women and you say, how many of you were told you were too abrasive? And you thought it was just you that heard that in that one performance review and lots and lots of hands in the room go up. And then you realize there's no one in this room that hasn't either been told she's too abrasive or too quiet. That's kind of a relief. And then in terms of how we each show up as women, we want to really bring all the warmth that sometimes is strategically useful, the warmth and the desire to connect, but also bring our competence and really show that.

38:07What we often end up doing is saying, in order to be perceived as likable, I'm going to diminish my competence and kind of hide it and be tentative about it. We want to amp up both. We want to amp up both. That's great advice, actually. Amp up both. Because you can be both things. You can be extremely highly competent and well-liked, but you don't need to be loved and you don't need to, you know, have to overplay that part of everything and dumb down what it is that you're really there to do. Yes. And being warm and being respected and being connected to people is not the same as trying to get everyone to like you at every moment all the time, you know, which also we can let that go.

38:45Oh yeah. It's the thing that I say all the time. Can't be a people pleaser and a leader. Like inevitably you are going to piss some people off and that's okay. You have to do it anyway. That's why I'm the most popular person in the office. always have been. I want to go back to guilt because I feel like it's so central to your work and we only just like touched on it. Talk to me about guilt and how it shows up, why it matters so much that we get a handle on our guilt. Yeah. I think it's a real mean strategy that the inner critic uses to keep us in those comfort zones and out of our risk. Even that framing is good.

39:21It's a mean strategy that your inner critic uses. It's not you. It's Not what you're feeling. No, because again, thinking about those different parts of ourself, I would say all of us have that part that really wants to contribute something beautiful to this world, that wants to help others, that wants to find our little corner where we want to make something better and do it, that wants to use our gifts and wants to have a blast doing it. And then there's this voice that comes in, that's selfish, that's too much. You're going to be completely neglecting your family if you do that. I think that's the voice in us that evokes a lot of guilt.

39:58The other thing I'll say though, I'm a big fan of apologizing, not the over-apologizing that women do and the like syrupy, but actual accountability in our lives where we reflect on where did I miss the mark, which we sometimes feel real guilt around and then proactive apologies. And I'm a fan of it in leadership, on teams. I think it's for our team, it's like one of the things that has helped us thrive and stay together long term is people do make mistakes and they do say things they a little bit regret. And when you have a culture where people proactively show up and apologize, you truly do that repair that needs to happen.

40:44Because guilt will accumulate if you don't have a healthy practice of making amends in your life. It's not that I'm a bad mom guilt, you know, that stuff, but just that didn't feel quite right. And I think when we do it right, I always say like apologizing is a peak life experience. I think it's so good. I think it's like one of the best things. It's so interesting that you say that. I mean, I think that I'm naturally a person that sees their mistakes and I apologize. So much a part of my job as a leader in any organization is, you know, you're modeling the behavior, you're creating the culture.

41:19So what I do, whether it's leaving the office at five so I can go home and be with my kids, or it's apologizing when I've made a mistake or even like apologizing, but also admitting and pointing to, I'm like, oh, that decision that I made over there, that was the wrong one. And as a result, this thing happened and this is what we'll do next time. But that was me, like my bad over here. It just creates the conditions for everybody to feel like they can behave like that. Maybe, I don't know, it's like a polite English thing, but I find I apologize all the time. But it is just something, it's not like a guilt thing for me.

41:57I apologize and move on. I'm not going to feel bad about it through the day. I'm like, so sorry. Okay, boom. And on to the next thing. Right. Well, I think that helps us not carry guilt because that is right when we recognize we've done something that wasn't what we intended, didn't feel aligned. That's the role of apologies or making an amends of some sort if there's like something to do to right the wrong. It's there so that we don't have guilt that stews. And just when I hear you share that, I'm like, that is one of the reasons to me that women's leadership is so important because we are less likely to fall into this ego game where because I hold the position of power, I'm going to puff up my chest and I have always done everything right.

42:38And I, you know, can't be questioned as the leader. And that builds such incredible trust in a team when they know you're accountable. Other people can be accountable. None of us are being expected to be perfect. It's huge. It's just huge. I think that so many of my listeners are in a position where leadership is in their future. It's something that they're doing now. It's something that they're aspiring to do. And leadership looks really different for men versus women. So just given your experience, everything you've learned, you wrote your book 10 years ago. Yep. What's changed? What's happening?

43:12Where are we at? I mean, Playing Big has been this beautiful book where I wrote it 11 years ago and it sold the same number of copies every week for 11 years. That's so crazy. Which is crazy because women just hand it to each other. I mean, I don't know enough about marketing to make that happen. That's some good marketing you've got going on there. Some good word of mouth. Some good word of mouth. So just to say some things have not changed around those fundamentals of self-doubt and inner vision and our callings and all of that. There was an article that ran years ago in Harvard Business Review and it said, you know, women are not ambitious for positions of power.

43:53And then the way they defined was that they had surveyed women and they were like, they literally said like, do you want to climb the ladder at your organization? And so everyone said no. And I'm like, that's because women don't like climbing ladders. That's not what motivates us. If they had just asked the question a little different, would you like to run your team in a more equitable and useful way than it's being run right now? Would you like to have a bigger impact with your company's mission? Would you like to be able to make real change in the company? They would have gotten totally different answers.

44:24Why is that even? Why is there such a level of uncomfortableness with like a term like climbing the ladder or power or anything that kind of, you know, has these connotations that, you know, women would feel less comfortable with? What is that about? Well, I know you might not. I don't know if you'll relate to this answer. You might not like it. Well, you know I'm not going to. I would say. Whatever it is. I would say that it's more that that is a boring term. It's just that men have been socialized and needing to care about that for status. I don't think anyone just, because if you didn't know what the ladder, the company's ladder, like what that company was creating, I don't know how much you would care about that either.

45:09Yeah, but what if you do? What if you have a complete awareness that, you know, because here's my experience is often that we just want to avoid the terms and the way that we'll be seen if we admit it. We want the thing. We just don't want to say the thing. We don't want to say. I talk about it all the time. You know, I've been on a panel called Women, Power and Money where somebody told me off for talking about money. I was like, what? We didn't mean that by money. I was like, what are you talking about? You know, so I do think there's a level of like, I'm uncomfortable talking about this, which is why I think it's so important to have these conversations because one would hope that in, you know, the 11 years since you wrote the book, look, some things are shifted and we got a bit more comfortable.

45:53I don't know about that. Whether we got more comfortable. Wait until my book comes out. Right, right. I'm going to be like, let's get comfy. I think that is one of your gifts, is that you do have a real comfort with that. And you're giving women different kind of permission around that. I think for a lot of women, the way, the route that sort of makes them feel compelled to move into leadership has to do with impact and the purpose they want to serve. No doubt. And what I'm saying is that, and to be clear, because I totally agree with you, but what I don't want and what I want to stop women from doing is hiding behind soft ambition or performative purpose.

46:37Because my point of view is if you have ambition, you're going to get uncomfortable. In fact, it requires discomfort. And when you want something like, you know, like a lot of money, You're going to have to have some audacity. And like, that's okay. Like, that's all right. Like, I'm like, we don't need to kind of live up to a version of ourselves. Because I think that I'm like a really nice girl who's super maternal with a lot of great, you know, characteristics. I just have ambition and audacity. And, you know, I'm fine with being uncomfortable. And I'm fine with making you uncomfortable for a second as well.

47:12Like, you can be both things. Two things can be true at once. Yes. Right? I want women to care deeply about money because I think you can care deeply about money and other things too. I think you can do really meaningful, impactful work and care about how much you get paid for it. Yes. You know, it's like, I'm trying to say it's like, it's all of it. Yes, you're right. And this is the thing too. Absolutely. I think, I think that's exactly it is that as a society and going back to that transition team idea, we are having trouble holding both at once. still. It is like I can, we're still in the stereotype, right?

47:52There's on the one hand ambition over here, but it comes at these costs of how I am relationally and personally, or there's the nice person, which is exactly that double bind. So that is like part of this transition team is you're actually, you embody both. And that's very impactful for people to absorb like at a, at a, almost at a cellular level to be like, oh, there it is. Both, both together. Let's do it. Buy both books. Read them side by side right now, right now. And because you're such an expert in women's leadership, I wanted to talk to you about something that me and my friends talk about all the time.

48:34This idea that women will outsource decisions and that will create bosses. There was a time early in my career when my now husband spoke to me about this idea of an employee mentality and it really cut me, you know, this Emma, you have an employee mentality. And I was so annoyed about it. Not because I get annoyed about a lot of things my husband says, but because it was so true at the time. I was 26, 27 going into a board meeting and, you know, sweating, like just sweating and like really erratic about this board meeting. And he said, oh, I know why you feel like that. You have an employee mentality.

49:11You haven't understood that you're the leader. You're there to paint the picture, show them the vision and bring everybody on the journey. And I lost it because it was so, so true. And I feel like there is this thing where even if we're in a position of leadership or decision-making, we will create or find a boss or a person for ourselves. We go to the bank, the bank manager's the boss. We go for a meeting with a lawyer or somebody suddenly they're the boss. What is it that creates that pattern that makes us look for other people to be in charge of our decisions? So great. Yeah, well, I think, you know, this is very much what we were also just talking about before in terms of the good student mentality.

49:52So we could say the good girl mentality, the employee mentality and the good student mentality. Please don't add my husband's vernacular to the thing. I'm like, it's made it. Those are kind of all very similar, right? In that my job is adapting to the authority figure, not being the authority figure. Yes. Nor is my job influencing authority. I'm going to be a shapeshifter, which a lot of us learn in school. This teacher wants the paper in this font. This teacher wants the paper in that font, like down to the very detail. This teacher likes it if, you know, you argue your point this way. And so we learn to be these shapeshifters for the authority figures.

50:28It's a huge transition then to step into our own authority. A lot of that gets conditioned in school. A lot of it gets conditioned because of our identity, right? We're being told explicitly and quietly that we're not the authority. I think you need another authority to replace it with that's not your ego self. So whether you think of that as your higher self or the calling that's in you, I like to think of the inner mentor is what we call it in Playing Big, this really visiting with your older, wiser self, like yourself 20, 30 years out in the future, kind of your inner elder woman. Joseph Campbell talked about we're all in the acorn state, but the acorn knows the oak tree that it's trying to become.

51:16So your oak tree self that your being is trying to emerge, grow into, that has to become the authority. This is your inner mentor. Oh, first of all, I love the idea of creating a 30 year older version of myself in the future. She's so much better than I am now. I could die. First of all, this is some stuff I can get with. One second. I told you I was going to like be all over the place in this one because you have so many golden things to say that I was like, I'm going to forget that I'm the host. I'm going to think this is my own personal coaching session. I'm going to lose myself. Okay. So first of all, let me just do this.

51:50So I am going to create a, oh my God, this is so good. an inner mentor for myself. And it's me 30 years in the future. Here's the thing though, you're not creating her. Oh, sorry, I'm not. You get to discover her. She's real. Oh, she's there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's coming. This is not something we make with our minds. Your oak tree is there. Okay. So we can even do, do you want to do it right now? Yeah, come on. Yeah, I definitely do. Yeah, we can close our eyes and you can just imagine a beautiful place, beautiful, calm place in nature. And you can take a few deep breaths and just let your body really relax.

52:27And then you can notice that in this beautiful place, your older, wiser self is coming to greet you. And she's so happy that you came to visit. And you can just take in her presence

52:47and notice if she has anything she wants you to know right now. and if there's anything she wants to give you to take back with you today. And then when you're ready, you can give your fingers and toes a little wiggle and open your eyes.

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54:18so before we wrap a quick reminder that start with yourself is available and tickets for the live shows are available now starting april 15th we're coming to new york los angeles san francisco chicago dc boston atlanta and london visit emigree.com for tickets and full tour details i cannot wait so I gave you the very short version because I know you're already very connected and I thought I could tap straight in do this without the 20 minutes I have her she's like Diane von Fissenberg and Maya Angelou and Martha Stewart and Oprah and she's together but she's me she's you and she's like she's she's she's there yes yeah but first of all one of the things like in the beginning of the conversation, when you spoke about like naming your inner critic, like giving her a voice, like that's some powerful stuff.

55:13And when you have that, like, like, you know, I'm thinking of that, that that's like a negative thing. Right. When you have this in like a really positive way, this like inner mentor, because again, like so many of us are running around looking for a mentor, looking for someone to show us and tell us and figure out the way for us. The idea that it's within you, that it's something that you have, that's a game changer. It is a huge game changer. That's a game changer. I mean, we can actually see on your face. I'm fully sure of it. Yes. That's a game changer. I have never, ever in my life thought about me 30 years in the future.

55:53As soon as you said it, like acorns, oak trees, never in my life have I thought about that. Yes. Yeah. How helpful. It's amazing. It's amazing. And so, right, the reason I think of that as a mentor is because you can actually, A, consult with her, like down to the granular, how would she write that email that I'm writing right now? What does she eat for breakfast? What does she do when she has a spare free hour? It gives me goosebumps because we can feel it, right? But then also the big things. And this is, it's so much better to be pulled forward by that than to push a goal that you've made up in your head.

56:37I'm telling you that inner mentor is a fucking gift. That's a gift. Yeah. That's like a, you just gave me a gift. I mean, I tell you why I love it so much is because you can call on that anytime that you need because it's within you. but the other thing even just the way you say you can think about how she would write an email I'm like yeah because she writes emails differently yes how so because she's just she's just in a different space and place so she is writing from an entirely different wisdom set yeah but also that idea of like how she spends an hour time is precious like she's she's using time differently Yeah.

57:21Yeah. So it's so great because she can direct us in the big things we can tap into her, but also these very granular things. And I think our external mentors are so important because we need, you know, we need people's lessons learned and we need community and we need the practical things that mentors provide. But each of us has a really unique path. And when we think our mentor can tell us what to do at big crossroads or where we should want to go or what the right path is going to be for us, especially if you're trailblazing, right? Like there isn't a mentor who can give you that, but your inner mentor is, it's like a North star and you're not going to arrive at her a hundred percent, but that's, that's actually the beauty of it is like, there's always a little more forward to go.

58:11I'm so happy I just discovered that. I wanted to ask you for anybody that's sitting listening to this, what is the one thing that a woman can start doing right now to make like her decisions hers? Like if you're stuck in like a loop of the way you do things, what's like the first thing that you just start doing? Go meet your inner mentor. You need your own. It's not just your own everyday self. It's your own North Star. That becomes your authority. That's it. Your own North Star, your own vision, as I call it. It's such an important thing to have. I wanted to talk a little bit about your work on callings, because when you think about your work and what you do, women's leadership, you don't always put the two things, the two sides of it together.

58:54And the reason I love your work so much is because you do. And I think that most of us certainly, we feel that intrinsically it's in us. Like what is our calling? What are we here to do? So can you speak on that? I would love to. Yeah. Yeah. So how I describe what a calling is, a calling is the inner assignment we get to bring goodness or light into the world in some way. When I hear you talk about Good American and you say, I wanted these women to feel seen, and that's what this product is about, and I was on fire, and you say I was obsessed, right? I would say you were in your calling, right, around.

59:33And that's such a great example of how it can be any specific corner of the world, right? What defines it is not whether it's work or outside of work, but this sense of, I feel some sort of mysterious spark that this need is mine to help address. That is our toolkit for being able to make those kinds of contributions to our world. I think the question is not what's my calling, it is what's calling me right now. Right. And then how do I become the kind of person who respects their callings and is friendly to them? And they often are kind of inconvenient because they're not easy choices. They're callings.

1:00:17But I really care about us understanding that because I do think that it's one of the most joyful things we can do in our lives. And one of the most vitalizing things we can do is to open ourselves up to the callings we're actually getting. And we don't have to do them all, but pick one that you're feeling and find some way to pursue it. What changes in your life when you meet your calling, when you actually decide to do what you're called to do? You stop feeling jealous and envious of other people because you're actually running your own race. Oh, that's a big one. That's a huge one. That's a reason.

1:00:55Yeah. And it's very joyful. And you also get that beautiful, often when we're working on a calling, like that's when we lose our sense of time and space and we're just so in it. So we, that's, it's a route into that flow state that everyone talks about. That's so wonderful. And it's also important to, right, as we're saying all this, like we, we resist our callings like crazy. What do you say to someone that's just, again, listening to that inner voice and resisting what they're calling might be? Yeah. Well, one, I want to normalize the resistance. And this is even, And, you know, when they map out the hero's journey.

1:01:28There's a pattern here. There's a pattern here. So we normalize it. It's okay. It is scary a lot. It's, you know, asks us to trust ourselves and do something different. And we tend to feel a lot of self-doubt around our calling. So we can normalize all that. And then the other thing, people will often feel like, I don't have the money to do what I feel called to do. I don't have the time or I'm not qualified. And so I spend a lot of time when I'm working with groups. and how do we get to the essence of your calling and then find the way you can live that out this week. So if you're telling me your calling is to be a painter that is showing in galleries in New York, I'm gonna ask you, how are you gonna make art and share it with somebody like this very week, this very week?

1:02:18And I'm also not gonna let you tell me if you're researching galleries that you spent time living your calling. We can do that, but that's not a substitute for the thing that's the actual essence of it. Make art, share art, right? For that person, that has to come alive. And that's usually really counter to like, especially our good girl way of thinking. Our good girl way of thinking is like, I'm going to wait till the right moment or I'm going to research things like, I'm going to do all the steps around the thing itself. Yeah, I'm going to wait till there's a gap and a moment and an opening and then, yeah.

1:02:54So we're looking for this like imperfect, scrappy, immediate, but true to the essence. Imperfect being the thing, right? Because everything that I've ever started or tried or had a crack at, it has been imperfect, including this podcast, by the way. You have to start before you're ready. You have to, and again, it's one of the subjects that I constantly tried to be really honest about in my book and show like, here's how it then fails. because it might not work. You might not actually get to exactly where you thought things would be or where, how you thought they would land. But that, that's not the point because when you're working towards a dream or a calling or something that has like a higher meaning to you, that's okay.

1:03:38It doesn't need to be your definition of perfect, but you'll find something and a certain part of you, like once you get there, like once you're in it, once you're doing it and you can keep refining and keep going. You don't get just like one big thing. And to your point, it's like you're calling right now. Yes, exactly. It's going to be imperfect if you're doing anything interesting. Anything interesting, anything that's not, you know, going to bore you to tears. And sometimes we actually know about that more in the big business world than like most of the smaller businesswomen entrepreneurs, because in the bigger business world, people are given millions of dollars and 12 months or 18 months to experiment their way to a business.

1:04:19And it doesn't work sometimes. Right. And it still doesn't work. And then we have these women entrepreneurs being like, I had my$200 and I'm really upset that didn't work the first, very first time I made an offer. Like, let me explain to you how the pros do it. Totally. They're hiring expert teams and then they're spending millions of dollars to figure out what's going to work in the market. You're good with a series of mistakes. You're okay. Yeah. So there's that aspect, but then there's also the aspect of just how do you take it out of your kind of big fancy version of it and do the most like local simple version.

1:04:48So it's like, if you eventually want to have an amazing retreat center for women, great. But while that you're raising, you know, capital and figuring out if that's ever going to work, I want you to host the women's group in your house this Sunday. Right now. Now the actual thing. And then when people start to contemplate that, that's when they go, wait, but I'm not sure if I'm ready. and I have self-doubt. And then we get to deal with all the real emotional stuff that would have been brewing while they were thinking they were working on building their retreat center for five years, but never really looking at the emotional fears that were going to keep them from ever really moving into that.

1:05:23So we got to jump in. We got to jump. And then people are, once they get over that hump and they're like, I can live my calling in that scrappy way now, it's wonderful and it's joyful. It's joyful. I think it's really important because I feel like what your book did was it broke a lot of new ground and for people to really understand where their behavior comes from. And when you have, you know, when you know better, you do better, that's all, you know, we can hope for. But I think that we need more models of women in the culture that do things differently and that have, you know, the desired result because you can't be what you don't see.

1:06:01We need to see that stuff. We need to see it working. and we all have to be what we never saw. It's so much of your work now in the years post you writing the book. Is it actually like directly with women? Yeah. So I'm still, I'm with every week, every week I'm with women who want to play bigger and who are taking those tools that we've talked about and we're learning about them one at a time. I've also trained now like thousands of coaches and therapists and educators in that model. So sometimes I'm training them. Sometimes I'm in companies doing leadership programs. So it's a beautiful mix. It's a beautiful mix.

1:06:41What is it that you still aspire to doing? Oh my gosh, so much. So much. Really tell me. Well, I mean, you can hear that there's a spiritual underpinning to my work. And I think in my younger self, I was maybe a little more tentative about how to bring that forward in sort of the women's career space. So I feel like I get to be braver and bolder about that now. I get to plan some sort of epic 50th birthday party that that's a few years around the corner. So I'm like, that needs multiple years of planning because it's going to be epic, you know? And yeah, really just my prayer is always like, how do I get braver and bolder and what I'm willing to say and what I want to put out into the world?

1:07:25How often do you speak to your inner mentor? At least weekly. And if it's not every day, it's only because I'm also drawing on other spiritual practice where I feel like I'm accessing similar energies, but maybe just through prayer or meditation. Amazing. If you were to go like 20 years in the future, what would you like to see as a result of your work, as a result of where we are in the culture and all the kind of positive momentum? like what do you envisage and where would you want us to be? I want us to have a more, what I call a more sane and humane world. So more sane and humane to me means humans are cherished, every human.

1:08:14Children and their needs and their bonds with the important people in their lives are kind of first above all else. Like we make policy decisions around that, you know, as a world. we are not a violent planet anymore. So that's the world I'd love to see. And I believe that getting there depends on real shifts of who's in power and that more women and more people who have been long marginalized from power of every gender come into power. And so that's my big why. Like I love that women will have a better time and more fun in their lives if they, you know, like they literally will have a lot more fun if they use these tools.

1:09:02That makes me happy. But more important to me is that what I see them doing with the tools is always about making their communities and their world that more sane, humane place. That's my deep, deep intention. Perfect answer, because I couldn't agree more. We are desperate right now for more women in positions of power without a shadow of a doubt. Thank you so much. This is such a pleasure. Oh, I have to do some rapid fire. Sorry, I'm the worst. I didn't get to talk about my morning practice. One second. I got you. That's where we're starting. That's where we're starting. Okay, tell me. You have some good ones here.

1:09:41Of course you do. Tell me, what is your morning practice? Okay, so I like to start in the morning. I like to turn my day over to like a larger spiritual power. So I will literally, I lie in bed. Most of the time I'm not woken up by a child. These days are a little older now. So I can lie in bed and just say, I turn over my day to you. Big, you know, you with a capital Y. May I hear your voice today? And I like actually to often picture, you know, those photos of the night sky with like the solar system where you can see the planets. I guess it's all the time sky. It's not really the night sky.

1:10:16So I like to picture the spheres of the planets in the morning and just think about the beauty and the intelligence that is informing this whole existence. That to me, that image is like, okay, something is at work here and it really knows what it's doing. So let me remember that I'm part of that and I'm like within that and listen to a larger energy than just my own mental chatter today. What an awesome way to like start the day. What's the last thing you do before you go to bed at night? I usually write down a gratitude list from the day. And then I write down a list of things I'm turning over to the sacred.

1:11:05So it might be like this issue with this kid, this question in my business, this big event that's coming up. I'm just sort of saying, let me turn it over to a larger wisdom and I'll do my part, but I'm not going to do it with a clenched fist of willfulness. What is something that you used to aspire to years ago that you no longer aspire to? Being popular with the other moms at the playground.

1:11:37It's just not. Tan bark is not my scene. Fair. And you know it. What is a book that changed your life? There's a book called This Here Flesh by Cole Arthur Riley. And it's just a beautiful book about every major topic in life you could imagine. Essays. She's an incredibly gorgeous, brilliant writer. So that's what I would recommend. Perfect. Haven't read it. It's going straight on the list. Thank you so much, Tara. Thank you. Have a good one.

1:12:11If you're loving this podcast, be sure to click follow on your favorite listening platform. While you're there, give us a review and a five-star rating and share an episode you loved with a friend. We'll be so grateful. Aspire with Emma Greed is presented by Odyssey. I'm your host, Emma Greed. Executive producer, Ashley McShann, Derek Brown, and me. Our executive producers from Odyssey, Leah Rees-Dennis, Asha Saluja, Lauren Lagrasso. Producer, KK Sublime. Stephen Key is our senior producer. Sound design and engineering by Bill Schultz. Angela Peluso is our booker. Original music by Charles Black.

1:12:46Video production by Evan Cox, Kurt Courtney, Andrew Steele, and Carlos Delgado. Social media by Olivia Homan, Catherine Bale. Special thanks to Brittany Smith, Sydney Ford, my teams at The Lead Company, and WME. Maura Curran, Josefina Francis, Hilary Schuff, Eric Donnelly, Kate Hutchinson-Rose, Tim Meekle, Sean Cherry, and Lauren Vieira. If you have questions for me, you can DM me at Aspire with Emma Greed. Greed is spelled G-R-E-D-E. That's Aspire, A-S-P-I-R-E with Emma Greed. Or you can submit a question to me on my website, emagreed.me.

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