SLO MO REWIND: Kasia Urbaniak on Lessons from a Dominatrix and True Female Power

28:49She doesn't speak truth to power. She definitely has no desires of her own. So she definitely doesn't go out and go, this is my vision. This is what I want to do. Everybody fall in line. No way. Also, she is quite quiet. Speaks when spoken to. Now, good girl conditioning has a sneaky, sneaky, sneaky, sneaky big sister, and that's the independent woman. Not every independent woman is the independent woman I'm talking about, but this phenomenon is so common, it's worth mentioning. I'm no good girl. I go out and get what I want, so long as she does it all by herself, so long as she doesn't trouble anyone, right?

29:25She's the hyper-competent, super-productive. She's mastered the masculine as we know it. She's mastered all of it. She does everything. She is everyone, does not complain, is never helpless, but finds herself not only alone, but when surrounded by people, surrounded by people who need her and not people who feed her. She doesn't receive. She can't receive, right? She can't receive because we are in this mode of believing the John Wayne myth, the Lone Ranger, the self-made man. Hello, the self-made man does not exist. and men have a lot of invisible support structures that help them. Yeah, that is the point.

30:05Absolutely. Yeah. It's so much easier. It's so much easier for me to succeed. By the way, because of my wonderful ex-wife who dedicated her life for us, right? If she didn't, if she didn't, I would be nowhere. I wouldn't be able to carry the kids. I wouldn't be able to even reflect at night and ask about what happened during the day. And the world was built for me to succeed. That actually is the problem. Fix that and you fix the world. So what we really need is a woman that is able to do both, be independent when she wants to, be a good girl if she wants to, and in the middle of all of it, be supported and carried like she carries us, right?

30:46Is that what we're looking for? That's what we're looking for. To explore the landscape of that, though, some of the patterns and some of the more nuanced details of how this happens have to be mentioned. Because we live our lives, you know, when somebody says, oh, I just need to stand in my power. I just need to use my voice. That's kind of in the cultural atmosphere. And then when women don't, they turn on themselves. But nobody ever actually says, this is how you get to a place where you feel like you can use your voice. It's not waiting for the whole world to change and asking you, this is how I get to a place where I can use my voice.

31:21This is how I get to a place where I can stand in my power. Those words mean nothing unless there's a roadmap for how to get there or understanding what that means, how one day we can't and how one day we can, why we freeze, what to do when we freeze. What do you mean freeze? Oh, if you put a woman on the spot and ask her a question and intensify the attention on her and ask her another question, she will probably answer the question, explain or completely shut down and freeze. So even the structure of a lot of accidental sexual harassment, I'm saying accidental because sometimes a man will say something to a woman with no ill intention, but the effect will be that she feels incredibly diminished, harassed, and like silent.

32:01She doesn't feel like she has the power to say no. She doesn't feel like she wants to say yes. She's in this state where a thousand thoughts are spinning around in her mind and all she wants to do is in this situation and can't speak. So I'm going to talk about that in a second, how that happens, because how these things work and how to reclaim that. Address it, yeah, yeah, yeah. So there is a moment where it's important to be respectful to our ancestors. You know, these patterns that have been in place for all this time, they got created by the people who came before us for good reasons. They were responding to their times in the ways they knew best.

32:37The one aspect of that is that up until even very recently, if not now, if a woman, for example, is wearing a short skirt and she gets attacked, she's likely to be blamed for it. Definitely was the case for a lot of human history. So mothers would be like, watch yourself. Your skirt's too short. Watch yourself. Watch yourself. Not like, don't go there. Far more than you would police a boy. Of course. So over time, women have learned to internalize that self-policing. Am I too much? Am I too little? Am I making the right move? To address that first, a loving respect, turning around and looking at all those that came before us and saying, thank you, this was given in love.

33:17I am now reweaving the fabric with respect and honor to what came before. So what is now makes sense now. That self-policing quality is something that comes across as lack of confidence, but isn't lack of self-confidence or lack of love at all. It's an attention habits can be changed. So So just quickly, if you look at how a boy and a girl are treated, generally, right? Generally. Things are changing, but generally. We have Billy, we have Mary. When does Billy get his dose of attention, positive or negative, attention? Getting attention is the most important thing a kid can do. It's how they belong in the tribe.

33:58They know they'll survive. If they're invisible, that's when they feel like they're worthless and about to die. Their survival depends upon being in and getting attention is how they know they're in. So Billy, there'll be a tendency that Billy gets his head of attention when he does something. Look what Billy did. Billy scored a goal. Billy got into a fight. Billy built a fort. So the moment you give Billy the attention he needs to know that he exists in the tribe, his attention is out on what he did. His attention is out on the impact he had. So there's an association with attention out equals success.

34:33Attention out equals belonging. For Mary, look how lovely Mary is. Look at how lovely her demeanor is. Look at how cute she looks. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, or is Mary getting chubby, positive or negative? That dose of attention is still a sign of belonging. So the tendency will be in the most extreme situations, Billy will default under duress to having his attention out. whether it's in a state of blame or pointing to something he did right or pointing to how someone's argument is wrong. Mary, on the other hand, first, very quickly, it can be so subtle, defaults like, what did I do? What did I say?

35:12How was I being? And if you look at how we even talk about celebrities and politicians, it goes on and on. Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton was blamed for she is aggressive or she is this or she is that. Yes, yes, yes. And never mind the incredible accomplishments, whether you like her or not. Can't argue with the record. Exactly. Yeah, it was, is she likable or not? That was actually the question. Not what she did. It was if she was likable or not. That's so eye-opening. And the men, even celebrities, rulers, politicians, oh, that guy's kind of an ass, but boy, can he get shit done, right? Even if it hasn't gotten that much done.

35:55There you go. The doing and the being are radically separated. We are looking at how women are being and what men are doing. But Kasia, that blows my mind. Are you saying here, if there is science behind this, it would blow my mind even more. And I think we should put science behind it. Are you saying if we change the way we condition boys and girls so that it's balanced in terms of being and doing, we would end up with generations that are balanced in being and doing that. Girls actually are not inherently genetically, biologically biased to be more in inward focused. Well, here's the beautiful part.

36:36Anybody at any age can learn both states of attention. Correct. Anybody. Correct. We can take care of ourselves before we take care of our children. And in terms of women, the fix is simple. It's not easy, but it's simple. It's how we practice using our attention and conversation when we lead and when we follow. Okay, I want to hear that. I mentioned the crisis example of women freezing. I've done this and we have, as a school, conducted this experiment hundreds of times, hundreds of times. It's a very, very, very simple one. How do men respond? How do women respond when they are asked an uncomfortable question?

37:13Men, when an uncomfortable question, meaning attention is put on them in an uncomfortable way, their attention immediately goes out and they question the questioner. They question the legitimacy of the question. They go, why do you want to know? Oh, isn't that a funny question? Immediate deflection, immediate attention back. They put their attention out. We're just talking about an isolated moment in time that's rather small, but happens thousands and thousands of times over the course of life. What happens to a woman is she's asked an uncomfortable question. She goes in to find the answer and she gets stuck there because the default state of attention for women is inward.

37:48Let me show you this. Class of 600 women, and I've done this so many times, I tell them, I tell them all, I'm about to ask you a really uncomfortable, inappropriate question. I'm going to pick on a couple of you and I'm going to ask you a really uncomfortable, totally inappropriate question. Are you ready? Yes, we're ready. Okay. Your job is to not answer the question, but instead put your attention on me and ask me a question. Question my question, question my outfit question anything just in this first level of practice i asked the first woman do you like to give blow jobs she gets the mic depends on who and the whole class laughs oh yeah and she's like oh right right right right right okay next question next inappropriate total did being beautiful help you get your job well i don't know that i'm beautiful wow and then she catches herself and goes, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, uh, Kasia, uh, where did you get your shoes?

38:47Okay. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. We're getting somewhere. Third woman, a little clumsy. By the time I get to the fourth woman, she gets it, but she hits way too hard. I say, do you think children compromise your career? Who the hell do you think you are asking a question like that? That is completely inappropriate. I'm not going to answer it. And everybody goes, woohoo! But really, that's not the aim. The aim is for the person. And they get it. Fifth, sixth person. But it takes five, six people witnessing each other do it. She goes, are you taking a poll? So cool. What made you so curious about that?

39:24Like, hey, do you want to have a threesome? Are you looking for new experiences that you've never had before? Or is this something that you normally ask people you find attractive? or maybe a harder one. Do you think a coffee break at work is the appropriate moment for a question like this? What has your head here? Are you not doing your work? Are you bored? And then we start getting these answers that are softer. Some are sassy. Some are a little cutting. Some are really loving. Some are really, really loving and just the right touch for the situation. Like, are you looking for love? Are you trying to get married?

39:59If they're in that realm, like, huh, what makes you think that beauty has anything to do with it? Do you wonder about your handsomeness in your career? Then we teach the calibration, lightweight, heavyweight. But all we're doing, all we're doing is spending a moment to train a woman to not default into the inward state of attention when panicking and stay there. Because what happens is if she freezes. Everything goes wrong. Everything goes wrong. And what's even worse is afterwards, the self-policing that she learned from her ancestresses. Yes. She was like, I'm so stupid. Why didn't I stand up for myself?

40:35I knew the whole project needed to go in this direction. Now we're all going on the wrong direction. I don't know how to turn it around. I wanted that promotion or I didn't need that job or like, that's not how I met. Why can't I speak for myself? And then all of a sudden we're teaching our bodies to be even more scared, more silent, more scared, more silent and starting to see invisible enemies everywhere. Oh, that person asks me where I like to shop. Are they saying something about my clothes? Are they trying to buy me a gift? Are they hitting on me? or are they judging me, right? Instead of being like, why do you ask?

41:07Easy. Yeah, and it's those simple moments that crush us. It's those simple moments. And also what happens is in real situations where a man is behaving inappropriately, oftentimes he doesn't know it. An HR policy in the workplace or some big conversation about you shouldn't do this isn't going to help because that's not how people learn. Mo, if I tell you 20 things you need to do to come up, to behave like the perfect gentleman who is supportive of men and women's growth. If I tell you 20 things, you will forget them by the time this podcast is over. I love this because as a teacher, if I start saying things like, don't dress too feminine, don't dress too sexy, make sure you don't use upspeak, make sure that you say your sentences in the affirmative, make sure that five minutes later, they'll be doing it because human beings are designed to learn socially.

42:00And what we're missing in this is like real-time feedback, real-time feedback. Totally. That is also characterized by real curiosity. Curiosity is one of the best ways to get through conflict and come out with gold. I ran mega-sized businesses. I ran half of Google for seven, eight years, and then I ran Google X as a chief business officer. And very early in my career, I knew that the only way for me to be successful, actually because of a wonderful experience. We were in a training course, six macho men fighting it out, and one woman. And we would argue for hours. And then after an hour and a bit, Ola would say, but guys, you're missing this point.

42:45Our jaws would drop and we go like, how the F did we miss this? I mean, like, it's so obvious, but she sees the world so much better than us. And so I had the policy in my life that 50 % of my leadership, if I had 10 leaders reporting to me, five will be men, five will be women. And the challenge has been, I hired some of the smartest humans on the planet who were women. And when they would be asked in a meeting, they would freeze. I'm like, seriously, I know you. I know how you push me. I know how you twist my ideas. Speak up. You're brilliant. But they would freeze. And that's so interesting that you You put it down to conditioning.

43:25So the other thing that kills me is this is where sexual harassment happens. This is where a woman gets pushed into corners that are me too like. And that's absolutely horrendous that because of such a simple skill, we're unable to turn the conversation around and take our power. Yes, yes, yes. So a lot of people ask me, why are you working with women? Why aren't you teaching the men? And I'm like, if I teach the women well, they will teach the men what they need to know as well. I know. You get the goods if you do the work. So what we studied also was woman in a meeting syndrome. Human beings are still animals, whether we like to admit it or not.

44:04And one of the greatest things I learned from dog training, from a dog training, was that you actually tell the animal. if the animal doesn't think anyone's in charge, the animal will run around freaking out, being like, how do I get this pack protected, water, you know, all that stuff. And the way you tell the animal someone's in charge is with your attention. But not with words. Not with words. Not with words. Yeah. So this, okay, so we studied women in a meeting syndrome. And this is not the blaming of women. We're just talking about what happens and looking at one of the ways that this can be solved.

44:41a woman speaking her beautiful ideas in a meeting will have a tendency to speak it in the surrendered state in the i state so i think and i feel that maybe this would be a good idea you even take the qualifiers away but she feels like an individual person and what happens is in a bdsm session when somebody shifts from a dominant state to a submissive state you can see it in the body In a meeting, you can also see it in the body. So she's speaking, but she's surrounded by a bunch of dominant energy that's looking at her. She says an idea, and it doesn't land in their bodies as a dominant message.

45:23So everybody feels the itch, and you see what happens. People are feeling uncomfortable in their seats. She's spoken. It's not just sexism. Those sexism exist. And then a man who's going to naturally state things in the dominant sense repeats what she said. And we've studied this enough to be able to prove that it's not that he's a man. It's that he puts his attention out on the whole room and informs the room that this is where we're going and then waits for the arguments, right? But in the moment that he puts his attention on the whole room speaking to the collective, he's assuming the dominant position.

45:57And in that moment, everybody's body shifts into a receptive state of listening and receiving. So even if they argue it, they receive it first and they know he had that idea. Whereas in the memory, she saying at first starts to disappear very quickly because it sounded like she was talking to herself. So we started training women to be able to experiment with speaking to the body of the room. And not lots of rules about, you don't need to say, I was thinking maybe just perhaps we could try. We don't even bother with that language because naturally when you're speaking out and looking at the group as they're the body collective that you're right now leading, even if you're just making a suggestion and saying, how about we take it this way?

46:38All of a sudden, everyone hears and flags that person gave that idea in that moment of leadership in a collective. So there was this tech job site. I know you might've heard of this, but this website that was tech jobs posted for men and women alike. But when the founders of this site started noticing that women were asking for way less money than men. So they had this beautiful idea. We're gonna solve the problem. Engineer brain solves the problem in an engineer way. We're gonna start posting graphs of exactly who's asking for how much or what is the average salary. What happened was men started asking for even more and women started asking for even less.

47:18Of course. This is not a mind job. And it's not that women don't love themselves. It's the conditioning. So I want to get to the next part of the conditioning because freezing is just the thing that you can be aware of and speaking in a dominant way, having your attention out, watching the signals of the room, speaking into other people's bodies is something that you can use in those situations and circumstances. However, there's more to it. The independent woman is doing everything herself and not asking for support because she doesn't want to seem needy. She doesn't want to compromise her independence.

47:46Women struggle with asking because they fear being either bossy or needy. Where does bossy come from? As you look at bossy or needy, what you're actually talking about is a difficulty with fully occupying the dominant state. Because if you're occupying the dominant state and saying, this is what we're doing, guys, it doesn't sound bossy. It's just being boss. And if you occupy the submissive state, it's no longer needy. It's someone who's exposing the needs, dreams, desires they have with their attention totally on what it would get for them, how they would feel. You know what would make me feel so good right now is if you brought me a glass of wine, you brought me a glass of water, right?

48:30Like no bossy, no needy. It's this, when we do the exercises in the school, when they first attempt dominant attention and they stand up and they're working with a male partner, the first thing they want to do is go down to eye level. I'm not bigger than you. I'm not in charge. And when they get down on their knees to look up at the man, they could kill him with their eyes. I'm not lower than you. I'm not lower than you. And so this facility and comfort with being able to express from both sides ends up creating energetically seamless exchanges that are deeply connected and generative. What we bump up against is there's a prohibition against desire and asking for things.

49:09Back to good girl conditioning in woman land. In woman land of the yester year, up until five minutes ago, a woman who had a lot of needs, a lot of desires. Even today, women are like, ah, no big deal. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I don't need it. I'm low maintenance. I'm really low maintenance. There's no human in the world, especially not a woman that's low maintenance. And being high maintenance, having higher visions, having needs, you know, the story I hear from people in the corporate world all the time is that a very successful woman will tend to not ask for all the staff she needs, all the time she needs, all the research, she will try to do more with less.

49:46Whereas a man will tend to. Totally. He knows that his job is to do. Over-ask. They will over-ask. I ran businesses for years. The men will over-ask. They'll build hierarchies. They'll build empires. And the women will just say, no, no, I can handle this. If I can handle three kids and their father and do 16 things at the same time, I can surely do that too. And what happens is over the years, the resentment starts to grow. And between men and women, the people who we love and work with grows and the unspoken grows. There's so much unspoken that it starts to choke us alive. So Kasia, give me practical advice.

50:26Give me as a man practical advice of how can I empower a woman to actually play that role. You're absolutely right. After I learned from you, watching all of your work and listening to you now, I realize I'm actually typically dominant. I'm typically talking about what needs to be done. I don't even question in my mind when I told my teams were going left. It sounded like we are going left. This is not an argument. I typically am. And probably in my relationships with a woman, I would probably be doing the same. It's like, you know, I'm in charge here. I'm going to do things. So how do I enable a woman to actually play the other role?

51:01That's question number one. Question number two is, you're absolutely right. Women, they freeze. They don't ask. They don't. What do we tell them? What should they do? Other than if you're asked the question, answer with a question or convert the attention outwards. What can a woman do? So give us two practical tips here. All of a sudden, 15 different exercises are flooding into my brain. We have time. I have all the time in the world, honestly. But let's give people something that they can do today. The advice for men. would be to, especially professionally, but personally to ask a woman if she has everything she needs in order to do what it is that she's doing.

51:43Then stop her from answering and tell her to think about it and return. And then when she returns, ask her if that's really all that she needs. Like really be consciously aware that she will try to do more with less, which can be great. It can be efficient. It can be effective. And the corresponding thing for women is I would recommend that all women do one day invisible labor log, meaning just devote one day. Oh, I love that. With really precise attention, how I spent this hour, how I spent this hour, how I spent this hour, but logging thoughts on behalf of others, like solving others' problems, figuring things out, making things work for others in a way they never see, in a way they never reciprocate, in a way they can't even say thank you for it because they just assume that's part of the air or part of your being.

52:30all the feelings that you work out the emotional problems how you work around other people's temperaments and all of the actual things you do that's not directly the things that you're paid for that are the things that these things are really really beautiful the acts of service the thing is if they're unconscious you can't pour your heart into it and if you can pour your heart into it you don't need the reward of another person giving you applause but if you feel any edge of, I bet they would do this for me if I needed it. If there's any edge of, why am I always the one bringing the coffee? Because once they log it, some women find that they spend 70 % of their day living for other people.

53:13Totally. And that can be beautiful, but where there is no awareness, there is no choice. Where there is no awareness, there is no choice. So if they're enslaved to good girl conditioning and doing these things, when they see what they're doing, they may choose to continue, they may choose to stop. They may choose to be financially compensated or acknowledged in any way that they want, but seeing it comes first. The next thing they can do is make a list and be like, these are the things I no longer want to do. Then they can decide, do I want to inform people that I'm no longer doing this or do I want to stop doing the dishes and see what happened?

53:47Do I want to ask someone, right? And then we have like a whole curriculum for how to make an irresistible, compelling ask that no one can say no to. Do I want to ask someone to take this on. Do I want to continue doing this, but get acknowledged for it? Is this something that I need to have seen? Because sometimes invisible labor can stay invisible so long as it's not invisible to us. And other times it's absolutely appropriate to be paid for it. So then we're talking about two things that are difficult for women, asking and talking about money. Oh yeah. We have curriculum for it, right? The day-to-day simple thing to do is to start noticing when a woman goes inward to self-attack or blame, in that moment, turn your attention out to the person that you're having a conversation with and ask a question just to flip the attention so that there's that back and forth.

54:36Here's another one. One really fun thing we do at the academy is we train women to be absolutely in love with hearing the word no. What happens for women is because our state of attention so quickly goes inward, if we are asking for something important or mean something to us, and we get resistance on the other side, we get a no, we make it mean that we just got told no. The energy goes directly to us. So we feel like not just no, you can't have a new desk, but no, you don't deserve to ask and no, you don't deserve to exist. Wow. You can even see it in the phrasing. Can I ask you a question? Is it okay if I ask you a question?

55:20It's a meta question, looking for permission to ask with the request itself. We play really fun games with having women hear no over and over and over again. And here's the thing about no. Here's the thing about resistance. When you make a request of someone, when you tell them that you want something or you command them to do something, resistance is precious because most people most of the time don't say no to be jerks. They say no because something came up that threatened something important to them. Gold, gold. You're a mind reader, aren't you? It's like they just give me a clue and I now can control them forever.

56:02I can tell them exactly what to do. I know what matters to them. I know what's important to them. By the way, I'm so sorry to say, I understand that as a businessman. That's exactly what I want. I want my customer to tell me no. Because when they say no, I know what matters. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And it doesn't stop at business. It moves to love. Absolutely. So the moment somebody says no, here's the art. Get curious. Get curious. My students will often go, the first question out of their mouth is, why not? I was like, that's not curiosity. That's badgering. That's trying to break the resistance with a hammer of question.

56:38No, get curious. Get around the resistance to find out what matters to them. Because if you're asking about something that matters to you, and there's something on the other side that matters to them, the no is most often an illusion of conflict. If I know what you care about right now, what's being threatened, and I know what I care about because I came to you with it, those two things, those two living impulses, when they meet in a conversation, when they truly meet in a conversation, that's when synergy is possible. That's when a new idea that's better than either of the two ideas starts to form.

57:13That is the magic of human connection, something being greater than the sum of its parts. It's gotten to the point where my, when my students get a yes, they're a little bit disappointed. Oh, come on. Yeah. I mean, just a little dungeon metaphor. If I have a session where for 90 minutes, I say, kneel, man kneels. I say, stand up, stands up, go over to the window. Make a fool of yourself at the window. And he does everything perfectly. It's the most boring session on earth. I have to find, I have to find his resistance. You are a little bit slow there. Are you being slow in order to get my attention?

57:49Do you want to get punished? Are you being slow because you enjoy taking your time? Is that the kind of pleasure you're here for? Because if that's the kind of pleasure you're here for, You can go over there and please yourself and they don't blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the point is the resistance is gold. So for any woman who wants to inoculate herself against no, I think actually on our website, we have tons of resources on our website where some of these exercises, you can run with a girlfriend. You can read about it. Try it out yourself. I know. I loved, I loved the legitimacy test.

58:26Let's not tell them about it. everyone listening to this, go to the website, watch the legitimacy test. I think it will change your life. Keep going. So when a woman is inoculated against no and like wants to get no, so she learns more about the people in her life and starts creating synergy, the legitimacy of her desire starts to amplify because again, the good girl conditioning, don't want anything, don't need anything. Then you ask a woman, what do you want? Suddenly she feels all this hyper masculine production oriented pressure to identify a measurable result of goal that she can reach that if she reaches, then she'll start feeling good.

58:59Instead of accessing the thing that takes a little more time, takes a little more space, accessing the voice and feeling inside of her that is the voice of her desire, that is the thing that is a seed that will grow and then have fruits and more seeds and reproduce itself. You cannot, if you set desire and goal in a race against each other, desire goes on for infinity. The results of following your desire go on for infinity. The goal is a premature ejaculation, one-shot deal. I get there, I get to have this, and now what? It's not the best way of walking through the world, and it's part of the reason why we have a world with so much stuff, quantity, right, but so little quality.

59:37Totally. So moving from the production to the creative has a lot to do with moving from what we call the masculine to the feminine or moving from end result to the living voice of desire within us. So asking becomes a whole new thing when desire is accessed. Because if you feel in a full-bodied way, even if it's something like not wanting to pick up the kids from school anymore or wanting a raise, wanting a better position, if that exists as a desire in a full-bodied way, what you're also present to is how getting this will light you up, light up your life, light up the people around you, the impact it's going to have on everyone else.

1:00:21it becomes a vision and when you're a visionary even if you're just asking the kids to get picked up the way that request is going to land in the body of the other person is not oh god this is such a burden or oh why is she asking me to do more or why is she asking for more what it's going to occur as is an opportunity totally and then when resistance comes up we get curious about it we connect with the other piece the other piece is their living impulse and it can be something dumb like vanity. They can be like, I'm worried that if I do this stuff, I won't look like a man or that I'm treating you, giving you a raise, treating you special.

1:00:57Okay. But you can speak to that. You can ask questions. What would it look like if everyone felt special? There's just a whole world of possibility there that wouldn't exist otherwise. What we're really talking about is creating the kinds of communications where we can have conflict without violence. We can have creative, we really look for the points where the friction is. Friction creates life, even in sex, right? And have peace among people, but without conformity. I love this image, this image of this woman, the first woman who came into her boss's office and said, you know what? I'm pregnant and I want to keep my job.

1:01:35And I want you to pay me while I stay at home with the baby and while I give birth. And I want you to pay me while I spend the first year with my baby. And then when I'm ready, I want to come back to work and resume the job I had at the same pay. How's that sound? Well, when you say it like that, it sounds absolutely insane. And this woman who was like, I have this desire. It's outrageous. I'm speaking it. And now we have maternity leave. The politicians run on those platforms. In some countries, we have paternity leave. And it turns out that this one woman's very, very outrageous desire, spoken, changed the course of humanity.

1:02:18We have children who are being better raised by their primary parents because they get some time off. Suddenly, it's a benefit to all society for this woman who might have thought of herself as greedy, as selfish, as one who wants too much. Make up your mind, woman. Are you a mother? Are you a worker? Come on. and she paved the way for so many people. And I just, I love imagining how she must've been like, this is going to sound nuts. I'm probably going to get fired. This is crazy. I'm going to do it anyway. I'm going to do it anyway. You know, the thought experiment I always ran with my team was I was saying, okay, so why don't you get your husband to ask for that?

1:02:54And believe it or not, when they put themselves in that position, they'll go like, yeah, he will walk in and say, look, I deserve this, this, this, and that. And right away he will put himself in the dominant position. And I love this conversation because I also pay a lot of attention like you. I really, really dig deep into what people's signs and body language and reactions and so on. And the most interesting side of this is when a man came into my office and asked for something outrageous, it didn't even cross his mind that it was outrageous. To him, it was like, yeah, of course, I want a million dollars.

1:03:27As a matter of fact, I ran a startup at one time. And, you know, we went through a bit of a difficult time. And so we asked people, how do we compensate you for this? And women were saying, oh, thank you so much for asking. Men were saying, I think you should double the shares you gave us at the beginning. And it is that extreme. And when you talk about it, I have to ask you a very, very important question, actually, on the topic of desire. There is so much conditioning to a woman that being a good girl is about suppressing your desires. There is so much, especially in the Middle East where I come from, where sexuality is totally taboo, right?

1:04:07So the culture, the religion, and so on and so forth would basically say, you're never going to touch a man until you're married. And so what parents do is they say, by the way, sex is bad. And the reversal of that to tell a woman, hey, by the way, it's your desire. It's what you feel. It's how you are made biologically. And it's absolutely okay to open up to this. By the way, this is not just the Middle East. As a matter of fact, around the world, you meet so many women that are not in touch because they think there is something wrong there. How do we tell a woman that what you desire is you?

1:04:40It's basically listen to it. It's your either body or your emotions or your something is telling you I want this. It's like I want coffee in the morning. I wake up and my body is telling me I want coffee in the morning. How do we change that mindset? The simplest thing I can say to that is what I say to my students. the beginning of the journey. It starts with a simple sentence and this goes for erotic desire. This goes for creative desire, even things that could be goals like professionals. We use the language of desire around them to bring these things closer to the body because addressing sexuality is so important because it ends up spilling over into things that we never think are sexual.

1:05:19So this is the sentence that begins a woman's journey of reclamation in regard to desire. You have no say in what you want. You have no say in what you want. You don't make it. You don't sit there and go, I want to desire X, Y, and Z. You have no say in what you want. You didn't make it. It comes through you. It doesn't even come from you. It comes through you. And imagine that for a moment, thought experiment. that women, just women for now, as creatrixes of life biologically, imagine for a second that the desires coming through have a universal intelligence. A woman wants pickles and ice cream when she's pregnant.

1:06:14This ability to be able to tap your inner barometer and lead from there has a beautiful way of being connected to all of life and all of nature. When we are allowing the deepest, most embodied parts of ourselves to be the signals we read, we are in touch with the whole universe. Now, you have no say in what you want. You do have a say in whether you acknowledge that that signal came up for you, because in some cultures it can be extremely problematic. In some situations it can be extremely... Desire can be a big... It can drag you out of marriages. It can make your life very inconvenient, make you quit a job to be a watercolor painter on the sidewalk.

1:06:52You have no say in what you want. You do have a say in whether you allow yourself to see it or not. And then you get to choose how to play with it. Then you get to choose. Then you get to choose. And there's nothing wrong with saying, I have this desire and currently no way. But I'm not going to act on it. Yeah, I'm not going to act on it, right? This also gives time because a lot of times desire will have a lot of unalchemized energy attached to it. So like anger will come up. Anger is very useful, but not in its first or second stage. First stage is sleepy anger, resignation, tiredness. Second is reckless chaos, destruction.

1:07:26Third is passion and clarity. We very rarely get to the third stage. So we take the time to notice what the desire is. And oftentimes it's much bigger than we think it is. Much, much bigger. And it connects to much bigger things. I had an incredible, incredible situation with a woman who couldn't stop talking about how frustrated she was that her husband wouldn't pick up the socks when we went deep into what the desire was oh this is the other fun thing if you ever hear someone complain desire always hides a complaint i mean complaint always hides a desire yeah yeah yeah so so if you're complaining ask yourself what's the desire if someone else is complaining ask themselves what are they actually asking for anyway socks turns out that in unpacking that conversation about socks she went to want better communication okay but what does that mean The more we went into it, the more she realized she wants both of them to quit their jobs and be teachers on the road.

1:08:23Wow. Yeah, and I was just like, it started with socks. It started with that complaint. And what came out was this desire to be a duo in the public eye, in an activist space, speaking for and leading as a married couple, as a married couple. Whoa. Whoa. Right? And so good we didn't leave it about the socks. I don't know what to say. You are freaking awesome. Like I totally am mind blown. This is a wonderful conversation. I want to talk about Unbound because every single one of you listening, you heard Kasia speak. You can imagine what her class is like. I actually visited her website. Why don't you allow men to attend?

1:09:07I want to attend. I mean, it's Zoom and everything. I can attend. What's wrong with that? We are actually currently working on designing our male alliance, allyship. So we are now sorting out how to have men in these classes in a space with their right. This is absolute brilliant, Kasia, because I will tell you this. In my career at Google, there was that group that was called Women at Google. I'm very, very passionate about the topic, I do not exaggerate when I tell you what will save our planet is the feminine. I always say the feminine, the feminine takes a lead because we're screwing the planet because we're hypermasculine now.

1:09:47So I asked and I said, can I attend because it's called women at Google? And we were in that session and I have to say, I'm not shy. I speak, right? I sat in that session and I sat in, you know, three rows from the back, not in the front row. I was a very senior VP at the time. And I just sat quiet. And there was one other gentleman, a developer of African-American origin, so a software developer. And he was sitting there and I was sitting there and we were totally on mute, not opening our mouths, until one of my team, a fabulous woman called Emily Ma, Emily basically said in the middle of the meeting, she said, we have two gentlemen in the back.

1:10:29maybe we should ask their opinion on this. So I first said, well, I have to say, you're losing a lot of firepower because there are so many of us men that are very passionate about this, but you're sort of pushing us back by saying it's women only. And the African-American gentleman said, and yeah, by the way, I understand what it's like not to get my fair equal rights. And so if we can actually be allowed into this. And in a way, what I'm trying to say is, everything you said today, believe it or not, as I listened attentively, applies to men exactly as it applies to women. The idea of attention out and attention in and, you know, the whole idea of playing the roles and so on.

1:11:11But I also think there is a lot of couples work. It's like someone and her boss and someone and her partner, right? There is a lot that needs to be taught to the men to understand that it's good for all of us to allow this to happen. And, you know, in a way, Anyway, when you're ready, I'm attending. I'm sitting in the first row. Okay? The school is founded by me and my business partner, Ruben Flores, who is a man. And it started because I started sharing with him what I understood about power dynamics by being in dungeons and in spiritual. He worked for 10 years for Doctors Without Borders in war zones, where he had to negotiate borders without being able to speak a common language.

1:11:53and the fact that the academy started with a man and a woman was really really really potent and helpful we in our live classes always had live had male volunteers now we're in the switching from live classes to zoom like we've always always always had not just men but the right place at the right time so that there could be a woman only session where women feel really safe to talk about how they work. I understand that. I totally understand that. Yeah. And then bring men in at the right time for the right role. We're just now figuring out how to do it on Zoom, which is why we're developing this male allies program.

1:12:34I'm on the front row. Awesome. Awesome. You are absolutely freaking awesome. I have rarely ever enjoyed the conversation as much. I have to say, so eye-opening, so balanced, so grounded, and so important. I am so grateful that you came. Thank you so, so much. It's been such a pleasure speaking with you. That was a fascinating conversation. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I learned so much. I was blown away by many of those thoughts that appear to be simple but are quite profound. and I surely intend to be friends with Kasia, if she lets me, for quite a long time to come. To get to attend Kasia's training on November 24th for free and save yourself$750, order Kasia's upcoming book, Unbound.

1:13:35To find more details, just go to kashaurbanyak.com slash good-girl-reform-school or just go to kashaurbanyag.com and scroll down to the bottom of the page and you'll find it over there. Find me on social media and let me know what you think about the conversations that we're hosting here. I am mo underscore gaudet on Instagram, mo gaudet on LinkedIn, mgaudat on Twitter and mo.gaudat.official on Facebook. Please help me out and rate this podcast five stars if you're using Apple Podcasts. Tell your friends about it, spread the message, and make everyone benefit from this new initiative that I believe has been reaching thousands and thousands and thousands with inspiring messages that have the power to change life from some of my wisest friends.

1:14:41I know you have a million and a half things to do in your daily life, but remember, there's always a little bit of time to slow down.