0:00

In case you're just recently joining us, or

0:02

however long you've been a listener of the show. You

0:04

may not realize that we have years

0:06

and years of incredible episodes in our archive.

0:09

We've had so many wonderful guests that

0:12

we've decided to hand pick one of our favorites

0:14

that may be new to you, but if not,

0:16

it is definitely worth another lesson. We

0:19

hope you'll enjoy this episode with Tara

0:21

Moore. Just stop even asking yourself

0:23

the question are you ready? It's kind of the wrong

0:25

question. The question is what

0:28

do I feel called to do? And what information

0:30

is life giving me about what I'm ready for? Welcome

0:41

to the one you feed throughout time.

0:44

Great tinkers have recognized the importance

0:46

of the thoughts we have, quotes like

0:48

garbage in, garbage out, or you

0:50

are what you think ring true. And

0:53

yet for many of us, our thoughts don't

0:55

strengthen or empower us. We

0:57

tend toward negativity, self pity,

1:00

jealousy, or fear. We see

1:02

what we don't have instead of what we do.

1:05

We think things that hold us back and dampen

1:07

our spirit. But it's not just about

1:10

thinking our actions matter. It

1:12

takes conscious consistent and creative

1:14

effort to make a life worth living. This

1:17

podcast is about how other people keep themselves

1:19

moving in the right direction, how they

1:21

feed their good wolf. Thanks

1:36

for joining us. Our guest on this episode

1:39

is Tara More, an expert on women's

1:41

leadership and well being. She helps

1:43

women play Bigger in sharing their voices

1:45

and bringing forward their ideas and work and

1:48

in life. Tara is the author of Playing

1:50

Big, Practical Wisdom for women

1:53

who want to speak up, create and

1:55

lead. Her book was named best Book

1:57

of the Year by Apple's Eyebooks and is now

1:59

available in paperback. Hi, Tara,

2:01

Welcome to the show. Thanks, thanks so much for having

2:03

me. I'm happy to have you on. You have a

2:05

book called Plane Big, which

2:08

is just released in paperback recently

2:10

and has been very successful. And it's

2:12

really about being willing to live in a

2:15

larger space than we have before and

2:17

and the book is primarily directed

2:19

towards women. Most of your coaching is done with

2:22

women. But as I was reading it, I saw

2:24

parallels with all sorts of things we talked

2:26

to on the show, and so I'm excited to

2:28

get into it a little bit more. I'm so

2:30

excited to be here and yes, we here

2:33

from a lot of men who have read the book. I think the

2:35

ideas are applicable to everyone.

2:38

I've focused a lot of my work on helping

2:41

women, but the concepts

2:43

are certainly universal. Absolutely.

2:46

We'll get into the book a little bit more in a minute,

2:48

but let's start like we always do, with the parable.

2:51

There is a grandmother who

2:53

is talking with her granddaughter and she says, in

2:56

life, there are two wolves inside of us that

2:58

are always at battle. One is a

3:00

good wolf, which represents things like kindness

3:02

and bravery and love, and

3:04

the other is a bad wolf, which represents things

3:07

like greed and hatred and fear. And

3:09

the granddaughter stops and she thinks about

3:11

it for a second, and she looks up at her grandmother. She says,

3:14

well, grandmother, which one wins? And

3:16

the grandmother says, the one you feed.

3:19

So I'd like to start off by asking you what

3:21

that paraul means to you in your life and

3:24

in the work that you do. I love the paraball

3:27

and it reminded me of a blog

3:30

post I wrote years ago called

3:33

what are you Pouring in? What are

3:35

you pouring into your day? What are you pouring

3:37

into your life? And

3:40

the post was really about me remembering

3:43

that in order to feel good

3:45

in my life and in order to show

3:48

up in my relationships the way I want to,

3:50

in order to feel like I'm doing my

3:52

best in my work, I

3:55

can't just kind of live blank

3:57

slade hoping that that will happen. I have to

4:00

pour a lot of inputs into

4:02

my life that let me do that. And for

4:04

me, that's writing, it's

4:07

prayer, it's uh

4:10

doing lots of creative things.

4:12

It's certain kind of reflective

4:14

practices where I'm checking in with myself against

4:17

my goals and what feels

4:19

and integrity to me. Um.

4:22

And I think, you know, I think, to me, this is what the

4:24

whole personal growth world is about. It's

4:26

about saying, hey, there's so

4:28

much flexibility in who

4:31

we become and how life can shape us.

4:33

And we have a tremendous amount of power

4:36

in terms of what we do each day and where we focus

4:38

our attention. Um, that affects

4:40

who we become and therefore

4:43

how we impact our world and

4:45

the people around us. I really like that idea

4:47

of what you pour in. I mean, for me, the parable

4:50

a lot of it was really very much that idea

4:52

that it's so easy to go on autopilot

4:55

and just sort of coast through our days, or I mean,

4:57

coast isn't even the right word right where a lot of us are

4:59

scrambling, but we're not,

5:01

at least for myself, I'm not stopping and

5:04

making sure I'm putting good inputs

5:06

into my life, that I'm that I'm doing the things

5:09

that matter, that I'm consistent, and just

5:11

that I'm really being thoughtful and conscious

5:14

about about what I do. Yeah. And then

5:16

the other piece is I think it's such a relevant

5:18

parable in our

5:21

social realm and our communal realm too,

5:23

because it's not only what wolf

5:25

do you feed in yourself that matters, but

5:29

what are you feeding in others?

5:31

And recognizing

5:34

that when we encounter people

5:36

who seem like they're acting like a bad

5:38

wolf, probably it's

5:41

because what

5:43

has been fed in their environment

5:46

is the bad wolf, and having some

5:48

wisdom and compassion around that. I

5:51

had such a classic example of that the

5:53

other day. So I was at work and there

5:55

was somebody there who started working there a

5:57

few months ago, and and I just was up

6:00

till up till yesterday. I've been like, well, they're just they

6:02

seem kind of aloof and you know,

6:04

kind of stuck up there just you know, they're just don't

6:06

they just don't seem very friendly. And

6:08

then I saw the person and the thought

6:11

occurred to me. I'm glad the thought occurred to me before

6:13

what's about to happen next, because I at least I'm not

6:15

completely ashamed. But I saw the person

6:17

and I thought, maybe they're just sad.

6:21

And and then so that was very strange because

6:23

I hadn't had that thought about this person before. And then about an

6:25

hour and a half later, I was sitting there and

6:27

this person came up and sat down not

6:30

too far from me, next to somebody else, and started

6:32

telling this person, I mean I couldn't help but over here

6:35

about problems in their relationship and how

6:37

heavy it's been weighing on them. And it was just another

6:40

reminder to me of like, I'm

6:42

judging somebody without knowing anything

6:44

about it. And you know, if you go in with the intention

6:46

of there probably a good person who's either

6:49

shy like you are, or uncomfortable or something's

6:51

wrong. I'm always pleasantly

6:53

surprised by people. Yes, yeah, And

6:55

then you notice things because you're you're asking

6:57

that question and looking at in that way. You

6:59

see something that you wouldn't pick up on if

7:01

you were caught up in your own story and your own

7:03

projections exactly. So

7:06

a lot of what you focus on, particularly

7:08

early in the book is the

7:10

voices that happen inside of us

7:12

um. I often think that another,

7:15

you know, great way to think of the parable

7:17

for me is that the positive

7:19

voices in my head are the good wolf, and all those negative

7:22

voices are my bad wolf. Now you refer to

7:24

them as our inner critic and

7:26

our inner mentor can you

7:28

tell me a little bit more about the inner critic.

7:31

I think we all probably know this person pretty

7:33

well in our heads, but it's be helpful

7:35

if you could elaborate, right and well, it's interesting

7:37

because of course we all know that we have an inner

7:40

critic, and we know we have these certain self doubts,

7:42

but we actually don't typically

7:45

in our culture, really pull the camera

7:47

lens back and take some time to look at

7:49

what is that voice. And we don't have

7:51

a very good collective understanding

7:54

of what I call inner critic one on one, which

7:56

I think every human being needs. So

7:58

the basic idea is in critic is the voice

8:01

in your head that's saying

8:03

things to you about yourself talking

8:05

to you about yourself in a way that you wouldn't intend

8:08

to talk to someone that you really love.

8:11

And there's a lot of common qualities

8:14

of the inner critic voice that can help

8:16

us start to recognize it.

8:19

It tends to be a very black and white thinker,

8:21

so thinks about things in very binary

8:23

terms. The inner critic doesn't usually see

8:25

the gray in us or the complexity

8:28

of any situations. You're going to be horrible

8:30

at that. You're gonna make a fool of yourself, you're not qualified

8:32

for that. Um. It tends to be

8:34

very repetitive and have kind of

8:36

a broken record quality.

8:39

It's the voice for many of us. It's the

8:41

voice of you're not ready yet, which can

8:43

sound like a very rational, even

8:46

an evolved inner

8:48

personal growth savvy person's

8:51

version of the inner critic. And

8:53

then it shows up an interesting gendered

8:55

ways too. For women, it will

8:57

speak up more around the things that are

9:00

associated with masculinity in our culture.

9:02

So you're not good at math, you're not good at

9:04

negotiating, um, you're not good at technical

9:07

stuff or scientific stuff.

9:09

For men, interestingly, the research

9:11

suggests it shows up more like, well, you're not good

9:13

at that, emotional stuff. You're not good at things that

9:15

are about communication if

9:17

you look at the population as a whole um.

9:21

And and my philosophy is

9:23

not that we need

9:26

to overcome

9:28

having an inner critic or move

9:31

beyond having self doubt. There's

9:33

so much encouraging us to become more confident,

9:36

and I don't think that that's actionable advice.

9:39

You say, don't argue with the inner critic, right,

9:41

Don't argue with the inner critic, because that will

9:44

Actually, the inner critic

9:46

voice is like one

9:49

of those people in your life that loves

9:51

to get you caught up in the argument. And

9:54

if you get into an argument with them, you

9:56

know, you start to get kind of you lose track of

9:58

what you're arguing about, and you it's a ton

10:00

of time and you just feel horrible after. That's

10:02

how it is to argue with your inner critic, because

10:06

your inner critic is an expression

10:08

of a manifestation of your safety

10:10

instinct. So the part of you that never

10:13

wants to fail, never wants

10:15

to risk criticism, doesn't want to

10:17

stand out from the crowd. That part

10:19

of you has to figure out its best

10:21

strategy to keep you in your comfort

10:24

zone and keep you in the status quo

10:27

and raising its hand and saying, Hi, please

10:29

stay in the status quo. You would just say no

10:31

to that, and so it uses a more

10:33

sophisticated argument like you're about

10:35

to make a fool of yourself. You're not qualified

10:37

for that. That's the kind of argument that's

10:39

likely to scare us into staying stock. So

10:42

since that's the cause of it, if we argue

10:44

with it, it just keeps coming up with a new line,

10:47

a new line, new line. It doesn't care what's true,

10:49

what's not true. It'll just try and keep us

10:51

distracted in the argument.

10:54

So I believe we have to learn to witness

10:56

the voice and get comfortable with it, but not take

10:58

direction from it. So is that basically

11:01

the heart of how to how to

11:03

deal with it? Because you also say

11:05

it's not about learning to be more confident, but

11:07

coming into a new relationship with our self

11:09

doubts. So is that new relationship

11:11

with our self doubt sort of? H I recognize

11:14

it's there, Thanks for the input,

11:16

but this is what we're gonna do. Yes, and

11:19

knowing that it's going to speak up most

11:21

loudly and most vocally when

11:24

you are on your right track in your life.

11:26

Because that's when you feel the most vulnerable,

11:28

when you're sharing your gifts, when you're speaking

11:31

up about something you're passionate about, when you're

11:33

following a calling. So it's

11:35

a practice of one getting familiar enough

11:37

with your inner critics so you know when it's talking,

11:40

which is really hard because it sounds really

11:42

like the voice of reason when it's talking to

11:44

each of us, and then naming it and

11:46

noticing it. And there's some other fun

11:48

tools you can use, like creating a character

11:50

that personifies it, or envisioning

11:53

it leaving the realm. Those can be nice

11:55

add ons. But the basis is I'm

11:58

able to recognize it and sure order in shorter

12:00

time frames, name it for what it is, and

12:03

then have a process where I can

12:05

take direction from another part of myself,

12:07

which gives us to the good wealth, not from this

12:10

part. So before we go into um

12:13

your inner mentor another question

12:15

about the inner critics. So the inner

12:17

critic that we're talking about in this

12:20

at least as as we're describing it, tends to be very

12:22

rational. You know, you're just not really good

12:24

at that, You're not, But is this the same

12:27

voice that can also be very harsh, can

12:29

be you know, people have body image issues.

12:32

Is that all the same source

12:34

or or do those things diverge at a certain point,

12:36

because you said that the inner critic is not pathological,

12:39

and I don't believe it's pathological in

12:41

the sense that we don't need to find

12:43

a bad experience we had in childhood

12:46

to explain why we have self

12:48

doubt. Having worked now with like people

12:50

all around the world, all different levels of success,

12:53

ages, gender, it's universal

12:56

and it shows up when

12:58

we're at the edge of our comfort

13:00

zone or some some possible

13:03

form of vulnerability, the kind

13:05

that the good wolf would like us

13:07

to risk so that we can get some fulfillment.

13:10

But yeah, I would say that the inner critic can,

13:12

you know, take on a lot of different forms. But like

13:15

for me, it was the same voice that saying, no,

13:17

Tarre, you cannot go on that television show

13:19

until you lose ten pounds or

13:21

you're gonna you know, it's gonna be just excruciating

13:25

to watch yourself, And that that might be the

13:27

same voice that, in a much more sophisticated tone,

13:29

is saying, you know, why don't you wait three

13:31

more months before submitting an article to that

13:34

publication. It would probably be better if you

13:36

could add this and this credential when you write

13:38

the email same thing. It's just like, please

13:40

don't let me ever be criticized or fail. It's

13:42

really when that voice is saying underneath

13:47

m h

14:00

m hm m

14:03

m m.

14:13

So let's talk about the inner mentor then,

14:15

So this is sort of back to the analogy. This

14:17

is the good Wolf. Yes, So

14:19

the inner Mentor. It's one of

14:21

my favorite things to talk about because I can

14:23

honestly say that

14:26

I have watched it be life

14:30

changing as a as a tool,

14:32

as a presence in people's lives for

14:34

thousands of people, and I don't know

14:36

anything that as

14:39

easily and efficiently connects

14:42

people to their highest best selves.

14:45

So that's my my pitch for it.

14:47

And what it is is the vision

14:50

of yourself twenty or

14:52

thirty years out into the future. But

14:55

if I were to say to you right now, like, hey,

14:57

so you know, who do you think you'll be thirty

14:59

years the future, that wouldn't be your inter

15:01

mentor. That would be some combination of

15:03

your egos, hopes, and your fears.

15:06

And so we get Yeah,

15:10

we get to the inter mentor through a

15:12

long, long ish you know, twenty

15:14

minutes or so visualization

15:17

and meditation, so people really get out of their

15:19

everyday conscious mind and you

15:21

don't make up what your inter mentor

15:23

is. You really discover it. And and for

15:25

everyone something shows up that

15:28

is from a deeper place about

15:31

not only who they're becoming, but

15:34

that figure that shows up isn't just an older

15:36

version of them, it's also like a more

15:39

authentic version of them. And they're sort

15:41

of inner wise woman

15:43

or their inner wise man. And

15:46

then once they get a sense of that person

15:49

and that that it's literally

15:51

like an archetype almost, that is their

15:54

highest self, their most essential

15:57

self. They can consult with

15:59

that it you're like a mentor. And so let's

16:02

say, oh, my boss, you know, just dump

16:05

this project on my plate that is so overwhelming

16:07

and I but if I respond, I'm going to you

16:10

know, the I'm going to be seen as not committed. If I

16:12

say I don't want to do it. We'll say, okay, what would your

16:14

inter mentor do in this situation? And

16:16

we might even have that person close

16:18

their eyes and reconnect that person and really

16:21

check in how would they handle it? And

16:23

unfailingly, every time

16:25

there's an answer that kind of surprises

16:28

the person. They wouldn't have thought of it on their own.

16:30

It immediately feels resonant

16:33

um and they have a way forward. It's a really

16:35

really amazing tool. And so

16:37

once you've gone as you mentioned,

16:40

you go through the visualization and you

16:42

make first contact with the

16:44

inter mentor then is it sort of you're able

16:46

to reach that person in a in

16:49

a faster, more consistent way after

16:51

that, or is it you kind of go through the whole

16:53

process every time. You don't have to go through the whole

16:55

process every time. So then people often that

16:57

first visit we do sort of an extend

17:00

did conversation with your inner mentor um,

17:03

and then a lot of people will

17:05

have a vivid enough sense that

17:08

they can then sort of just check in even

17:10

just sort of thinking of it for a second. Oh yeah,

17:12

what would you do? What would she do? And

17:14

sometimes you know, if they're feeling

17:16

off balance or whatever, the situation

17:19

is particularly tough, it might take like okay,

17:21

let's just really close our eyes for ten seconds and imagine

17:23

we're going back to their house and sitting down. But

17:25

it is much quicker and more accessible. Excellent.

17:28

You have a question that you use,

17:30

which is a great question that is

17:33

one that we explore often about

17:35

the idea of the fact that we're telling

17:37

ourselves stories in our head. But your

17:39

question that you think is worth asking

17:42

is what am I making this mean? Yeah?

17:44

Yeah, and I don't I'm certainly not the

17:47

creator of that question. I'm sure it

17:49

crossed my path in the coaching world,

17:52

but I think it is a super helpful

17:54

question. Um, that could be you

17:56

know, I I

17:59

started a blog and no one's reading it.

18:01

What am I making that mean? Have I made

18:03

that mean that I'm a bad writer?

18:05

Have I made that mean that no one's interested in

18:07

my story? It might mean those

18:10

things. It might also mean like

18:12

your blog hasn't gotten enough exposure yet,

18:14

or you've been targeting the wrong audience.

18:17

And a lot of times what

18:20

the truth of the matter is is a lot

18:22

less personal and a lot less you

18:24

know what our inner critic would think it is than

18:27

what we're assuming. Yep, yep, we're

18:29

we're obviously taking a fact and

18:32

then putting quite a bit of interpretation into

18:35

it. The fact is your blog has been read

18:37

by eighteen people today. The interpretation

18:39

of that is is kind of wide open. Yeah,

18:41

And I always think back to that idea

18:44

that often when children's parents

18:46

go through a divorce, the child

18:49

will feel responsible,

18:51

like they somehow caused the divorce, and they

18:53

can even make up in a particular

18:56

story like, oh, because I didn't clean my

18:58

room enough, I caused my parents it's to

19:00

break up. And what amazes

19:02

me so much about that phenomenon

19:04

is that it's actually as

19:07

painful as it would be for a child to feel

19:09

that they caused the breakup of the family. That's

19:12

less painful to

19:15

them then the

19:17

the story that they

19:19

had no control over what happened.

19:22

And we do this as adults all the time. It's

19:24

more comfortable for us to say

19:27

if only I had done this or that, and

19:29

to and to take blame on

19:31

ourselves and have the inner critic story, then

19:34

to sometimes recognize what

19:36

we can't control and how many factors

19:38

are really at play and so on. Yeah,

19:41

I'm always interested when people choose the

19:43

self blame route and

19:45

when people choose the other blame

19:48

route. Whereas there's sort of a middle ground

19:50

between those two things, which a lot of is exactly

19:52

what you said, which is a lot of life

19:54

is um in a very frightening

19:56

way, sometimes out of our control, right

19:59

right, yeah, And what is in our control?

20:01

You know? I always I like to think of that. It's what's on our side

20:03

of the street. And you can there's a lot to

20:05

do on your side of the street, usually to clean

20:08

up your side, But there is another side

20:10

of the street to there. There sure is, and

20:12

and thankfully the way we choose

20:14

to react and process and interpret

20:16

all those things is on our side

20:18

of the street. Right. So you

20:21

discuss the fact that a lot

20:23

of women are hiding,

20:25

you call them hiding strategies. What

20:28

what are hiding strategies? And maybe you could

20:30

highlight a couple of the top ones that come to

20:32

mind. Yeah, yeah, and I would be curious

20:34

to hear how how prevalent you think these

20:36

are among man as well?

20:39

Uh so, hiding strategy. So this was I

20:42

started to see this pattern in my coaching practice

20:44

of I was coaching you know, brilliant women,

20:47

educated, successful in their careers,

20:49

and and a lot of them were hiding

20:53

their gifts or stalling on their

20:55

dreams and their goals,

20:57

even though from my perspective, you know, it seems

21:00

obvious to me and many people around them or you

21:02

could totally pull this off like they

21:04

were capable, but they didn't feel that way.

21:07

And because again,

21:09

are the way our fear operates and our

21:11

inner critics operates as kind of sneaky

21:13

sometimes and sophisticated. Um,

21:15

they didn't feel consciously afraid

21:18

or or even self doubting. Sometimes

21:20

they came up with these hiding strategies

21:23

that allowed them to hide and

21:25

to stall on playing bigger, but to convince

21:28

themselves they were moving forward as diligently

21:30

as they could. So a couple

21:32

examples, So one of them is

21:34

what I called this before that and

21:37

this before that are

21:39

the beliefs that we have about the order

21:41

that things need to happen in. So we

21:44

come up with a story like, well,

21:46

I really want to launch leave my job and launch

21:48

my business. But to launch my business, I need a website

21:50

for my business. But to have a

21:52

website, I need a great web designer,

21:55

and that costs five thousand dollars.

21:57

So first I

21:59

need to get the rate, like

22:01

and we come up with a long story,

22:04

right, that's this before that hiding

22:06

strategy. Another one

22:09

that I think is probably

22:12

particularly common for women, because

22:14

the data suggests, you know, women are

22:16

getting much more education now than men

22:19

um as adults that women are

22:22

often feel they need another degree or

22:24

another certification to do

22:26

what they want to do. And I can't tell you the

22:28

level of ridiculousness of examples

22:30

of this. I've seen, like a woman saying, you

22:33

know, well, i want to teach um teens

22:36

yoga, but I'm only certified.

22:38

I've certified as an adult yoga instructor,

22:40

and I've taught teens as a high school teacher

22:42

for twenty years, but I'm not certified as a team

22:45

yoga instructor. You know where,

22:48

so and and that's I think that the

22:50

gender piece there. It's not at all to blame

22:53

women for that, but there is there's

22:55

a real overlap between how

22:58

girls are socialized and then the

23:00

mode that we expect students to be in

23:02

just like listen to the authority figure and take

23:05

in all their information and then give it back. So

23:07

there's a there's a connection there. Another

23:11

hiding strategy is curating

23:14

other people's voices instead of sharing

23:16

your own voice. And of

23:18

course there's nothing wrong with curating other people's

23:21

voices. There are lots of important projects that do

23:23

that, but sometimes, um,

23:26

someone will really have something to

23:28

say on a topic and that's

23:30

why they're drawn to it, but it feels too

23:33

scary to share their point of view

23:35

and experience, so then they go create a big project

23:38

curating you know, fifty great thinkers

23:40

on this topic, and they somehow managed

23:42

to forget the whole time to say

23:45

their own point of view. And those

23:47

are a few of them. Yeah, you know, I recognize

23:49

a lot of those. I've been in entrepreneurial

23:52

cultures, uh, startups since

23:55

I was very early in my career, and

23:57

I never went to college, So I've kind of learned to

23:59

get over most of those

24:01

because in an entrepreneurial situation,

24:04

you're never really ready. I mean, that's

24:06

the that's the that's the lesson

24:08

that I think most people could

24:10

get is if you if you wait

24:12

until you think you're ready or you really feel

24:14

ready, you're probably never going to start.

24:17

Yes, I'm a huge advocate of you should

24:19

just stop even asking yourself the question are

24:21

you ready? It's kind of the wrong question. The

24:23

question is what do I feel

24:25

called to do? And what

24:28

information is life giving me about what

24:30

I'm ready for. You know, when I first started

24:32

doing media UM associated

24:34

with my writing, UM I

24:37

publicist had approached me because she had read

24:39

some work I liked, and she was like, we've got to get this out

24:41

there. And so she said charl like here's how it's going to

24:43

be. We're gonna do some local media

24:46

and then we're going to do regional and then when you have all

24:48

that, then will do national. So

24:50

I'm like, okay, great, Well, I don't know what happened,

24:52

but something happened, and like literally two weeks

24:55

later, she emailed me like,

24:57

great, You're booked on the Today Show. And

25:00

I literally, thank goodness, I happened to be in a store

25:02

at the moment that had chairs in front of the dressing

25:05

room, Like I could not stand. I was so

25:07

panicked and nervous, um and was

25:10

sure I wasn't ready, like I haven't honed

25:12

my message enough, and um I'm

25:14

not media trained, and um, this

25:17

show isn't the right fit. And then

25:19

I kind of had to say, like, let's actually

25:21

let the Today Show producers

25:24

decide if you're ready. And

25:27

that might sound passive, but to me,

25:29

that's been such a helpful principle, Like if

25:32

life opened the door and the opportunity

25:34

comes, let's trust

25:36

life to know what you're ready for

25:39

and not have to separately assess that

25:41

in your head. Yeah, well, I think it's that that

25:43

gets a little bit to that idea of imposter syndrome.

25:45

And I had a conversation with a guy

25:47

today that I do some work with, and he lives

25:50

in India, and he's got some great opportunities

25:52

that are that are happening to him right now, and he's

25:55

he's in these meetings and he's doing

25:57

these different things, and he's saying, but I didn't go to Yale.

25:59

And I did go to and I said, but you're

26:01

in the room like you didn't

26:03

get in that room by accident, Like you

26:06

earned being in that room.

26:08

And and don't don't judge

26:10

yourself out of it. You know, you

26:13

there's a reason that they're inviting you to these things. There's

26:15

a reason you're getting these internships. And

26:17

the person who went to Yale is

26:19

sitting there going, well, they

26:21

just went for this thing on my resume,

26:24

and I imposter syndrome my way into Yale.

26:27

You know. I mean, that's the funny thing. It's

26:29

like I get to say that the old old people

26:31

think they're too old to do it, the young people think they're

26:33

too young to do it.

26:35

It's like because again the inner critic,

26:37

I call it the objection rolodex, because

26:40

the inner critic was just like, well, we didn't go for that

26:42

car. Let me pull the next one up. It's just you

26:45

know, trying everything I can think of. You

27:06

have a great approach for

27:08

dealing with hiding that I really like, and you call

27:10

it the leap. Yeah, So, because

27:13

how how do we get out of this hiding? You know,

27:15

I think you do need that foundational

27:18

inner work of inner critic

27:21

or inter mentor you can't go straight to leaping

27:23

because you just won't leap. So you need some

27:25

kind of inner tools of how

27:28

do I even quiet a little bit, that voice

27:30

of self doubt and so on. But then when

27:32

it's you know, when you have that, you can really start to get

27:34

into action and move out of hiding. And

27:37

a leap is I have six or

27:39

six criteria for a leap. Um,

27:41

it's not just anything that makes you feel wild

27:43

and crazy, And which I'm

27:45

constantly misunderstood is that there's

27:48

six criteria. Chris is on his way

27:50

to leap right now. I think maybe based on that. Okay,

27:57

So it's something that relates

27:59

to your playing bigger, whatever that means

28:01

to you. It's an action

28:03

that our project that you can finish and

28:06

under two weeks it

28:08

gets your adrenaline flowing.

28:11

So it's got to kind of take you

28:13

out of your comfort zone, and

28:16

it's something that has a

28:18

learning question at its heart.

28:20

And this is one of the kind of hardest

28:23

ones for people to understand

28:25

what that means. It means that there's

28:28

something you want to learn through

28:31

doing the leap. You might want to

28:33

learn do I really like memoir writing

28:35

as much as I think I'm going to? Or um

28:38

if you're going out on a fundraising meeting,

28:40

maybe the learning question is are the investors

28:43

for this company who I think they're going to be? But there's a

28:45

specific question you've highlighted that

28:47

you can gather data on UM

28:50

by doing the leap. And

28:52

and then another key part is it's

28:54

not something that's done in isolation.

28:57

It's something that brings

29:00

your work into contact with

29:02

the people that you want to influence

29:05

or reach. Uh So, writing

29:07

your mission statement is not a leap, but

29:09

writing your mission statement and sharing

29:11

it with a few potential board members to get

29:14

their feedback is al Drafting

29:16

you know the next five blog pots

29:19

not a leap, but drafting and publishing

29:21

is a leap. So on UM So,

29:23

the idea is you're moving into action really

29:25

quickly. You're doing a

29:28

messy version of something that will probably

29:30

feel quite out of control and ikey

29:32

to you, but you're getting yourself

29:34

into action and the you

29:37

know, it has great practical

29:39

benefits because you learn and

29:41

you get into action, and it has great emotional

29:43

benefits because it really forces you

29:46

to really confront whatever fears have been

29:48

keeping you hiding. I

29:50

love all the things you've wrapped around that, because

29:52

there's really no substitute for

29:55

actually doing something versus

29:58

analyzing, thinking about templating,

30:02

versus an action that you can take that

30:04

moves things forward and you gather some

30:06

real data on what's happening. Yeah,

30:09

And it's it's very paradoxical

30:11

in a way because we all avoid doing

30:13

this, like, you know, instead

30:15

of just sending off that one book

30:17

chapter two, you know, someone

30:20

to read, we like spend years reorganizing

30:23

our table of content, you know, Like we do that because

30:25

it feels safer. But I always find as much

30:27

as people avoid those leads, once

30:29

they take them, they always write to me

30:31

and they're like, that was so much fun,

30:34

you know, And now I'm talking to the people

30:36

that I wanted to be talking about that, and I'm so energized.

30:38

So it actually feels really good once

30:41

we get over the initial fear. So one of the things

30:43

I wanted to talk about in the book, you talk

30:45

about a thing that I think we all

30:47

have a lot of challenges with,

30:49

and that is how to make a

30:51

change, which a lot of us know how to

30:54

do, but how do we stay with

30:56

that change? So we've made a change, how do we keep

30:58

it going? Well? This is so important, right

31:00

because it is where most of our efforts

31:03

fall short. And my

31:07

approach with this it actually

31:09

comes out of my own experience with

31:12

food and eating and sugar

31:15

which I come from a family of sugar addicts.

31:17

I grew up in overweight kid. Um.

31:20

You know, no one I am related to can

31:23

has any control over what happens when

31:25

they come into contact with sugar and

31:28

uh. And at a certain point in my life,

31:30

I, you know, really have

31:32

fought I had suffered too much with this and

31:36

gave up sugar successfully

31:38

and a lot of refined carbohydrates

31:40

that I also my body couldn't really handle

31:43

and didn't eat them um for

31:45

over a decade. It's now with a

31:47

brief hiatus of pregnancy when I was extremely

31:50

ill really needed to eat crackers.

31:52

It's probably about twelve or thirteen years now,

31:55

um, yeah, thirteen years uh.

31:58

And so people would always, you know, if I

32:00

was at a party and they'd like, oh, I don't eat sugar,

32:02

and then they'd say, well, how what do you mean did you give it

32:04

up for New Year's And I'd say no, I haven't had it, you

32:06

know, in seven years, and they'd be like, what, I I don't

32:08

have the willpower for that. And

32:11

I always felt it was so important, like I'm

32:13

straight in the eye and say the truth, which

32:15

is this has nothing to do

32:18

with willpower. And it

32:20

was such a powerful learning for me because

32:22

so many times in my life I had tried to change

32:25

my eating or my weight through willpower

32:27

and always failed miserably. And

32:30

in the end, what allowed me to make that

32:32

change sustainably really

32:34

was almost the opposite of willpower.

32:37

It was setting up

32:39

my life and my routines

32:42

and the supports of my life in such

32:44

a way that that change

32:46

became truly doable. And

32:49

that meant different things at different points. So in

32:51

the beginning it was more dramatic, like I

32:53

have to nap a lot more because I

32:55

used to use sugar for energy, and so

32:58

now I'm finding I'm actually exhausted by or

33:00

PM if I don't have you know, sugar at my disposal,

33:03

um, or I'm going to take these things out of my house.

33:06

And then it became you know, much more um,

33:10

much more kind of mellow

33:12

supports as I got more used to that new way

33:14

of living. But what that evolved into

33:16

for me is any time we

33:18

want to make a sustainable change. Anytime I want to

33:21

make a sustainable change, I now don't think

33:23

about am I going to rally myself

33:25

up? And am I going to get my ship together? You know? Nope?

33:27

It's more like, how do I design what

33:29

I call a success architecture

33:33

that is going to support me? And that would

33:35

include who are my champions

33:37

going to be people cheering me on? What is my

33:39

source of accountability? Um?

33:42

What are the small pieces that

33:44

I've broken this down into the small milestones

33:46

and thinking of my steps in that way? Um?

33:50

What kind of spiritual energy

33:53

can I draw on here? Like? What what do

33:55

I feel I'm in partnership with in doing

33:57

this that's larger than me? How

33:59

do I make what I want to do the default? There's seven

34:02

or eight things that are to me like the possible

34:04

elements, and then you can make your own recipe

34:06

from those elements of what you

34:08

need for that success architecture. Yeah,

34:10

the data is really overwhelming

34:13

in that idea of setting

34:15

up external support for

34:18

things. The main thing I work with people on coaching

34:20

on is behavior change, and

34:22

it's amazing how much we do think it's

34:24

a willpower or a discipline thing like

34:27

the term that you use. They're

34:29

making things structural in your life. There's there's

34:31

some study that shows that the more factors

34:33

of influence that you bring in and

34:36

there's five or six different kinds, your

34:38

chances of being successful there's like double

34:40

every turn. Yeah, and

34:42

this goes back to right, I mean, it's the ultimate what

34:45

are you feeding in your life? What? What

34:47

are you supporting and getting

34:49

away from. I'm not sure if it's aren't just our

34:52

human fantasy that we have control, or

34:54

if it's our American individualism

34:56

thing that makes us think, you know, we should

34:58

be able to say I will it. I wrote it down in

35:00

my New Year's goal is therefore it will happen. But

35:03

you know, that's just not how we're My

35:06

sense is not how we're wired. And in

35:08

the book I share there's

35:10

a stat from the American Psychological

35:12

Association that people Americans

35:15

reported they feel their number one reason

35:17

that they're not meeting their goals as lack of

35:19

willpower, and

35:22

so we need to look at that. If everyone

35:24

thinks that they individually

35:26

lack the willpower they're supposed to have, that

35:29

means there's probably something um

35:32

illusory about our expectation

35:35

of what willpower is supposed to be able to do for us.

35:37

Yep. You you referenced Kelly McGonagall

35:40

in your book. She's got great writing on it.

35:42

Um. We had Carrie Patterson on the show who

35:45

wrote a book called Influencers, which

35:47

has a lot of this information switch by

35:49

the Heath Brothers. I mean, there's a lot of stuff

35:52

out here. We had b J. Fag on the show, and

35:54

there's a lot of studies and a lot of things

35:56

out there about how building habits

35:58

and behavior change is. It's an art

36:00

and a science, but there's a lot of clear

36:02

things that we can do because willpower is ultimately

36:05

kind of like a mood, and moods, just by

36:08

their very nature, fluctuate

36:10

a great deal. I love that willpower is like, that's

36:12

great. One

36:14

of the last things I want to talk about, and it's related

36:17

to this idea of willpower and discipline,

36:20

and um, you talk about it in a similar

36:22

section of the book, but I just think it's so so

36:25

important, and I love the idea

36:27

which you said, the self criticism is associated

36:29

with less motivation and worse

36:31

self control. But we tend to think

36:33

that the way we get things done is to be really hard

36:36

on ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. And

36:38

it's interesting because every

36:40

time I go and teach a workshop

36:43

or give a lecture about the inner critic, one

36:45

of the first questions I get is

36:48

from someone who says,

36:51

but what if your inner

36:53

critic is like your best

36:55

ally? And then they'll

36:58

talk about how through

37:00

their life they've done better

37:02

work because of that voice that

37:04

says, you know, that wasn't good enough

37:07

for that's gonna you need to double check

37:09

it again, and and all of that.

37:11

And I can relate to that,

37:13

and you know, going through parts of

37:16

my career and school being very

37:18

fueled with the fear of messing up,

37:20

and that was my motivator. The

37:23

problem with that, there's a few

37:25

problems with it. One is if

37:27

you have stress hormones flooding

37:30

through your body as a source of motivation

37:32

for your great work, that over time

37:35

is going to have a really bad impact on

37:37

your health. This is not what our friend Kelly McGonagall

37:40

would would deem the good stress. This

37:42

is like, right, the fear of like

37:44

and the belief that I am screwing it up

37:46

or I'm about to screw it up, and I have to do a bunch

37:49

of things to not not screw it up.

37:51

Um. But the bigger issue to me is

37:55

that that kind of inner

37:57

critic, being tough on your off,

38:00

that doesn't actually motivate

38:03

you to do your most important,

38:08

glorious work. Like

38:10

what the inner critic motivates you to do. What

38:12

being hard on yourself motivates you to do is

38:15

work. A few hours later, you

38:18

know, read that document again

38:20

and make a bunch of changes you just decided

38:22

in that moment are needed, even though you've done it ten

38:24

times already. Um, you

38:26

know think that you need to go fix this

38:29

and that about yourself before you do a

38:31

B or C. So it's never

38:33

going to motivate you to do the most

38:35

important moves in your career, which would

38:37

be the I'm speaking up even though I don't feel ready.

38:40

I'm doing this thing that I was asked to do,

38:42

even though I can't believe I'm qualified. I'm

38:44

taking a risk and sharing creative work

38:46

in the world. I'm saying something on

38:48

this topic even though no one

38:50

else in the room is talking about it

38:52

the way I'm thinking about it. That's

38:55

where we get to share our individual gifts.

38:58

That's where we get to move our world

39:01

beyond the status

39:03

quo and help it move forward. And

39:05

that is not um

39:08

a kind of expression into

39:10

the world that being hard on yourself will

39:12

ever help you move toward it will move you away

39:15

from it. Yeah, that's absolutely true. And

39:17

even with things that we think it will help us

39:19

with, like motivation and basic self control,

39:22

a lot of the studies she seemed to show

39:25

that that being extremely self

39:27

critical and hard on ourselves actually is

39:29

less effective than being encouraging

39:32

and supportive to ourselves for sure. Well,

39:34

thank you so much for taking the time to come

39:36

on the show. I really enjoyed the book. Will

39:38

have links in our show notes to

39:41

your book and a lot of your writing online.

39:43

So thank you, Thanks so much for having me, and thanks

39:46

everyone who is listening today. Okay,

39:48

take care, Okay, bye bye.

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