transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:09] So today, we're speaking to Tara Mohr, who is an expert in Women's Leadership and Wellness. She wrote an incredible book called Playing Big, and her work really sent us around so many of the themes that I've written about in Start With Yourself. Today, she's giving us an absolute free game masterclass in so many things that you will find familiar that come up in your work and your life all the time. I cannot wait for you guys to sit and listen to this conversation. We talk about fear and guilt and leadership and all of the things that hold us back or happen in our minds and our bodies. And let me tell you, she is about to let you discover your inner mentor, your love, love, love this episode, and I cannot wait for you to watch it. But don't forget to like and subscribe. This episode is sponsored by BILT. You know how your housing payment is just one of those things you make every month without really thinking twice about it. It's just part of life. But BILT is built around the idea that if you're paying it anyway, you should actually get something back from it. BILT is the membership for where you live that rewards you with points on every housing payment. It started with rent and now as of 2026, BILT members can earn points on mortgage payments to wherever you live. Those points can be redeemed towards flights, Lyft rides, amazon.com purchases, fitness classes and more. Personally, I'd put mine towards travel. Just making a monthly expense feel more intentional is worth it to me. BILT also gives you access to neighborhood concierge, restaurant reservations, fitness classes, new local spots, plus rewards over 45,000 partners. It's designed to fit into real life, not change it. Join the membership for where you live at joinbil.com. That's joinbilt.com. Make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you. Let's be honest, finding supplements you actually trust really can feel like a lot. There's so much out there and it's not always clear what you're really getting. That's why I try to be intentional about what I add into my routine, and Symbiotica is one I like because the focus is simple, clean, science-backed ingredients that your body can actually absorb. One that stands out to me is their NAD+. It supports cellular energy and overall vitality, which for me just translates to feeling more steady day-to-day. I also like how easy it is to take. Everything comes in these single-use pouches so that you can take it straight or mix it into whatever you're drinking. No pills, no extra steps. And that's really the point. It's not about adding more to your routine. It's about choosing things that actually support how you want to feel. Go to symbiotica.com/aspire to get 20% off plus free shipping. That's cymbiotika.com/aspire for 20% off plus free shipping. The Start With Yourself Tour kicks off on April 15th in New York City. Tickets are on sale now at emmagrede.com. Tara, welcome to Aspire.

Speaker 2:
[03:22] Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.

Speaker 1:
[03:24] Honestly, I'm so happy to have you here. The timing couldn't be more perfect. You wrote a book 10 years ago that to me is just such an important piece of work, not just for women, but for so many people to understand how we block ourselves, how we can be filled with fear. And I felt like your book was just really an eye-opener. So I am just excited to sit down and to delve in with you a little bit today and talk about some things that perhaps we don't spend enough time examining and talking about in our own life.

Speaker 2:
[03:56] Thank you. I'm so excited for your book because it's all about starting with yourself.

Speaker 1:
[04:02] It's always about starting out with yourself. You can't do anything and think about things externally until you've really examined yourself. And I feel like in your book, Playing Big, you talk about what playing small looks like in real life. And so for anyone seeing at home, will you just explain to us and describe if you haven't heard that term, what you mean by that?

Speaker 2:
[04:21] Well, I think above all, playing small is a feeling. So you could have actually a big career, a big title. You could look like you are thriving, but you know inside if you feel like you're playing small relative to what you feel called to do, what you really want to do, who you think you really are. And that's what I found very early in my work is that most of the women that I was meeting had this kind of sinking sense inside. I'm playing small. I really don't like it. And I also am stuck. I don't know how to change it.

Speaker 1:
[04:55] So what patterns do you see over and over again where women are like stuck in their careers?

Speaker 2:
[05:01] So the biggest thing is being stuck in self-doubt and being stuck in listening to the voice of the inner critic. And I often say brilliant women have brilliant inner critics. So our inner critics do not say, you know, sometimes on their most abusive days, that inner critic might say you are a total fool. But it's more likely to say, you know, if that was a good idea, surely someone else would have done it. Or you can totally pursue that dream. But in five years, not today. Or do a little more homework before you pitch that idea in the meeting. So listening to that voice of self-doubt is a huge one. Because at its root, that voice of self-doubt has underneath it fear. And I'll sometimes say that that voice of self-doubt is actually a strategy that your safety instinct is using to try and get that feeling of, I'm in my comfort zone, I'm safe, I'm not gonna have failure or too much rejection. But the problem is the part of us that's really only concerned with that emotional safety does not care if we have fulfilled or exciting or self-expressed day in our lives. It only cares about that comfort. So yeah, it is a stay in the comfort zone, stay in the safe zone kind of voice, but it's very overreactive and misleading in that.

Speaker 1:
[06:23] It's so interesting because early on in my career, I don't really feel like I felt fear anywhere near as much as I might do, sometimes even now, and I really feel like that stems from my childhood. It stems from how I kind of had no choice to survive. And I wonder if you feel like fear and the voice of the inner critic, does it show up differently depending on what you've been through in early parts of your life?

Speaker 2:
[06:47] So I'd love to just take us back to like, what is fear? What is the definition of fear?

Speaker 1:
[06:53] Bring it, bring it on home.

Speaker 2:
[06:54] Because when we're in fear, it actually hijacks our brain such that we're definitely not thinking about what am I experiencing now? What is that? So fear is just our physiological response, our body and mind response to something we perceive as a threat. So until you perceive something as a threat, you're not going to feel fear. And so the question for each of us, for some of us, that fear might be more in our early, in our career, more later, it's what feels threatening to me and why. For a lot of women, it is visibility is threatening, power is threatening, because maybe I got the message people don't like, powerful women. Maybe just change from what I grew up with feels threatening because it feels like leaving home in a way that I'm uncomfortable with. So it's whatever evokes that. And sometimes I talk to more senior women who say, ah, you know, I had these fears, I kind of got over them. But now, now that maybe I'm at the Board of Directors table, now that stakes are higher, there's a new level of fear, which is why we're not waiting to graduate from fear. We need our toolkit that we take with us for our whole lives, for fear and self-doubt.

Speaker 1:
[08:03] I always think about fear in the sense that it's a signal. And that's why I wrote this book, because I feel like every time, I mean, real fear, and I'm feeling that, I actually take it as a signal that it's time to move. It's time to delve in, and I have to explore that. I have to understand why I'm feeling that fear. And I probably need to go further towards it as opposed to retract from it. And so why do you think that it tends to peak just before something really big is about to happen, like just before we're about to do something really important?

Speaker 2:
[08:35] Well, I feel like there's a spiritual reason and then there's a cultural reason. So the cultural reason is because if you're a woman or you are in any kind of underrepresented identity, when you are coming into power, when you are coming into visibility, you know your society might really take you down for that. Or you just know that's new. In my lineage, this is new what I'm doing right now. So that's kind of the cultural reason. Spiritually, I would say when we're stepping into our purpose, when we're following a calling, when we're using our true gifts, when we're being in our full glory, our ego is basically terrified, even though that's the step our soul wants to take. And a lot of fear comes from the ego. And so you could think about this kind of expansive impulse of your soul and this contractive impulse of your ego. And so when we're really stepping through the gates that we all can step into, into more in our lives, that is very scary. Yeah, for the kind of small self in us.

Speaker 1:
[09:42] What is moving forward while still feeling afraid actually look like?

Speaker 2:
[09:47] Almost like being on like an actual physical roller coaster. That it's exhilaration. There's this word I really like. It's a term from ancient Hebrew. So this is like 3000 years. People have been talking about this term. And it's a term for fear. The term is Yira.

Speaker 1:
[10:02] Yira.

Speaker 2:
[10:03] And Yira has three definitions. So the feeling you feel when you are inhabiting a larger space than you're used to. Metaphoric space or literal space. The feeling you feel when you suddenly come into more energy than you normally have. If you do something that plugs you into your energy. And the feeling you feel in the presence of the sacred.

Speaker 1:
[10:26] Literally, as you say that, so many people will be going, Oh my God, I completely understand that.

Speaker 2:
[10:33] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[10:34] Like I completely get that moving into the energy. Like it's going to give me more fear.

Speaker 2:
[10:40] Yes, exactly. And so that kind of fear, it's like the same as you would on that roller coaster. You're like, I'm in it, I'm doing it. I'm going to breathe. I already decided this was going to be fun. So I'm going to breathe with it. And we actually have to learn to tolerate the discomfort of that level of exhilaration. That's very different from what you'll often now hear, like psychologists will talk about our lizard brain fear. This is the reptilian part of the brain that's just everything is scary, worst case scenario thinking. That if we only breathe with it, like if let's say you're about to give a presentation and you're sure they're going to laugh me out of the room, that we don't want to just stay and breathe because that kind of fear, which is really what kicks off fight or flight response, that's going to prevent us from doing our best thinking research shows. It prevents us from connecting with other people. So there we aren't just breathing into it. It's like how do I shift myself out of this state? And that's where things like whether you're using your body and you're going to go for a run or you're using an affirmation to try and change your thinking, you're actually trying to change your body out of the fear state. So you can essentially perform at your highest level again.

Speaker 1:
[11:55] I want to go back to something you said earlier in the conversation, this idea of an inner critic, because I think that that feels so familiar to all of us. We all have a, I certainly do, I have a constant conversation going on in my head and I feel like I've trained myself to be good to myself. It's not that I don't hear that critical voice. It's just that I kind of have a way of tuning her out and slowing her down. It's like I listen and then I kind of put it where it belongs. It's like it just isn't useful right now. So how do you describe that voice and also like what to do with it?

Speaker 2:
[12:28] The big mistake so many of us make is we think confidence is coming. We think it's coming with experience. We think it's coming with achievement. We think it's becoming because someone's going to give us the gold star. All the research shows confidence is not coming. There's one study that looks at executive women and entry level women. One in 10 say that over that time difference, they've experienced some kind of change in their confidence level. So unless you want to bet that you are going to be the lucky one in 10, I don't think that's a great bet. Let's assume we're going to be in the 90, that's going to continue to grapple with a lot of self-doubt. It does come up for the reason we talked about. It comes up more when you're going for your dreams. What we want to do is when we're hearing that voice of self-doubt, which basically is anything you wouldn't intend to say to a friend you really love. If you're talking to yourself that way, you're probably hearing your inner critic. Then you want to use a tool or a practice.

Speaker 1:
[13:25] Fertile, understand that it's there. That is the inner critic, that person, that thing in your head that's speaking to you in a way that you would never speak to anybody else.

Speaker 2:
[13:34] That's right. That is a voice in you, and we want to start to label it as a voice. That's the first thing is, oh, I'm hearing my inner critic right now. That can just be a breath that you say to yourself, oh, okay, that voice is saying I'm not ready for this. The voice is saying there's no way I'd ever get that job, so I'm not even going to apply. Okay, hi, inner critic. Sometimes that alone is enough. If you just go, oh, that's what that is, that wasn't me. You can start to do that setting aside that you're talking about. Sometimes it's helpful to do a little more. A lot of people like to create a character, and that's something I'll do with people, create a character, almost like a extreme cartoony version of this voice. Is it the mean boss from Devil Wears Prada? Is it the perfect homemaker, domestic lady? Is it the perfect feminine, whatever? Maybe it's a blend, and they're arguing with each other all the time about what you should do. And when you hear that thought, you're going to go, oh, that's coming from this character, not from the core of me. It's just a silly device to help you take it less seriously. And I'll even sit down with women and I'll say, what are all the values and priorities of your inner critic? And they'll say, perfectionism, image, always being polite. What are your values and priorities? And they'll make a totally different list.

Speaker 1:
[14:54] Oh, my goodness. First of all, I just love that you say that so much because when I wrote this book, I kind of almost wrote it back to front. I thought I was writing a book about building a business and creating brands and leadership. And then I kind of reverse engineered it and spoke about managing emotions and vision. And vision, to me, is so much about principles. Like, what are the things that are important to me? And having that separation between what you think is important on the outside and really what is important to you is a game changer and has been for me. Like, what am I measuring myself against? And when do I let these ideas seep into my head that are just not useful, that I don't need? And so I love that you say that because oftentimes when you compare those two things, they won't look anything alike and it allows you to tune it out somewhat.

Speaker 2:
[15:42] Exactly. And this is another thing that there's so much misunderstanding about, because we think that if my problem is that I'm thinking about myself in a negative way, my solution is going to be thinking about myself in a really positive way. The solution is actually not thinking about yourself. And so this is a more radical piece. I'm like, someone show me a piece of evidence of why we need to be self-assessing. I don't see it. And I work with a very wide range of women.

Speaker 1:
[16:11] Say more. Say more.

Speaker 2:
[16:12] So if I am there looking in the mirror trying to gear myself up, I can do this. I'm confident, you know, that kind of stereotypical image.

Speaker 1:
[16:20] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[16:21] I'm kind of building my house on a very rocky foundation because confidence comes and goes, as you know, and as you talk about a lot, there's a lot of failure along the way. So if I motivated myself today by trying to convince myself that this thing was definitely going to work out great, I just have lied to myself because it's not going to definitely work out great. What we actually need to be saying to ourselves is, it might not work out today and we will get up again and I'll be on your side, honey, and I'm not going to beat you up if that happens. So exactly what you're talking about with principles, we don't want to try to boost ourselves up by thinking better of ourselves. It's really about thinking bigger than yourself. And the calling or your mission or your values is what is big enough and true enough and sustained enough that it will carry you over self-doubt because you essentially care so much about whatever you feel called to do that you don't have time and space to worry about whether you're the one. You're just doing it.

Speaker 1:
[17:26] You're just doing. How do you distinguish between what is the inner critic and sometimes what we label as like instinct? You know, you're telling yourself something. How do you separate the two and know what to listen to from what's coming on inside you and know what to dismiss?

Speaker 2:
[17:41] A great way to tell is the tone that that voice is speaking to you in.

Speaker 1:
[17:47] That's why you give it a character because it's so clear.

Speaker 2:
[17:51] They can help with that.

Speaker 1:
[17:52] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[17:52] So if I always say your inner critic and your realistic thinking can have the same question. So the inner critic and realistic thinking could be thinking, did I make the right decision with maybe what we're our inventory, what we're going to do next fall? Inner critic is going to be like, I know I didn't know what I was doing. I know I didn't know it's going to be repetitive. It's going to be very declarative. It knows the deal. It's going to be looping. You could ask that with realistic thinking or with just good critical thinking, I'm actually feeling unsure about that. What further information do I need? Who would be an interesting person to talk to? What can I do to reduce uncertainty? You might have the same concern, but you're going to move forward in a very solution oriented way when you're not hearing from that inner critic.

Speaker 1:
[18:41] What happens when you meet people that just go, but that's just part of my personality, that's who I am. I doubt myself, that's who I am. It's not something I do, it's me.

Speaker 2:
[18:52] I was in this place myself. A lot of times when you're in schools or workplaces, or maybe home environments, where the emphasis is on think critically, think critically, you learn to think critically about everything, including eat yourself into pieces, doing skeptical thinking about your own dreams. Your inner critic can be like a conqueror that took over your whole psyche. But the voice of inner wisdom and the voice of your dreams, and the voice that actually has a very calm, loving knowing, is always there. But it can become very obscured. And so sometimes we need a little bit of quiet and a little bit of loving support to find that voice again. And we might have a slow process of walking back the sort of dominance of that inner critic.

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[21:00] It's number one, knowing it's there. It's knowing it's not telling the truth. It's actually viewing it with a lot of compassion, because it is a scared part underneath. We want to soothe it almost like we would a scared child in how we are, okay, honey, I hear you, but. Then having those tools to use in the moment when it comes up.

Speaker 1:
[21:21] I think those tools are so important. It's just hard, I guess, for people to remind themselves, because we're talking about ingrained behavior, things that just become your default settings and your ways of managing and handling things all the time. Do you think there's a point at which there's no turning back? Do you think anybody can get a handle on speaking better to themselves, understanding their inner critic at any point in their life?

Speaker 2:
[21:44] Absolutely. That's what I see every week in my work, that when women learn those tools, it's like habit change. It is a habit formation to learn to respond differently. It's not that it becomes perfect, but instead of getting lost in believing your inner critic for six months, after two days, you go, oops, I got lost in a little inner critic trance there, and I'm going to make a different choice.

Speaker 1:
[22:07] I love your thoughts around confidence because a lot of people ask me about, God, you're so confident, how did you get that way? And I always think that it's such an interesting question because, A, it's not how I think about myself. I always just think, I just made so many mistakes, I've done so many things that I just get through stuff. And it's not that I feel particularly confident. It's almost like the confidence comes through going through things. How do you speak to women who just find it almost impossible to find their confidence? And again, they've told themselves, I'm not confident, I can't do that thing.

Speaker 2:
[22:41] I really do say, I say, when you imagine yourself pursuing your dreams, do not picture yourself as a confident rock star. Picture yourself as a racked with self-doubt rock star. It's okay for it to be like that. It's okay for it to be scary. It's okay to hear that voice, as long as you are responding to it and remembering it's not the voice of truth and essentially not letting it drive your actions. So that's really important piece. But then the second piece is connecting with your bigger vision, your intention to serve, the values you want to embody in this world and really that voice of inner wisdom in you. Because anytime I ask a woman, once she's connected with that inner wisdom, how would that part of you navigate this challenge? She has an amazing wise answer right there.

Speaker 1:
[23:36] Why do you think we feel like we need to be ready before we start? Because I think what's been true in my career over and over again is that I'm never ready. I've always done things before, on paper, I've had the remit to do it or before I've been, I guess, what would be considered qualified to do something. What is it that tells you or tells so many people that you have to have a different version of yourself before you might be ready to start something?

Speaker 2:
[24:06] Well, I think school is not our friend here on that particular issue.

Speaker 1:
[24:11] Because it's ingrained into us that you should have a different start.

Speaker 2:
[24:14] That basically you are going to prepare to be ready to do things for 20 years. And the whole emphasis of school, there's a lot of you need years and years and years of preparation to be able to make a contribution. But because the way our psyches work, we don't actually graduate and then feel ready. We've just internalized that message for 20 years. So that's a big part of it. Another part of it is just that it's often terrifying to do what we most really want to do. And we're looking for any excuse. And so I'm not ready is like a nice vague one that we can always use.

Speaker 1:
[24:51] It's a really nice big 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, still not putting themselves in the right situation to be able to take advantage of 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?

Speaker 2:
[25:19] Well, I would say it with a lot of compassion because it can be quick to go from there to 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. It'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 unlearning to do. 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.

Speaker 1:
[26:41] We're all in the transition. We'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?

Speaker 2:
[27:03] 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 notice I can never find time. I can never quite get myself in motion. I come up with a lot of reasons why this isn't the right year, what all that stuff. Picture, really play the movie in the most vivid way you can in your mind of I'm doing this. Or what if I imagine taking a bold step towards it tomorrow? And then fears are going to come up. Usually it's not going to go well, or people aren't going to like it, or what if nobody responds? And then we got to 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? The 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.

Speaker 1:
[28:10] 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.

Speaker 2:
[28:33] Absolutely. It is completely different to write something than to try and think about it.

Speaker 1:
[28:38] First, you are completely right. 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. I'm ready to do things differently. Because at the end of the day, you just 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 gratifying in so many ways. I wanted to talk to you about guilt, 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. And I wondered where the idea of guilt fits into everything that you know so well and all the work that you've done.

Speaker 2:
[29:50] 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.

Speaker 1:
[30:06] 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. And he knew my my prior boss. And I was like, Oh, I hope you had a good conversation. He said, Yeah, she told me you were very ambitious. You know, like this. And I was like, 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.

Speaker 2:
[30:57] 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. And then we also asked how many were given the feedback that you're too quiet, you're too passive, or you lack executive presence.

Speaker 1:
[31:18] Literally every person that is listening to this right now, just put their hands up, like for either one or the other.

Speaker 2:
[31:25] So between the two of those, right, we're at 95%.

Speaker 1:
[31:28] That's all of us, yep, got us down.

Speaker 2:
[31:30] And then for 20% of women, it's both, right? So those women are like, where do you want me to be?

Speaker 1:
[31:35] In limbo land, totally.

Speaker 2:
[31:36] 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.

Speaker 1:
[31:52] Oh shit, is it really?

Speaker 2:
[31:53] 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%.

Speaker 1:
[32:14] Wow, that's extraordinary, what a gap.

Speaker 2:
[32:16] 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 too abrasive, you'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.

Speaker 1:
[32:39] It's a massive takeout for anybody listening. And actually it's even made me think, 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. It is insane. It'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. Yeah. 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. It'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?

Speaker 2:
[33:56] 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 sort of regarding your bosses. Because women will do this thing of the mean woman boss and the meanest boss I ever had. And 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.

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[37:35] 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 wanna 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. What we often end up doing is saying, in order to be perceived as likable, I'm gonna diminish my competence and kind of hide it and be tentative about it. We wanna amp up both. We wanna amp up both.

Speaker 1:
[38:18] 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 have to overplay that part of everything and dumb down what it is that you're really there to do.

Speaker 2:
[38:34] 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, which also we can let that go.

Speaker 1:
[38:45] Oh yeah, that's the thing that I say all the time. Can't be a people pleaser and a leader. 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 a bit, 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.

Speaker 2:
[39:10] 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.

Speaker 1:
[39:19] Even that framing is good. It's a mean strategy that your inner critic uses. It's not you. It's not what you're feeling.

Speaker 2:
[39:28] 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. The other thing I'll say, though, I'm a big fan of apologizing, not the over apologizing that women do and the 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. I'm a fan of it in leadership, on teams. I think for our team, it's 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. When you have a culture where people proactively show up and apologize, you truly do that repair that needs to happen. Because 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, that stuff, but just that didn't feel quite right. I think when we do it right, I always say apologizing is a peak life experience. I think it's so good. I think it's one of the best things.

Speaker 1:
[41:03] That's so interesting that you say that. 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're modeling the behavior, you're creating the culture. So 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 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. I 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.

Speaker 2:
[42:04] 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 and I 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.

Speaker 1:
[42:50] It's just huge and it's human. I think that so many of my listeners are in a position where leadership is in the future. It's something that they're doing now. It's something that they're aspiring to do. Leadership looks really different for men versus women. Just giving your experience everything you've learned. You wrote your book 10 years ago.

Speaker 2:
[43:10] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[43:11] What's changed? What's happening?

Speaker 2:
[43:13] Where are we at? 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 don't know enough about marketing to make that happen.

Speaker 1:
[43:30] That's some good marketing you've got going on there. Some good word of mouth.

Speaker 2:
[43:34] Some good word of mouth. Just to say, 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, women are not ambitious for positions of power. Then the way they defined was that they had surveyed women and they literally said, 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.

Speaker 1:
[44:25] Why is that even? Why is there such a level of uncomfortableness with a term like climbing the ladder or power or anything that has these connotations that women would feel less comfortable with? What is that about?

Speaker 2:
[44:42] Well, I don't know if you'll relate to this answer. You might not like it. I would say that it's more that that is a boring term. It's just that men have been socialized into 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.

Speaker 1:
[45:09] Yeah, well, 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. Like 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.

Speaker 3:
[45:32] I was like, what?

Speaker 2:
[45:35] We didn't mean that by money.

Speaker 1:
[45:37] 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, some things have shifted and we got a bit more comfortable.

Speaker 2:
[45:54] I don't know about that. Whether we got more comfortable.

Speaker 1:
[45:57] Wait until my book comes out. I'm going to be like, let's get comfy.

Speaker 2:
[46:02] 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 route that makes them feel compelled to move into leadership has to do with impact and the purpose they want to serve.

Speaker 1:
[46:24] No doubt. 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. Because my point of view is if you have ambition, you're going to get uncomfortable. In fact, it requires discomfort. When you want something like a lot of money, you're going to have to have some audacity and that's okay. That's all right. We don't need to live up to a version of ourselves. Because I think that I'm a really nice girl who's super maternal with a lot of great characteristics. I just have ambition and audacity and I'm fine with being uncomfortable and I'm fine with making you uncomfortable for a second as well. You can be both things. Two things can be true at once. 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. I'm trying to say it's all of it. Yes, you're right and this is the thing too.

Speaker 2:
[47:38] Absolutely. 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 we're still in the stereotype. Yes, you're right. There'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 almost at a cellular level to be like, oh, there it is, both, both together.

Speaker 1:
[48:20] Let's do it. Buy both books. Read them side by side right now, right now. 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, this 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 sweating, like just sweating and really erratic about this board meeting. And he said, oh, I know why you feel like that. You have an employee mentality. You 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 is 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?

Speaker 2:
[49:43] So great. Yeah. Well, I think this is very much what we were also just talking about before in terms of the good student mentality. So we could say the good girl mentality, the employee mentality, and the good student mentality.

Speaker 1:
[49:58] Please don't add my husband's vernacular to the thing. I'm like, it's made it.

Speaker 2:
[50:03] Those are all very similar in that my job is adapting to the authority figure, not being the authority figure. Yes, norm is my job influencing authority. I'm going to be a shape shifter, which a lot of us learn in school. This teacher wants the paper in this font, this teacher wants the paper in that font. Down to the very detail, this teacher likes it if you argue your point this way. Until we learn to be these shape shifters for the authority figures, it'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. 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. So your oak tree self that your being is trying to emerge, grow into, that has to become the authority. This is your inner mentor.

Speaker 1:
[51:26] 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. This is some stuff I can get with one second. I told you I was going to be all over the place in this one because you have so many golden things to say. 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. So 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.

Speaker 2:
[51:59] Here's the thing though, you're not creating her.

Speaker 1:
[52:01] Oh, sorry, I'm not.

Speaker 2:
[52:02] You get to discover her. She's real.

Speaker 1:
[52:04] Oh, she's there, she's coming.

Speaker 2:
[52:06] This is not something we make with our minds. Your oak tree is there.

Speaker 1:
[52:09] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[52:11] So we can even, do you want to do it right now? Yeah, come on.

Speaker 1:
[52:13] Yeah, I definitely do.

Speaker 2:
[52:14] 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. And 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 and 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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Speaker 1:
[54:13] So 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 emmagrede.com for tickets and full tour details. I cannot wait.

Speaker 2:
[54:34] So I gave you the very short version because I know you're already very connected, and I thought she can do this without the 20 minutes.

Speaker 4:
[54:42] I have her.

Speaker 1:
[54:43] She's like Diane Von Fissenberg, Amaya Angelou, Martha Stewart, and Oprah, and she's together, but she's me.

Speaker 2:
[54:49] But she's you, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[54:52] She's there.

Speaker 2:
[54:53] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[54:55] But first of all, one of the things in the beginning of the conversation, when you spoke about naming your inner critic, giving her a voice, that's some powerful stuff. And when you have that, like, you know, I'm thinking of that, that that's like a negative thing.

Speaker 2:
[55:12] Right.

Speaker 1:
[55:13] 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, like that's a game changer.

Speaker 2:
[55:33] It is a huge game changer. That's a game changer.

Speaker 1:
[55:36] We can actually see it in your face. I'm fully sure of it.

Speaker 2:
[55:39] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[55:40] That's a game changer. I have never ever in my life thought about me 30 years in the future. Like as soon as you said it, like acorns, oak tree, never in my life have I thought about that.

Speaker 2:
[55:51] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[55:52] How helpful.

Speaker 2:
[55:54] It's amazing. And so the reason I think of that as a mentor is because you can actually consult with her 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. 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 made up in your head.

Speaker 1:
[56:31] I'm telling you that in a mentor is a fucking gift. That's a gift.

Speaker 2:
[56:36] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[56:36] 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.

Speaker 2:
[56:54] Yes. How so?

Speaker 1:
[56:56] Because she's just in a different space and place. So she is writing from an entirely different wisdom set.

Speaker 2:
[57:05] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[57:06] But also that idea of how she spends an hour. Time is precious. She's using time differently.

Speaker 2:
[57:15] Yeah. 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. I think our external mentors are so important because 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. 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? There isn't a mentor who can give you that, but your inner mentor is like a North Star, and you're not going to arrive at her 100%, but that's actually the beauty of it. There's always a little more forward to go.

Speaker 1:
[58:05] I'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 her decisions hers? If you're stuck in a loop of the way you do things, what's the first thing that you just start doing?

Speaker 2:
[58:23] 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.

Speaker 1:
[58:32] 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. And 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 for me?

Speaker 2:
[58:59] 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 around. And 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. 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. But 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.

Speaker 1:
[60:32] What changes in your life when you meet your calling, when you actually decide to do what you're called to do?

Speaker 2:
[60:40] You stop feeling jealous and envious of other people because you're actually running your own race.

Speaker 1:
[60:45] Oh, that's a big one.

Speaker 2:
[60:46] That's a huge one.

Speaker 1:
[60:47] That's a reason.

Speaker 2:
[60:48] Yeah. And it's very joyful. And you also get that beautiful, often when we're working on a calling, that's when we lose our sense of time and space and we're just so in it. So it's a route into that flow state that everyone talks about that's so wonderful. And it's also important to, as we're saying all this, we resist our callings like crazy.

Speaker 1:
[61:09] What do you say to someone that's just, again, listening to that inner voice and resisting what their calling might be?

Speaker 2:
[61:16] Yeah. Well, one, I want to normalize the resistance. And this is even when they map out the hero's journey.

Speaker 1:
[61:21] There's a pattern here. There's a pattern here.

Speaker 2:
[61:24] So we normalize it. It's okay. It is scary a lot. It 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 going to ask you how are you going to make art and share it with somebody like this very week, this very week. And I'm also not going to 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, for that person. That has to come alive. And that's usually really counter to like, especially our good girl way of thinking. A 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.

Speaker 1:
[62:43] Yeah. I'm going to wait till there's a gap and a moment and an opening and then.

Speaker 2:
[62:47] Yeah. So we're looking for this like imperfect, scrappy, immediate, but true to the essence.

Speaker 1:
[62:53] Imperfect being the thing, right? Yeah. 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 I constantly tried to be really honest about in my book and show like, here's how it then failed, 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's not the point. Because when you're working towards a dream or a cooling or something that has like a higher meaning to you, that's okay. It 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 until you get to your point, it's like you're calling right now.

Speaker 2:
[63:48] Yes, exactly. It's going to be imperfect if you're doing anything interesting.

Speaker 1:
[63:52] Anything interesting, anything that's not going to bore you to tears.

Speaker 2:
[63:56] Sometimes we actually know about that more in the big business world than most of the smaller business women 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.

Speaker 1:
[64:12] It doesn't work sometimes.

Speaker 2:
[64:13] 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.

Speaker 1:
[64:24] Totally.

Speaker 2:
[64:24] They're hiring expert teams and then they're spending millions of dollars to figure out what's going to work in the market.

Speaker 1:
[64:29] You're good with a series of mistakes. You're OK.

Speaker 2:
[64:31] 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 local, simple version? So it's like if you eventually want to have an amazing retreat center for women, great. But while that you're raising capital and figuring out that's ever going to work, I want you to host the women's group in your house this Sunday.

Speaker 1:
[64:54] Right now.

Speaker 2:
[64:55] 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, never really looking at the emotional fears that we're going to keep them from ever really moving into that.

Speaker 1:
[65:17] Absolutely.

Speaker 2:
[65:17] So we jump, we got to jump in.

Speaker 1:
[65:19] We got to jump.

Speaker 2:
[65:20] And then we, 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.

Speaker 1:
[65:27] It's joyful. I think it's really important because I feel like what your 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. We need to see that stuff. We need to see it working.

Speaker 2:
[65:57] And we all have to be what we never saw.

Speaker 1:
[66:01] It's so much of your work now, in the years post you write in the book, is it actually like directly with women?

Speaker 2:
[66:08] Yeah, so I'm still with every week. Every week I'm with women who want to play bigger, 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. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[66:33] It's a beautiful mix. What is it that you still aspire to doing?

Speaker 2:
[66:36] Oh my gosh. So much.

Speaker 1:
[66:38] So much. Really tell me.

Speaker 2:
[66:40] 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's a few years around the corner. 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 in what I'm willing to say and what I want to put out into the world?

Speaker 1:
[67:19] How often do you speak to your inner mental?

Speaker 2:
[67:22] At least weekly.

Speaker 1:
[67:23] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[67:24] And if it's not every day, it's only because I'm also drawing on, you know, other like other spiritual practice where I feel like I'm accessing similar energies. But maybe just through prayer or meditation.

Speaker 1:
[67:37] 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? What do you envisage and where would you want us to be?

Speaker 2:
[67:54] I want us to have a more, what I call a more sane and humane world. More sane and humane to me means humans are cherished, every human, children and their needs and their bonds with the important people in their lives are kind of first above all else. We make policy decisions around that as a world. We are not a violent planet anymore. 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. That 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.

Speaker 1:
[69:14] 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 was going to say I didn't get to talk about my morning practice. One second. I've got you. That's where we're starting. You have some good ones here. Of course you do. Tell me, what is your morning practice?

Speaker 2:
[69:39] Okay. I like to start in the morning. I like to turn my day over to a larger spiritual power. So I will literally 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 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. So 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 larger energy than just my own mental chatter today.

Speaker 1:
[70:41] What an awesome way to like start the day. What's the last thing you do before you go to bed at night?

Speaker 2:
[70:47] 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. So 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.

Speaker 1:
[71:17] What is something that you used to aspire to years ago that you no longer aspire to?

Speaker 2:
[71:24] Being popular with the other moms at the playground. It's just not-

Speaker 1:
[71:31] No longer needed.

Speaker 2:
[71:32] Hanbark is not my scene.

Speaker 1:
[71:35] Fair, and you know it. What is a book that changed your life?

Speaker 2:
[71:39] 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.

Speaker 1:
[71:56] Perfect. I haven't read it. It's going straight on the list. Thank you so much, Tara.

Speaker 2:
[71:59] Thank you.

Speaker 1:
[72:05] If 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 Grede is presented by Audacy. I'm your host, Emma Grede. Executive producer, Ashley McShann, Derek Brown, and me. Our executive producers from Audacy, Leah Reese-Dennis, Asha Saluja, Lauren Lagrasso. Producer, KK Sublime. Stephen Key is our senior producer. Sound design and engineering by Bill Shortz. Angela Peluso is our booker. Original music by Charles Black. Video production by Evan Cox, Kirk 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 Schaff, Eric Donnelly, Kate Hutchinson-Rose, Tim Meikle, Sean Cherry, and Lauren Vieira. If you have questions for me, you can DM me at Aspire with Emma Grede. Grede is spelled G-R-E-D-E. That's Aspire, A-S-P-I-R-E with Emma Grede. Or you can submit a question to me on my website, emmagrede.me.

Speaker 5:
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