Good Life Project - How to Release Criticism and Embrace Your Calling

Episode Date: October 23, 2014

There a certain inertia that often takes hold of our lives when we hit a certain age.One that says “you know that dream, it’s just not that realistic, so why don’t you just buckle down and do the adult thing?” It’s the voice of the inner critic, sometimes bundled with a whole lot of outer critics.Together, they keep you from playing big. From refusing the call to do something that might leave you exposed. How you handle those voices, that’s what we’re talking about on today’s episode.My guest today is womens’ leadership expert and author of Playing Big, Tara Sophia Mohr. Fresh out of Yale and on her way to becoming Shakespeare scholar and womens’ activist, she took an unexpected turn. Mohr headed to Stanford to get her MBA, where she confronted both the reality of the largely "male-born" and sense of disempowered voice.Emerging into the world of business, she kept seeing more of the same all around her. Powerful, strong women not stepping into that power and strength. And she wanted to do something about it. This became her calling. We dive into her remarkable journey in this week's conversation. You can learn a lot more about her process in her new book, Playing Big: Find Your Voice, Your Mission, Your Message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh my God, I'm going to die at the end of my life knowing I sided with my fears. In this tug of war between fears and dreams, I sided with my fears. There's a certain inertia that often takes hold of our lives when we hit a certain age. One that says, you know that dream? It's just not that realistic, so why don't you just buckle down and do the adult thing? It's the voice of the inner critic, sometimes bundled with a whole lot of outer critic. And together, these voices keep you from playing big,

from refusing the call to do something that might just leave you exposed. Well, how you handle those voices, that's what we're talking about on today's episode. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. My guest today is women's leadership expert and author of Playing Big, Tara Sophia Moore. Fresh out of Yale and on her way to becoming a Shakespeare scholar and women's activist, she took an unexpected turn, heading to Stanford to get her MBA, and then into a world of business where she reconnected with something that's become her calling.

The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg.

You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. So you recently wrote a provocative op-ed piece from the New York Times about how men and women are criticized differently and what to do about that. So tell me a little bit about that op-ed. Yeah.

So it was about the fact that, one, that all substantive work that women do brings praise and criticism. And that particularly for women, what the research shows is that it will tend to bring personal and personality criticism. So this recent study done was analyzing women and men's performance reviews, written performance reviews from their bosses, and found that women got more critical feedback overall than men. But most notably, what it found was that 75% of the critical feedback that women receive includes a personality criticism of some time, some kind. You're too abrasive, too judgmental, too aggressive, and only 2% of men's performance or feedback includes this personal criticism. So it's particularly hard for women, right? Because, and we all live with kind of a subtle consciousness of if I speak out too much, if I'm too bold, if I'm too public in sharing my voice, too visible, too threatening of the

status quo, it's not just going to be a criticism of my work, but a more personal attack. And that's particularly hard for women because we're also socialized that the most important thing is to be nice and likable and connected to others. Yeah. You know, it was really interesting to me to read that. And I've actually had this conversation that triggered something in me because part of my mission for this series has always been to make sure that I have an equal spotlight on women and men. And from day one, I have struggled to find women to bring on. Whereas men are like lining up, like elbowing each other out of the way to come and be guests from before this existed.

And in the early days, I kind of figured, OK, it's not proven. Nobody knows it's out there. Nobody knows we're actually doing something, you know, on a serious level. And this is when we were actually filming the web show, too. So you were visibly present. But then it persisted. And I knew it has nothing to do with there not being amazing women

and amazing stories to tell. And I got really curious about the phenomenon. What was really going on here? And so seeing that research and also having some conversations with some women really opened my eyes to this. And because I asked a few women, powerful, high-profile women, and they said that one of the things that goes through their head the moment they would get an invitation from someone like me is, will they be attacked? But not attacked for their ideas, attacked for who they are, attacked for what were wearing. Attacked for their energy in the conversation.

Whereas I think men don't think about those things in the vetting process nearly as much. Because I guess what I'm discovering is it's just not as much a part of our day-to-day experience in a weird way. Yeah, it's not as much a part. And one thing that really surprised me when I started working with women around praise and criticism, we would get on the phone to do that part of my course and I would be, you know, maybe coaching someone or we'd be in a discussion about what was the criticism they were afraid of and what felt scary about it. And I listened to their voice and like, they actually sound like they feel like they're about to die. Like the fear sounds like they're petrified

and almost like survival, physical safety kind of feeling. Like they're re-experiencing it while they're sharing it almost. Just something. I didn't know. I was like, this is mysterious, but why are they so afraid? And then I started thinking about women's history and how we, for most of history, really didn't have legal protection for ourselves. We didn't have, we weren't able to own financial property, so we couldn't escape a life-threatening situation with our, you know, with a dollar to get us out of there kind of thing. We didn't have political rights.

And so approval was actually quite necessary for survival. You couldn't just be a not-liked, not-accepted woman and be safe. So there's like generations of just training through environment and society that this is the way to be okay. Yeah. And many parts of the world, that's obviously still going on. Many homes, sadly, that's still going on. So I do think there is this psychological legacy that now for a lot of us, it's not true in our moment, but we kind of have to compassionately retrain ourselves.

Like, no, it's going to be okay. Like you can even be attacked and it's going to be okay now. Yeah. And what's interesting is, um, I mean, I experienced that on a nonstop basis, but, um, what's interesting about me is also any, almost any business, including brick and mortar companies I've had, our clientele have generally been 70% women, um, without that being my intention. So there's, it's, it's been interesting for me to experience that also. What experience? What? Not intentionally trying to build a business around women, but having that end up be the clientele and trying to figure out, okay, what's the dynamic here that people are responding to?

And granted, they're in spaces where, in the yoga know, there's just by default, that was like, you know, especially when we started as 80% female, um, in the fitness world, it wasn't, but we ended up pretty much that way. Um, and then through just, you know, written expression on, you know, all sorts of basically where I've been for the last five years. But, um, but I want to circle back to your op-ed because you shared all this information. You shared a fact, you're like, this is the scenario. Then you also offered an opinion. Yeah. And in fact, one of the things that was mind-boggling to me, the original piece I turned into the Times had a lot more facts. And it was a very profound experience for me to see

when the edited version came back, a lot of that was stripped out. And they were like, Tara, you're not writing for the magazine. This is an op-ed. What is your opinion? And as much as, everything I do in some sense is really about trying to help women just share what they believe and share their voices and get out of that good girl, good student mode. That's like, I have to do my homework and back it up and prove to you how, but I had kind of fallen into that. And it was, it was pretty profound to be like, oh, I'm actually, they're, they're just asking what I think. Okay. Got it. Got it. I don't need to go find supporting facts. That was like, whoa. Yeah. Cause so not what we learn in school. Yeah. And I think that's across, I mean, again, it's this women and men thing.

But I think across the board, we're freaked out about just we just want to validate. You know, everyone's terrified of being attacked and not being able to defend your position by evidence or other people's opinions. Like, well, I was just saying, I mean, you know, CYA is an acronym for a reason. Yeah. But so what was your opinion? What was your advice? Because I think that's what touched for a reason. Yeah. But so what was your opinion? What was your advice? Because I think that's what touched off a lot of your response. which also includes that we're so often looked at for our appearance, which sends the underlying message that how you're perceived is what matters the most and will determine your destiny, not,

you know, who you are and your choices. And then we talked about, and then I talked about what to do. So reframing feedback as only telling you about the person giving the feedback, not as telling you anything about you. And, you know, my editor, when I wrote that line in the book, she's like, do you really mean that? Don't you mean it doesn't just tell you about you? It also tells you about the person giving the feedback? And I'm like, no, I really do mean something more extreme. I truly believe feedback never tells you about you. It only tells you about the person giving the feedback. So that was one piece we talked about in the article. Also noticing what feedback, what kinds of criticism or praise affect you the most, either the criticism that wounds you the

most or the praise you're most seeking and looking for the matchup of how does that mirror what you believe about yourself. So the criticism that hurts us most usually mirrors what we fear about ourselves. The praise we're seeking most usually mirrors something we're wanting to be true about ourselves or doubting about ourselves. So, yeah, that kind of stuff. Right. Yeah. How do people respond? So, you know, I didn't delve too much into the responses. So I don't know too much actually about how they responded.

I know a tremendous number of people found it extremely helpful. And I know some felt that it was making women responsible. They interpreted it as choosing to make the woman responsible for dealing with this rather than changing the system. And that was the primary criticism. And what I so love about the place that I've gotten to with my creative life is that I really wasn't hooked by the criticism. I was like, I'm so glad they're writing their response articles because that's their job and they get to share their voice. And my job was not to cover every base and argument. My, my job was to share my, you know, what I call my slice of the truth and their job is to share their slice of the truth.

And it would be, there's something that now for me feels very spiritual about generously giving people room to have their seat at the table, which means I have to firmly be in mine and be like, yeah, I'm going to talk about the inner work women can do. And if you want to, you can talk about the system change they can do. And I'm so excited for you to do that. And I hope your piece feels like an important piece of self-expression for you. Yeah. Which is, um, not an experience that a lot of people would have if somebody, I mean, me included, um, the moment you put your voice out publicly and you actually take an opinion, you, you stray from, you know, like, okay, I've got 10 years of data

here and I'm going to just kind of like say it in my voice. But you actually say, this is what I think we should do. You hold yourself up to be judged. You hold yourself up to be criticized and praised and accepted. And I remember having this conversation with Brene Brown, you know, about how both of us still respond and, you know, try and figure out how do we process that when people really strongly disagree and potentially misinterpret what you're saying grossly sometimes and respond to that and attack you based on something which was completely not what you actually meant or intended. And how do you deal with that? many people not sharing themselves with the world because they're terrified of being criticized or judged when they do and just wanting to crawl under a rock when it happens. And instead of actually developing the skills or the practices to be okay living through that process, they just shut down and they don't share their amazing gifts with everybody else.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's such a complex thing because I think about, you know, I was someone, I had what I call a seven year sabbatical for writing sponsored by my inner critic. So I did not write for most of my 20s for all of these reasons. I had been an English major at a place where the definition of like how we're going to help English majors was like, you're going to, you know, you'll write an essay or a poem, you know, creative writing, and then we'll like mark it up with a red pen and tell you everything that's wrong with it and expect you to go find your creative voice for the next one. And for me, that just like totally, my artist went like running, my inner artist went running for the hills. Like that was so scary. So it has been a long process for me to find my way back to sharing my voice, knowing some people

are going to like it and some people aren't. And it's involved a lot of different pieces, starting with the very first one was choosing to write for myself and really getting the difference between writing because I love to write versus writing because I want people to tell me it's good enough. And I had to really, in the beginning, I had to like so let go of any concern about what anyone else would think to even be able to publish a blog post.

Yeah, difference between writing because you want to be read and writing because you have to write. And I think a lot of people stumble with understanding that they're two really different things. And then very often the best way to the first one is actually to just forget about it and focus on the second. And I say, you know, it's not to me, it's not that we can become impervious to praise and criticism and totally disconnected because we're still human and we have egos. And sometimes there's valid data in there that you want. Very valid data. Very valid data.

But I do think we want, for me, it's like, I think of it as praise is the cherry on top of the sundae, not the sundae. So it's still nice. It's just like, oh, thank you. That was a nice little addition. But the juice was for me in the creative process. And then to the, yeah, to the extent that I pay attention to feedback, you know, it's because it tells me about the person giving the feedback.

So when I say feedback only tells you about the person giving the feedback, it's not like, therefore we ignore it. It's like, therefore, if that's your audience, you really listen, or that's someone you want to influence. You really listen and you incorporate it, but you incorporate it because it can help you have the impact you want to have. Not because you're going to, you know, it's telling you whether you're a good writer or not. Right. So where's the, the dividing line then between saying, okay, this is, this is

the audience that I want to really reach out to and, and impact and connect with telling me how they're perceiving what I'm doing and me responding to that by shifting what I'm doing so that it really lands with them. And then also honoring the completely fully aligned sense of expression and belief that's deep inside of you. Cause that is a really thin line that I think a lot of us dance. It's tricky. And it is, I think it is a dance. Sometimes I think of it as like an act of translation almost, or like, so the, I would think of the core of my work and the core of what I'm saying is the part that's, I'm sort of imagining this physically. And for those listening, you know, Jonathan and I are sitting across from a table, so

he's across from me. So on the side of this table closest to me, that would to me be the core of my content, what really matters, the meaning of what I want to say, and that I'm going to be true to. But as I start to like move into the space across the table to the audience or the person I'm in conversation with, now I have to pay attention on the outer side of it to, is this being languished in a way that will make sense to the person I want to talk to? So I'm more okay. Like, for example, I would change the title of what I'm talking about, like a hundred times until I figured out what worked for my audience.

I wouldn't change the core of what I was talking about. Yeah. So it's the rapper. Yeah. Which is very entrepreneurial. Succinctly said, yes. I mean, it's essentially, that's, you know, it's the approach of entrepreneurship. But interestingly, it's also, it's something I think we've seen in the world of faith

these days a lot also. It's really like you'll have, I mean, there are huge televangelists and preachers and mega churches now and across all different faiths. And I think, you know, it's interesting to see where it's sort of like, you know, the written word is the written word. You know, you can't rewrite the Bible or whatever, you know, doctrine you follow. But at the same time, you see a lot of people really, really redefining the wrapper and the delivery system and the languaging around it to try and just make it, you know, digestible so that the core of it, you know, gets through those just automatic defenses and says, huh, yeah, okay, I'm open to that on some level. And sometimes I think the wrapper is also sort of where we meet the roles and the life experiences that life has given us, you know, so for me, like women's leadership is women's leadership is in fact, part of the

rapper for me and the core in some ways is a, is a very spiritual message. It's funny that you mentioned religious people. Cause I, my, I did a book party last night for clergy, women clergy. That was really cool. Really cool. I'm like, what could be more important than talking to women, talk to people about God? Awesome. Yeah. If you're looking for flexible workouts, Peloton's got you covered. Summer runs or playoff season meditations, whatever your vibe, Peloton has thousands of classes built to push you.

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It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg.

You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. We're talking with Tara Sophia Moore today about the voice of the inner critic and how it differs between men and women and how it plays with this concept of a calling. I grew up about an hour south of San Francisco, sort of near Stanford University. Which is also where you did your MBA. MBA.

Right. So were you a kid where you grew up in the town and you're like, I'm going to go live there. No, not at all. Not at all. You're like, no, I'm never coming back here. I wasn't really aware of Stanford growing up. But I grew up in a very unique home. My mom, I used to call my mom affectionately a bedroom mystic.

Because if you walked into her bedroom, she had floor to ceiling bookshelves, like the ones in your home. And they were just full of books about mysticism from every religious tradition. And, you know, bedroom mystic, it's almost like closet mystic, because she wasn't no, if nothing in her outer life, would you know that when she was coming home, you know, she was reading these books and spending all her time immersed in them. And she was coming home, you know, she was reading these books and spending all her time immersed in them. And she was really also very well read in psychology and wasn't a therapist, did some writing, but was primarily a full-time mom. And she raised me with all of those concepts. So like from age five, we would be diagramming my dreams every morning at the

breakfast table, mapping out the Jungian archetypes, like a yellow pad next to, you know, the corn muffin or whatever was the breakfast food at the time. And I can literally remember things like, you know, coming, getting in the backseat and she picked me up from kindergarten and saying, so-and-so teased me on the playground. And she said, well, what do you think is going on for him at home that would make him tease another kid? Cultivating empathy and compassion from a very young age. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah. So I was raised with all this, you know, or like, you know, I can remember from a very young age her being like, people are 95% driven by unconscious motivation. And it's always great if you can go to therapy and find out about some of those unconscious motivations. So I was raised with all these personal growth topics and I took to it and I loved going to the New Age bookstore after school and reading. And I found that those are actually, all that stuff is totally comprehensible in childhood and adolescence and are really great tools for navigating adolescence, especially. So there was that going on. And then at the same time, school was really valued in my house. And so I had this other world that was like

very left brain, very rational, was in conflict with a lot of the things I was learning from these spirituality and psychology books. So that was really confusing for a while. So what did you end up, when you went to college, what did you do your undergrad? I did my undergrad at Yale in English literature. And I had thought I would major in psychology because I thought, well, that's where I'm going to pick up all this reading. Right, because I'm thinking from the upbringing, I'm like, oh, this is like a psychologist in the making. Yeah, yeah.

So I went to the psychology class. Yeah, yeah. It's like one or the other. I went to the psychology class thinking I would major in psychology. And we got like the big hardback psychology textbook. And I went immediately to the index to look for Carl Jung because I had grown up reading him. He was one of the greats. And he wasn't in the index. He wasn't even in the index. So then I went to look up Freud because my mom had talked to me a lot about Freud too.

And Freud wasn't in the index. And I went to the professor and I'm like, I don't get it. Like, is there another textbook coming? Like, who are we going to read in Psych 101? And he said, no, we don't read them in psychology anymore because they, they, psychology is a social science and they didn't approach their work with a scientific method. And the only place that you'll find Freud or Jung taught anymore in the university is in the literature department. And I took the psychology class, and I found that it felt like we were only talking about minutiae and talking about the most basic and oversimplified version of a human being.

And then I was taking some English classes, and it felt like in the discussion of the characters and the stories, a much more complex conversation about human life was happening. And so that's why I became an English major. And then I fell madly in love with Shakespeare. Like, I actually fell in love with Shakespeare. And some people may have heard of Harold Bloom. Do you like Harold Bloom? He's a literary critic, very famous literary critic and Shakespeare critic. So I worked for him for a while during college and

spent almost like all of my last two years of college studying and writing about Shakespeare. I lived in Stratford. So what was it about that that drew you in? I mean, the genius, the poetry, the genius of the writing and the genius of the puzzle of it and the psychology of it and working with all of that. So where do you go from there?

Right. So then I have a lot of like, a lot of papers about Shakespeare in drawers. Right. You're like, you're clearly, you're completely hireable right now. Right. Completely hireable. Any company that needs analysis of all of Shakespeare's comedies. I got it.

And let me ask you another question also, because you're going to Yale, right? Like big school, cool school, like a lot of different things that you could do there. And you're pursuing something very, a very narrow slice that clearly is massively lighting you up. But also probably clearly, you know, it's going to be a little bit challenging to find a way to earn the sort of yell-worthy living when you get out. What's going on in your head or in the people around you at this time? I honestly wasn't thinking about that. I was not raised, interestingly, one of probably the gender biases in my home when I was growing up was sort of like girls don't have to think about what's going to make money. So my parents never talked to me about that. They were like, what's the why there, by the way, first by why they, why, why that was the bias or why they never talked to you?

Probably because that was their model. Like my mom had been a full-time mom. My dad had been the breadwinner. And I think there was also a little bit of like a, um, you shouldn't have, like the, like the girl shouldn't have to, that's a guy's job to do that. So they hadn't talked to me about money, but they had really encouraged me to follow my interests and passions. So it wasn't in my radar, like I have to find the thing that's going to make money. It was sort of like, that'll work itself out. And my attention just wasn't there, even though I knew I was going to have to support myself when I graduated. But I also, you know, when you're 22, like my version of support myself was like, if I can find something that will pay $22,000 a year, right?

And my first job, you know, then I'll tell you. So what I ended up doing was I had also been, I was already very interested in women's issues and how women's voices were missing in the world. And as an outgrowth of some things that I had been involved in at Yale, I teamed up with a classmate of mine and one of the rabbis at Yale. And we started a project creating two anthologies of Jewish women's writings about Passover, which is one of the Jewish holidays, and sort of bringing women's voices back where they were missing. And so we essentially incorporated that project under a nonprofit and raised funding for it and supported ourselves with the $22,000 a year, you know, whatever that we needed. And we did that and those books were published. And that project, I started to understand as sort of a social venture and started to get interested in the world of social entrepreneurship.

That, you know, you could build things in the world that would enrich the world in some way. And I just loved any kind of entrepreneurial process that had sort of always been a part of the way I'd done things. I was always, you know, one who liked to create things, not manage them. So when the books finished, I was sort of, then I was really lost and floating because I was like, okay, I did these books. They were very, you know, the project was very successful. And I literally, a year later, was looking at psychology graduate school programs, like funky hippie psychology graduate school programs, poetry MFAs, because I had also been writing poetry all this time. Which doesn't sound all that different from the funky graduate psychology programs.

And then a friend said to me, you should really check out Stanford Business School's website. I was like, okay. So I went to the website and the website said, change organizations, change lives, change the world. And I was like, that's what I want to learn how to do. I didn't know there was a graduate school program for that. And you could read their whole website and there was no language about business.

And I looked at it and I just immediately knew this is what I'm doing next. And it was a very clear click. And, and I, you know, I'm not someone who ever thought of myself as a quantitative person. I had to start studying for the GMAT, which has math on it. So I did that, and I went to Stanford Business School, which I obviously had an unusual background. Yeah, I'm wondering what the admissions officers were like. Well, let's see. She's got a lot of time studying and reviewing Shakespeare. They're like, well, we're not admitting anyone else who just finished doing a feminist anthology, so why not her?

Perfect. But I think they saw it was an entrepreneurial kind of social venture, and they were trying to diversify the student body. So I did that, and I found, that there was a lot else to business school than learning how to change lives and change the world, that that was part of the marketing part of what went on there, but a lot else went on there. Um, and then I struggled to be at home in business school, which, you know, I was coming out of like feminist nonprofit world. All of a sudden it's two thirds men, very frat boy culture. I have a humanities background. It's very quantitative work. Um, so that was quite challenging. Did you doubt at some point that

you should be there? Do you think about leaving at all or no? I didn't think about leaving, but it was, it was, there were times when it was extraordinarily hard and times when I really felt like I was also losing my voice in, in the midst of that culture. So how do you, what were their moments or stories or particular things you can remember where that really hit home and you're like, wow, this is happening. Yeah, there were moments. I mean, I chose actually not to put some of them in the book because I just didn't want that in stone. But there were moments of, you know, pornography being shown in the classroom and the professor not saying anything when students decide it would be really funny and awesome to do their business projects about porn companies multiple times. You know, vodka being served to all the students in a 10 a.m. class.

Like frat boy culture, you know. Dumb blonde jokes being made by professors. Like just a lot. A lot of things. But, you know, I had my little posse and we did our best. And then you lose your voice a little bit. And then, you know, which happened to me, I would say, I had my little posse and we did our best and then you lose your voice a little bit. And then, you know, which happened to me, I would say both in undergrad and graduate school, I don't, I didn't find any of my educational experiences nurturing to my voice. And I have

always had to have a recovery period after them. Hmm. It's interesting. So when did you, because at some point you decide, oh, hell no. You know, not only can this not go on for me, but this, I need to, I need to recover my own voice and then I need to help other women recover their voice. So what's the trigger? When, how does that flip get switched? Yeah. So I left business school. I went back to work in the nonprofit world at a large foundation and I was doing grant making work. So evaluating grant proposals. And it was sort of like, I'd call this one of the first articles I ever wrote for Huffington Post was called the B plus life. And that was sort of my B plus life. Like it wasn't horrible,

nothing wrong with it. B plus. I like my job. I like my colleagues. Work is good for the world. We're helping social service organizations. But so far from what I really wanted to be doing. And for me, it was actually coming up on my 30th birthday, there was something about that number where I was like, wait, whatever you're doing at 30 is what you're doing in your adult life, by definition. And so this is what it looks like, Tara. And I had started to just feel more and more sad. I had started to feel, the best way I could describe it was like, I was experiencing life, like looking through a window where the action was on the other side of the window and I was looking through the glass, like things had become very dried up and not dynamic

in my own experience. And so the pain of being off track, you know, was getting more intense. And I, I usually change in my life out of pain of the old way, not working. How is that actually manifesting in your life? Nothing obvious on the surface. Just me feeling sad, resentful, cranky all the time, you know, not lit up. Which is what so many people feel and just pretend it's not there. Yeah. Yeah. It's very hard.

It's hard to look at. And so the step I then took, I was like, I don't know what to do. I remember my husband and I went to kind of like a personal growth retreat center. And when I was there, I was like, it really started to hit home for me. Like I want to work in this field, which was very vulnerable for me to admit, because from a Stanford MBA and a Yale education, you don't say you want to go be in the personal growth field. That's not intellectual enough. And, and I remember, you know, saying that to my husband and he was like, I know, sweetie. I'm like, you've known that for a long time, you know, saying that to my husband and he was like, I know, sweetie.

I'm like, you've known that for a long time, you know? And I'm like, I have? It's like, yeah. You know, kind of like, oh, are you coming back around to that again, Tara? Yeah, exactly. He's like, it's okay with me, you know, whenever you're ready kind of thing. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to get trained as a coach. I knew a little bit about coaching from, it was actually part of the curriculum at Stanford Business School

was teaching coaching as a management skill. And I had been really attracted to it because it seemed more positive and in the world than traditional therapy. And so I went to get trained as a coach. And as part of that process, then I needed to be coached. And so that meant looking at what do you really want to do? And the answer actually was not be a coach. The answer was, right. I want to write. Or something in me was saying, right, is the answer. And from there, I started blogging a little bit. I started tapping into my creativity again. And, and also coaching,

but coaching, you know, has always been and even then was very secondary to me to the creative process of writing and of formulating content. goes. New father, new routines, new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca

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So is coaching almost in a way your laboratory to have stuff to write about? Exactly. Laboratory to see what works, what doesn't, you know, what only works for a small segment of people, what seems to work for most. So what lights you up more, the outcomes that you actually experience as a coach or the input that you get to your expression and writing engine by coaching? Definitely the input. I'm so similar in that way. And I don't coach anymore. years. And then once I felt like, wow, I'm seeing there's a process I'm taking people through that is getting consistent results that they find really powerful, then I turn that into a course. So I also much prefer a teaching mode, even a very interactive mode. And that became the

Playing Big program. So I like to coach now as, as an element of teaching, but, um, totally not my sweet spot. Yeah. You and I are so similar in that way. And that I, I did it for a couple of years on and off of, um, not traditional coaching by any means, like a tough love of entrepreneurship. It's like, suck it up. Oh, must you whine so much? Yes, it's hard, really hard. Right. I too have noticed it's hard. Welcome to the club. Yeah. Remember when you signed up for this, right? Yeah. But for me, it was the same thing. I was like, yeah, I discovered really late, much later than you,

that actually writing is a part of me. But I also discovered that I need a lot of input. I need to experience the world through my own engagement with it and through working with other people who engage in different ways to have that data come into the expression engine so that it can come out in some other form. And so for me, it was always about that too. And teaching is a huge love of mine as well. But coaching has never really been something. I know some people who love it. They're drawn to it. I just can't wait to do it. But it's never been my thing. And I find the people, the best coaches I know hate blogging, hate having to have any kind of platform in the world. Like they are all about what happens in that moment.

And they're all about the space they create for other people. So I just like to then, I have all like, I have my, you know, my little posse of friends that are like these brilliant coaches who are so invisible in the world. And I just like to funnel as many people to them as I can. I have the same thing. I have a resource list. I've got my three coaches who I send people to and this and that. And people are like, don't you do this? I'm like, no.

I know amazing people. And we've actually, now that with what we're doing, now we have a whole faculty. So now I actually just bring them on to our faculty. So it's amazing. I get to play with them and we get to, but I just get to do the stuff I love to do. And they have the stuff that they love to do. And you're such a gifted writer. I love your writing.

Thank you. I appreciate that. I still consider myself very much in the early stages of the journey. But one of the things that you talk about that's kind of a fascination of mine also is this idea of calling. And I think we're probably both students of Joseph Campbell and Hero's Journey and kind of fascinated by Liz Gilbert's sort of more feminine take on the history of these days too. But talk to me a little bit about the notion of calling. Well, I started my thinking around calling drawing from my own experience.

And the first experience I ever had of a calling was when I was about 15 and the first day of a new school year, walked into English class, my favorite class of the day, and the teacher introduced what we would be reading for the year. And he said, we're going to be studying the theme of coming of age. We're going to read a whole variety of stories of coming of age. And we're going to discover what's universal about this rite of passage. And we're going to read Black Boy by Richard Wright. And we're going to read what's universal about this rite of passage. And we're going to read Black Boy by Richard Wright. And we're going to read Lord of the Flies.

And we're going to read a separate piece. And you're like, dude fest. Dude fest. No girls coming of age. No books written by women. So what was interesting was a fire really got lit in me where I really wanted to fix that and change it. And I was able to go over to the teacher after class. And you have to imagine at this time, I'm like a smoking, red hot chili peppers, loving, like full on in my rebellion, trying to not get good grades. Yeah, like not, you know, and went to the teacher and said, you know, there are no books by women and it seems like there should be.

And he said, well, we don't have the money for new books. It's a public school. And I was like, I'm going to do this. And I went home and I made a little binder and started navigating the district politics to get the curriculum changed, and did. And it was absolutely an experience of this piece of work is yours to do, like this piece. And I had a sense of assignment. At 15, too. Mm-hmm. And then when it was done, it was done. And so the way I think about

callings now, it's very much that. I think they usually show up in one of two ways, either when we get a vision of how something in the world could be different, like a persistent vision that won't leave us alone, or when we have a particularly vivid frustration or pain about the status quo, some piece of the status quo. And that that's telling us something about what is our slice of, our piece of all the needs and brokenness in the world to help fix. And sometimes a calling is a calling to a 20-year career. Sometimes aness in the world to help fix. And sometimes a calling is a calling to a 20-year career. Sometimes a calling is a calling to help this person in your community and not that person.

I think that's where a lot of people get tripped up also because they intertwine the word calling with life purpose, which is such a loaded term. I'm not a fan of that term, to be honest, even though it's huge in the personal growth world these days, I'm a bit of an outlier. I kind of have the Steve Jobs approach to that. I'm like, you know what, most people aren't going to be able to piece, you know, like connect the dots until they're pretty far into life and looking back. And most people actually will never actually even bother trying. But the notion of calling not having to be the identical thing to this, you know, like

overwhelming and for everlasting life. For just like, this is a moment in time. Maybe it lasts a month until we get this job done. Maybe it lasts a couple of years. Maybe it lasts, maybe it does end up lasting in some way forever. But I think there's a certain amount of forgiveness to saying that like a calling can be this thing that you're fiercely committed to for potentially a fixed window of time. And it doesn't have to be the thing that like this is what you do for life that would almost enable people to accept it more readily.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Because I think, you know, our callings are there about how we bring light and love into the world. And I often joke with people and I'm like, you don't know your life purpose. Excellent. We can solve that like in the next 30 seconds, because my point of view is every one of us shares the same life purpose, which is to bring light and love into the world. And then on top of that fundamental layer, we each have different expressions of how we're going to bring light and love into the world. And that that changes with our circumstances, right? Like

when you're a graduate student, you have different kinds of opportunities to bring light and to love into the world than when you're a professional, than when you're a grandparent. So to me, the realm of callings is all about how we, we make manifest that bringing light and love into the world in the very fluid changing circumstances that we're presented with. And changing external circumstances, but also internal like life cycle. And that's why, you know, there's, I can get started on the whole life purpose thing, but you know, the notion of people saying like, everybody has one single life purpose, which is very specific in design. And then you find people where, as a parent, a child dies, and then they start a foundation.

Their purpose becomes to... So then you're telling me that for them to actually have discovered their life purpose, their child had to go. Right. And there are just all sorts of things like that that I have strong reactions to. But when you tell me, okay, this becomes a person's calling. And for this window of time, maybe forever, but for this window of time, this is the burning thing for them. And it's what they're deeply committed to. And they'll see it to a place where they need to see it, wherever that may be.

And we'll figure that out down the road. And it's too easy for our inner critics to manipulate the idea that we need one calling and then use that as an excuse to wait on doing anything. I so believe, I think that stops so many people from acting because they're like, no, I'm not sure that that's it. So I can't really invest all of my energy in it. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. Right. We don't want to go down that road. I'm on the same page with this stuff. What do you most want women to experience in the world now that you think that they're not fully experiencing? The power and impact of their own voices. Yeah. I think that, you know, the phenomenon that really started me doing all this work was feeling like I was surrounded by brilliant women whose voices were not getting out in the world and brilliant women who were not fully sharing their voices. turning down the opportunity to come speak here because they don't think they're qualified enough, because they're insecure, because they're afraid of the criticism, because of all of those fear

and inner critic voices. And I think it's sort of one of the next steps for women's empowerment, for us to practice sharing our ideas, our voices, what we already know, you know, kind of just like in that op-ed article, like stripping out the supporting facts and that need to go get the research and have the proof, but really like, what do you believe? What do you think? What do you know already sharing that in the world and seeing how enough they already are and seeing the impact of that sharing and then letting that fuel them to go further. Beautiful. So the name of this is Good Life Project.

So I want to offer that term out to you, to live a good life with the incredible work that you're doing, a new mom, playing big, to use your language in so many different ways. Actually, let me ask one question before I ask that. Do you feel like you're playing big in all aspects of your life right now? I don't feel like I'm playing big in all aspects of my life. I feel like I'm very much moving forward on my playing big journey. And that's actually how I look at it. Not as a binary, we're playing small or we're playing big, but that we're, you know, we're always moving along that spectrum, coming into greater and greater levels of playing

big, hopefully, which really means listening less and less to our inner critic, listening less and less to our fear, moving more and more towards what we really want to be and how we want to live in the world. So I feel like I'm moving forward on that journey. And I feel like I still grapple with lots of my own ways of playing small. And that's why I care about the topic and like to talk about it all the time. Yeah, because it's a real fascination of mine also, I guess. But honestly, probably the deeper fascination is, is it possible to play big in all areas of your life at the same time?

I'm not convinced that it is. I'm looking for ways to make it happen. I haven't found it yet. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, there's the world's definition of playing big. Yeah. And I think it's probably a great, good idea to sort of break down what we actually mean by that.

So by the world's definition, like, are you being uber successful and, you know, getting the five gold stars in your fitness regime, your family contribution, your, you know, uber successful career, right? Your philanthropy, like, can you be excellent in what would look like excellent in the world's terms all at the same time, I think that's probably really hard. But my most fundamental definition of playing big is you're being more loyal to your dreams than to your fears. I love that. Thanks. Say that again. Yeah. And this was for me when I realized I was playing small, that sort of coming up on my 30th

birthday time, the best way that I could articulate it was, oh my God, I'm going to die at the end of my life knowing I sided with my fears, basically. Like in this tug of war between fears and dreams, I sided with my fears. So the shift for me was like moving my center of gravity, moving my loyalty to the dreams, what I wanted to do and what I wanted to express. So yeah, to me, that's playing big, being more loyal to your dreams than your fears. And that I think you can do in a way that runs through every aspect of your life. Not like that. All right. So let's finally circle around to that final question then.

Offering up the term to live a good life. What does that mean to you? Well, I thought about this. Because you knew it was coming. I knew it was coming. And then I recently saw something on social media that reminded me it was coming. And the answer that kept popping up for me was a life in which your soul has evolved. So I haven't thought about what that means a lot,

but to me, yeah, a good life is one in which whatever way your soul came here to grow has happened. Awesome. Thank you so much for hanging out. It's been a lot of fun. Thanks. Thanks so much for listening to Good Life Project. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you'd share a quick review over on iTunes. It helps us get the word out to more people and make a bigger difference in the world.

And hey, while you're there, please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you'd love to know more about how we can help you live your best life, check out our upcoming events and courses at goodlifeproject.com. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off with gratitude. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday.

We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die.

Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk.