The Liz Moody Podcast - The Invisible Forces Keeping You Exhausted & Anxious—And How To Break Free

Starting point is 00:00:00 So many women feel guilty when they rest. Why is rest the first thing we sacrifice and how do we start breaking free from that guilt? With our conscious and unconscious agreement, it keeps us so enslaved to busyness that it's impossible to really attend to anything else, including what's happening in the world and around us. I think it comes from this core idea that's passed on to women by women. To be a quote unquote good woman, you will subjugate what you want, which might be a desire for. rest to other people's needs. And the needs are endless. We end up in this perpetual hamster wheel servicing the world and its inhabitants rather than tuning in to ourselves. What if they do feel like real needs, though? Like if you have children, those are real needs and you do need to attend to them.

Starting point is 00:00:46 You want to attend to your partner's needs. You need to attend to the needs of your work. How do you begin to distinguish what needs you can maybe deprioritize to make room for yourself? I think what's sold to women and that we pick up is this idea that we're the, only one who can service those needs and it's on us to do it with a sort of religious fervor. I'm married. I have two boys and similar to you, I'm trying to build my own little media world and yet I still find myself doing far more than my husband and not because he's making me, but because it's part of this mantle that I've picked up about what it is to be a good woman and what it is to be a good mother. Hi, I'm Elise Loonen, the author of the New York Times bestseller

Starting point is 00:01:27 on our best behavior and the host of pulling the threat. Elise, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. Tell me about performative motherhood. A good mother performs all of these acts of devotion to her children. And yes, some of them are necessary. My kids need to eat and be clothes and educated. And some of them are certainly in the extra credit category of performative motherhood that we see all over our culture. It's this idea that you have these highly regulated children, but of course they're regulating themselves around screen time, right, who are excellent students and well-rounded athletes and maybe taking Mandarin and really good painters and this activity that we do and that we push on them

Starting point is 00:02:13 to ensure that they're going to be successful students and citizens of the world who are going to have, you know, assured success, right? It's all driven by fear. It's not really driven. by our hearts or certainly by our children's hearts, but it's this like, if my child manages to achieve all these things, then they'll be okay, they'll be safe. How do we begin to dismantle and combat that? It's really hard. I think it's primarily comes to attending to our fear, which is really the baseline of what it is to be human, right? Our fear means that we stay alive. It's the driver for safety, security, food, et cetera, approval, right, and belonging to the tribe. And so part of it is getting comfortable with the fact that actually there's really not that much that we can control.

Starting point is 00:03:04 The world is highly uncertain. I know. I can just feel my own anxiety is spiking. But that's the truth, right? That's reality. And the more we can be present with our fear rather than repressing it and suppressing it and maybe control. fixing, et cetera, in the world to try to keep it at bay,

Starting point is 00:03:22 using our busyness to keep it out bay, and we can breathe into it and just be like, I'm scared. And when I am pushing my children and pushing myself to achieve some sort of cultural ideal, it's because I'm scared. And I just need to be with my own fear for a minute and breathe into it.

Starting point is 00:03:42 And I mean, you know, you're like, you have all the tools. But if I can just acknowledge that it's even present, it does a lot to distill it, to make it dissipate and go away. I think a lot of it is also about recognizing what's in our control and what's out of our control. And I find doing that an impossible task. Do you have any advice for that? I mean, it's interesting.

Starting point is 00:04:04 I was just interviewing Katie Hendricks being gay and he wrote The Big Leap and they have like upper limit or upper limit problem, which is like when things get too good, we tend to try and sabotage. Or, you know, it's like why, when you have a day of closeness with your husband, you pick a fight? Upper limit problem. So I was interviewing Katie and she was saying that she does an active practice, particularly at this moment and time when it's really scary out there where she sorts, this is in my control and I can take some sort of small action. And this is completely out of my control, unfortunately. And then she takes a few actions in the, I can write a letter to my representative. I can recycle. I can make a donation. I can't stop ice, right? But that that's like a daily practice that she brings herself back to of just like, this is in my world of my fiefdom that I can impact and this I cannot.

Starting point is 00:04:59 What do you do to let go of the things that aren't in your control pragmatically? With the hope and a prayer of like, I wish that this were different and it's not. And yet I can still find ways to move forward. And the thing that I think is most helpful, collectively and personally is the fear work of just what does it look like to be with myself. I imagine myself as a washing machine literally. And I'm like, what can I, what can I integrate and absorb so I'm not spreading it? And particularly for people like us, right, who have some influence in culture and have microphones. How do I manage my own anxiety so I'm not spreading it? and I don't want to, I want to power love. I want to power peace. I want to, you know, you can

Starting point is 00:05:47 imagine it as a switchboard in front of you. It's interesting though, because even as you're saying that, I'm like, look at you taking on more responsibility for like the emotions of the world. Yeah. That feels distinctly part of the problem in a way to me. Yeah, I guess I think of it as my personal responsibility to the world is to manage myself and to make sure that I'm not unloading my stuff onto other people, that I'm taking personal responsibility for how I show up and the encounters I have and the people I touch. And that that's honestly the best I can do. And the rest of it is unfortunately out of my control. But I can not spread my fear all over people. I cannot spread my hate all over people. Tell me about when you broke your neck. Because I feel like that really speaks to

Starting point is 00:06:35 some of the stories we tell ourselves about what this mental load looks like, what household labor should look like. So it was 2022 and I was riding a horse really fast and I lost my stirrup and I broke my neck and lost consciousness. And my friend calls me a broken robot and I went to lunch. You know, this happened at like 1130. I got picked up in a van and I was

Starting point is 00:06:57 like, I'm fine. I just didn't. Wait, what? I didn't want anyone around me to worry because I didn't want to. You didn't go to the hospital? No. Because I know, this is a crazy story. So my father's a physician and my dad called the local emergency room doctor who we know I knew as a child and I didn't have any symptoms. I didn't have any, I didn't have a headache. I didn't have tingly hands. They changed the policy, by the way, after this. And everyone is like, your dad is insane. And he was like, okay, don't take any Advil in case you have a brain bleed. Like, let's just see what happens. And so I was in a lot of

Starting point is 00:07:32 pain, but I didn't have concussion symptoms. We were like, I cannot let my lunch date down. I don't want people to feel that. or worry about me. I know. It's like a symptom of my madness. Yeah, I went through the rest of the week at the ranch. I didn't ride again, obviously, but I like, I remember being like, Mom, can you help me pack? Because, like, I'm like squatting and trying to pack. Anyway, I get back to L.A. and my osteopath, who's an MD was like, what do you mean? You didn't go to the hospital. You're going right now. And, and I went. And I was literally, I was in a chair like this. Like my legs. I'm like, all, I sit and chair is so improper. and they came to get me after my CT scan and they were like, do not move. You have a broken

Starting point is 00:08:15 neck. And then I went to the hospital and it ended up that it was because it was stable and in place, I wasn't particularly symptomatic. And so my recovery was easy where I wore a brace for six weeks, I believe. You know, I've done all the work to have full range of motion. But the great learning from it was, you know, I remember getting home and being in too much pain to unpack and being like, oh my God, I need to unpack and I need to do laundry and just like this flooding anxiety of all the things that I wish I could be doing and lo and behold, my husband without prompting unpacked and did laundry. And then I really was not allowed to drive, not allowed to lift, not I couldn't do anything for six weeks. and I had to be present with myself. And that was the big awakening in some ways of, oh, this anxiety, this performative, like, my kids need really well-balanced, nutritious meals that ideally are home-cooked.

Starting point is 00:09:14 The house should be clean. Like all of these ideas that were driving me crazy in that moment, I was like, oh, these are self-created stories. This is not coming. As much as I want to be angry at my husband, Rob, he's not demanding anything for me. And this is me doing this too. myself in this practice of performative, perfect mothering. And so it was a really powerful lesson of just having to be present with myself. That's a really powerful example of figuring out that something

Starting point is 00:09:47 you thought was a fact was actually a story. Yes. You talk a lot about the difference between facts and stories. Yes. How do we know if something that we are telling ourselves is indeed a story and not a fact? I think there's no official statistic on this, Liz, but I think probably 99% of our content is story, right? So just if you're asking the question, it probably is. Is it probably a story, right? Like, country is a story. Friendship is a story. Personality is a story.

Starting point is 00:10:13 These are their working definitions. But a fact is something that can be recorded on a videotape. I know we argue about facts in our culture, but it is like something that everyone would agree, like, this happened. And a story is everything else. But what happens because we're meaning making machines and a story is how we structure our world and our relationships and culture. is we take facts and we generate stories and we go with the story. And often we argue that our stories are in fact facts. This is your fault. Like you did this thing. This is your fault. That's the story. Masquerading is a fact. So like I'll give you a basic example. Let's say my husband

Starting point is 00:10:55 walks into the room and he doesn't say hi. Right? He's been away all day. He walks in. He doesn't say hide doesn't acknowledge me. I can generate from that fact a lot of stories. My husband's mad at me. I did something to piss him off. He's still upset about something that happened last week. We're probably going to get divorced. Now I'm furious because he's making me so uncomfortable. I don't deserve this. Screw him. Right? Like you can just imagine, you just know what happens, right? The reality is if I say to him, you walked into the room, I state the fact. You walked into the room and you didn't say hi to me. the story I'm now telling myself is that we're going to need a couples therapy counseling, a therapy session. He might say, oh, sorry, babe. Like, I had my AirPods in and I was listening to a

Starting point is 00:11:45 podcast that's not yours. Just kidding. You just start to see how much we can generate from one thing. So how do we stop that? I think we just start to be conscious of sorting and being like, oh, I'm in a story. And it really is incredibly helpful for conflict. right? Like, I noticed you haven't returned my last three phone calls. The story I'm telling myself is that I've upset you. And it also creates like a nice triangulation of distance where you're not coming at someone and saying you did this thing in response to this thing, but you're offering an opportunity for other explanations. And you're saying, like, can you fact check me here? So often it's like can be a very relaxed encounter of, oh, I understand why. I kind of understand how you got over here with this crazy story in response to this fact, but like there's just a misalignment of like I wasn't paying attention or my mom got sick or a million other things, right? Yeah, it's interesting because all the examples you're using are sort of in a romantic relationship, but I think these stories show up as shoulds constantly in our life.

Starting point is 00:12:54 And that's sort of the overarching theme of so much of your work. So can you maybe zoom us out and talk us through how some of these stories are showing up in our greater lives? Yeah, and they show up. with parenting all the time, right? And then we'll go to work examples. But a story is like, I should be at all of my kids' school performances, or I should walk my kid onto campus every day. Okay. Like, that's a story. That's something I'm choosing to believe. That's not a fact. But I could easily go to bat arguing that that's a fact. And that if I'm a good mom, I am parking the car, getting out of the car, walking my kid. That's what good moms do. And like a should at work,

Starting point is 00:13:37 like, I should stay late. I should take on all this extra work. That's like how you get a promotion. Okay. That's a story. That's not a fact. Right. And yet what happens with stories and culture is it's so contagious that I start doing that and modeling a type of behavior around like what needs to happen or what should happen and then we're all like, oh, I guess because Elise and Liz are like cleaning the conference room and staying late, that's what I should do. That's a, that's what needs to happen for me to get ahead of this business at this company. You share a tip in the book about how we can fact check stories by asking other people if they're telling themselves the same story. Can you share that? So that's just a very simple idea of confirming your story, like am I in story or is this a fact?

Starting point is 00:14:24 Let's say the revenue projections are down. Your boss. is maybe a little bit more distance story, right? And so you would say to your friend, I work, like, I'm telling myself a story that we're all going to get laid off and that the business is going to close. Is this, can you fact check me? You know, and your friend, your coworker might be like, I totally understand that story, but here are like five other facts that refute that story and like, I'm going to reground you, not like gaslight you and tell you everything's fine. but I can offer some other stories. But what about also when people are essentially doing the opposite?

Starting point is 00:15:05 Like, if you don't find a partner in your 30s, you're going to die alone. If you don't buy a house, you're not a successful adult. What do we do when the stories are being enforced by the people around us? That's tough. And find me friends. Just kidding. I think in those instances, there's like you can offer a million other counter stories of instances in which that is not a fact.

Starting point is 00:15:28 that's a story and there's another story that shows a completely different outcome. Like my aunt, Betty, got married at 50 and stayed married for 30 years and had the best life and I want everything about her life or whatever it is. Like part of it is saying like, I understand why you have that story and I understand the fact like you're single that why you could leap to that story and generate that story. And that's certainly a story that's confirmed by culture, right? We love that story and there's like a lot of other conflicting stories so you just need to widen the aperture and hold a lot of different stories as potentials in your mind that could happen but this story could be true too well and i would say seek them out too like if you feel like oh shit this is a story

Starting point is 00:16:14 but i don't have a counter story go find a counter story yeah it really shows how important the stories that we're being told are for creating our sense of possibilities for our life yeah 100% why are certain stories that especially sticky. A lot of us get incredibly attached. I put myself in this camp to our stories. Sometimes those are stories of like adverse circumstances and victimhood. I do this. We all do this. It's very human where I'm like, this didn't happen because this person did this thing to me and therefore, like, woe is me. I can't be successful. Right? Like that's, you hear versions of that story or like, I had a tough mother, therefore that's why I can't have a functioning relationship, right? Um,

Starting point is 00:16:56 And part of the work in choosing wholeness over goodness is like, that's a story. And yes, there's a lot of payoff. And sometimes these stories are really important for us in terms of learning how to survive. We structure our personalities around them, et cetera. We get a lot of payoff from that story. We might get a lot of sympathy for that story and understanding. And then it comes to a point where the cost of that story is way too high, where it's like, yeah, you could stay, stuck in this, you can blame your mom in perpetuity for failing to live up to your potential. I get it.

Starting point is 00:17:34 There's a lot of hit, emotional hit from that or you could start to take responsibility for your life. And I know how unpleasant that is. I want to linger there for a second because I do think we don't often think about what we're gaining from these stories that we tell ourselves. And I think that's such a big unlock that if we can pull apart, well, what am I gaining by telling myself this thing? Then we can begin to dismantle it after that. Yes. So I'll use an example from my life. A big story. This is aligned with how we open the conversation in Sloth. I'm the only one who can do it right, so I should do it all. That's my story. And I have structured a huge amount of my personality around ensuring that that story is true. And it has had a lot of payoffs for me. I've gotten really far

Starting point is 00:18:18 relying on myself and proving my virtue to the world, right? And being an awesome mom, all the things. Like, that has been a big driver in my life. And as I've worked this process in the workbook and made that story really big and excavated it and understood the fear that it sits on, which is like, who would love me if I'm not doing all the things for all the people and doing them also perfectly, Liz, and made it really big, I can move past the payoffs of that story to understand actually that story has very high cost, which means, and I, and I, I can't afford this story anymore. I don't like this story.

Starting point is 00:18:57 Actually, we have a practice called Teach the Class, which is hilarious, and you should do it with friends. But you take one of these stories that you're clinging to and you make it really big. And we instruct you on how to create a syllabus. And then you go to a woman's college. You pretend like you're teaching a class to a bunch of 20-year-old women about making sure that they believe your story too and really take it on. right? So when I go and I teach a class on you're the only one who can do it right so you can do it all, your behavior starts to become really apparent to you and you start to see the payoffs, the costs, and like the move to control, right? So for me, I'm like, all right, to make this

Starting point is 00:19:36 true for you, you make sure that you're the first person to respond to the school emails. You do it under two minutes. Like do not delay. Do not make sure that they know that you are the primary parent and you're the most responsive parent so that if something has, you do it. happens and your child needs to be picked up, they're really only going to call you. You make sure that you have all the logins and passwords exclusively for ordering hot lunch and getting into the admin and signing the sheets and getting the prescription permissions and you just lock your partner out of that process entirely because you're the only one who can do it right. So you need to do it all. At work, you don't delegate, you gatekeep, you make sure that no one can support you or

Starting point is 00:20:19 understand your process because maybe they would do it better than you. And you can really get going and build momentum. And it's funny and it's sad. And you're also like, you just see what you're up to. And you're like, God, the cost of doing this and not delegating and not accepting support is brutal. There are two things I want to talk about with that. One is, it's interesting what you said, because it does showcase how a story can serve us for certain points in our lives and certain parts of our lives. And then we can not need that story anymore. And I think that can be important, too, to be like, thank you to that story. That story got me to where I am today.

Starting point is 00:20:55 And I appreciate that. And I don't need it anymore. I've evolved beyond that. And I think that's really important. And then the second thing is, did you struggle with a loss of identity? Because I do think there is this, like, if I'm not the best mom, if I'm not this superstar worker, like, who am I? Yeah. I think that's a really powerful question, actually.

Starting point is 00:21:18 And in part because we get payoffs and we get hits and we get when we're externally oriented for approval around these stories, like this is who I am. I'm going to tell you I'm this person. I'm like conscientious and honest and hardworking. All story. Right. It can be one really hard to accept anything that's contrary. It creates this like rigidity of personality where, you know, I just said I'm really honest, right? Like that's one of my cardinal virtues and values. And I would stake my whole identity on it. And yet I probably, I'm sure, told like three Butler lies today, right? I told my mom I couldn't chat because. Wait, is a Butler lie? Like a white lie? A Butler lie is a white lie. They're like niceties where you don't hurt someone's feelings. That's interesting.

Starting point is 00:22:05 Yeah. So you're like, oh, I would love to, but I can't. But really you wouldn't love to and you can. Right. But there are these niceties to preserve feelings and relationships, but they're lies, right? But even that, like, I'm so honest, I can find all sorts of, that's a story. I can find a lot of facts in this day to prove most of the time on things that matter, right? So then what's underneath that? Like, what gives you something to cling to in terms of like, this is who I am? Yeah, a much more flexible self, you know? And that's why I, like, in so much of my work is, the workbook is called choosing wholeness over goodness because the work that I'm doing,

Starting point is 00:22:46 And personally, and that I want us all to do is to be like, actually, I need to learn how to accept these parts of myself that I've decided are quote unquote not good, that I've put in my like trash bag of shadow and pretended not to have, right? That I've disowned, that I've repressed, that I've suppressed. In a way, on our best behavior is all about the cultural shadow of women and everything that we've been conditioned to think is bad. Our ambition, our wanting, our sexuality, our desire for more, our greed, our wanting. to like have pleasure and eat what we want and enjoy our bodies. That's all in our sort of cultural shadow bag. But it's in us. It's part of us. It's part of our wholeness. So I think a lot of this work is like, can I be a little bit more flexible about my person, like what I'm holding up as who I am and recognize like, this isn't a totally full picture, you know? And I need to get, you know, you're an inspiration for me, as you know, in many ways of like, I love how I'm being. You know, you are. I love that you are like, I want these things and I'm going to do it and I'm going to show it's possible to other women. And so many women can't own that part of themselves, right? For a good

Starting point is 00:24:00 reason. Like we're scared. We get punished. We get destroyed. We like to put women in our place. Women like to put women in their place too. It's not just men. In fact, it's more likely women. Yeah. What's that about? Undiagnosed envy. Uncomplicated. Uncomplish. Uncomplish. Uncomplish. conscious envy. It's like, I want what she has and she's doing something I want to do, but I would never allow myself to do it. Is it because men feel like they have more paths available to them that they don't do that as much? Because it's not labeled as bad for men in the same way. They're not ashamed of their jealousy and envy. It's a little bit more accepted. It's more conscious for them. And it's more overt. So they can, like, they're just more overtly competitive with each other. And they're

Starting point is 00:24:44 like, I'm going to do that. Like, I'm going to go get it. Whereas for women, you know, in my early work on envy, when I first came to recognize, like, oh, you know, Lori Gottlieb had this small aside in her book that got me thinking, this is like 2018, 2019, where she said envy shows us what we want. I tell my clients to pay attention to their envy because it shows them what they want. And I just couldn't stop thinking about it, Liz. I was like, oh, my God, why am I obsessed with this thought, and it was for two reasons. I had a visceral reaction to the word envy. I was like, never. I'm not envious of anyone. I would never. Gross. And the second revelation was I had no idea what I wanted. And so I realized the mechanism that happens, I'm sure it happens with men,

Starting point is 00:25:32 but it certainly happens with women, is that when we see someone, because it's unconscious, when you see a woman doing something that you want to do or who has something that you want, And it starts to, the envy starts to rise. It feels uncomfortable. You don't like it. It's bad. And so instead of saying, oh, there's like something happening in me and it's my envy and I need to pay attention to it because this woman has something I want, the instinct is to deprecate, judge, destroy. She's bad. She's making me feel bad. I'm going to destroy her. And so that's the apparatus that I think is the driver for women on women hate. And it's very closely aligned with pride, which is. when women are visible and we see them having all this stuff and doing all this stuff, it inspires our unconscious envy and we will strike out and destroy them, right? Every celebrity take down, it's always a woman, it's always reputational damage. She's not good. She's bad.

Starting point is 00:26:30 She's a toxic person. The amount we let male celebrity. I mean, Brad Pitt just went on armchair expert. And he has pretty known abuse allegations. There's male podcast hosts with very known abuse. allegations. As long as they're powerful, men are programmed for power. The worst thing a man can be is weak or feminine and women are programmed and conditioned to perform goodness. So that's why reputational harm, your bad, bad mom, bad friend, toxic is so damaging to women. And more often

Starting point is 00:27:01 than not, we just cancel ourselves. Like, we will take ourselves away and take it. Like, I'm bad, I'm bad, I'm bad. And we do it to other women, whereas the men just don't care. It doesn't matter. It doesn't stick. Do you think that women should be doing something different, like not on when they're on the receiving end? Like the spade of women in 2020, there's a bunch of female CEOs who step down. And I don't condone their behavior. And I think it's notable that male CEOs were not stepping down in the same way. No, they were just enduring. They were just enduring. Yeah. Yeah. I'm waiting for a master class. I feel like the only women who have survived or escaped that are women who take the approach that men do, which is like no acknowledgement of any issue. And they

Starting point is 00:27:41 just keep going and it eventually drops. Which also does not feel great to me. No. Like morally, learning wise, bettering society way, that doesn't feel 10 out 10. No. And I think our culture is woefully lacking from both men and women of models of that was not good. And I take full responsibility and I have a lot of work to do in that space. And I'm sorry and I apologize for any harm that I've caused, and I'll do better, like, and I'm going to keep going. And instead, we just get this, the masculine way of, it doesn't matter, and the feminine way of like, I'm bad, I'm bad, I don't deserve to be here, destroy me, I'll destroy myself. And then we have no good models for what a proper apology and restoration looks like, while still being like, I still deserve to be here,

Starting point is 00:28:36 and I hope you stay with me. So I hope we see it. But again, like, I struggle to find examples. And I think, you know, I've participated. We get into this unconscious mob action. Like, I'm guilty of it too, where it just feels so good. Like the Schadenfreude and the like, I'm going to expel all my bad feelings onto this person. Like there's like a virtuousness that you gain from it. Yes. We're all susceptible to it. It's a it's like an unconscious mob action scapegoating, etc. It's like we. We're. We're like, we. We're. We We did it to Jesus, you know? We did it in ancient Greece. That's how our culture discharges anxiety and stress. It's like, who is the person that I can unload on and then light on fire and feel better? I'm genuinely confused how master class gets literally the absolute top people in every single field to teach every single one of their classes.

Starting point is 00:29:31 I use it when I want to learn things directly, like the cooking class from Thomas Keller has all of the wisdom that you would normally have to go to college. culinary school for. But also, I'm being honest, this is like a use case I don't hear a lot of people talking about. I'll just watch it for entertainment when I want to do something that's far more interesting than scrolling. Christina Aguilera taught me to sing. Shan Boudrum's Art of Master's Art of Master's in Sex Appeal class. It's 10 out of 10. There's menopause classes with leading doctors. There's script writing with Mindy Kaling. Literally, you name it, they're on masterclass, and it is such a good way to get off your phone, but have something that's like not quite as long or

Starting point is 00:30:07 hard to get into is a TV show or a movie and that it just keeps you entertained and interested, and you are learning. There are over 200 classes from the world's best, all for just $10 a month when billed annually, and you get unlimited access to every class on the platform so you can learn at your own pace whenever you want on your phone, your computer, or even in audio mode, like a podcast. If you're looking to stop scrolling and start consuming entertaining content that makes you feel excited and helps you learn, Masterclass is it. And the best part, every membership comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can start learning risk-free. Right now, our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. That's 15% off at

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Starting point is 00:32:39 That is right, up to 25 free meals with Marley Spoon. That is Marley Spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody. So remember to get the offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. When it comes to wellness, you're going to get the best results by focusing on the big needle movers. A lot of us spend a lot of time trying to optimize that last 1%, which creates a ton of stress, and it actually doesn't help our help that much. At the top of the needle mover list, sleep. And one of the best ways to optimize your sleep is to optimize your mattress, which is why

Starting point is 00:33:16 I love avocado green mattress so much. First of all, this mattress is so comfortable. I have the one with the pillow top, which is medium firm, and it's just a dream. I miss it when I travel. It's better than even the fanciest hotel beds. Having a mattress that supports your joints and your body and feels good is going to help you get more sleep and better quality sleep. But then, on top of that, avocado mattresses are made with certified organic cotton, wool, and latex, and they are made safe and green guard gold certified. They're also Okotech certified, which is the gold standard.

Starting point is 00:33:48 I look for it in any mattresses, sheets, or towels that I buy, which means the materials have been rigorously tested for harmful substances. You can actually look for the Okotech standard 100 label right on the product, and I love it. this part. It includes a traceable certificate number and the name of the testing lab so you know exactly what you're getting. There are no toxic chemicals. There's no harmful off gassing. It does not smell like it's going to kill you when you unbox it. This is what I mean. I'm not going to swap out all of my clothing, which is that top 1% of optimization. But by making sure that my mattress and my bedding are as good for me as possible, I literally reduce my exposure during a third of my life, which is a huge needle mover for a one-time swap.

Starting point is 00:34:31 I will also note, and this is a me thing, but I sleep super hot and avocado's materials are really breathable, and it makes me sweat the least of any mattress that I have slept on. And avocado is a certified B-Corp and a 1% for the planet member because caring for yourself and caring for the planet do not have to be separate things. You can get up to 20% off organic mattresses and more by shopping Avocados Presidents' Day Sale right now at avocado green mattress.com. That is avocado green mattress.com, no code needed. How can we stop comparing ourselves to our friends, our coworkers, to other women we see online?

Starting point is 00:35:07 I do this work with my best friends all the time. I walk with my friends, Sarah, every weekend. And part of it is like a practice where it's like who's irritating you. And not because it's like, let's go and dump on this person. It's there's something really powerful and interesting for you there. And so it's this conscious action where someone's like has this thing you want, right? Or is doing what you want and it's driving you crazy. Because you'll find like you don't respond to the same people.

Starting point is 00:35:37 You don't get irritated by the same people as your friends. It always has like a nugget for you specifically. And once you get that gold and be like, ah, when she brags on herself, when she like, it makes me so uncomfortable because I want. to feel so comfortable expressing my gifts. I want affirmation. I want praise. I want to be celebrated. I want to be seen. Whatever that, if that's what you need to reclaim. So I think, like, yes, comparison is a thief of joy, but I also think comparison can be just the greatest teacher in terms of being like, you want that. I'm a pretty spiritual person. And I feel like that's like the greatest way to interact with your higher self and your soul is, okay, something is here for you. It's giving you

Starting point is 00:36:27 information. Take the information and use it. Do you think talking about it with somebody else is the best way to extract that information? Like what's the best way to get to that nugget from this like, oh my gosh, I'm so jealous. I'm activated to I have a nugget to take. I think doing it with a friend is really powerful because I think your friend can see you and see your blind spots and like help you to that place in a very loving and gentle way, if you have nice friends. I also think that it's really powerful for women in particular to experience quote unquote bad feelings, like envy or anger or fear in the company of other women who can prove to them. Like you're not going to lose community. You're not going to lose approval. Like, I'm here with you. This is human and beautiful.

Starting point is 00:37:12 And like, give it to me. Like, let's invite these parts of ourselves to the table. And I still love you. And I love that dark human part of you, too. I think we really need that type of support instead of being feeling shamed and like, I'm a bad person for feeling this. Where does envy show up the most for you? Oh, I think envy for me is around people who are sort of naturally financially abundant. I think I share this with a fair number of women and probably men too of like if I'm not working a lot, if I'm not efforting and trying, then. There's no version of sort of like easy money. That to me feels like a dissonant idea. Yeah. That's a huge story I tell myself. It's like if it's easy, it's not good. My friend says to me all the time, try easier. Ugh. It's hard. And so when I see people who are really, you know, I have a lot of scarcity stories, a lot of, most of us do around money. I'm deeply envious of people who have ease. whether they have a lot of money or not, but who just aren't, that aren't carrying a lot of stories

Starting point is 00:38:23 about money. What helps you the most with that? This is a big part of what I'm working on with myself now because I write about personas, but one of my personas is called Bag Lady Bethy. I grew up in Montana, kind of in the middle of nowhere, and yet somehow my mom ended up going on Donnie Hugh in the 80s to talk about her fear of becoming a bag lady. It was her Gloria Steinem and Lily Tomlin, which is wild. I remember watching it, but I remember mostly like the fuss around this big cultural event from Missoula, Montana where one of its citizens went on Donahue.

Starting point is 00:39:03 And there were like jokes and my mom was constantly being celebrated as bag lady. But the fear was very real of I could end up in a homeless and living out of the trunk. of or out of a shopping cart. That was like the trope of the day. My mom has a very anxious relationship with money. My father's a physician. They've always lived well within their means. So it's not real. And yet as a child, it was very much like, I can't afford a latte or we would go out for dinner and then it would be like, we can't afford. It was just a totally, I think pretty manufactured scarcity story that was very present in my childhood. And then I I picked up that pattern. And I've done a lot of work around it. I used to drive my husband crazy,

Starting point is 00:39:50 but it's still there. So now when I get into this, like, I get into like a breathless anxiety, I invite Bag Lady Bethy to the table. She's one of a part of me who wants to keep me safe by making sure I'm not overspending. And I recognize her. I mean, it sounds corny, but I I'm like, I see you, you're here. I don't need you right now. You can trust me. It's kind of a little bit like internal family systems, Richard Schwartz, and parts work where it's like, I respect actually what you're trying to do here, which is to make sure I'm secure, but I'll call you when I need you. And sometimes I do need Bag Lady Bethy. That's the type of work where I'm just, again, trying to make all my stories about money conscious. Like if I get more, you get less.

Starting point is 00:40:42 money is bounderied and finite and there's not enough. And it's really deep and hard work, because obviously we're living in a time of extreme financial inequity. And there's always a lot of substantiating truths for all these stories that we believe. Yeah. Right. So many women believe more money equals more safety. How can we begin to separate that scarcity mindset from reality? Yeah. I mean, they're not related, right? In a way. I know that that sounds insane because of course they are and not having enough money is certainly generates a lot of insecurity like money will solve your money problems it will solve a lot of problems right but I think too many of us are subscribed to this idea that if I get this then why right if then statements and

Starting point is 00:41:35 this that will escape an anxiety that I think is much deeper than just like basic financial sufficiency. And I mean, you can see it all over our culture, right? Like, apparently Elon Musk doesn't have enough money. Mark Zuckerberg doesn't have enough money, right? They're still driven. Something is driving them. Serious feelings of lack and scarcity and I don't have enough and I need more. So there's no outrunning it. And so the work can't be escaped, even if you set a financial target for yourself once you get to that. I've done it. Or I'm like, oh yeah, I wrote down this figure and I've achieved it. And guess what? I feel the same. Nothing's changed, right? So many things, so many of our monies are not tethered to reality. So what do we do instead? We do the work of really

Starting point is 00:42:25 understanding what the stories are and we work those stories again, like this is the payoff, this is the cost. Is there a different story that I can pick up instead? So one of my money stories is if I accept payment from someone, then they own me. There are payoffs from that. in that I'm a really diligent employee slash consultant slash board member and I always overdeliver and that's been great and probably ensured that I always get work. And yet it's a terrible unhelpful story when I'm full of resentment because I feel undercompensated and taken advantage of. And so what's a new story? I need to be really clear and overt about what the transaction is and I need to be a boundary about this is what I'm going to do for you and this is what you're going to do for me

Starting point is 00:43:12 in return and get crystal clear about how I'm moving in the world rather than letting it be this tenuous, covert never enoughness. Yeah. For me, the best way I've been able to combat the never enoughness is literally sitting down and being like, how much does my dream life actually cost? Because I feel like until I did that, I was like, it could be any amount, you know what I mean? But it's like, how much does my dream house cost? How much is the car that I want to drive costs? How much of the vacations I want to take? How much do the money I want to get my family, etc.? etc, et cetera, like how much does it actually cost? And it's a lot, but it's not as much as I, like, I'm not going to mark Zuckerberg it and be like, oh, I have billions and it's not enough,

Starting point is 00:43:52 you know? There's a practice in choosing wholeness along those lines, which I think is a really, really helpful practice. And it's about identifying your needs and wants. And when I left my big corporate job, I was in a panic. This is 2020. It was, you know, COVID. I had a book deal, but I was like, I don't know. I don't know. And I'm the primary breadwinner and I was freaked. And I was speaking to this woman who's sort of a spiritual coach for me. And I was like, I don't have enough. You know, I was in a full, very justified story about enough, not having enough. And she was like, okay, what's, what's enough? And I was like, well, what do you mean? She was like, I want a number and I want you to actually figure out what you need. She was like, I want, one Excel page of needs, all the things that you were saying, how much is your mortgage, how much is your child care, et cetera, and one Excel spreadsheet of once. And, you know, in her word, she was like, the divine is very good at meeting needs. Yeah, you might get what you want too, but very good at needs. So there's nothing to be done here if you don't even know

Starting point is 00:45:05 what that number is. So concretize it. And it was so helpful because, similar to you when I actually wrote it down, I was like, oh, I can do this. Yeah. This is a real number and it's not insignificant, but I can do this. Well, and I think we all need it because every societal message that is coming at us is just telling us we need more. You know what I mean? So like unless we make it concrete, it will be more, more, more because every social media posts, every article you read, every definition of success is just like more, more, more because we're trying to fuel capitalism, essentially. A hundred percent. I think what also has to happens and and this is in some ways a good financial idea, but it also drives my own scarcity

Starting point is 00:45:48 is that I pretend like I don't have the money. I invest it as I should, as we all should, and it's not liquid or, and then I, so I manufacture scarcity in my life sometimes in a way to like keep myself going out of fear of my own laziness if I'm real. Yeah. Unpacked that for me. Yeah. When I think about my stories around sloth and I'm in this incessant doing, what we opened our conversation with, the busyness. I think when I, I'm terrified, yes, I'm terrified to stop doing so much and having to face all my existential anxiety. But I think the root fear is I'm really terrified of my own laziness because it's so disowned in me. And I am so unallowing of the fact that, yeah, I want to sit and watch Love Island and do nothing. And I don't want to read and I

Starting point is 00:46:38 don't want to prep for my podcast and I don't want to write my next book, all the things, right? And that inner temper tantrum that wants to come up of like, I just want to sit and eat potato chips and do nothing. And that's very scary. And I think that what's happened to me and I, again, all work that I'm doing to allow that part to come up is that's the part that keeps me alive, like keeping my laziness out of my life. But actually I could like embrace my lazy. and maybe have some more balance, but it feels existentially scary to do it. That like if I get lazy, I'll never get anything done, Liz. It sounds stupid.

Starting point is 00:47:19 No, I think it sounds really relatable. And it also, it reminds me of the part in the book, you wrote, how many of us are avoiding our ultimate potential because we're too busy to let it become a primary driver in our lives. I thought that was such a fascinating sentence. How many of us are avoiding our ultimate potential because we are too mired in our own busyness to let our potential drive us. So can you talk about that? Yeah. And it's related to your last question, which is that I manufacture scarcity and I will, you know, create financial scarcity in order to

Starting point is 00:47:51 justify my overdoing and busyness. So I come to my husband and I'm like, I have to go write this book because we need the money. And he's like, but we didn't need the money a week ago. But the need is real, it's for me to continue overworking and doing this stuff. And to your point about potential, my brother who doesn't have the same scarcity mentality and is very similar to me and grew up in the same household. He's a book editor and he's always like, Elise, why are you building your book ghost writing resume? You know, like, what are you doing?

Starting point is 00:48:21 This is not the best use of your time. But this is how I think I avoid my own potential by doing all these other things that are ancillary and I justify it out of stories of scarcity. It's not really what I'm supposed to be doing. I think I'm supposed to be writing books, hosting my podcast, writing a newsletter. And that's what creates flow for me and joy and where I really feel like I'm in my zone of genius. But I sure deplete myself in my zone of excellence over here doing all this other crap.

Starting point is 00:48:53 I just felt such a deep sadness reading that because I was like, how many women are denying themselves, their dream lives, their potential, this, what they're here to be on this planet to do by just, just drowning themselves in a sea of busyness every single day. Yes. And what's wild is, and so much of my work is in a way about letting your unconscious come up and making a conscious. But when you're so busy and you're in your conscious doing and you're tapped out, your unconscious really can't come out to play. And most big insights leaps, it's like Einstein theory of relativity, listening to music. Steve Jobs would just sort of like gamble around, walk around doing nothing. Like, oh, I just had a thought is one of the many reasons men can get so much more ahead in our world because men give themselves more time to do nothing.

Starting point is 00:49:47 100%. It's like the unconscious brain is so powerful. I'm sure you've had a million neuroscientists on who've articulated this. It's like it processes like 11 billion bits of information a second and like the conscious mind does like 60 or something. some staggering statistic. And I think women, we are kept from our unconscious because we're so busy and that the big leaps, the big insights, the big breakthroughs happen when you are letting your conscious mind rest and you're just being present in your body and, yeah, walking around

Starting point is 00:50:21 or listening to music or being idle. So how do we combat that? Is this like an energy conversation? Is it a priorities conversation? I think it's unhooking from a lot of the stories about what you should do and then evaluating those stories as they come up and provoke your anxiety and fear, right? It's going to happen. Like, what happens if I don't make my kid, you know, a bento box lunch, whatever it is, what happens if I don't overprepared for this meeting? Like, you got to get a little playful and being like, let's see what happens. Maybe no one cares, right? And through that, like, easing up on some of that cultural conditioning and allowing something else to happen, Even the story like your kids need you, that's a story.

Starting point is 00:51:06 I know that's crazy for people to hear, right? But the reality is like, it's kind of true. My kids would be okay. I know. It's a terrible, but it just gives you a sense of like how deep story is and how enslaved a story we get where I'm like, my children like desperately need me at this level. No, they don't. Why do we tie our worth to productivity and how can we rest without guilt? Oh, God, Liz, with the questions.

Starting point is 00:51:34 I think it's because, and this goes to the work of the famous developmental psychologist Carol Gilligan, but when she studied all the developmental psychologists until Gerald Gilligan had only ever studied middle class white boys. And she's in her 80s now, but she wrote in a different voice, I know. And she realized, like, as she was interviewing girls and a variety of girls, and they give these kids this famous morality example, that girls fundamentally, again, culture, not nature, see themselves as being in service to the world, while boys see themselves as being in the world. I know. What we've inherited and what we continue to pass on is this, it's a beautiful thing, this service-oriented mindset, but it's like if I'm not in service,

Starting point is 00:52:19 no one, who will take care of me, who will, how will I belong, how will I not be ostracized, and we like do that story to death. Give me an alternative story. An alternative story is I have innate value that's incontrovertible. I have gifts that are specifically my own, that it's my, I need to bring those to bear, and that I can maintain relationship with people and community while still individuating and separating and doing my own thing. I don't think we have good models for that as women, right? But that's the work. That's what I need to do. I need to figure out how to balance this need for community and relationship with a need for self-expression, and that the two actually belong together and our two halves of one whole human experience,

Starting point is 00:53:08 rather than, like, I have to stay in community and above all else, period, end of story, and any separation or individuation or pursuing my own potential puts that at threat. Like, that's the story we have to get rid of. It's part of servicing the whole. is actually pursuing yourself. Tell me about your dump, delegate, or do differently method. How do we use it to let go of pressure? There are all these insistent needs that need to be serviced, right?

Starting point is 00:53:38 This has to happen. You know, there needs to be food in the fridge. There's just like this basic dereliction of duty that you can't do, right? And so part of it is like, okay, dump, delegate, do differently? Do I need to be the one to go to the grocery store? Or is this like where I actually use Instacart? Can my husband do that? Can I relinquish some control actually and be like you're responsible every week for like making sure there's fruit and milk and eggs? And so it's a lot of it is like making a list of

Starting point is 00:54:09 of these habituated things that you do that you feel like you have to do only you and then really assessing it. Particularly when like, and there are lots of exercises in the book for understanding like what's a full body yes and what's a full body no. But for the things where you're like every time I have to do this thing. My energy drops. I feel like a small death. Those are things you want to delegate, dump, or do differently. It's interesting. You mentioned that you're the primary breadwinner. I'm the primary breadwinner in my relationship. I'm married to like a super feminist who's like born and raised in Berkeley. And I'm a super feminist who is born and raised somewhere worse than Berkeley. But like I, I'm constantly surprised at the stories that creep into even our relationship about

Starting point is 00:54:52 that. And I'm curious how that's impacted your relationship. Yeah. Culture is so much bigger than And I think in our culture, too, there's this like such a pressure on individualism to the point of like, these are your stories and your stories alone. And whatever's happening is like because of your dynamic with your husband, right? Or he's putting this on you. And the reality is like these are much bigger than you or him. It's not all your partner. These are bigger stories. This is cultural work that we have to do, which I think not to give each other too much. of a break, but I think it relieves some of the pressure on relationships and helps. I really want meant to read my book because I think they would really understand the psychology of women and

Starting point is 00:55:38 understand their mothers and their sisters and their partners and their daughters better, which is because I think so much of, so many of us are like, all right, I clearly have to blame my parents or I have to blame my partner or there's someone to blame. And the reality is it's just much bigger than that. But it's almost like it's permission giving and it's frustrating because I think we like when there's something we can do about it individually. You know what I mean? It's like it's you, you chants for the blame, but then you have much less power in agency. I think you have more power in agency because I think it can be so disheartening to look at particularly this current moment in time and to not feel devastated. And regardless of your affiliations or beliefs, like,

Starting point is 00:56:23 like, things are not great. In some ways, you know, maybe our daily lives are as wonderful as ever, but there's a lot to be heartbroken about. And it's impossible to also feel like you can affect any change. But you can change the way that you can change yourself. You can change the way that you relate to yourself. You can change the way you relate to your partner and your kids and your community. And not to say like, oh, the people who are doing the bad things should just get out of jail, get out of jail free card. But I do think that if you can manage yourself, we could all show up in a way that would be unstoppable. And the same way that I think it sounds right. But if women, if we could resolve our unconscious envy, for example, and understand what's

Starting point is 00:57:12 really happening and then get on side with each other and work through our feelings of scarcity and all the work that you and I do together, it starts to change and move things really quickly. When we say, Your success is not a threat to me. Your success is a model for me, right? I'm going to do what you're doing. I'm going to follow your example. That's how we change culture. When you think about strength and resilience, like your ability to feel energized,

Starting point is 00:57:38 to recover well, to stay strong as you get older, what do you think that actually comes from? Most people say working out are good nutrition. And yes, of course that matters. But there is a biological foundation underneath all of that that most people are completely overlooking. I have been diving deep into this lately with the team at timeline and what I've learned has genuinely shifted how I think about my own health. Every single movement that your body makes every step, every workout, every muscle contraction depends on energy produced at the cellular level. And at the center of that is your mitochondria. Here's the thing that nobody tells you,

Starting point is 00:58:14 certainly nobody told me. Starting around age 30, our mitochondria naturally become less efficient. More get damaged, more become sluggish. And over time, that is, impacts your energy, your strength, your recovery, and your resilience. Most of us respond by pushing more. We're like noticing these things and we're adding in more protein. We're trying to fix it with more supplements. We're trying to do harder workouts. And those things do help. But timelines research suggests that we also need to be supporting the cellular machinery underneath. And that is exactly what their supplement mitopure does. It contains urolithin A, which helps your body clear out damage mitochondria and support healthier

Starting point is 00:58:52 ones so that your cells can produce energy more efficiently. Because this is happening to your cells, it's going to impact your entire body, your immune system, your muscles. One study found that taking mitochondere increased muscle strength by 12% in four months with no change in exercise routine, it's going to impact your energy, your sleep, your skin, your cell health impacts all of this, and uralithin A keep. your cells healthy. Timeline has done over 15 years of research and testing on this one product, Eurolythine, which, by the way, most of us lack the gut bacteria to synthesize naturally.

Starting point is 00:59:26 That's why many of us need to supplement it to get the benefits. This has become a staple supplement for me. It is my top way to support how I want to look and feel as I age. Support your cells and how you age with mitopure gummies from Timeline. Visit Timeline.com slash Liz and save up to 39% on your mitochondere gummies. That is timeline.com slash Liz. I very rarely get genuinely excited about skincare, but this is one of the most innovative products that I have come across in years and I am so obsessed with it. I've been telling all of my friends to get it, so now I need to tell you guys. Here's some science first. Your skin isn't just getting older. It's being actively broken down by something called senescent cells. These are cells that

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Starting point is 01:00:52 OSO1 goes in and it clears out the senescent cells so it helps skin function like healthier, younger looking skin. It is not masking the signs of aging. It's not targeting one thing. It is actually rolling the clock back at a cellular level. I've been using the face moisturizer for almost six months now and I love it. so much. It feels amazing. It goes on really smoothly. It's not tacky at all. And I actually see a difference, which I just feel like is never the case with skincare. You want to always like see a real

Starting point is 01:01:21 difference and you're kind of like, do I? Do I? And this I genuinely do. Because it's clearing the senescent cells, it doesn't just target one thing. So my skin looks firmer. It looks glowier. The texture feels dramatically smoother. And I feel like you can see that too. I also love the body moisturizer. It dries down really quickly, which is always a pet peeve of mine with moisturizers. I hate that, like, sticky feeling when you go to put your clothes on. This does not do that. But it does moisturize really, really well. And then again, I'm reducing my skin's biological age.

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Starting point is 01:04:00 so it's easier than ever to make the switch. And if you want to grab their premium starter kit, you can use code Liz Moody for 15% off at branchbasics.com. That's code Liz Moody for 15% off the premium starter kit at branchbasics.com. And when they ask you where you heard about us, please make sure to mention the show. That is branch basics.com and use code Liz Moody. I think there's this interesting thing going on societally right now where women are making more money

Starting point is 01:04:28 than ever before. They're attending college at higher rates than ever before, all these amazing things. but then I have a lot of my girlfriends want to feel taken care of by a man, but they're really doing such a good job of taking care of themselves. So they still have this cultural script of like, I want a man to come in in this way, but then they're setting the bar almost impossibly high

Starting point is 01:04:50 because they're doing such an incredible job of taking care of themselves. I mean, what I would offer is that in light of what I told you about my mom and feeling like tangentially like my mom felt scared that even though she ran my dad's practice and they sat at desks facing each other, that my mom felt a tremendous amount of anxiety because in some way she wasn't the captain of her own ship. I think I inherited that. Like, I need to be the captain in order to escape my mom's level of anxiety. And then when I was a magazine editor in my 20s and I was largely single, I met my husband when I was 29 in terms of the stories about spinsters. And I had dated, like at that time in New York,

Starting point is 01:05:31 it was funny. You'd go to a event and it would let everyone would tell their horror stories of dating and you'd all have been on dates with the same people. And there were these like, I wouldn't call them toxic, but these like bachelors that were just sampling. Mr. Big Energy. Yeah, Mr. Big Energy. Who's literally based in New York. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That dynamic. And so I had gone on out with my fair share of trustifarians and hedge funders and corporate lawyers who like that. the idea of sort of like a connoisse side piece. Like truly we were living like devil wears Prada. One guy offered to like buy me a burkin if I dated him. I don't have a burkin. And they just had this attitude towards me. And I was making terrible money and living paycheck

Starting point is 01:06:18 to paycheck and it was really scary. But that like how nice that I had this like joby, you know, this little joby job hobby and that I had this walking around money. I think one person called it. For me, I was like, I will never be, this is unacceptable to me, even though at times I wanted to be rescued. And I was like, wouldn't it be nice to just be pulled out of this? It never happened, which was great protection, I think, from my soul. And when I met my husband, we were kind of making the same amount of money, which wasn't much. But I was like, this feels much better to me to be in a dual income family where I am not reliant. And for the first five to 10 years, years of our marriage, there was like pretty much parity between us. And then I started kicking

Starting point is 01:07:05 his ass financially. Is your advice to women who is like maybe explored, do you really want to be cared for in that way? Yeah. And I think what's underneath it? What will be solved? Because I think so often these core needs are are more existential, these bigger fears that money can't solve, that, you know, and I've had this experience with many friends who opt that was their path. Right. And now it's this like its own form of enslavement and terror. Every, it just keeps coming in different form. And until you like do the root work, it's just going to show up somewhere else. Well, if he leaves me, then I'm screwed. Or if my appearance changes. That's the story that I hear a lot. Yes. If my appearance changes or I'm going to have to accept that my husband is going to cheat.

Starting point is 01:07:53 Like it's the feelings of powerlessness and needing to be rescued persist. And it's just becomes like a grander and grander nightmare. So if you want to marry a rich person, great, but do the root work first. Do the root work first. Make sure you are also engaged with your financial future and pursuing your own wealth and sufficiency and security and all the stuff that our friends preach. How do the stories that we tell ourselves and the shoulds that drive our lives get in the way of us pursuing pleasure and having the sex that we deserve to have? Oh, Liz. I mean, I think for so many of us, this idea, you know, a good woman is sexy but not sexual. A good woman is desirable but not desiring. Our culture, I think, persists in being terrified of women who are sexual and like want it

Starting point is 01:08:45 and have a really deep relationship with their own wanting, right? We don't like it, even though we sort of preach it and profess to want it. We want the woman who is sort of like the willing vessel. And so I think it's, becomes really difficult. It's like one of the trickiest, most compelling stories for us. Like, what's the balance and how do I get in touch with my pleasure? How do I say what I want? How am I not just a passive participant and object, right? Like, how do I become a subject of my own life? That's, like, I think some of the deepest work that we have to do, particularly because so many of us, men and women are victim, you know, have our own sexual trauma. I feel like it's really rare.

Starting point is 01:09:30 to meet someone who's like, oh, yeah, I got out alive, you know? Yeah. And I know so many women who spend so much of their sex life performing, essentially, what they feel like sex should be, whether it's, I should be coming this quickly, I should be making these noises, I should be doing these actions. How can we begin pragmatically to, like, move away from that, especially because we are often sleeping with men who are also conditioned to think that, like, that's what sex should look like as well. I mean, the stories that we have about sex. And yes, as you just said, like now the stories about what it looks like and what people look like and what happens are so incredibly far from fact, right? You know, for me, if I can just my own experience and not to say that I'm like the most sexually evolved, healed person I've had my own stuff too. But I didn't even know until I was 36 that I would disobeyed.

Starting point is 01:10:30 It never occurred to me that I was not physically in my body. It was a dissociator. I didn't know and I didn't have language for it until a therapy session after I'd done some deeper plant medicine work. And that revelation alone was like, oh my God, I could start to work with it. I could start to be with myself and start to understand my own relationship to male attention and how scary that was for me. And it goes to early childhood, nothing wild, like just your run-of-the-mill sort of creepy friend of a family friend. I'm not even sure exactly what happened, but enough for me to feel imperiled by male attention and that male attention was scary. And again, it goes to this, like, the way that girls are conditioned to be, like, pleasing and responsive and taking on responsibility for how other people feel, right? So for me, it was very much an inappropriate level of attention and touch and me feeling like I had inspired it and I was responsible for it. And because of that and not really understanding that, like, I didn't know how to be embodied and like not flee in the face of

Starting point is 01:11:51 male, even male attention that I wanted. And so, yeah, it was like much easier to be performative for me. Did the awareness change the behavior? Yes. And explain what was happening to me and where I was and what I would need, you know. And so, and it became, it definitely had created way more intimacy with my husband, who was, I think, always vaguely aware that I wasn't present, you know? And like, that's not that fun. But I could fake it until I couldn't. And then it was like, okay, let's actually help me.

Starting point is 01:12:25 I need you to help me through this. Yeah. It breaks my heart to think about the amount of women out there who are faking their way through their sex lives instead of getting the pleasure that should be available to them, you know? No, 100%. Do you have any, like, action steps that somebody listening could maybe do or take to begin to tap into their real sense of pleasure instead of like, I'm thinking about I have a girlfriend and she takes like 20 minutes to have an orgasm usually? and she just feels terrible about it. She's just like, this is absolutely, like, not realistic. And men give her shit about it, too, because they're like, well, in porn, women come in, like,

Starting point is 01:13:06 two to three minutes. So she started just pretending to have orgasms in two to three minutes because she's like, that's the expectation. What could somebody like that do to feel like a new story was available to them? Well, I think widening the aperture. Like, I think the more we talk about this stuff and the more stories, again, that are out there that are not so confirming of the stories that we hold. as like how everyone is.

Starting point is 01:13:28 Yeah. Right? What I found after writing on our best behavior, and I share a lot of stories from my own life, not because they're unusual, but because I think they're quite relatable. And that's been, like, as we start talking about it, it's all it is is confirmation.

Starting point is 01:13:44 I thought I was the only one who had that experience. I'm sure a ton of people listening are like, that's my experience. Yeah. Right? So I think the more you get other people's stories and realize, like, I'm not an aborician. I'm quite normal or, like, this is part of what it is.

Starting point is 01:14:02 This is, like, part of the spectrum of human sexuality. There's a huge relief in that. And then there's something, I think, that needs to come up in her where she's like, and that's fine. Like, this is what I need in order to feel pleasure. And if we're going to have paired pleasure, this is what I need. This is what I want. And this is, these are my expectations that I need you to meet.

Starting point is 01:14:23 I just got, like, full body. shivers, just thinking about a woman in any facet of their life saying, this is what I need and just letting that sit. Right. Like not saying, well, because of this, this and this and this. And I'm so sorry about this, but like, I do think I need this or whatever, but like, this is what I need. Yeah. That's the facts. Like that's, this is what I need. Yeah. The more that we can practice that and model that for each other, it's contagious. It really is. That's how culture spreads. And, And I think part of it is a lot of us need the confirmation, like, oh, I am actually still connected to a million other women who have the same story. And even just she can think of it as an act of public education.

Starting point is 01:15:04 I don't know if she's partner or not, but being like, I'm going to actually teach my partners this is a reality for some women. And they need to widen their aperture of normal. She should go sleep with as many people as possible to spread the word. Spread the word. 20 minutes. Okay, I'm going to do a little speed round. I'm going to share a few other sheds that I feel like are keeping many of us from our dream lives. And then I'd love any thoughts you have on changing the story and maybe any pragmatic action tips to break free from these stories. Okay, I should already own a house by now.

Starting point is 01:15:35 It's great to have my freedom to locate and live wherever I want. I would also add look into the real estate lobby and the about that the stories that we're telling ourselves are influenced. Because I do think a lot of times literally people are paying for you to believe a certain story. And we haven't even begun to uncover that. And I always find that like, whoa, like this story is literally being fed to me by people. Right. And that's another profit from me believing that. You get married. You have two kids. You buy a house. American dream. Yeah. I'm too old to make a major life change like switching careers or moving to a new city. Most major changes happen in midlife and beyond. You know, you need that big transitional event often to do something differently.

Starting point is 01:16:22 Is that true? I don't know if it's a stat, but I think about the people that I meet who, let's say they've spent the first half of their life trying to create stability and structure and there's no meaning. And suddenly they are living in an ashram. You know, it's a cliche. It's a ripe time for transformation. And often we don't do this work until we're forced up against a wall.

Starting point is 01:16:42 You know, we just stay with what's comfortable in status quo until. There goes the carpet up from under our feet and we're forced to shift. Oh, I love that. So your age is an opportunity. Yes. I should know whether I want kids or not. Oh, no. Ambivalence and ambiguity are the spice of life. I don't know any. I think it depends on the day, even when you have kids, whether you want to have kids or not. This is fair. If I don't find a partner and get married, I won't live a good life. I feel like many of my friends who chose otherhood or to never get married are truly living. So that would be like a let's look for some examples of these people. Let's look for some examples of people who are financially killing it, free, unbounded, and have like amazing communities of

Starting point is 01:17:33 friends. Like I have a golden girl's fantasy, you know, don't you? I have a girlfriend who she's decided to have a kid with her friend and they live together and they were just like, we can both put a lot into parenting more than many of their partner, like their friends who have partners are putting into parenting and things like that. And they're living a great life. I would also offer and, and maybe this is easy for me to say, because I ended up married and happily married at that at this point in time. I did that spinster thing in my 20s at a time when that was very insistently the story. Like you better, if you are, there's something wrong with me, Liz. Like everyone was trying to figure out what was wrong with me because I was still single. It's gotten better.

Starting point is 01:18:16 I think. But I did also do a lot of work on myself. I wouldn't have known what to call it then of just accepting. Actually, I like my life. And this works for me. And I'm happy and I'm having a good time. And I actually could embrace this as my future. I weirdly feel like the minute I did that truly, like felt it dropping me where I was like, I'm good. Met my husband. It is so interesting. It feels like one of the last just like incredibly pervasive societal myths though that like there is this only one path to a good life like I just feel particularly with marriage and again I recognize that I'm my voice here is also probably not going to mean as much because I am happily married but I know so many people who are staying in unhappy marriages because they like the story of what marriage offers to their life

Starting point is 01:19:07 versus their lived experience on a day to day basis 100%. I'm curious if you have any thoughts on how we begin to shift that in a world of, you know, I love a rom-com as much as anybody else. It is just such a pervasive story. And I think so many people would find so much more happiness, whether they're married or not, like, whatever their relationship to the ultimate thing ends up being, if they were like, this is not the only path to happiness. Yeah. Well, and I think that we both acknowledged the happiness of our marriages. I would also say marriage is incredibly hard. and requires so much work and investment. And there are times when I look at, you know, my older brother is gay.

Starting point is 01:19:50 He was married to a wonderful man. He died. And he is a boyfriend now. But I look at my brother's life in parallel. And like he is having, you know, no kids, probably never be married again, living his best life, traveling the world, working sort of as much as he wants to or not. And I have like there's definitely some FOMO on my part where I'm like that looks pretty great. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:20:18 Again, he's a gay man. So he's not carrying a story. And there's not a lot of sadness on his part about I should have had kids. He's like happy to see my kids a couple times a year as long as he's not responsible for attending to their needs. But his life is so full and beautiful. And so I think. part of what makes it feel like it must be an empty and awful life is just the story. It's just the story. And it's just typically what we level at women. You don't see men sort of bachelors getting it.

Starting point is 01:20:57 Yeah. You're like they're having the best time. I do think we need like a new golden girls. You know, we need we need some more media examples. I feel like of these are great paths to life. Let's do I should be able to have more self-control around food. If we could just relax. I mean, food's delicious and fun, and there are times when it's like, of course, we're going to just, you got to go for it. And I mean, this is like, I think the trickiest story for women, right? Like the flying between permitting and restricting and the shoulds of eating. I think the more accurate story is like sometimes my body, like, I want what I want and I'm going to allow myself to have it without judgment. What about the story that's really related,

Starting point is 01:21:39 which is I should have been able to lose that last 10 pounds by now. It's a terrible story because I think for so many women, it's weight loss is always elusive and not at all actually connected to action. Well, and it's a story that keeps us distracted for our entire lives. Like it holds on to this little chunk of our brain for our entire lives so that we cannot focus our brain on all these other things that really matter. God, what I wouldn't give to take back all the energy that I've spent crawling and policing my body and my plate.

Starting point is 01:22:13 Is there any one tool or action step that you feel like has been the most helpful in changing your relationship with your body? That's a great question. God, is there one? Do you have one? I think like my whole, my body is for living, not looking thing. That's a really good line, actually. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:22:28 I need to use that. I'll cite you. No, but I think that, you know, the research and that's like, yeah, your line. The body is for living and not looking. The reframe for me is like, look how strong I am, look at my athletic gifts, look at what I'm able to do in the course of a day, look at my energy, which is, oh, it never deserted me throughout my life. And when I can reshift my focus on what I'm actually doing and not what I look like, I find a lot of, I find honestly a lot to celebrate and a lot of joy and gratitude. bodies are pretty amazing. It's also interesting if you actually unpack that story and you're like, did that start

Starting point is 01:23:12 to come from my parents that come from society? Because I think a lot of us were like, oh, we want to look this way so we can attract a partner. But we often have partners who are like, your body's great. Like I'm enjoying sex with your body. And where are these stories coming from and how can I begin to unpack who actually said that? Yes. Oh, 100%. And this is one of my favorite activities to do with friends.

Starting point is 01:23:35 Like I remember a month or two ago sitting down with friends. And one of them had just gotten neck Botox, which I had not heard of. And I was like, what is that about? And she was like, I don't like how my neck looks in photos. And she was like, and I do this and I do that. And I was like, why? You know, what's the mechanism? And she, you know, was like, I just don't like how I look.

Starting point is 01:23:56 I was like, what is your husband think about it? And she was like, he hates it. He like hates that I do this to myself. Yeah. And in my experience, that's been my experience with my husband too when I get after myself about my weight. And he's just like, what planet are you on? Yeah. Like where is this coming from? And then it's like, well, we don't want to perform beauty for our partners. I don't think that's the answer either. But it's interesting if like for who are we performing this. It's not wild. Yeah. And I think about this all the time as a 45 year old woman who's still doing my work on this. I'm like, nobody is looking like. Nobody's looking at me. Has the pressure eased as you've gotten older, or what's your relationship with that? Yeah, I think the pressure has eased, unless it's just shape-shifting. Like what I found myself doing recently was, well, this is really just because I don't want to buy new clothes.

Starting point is 01:24:49 And that's why I want to try and get my weight closer to what my weight used to be. But I'm like, I think that's just like the same shit under different cover. But I do think, and I think that there's important work to do there for women because we're so, scared of being invisible. We're so scared of, you know, because it's sold to us that our sexual and attractive power is the primary currency that we have in our lives. Which makes aging the most scary thing that can happen to us, yeah. A hundred percent. But I find, like, I enjoy less visibility. I enjoy feeling like, who cares? It doesn't matter. I don't, I don't, like, who am I looking, trying to look hot for? I don't, I don't care, actually. Does that

Starting point is 01:25:35 mean you have a more positive relationship with aging because this thing that is supposed to be scary is actually comforting in a way? I think so. I think too because my brother-in-law died when he was 39, he died in 2017, that I really feel like aging is a privilege. And I'm really happy to be here. And I love, you know, my mom is a beautiful woman who really doesn't, has never messed with her appearance. And I've taken a lot of notes from her. Like, I really love that she didn't pass that on to me about like, oh, you need to worry about this. She went gray when she was 35 or 40. So she sort of was prematurely aged, but has worn it really beautifully. And so I'm really grateful to her for that, that she didn't pass on this idea that I needed to really care about that. And so I feel like I do have a fair

Starting point is 01:26:31 amount of ease. I'm excited to get old and like see what happens to my face. And I get, I'm not scared of it. I'm really not. I don't have that story. I feel like that highlights just one of the most important underlying themes of this episode, which is the stories that we are exposed to are shaping every sense of our possibility for our lives, every sense of how we are relating to our lives. So you had your mom who shaped the way that you think about aging. And if you feel a way about something that you feel like it's limiting your life. That just feels like the number one sign. You need to find an example of another story.

Starting point is 01:27:06 Yes, 100%. You've got to expose yourself to another way of being. Yeah, like that it's an action step that I feel like works for almost anything. Yes. And I think also an important question is, who taught me this story and where did I learn it? And really trying to trace it helps dramatically.

Starting point is 01:27:24 Because sometimes you're like, oh. That's like one teacher said this to me in third grade. and I've held on to it forever. Yeah. Let's do one more. I should have more friends. I feel like this comes up a lot because we like see these girl groups.

Starting point is 01:27:37 We feel a little lonely ourselves. We feel like we're the only ones who feel lonely. So is that a story? I'd say a counter story is like I'm my own best friend. I say this as an introvert. I love being by myself. So let me preface it. And part of this work is to become less externally oriented

Starting point is 01:27:57 towards pleasing other people and more self-authored. To that end, I like find my own company. I like being with myself. I make myself laugh, Liz. But yeah, I think that there is a very insistent story that you have this girl gang and it's sex in the city. It's all of these movies. And the reality, I think for most of us is that our social lives probably don't look like that. And we're lucky if we have a great partner who we can talk to and family that we're close to and maybe a couple of really good girlfriends. And then mostly, like in my experience, I'm happy if I see my friends who live in L.A. once a year, you know? Once a year? I thought you were going to say once a month. No, I wish. But like you live on opposite sides of the city. It's hard. But I also feel like real friendship, in my experience, is forged on a deep knowing and time that endures, like even if you can't feed it all the time. And I think to that end, so many of us are servicing.

Starting point is 01:28:58 friendships, quote unquote, or relationships in our lives that we actually find depleting. And so a good practice as you're spending time with people is like, is my energy dropping or is my energy going up? And if your energy is dropping, like, it's okay to weed your garden and choose to not spend time with people who don't make you feel good. Yeah, there's probably so many stories there like, oh, we've had this many years of friendship or a good friend act like this. Yeah. I need her. You know, I think for so many women, we come into friendship with like all this covert transactional interests. Like, I need to know her because she's a powerful school mom or she has access to this thing I want, et cetera. And we disown that. We don't own it. And that sometimes

Starting point is 01:29:46 being like, oh, I'm only friends with this person because she's socially powerful or rich or whatever it is. Like, I think when you actually start looking at it, you can be a little bit more honest with yourself of what you're hoping to get out of it. And like, maybe you don't want that after all. Are there any other stories or sheds that you feel like really have an outsized impact on keeping women from living their dream lives? I think a big one. And I want to say that I understand why this story has so much social power and feels so real. There are two. One is that attention and being visible is dangerous. And so I think it prevents a lot of women from living as big as they should. and it prevents us from having as many visible examples of women doing their thing.

Starting point is 01:30:33 So it's unfortunate. We pay the price for that. And I get it. We destroy visible women. So I understand why women keep themselves small and hidden. The other story that is a real killer for women, but again, feels accurate and real. So there's a reason we have this story is that is scarcity and is like there's only going to be one. Maybe there's room for two.

Starting point is 01:30:56 And the problem with that story is that it keeps us from expanding. It keeps us in sort of direct threat competition with each other rather than supporting each other. And we have this story. Like if she has it, I can't have it too. So I need to destroy her to throne her. They're related. They're related.

Starting point is 01:31:15 Yeah. In order to have that thing. What's one thing that we can do to begin to shift that story personally so we can shift the culture? Well, if I'm allowed to say it, like you are a great teacher. me in this. And like one of the things we do is practice with other women in our space, sharing information, getting behind each other, getting intel. It's a what's up chat, right? And I think it's a really been a powerful mechanism of understanding how other women are

Starting point is 01:31:46 operating, what's possible, and sharing information that can help us all get bigger and hopefully help other women get bigger as well. And I think that's a terrifying prospect for a lot of us. Like, I would never and, oh, my God. But the reality is, like, the more we can share and confirm stories, the more opportunities, I think, we'll find. And the more we can combat our own scarcity of, like, look at all of us. We're all killing it. And I will say, like, some of the most supportive women in that group that we're in are women. I mean, you get the prize, but are women who work in sort of financial freedom and coaching and they've really done a lot of work around scarcity. And I find them to be the most generous, the most. It's an interesting observation.

Starting point is 01:32:39 Yeah. And they have really built their careers around like, how can we give women access to wealth? Yes. And so I love it because it's affirming that they have like done their own work before going out. and helping other women do this work too. That's cool. So anybody who wanted to mimic that, just to be very clear, we have this WhatsApp chat, and we basically invited other top female podcast hosts to come on and we all share everything

Starting point is 01:33:02 from like rates to strategies to guest, you know, conversation topics. Like we, everything is off limits on this group chat. So you could find a group of women in your own life who are maybe in a similar career or similar hobbies and interests and begin or similar relationship stages, similar life stages. There's so many things that you can kind of group people together around and then say this is going to be like an honest, safe space where we can all share things without fear. Yes. And practice being candid, practice telling our stories, confirm each other's stories,

Starting point is 01:33:33 dispute each other's stories, show each other that like a different story is possible. Yeah. Highly recommend the practice and get comfortable talking about money, which is so hard for us. Yeah. And it's scary. And I do think like just having the mantra, my mantra is always like rising tides, raise all ships. And that's like the backbone of this chat. It's the backbone of what we're trying to do in this women in podcasting group. And I think it's so true. I've been proven it time and time and time again in my life. I can count on like a few fingers the amount of times that I've lost something by being generous. And the amount of times that I've gained something by being generous is just immeasurable. Yeah, 100% Liz. And I think what I love about it too is like women are amazing.

Starting point is 01:34:15 And sometimes I think we need to remind ourselves and each other of that fact. But like, but women are amazing. Women are amazing. Can you leave us with one homework assignment, something that anybody can do the second they turn off this podcast to begin to break free of these stories that are keeping them back from the life of their dreams? So you're going to do fact versus story. You can do this with a partner. It's actually a great intimacy building exercise or you can just do it with a pen and paper. And if you do it with a partner, same process.

Starting point is 01:34:41 But you would say, tell me the fact about yourself. they say a fact, now tell me a story you make up about that fact. And then you thank them. You're not allowed to console or dispute their story. And then you repeat the process and you do it over and over again for a minute, two minutes, and then you switch. And it is amazing how deep you go, what comes up, like what's in your unconscious that just comes out. But you're not allowed to like comment on anyone? And you're not allowed to comment, which is also in of itself an amazing practice. because our instinct is to like fix and comfort and and I don't see you that way. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:35:21 And dispute someone's story. So just having to sit and say thank you is in of itself amazing. Can you tell us a little bit in your own words about your amazing new workbook, which is like it feels like workbook is like a small word for what it is? It's a massive piece. Yeah. It's called choosing wholeness over goodness. It's the companion to honor best behavior. The New York Times best selling.

Starting point is 01:35:44 The New York Times Best Selling on our best behavior. And it is, you don't have to have read on our best behavior to do the workbook. And you can, we, we structured around each of the sins, but it works for any story in your life. And most stories fit into one of the sin buckets. But it's this core process where you identify your stories and then you make, you work them. And again, it goes through all of the payoffs, the cost, the underlying fear, the ways in which you keep. this story going and then how to how to put it down and pick up something else. And it's do it with your friends. It's a great group activity because it's deep and funny and you'll get

Starting point is 01:36:26 to know each other. And I think we can see things about our friends that they might not be able to see about themselves and maybe sometimes hold up a more accurate mirror. It's seven tools and then tons of expansion moves. Scripts for saying no, full body yes, et cetera. But that these are tools that you can like fact versus story use all the time and all parts of your life. And then give a shout out to your incredible podcast. And my podcast, thank you, Liz. It's called Pulling the Thread. And it is conversations with luminaries and cultural thought leaders about like big questions of the day and why we do what we do and what we're doing here.

Starting point is 01:37:04 Things that I think about constantly. Don't we all? Well, thank you so much for joining me today. This was so fun. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Liz Moody podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, go ahead and follow on Apple or Spotify or subscribe on YouTube and hit that notification bell so you never miss a new episode. And if there's somebody in your life you think would benefit from this episode, send them a quick link.

Starting point is 01:37:27 It is the best way to support the podcast, and it is so, so appreciated. And if you're watching this, drop me a comment. I would love to hear your thoughts and what resonated most with you. Thanks again for being here. I feel so lucky that I get to grow. and learn and share with you, and I will see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician,

Starting point is 01:37:58 a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional.

The Liz Moody Podcast - The Invisible Forces Keeping You Exhausted & Anxious—And How To Break Free

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