Pod Insights Aspire with Emma Grede How to Quiet the Voice That’s Holding You Back About this episode Emma sits down with Tara Mohr, author of the bestselling ‘Playing Big’, for a conversation that started as an interview and turned into something much more personal. Tara has spent over a decade helping women understand why they hold themselves back — not from the outside, but from within.
Together Emma and Tara get into why your self-doubt gets loudest right when something actually matters, the difference between your inner critic and realistic thinking, why chasing confidence is the wrong goal, and the two types of fear — one keeping you stuck, one telling you you're exactly where you need to be.
Then Tara introduces Emma to her inner mentor and walks her through the exercise live, on camera.
In this episode you’ll learn:
What "playing small" really looks like, even when life looks big on the outside
How to identify your inner critic and what to do about it
How to tell the two types of fear apart
The guilt trap and how to know when guilt is actually yours
How to stop outsourcing your decisions and become the authority in your own life
The inner mentor exercise
What's the voice in your head telling you right now and is it actually true? Drop it in the comments. And subscribe to Aspire with Emma Grede so you never miss what's next.
Transcript 13,229 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:09 Emma Grede? So today we're speaking to Tara Moore, who is an expert in women's leadership and wellness. She wrote an incredible book called Playing Big, and her work really centers around so many of the themes that I've written about in Start With Yourself. Today, she's giving us an absolute free game masterclass in so many things that you will find familiar, that come up in your work and your life all the time. I cannot wait for you guys to sit and listen to this conversation. We talk about fear and guilt and leadership and all of the things that hold us back or happen in our minds and our bodies. And let me tell you, she is about to let you discover your inner mentor, your love, love, love this episode. And I cannot wait for you to watch it.
0:53 Emma Grede? But don't forget to like and subscribe.
0:58 Emma Grede? Housing is one of the biggest payments most people make every month. Whether you rent or own, for a long time, it was just treated as a payment you made, not something that could become part of a rewards membership. That is what makes Bilt interesting. When you become a Bilt member, you can earn points on every housing payment, whether that's rent or mortgage. Then you can redeem those points towards things like flights, hotels, Lyft rides, Amazon.com purchases, future housing payments, and more. I also think the neighborhood concierge in the Bilt app is worth paying attention to. It's connected to your home and more than 50,000 merchant partners. So you can ask it to do things like make a dinner reservation, book a fitness class, schedule a Lyft, or pay your rent.
1:42 Emma Grede? It is not just giving you information. It can actually take action in the app and apply your member benefits along the way. For anyone thinking about what AI looks like when it's actually useful in daily life, this is a good example. It's tied to where you live, what you do around your neighborhood, and the things that you're already paying for. Download the Bilt app and join the membership for where you live at joinbilt.com/emma. That's J O I N B I L T dot com slash emma. Use our link so they know that we sent you.
2:15 Emma Grede? The Start With Yourself tour kicks off on April 15th in New York City. Tickets are on sale now at emma greed dot com.
2:25 Emma Grede? Tara, welcome to Aspire.
2:27 Speaker 01 Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.
2:29 Emma Grede? Honestly, I'm so happy to have you here and the timing couldn't be more perfect. You wrote a book 10 years ago that to me is just such an important piece of work, not just for women, but for so many people to understand how we block ourselves, how we can be filled with fear. And I felt like your book was just really an eye opener. So I am just excited to sit down and to delve in with you a little bit today and talk about some things that perhaps we don't spend enough time examining and talking about in our own life.
3:01 Speaker 01 Thank you. I'm so excited for your book because it's all about starting with yourself.
3:07 Emma Grede? It's always about starting out with yourself. You can't do anything and think about things externally until you've really examined yourself. And I feel like in your book, Playing Big, you talk about what playing small looks like in real life. And so for anyone sitting at home, will you just explain to us and describe, if you haven't heard that term, what you mean by that?
3:26 Speaker 01 Well, I think above all, playing small is a feeling. So you could have actually a big career, a big title. You could look like you are thriving, but you know, inside, if you feel like you're playing small, relative to what you feel called to do, what you really want to do, who you think you really are. And that's what I found very early in my work, is that most of the women that I was meeting had this kind of sinking sense inside, I'm playing small. I really don't like it. And I also am stuck. I don't know how to change it.
4:00 Emma Grede? So what patterns do you see over and over again, where women are like stuck in their careers?
4:06 Speaker 01 So the biggest thing is being stuck in self doubt and being stuck in listening to the voice of the inner critic. And I often say brilliant women have brilliant inner critics. So our inner critics do not say,
4:17 Emma Grede? Real good.
4:18 Speaker 01 Yeah. Sometimes on their most abusive days, that inner critic might say, you are a total fool. And it's more likely to say, you know, if that was a good idea, surely someone else would have done it. Or you can totally pursue that dream, but in five Five years, not today, or do a little more homework before you pitch that idea in the meeting. So, listening to that voice of self doubt is a huge one because at its root, that voice of self doubt has underneath it fear. And I'll sometimes say that that voice of self doubt is actually a strategy that your safety instinct is using to try and get that feeling of I'm in my comfort zone, I'm safe, I'm not gonna have failure or too
5:03 Speaker 01 much rejection. But the problem is, the part of us that's really only concerned with that emotional safety does not care if we have fulfilled or exciting or self expressed day in our lives. It only cares about that comfort. So yeah, it is a stay in the comfort zone, stay in the safe zone kind of voice, but it's very overreactive and misleading in that.
5:28 Emma Grede? It's so interesting because early on in my career, I don't really feel like I felt fear anywhere near as much as I might do, sometimes even now. And I really feel like that stems from my childhood. It stems from how I kind of had no choice to survive. And I wonder if you feel like fear and the voice of the inner critic, does it show up differently depending on what you've been through in early parts of your life?
5:52 Speaker 01 So, I love to just take us back to like, what is fear?
5:56 Emma Grede? Oh, please do, Tara. Come on, bring it, bring it on home.
5:59 Speaker 01 Because when we're in fear, it actually hijacks our brain such that we're definitely not thinking about what am I experiencing now? What, what is that? So, fear is just our physiological response, our body and mind response to something we perceive as a threat. So, until you perceive something as a threat, you're not gonna feel fear. And so, the question for each of us, for some of us, that fear might be more in our early in our career, more later, it's what feels threatening to me and why? For a lot of women, it is visibility is threatening, power is threatening because maybe I got the message people don't like, powerful women, maybe just change from what I grew up with feels threatening because it feels like leaving home.
6:43 Speaker 01 Home in a way that I'm uncomfortable with.
6:45 Emma Grede? Yes.
6:46 Speaker 01 So it's whatever evokes that. And sometimes I talk to more senior women who say, you know, I had these fears. I kind of got over them. But now, now that maybe I'm at the board of directors table, now that stakes are higher, there's a new level of fear, which is why we're not waiting to graduate from fear. We need our toolkit that we take with us for our whole lives for fear and self doubt.
7:08 Emma Grede? I always think about fear in the sense that it's a signal. And that's why I wrote this book, because I feel like every time I'm in real fear and I'm feeling that, I actually take it as a signal that it's time to move. It's time to like delve in and I have to explore that. I have to understand why I'm feeling that fear. And I probably need to go further towards it as opposed to retract from it. And so why do you think that it tends to peak just before something really big is about to happen? Like just before we're about to do something really important?
7:40 Speaker 01 Well, I feel like there's a spiritual reason and then there's a cultural reason. So the cultural reason is because if you're a woman or you are in any kind of underrepresented identity, when you are coming into power, when you are coming into visibility, you know, your society might really take you down for that. Or you just know that's new. In my lineage, this is new, what I'm doing right now. So that's kind of the cultural reason. Spiritually, I would say when we're stepping into our purpose, when we're following a calling, when we're using our true gifts, when we're being in our full glory, our ego is basically terrified, even though that's the step our soul wants to take.
8:24 Speaker 01 And a lot of fear comes from the ego. And so it's, you could think about, you know, this kind of expansive impulse of your soul and this contractive impulse of your ego. And so when we're really like stepping through the gates that we all can step into, into more in our lives, that is very scary for the, yeah, for the kind of small self in us.
8:47 Emma Grede? What does moving forward while still feeling afraid actually look like?
8:52 Speaker 01 Almost like being on. Like an actual physical roller coaster that it's exhilaration. There's this word I really like. It's a term from ancient Hebrews. So this is like 3,000 years. People have been talking about this term and it's a term for fear. The term is yura.
9:07 Emma Grede? Yura.
9:08 Speaker 01 And yura has three definitions. So the feeling you feel when you are inhabiting a larger space than you're used to. Metaphoric space or literal space. The feeling you feel when you suddenly come into more energy than you normally have. If you do something that plugs you into your energy. And the feeling you feel in the presence of the sacred.
9:31 Emma Grede? Literally, as you say that, so many people will be going, oh, my God, I completely understand that.
9:38 Speaker 01 Yes.
9:39 Emma Grede? Like, I completely get that moving into the energy, like it's going to give me more fear.
9:45 Speaker 01 Yes, exactly. And so that kind of fear. It's like the same as you would on that roller coaster. You're like, I'm in it. I'm doing it. I'm going to breathe. I already decided this was going to be fun, you know? So I'm going to breathe with it. And we actually have to learn to tolerate the discomfort of that level of exhilaration. That's very different from what you'll often now hear, like psychologists will talk about our lizard brain fear. This is the reptilian part of the brain that's just, everything is scary, worst case scenario thinking. That, if we only breathe with it, like if, let's say, you're about to give a presentation and you're sure they're going to laugh me out of the room.
10:26 Speaker 01 That we don't want to just stay and breathe because that kind of fear, which is really what kicks off fight or flight response. That's going to prevent us from doing our best thinking, research shows. It prevents us from connecting with other people. So there, we, we aren't just breathing into it. It's like, how do I shift myself out of this state? And that's where things like. Whether you're using your body and you're gonna go for a run, or you're using an affirmation to try and change your thinking, you're actually trying to change your body out of the fear state so you can essentially perform at your highest level again.
11:00 Emma Grede? I wanna go back to something you said earlier in the conversation, this idea of an inner critic, because I think that that feels so familiar to all of us. We all have a, I certainly do. I have a constant conversation going on in my head and I feel like I've trained myself to be good to myself. It's not that I don't hear that critical voice. It's just that I kind of have a way of tuning her out and slowing her down. It's like I listen and then I kind of put it where it belongs. It's like it just isn't useful right now. So how do you describe that voice and also like what to do with it?
11:33 Speaker 01 The big mistake so many of us make is we think confidence is coming. We think it's coming with experience. We think it's coming with achievement. We think it's coming because someone's gonna give us the gold star. All the research shows confidence is not coming. You know, there's one study that looks at executive women and entry level women. One in 10 say that over that time difference, they've experienced some kind of change in their confidence level. So unless you wanna bet that you are gonna be the lucky one in 10, I don't think that's a great bet. Let's assume we're gonna be in the 90. That's gonna continue to grapple with a lot of self doubt. And it does come up, right? For the reason we talked about. It comes up more when you're going for your dreams. So what we wanna do is when we're hearing that voice of self doubt,
12:19 Speaker 01 which basically is anything you wouldn't intend to say to a friend you really love. If you're talking to yourself that way, you're probably hearing your inner critic. And then you wanna use a tool or a practice.
12:30 Emma Grede? First of all, understand that it's there. Like that is the inner critic. That person, that thing in your head that's speaking to you in a way that you would never speak to anybody else.
12:39 Speaker 01 That's right. That is a voice in you and we wanna start to label it as a voice. So that's the first thing is, oh.
12:45 Emma Grede? Know it.
12:46 Speaker 01 I'm hearing my inner critic right now. And that can just be a breath that you say to yourself, oh, okay, that voice that's saying I'm not ready for this. The voice is saying there's no way I'd ever get that job. So I'm not even gonna apply. Okay, hi, inner critic. Sometimes that alone is enough. If you just go, oh, that's what that is. That wasn't me. You can start to like set, do that setting aside that you're talking about. Sometimes it's helpful to do a little more. A lot of people like to create a character and that's something I'll do with people. Create a character, almost like a extreme cartoony version of this voice. Is it the mean boss from Devil Wears Prada? Is it the perfect homemaker domestic lady? Is it, you know, the perfect feminine, whatever? Maybe it's a blend and they're arguing with each other all the time about what you should do.
13:31 Speaker 01 And when you hear that thought, you're gonna go, oh, that's coming from this character, not from the core of me. It's just a like a silly device to help you take it less seriously. And I'll even sit down with women and I'll say, what are all the values of your prior and priorities of your inner critic? And they'll say perfectionism, image, always being polite. I'm like, great. What are your values and priorities? And they'll make a totally different list.
13:59 Emma Grede? Oh, my goodness. I, first of all, I just love that you say that so much because when I wrote this book, I, I kind of almost wrote it back to front. I thought I was writing a book about building a business and creating brands and leadership. And then I kind of reverse engineered it and spoke about managing emotions and vision. And vision, to me, is so much about principles. Like what are the things that are important to me? And having that separation between what you think is important on the outside and really what is important to you is a game changer and has been for me. Like what am I measuring myself against? And when do I let these like ideas seep into my head that are just not useful, that I don't need? And so I love that you say that because oftentimes when you compare those two things,
14:43 Emma Grede? they won't look anything alike and it allows you to tune it out somewhat.
14:47 Speaker 01 Exactly. And this is another thing that there's so much misunderstanding about because we think that if my problem is that I'm thinking about myself in a negative way, my solution is going to be thinking about myself in a really positive way. The solution is actually not thinking about yourself. And so this is a more radical piece. I'm like, someone show me a piece of evidence of why we need to be self assessing. I don't see it. And I work with a very wide range of women.
15:16 Emma Grede? Say more, say more.
15:17 Speaker 01 So if I am there looking in the mirror, trying to gear myself up, I can do this. I am competent, you know, that kind of stereotypical image.
15:25 Emma Grede? Yeah.
15:26 Speaker 01 I'm kind of building my house on a very rocky foundation because confidence comes and goes. As you know, and as you talk about a lot, there's a lot of failure along the way. So if I motivated myself today by trying to convince myself that this thing was definitely going to work out great, I just have lied to myself because it's not going to definitely work out great. What we actually need to be saying to ourselves is it might not work out today and we will get up again and I'll be on your side, honey. And I'm, I'm not going to beat you up if that happens. So exactly what you're talking about with principles, we don't want to try to boost ourselves up by thinking better of ourselves. It's really about thinking bigger than yourself.
16:07 Speaker 01 And the calling or your mission or your values is, is what is big enough and true enough and sustained enough that it will carry you over self doubt because you essentially care so much about whatever you feel called to do, that you don't have time and space to worry about whether you're the one. You're just doing it.
16:31 Emma Grede? You're just doing. How do you distinguish between what is the inner critic and sometimes what we label as like instinct, you know, you're telling yourself something. How do you separate the two and know, know what to listen to from what's coming on inside you and know what to dismiss?
16:45 Speaker 01 Yes, a great way to tell is the, the tone that that voice is speaking to you in, in your head.
16:52 Emma Grede? That's why you give it a character because it's so clear.
16:56 Speaker 01 They can help with that, yes. So if, I always say your inner critic and your realistic thinking can have the same question. So the inner critic and realistic thinking could be thinking, you know, did I make the right decision with like maybe what we're, our inventory, what we're going to do next fall. Inner critic is going to be like, I know, I didn't know what I was doing. I know, I didn't know it's going to be repetitive. It's going to be very declarative, like it knows the deal. It's going to be looping. You could ask that with realistic thinking or with just good, critical thinking. Like, I'm actually feeling unsure about that. What further information do I need? Who would be an interesting person to talk to? What can I do to reduce uncertainty? So you might have the same concern, but you're going to move forward
17:41 Speaker 01 in a very solution-oriented way when you're not hearing from that inner critic.
17:45 Emma Grede? And so what happens when you meet people that just go like, but that's just part of my personality. Like, that's who I am. I doubt myself. That's who I am. It's not something I do, it's me.
17:57 Speaker 01 I was in this place myself. You know, a lot of times when you're in schools or workplaces, or maybe home environments, where the emphasis is on like, think critically, think critically, you learn to think critically about everything, including eat yourself into pieces, doing critical, you know, skeptical thinking about your own dreams. So your inner critic can be like a conqueror that took over your whole psyche. But the voice of inner wisdom and the voice of your dreams and the voice that actually is a very calm, loving, knowing is always there. But it can become very obscured. And so sometimes we need a little bit of quiet and a little bit of loving support
18:41 Speaker 01 to find that voice again. And we might have a slow process of walking back the sort of dominance of that inner critic.
18:53 Speaker 02 Hi, everyone. This is Kara Swisher.
18:55 Speaker 03 And I'm Scott Galloway.
18:56 Speaker 02 And we want to tell you about Pivot, our twice-weekly podcast.
18:59 Speaker 03 That's right, Kara. What a thrill. It's a chance for us to break down all the big things happening in tech, business, and politics.
19:06 Speaker 02 Yes, and I keep you in check so people can make it through each episode, whether it's digging into constant changes in the world of AI and social media or trying to keep up with whatever the fuck Elon is doing. We're here to give you our take on all of that.
19:17 Speaker 03 Every Tuesday and Friday morning, we drop a new episode about some of the major stories of the moment.
19:23 Speaker 02 And Scott is a prediction machine gazing into his crystal ball to tell you about where it's all heading.
19:28 Speaker 03 That's right.
19:29 Speaker 02 So if that sounds like a good time for you, especially Mr. "That's right", you can follow us on your favorite podcast app to get new episodes every week.
19:41 Speaker 04 Do you ever wish you could ask nosey questions about people's money?
19:44 Speaker 05 I have $729.71 in my bank account. We bought, you know, a $1.3 million house on a $350,000 income.
19:53 Speaker 04 On the podcast, What We Spend, we ask those questions. It's a show about money and all the feelings that come with spending it.
20:00 Speaker 06 I want to be the kind of person who can just take care of the people in my life.
20:05 Speaker 04 Listen to What We Spend, an Odyssey original, available now wherever you get your podcasts.
20:16 Emma Grede? What's the work that needs to be done to have a more healthy relationship with your inner critic?
20:21 Speaker 01 It's number one, knowing it's there.
20:23 Emma Grede? Yeah.
20:23 Speaker 01 It's knowing it's not telling the truth. It's actually viewing it with a lot of compassion because it is a scared part underneath. We want to soothe it, almost like we would a scared child in how we are. Okay, honey, I hear you, but. And then having those tools to use in the moment when it comes up.
20:41 Emma Grede? And I think those tools are so important. It's just hard, I guess, for people to remind themselves because we're talking about ingrained behavior, right? Things that just become your default settings and your ways of managing and handling things all the time. Do you think there's a point at which like there's no turning back? Do you think anybody can get a handle on speaking better to themselves, understanding they're an inner critic at any point in their life?
21:05 Speaker 01 Absolutely. I mean, that's what I see every, every week in my work, that when women learn those tools, it's like habit change. It is a habit formation to learn to respond differently. And it's not that it becomes perfect, but instead of getting lost in believing your inner critic for six months, after, you know, two days, you go, oops, I got lost in a little inner critic trance there and I'm going to make a different choice.
21:28 Emma Grede? I love your thoughts around confidence because a lot of people ask me about, gosh, you're so confident. How did you get that way? And I always think that it's such an interesting question because A, it's not how I think about myself. I always just think, I just made so many mistakes. I've done so many things that I just get through stuff. And it's not that I feel particularly confident. It's almost like the confidence comes through going through things. How do you speak to women who just find it almost impossible to find their confidence? And again, they've told themselves, I'm not confident, like I can't do that thing.
22:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, I really do say, I say, when you imagine yourself. Pursuing your dreams, do not picture yourself as a confident rock star. Picture yourself as a racked with self doubt rock star. It's okay for it to be like that. It's okay for it to be scary. It's okay to hear that voice as long as you are responding to it and remembering it's not the voice of truth and essentially not letting it drive your actions. And so that's really important piece. But then the second piece is connecting with your bigger vision, your intention to serve, the values you want to embody in this world and, and really that voice of inner wisdom in you.
22:47 Speaker 01 Because anytime I ask a woman, once she's connected with that inner wisdom, you know, how would that part of you navigate this challenge? She has an amazing wise answer right there.
22:57 Emma Grede? Why do you think you feel like we need to be ready before we start? Because I think what's been true in my career over and over again is that I'm never ready. Like I've always done things before, you know, on paper, I've had the, the remit to do it or before I've been, I guess, like what would be considered qualified to do something. What is it that tells you or tells so many people that you have to, you know, have a different version of yourself before you might be ready to start something?
23:27 Speaker 01 Well, I think school is not our friend here on that particular issue.
23:32 Emma Grede? Because it's ingrained into us that you should have a different start.
23:35 Speaker 01 That basically you are going to prepare to be ready to do things for 20 years. And the whole emphasis of school, there's a lot of, you need years and years and years of preparation to be able to make a contribution. But because the way our psyches work, we don't actually graduate and then feel ready. We've just internalized that message for 20 years. So that's a big part of it. Another part of it is just that it's often terrifying to do what we most really want to do and we're looking for any excuse. And so I'm not ready is like a nice vague one that we can always use.
24:12 Emma Grede? It's a really nice one. I mean, it's really interesting because I feel like for So many women, they are working hard and showing up and delivering and still not stepping forward. You know, still not putting themselves in the right situation to be able to take advantage of whatever might be next. Because it's just so much going on that that actually we're stopping ourselves from doing. Do you believe in that idea of like, we just have to get out of our own way? Is it that easy? Is it ever that easy?
24:40 Speaker 01 Well, I would say it with a lot of compassion because it it can be quick to go from there to kind of like, well, what's wrong with us? And everything that women are doing around feeling self doubt or trying to stay safe has a really good reason. Right? So we have to remember, we're still getting a lot of messages, all kinds of cues from the culture that somehow women aren't really leaders or we're not quite qualified or the right fit. And a lot of us have absorbed those messages. So I feel like I'm working with the inner legacy of our history. And so in that sense, it's not just like we are in our own way.
25:22 Speaker 01 It's more to me like this is a really interesting transitional moment in history. Where we're coming out of a past, right, where women didn't have financial power, legal protection, political power, the opportunity to lead in so many ways. And that left a very strong imprint in our psyche as well as in our world. And now we all have this strange, like, unlearning to do. Like, how, I say strange in the sense of like, how do we do that? How do we really unlearn those deep patterns? So we're we're doing that on behalf of, like, I call all of us in this moment, we're all on the transition team.
26:02 Emma Grede? We're all in the transition, we're all in the transition together. And so much of what I write about is like, understanding it is a transition. Like, that that is part of it, that we have to understand there's a lot of work to be done here. When you think about unlearning some of that stuff, like, what is a practical thing that someone can do today to start kind of moving themselves forward towards, working towards that thing before they're ready?
26:24 Speaker 01 Well, I would say, picture yourself doing the thing, like, really picture it. And then notice all the fears and objections that come up. Because sometimes until we really play the movie, so it's like, let's say I want to start the business.
26:38 Emma Grede? Yeah.
26:38 Speaker 01 But I just noticed I can never find time. I can never quite get myself in motion. I come up with a lot of reasons why this isn't the right year, what all that stuff. Picture, really play the movie in the most vivid way you can in your mind of I'm doing this. Or what if I imagine taking a bold step towards it tomorrow? And then fears are going to come up. And usually it's not going to go well, or people aren't going to like it, or what if nobody responds? And then we got to get out our pen and paper, or talk to a supportive person, and really get into like, what are those fears exactly? Let me look at them in the light. And what would my wisest, most loving self say to do about those fears?
27:21 Speaker 01 The woman I want to be, how would she work with those fears? When we really get quiet and ask ourselves that, like, there's amazing answers always waiting for us.
27:31 Emma Grede? Amazing answers. But it's often so hard what comes out on that piece of paper, right? That can be really hard to reckon with, because what you realize is like, so much of it is internal. It's stuff that you need to work through. And as you quite rightly say, it's patterns, it's things that creep up in other parts of your life. But to me, the writing down of everything is the most useful part.
27:54 Speaker 01 Absolutely. It is completely different to write something than to try and think about it.
27:59 Emma Grede? First, you are completely right. Like, in the back of my book, I put a bunch of pages just for people to write notes, because when these things come up, it's so easy to dismiss them as well, because it's hard. This is not easy work that we're talking about. It's like just meeting yourself in the mirror and going, ah, this is really old stuff that I don't want to deal with. This is really difficult stuff that I don't want to deal with. But there's something about the act of writing it down, and then putting it away, and then bringing it back out and saying, okay, like, I am ready to face some of these things now. I'm ready to do things differently. Because at the end of the day, you just want to, you know, you want to be able to get to where you want. We're talking about women being able to live the life of their dreams and do what makes them happy. And so, what's on the other side?
28:43 Emma Grede? Side of that is just so, you know, so gratifying in so many ways. I wanted to talk to you about guilt, one of my favorite, one of my favorite subjects. And I feel like it's such a default emotion for so many women. We can feel guilty about our ambition, we'll feel guilty about our kids, what we're not doing, what we are doing. Certainly guilty about wanting more. And, and I wondered where like the idea of guilt fits into everything that, that you know so well and all the work that you've done.
29:11 Speaker 01 You know, again, I would say guilt is often about what we're afraid of being or what we're afraid of being perceived as. So all of these like, I don't want to be the selfish lady. I don't want to be the too ambitious lady. These are often things that two women will say.
29:26 Emma Grede? I've just got really comfortable with those two things. I'm the selfish, ambitious lady, like literally just give me a sticker, a little badge, fine with it.
29:37 Speaker 01 I love it. I love it.
29:39 Emma Grede? Like, I don't want to be the selfish, greedy like girl, but it's like, I have for a long time. I will never, ever forget, early in my career, I switched jobs. And my first day at the new job, you kind of go in to meet the boss or whatever. And he knew my, my prior boss and I was like, oh, I hope you had a good conversation. He said, yeah, yeah. She told me you were very ambitious, you know, like this. And I was like, well, in a new job, like, isn't that a good thing? But I knew it wasn't meant to sound or to, you know, it wasn't praised.
30:08 Speaker 01 Yes.
30:08 Emma Grede? And so it's one of those things that sticks with you. It's like, oh, she's very ambitious. And I was like, yeah, I am like, I'm going to be ambitious for you. I'm going to be ambitious for this company and you're welcome. You know, it's just.
30:19 Speaker 01 So interesting, you know, when we surveyed women in our community, we asked them, how many of you have been given the feedback in a professional setting? That you're too aggressive, too direct or too abrasive? And then we also asked how many were given the feedback that you're too quiet, you're too passive or you lack executive presence.
30:39 Emma Grede? Literally every person that is listening to this right now, just put their hands up like for either, either one or the other.
30:46 Speaker 01 So between the two of those, right, we're at ninety five percent.
30:49 Emma Grede? That's all of us. Yeah. Got us down.
30:51 Speaker 01 And then for, for twenty percent of women, it's both. Right? So those women are like, where do you want me to be?
30:56 Emma Grede? In limbo land, totally.
30:57 Speaker 01 So there's all those, yeah, all those projections put on us. And there's a lot of, you know, the other piece we often don't talk about enough, I think, with the kind of feedback women get at work, is that the research shows that feedback is much more personality driven than it is for men.
31:13 Emma Grede? Oh shit, is it really?
31:14 Speaker 01 Yes, this is actually documented. Karen Snyder did a great study looking at performance reviews in corporate and tech companies. And first of all, women were getting more negative feedback than men. But when they got negative feedback, 70% of the time, it involved some kind of criticism of their personality. And for men, that number was 2%.
31:35 Emma Grede? Wow, that's extraordinary. What a gap.
31:37 Speaker 01 It is a huge gap. And so then, again, like, we don't have to wonder, why does feedback feel a little scary to us? Well, it's often more personal. It's kind of shaming, right? Like, that is a shaming thing to say, you're too abrasive, you're too aggressive. That for most women, oh my gosh, we're like out here trying to be relational and kind and also get something done at the same time. It's already impossible.
32:00 Emma Grede? It's a massive takeout for anybody listening. And actually, it's even made me think, you know, if you're in a position of power, if you're in a position of leadership, thinking about how you assess the men in your organization versus how you assess the women and how much of it is personality driven. That is a moment to take a step back and go, what is happening? And are we okay with that? Because even as you say it, the 70% to the 2%, that's insane.
32:25 Speaker 01 It is insane.
32:26 Emma Grede? It's literally not okay. And so I would say to everyone to just stop for a moment and really look at that, because that's a statistic that you just could not, I mean, if that was happening in any of my companies, I would be mortified.
32:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:40 Emma Grede? Mortified.
32:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:41 Emma Grede? Because again, if that's the message and the signal that we're giving to women, we're essentially saying, you know what? You need to be a people pleaser to get ahead in this organization. You need to be likeable. And to me, who is like the most results orientated person ever, it's like, I don't want a bunch of assholes running around in my office. But by the same token, I don't want all of my female staff to think that they need to Think likability is a factor to then being successful in the organization because it isn't. It's like, it's a big difference between being liked and being somebody that is respected and can work well with other people. And all of the rest of it, right?
33:17 Speaker 01 Right. No, it's a huge thing. And this is called the double bind in research and it's this phenomenon that women are often perceived as either competent or likeable, but not both. And that effect is just as strong when women are looking at other women. So absolutely, think about how you're evaluating people. I also always say, people, think about how you're thinking about and sort of regarding your bosses, because women will do this thing of the mean woman boss and the meanest boss I ever had. And some of that is, you know, there's complex dynamics there, but I think often we're holding those senior women to a very different standard of the kind of niceness and people pleasing we would expect.
33:58 Speaker 01 That's very hard to maintain while you're also making difficult and controversial decisions and you're trying to get real things done. This is one of the reasons for so many people, this whole thing that I call unhooking from praise and criticism is so important because a lot of times we are getting feedback that is informed by some of these biases and kind of unfair boxes that we're putting women in.
34:31 Emma Grede? So talk to me about the unhooking. How do you unhook from that type of feedback if it's, if it's there?
34:37 Speaker 01 Well, first of all, just knowing, like when, when you gather a group of women and you say, how many of you were told you were too abrasive? And you thought it was just you that heard that in that one performance review and lots and lots of hands in the room go up. And then you realize there's no one in this room that hasn't either been told she's too abrasive or too quiet. That's kind of a relief. And then in terms of how we each show up as women, we want to really bring all the warmth that sometimes is strategically useful, the warmth and the desire to connect. But also bring our competence and really show that. What we often end up doing is saying, in order to be perceived as likeable, I'm going to diminish my competence and kind of hide it and be tentative about it. We want to amp up both. We want to amp up both.
35:20 Emma Grede? That's great advice, actually. Amp up both, because you can be both things.
35:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
35:25 Emma Grede? You can be extremely highly competent and well-liked, but you don't need to be loved and you don't need to, you know, have to overplay that part of everything and dumb down what it is that you're really there to do.
35:36 Speaker 01 Yes, and being warm and being respected and being connected to people is not the same as trying to get everyone to like you at every moment, all the time, you know, which also we can let that go.
35:47 Emma Grede? Oh, yeah. It's the thing that I say all the time. Can't be a people pleaser and a leader. Like inevitably, you are going to piss some people off, and that's okay. You have to do it anyway. That's why I'm the most popular person in the office. Always have been. I want to go back to guilt a bit, because I feel like it's so central to your work and we we only just light touched on it. Talk to me about guilt and how it shows up, why it matters so much that we get a handle on our guilt.
36:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think it's a real mean strategy that the inner critic uses to keep us in those comfort zones and out of our risk.
36:21 Emma Grede? Even that framing is good. It's a mean strategy that your inner critic uses. It's not you. It's not what you're feeling.
36:30 Speaker 01 No, because again, thinking about those different parts of ourself, you know, I would say all of us have that part that really wants to contribute something beautiful to this world, that wants to help others, that wants to like find our little corner where we want to make something better and do it, that wants to use our gifts and wants to have like a blast doing it. And then there's this voice that comes in, that's selfish, that's too much, you're going to be completely neglecting your family if you do that. I think that's the the voice in us that evokes a lot of guilt. The other thing I'll say, though, I'm a big fan of apologizing, not the over-apologizing that women do and the like syrupy.
37:11 Speaker 01 But actual accountability in our lives where we reflect on where did I miss the mark, which we sometimes feel real guilt around, and then proactive apologies. And I'm a fan of it in leadership, on teams. I think it's for our team, it's like one of the things that has helped us thrive and stay together long term is people do make mistakes and they do say things they a little bit regret. And when you have a culture where people proactively show up and apologize, you truly do that repair that needs to happen because guilt will accumulate if you don't have a healthy practice of making amends in your life.
37:52 Speaker 01 It's not the I'm a bad late mom guilt, you know, that stuff, but just that didn't feel quite right. And I think when we do it right, I always say like apologizing is a peak life experience. I think it's so good. I think it's like one of the best things.
38:05 Emma Grede? That's so interesting that you say that. I mean, I think that I'm naturally a person that sees their mistakes and I apologize. So much a part of my job as a leader in any organization is, you know, you're modeling the behavior, you're creating the culture. So what I do, whether it's leaving the office at five so I can go home and be with my kids, or it's apologizing when I've made a mistake, or even like apologizing, but also admitting and pointing to, I'm like, oh, that decision that I made over there, that was the wrong one. And as a result, this thing happened and this is what we'll do next time. But that was me, like my bad over here. It just creates the conditions for everybody to feel like they can behave like that.
38:50 Emma Grede? Maybe, I don't know, it's like a polite English thing, but I apologize all the time. But it is just something, it's not like a guilt thing for me. I apologize and move on. I'm not going to feel bad about it through the day. I'm like, so sorry. Okay, boom, and on to the next thing.
39:06 Speaker 01 Right, well, I think that helps us not carry guilt because that is right when we recognize we've done something that didn't, wasn't what we intended, didn't feel aligned. That's the role of apologies or making an amends of some sort if there's like something to do. To right the wrong. It's there so that we don't have guilt that stews. And just when I hear you share that, I'm like, that is one of the reasons to me that women's leadership is so important because we are less likely to fall into this ego game where because I hold the position of power, I'm going to puff up my chest and I have always done everything right and I, you know, can't be questioned as the leader. And that builds such incredible trust in a team when they know you're accountable, other people can be accountable, none of us are being expected to be perfect.
39:51 Speaker 01 It's huge.
39:52 Emma Grede? It's just huge and it's human. I think that so many of my listeners are in a position where leadership is in their future. It's something that they're doing now. It's something that they're aspiring to do. And leadership looks really different for men versus women. So just given your experience, everything you've learned, you wrote your book 10 years ago.
40:12 Speaker 01 Yep.
40:13 Emma Grede? What's changed? What's happening?
40:15 Speaker 01 Well, I have to say, I mean, Playing Big has been this beautiful book where I wrote it 11 years ago and it sold the same number of copies every week for 11 years.
40:24 Emma Grede? That's so crazy.
40:26 Speaker 01 Crazy because women just hand it to each other. I mean, I don't know enough about marketing to make that happen.
40:32 Emma Grede? That's some, that's some good marketing you've got going on there. Some good word of mouth.
40:36 Speaker 01 Some good word of mouth. So just to say, some things have not changed around those fundamentals of self doubt and inner vision and our callings and all of that. There was an article that ran years ago in Harvard Business Review and it said, you know, women are not ambitious for positions of power. And then the way they define was that they had surveyed women and they were like, they literally said, like, do you want to climb the ladder at their, at your organization? And so everyone said, no. And I'm like, that's because
41:06 Emma Grede? Wrong question.
41:07 Speaker 01 Women don't like climbing ladders. That's not what motivates us. If they had just asked the question a little different, you know, would you like to run your team in a more equitable and useful way than it's being run right now? Would you like to have a bigger impact with your company's mission? Would you like to be able to make real change in the company? They would have gotten totally different answers.
41:27 Emma Grede? Why, why is that even? Why is there such a level of? Uncomfortableness with like a term like climbing the ladder or power or or anything that kind of, you know, has these connotations that, you know, women would feel less comfortable with. What is that about?
41:44 Speaker 01 Well, I I know you might not you. I don't know if you'll relate to this answer. You might not like it.
41:48 Emma Grede? Well, you know, I'm not going to.
41:49 Speaker 01 I would say, I would say.
41:50 Emma Grede? Whatever it is.
41:51 Speaker 01 I would say that it's more that that is a boring term. It's just that men have been socialized into needing to care about that for status. I don't think anyone just because if you didn't know what the ladder, the company's ladder, like that what that company was creating, I don't know how much you would care about that either.
42:10 Emma Grede? Yeah, but what if you do? What if you have a complete awareness that, you know, because here's my experience is often that we just want to avoid the terms and the way that we'll be seen if we admit it. We want the thing. We just don't want to say the thing. We don't want to say. I talk about it all the time. You know, I've been on a panel called Women, Power and Money, where somebody told me off for talking about money. I was like, what?
42:36 Speaker 01 We didn't mean that by money.
42:39 Emma Grede? I was like, what are you talking about? You know? So I do think there's a level of like, I'm uncomfortable talking about this, which is why I think it's so important to have these conversations because one would hope that in, you know, the 11 years since you wrote the book, some things have shifted and we got a bit more comfortable.
42:55 Speaker 01 Hmm. I don't know about that. Whether we got more comfortable.
42:59 Emma Grede? Wait until my book comes out.
43:00 Speaker 01 Right, right.
43:01 Emma Grede? I'm gonna, I'm gonna be like, let's get comfy.
43:03 Speaker 01 I, I, I think that is one of your gifts is that you do have a real comfort with that and you're giving women different kind of permission around that. I think for a lot of women, the way, the route that sort of makes, makes them feel compelled to move into leadership has to do with impact. And the purpose they wanna serve.
43:26 Emma Grede? No doubt. And what I'm saying is that, and to be clear, because I totally agree with you.
43:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
43:32 Emma Grede? But what I don't want, and what I wanna stop women from doing, is hiding behind soft ambition or performative purpose. Because my point of view is, if you have ambition, you're gonna get uncomfortable. In fact, it requires discomfort. And when you want something like, you know, like a lot of money, you're gonna have to have some audacity. And like, that's okay. Like, that's all right. Like, I'm like, we don't need to kind of live up to a version of ourselves. Because I think that I'm like a really nice girl who's super maternal with a lot of great, you know, characteristics. I just have ambition and audacity and, you know, I'm fine with being uncomfortable and I'm fine with making you uncomfortable for a second as well.
44:14 Emma Grede? Like, you, you can be both things. Like, two things can be true at once.
44:19 Speaker 01 Yes.
44:19 Emma Grede? Right? I want women to care deeply about money, because I think you can care deeply about money and other things too. I think you can do really meaningful, impactful work and care about how much you get paid for it.
44:33 Speaker 01 Yes.
44:34 Emma Grede? You know? So it's like, I'm trying to say, it's like, it's all of it. Yes, you're right. And this is the thing too.
44:40 Speaker 01 Absolutely. I think, I think that's exactly it, is that as a society, and going back to that transition team idea, we are having trouble holding both at once, still.
44:50 Emma Grede? Yes.
44:50 Speaker 01 It is like, I can, we're still in the stereotype.
44:53 Emma Grede? Yes, you're right.
44:54 Speaker 01 Right? There, there's on the one hand ambition over here, but it comes at these costs of how I am relationally and personally, or there's the nice person, which is exactly that double bind. So that is like part of this transition team is you're actually, you embody both. And that's very impactful for people to absorb, like, at a, at a, almost at a cellular level, to be like, oh, there it is. Both, both together.
45:22 Emma Grede? Let's do it. Buy both books.
45:25 Speaker 01 Yes.
45:26 Emma Grede? Right, read them side by side, right now, right now. And because you're such an expert in women's leadership, I wanted to talk to you about something that me and my friends talk about all the time, this idea that women will outsource decisions and that will create bosses. There was a time early in my career when my now husband spoke to me about this idea of an employee mentality. And it really cut me, you know, this, Emma, you have an employee mentality. And I was so annoyed about it, not because I get annoyed about a lot of things my husband says, but because it was so true at the time. I was twenty six, twenty seven, going into a board meeting and, you know, sweating, like just sweating and like really erratic about this board meeting. And he said, oh, I know why
46:11 Emma Grede? you feel like that. You have an employee mentality. You haven't understood that you're the leader, you're there to paint the picture, show them the vision and bring everybody on the journey. And I lost it because it was so, so true. And I feel like there is this thing where even if we're in a position of leadership or decision making, we will create or find a boss or a person for ourselves. We go to the bank, the bank manager's the boss. We go for a, you know, a meeting with a lawyer or somebody, suddenly they're the boss. What is it that that creates that pattern that makes us look for other people to be in charge of our decisions?
46:45 Speaker 01 Hmm. So great. Yeah, well, I think, you know, this is very much what we were also just talking about before in terms of the good student mentality. So we could say the good girl mentality, the employee mentality, and the good student mentality.
47:00 Emma Grede? Dear, please don't add my, my husband's vernacular to, to the, to the thing. I'm like, it's made it.
47:05 Speaker 01 Those are kind of all very similar, right? In that my job is adapting to the authority figure, not being the authority figure.
47:13 Emma Grede? Yes.
47:13 Speaker 01 Norm is my job influencing authority. I'm going to be a shapeshifter, which a lot of us learn in school. This teacher wants the paper in this font, this teacher wants the paper in that font, like down to the very detail, this teacher likes it if, you know, you argue your point this way. And so we learn to be these shapeshifters for the authority figures. It's a huge transition then to step into our own authority. A lot of that gets conditioned in school. A lot of it gets conditioned because of our identity, right? We're being told explicitly and quietly that we're not the authority. I think you need another authority. To replace it with, that's not your ego self. So whether you think of that as your higher self or the calling that's in you.
47:58 Speaker 01 And I like to think of the inner mentor is what we call it in Playing Big. This really visiting with your older, wiser self, like yourself 20, 30 years out in the future, kind of your inner elder woman. You know, Joseph Campbell talked about, we're all in the acorn state, but the acorn knows the oak tree that it's trying to become. So your oak tree self that your being is trying to emerge, grow into, that has to become the authority. This is your inner mentor.
48:28 Emma Grede? Oh, first of all, I love the idea of creating a 30-year-older version of myself in the future. She's so much better than I am now. I could die.
48:36 Speaker 01 Yes.
48:37 Emma Grede? First of all, this is some stuff I can get with. One second. Because I told you I was gonna like be all over the place in this one because you have so many golden things to say. That I was like, I'm gonna forget that I'm the host. I'm gonna think this is my own personal coaching session. I'm gonna lose myself. Okay, so first of all, let me just do this. So I am going to create a, oh my God, this is so good. An inner mentor for myself. And it's me 30 years in the future.
49:01 Speaker 01 Here's the thing, though, you're not creating her.
49:03 Emma Grede? Oh, sorry, I'm not.
49:04 Speaker 01 You get to discover her. She's real.
49:06 Emma Grede? Oh, she's there.
49:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is not something we make with our minds. Your oak tree is there.
49:11 Emma Grede? Okay.
49:13 Speaker 01 So we can even, do you want to do it right now?
49:15 Emma Grede? Yeah, come on. Yeah, I definitely do.
49:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, we can close our eyes. And you can just imagine a beautiful place, beautiful calm place in nature. And you can take a few deep breaths and just let your body really relax. And then you can notice that in this beautiful place, your older, wiser self is coming to greet you. And she's so happy that you came to visit. And you can just take in her presence. And notice if she has anything she wants you to know right now. And if there's anything she wants to give you to take back with you today.
50:01 Speaker 01 And then when you're ready, you can give your fingers and toes a little wiggle and open your eyes.
50:16 Emma Grede? So before we wrap, a quick reminder that Start With Yourself is available and tickets for the live shows are available now. Starting April 15th, we're coming to New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, DC, Boston, Atlanta, and London. Visit emigre.com for tickets and full tour details. I cannot wait.
50:38 Speaker 01 So I gave you the very short version because I know you're already very connected. And I thought
50:42 Emma Grede? I could tap straight in.
50:43 Speaker 01 She can do this without the 20 minutes.
50:45 Emma Grede? I have her.
50:46 Speaker 01 Yes, you have her.
50:47 Emma Grede? She's like Diane von Furstenberg and Maya Angelou and Martha Stewart and Oprah. And she's together, but she's me.
50:53 Speaker 01 But she's you, yeah.
50:54 Emma Grede? And she's like, she's, she's, she's there.
50:57 Speaker 01 Yes, yes.
50:58 Emma Grede? But first of all, one of the things like in the beginning of the conversation, when you spoke about like naming your inner critic, like giving her a voice, like that's some powerful stuff. And when you have that, like, you know, I'm thinking of that, that that's like a negative thing.
51:15 Speaker 01 Right.
51:17 Emma Grede? When you have this in like a really positive way, this like inner mentor, because again, like so many of us are running around looking for a mentor, looking for someone to show us and tell us and figure out the way for us. The idea that it's within you, that it's something that you have, that's a game changer.
51:37 Speaker 01 It is a huge game changer.
51:38 Emma Grede? That's a game changer.
51:39 Speaker 01 And you just felt it. I mean, I can, we can actually see it on your face.
51:41 Emma Grede? No, no, like I'm fully, like I'm fully sure of it.
51:43 Speaker 01 Yes, yes.
51:44 Emma Grede? That's a change. I have never, ever in my life thought about me 30 years in the future. Like as soon as you said it, like acorns, never in my life have I thought about that.
51:55 Speaker 01 Yes, yes. Yeah.
51:56 Emma Grede? How helpful.
51:57 Speaker 01 It's amazing. It's amazing. And so, right, the reason I think of that as a mentor is because you can actually, A, consult with her, like down to the granular, how would she write that email that I'm writing right now? What does she eat for breakfast? What does she do when she has a spare free hour? It gives me goosebumps because we can feel it, right? But then also the big things. And this is, it's so much better to be pulled forward by that than to push a goal that you've made up in your head.
52:35 Emma Grede? I'm telling you that inner mentor is a fucking gift. That's a gift.
52:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
52:40 Emma Grede? That's like, you just gave me a gift. I mean, I tell you why I love it so much is because you can call on that any time that you need because it's within you. But the other thing, even just the way you say, you can think about how she would write an email. I'm like, yeah, because she writes emails differently.
52:58 Speaker 01 Yes, how so?
53:00 Emma Grede? Because she's just, she's just in a different space and place. So she is writing from an entirely different wisdom set.
53:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
53:10 Emma Grede? But also that idea of like how she spends an hour, time is precious. Like she's, she's using time differently.
53:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. So it's so great because she can direct us in the big things. We can tap into her, but also these very granular things. And I think our external mentors are so important because we need, you know, we need people's lessons learned. And we need community and we need the practical things that mentors provide. But each of us has a really unique path. And when we think our mentor can tell us what to do at big crossroads or where we should want to go or what the right path is going to be for us, especially if you're trailblazing, right? Like there isn't a mentor who can give you that. But your inner mentor is, it's like a north star and you're not going to arrive at her a hundred percent.
54:03 Speaker 01 But that's, that's actually the beauty of it is like, there's always a little more forward to go.
54:08 Emma Grede? I'm so happy I just discovered that. I wanted to ask you, for anybody that's sitting, listening to this, what is the one thing that a woman can start doing right now to make like? Her decision's hers. Like, if you're stuck in like a loop of the way you do things, what's that the first thing that you just start doing?
54:27 Speaker 01 Go meet your inner mentor. You need your own, it's not just your own everyday self, it's your own north star. That becomes your authority.
54:36 Emma Grede? That's it, your own north star, your own vision, as I call it. It's such an important thing to have. I wanted to talk a little bit about your work on callings, because when you think about your work and what you do, women's leadership, you don't always put the two things, the two sides of it together. And the reason I love your work so much is because you do. And I think that most of us certainly, we feel that intrinsically, it's in us. Like, what is our calling? What are we here to do? So can you speak on that for me?
55:03 Speaker 01 I would love to. Yeah, yeah. So how I describe what a calling is, a calling is the inner assignment we get to bring goodness or light into the world in some way. When I hear you talk about Good American and you say, I wanted these women to feel seen, and that's what this product is about, and I was on fire, and you say I was obsessed, right? I would say you were, you were in your calling, right, around. And that's such a great example of how it can be any specific corner of the world, right? What defines it is not whether it's work or outside of work, but this sense of,
55:41 Speaker 01 I feel some sort of mysterious spark that this need is mine to help address. That is our, like, our toolkit for being able to make those kinds of contributions to our world. I think the question is not what's my calling, it is what's calling me right now.
56:02 Emma Grede? Right.
56:03 Speaker 01 And then, how do I become the kind of person who respects their callings and is friendly to them? And they often are kind of inconvenient because they're not easy choices, they're callings. But I really care about us understanding that, because I do think that it's one of the most joyful things we can do in our lives, and one of the most, like, vitalizing things we can do is to, to open ourselves up to the callings we're actually getting. And we don't have to do them all, but pick one that you're feeling. And find some way to pursue it.
56:36 Emma Grede? What changes in your life when you meet your calling? When you actually decide to do what you're called to do?
56:43 Speaker 01 You stop feeling jealous and envious of other people because you're actually running your own race.
56:49 Emma Grede? Oh, that's a big one.
56:50 Speaker 01 That's a huge one.
56:51 Emma Grede? That's a reason.
56:52 Speaker 01 Yeah. And it's very joyful. And you also get that beautiful, often when we're working on a calling, like that's when we lose our sense of time and space and we're just so in it. So we, that's, it's a route into that flow state that everyone talks about that's so wonderful. And it's also important to, right? As we're saying all this, like we, we resist our callings like crazy.
57:13 Emma Grede? What do you say to someone that's just, again, listening to that inner voice and resisting what their calling might be?
57:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, one, I want to normalize the resistance. And this is even, you know, when they map out the hero's journey.
57:25 Emma Grede? There's a pattern here. There's a pattern here.
57:28 Speaker 01 So we normalize it. It's okay. It is scary a lot. It's, you know, asks us to trust ourselves and do something different. And we tend to feel a lot of self doubt around our calling. So we can normalize all that. And then the other thing, people will often feel like, I don't have the money to do what I feel called to do. I don't have the time or I'm not qualified. And so I spend a lot of time when I'm working with groups and how do we, how do we get to the essence of your calling? And then find the way you can live that out this week. So if you're telling me your calling is to be a painter that is showing in galleries in New York, I'm going to ask you, how are you going to make art
58:10 Speaker 01 and share it with somebody like this very week? This very week? And I'm also not going to let you tell me, if you're researching galleries,
58:21 Speaker 01 that you spent time living your calling. We can do that, but that's not a substitute for the thing that's the actual essence of it. Make art, share art, right, for that person. That has to come alive and that's usually really counter to like, especially our good girl way of thinking. Our good girl way of thinking is like, I'm gonna wait till the right moment or I'm gonna research things like that. I'm gonna do all the steps around the thing itself.
58:46 Emma Grede? Yeah, I'm gonna wait till there's a gap and a moment and an opening and then.
58:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, so we're looking for this like imperfect, scrappy, immediate, but true to the essence.
58:57 Emma Grede? Imperfect being the thing, right? Because everything that I've ever started or tried or had a crack at, it has been imperfect. Including this podcast, by the way, you have to start before you're ready. You have to, and I, again, it's one of the subjects that I constantly tried to be really honest about in my book and show like, here's how it then failed, like, because it might not work. You might not actually get to exactly where you thought things would be or where, how you thought they would land. But that, that's not the point, because when you're working towards a dream or a calling or something that has like a higher meaning to you, that's okay. It doesn't need to be your definition of perfect, but you'll find something in a certain part of you.
59:41 Emma Grede? Like, once you get there, like, once you're in it, once you're doing it and you can keep refining and keep going. You don't get just like one big thing. And to your point, it's like you're calling right now.
59:51 Speaker 01 Yes, exactly. It's gonna be imperfect if you're doing anything interesting.
59:55 Emma Grede? Anything, anything interesting, anything that's not, you know, gonna bore you to tears.
1:00:00 Speaker 01 And sometimes we actually know about that more in the big business world than like most of the smaller business women entrepreneurs. Because in the bigger business world, people are given millions of dollars and 12 months or 18 months to experiment their way to.
1:00:15 Emma Grede? And it doesn't work sometimes.
1:00:17 Speaker 01 Right, and it still doesn't work. And then we have these women entrepreneurs being like, I had my $200 and I'm really upset that didn't work. The first, very first time I made an offer. Like, let me explain to you how the pros do it.
1:00:27 Emma Grede? Totally.
1:00:28 Speaker 01 They're hiring expert teams and then they're spending millions of dollars to figure out what's gonna work in the market.
1:00:33 Emma Grede? You're good with a series. Of mistakes. You're okay.
1:00:35 Speaker 01 Yeah. So there's that aspect, but then there's also the aspect of just how do you take it out of your kind of big fancy version of it and do the most like local, simple version? So it's like, if you eventually want to have an amazing retreat center for women, great. But while that you're raising, you know, capital and figuring out if that's ever going to work. I want you to host the women's group in your house this Sunday.
1:00:58 Emma Grede? Right now.
1:00:59 Speaker 01 Now, the actual thing. And then when people start to contemplate that, that's when they go, wait, but I'm not sure if I'm ready and I have self doubt. And then we get to deal with all the real emotional stuff that would have been brewing while they were thinking they were working on building their retreat center for five years, but never really looking at the emotional fears that were going to keep them from ever really moving into that.
1:01:20 Emma Grede? Absolutely.
1:01:21 Speaker 01 So we jump, we got to jump in.
1:01:23 Emma Grede? You got to jump.
1:01:23 Speaker 01 And then we, and then people are, once they get over that hump and they're like, I can live my calling in that scrappy way now. It's wonderful and it's joyful.
1:01:31 Emma Grede? It's joyful. I think it's really important because I feel like what your, your book did was it broke a lot of new ground and for people to really understand where their behavior comes from. And when you have, you know, when you know better, you do better. That's all, you know, we can hope for. But I think that we need more models of women in the culture that do things differently and that have, you know, the desired result because you can't be what you don't see. We need to see that stuff. We need to see it working.
1:02:00 Speaker 01 And we all have to be what we never saw.
1:02:05 Emma Grede? Is so much of your work now in the years post you write in the book, is it actually like directly with women?
1:02:11 Speaker 01 Yeah. So I'm still, I'm with every week, every week I'm with women who want to play bigger and who are taking those tools that we've talked about and we're learning about them one at a time. I've also trained now like thousands of coaches and therapists and educators in that model. So sometimes I'm training them. Sometimes I'm in companies doing leadership programs. So it's a beautiful mix. Yeah.
1:02:37 Emma Grede? Beautiful mix. What is it that you still aspire to doing?
1:02:40 Speaker 01 Oh my gosh, so much, so much.
1:02:43 Emma Grede? Really tell me.
1:02:44 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, you can hear that there's a spiritual underpinning to my work. And I think in my younger self, I was maybe a little more tentative about how to bring that forward in sort of the women's career space. So I feel like I get to be braver and bolder about that now. I get to plan some sort of epic 50th birthday party, but that's a few years around the corner. So I'm like, that needs multiple years of planning because it's going to be epic, you know?
1:03:14 Speaker 01 And yeah, really, just my, my prayer is always like, how do I get braver and bolder? And what I'm willing to say and what I want to put out into the world.
1:03:23 Emma Grede? How often do you speak to your inner mentor?
1:03:26 Speaker 01 At least weekly.
1:03:27 Emma Grede? Yeah.
1:03:27 Speaker 01 And if it's not every day, it's only because I'm also drawing on, you know, other like other spiritual practice where I feel like I'm accessing similar energies. But maybe just through prayer or meditation.
1:03:41 Emma Grede? Amazing. If you were to go like 20 years in the future, what would you like to see as a result of your work? As a result of where we are in the culture and all the kind of positive momentum? Like, what do you envisage and where would you want us to be?
1:03:58 Speaker 01 I want us to have a more, what I call a more sane and humane world. So more sane and humane to me means humans are cherished, every human. Children and their needs and their bonds with the important people in their lives are kind of first above all else. Like, we make policy decisions around that, you know, as a world. We are not violent planet anymore. So that's the world I'd love to see. And I believe that getting there depends on real shifts of who's in power.
1:04:39 Speaker 01 And that more, more women and more people who have been long marginalized from power of every gender come into power. And so that's my big why. Like, I love that women will have a better time and more fun in their lives if they, you know, like they literally will have a lot more fun if they use these tools. That makes me happy. But more important to me is that what I see them doing with the tools is always about making their communities and their world that more sane, humane place. That's my, my, my deep, deep.
1:05:16 Speaker 01 Intention.
1:05:17 Emma Grede? Perfect answer, because I couldn't agree more. We are desperate right now for more women in positions of power, without a shadow of a doubt. Thank you so much. This is such a pleasure. Oh, I have to do some rapid fire. Sorry, I'm the worst.
1:05:31 Speaker 01 I didn't get to talk about my morning practice.
1:05:33 Emma Grede? Forgot the rapid fire. One second. I've got you. That's where we're starting. That's where we're starting. Okay, tell me.
1:05:38 Speaker 01 I have some good ones here.
1:05:39 Emma Grede? Of course, of course you do. Tell me, what is your morning practice?
1:05:42 Speaker 01 Okay, so I like to start in the morning. I like to turn my day over to like a larger spiritual power. So I will literally, I lie in bed. Most of the time, I'm not woken up by a child these days. They're a little older now, so I can lie in bed and just say, I turn over my day to you. Big, you know, you with a capital Y. May I hear your voice today? And I like actually to often picture, you know, those photos of the night sky with like the solar system, where you can see the planets. I guess it's the all the time sky. It's not really the night sky. So I like to picture the spheres of the planets in the morning and just think about the beauty and the intelligence that is informing this whole existence.
1:06:26 Speaker 01 But to me, that image is like, okay, something is at work here. And it really knows what it's doing. So let me remember that I'm part of that. And I'm like, within that and listen to a larger energy than just my own mental chatter today.
1:06:45 Emma Grede? Oh, what an awesome way to like start the day. What's the last thing you do before you go to bed at night?
1:06:50 Speaker 01 I usually write down a gratitude list and from the day. And, and then I write down a list of things I'm turning over to the, to the sacred. So it might be like this issue with this kid, this question in my business, this big event that's coming up. I'm just sort of saying, let me turn it over to a larger wisdom. And I'll do my part, but I'm not gonna do it with a clenched fist of willfulness.
1:07:21 Emma Grede? What is something that you used to aspire to years ago that you no longer aspire to?
1:07:27 Speaker 01 Being, being popular with the other moms at the playground.
1:07:34 Speaker 01 It's just not.
1:07:35 Emma Grede? No longer needed.
1:07:36 Speaker 01 Tan bark is not my scene.
1:07:39 Emma Grede? Fair, and you know it. What is a book that changed your life?
1:07:43 Speaker 01 There's a book called This Here Flesh by Cole Arthur Riley, and it's just a beautiful book about every major topic in life you could imagine, essays. She's an incredibly gorgeous, brilliant writer. So that's what I would recommend.
1:07:59 Emma Grede? Perfect. Haven't read it. It's going straight on the list. Thank you so much, Tara.
1:08:03 Speaker 01 Thank you.
1:08:08 Emma Grede? If you're loving this podcast, be sure to click follow on your favorite listening platform. While you're there, give us a review and a five star rating and share an episode you loved with a friend. We'll be so grateful. Aspire with Emma Grede is presented by Odyssey. I'm your host, Emma Grede. Executive producer, Ashley McShan. Derek Brown. And me. Our executive producers from Odyssey, Leah Reese Dennis, Asha Saluja, Lauren Legrosso. Producer KK Sublime. Stephen Key is our senior producer. Sound design and engineering by Bill Schultz. Angela Peluso is our booker. Original music by Charles Black. Video production by Evan Cox, Kirk Courtney, Andrew Steele, and Carla
1:08:49 Emma Grede? Stelgardo. Social media by Olivia Homan, Catherine Bale. Special thanks to Brittany Smith, Sidney Ford, my teams at The Lead Company and WME. Maura Curran, Josefina Francis, Hillary Schaff, Eric Donnelly, Kate Hutchinson Rose, Tim Meekle, Sean Cherry, and Lauren Vieira. If you have questions for me, you can DM me at aspirewithemmagreed. Grede is spelled G R E D E. That's aspire, A S P I R E with Emma Grede. Or you can submit a question to me on my website, emmagreed.me.
1:09:27 Speaker 07 Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Anthropic is a research company first, built to make sure the transition to powerful AI goes well. When they launched Claude in 2023, its first users were businesses. Since then, it's been tested inside leading startups and enterprises. At DoorDash, a code migration that would have taken four engineers months to complete took one person three weeks. At Carvana, one team used to hunt through old tickets and code to answer a question. With Claude, they get answers 65% faster. And at Rakuten, engineers have achieved 99.9% accuracy on tough coding jobs using Claude. Today, nine Fortune 10 companies run on Claude
1:10:11 Speaker 07 for the work they want to get right. And these businesses are helping Anthropic shape what comes next. Build your business with support from Claude at claude.ai/odyssey.
Previous It’s Time to Start With Yourself Next On Negativity, Ambition, and Building a Serious Business (Tory Burch) Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated