Playing Big with Tara Mohr

Emily Thompson 0:05
Hello and welcome to being involved episode number 55. Brought to you by fresh books cloud accounting.

Kathleen Shannon 0:13
Guys, we are so excited to have Tara more of playing big on our show today,

we're chatting with her about everything from your inner critic to your inner mentor to how to redefine fear. And it's interesting because there are actually two different types of fears so this will be good

Unknown Speaker 0:31
for you guys to hear.

Kathleen Shannon 0:32
Tara is an expert on women's leadership and well being she helps women play bigger and sharing their voices and bringing for their ideas in work and in life, which is what being boss is all about. Tara is the creator of the plane big leadership program for women, which we'll be linking to in our show notes. And it has now has more than 1000 graduates from around the world. A book playing big practical wisdom for women who want to speak up create a need is named a best Book of the Year by Apple's iBooks and it's now in paperback we've got a copy ourselves guys will have to check it out. Good. turret is a coach's dream Institute certified coach with an MBA from Stanford University and an undergraduate degree in English literature from Nelson. She's super smart. Anyway, and stay tuned, you guys will not want to miss this episode. Get your business together, get yourself into what you do and see it

Emily Thompson 1:34
through. Being bosses hard. Blending work in life is messy. Making a dream job of your own

Kathleen Shannon 1:40
isn't easy. But getting paid for it, becoming known for it. And finding purpose in it is so doable.

Emily Thompson 1:48
If you do the work.

Kathleen Shannon 1:50
Being boss is a podcast for creative entrepreneurs. Brought to you by Emily Thompson and Kathleen Shannon. Check out our archives at love being boss calm. So, Emily and I recently hired a new CPA for our businesses. She's fantastic. She specializes in creative entrepreneurs, which is really refreshing because a lot of times, accountants just don't really know how to handle our businesses. But one of the things that she's really excited about for us is that we are so organized with delivering our financials by using fresh books, cloud accounting, fresh books, this makes it super easy to create reports and to share those with your accountant. So it's funny because as I was trying to get this stuff together, and I could not figure out how to add my accountant to freshbooks. So I gave him a quick call. They answered immediately. It was a real person talking to me from the get go. And I asked them hey, how do I add an accountant and they quickly just walked me through the website and didn't make me feel like a total idiot for missing what was very obvious. So they're so user friendly is so easy to use fresh books that if you ever have a problem, you can call their Rockstar support team and they will help you out immediately. So stay on top of your business with a clear picture of its financial health. Hire a CPA to and try fresh books for free today go to freshbooks comm slash being boss and enter being boss in the How did you hear about us section? First off, I have to tell you that our being boss listeners are already such fans of yours. And I have literally had friends send me iPhone photos of your book like passages from your book. And they're like, Oh my gosh, you have to read this if you haven't already. So

Tara Mohr 3:45
amazing. That's so touching to hear it was fun to sharing that, of

Kathleen Shannon 3:48
course is fun to finally finally dig in and then to get to talk to you is I love my job.

Unknown Speaker 3:58
As it should be Yeah.

Kathleen Shannon 3:59
So obviously your book is called playing big. And Tara, can you just give us a quick? What does it mean to play big if you can just kind of wrap it up in a nutshell?

Tara Mohr 4:10
Well, my favorite short definition and the one that I personally hold in my in my heart is that playing big is being more loyal to your dreams than to your fears. And that definition showed up for me because in my own life, I got to a point, actually right as I was coming up on my 30th birthday, when I was feeling more and more disillusioned with my job and being more honest with myself that I had really turned my back on what I really wanted to be doing in my career. And it was a very pivotal moment for me when I realized like wow, I have put my allegiance with my fear. Instead of with my dreams, and just making that shift was the beginning of playing much bigger for me. I love it.

Unknown Speaker 5:12
It's so huge. So

Kathleen Shannon 5:13
one of the things that you talk a lot about in your book is the inner critic. And I think a lot of us are already super familiar with that inner dialogue that can be kind of a gremlin, as Bernie brown calls it that often takes us to a place of fear, and shame. And can you just tell us a little bit more about the inner critic, but then I want to quickly jump to the inner mentor, because that part blew my mind.

Tara Mohr 5:39
Yeah, so you're right, we are more familiar with the inner critic than we are with the inner mentor. But we're familiar but I think we most of us are lacking what I think of as inner critic 101, like basic knowledge. And I always think back to my high school education, where I was literally taught how to balance a check. And, you know, then I went to get driving less whatever, but like, this very fundamental thing of what are these voices in our heads? And how do we deal with them, we don't get one on one, training on that. So we're familiar with it, but in a way, we're really not familiar with what it is and how to deal with it. So the inner critic is that voice in our heads, that says harsh and mean and untrue things about ourselves to us, but they feel really true. And they sound true to us in the moment. And I think anytime you hear a voice in your head, that's saying to you, talking to you in a way that you wouldn't intend to talk to someone you really loved and wanting to support your hearing your inner critic. And what a lot of us don't know is that we're all hardwired to have an inner critic. So we don't have to go looking for like what happened in my childhood that made me feel self doubting, or is this because that one professor, those things can contribute and they can affect the particular former inner critic takes. But everybody has got that voice of self doubt. And the reason is that we've all also got an instinct to stay safe to stay in our comfort zone to never risk criticism or failure or harm. And that safety instinct, that doesn't care how fulfilled we are, or how happy we are, it just wants things to stay familiar and safe. That safety instinct is always trying to get us to live by its priorities and its rules. And so if you say I think I want to launch that business, or I think I want to reach out to that person that I'd love to have as a client, or I think I want to share my work in a new medium or a new ways, the safety instincts. Like, if that could lead to any ouchy moments, let's not do it. But it can't just say that to you, because you would not, you would not be persuaded by that. And so instead, the safety instinct uses a more sophisticated strategy. And it puts on this costume and this gets dressed up in this vehicle, that the inner critic, so instead of saying to you, let's just stay on the couch, instead of launching that new business, like, it'll be more safe to just watch more reality TV over here with our snack, instead of saying that, because you wouldn't, you know, you'd be like, but I think it could be fun and lucrative and wonderful to start my own business. Instead of saying that it says, You don't know what you're talking about, you're not an expert in that you would need 10 more years of experience, you know, you're not good at the money part, or whatever your particular inner critic lines are. And that's much more intimidating task. So anytime we're on are playing big edges, we're going to hear from the inner critic, and it doesn't mean we're off track, it usually is an indication that we are taking an important step out of our current comfort zone.

Kathleen Shannon 8:56
Emily, do you have anything to add? No, I'm

Emily Thompson 8:59
just gonna just so I need to hear this today.

Unknown Speaker 9:05
I

Emily Thompson 9:06
liked what you said, I was reading through reading through some of your book. And you mentioned something about how the inner critic is, is mostly concerned with things that are like associated with masculinity. And he just brought it up in terms of like, you know, worrying that you're not going to have enough money do it you're not gonna be able to manage it and those sorts of things. And I thought that that was such a such an interesting and profound like a realization about how like our our audiences, mostly women, and how like this is a conversation Kathleen and I have with our like coaching clients and our, our design clients constantly, like they're so worried about, about the money side of things we're about managing or about, you know what I do when it comes to marketing and really the sort of masculine pieces of the puzzle that's involved with doing business. And I think that's sad, and I'm But I'm also so glad that you you recognize that and brought that up in terms of you know, this inner critic is, is just, I don't know, bullying us in a way that we're almost conditioned to be bullied.

Tara Mohr 10:12
Yeah, that's such a good point. I'm so glad you brought that up. People are always, you know, if I'm teaching about the inner critic are lecturing about a really common question, because I'm usually talking to groups of women is what do men have this to? And it's interesting, because a lot of us assume that women struggle with the inner critic more than men. But there have been a handful of studies done around self doubt. And the research suggests that women don't have more self doubt than men. But we do have a lot more when it comes to, as you're saying, those things that and it's not that they're necessarily masculine things, but the things that are associated with masculinity in our culture in a stereotypical way. And so as you're saying, that tends to be financial things. It's also anything quantitative, right, they're like, I'm not good at math, negotiation, and then even leadership in this sort of traditional sense of I'm leading the group, I'm leading the team. And then on the opposite side, there's some research that suggests that men feel more self conscious about things that are associated with femininity in our culture, whether that's like, well, I don't know, you know, what, what, how do you make things look nice, I don't know anything about that, or I don't that communication stuff. I'm not good at that. And so those stereotypes, of course, affect us. And the reason it's so good to realize that is because most of us walk around, truly thinking like, I know, I individually, I'm just not a good negotiator. And we're not seeing that that's part of a pattern. And it's really not the truth.

Kathleen Shannon 11:51
One of the things that I love that you highlighted in the book was an actual conversation with your inner critic. So this is maybe two separate parts. And I feel kind of like a dork being like, I love that thing that you wrote Tara, in your book that we're talking about.

Tara Mohr 12:07
Now, by the way, like, obviously,

Kathleen Shannon 12:11
you know, go get the book and read it. But one of the things that I love that you do in it is you talk about kind of not just telling the inner critic to shut up, but in a way, almost making friends with it and having more of a dialogue with it. So I wanted to share how this came up for me recently. And I have a very good established creative career. I'm totally living the dream, I have a podcast, I have a branding agency. But I recently had the dream of becoming a makeup artist, and my inner critic and not like, it's not a real dream, but I'm excited about it. And so my inner critic piped in and was like, What the hell are you thinking like a makeup artist? And so I took a cue from your book. And instead of just listening to that inner critic, I was like, let's have a dialogue. And one of the things that you mentioned is, what would it take to make that happen? What would it mean to keep the things that are important to me like security, and my job and security and my expertise and finances, but also explore this makeup thing. So it was really, it was so cool to see that it doesn't have to be black or white, but there are a lot of gray areas. And without my inner critic, I wouldn't have been able to have that conversation, or at least without the tools that you kind of gave me in your book. And so I just wanted to share that as like a real life example of what that inner critic might look like and what that actual conversation might look like. Yeah,

Tara Mohr 13:38
that's fabulous. Yeah. And I would say it I also have a chapter in the book on callings. And I really believe that we all get lots of callings over the course of a lifetime. We get many callings, at the same time. And that sometimes our callings are a calling isn't just a big epic, like, this is what I'm going to do for the next 20 years. But it could be, oh, I feel a calling to do this particular project or fix this little need, you know, that I see in my community are at my school or, you know, among this group of friends or whatever. And so I would say you know that that sense of I have this vision now about being a makeup artist. And I feel really called to that that would fit for me as a calling that with our callings we always want to pay attention to and it sounds like this is just what you did, like, what's the practical, no big deal way that I can start living that in some way right now. And not get caught up in? How do I overhaul my life to do it in the most huge way I can imagine because that can actually be a way that fear would love for us to think about it because then it becomes impossible, right? versus if you're saying okay, I feel Calling to be a makeup or what can I do two or three hours a week right now that has been living that calling, not preparing to live it? Can I do free makeup? things for my friends? Can I just go to this makeup? You know, artists training? Like, really start living it

Kathleen Shannon 15:14
lots of YouTube tutorials? Yes.

Unknown Speaker 15:18
I saw something on your blog about that.

Kathleen Shannon 15:24
And answer for is getting a lot of my money. So that's also something that I realized is that I can love makeup. And it can be more of a hobby, and I can play with experimenting it, experimenting with it on myself. But again, like none of that would have happened

Unknown Speaker 15:37
without,

Kathleen Shannon 15:38
you know, kind of hearing that calling hearing my inner critic having a fair dialogue with my inner critic, and then moving forward.

Unknown Speaker 15:46
Yeah. And, okay,

Kathleen Shannon 15:48
let's move on to the inner mentor because, and I promise, we're not going to go through your like chapter by chapter by the inner mentor, like if there's anything that I want our audience to hear about, it's about the inner mentor. And so would you mind sharing a little bit about that with us.

Tara Mohr 16:07
So this is, I would agree, I always feel like if there's one thing people take away, it's please, please, please go take the 20 minutes to do the inner mentor visualization, it's, you won't be sorry. So I started using this tool in my coaching practice years ago. And I would see again, and again, it was it was truly life changing for people and pretty much for everyone who I did it with. And I have never come across anything else that allows us to so almost instantly get answers to our biggest dilemmas to get unstuck where we're stuck to move from fear to a place of contentment, and, and seeing a way forward. So it's just, it's just such a powerful thing. And the idea with the inner mentor, is that you are meeting your inner mentor who is a vision and a version of yourself 20 or 30 years out into the future. But if I were to say, you know, hey, Kathleen, what what do you want to be in 20 years like that wouldn't be your inner mentor, because that would be your some combination of you know, what your conscious mind is wanting and your plans and your fears. And you know, all of that. And you probably be thinking about how you're aging or when we're coming back, right? What will be going on in your relationships. So the reason we do a visualization and a meditation is because it really does get us out of all that more surface level thinking. So that it's not like we're making up our inner mentor, but really something is being revealed to us from inside of us. And we discover it. And so when people do this visualization, the figure that they meet, it's not just like, oh, here's who I'm literally going to be in 20 years that are not, it's more like you're meeting your inner wisewoman. So it's sort of your older self, it's sort of your authentic self, it's sort of your soul self. And, and people are often really kind of surprised by some of the elements of her in her life. There's a lot of symbolism usually and what people see, there's a lot of mystery, some things that they understand right away some things that reveal themselves more over time in terms of the meaning of them. But what people always find is this figure that is very calm, loving, and who they can really get a sense of and then consult with about whatever's coming up in their life and a very literal level. So like, Oh, I have to write this sticky email to a client, I need to fire Hmm, how would my inner mentor write it? Or I have to decide, you know, if

Kathleen Shannon 19:15
I'm going to continue this product line in my business, like let's let me approach that as my inner mentor would and then on the personal level to like, I need to have a difficult conversation with my mother in law, how would she approach that? So it's really powerful. I love it so much. I love this because I feel like we're constantly and especially lately, this trend of needing to have a mentor comes up all the time. People are searching for their mentor or hiring consultants or experts to tell them what to do. And I do think that those things have their place. But whenever it comes to the direction that you're taking your life and your career based on your own inner values is so important to have a place within yourself that you can go to to find those answers and something that you can really trust so i love that you can look at yourself just 20 to 30 years from now and and trust that

Tara Mohr 20:13
i couldn't agree more and whenever i'm speaking i and i'm talking about this i say you know how many of you in the audience have been told you need to find great women mentors and every hand goes up and then i ask how many of you feel like you found those mentors you were supposed to be able to find and like two hands will go up because it just doesn't work for people and i would say even more so for women pursuing an entrepreneurial career were you know 20 years ago the people you'd be looking to as mentors who presumably are maybe further along than you had totally different career options charted a different path like you're creating your own individual path and i don't think i ended up this and didn't end up getting included in the book i don't think but one of the things that shocked me i was looking into the history of mentorship because i always like you i just loved the concept has always kind of that doesn't feel real or write the way it's prescribed to women for their careers so anyway it turns out i

Kathleen Shannon 21:16
always think of listening and jack donaghy whenever

Tara Mohr 21:22
sony mentor the word mentor is it's the very first use of the word mentor is in homer's odyssey and and the character called mentor is when odysseus goes away on his journey mentor comes in to be like a substitute father figure for his son and then for like 1000s of years of literature mentor means a male father figure for a young male and then like in the 1970s someone's like oh and we have mentors at work like let's use this term in the business world and then in the late 1970s some feminists are like yeah but it's not just like male relationships it's female relationships too so the idea that this is how an older and younger woman should relate and support each other is really like a made up idea that's not grounded in any sense of how women actually relate to each other and i don't think we really i do think relate and more in circles and in mutual exchanges where we're sharing different things with each other it's not that like hierarchical son let me guide you kind of thing

Kathleen Shannon 22:36
so true and even in our own coaching practices and even in our facebook group for being boss i feel like an in even this podcast like we're in it with you guys you know we're all in it together we're all figuring out together and i feel like the best discussions are the kind that are in the round and where we're all having a voice and having a place and questioning each other yeah i feel a question every day even even as an expert on constantly re evaluating things so even being in a position where you've been a mentor can be kind of uncomfortable to not just being the mentee so

Tara Mohr 23:12
yes if you think your job as a mentor is to know all the answers which is how it's kind of prescribed and really a great mentor is more like a coach who's asking right the right questions and helping that person find their own inner wisdom so but but the inner mentor is like this failproof available around the clock way to get that and of course you know there's lots of great great roles that the outer colleagues and peer mentors in our lives can play but i don't think that they can give us the big the big answers and help us find our own highest way of moving through the world that is what the inner mentor gives us

Emily Thompson 23:53
hey bosses did you have a case of fomo that stands for the fear of missing out

Kathleen Shannon 23:58
when you saw all the being boss magic go down for our being boss vacation in new orleans

Unknown Speaker 24:03
fear not friends

Emily Thompson 24:05
because we are planning another boss vacation this spring in

Kathleen Shannon 24:09
miami so it was really hard to figure out what location to go to but we've never been to miami and the reason why we do these boss vacations is to cultivate our creative pack see different parts of the world get some face time with each other connect with each other and live the boss life so to learn more details about this boss vacation just go to love being boss calm slash miami we hope to see you there

okay we have some listener questions

Unknown Speaker 24:47
oh good

Kathleen Shannon 24:48
i want to i just want to touch on one more thing that blew my mind and it's the two types of fear and i'm afraid that i will butcher them

Unknown Speaker 24:59
you will

Tara Mohr 25:01
Well, I actually pronounced it wrong for like the first two years I was talking about it because I had only read it and I thought I was pronouncing it right. But I had like read what syllable should be stressed during so sometimes I still pronounce it wrong. But yes, I'm gonna take that off your hands.

Unknown Speaker 25:18
Be the first to say the word.

Kathleen Shannon 25:20
And this is the excerpt from the book that actually someone had photographed and sent to me because it was just so profound.

Tara Mohr 25:27
That's so that's so lovely to hear. Yeah, so this really, yeah, knocked me like off my feet when I first came across it to, I was reading a book by Rabbi Alan Lu, who is a late San Francisco rabbi, who, right has some beautiful books on spirituality. And he was. So this particular chapter was about the, he was mentioning that in the Hebrew Bible, in the Old Testament, there's two different words used for fear. So the first word is pothead. And the the transliteration for people who want to it's usually spelled PA, ch, ad. And pochard is the fear of projected things or imagined things. So the things we imagined could happen, our projections about what's going to happen, it's always future oriented, right? Fear, this might happen. And since it's what we imagined could happen, it's like, you know, Oh, my gosh, the planes gonna crash, Oh, my gosh, the person is gonna scoff when I tell them what my prices are. I'm gonna, you know, invite this friend I want to, this person might want to become friends with to lunch, and she's not going to want to get whatever we fear could happen. And that's that kind of often inner critic fueled fear, it tends to be very over reactive, wants us to be extra conservative. And that's, that's the kind of fear most of us are very familiar with. And certainly as coaches, we're trying to help our clients not be run by those kinds of fears. Okay. Then he mentions, there's a second word used, in some other instances for fear. And that word is your RA. y i RH. And euro is used in three different kinds of instances. In the stories in the Hebrew Bible, one, it's used to describe the feeling that someone has when they are suddenly inhabiting a larger space than they were in before than they're used to being in. Second, it's the word that's used to describe when someone suddenly comes into possession of more energy than they normally have. And then third, it's the word that's used to describe what people feel when they're in the presence of the Divine. So when Moses is at the burning bush, this word as described to you use to describe how he feels. So when I read that, we're inhabiting a larger space than we're used to, coming into possession of more energy than we're used to, and in the presence of the Divine or the sacred, I was like, a whole. I experienced that with my clients all the time. And I had just had an experience with a client where she had finally kind of gotten to the truth within herself and spoken the truth about making a huge change in her life. And I could really remember, as I was reading that feeling of we had, there had just been such a heightened sense in the era that we were on the phone, but even just in the space of our conversation and kind of fear, but kind of a sense of awe. And, and she said, I'm scared. After she said that, she said, I'm so scared, and I had kind of addressed it as regular old fear and knew that didn't feel exactly right. And when I read this, I was like, Oh, that's because I was treating it, like regular old fear. And it was and it was this other thing. And so, as I lived with that more, I really evolved that as the basis of how I think about fear in my own life and work with people around it, that first we need to know which are we feeling here and usually when we're playing bigger when we're sharing our voice when we're going for calling we will feel your we may also feel some Pahad but we'll feel euro and there's really nothing to do with euro except, know that you're feeling it and savor it.

And then with Pahad, it's very different, because that's that over reactive, I'm imagining this and that could happen. And we don't want to be led by that. So that's where we like want to use all those kind of practices we have for not being directed by our fear and moving past it. And there's a lot of those in the book. But sometimes it's just You're right. And you're right, it feels wonderful in some sense, because it has that exhilaration. But it also feels uncomfortable, because it's again, it's not the it's certainly not the sitting on the couch. With our snacks and our reality TV cozy state of being it's, it's jittery, it's feels a bit vulnerable. So sometimes we do want to find a way out of it. But we really can just breathe, breathe through it and enjoy what it is and what it's showing us about our path.

Kathleen Shannon 30:51
I have a question about your art and our capacity for it. So I've experienced this a lot in my life. And I always ask the successful women around me, how do you grow your capacity for that kind of energy. So even I think as much as all of us want to make more money, if tomorrow I landed a client who is like, I want to give you $100,000, for what you're doing, I would I would feel overwhelmed, and a ton of pressure. And whenever I think of it almost like electricity, right? Whenever I moved into my old house, I had to update the circuit because my house was so old that it couldn't handle all the electricity that modern technology has given us, right. So like, sometimes I feel that way, whenever I'm experiencing urology, almost like I'm about to short circuit that I don't quite have the capacity to to handle the success for lack of better words. So do you have any tools for really just growing your capacity for holding

Unknown Speaker 31:51
that space?

Tara Mohr 31:53
Well, I have a couple thoughts. So one is, there's a difference between thinking it's going to be too much electricity, and it actually being too much electricity. True. So I would say, you know, it might be interesting to test out not obsessing that in advance, but sort of saying, Well, if life is bringing me the opportunity, or if life is bringing me the aspiration or calling towards the I'm going to walk forward, and I will deal with the too much electricity problem when it's actually happening. And you know, and I'm just thinking about times in my life where I felt like, that's way too big for now. I'm not ready for that. Now, I've definitely not ready for that now. And then like I decided that that was my inner critic, and I did it anyway. And it was great. You know? So that's one piece, like maybe

Kathleen Shannon 32:49
writing a book, did you feel that way before you wrote a book, I

Tara Mohr 32:52
felt I didn't feel that way with the book. But I felt that way. Like, the first time I was on national television, I felt that way. When the book was coming out and and I, my editor without, you know, really telling me like pitch The New York Times. And so then I just got the email that was like, great. You're writing an op ed for the Sunday New York Times about women's relationship to praise and criticism. And I was like, No, I am not. Actually my first thought was like, Oh, no, this is a horrible, because I'm going to have to spend all this time writing this op ed so that I because I can't say no, because that would be my publisher would then feel like I wasn't, you know, supporting the book. But I know it's not going to be publishable because my writing isn't good enough for that. And people who write for the New York Times op ed sound very grown up when they write and you don't your writing doesn't sound that way, Tara. And now I'm gonna have to waste all this time when I really need to be doing book launch stuff, writing this piece that I know is not going to get. And I actually even though I had just finished writing the plane Bay, but I thought that for five days before the first time, I had the thought like, maybe that is partially my inner critic tagging. So that's what I mean about our inner critic. It really is a it's a lifelong practice to get more and more savvy about discerning when that's what you're hearing, it's not easy, you know, even if it would be obvious to an outsider, like I was convinced, you know about that. And then and so so for me, the practice was like, I just then it was like, Well, if that might be my inner critic, I guess that might not be true. And I have to write this anyway, even while I'm sure that this thing is going to be horrible and not be published. And so I you know, I worked on it for a couple weeks like that. And guess what, you know, it was published and then guess what it was the number one most emailed Article of the week and the New York Times like so and now It was I mean, it was just such a like, Oh my gosh, like our inner critics are so convincing. And they really are so off base. So I was tricky. Yeah. Oh, totally tricked. Yeah. Total trickster. So so you know, is it too much electricity? Or does it feel like it might be those are two really different things about them. The other thing I would say is, you're kind of reminding me of this, you know, and I wrote a piece years ago called 10, rules for brilliant women, and our Huffington Post article that went really viral and, and, and people can still find it, there's a page for it on my, on my main navigation on my

Unknown Speaker 35:38
shirt, a link to it, okay.

Tara Mohr 35:41
But one of the rules is about restoration of yourself. And that, if you, I think of it as a tank, where you have a certain amount of juice for taking risks, and that if the tank starts to get low, because you've been taking a lot of risks, and playing big and doing things that scare you, then you need to refill the tank. And, you know, I think sometimes like, people would laugh if they, I mean, it's a little different now than we have, that we have a kid. But like, if people saw my husband and I, at the end of the day, it's like, you know, it's like, we go and do all these things that really challenge ourselves through our work day. But then we become like completely, you know, saddened, sedentary and comatose. And we like hunker down in our house and like, eat the food that's cozy to us. And like watch the shows that are cozy to us, and like really refill the tank with things that are the opposite of that energy we used all day. So I think that is important too, because we do only have a certain amount of capacity, you know, we can't go around 24 seven, pushing our edges.

Kathleen Shannon 36:57
Good point. And I think that that what I'm getting from this is I just need to be more. Sorry, now I'm having you coach me. But like just really being discerning about the opportunities that we take on. And I think that as you're playing big, you get asked to do more and more things. And so sometimes you have to say no, not because you're afraid but because you only have so much capacity. So you have to figure out what's important to you.

Unknown Speaker 37:20
Definitely.

Kathleen Shannon 37:22
Well, let's go ahead and move on to some of the questions from our listeners. Yeah, make sure to get to those. Emily, do you want to read a couple

Emily Thompson 37:29
of those, and we'll Alright, so the first one is from Christy Daniels. And it is, let's see, she says loved her book and eager to hear the interview, I seem to oscillate between playing big and playing small. And from the book, I recall that she's also an introvert. how she's seen this with the women she's worked with or experienced it herself, are their rhythms at play, when learning to play big that she ever find herself going through a wave of contraction than expansion when it comes to playing big.

Tara Mohr 38:06
It's a great question. And very beautifully put. So I would say that the way I think of it is more like you know that playing big is it's a journey we're on in our art through our whole lives, we don't arrive at some point of like, now I'm playing big. So I'm done with that part. Like Well, what's my next playing big edge and oh, now that I'm playing big in this way, I kind of am looking over here and saying I'm really playing small over here. And there's also so many different aspects to playing big and I'll find when women take the playing big course like they'll often say to me Oh, when I took it you know I was it was like a huge awakening about my inner critic and about being hooked on praise and and I didn't even understand you know what this whole like callings part was and I didn't really connect to this part and then you know, your your later because then they have the materials for a long time, then they'll say you're later, I listened to everything again. And I got that like, and then this part stood out. So it's kind of one of those things. And, you know, I don't know about the arcs and the waves questions. It's interesting for me because I would say from you know, about 2008 until I started my when I was when I left my when I started kind of what I'm doing now and then I left my job in 2009 from then till now has been like a huge arc of coming into my own in the world and really like claiming my voice. And now I have a kid and I have a two year old and And I feel like I, the hunger to like, be my authentic self and the world like I really feel I fulfilled that. And so I can feel my energy shifting, I wouldn't call it a playing small, but it's more about putting down roots versus branching out, which I'm, I'm very influenced by my friend and colleague, Liane Raymond, who's I recommend everyone check out her site, who uses those metaphors of Is it a time of planting seeds or putting down roots are bearing fruit and spreading out branches. So those metaphors from her like have really been resonating with me. But I think the last thing I'll just say is, I think that that feeling of Well, I'm playing my Yeah, I go, I play bigger, but then I play small. That for me is just like it's the human struggle of, there's all there's always still areas where we're in our fear, or we're in our old narratives. And we can't be stretching into that playing bigger every moment of every day all the time.

Kathleen Shannon 41:11
So true. I also have a two year old and I feel like I'm drawn to planting those roots. Right. But at the same time, my playing big that had happened, you know, the the seeds that I planted before I had the baby were also sprouting at the same time. So it was Yeah, huge growth all over the place. That definitely stretched me every bit. Wayne, I'm sure that you've experienced that as well.

Tara Mohr 41:35
Yeah, similar. Yeah, similar timing, where a lot of what's in my career now is fuel. It has been fueled and created by the what I was doing pre baby, which is kind of a nice way to do it.

Kathleen Shannon 41:50
Totally. So that's one thing I do whenever you were, you know, answering that question is, I think that sometimes, you know, we're we played big and Emily and I talked about this all the time, we're setting ourselves up so that whenever we need a time of rest, our our businesses are still playing big for us.

Unknown Speaker 42:07
Totally.

Kathleen Shannon 42:08
Yeah. Which is, which is I think, for us a big part of what it means to play big.

Tara Mohr 42:13
Yes, absolutely. And, you know, I think it's, this is kind of coming up around the edges of what we're talking about that a lot of times when women hear the term playing big, they're like, oh, God is that that sounds exhausting. And that sounds stressful. And that sounds like I'm gonna have to push myself harder. So I want to kind of remind everyone that that's not the playing bag we're talking about and that my experience is actually working with women and using these kinds of tools and talking about playing big. As you know, it's about being more of your authentic self. It's actually about unblocking your gifts and your voice. Because when we're playing small, it's, it's not just like, we're not playing big. It's like, no, we're actually fighting against ourselves, we want to say something, but the inner critic has an argument why we shouldn't say it, we have an impulse to create something, but then we rationalize it away. So we're in a tug of war with ourselves. And that is more tiring than the natural flow of your creativity that you can have when you get some tools to manage fear and the inner critic and you can start living with your inner mentors guidance. So think of playing big as a more natural flow than playing small. It's not like about pushing harder at all.

Kathleen Shannon 43:41
Yeah, I think one of the things that you mentioned in the book is it's not about pushing but about letting your vision pull you Yeah, which I thought was really beautifully said.

Emily Thompson 43:54
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Unknown Speaker 44:54
Now let's get back at it.

Kathleen Shannon 45:03
Alright, so this kind of leads into another question from Sophie Davies, who I actually think shares a co working space with you. It's just a small.

Unknown Speaker 45:11
Sophie. Yeah, she's awesome.

Kathleen Shannon 45:14
So Sophie asks, What factors contribute to a woman's lack of confidence and self worth when trying to get back into the work force even after its successful career prior to kids? So what causes them to value themselves so differently that playing big almost has to become a mantra?

Tara Mohr 45:34
Yeah. Did she say specifically coming back into the workforce after kids? I didn't catch that.

Kathleen Shannon 45:39
Yeah. She said, it was. Yeah. She says like, yes, definitely coming back into the workforce, after kids. Yeah. But but especially if your career was successful prior to having kids like coming back into the workforce after having kids too, can still feel different, even if you were already successful.

Tara Mohr 45:56
Yeah. Well, you know, I think so there are lots of there's real external factors, of course, that affect how we feel about ourselves and the fact that caregiving, you know, and the daily grind of like, diaper changing and oatmeal making thing, you know, is not exactly like, celebrated by our culture, and no one's saying, like, Wow, it takes such skill to do that, you know, with as an art like you did, and, you know, like, we're getting messages from our culture, that that sort of invisible, it's not that important. It's not well paid work. So that affects, of course, how we feel about ourselves. And then I know for a lot of women, the career that they had, not for all, but for a lot the career that they had, first before they had kids, and often was like a career other people thought was prestigious, or it was a corporate career that never really felt meaningful to them. So that can be it means that that background, it might not actually, like route people in a sense of confidence about themselves, because it it just not that connected to who they who they are. And then again, no, I think most of the inner critic stuff we have, the reason for it is that we're human, and we're therefore afraid of failure criticism, in Bernays words, emotional exposure, and putting ourselves out there in the workforce, to go back in involves risking all those things. And so the inner critic would prefer to like shut us down enough that we don't risk them. And this is a place where inner mentor can be really valuable, because she's going to give you that individualized customized vision that you can really feel of how you can move through the job search or the career defining for yourself as you're going through that transition.

Unknown Speaker 48:04
Love that inner mentor. She's so she's so nice

Unknown Speaker 48:08
to do your Did you do it yet?

Kathleen Shannon 48:10
I did. And my inner mentor lives in like this super modern house in the woods. She's wearing a caftan. And she's having like, she's drinking wine with her kids and talking to them about real things. And yeah, and she's like, well traveled and

Tara Mohr 48:27
yeah, Oh, that sounds really rich and beautiful.

Kathleen Shannon 48:30
It's totally beautiful. So okay, this is actually a question I had. Sorry, for going back to my question. What do you do if you're feeling impatient for your inner mentor? Like, I want to be here now? Like,

Tara Mohr 48:41
what do I teach us? Great. I mean, that's what happened to me. I. And I was like that women? Yep. I was like, Oh, yeah, that would be all the parts of myself, I'm completely repressing, you know, living out. And I would say for the first about nine months or so up to a year after I did the visualization. I mean, every decision I made in my life was which choice would bring me closer to her. Like even you're talking about the filter for projects now that you're you know, as the podcast grows and everything, so which projects was your inner mentor? Do? But I would, you know, so I mean, that year, and it was it is granular for me as like, she has long hair. I'm growing my hair out long. She wears lavender, I'm buying some lavender clothes. You know, her house looks like this. Every time I see a piece of furniture that I feel like she'd have in her house. You know, I'm switching it over. That's how I live and that's how I changed my life. Like that is how I went from. You know, someone who wrote white papers and wore tweed blazers and had short hair. So someone who wants silky lavender blouses and wrote a blog and had long hair.

Kathleen Shannon 50:09
You know, I recently had a moment where I responded to an outer critic in a very harsh way. And it's not the person I wouldn't be in, if I had just stopped to check in with my inner mentor, she would have said, Kathleen, shut your email, like don't just don't reply. And instead, I was playing small and if I responded, so like in very real ways, from how we dress to how we, and I think just listening to our inner mentor makes us less reactionary, good and bad to opportunities to critics that are external critics that are very real. So out of that, yeah. All right, one more question from listeners if you have time.

Unknown Speaker 50:49
Yeah.

Emily Thompson 50:50
Okay. Emily, do you want to read that one? Absolutely. Alright, so we have one from Caitlin, that Horton and Mickey, Laura.

Unknown Speaker 50:57
And they

Emily Thompson 50:58
both want to know the difference between staying small, and playing small, when it comes to how we operate our businesses.

Tara Mohr 51:08
Yeah, is playing big for everyone. Right? So playing big is for everyone, but not the literal big, have bigger business, bigger revenue bigger, you know, audience, whatever. Because that's not what everyone's true playing big would look like. So if we go back to playing big is being more loyal to your dreams and your fears, so what are your dreams? And what are you feeling called toward and what direction is your inner mentor guiding you to? For a lot of people, some of their most courageous, playing big decisions are things that look small to the outside world. And I'll give you an example of a woman who took my course and works for like a major fortune 500. Company, in the financial services. And she was in a cohort, a large cohort of like, peers who were at her level in the company. And there was one particular coveted promotion that everyone was competing for, basically. And she was offered it. And when she thought about it to herself, she got honest with herself and knew that for her playing bag, actually was saying no to this promotion. Because she in her current job, she had been given a project, she was leading a team, the project had like a five or six year arc. And they were in the middle of it. And she was like, for me playing big. What's really at my edge is sticking with this project all the way through sticking around to see the results continuing to lead my people through this and having the courage to not do the thing that everyone's expecting me to do. So she turned the promotion down. And that was right at the time that she was finishing the playing big course. And I thought that was you know, really interesting and kind of brave, and was kind of waiting to see what happened, like, how's that gonna go for her. And what was so amazing about it was that in the process of turning it down, she also talked to the leadership of the company, like, Hey, I'm in the middle of this six year thing and the way we promote people so frequently, and take them out of these projects as part of what's hurting our company, because nobody's really accountable for the long term results of what they're working on. So they of course, were impressed that she was bringing that up and was willing to really look at that. And now a couple years later, she was moved into an even more senior position than that promotion, she had got to see her project through to the end. And she went on to this, this other role that she's super excited about. So just an example of, you know, the kinds of often what is our playing gig isn't what looks big from the outside. And to have a small business that as long as it's at you're playing big edge of what you want to be doing, what your dreams are. That's you're playing big, but I would look for and be skeptical. You know, if it doesn't feel like there's any fear, or stretch or challenging of your inner critic narratives, I'd say like, ooh, you know what other little dreams or callings are in there that you're maybe rationalizing away. But it could still feel small and be a stretch in other ways in terms of what you're doing or how you're showing up or what you're charging or even what you're saying no to

Kathleen Shannon 54:59
it. just the best way to stretch and from what i've taken away from reading your book is just to get really curious just to ask a ton of questions and that way you can find what is your inner critic what it means for you to play big what it means for you to play small and i love everything that you just said because a lot of our listeners still work quote unquote day jobs where they're working for someone else that have a side hustle of creativity that they're working on and so for them playing big might not mean and again the creative entrepreneurship lifestyle is really glamorized even by our podcasts but it's not always the best way to play big to quit your job and start your own thing in fact that can make you feel really desperate and small at times so i love that you bring that up as well you know using someone who's working a job and turning down a promotion as an example

Tara Mohr 55:54
absolutely absolutely yeah and again like i think that that it's all or nothing you know i have to take this big flying jump off a cliff i'd always be skeptical that because it can really can be a setup from the fearful part of us and the inner critic part of us to make it binary like that versus that more there's always an immediate way you can start playing big while you're working your full time job living into what you really want to do now and sometimes we we avoid that because that's scary and then we create a bigger more complicated plan because it actually allows us to put the whole thing on hold

Kathleen Shannon 56:35
all right i have one more kind of more personal question before we share with our listeners how they can find out more about you and your work i'm curious what are you reading lately or even watching that is for fun or more business he what are you digging lately yeah

Tara Mohr 56:51
well i just finished gloria steinem's new book which is life on the road and it's so funny because my son for some reason my son thinks it's me on the cover so it's also hilarious our house and he's like constantly pointing at gloria steinem and being like mama and i'm like that's so great

Unknown Speaker 57:14
believe me gloria steinem

Unknown Speaker 57:16
my son thinks that my son thinks that i'm pink

Tara Mohr 57:23
yeah but gloria steinem his new book i feel like it did not i mean i just think it's so extraordinary and i didn't hear a ton about it in the media so i'm just i just want to make sure that everyone knows about it she's such a beautiful writer and she's been literally literally on the road talking to women about their lives for decades and this is a book about not only like her most amazing stories from that time but also about travel and being on the road as sort of a mindset that you can you can take both with travel or just in your daily life it's such an amazing book so

Kathleen Shannon 58:05
i highly highly recommend that and you know in her book she's she's kind of an anti mentor me not necessarily but relating back to what we were talking about earlier she really talks about if you want to be heard you need to hear other people

Unknown Speaker 58:20
yeah

Kathleen Shannon 58:20
that's a key takeaway i took from that book as well yeah it's really great i highly recommend it as well anyway okay so what else what are you watching

Unknown Speaker 58:28
i'm watching

Tara Mohr 58:30
the the new the most recent season of downton abbey the final season is is pretty great i have to say

Kathleen Shannon 58:41
i was watching downton abbey and walking dead at the same time like so i really enjoyed the tour a couple years ago and it was oh my gosh downton abbey is killing off more people than the walking dead like it was just so traumatizing oh

Tara Mohr 58:55
that was they had a bad patch there but then i think they kind of i don't know they figured it out so people are more generally there to stay now and they don't have to keep like weaving mysterious disappearances into the plot yeah it's sweet because it's the last season and then um and then i'm reading you know i'm reading a lot of like toddler you know i'm reading maria montessori his books and things like that

Unknown Speaker 59:23
who i should check those out you should write a blog post about that if

Tara Mohr 59:26
you haven't already about toddler books about toddler books yeah cuz a lot of bad ones it's shocking

Kathleen Shannon 59:36
and there are and that's why i have a hard time you know even buying them or picking them up i'm just like oh i don't want to know yeah yeah all right well finally tell us and we'll be sure to include links to every place people can find you but tell us a little bit more about you know what you're offering right now or how people can find out more about you and your work

Tara Mohr 59:54
well the big thing is that the paperback of the book just came out which i'm so excited about It has a really beautiful new cover. And it's just like, a lot easier to move around your life with than the hardback was. So that's the big thing. And people can get that there's a page on my site that links to where it is on there, all the retailers are, of course, you can go to Amazon or indiebound, or wherever you like to go.

Kathleen Shannon 1:00:21
And I just have to plug that there are a ton of like journaling exercises, your book is really interactive. But then there are also like key takeaways at the end of every chapter. It is so digestible. So I just wanted to share that. Thanks.

Tara Mohr 1:00:33
Thanks. Yeah, yeah, I like to I try and really make everything very practical. So that's, that's not all that there for everyone. And then, coming up in March, I'm going to be offering the playing big course again, which is a six month journey through this process with a group of other women. So that's really fun and exciting. And then in the meantime, you know, I, for me, like the heartbeat of what I do is still blogging. And, and so people can come to my site and sign up, you'll get the 10 rules for brilliant women workbook to start for free. And then get short blog post for me on all these kinds of topics regularly.

Kathleen Shannon 1:01:18
Thank you so much for spending a little bit of time with us. And now.

Tara Mohr 1:01:24
This was such a fun conversation. Thank you so much. And it's so fabulous. What what you both are added to and I'm so happy that people have found you and I'm I am quite sure that tons of women's playing big is being supported through what you're both creating all the time with this. Yeah.

Emily Thompson 1:01:44
Thank you. I hope so.

Kathleen Shannon 1:01:50
Thank you for listening to being boss. Find Show Notes for this episode at love being boss calm. Listen to past episodes and subscribe to new episodes on our website on iTunes, SoundCloud

Emily Thompson 1:02:02
or Stitcher. Did you like this episode? Head on over to our Facebook group by searching being boss on facebook and join in on the conversation with other bosses or share it with your friends. Do the work? Be boss?

Unknown Speaker 1:02:15
I will see you next week.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:34
All right.

Kathleen Shannon 1:02:35
Well, Tara from I mean, I'm Tara It's okay. It's okay. Sorry.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:43
Whoever is the regular person and I know you have a Tara and you're like

Kathleen Shannon 1:02:46
yeah, I mean my sister in business partner.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:49
Yeah.