Speaker 1: No one has all the answers, but when we ask
Speaker 1: the right questions, we get a little closer, closer to truths,
Speaker 1: closer to each other, even closer to ourselves. I'm journalist
Speaker 1: Danielle Robe and each week, my guests and I come
Speaker 1: together to challenge the status quo and our own ways
Speaker 1: of thinking by daring to ask what it, why not?
Speaker 1: And who says? So? Come curious, dig deep, and join
Speaker 1: the conversation. It's time to question everything. Hello. Hello, I
Speaker 1: hope you're having a beautiful day. I really do. If
Speaker 1: you can hear in my voice, I swear I'm having
Speaker 1: a great day. I just am a little bit under
Speaker 1: the weather, and I'm going to share why because it's
Speaker 1: so interesting. I think I've really been focusing on my
Speaker 1: health recently. And you know, when I turned thirty five
Speaker 1: this year, I was like, I want to like really
Speaker 1: push my body and see what I can do. A
Speaker 1: few years ago, I know some of you know this,
Speaker 1: that I trained for a triathlon. It was after my
Speaker 1: breakup and I needed like purpose and something to like,
Speaker 1: you know, put all my energy into. And the last
Speaker 1: few years I've been so busy that I haven't really
Speaker 1: focused on my workouts. I've been just trying to like
Speaker 1: maintain or make it through. And I love having a
Speaker 1: physical challenge. So I started working with this trainer, actually
Speaker 1: two different trainers, and I got a DEXAS scan this morning. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting. I have a physician, So UCLA in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles has a really interesting program. It's the only
Speaker 1: one in the country. It's like an East West program.
Speaker 1: So every physician meaning like every just doctor that you
Speaker 1: go to for your annual checkup, has graduated from Eastern
Speaker 1: medicine school and Western medicine school. So Western medicine meaning
Speaker 1: like you know somewhere in America for instance, like they
Speaker 1: went to Duke or toa Wisconsin or Texas, and then
Speaker 1: they also graduated from an Eastern medicine school. And they
Speaker 1: ask you all these interesting questions that you know, you
Speaker 1: probably don't get it a normal physician's office, Like they
Speaker 1: talk about meditation and how's your stress levels? And what's
Speaker 1: your emotional health? Like what are your relationships like? And
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. And you know that I
Speaker 1: am a full believer in science and vaccines, but I
Speaker 1: love pairing it with Eastern medicine and a little bit
Speaker 1: of the WU so to speak. So I see my
Speaker 1: physician and I told her about my fitness goals and
Speaker 1: she was like, oh, you should get a Dexa scan.
Speaker 1: It's fifty nine dollars at a place called body Speck.
Speaker 1: They have them all over the country, which is interesting,
Speaker 1: and you can see like your bone density and your
Speaker 1: body fat percentage, and not only that, it tells you
Speaker 1: like where your body fat is and if you have
Speaker 1: visceral fat and so on and so forth. And they
Speaker 1: really only recommend a Dexa scan for women who are
Speaker 1: over fifty or sixty because they're looking at your bone density.
Speaker 1: But for fifty nine dollars, it's not bad to have
Speaker 1: a baseline and get some information about your body. And
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, this is so cool. So I
Speaker 1: did it this morning, got the results from my scan,
Speaker 1: sent them to the trainer that I'm working with, and
Speaker 1: he was the one that told me why I'm sick
Speaker 1: most likely. So that reason is I've noticed that most
Speaker 1: of the times when I start working out really hard,
Speaker 1: I love hit workouts. I love lifting weights, and I
Speaker 1: love like sprinting, you know, like a Barry's boot camp
Speaker 1: type thing. I go to this place called Bunda in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles and it's like it's Barry's boot Camp basically,
Speaker 1: but for a staremaster. And so you go StairMaster weights,
Speaker 1: StairMaster weights, and I love it, like it hypes me
Speaker 1: up and it's tough and I see changes in my body,
Speaker 1: Like I know it's good in that sense, but I
Speaker 1: have been pushing it too hard, I think because the
Speaker 1: trainer was like, there's something called the open window hypothesis,
Speaker 1: and it's not really a hypothesis. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: research behind it. And when you are work looking out
Speaker 1: really intensely for about three to seventy two hours post exercise,
Speaker 1: your immune cells drop significantly. And I have to look
Speaker 1: into this more. But I'm thinking, you know, I have
Speaker 1: some stress in my life from work and stuff, and
Speaker 1: my cortisol is already high. Maybe I need to switch
Speaker 1: up my workouts and not be doing so much HIT.
Speaker 1: And you know sometimes you have to switch up your
Speaker 1: workouts with your age. So anyways, I'm going to keep
Speaker 1: you posted. I saw this as not turning into a
Speaker 1: wellness podcast, but I just think it's interesting because I'd
Speaker 1: never heard of a DEXA scan before. So if you're interested,
Speaker 1: I wanted to share it with you because I think
Speaker 1: it's cool just have like baseline information. And yeah, if
Speaker 1: you find yourself sick like me after hard workouts, it
Speaker 1: may be these hit workouts that are not right for
Speaker 1: us in this moment in time right now. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I hope that you're all not fighting a cold and
Speaker 1: are having a great week. And if you are and
Speaker 1: you're on the struggle bus like me, at least we're
Speaker 1: in it together. Right. The good news is is that
Speaker 1: I recorded this episode before I got six, so you
Speaker 1: don't have to hear me all stuffed up for the
Speaker 1: next forty minutes. So let's get into it. We're all
Speaker 1: taught that success will set us free, get good grades,
Speaker 1: get into the right school, find a prestigious job, grind, climb,
Speaker 1: achieve all that stuff. But our guest today is honing
Speaker 1: in on a very unsettling piece of all of this.
Speaker 1: What if when we finally arrive, we still feel unfulfilled.
Speaker 1: Today's guest is Brooke Taylor, a former Google executive turned
Speaker 1: career coach and author who argues that many ambitious women
Speaker 1: are unknowingly living with what she calls the success wound,
Speaker 1: the belief that our worth is something we have to earn.
Speaker 1: Brook says, we've essentially worked on ourselves in reverse achievement
Speaker 1: as a strategy for self worth instead of self worth
Speaker 1: as the foundation of healthy aga achievement. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: these wounds have the potential to upend our lives, which
Speaker 1: is something Brooke knows all about. As she puts it,
Speaker 1: her success wound nearly ruined her career at Google and
Speaker 1: devastated her sense of self, and now she's out with
Speaker 1: her new book, Healing the Success Wound, which she hopes
Speaker 1: will help women build themselves back better.
Speaker 2: This is for the people who have hit their bottom
Speaker 2: and are like, please tell me that there is another
Speaker 2: way to work. If you're somebody who's wondering, is there
Speaker 2: a way for me to work in a way that
Speaker 2: builds me up rather than brace me down? Is there
Speaker 2: a way for me to feel good about my accomplishments
Speaker 2: instead of always doubting if I've done enough? If it
Speaker 2: is enough, then this is who that's for.
Speaker 1: Now, something Brooke talks about in our conversation that really
Speaker 1: struck me as this how easy it is to confuse
Speaker 1: achievement with identity and how dangerous that becomes when you're
Speaker 1: self worth depends on constantly performing, and maybe that's why
Speaker 1: so many high achieving people can look successful on the
Speaker 1: outside be quietly falling apart behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: This success one shows up everywhere, but it forms this
Speaker 2: image that we are constantly comparing ourselves to. And unless
Speaker 2: we consciously rewrite what that image is, our success one's
Speaker 2: always going to pick up the pen and draw a
Speaker 2: picture for us.
Speaker 1: So what if the version of success that we've all
Speaker 1: been chasing, or even pieces of it, was inherited and
Speaker 1: not chosen. Today we're digging into that question and a
Speaker 1: whole lot more, because everyone deserves to enjoy their success
Speaker 1: and the journey of it, not just use it as
Speaker 1: a coping mechanism. And if achievement has become the thing
Speaker 1: you rely on to feel worthy or productive or enough,
Speaker 1: eventually even success starts to feel exhausting. It's time to
Speaker 1: question everything. With Brooke Taylor, So, Brook, you worked at
Speaker 1: Google and you did it. By twenty four years old,
Speaker 1: you were managing eighty million dollars. Is that true?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: To everyone listening, it really sounds like a twenty four
Speaker 1: you had it all? Like, what did you not have?
Speaker 1: Did you feel that way?
Speaker 2: You know? A lot of people dread the question what
Speaker 2: do you do for work? I couldn't wait for somebody
Speaker 2: to ask me that. That's the question that I wanted
Speaker 2: to get to as quickly as possible at parties or
Speaker 2: on dates so that I could quickly get to my accolades,
Speaker 2: because that's what I've been kind of groomed and grewed
Speaker 2: to understand is my whole self worth? Because I didn't
Speaker 2: feel good about myself. But at the same time, if
Speaker 2: you tell somebody that you work for Google, they automatically
Speaker 2: ascribe things like intelligent, hard working interesting to you. And
Speaker 2: so that was an arena that I felt so comfortable
Speaker 2: talking about, was my work life.
Speaker 1: I think everything you're saying is going to resonate with
Speaker 1: a lot of people listening. And you said groomed, which
Speaker 1: I think is an interesting word. Was that by your parents?
Speaker 2: I would say more culture because growing up I grew
Speaker 2: up in Silicon Valley in the nineties before it was
Speaker 2: the Silicon Valley of today, but it was still this
Speaker 2: promised land where the nerdiest programmers could come and be
Speaker 2: these rock stars. All they had to do was work really, really,
Speaker 2: really hard. And so I learned growing up that success
Speaker 2: comes from hustle and sacrifice. And I also loved movies
Speaker 2: and TV shows probably similar to you, like Gilmore Girls
Speaker 2: where she wanted to get into Yale, or even like
Speaker 2: the OC where like this image of what like a
Speaker 2: successful young person looked like. And even I went to
Speaker 2: this prep school where at age eleven, I walked through
Speaker 2: the halls and all over the walls. It was like Harvard,
Speaker 2: cal Stanford, and so I grew to understand that that's
Speaker 2: what success looked like. High achieving, very articulate, well adjusted,
Speaker 2: did all good things. But inside I never felt like
Speaker 2: I could live up to that ideal. Now, that gold
Speaker 2: star chasing mentality got me far to that job at Google,
Speaker 2: managing eighty million dollars in advertising revenue, at some great
Speaker 2: brands like Corona, Modello, TGI Fridays, Ruby Tuesdays, Soul Cycle, Cultureal,
Speaker 2: all these great brands. But on the inside I felt
Speaker 2: this emptiness, this void that was undeniable.
Speaker 1: It's also hard when there's a dissonance between who you're
Speaker 1: presenting as and who you feel like you are on
Speaker 1: the inside. When did you start to recognize the emptiness
Speaker 1: and think, hmm, maybe something's off here.
Speaker 2: Pretty early on I remember there was this moment I
Speaker 2: can't remember, maybe I was like twelve or thirteen, and
Speaker 2: I was trying to put my shoes on to go
Speaker 2: to school, and I couldn't find my other shoe, and
Speaker 2: I was looking all over and I was feeling rushed
Speaker 2: out the door, and I remember taking my shoe and
Speaker 2: kind of throwing it across the room and saying something like,
Speaker 2: why do I feel so empty inside? And I remember
Speaker 2: saying that, literally, those words came out of my mouth
Speaker 2: when I was thirteen. And I remember saying that again
Speaker 2: in college to a friend of mine. And when you
Speaker 2: say that to somebody, their eyes kind of get big
Speaker 2: and they're like, WHOA, we don't want to go there.
Speaker 2: And so maybe, looking back now, you could call that depression, right,
Speaker 2: But as I got older, it wasn't depression so much
Speaker 2: as this longing for something else, longing to feel reconnected
Speaker 2: with myself, longing to feel a sense of significance, longing
Speaker 2: to know who I am and what I stand for.
Speaker 2: And work could never answer that question so much as
Speaker 2: I wanted it to. And I think that's the trap
Speaker 2: that so many of us fall into today. For example,
Speaker 2: as somebody who's a career coach who talks to people
Speaker 2: who are dissatisfied in their careers. Think about the words
Speaker 2: people used to talk about their career dissatisfaction. I've lost
Speaker 2: faith in leadership. I no longer believe in the mission.
Speaker 2: I'm looking for my calling, my purpose, my path. I
Speaker 2: don't know where it is. Those aren't work words. Those
Speaker 2: are church words, those are religion words, those are spiritual words.
Speaker 2: And so the problem is not in the seeking for
Speaker 2: those things. The problem is the fact that as religion
Speaker 2: has declined in society, we projected onto it those essential
Speaker 2: human needs onto work, expecting it to give us this
Speaker 2: sense of community, place, significance, transcendence, purpose, meaning that it
Speaker 2: just never can. And those are biological human needs. We're
Speaker 2: hardwired to search for those things in our lives. So again,
Speaker 2: the issue isn't in the searching. It's the fact that
Speaker 2: we're searching for it in all the wrong places. And
Speaker 2: that's really what the success wound is is the pain
Speaker 2: that comes from mistaking success for self worth, meaning, transcendence
Speaker 2: and peace.
Speaker 1: I think there are going to be some people listening
Speaker 1: right now saying WHOA. I feel that so deeply, And
Speaker 1: there's also going to be people listening right now who say,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I really like ambition. I feel ambitious.
Speaker 1: So I want everyone listening to know we're going to
Speaker 1: get to that, because you actually have a lot of
Speaker 1: thoughts on that. But before we do, there's a part
Speaker 1: in your book where you talk about your mom. And
Speaker 1: your mom was a great feminist, So I do I
Speaker 1: want to say that? And she would tell you you
Speaker 1: can be anything that you want to be, And you
Speaker 1: actually said that. That hurt you in some ways, it
Speaker 1: was damaging. Can you explain that?
Speaker 2: Sure? So my mom went to Smith College, alma mater
Speaker 2: of Gloria steinem as well and Betty for Dan, so
Speaker 2: some amazing feminists, and she wanted me to have a
Speaker 2: single gender education as well. So I went to this
Speaker 2: amazing girls school and I was raised on this really esteemable,
Speaker 2: wonderful second wave feminist movement idea that I can be
Speaker 2: anything that I want to be in a way that
Speaker 2: my mom or you know, my grandma couldn't, that all
Speaker 2: the doors were open for me, that this glass ceiling
Speaker 2: was shattered. What I took that to mean in my
Speaker 2: childhood brain is that anything that I could be was
Speaker 2: actually a very narrow definition of what I should be high, achieving, accomplished, admirable, enviable,
Speaker 2: that I had to ascend to positions of power traditionally
Speaker 2: occupied by men because no woman before me had And
Speaker 2: again I took this to mean it's not anybody else's fault.
Speaker 2: I took this to mean that unless I was, that
Speaker 2: I wasn't living up to my potential, and I was
Speaker 2: maybe even letting my ancestors down. And so that created
Speaker 2: within me like a pressure cooker, like a really intense
Speaker 2: pressure cooker, and the belief that if I wasn't the best,
Speaker 2: then I was the worst. I think again, it took
Speaker 2: me really far, and I'm so glad I had that
Speaker 2: idea that I could be anything and do anything. And
Speaker 2: I think to this day I have this optimistic ideal,
Speaker 2: but I think what it created in myself and a
Speaker 2: lot of other women our age is this purpose anxiety,
Speaker 2: this oh my gosh, I need to find my thing,
Speaker 2: I need to find my path. Sky's the limit, but
Speaker 2: holy crap, sky's the limit. That means I can do anything,
Speaker 2: And an abundance of options actually creates this decision paralysis.
Speaker 2: I think in a lot of our careers where it's
Speaker 2: like should I go left or right. Oh she has
Speaker 2: a cool thing going. Oh they're making money over there,
Speaker 2: or AI's a good thing, or should I be doing influencing.
Speaker 2: It's this abundance of options that creates this comparison and
Speaker 2: this analysis paralysis that I think is doing us more
Speaker 2: harm than good at this phase of life.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. I think you're speaking to a lot of
Speaker 1: people's souls right now. Do you feel like in your
Speaker 1: house there were implicit messages? Because I ask only I
Speaker 1: think there were explicit messages in my house, and then
Speaker 1: there were implicit messages about ambition, like my parents would say,
Speaker 1: like we get straight a's. So I knew explicitly that
Speaker 1: was something that was expected of me, But implicitly they
Speaker 1: never talked about, you know, me being valedictorian. There was
Speaker 1: really nothing else that was said, but I felt pressure.
Speaker 1: I knew that they expected excellence. Right, So do you
Speaker 1: think there were implicit messages shared with you?
Speaker 2: I had a lot of explicit and certainly a lot
Speaker 2: of implicit, And as a firstborn daughter who was always
Speaker 2: looking for that approval, I would look for the smile,
Speaker 2: the eyes getting big, the warm hug. So a couple
Speaker 2: that I remember, you know, my dad would drive me
Speaker 2: to school every day for seven years, and I remember
Speaker 2: saying something once like, well, if I'm not going to
Speaker 2: be the best at it, then why bother trying? And
Speaker 2: he kind of looked at me to the side and
Speaker 2: smiled really big, and I took that to me and
Speaker 2: as like, that's my girl. Yes, that's something that we
Speaker 2: do together, me and my dad, Like we try really hard,
Speaker 2: and we're ambitious, and if we're not going to be
Speaker 2: the best, then we're the worst. And that sense of
Speaker 2: belonging and attachment is something that I craved. Another time
Speaker 2: is my dad also dared me to get straight a's
Speaker 2: on my report card. It was the first and the
Speaker 2: last time I ever did that. I worked really hard.
Speaker 2: I brought it home and he picked me up and
Speaker 2: spun me around and said, I'm so proud of you.
Speaker 2: He didn't say this is expected, he didn't say I
Speaker 2: won't love you unless but he did pick me up
Speaker 2: and spin me around. And I've never seen him more proud,
Speaker 2: even to this day. So those implicit things can you
Speaker 2: harm as much as the explicit ones too. It's what's
Speaker 2: said and what's unsaid that is constantly being taken in
Speaker 2: as children.
Speaker 1: So you write in the book that your success wound,
Speaker 1: which we're going to explain what that is, but that
Speaker 1: your success wound nearly ruined your promising career at Google.
Speaker 1: Was there a specific moment, a meeting, a Sunday night,
Speaker 1: a doctor's visit where you realize that something inside of
Speaker 1: you was breaking.
Speaker 2: It was three things that happened in a very short
Speaker 2: period of time. I think the universe, you know, had
Speaker 2: thrown pebbles, and now it was throwing bricks, and it
Speaker 2: threw three all at once. And leading up to that time,
Speaker 2: my life kind of looked like this. Monday through Thursday.
Speaker 2: I would work really hard. I'd get to inbox zero,
Speaker 2: I would close the deal, I would create the pitch deck,
Speaker 2: I would do the meeting, and come Friday afternoon, I
Speaker 2: would be so exhausted that I would turn to alcohol
Speaker 2: and partying to numb both the stress but also the
Speaker 2: quiet pain underneath of not feeling good enough over the
Speaker 2: last few days, and so I would party. I'd wake
Speaker 2: up on Sunday exhausted, demoralized, most likely having woken up
Speaker 2: in other places. I shouldn't have been doing things that
Speaker 2: didn't align with my character. And so what would I do.
Speaker 2: I'd throw myself back into work in order to prop
Speaker 2: back up my self esteem. So this went on for
Speaker 2: six years or so, and it finally came to a
Speaker 2: screeching halt when these three things happened in succession. The
Speaker 2: first is that I was sexually harassed by my direct
Speaker 2: manager at Google, but I didn't want to report it,
Speaker 2: not because I didn't know what was wrong, not because
Speaker 2: there wasn't you know, an HR team that would have
Speaker 2: taken me seriously, but because I was up for promotion
Speaker 2: and I didn't want to rock the boat. I didn't
Speaker 2: want to anger or embarrass him.
Speaker 1: I just want to pause because I think what you're
Speaker 1: saying is so important. I know I've felt that way.
Speaker 1: This is not sexual harassment. But I was being paid
Speaker 1: sixty thousand dollars less than my male co host in Chicago.
Speaker 1: And there was a writer at the Chicago Tribune who
Speaker 1: was like, when you leave, let's do a story about it.
Speaker 1: And I was like, absolutely not. Like when people Google
Speaker 1: search my name, I was not in a place where
Speaker 1: I knew I could ever get another job. That's not
Speaker 1: something I want to come up. And I think about
Speaker 1: that a lot now. And I also feel as if
Speaker 1: there's a whole aspect here about financial security that doesn't
Speaker 1: get spoken about a lot as it relates to harassment,
Speaker 1: because is when you are able to be in a
Speaker 1: position of either financial power or like social power in
Speaker 1: a situation, you can walk away. But when you're up
Speaker 1: for a promotion at Google and you want that promotion,
Speaker 1: and you're young, and you're saving money and you're struggling.
Speaker 1: Even though you're at Google, you're still young. You know
Speaker 1: you don't have a lot. There is so much pressure
Speaker 1: to just say I'm going to figure this out and
Speaker 1: muscle through it.
Speaker 2: You're so right. It's the emotional cost of going through
Speaker 2: reporting something like that. It's the reputational impact of that
Speaker 2: long term, it's the financial impact of being a young
Speaker 2: person living in a city and sure making a great living,
Speaker 2: but let's be honest, cost of living is really high,
Speaker 2: and so it all feels so insurmountable. So what do
Speaker 2: you do. You just kind of bury it and move on,
Speaker 2: And that's what I did. But at the same time
Speaker 2: I was making that decision of like, I'm just gonna
Speaker 2: move on, But also it was this out of body
Speaker 2: the experience where I could look at all the events
Speaker 2: that transpired to get me here and say, this is
Speaker 2: not the person that I'm meant to be, This is
Speaker 2: not the person I was raised to be, and I
Speaker 2: don't want this for myself anymore. And so that was
Speaker 2: one of those moments I remember even after it happened.
Speaker 2: I called my friend and roommate who also worked at Google,
Speaker 2: and I said to her it was kind of prophetic.
Speaker 2: I was like, I don't know what's going to happen
Speaker 2: from here on out, but something has to change.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And the next thing that did change for me was
Speaker 2: that I ended up getting sober and I ended up
Speaker 2: going through a recovery process and essentially looked at my
Speaker 2: behavior in my side of the street and was like, okay,
Speaker 2: Like I have a dependence on alcohol, I also have
Speaker 2: a dependence on external validation and approval and significance, and
Speaker 2: I need to find another way of working, but I
Speaker 2: also need to take this piece out of the equation
Speaker 2: for myself. And then the final thing that happened for
Speaker 2: me was that my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Speaker 2: And just that in and of itself, whenever somebody close
Speaker 2: to you gets that diagnosis, you question, you look at
Speaker 2: your decisions in your life and you take inventory. But
Speaker 2: the fact that that happened in November and these other
Speaker 2: things happened in October and September, it caused me to
Speaker 2: really question everything and look at all of my decisions
Speaker 2: and say, okay, I need to really reevaluate my life,
Speaker 2: my relationship with my work, and my self worth. And
Speaker 2: that was really the very slow start of something else.
Speaker 1: First of all, thank you for sharing all of that.
Speaker 1: And I also want to mention that you hadn't shared
Speaker 1: publicly what happened at Google until you wrote the book.
Speaker 2: Right correct, Yeah, I haven't and hadn't shared. In fact,
Speaker 2: my publisher was like, are you sure? Are you sure?
Speaker 2: And I said, yeah, I'm sure. It's been ten years.
Speaker 2: This is something that happened. It did happen. Although my
Speaker 2: you know, trauma can say did this really happened? It
Speaker 2: was it really that bad? And I will say, just
Speaker 2: to put a finer point on it, that a few
Speaker 2: years later I did report it. I had a very
Speaker 2: good experience with HR. They did an investigation, this person
Speaker 2: was terminated, and you know, the company did the right thing.
Speaker 1: Basically, I'm really happy to hear that, because that doesn't
Speaker 1: happen all the time. No, can I ask you why
Speaker 1: you chose to report it, like what happened a few
Speaker 1: years later that you felt emboldened to report it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was October twenty seventeen. Me too was happening
Speaker 2: in a big way the tech walkouts. Do you remember
Speaker 2: that Google and other tech companies were having these walkouts
Speaker 2: and somebody who was very senior at the company did
Speaker 2: in all hands and essentially kind of looked into the
Speaker 2: camera and was said, if anything like this has happened
Speaker 2: to you, please come forward. And so I decided to
Speaker 2: come forward, emboldened by that great leadership and saying essentially
Speaker 2: like this isn't tolerated, and again, great leadership, something good
Speaker 2: that had happened, But I still had to see this
Speaker 2: person in the hallway. This person continued to be my
Speaker 2: manager for another two years. It really did impact my
Speaker 2: career and my sense of place and belonging at the company.
Speaker 2: I left shortly after because I wanted to start my
Speaker 2: business and I had done a lot of recovery and
Speaker 2: done a lot of work on myself, but that was
Speaker 2: something that really did impact me for a few years
Speaker 2: to follow.
Speaker 1: So you write that the success swound is the pain
Speaker 1: of mistaking success for self worth.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1: I was reading your book and I was thinking, oh
Speaker 1: my god, this is so hard to write about. I
Speaker 1: don't know how you wrote a book about this, because
Speaker 1: that line can feel almost invisible. What is the difference
Speaker 1: between a healthy ambition and a wound talking?
Speaker 2: It's a great question, and that line can be hard.
Speaker 2: But let me give you an example. So when I
Speaker 2: got this book deal, I got pregnant a couple months later,
Speaker 2: and I decided that I wanted to write every single
Speaker 2: word of this book. I wanted to still run my business,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to do it all before the baby came.
Speaker 2: And so this is what my day looked like. I'd
Speaker 2: get up at five am, I'd write. Between five and
Speaker 2: ten am, I would take client calls. I would be
Speaker 2: doing marketing, running a business, and I'd go to sleep
Speaker 2: at eight and do it all over again. Now, from
Speaker 2: the outside, people could look at that and say that's unhealthy.
Speaker 2: You should slow down, you don't have to do it all.
Speaker 2: You could get a ghostwriter, and a lot of people
Speaker 2: did try to say that to me. I was exhausted.
Speaker 2: I did deprioritize my social life my friendship suffered. But
Speaker 2: the reason why this was healthy ambition and that this
Speaker 2: was just an example of my work ethic is because
Speaker 2: I believed so deeply in this message and I wanted
Speaker 2: it to come from me, and I felt energized, inspired
Speaker 2: my best self. When I was writing and running my business,
Speaker 2: I didn't want to close the business down because I
Speaker 2: wanted to stay close to my clients so that I
Speaker 2: could stay close to this success wound in other people,
Speaker 2: so I could write it from a place of not theory,
Speaker 2: but true application. And so again, from the outside, that
Speaker 2: could look like hustle culture, it could look like a
Speaker 2: million different things. But for me, I knew this was
Speaker 2: a good choice for me. Now, there have been other
Speaker 2: times in my life where if I was doing that
Speaker 2: from a place of, oh my gosh, I need to
Speaker 2: prove myself. What happens if this book comes out and
Speaker 2: it's a piece of crap. What happens if my book
Speaker 2: is delayed and my publishers mad at me? You know,
Speaker 2: Oh God, this isn't good enough. And those thoughts did
Speaker 2: come through my mind. But when I'm working for from
Speaker 2: that place, from that wounded place, that's when I get stressed.
Speaker 2: That's when I'm not sleeping anxieties running the show. I'm
Speaker 2: prone to depression. I'm working to prove myself and to
Speaker 2: fill a hole rather than working from collaboration. So the
Speaker 2: interesting thing about our ambition and that line is that
Speaker 2: it's like a lamp, our ambition, but unlike the lamp
Speaker 2: in your apartment or our houses, it only has two outlets.
Speaker 2: Our ambition can be plugged into a wound and to
Speaker 2: a place of fear, lack and scarcity, or our ambition
Speaker 2: can be plugged into our true self, our place of curiosity, collaboration, creativity, playfulness,
Speaker 2: and presence, and our ambition can get plugged into one
Speaker 2: and the other, all within a single day or minute,
Speaker 2: kind of depending on where we're at. But that healthy ambition,
Speaker 2: you know you're in alignment with that when things feel expansive, flowing, challenging,
Speaker 2: but appropriately so and very interested. So I give that
Speaker 2: example about the book because again, look a million different
Speaker 2: ways from the outside, but you have to know it
Speaker 2: within yourself.
Speaker 1: I really like that imagery, and tell me if I'm
Speaker 1: internalizing it correctly. But I'm thinking, like a very easy
Speaker 1: question to ask yourself, is this lighting me up? Or
Speaker 1: is this draining me? Well said, yes, do you feel
Speaker 1: like and I guess asking for a friend aka me.
Speaker 1: You know, my work lights me up, and there are
Speaker 1: elements of my work that drain me, but they're necessary
Speaker 1: to get everything done that does light me up. So
Speaker 1: is there like a percentage here that you can think about?
Speaker 2: Yeah, based on my research, you know, esteemable work has
Speaker 2: three things. One, it uses your strengths more often than not,
Speaker 2: which put you into a state of flow. The second,
Speaker 2: it's of the highest good for yourself, your end user,
Speaker 2: the business, everybody, so meaning you're not creating destruction or
Speaker 2: distortion or manipulation in the marketplace for example, right. And
Speaker 2: the third thing is that it's in alignment with your values.
Speaker 2: So if these three things are met more often than not,
Speaker 2: so I would say fifty one percent of the time,
Speaker 2: then that's a career that I think is like an
Speaker 2: ideal path for you without putting purpose anxiety on it.
Speaker 2: But I'm the same. The thing I loved the most
Speaker 2: about working at Google was the people. I loved walking
Speaker 2: into a beautiful building, being at my desk, being surrounded
Speaker 2: by thousands of really intelligent people. As a coach, author,
Speaker 2: somebody who works for themselves. There's nobody around me ever, right.
Speaker 2: But the thing that I wanted more than anything else
Speaker 2: my non negotiables was a sense of meaning, feeling emotionally
Speaker 2: attached to the work that I was doing, and autonomy,
Speaker 2: being able to call the shots in my work. And
Speaker 2: those were two things that were lacking in my previous career.
Speaker 2: So I said to myself, and this is a prompt
Speaker 2: that I give to any of my clients. Solve for
Speaker 2: two things that are most essential in your career, and
Speaker 2: be okay with the trade offs, the admin, the travel,
Speaker 2: the maybe lone holiness sometimes because those are always trade
Speaker 2: offs and nothing's perfect, right right.
Speaker 1: I love that you mentioned, meaning, are there other things
Speaker 1: that you find that women in particular are seeking in
Speaker 1: their careers.
Speaker 2: Yes, the kind of main ones are meaning flexibility, autonomy,
Speaker 2: a sense of being again appropriately challenged, like that sense
Speaker 2: of mastery. People also can define that as like growth,
Speaker 2: wanting to grow certain skill sets in a way, those
Speaker 2: are kind of the primary ones. What we tend to
Speaker 2: find fulfillment breaks down is not so much in what
Speaker 2: people are working on, but how they're working. Fulfillment really
Speaker 2: comes from our working styles and our ways of working,
Speaker 2: rather than the content of the work. It's ah, which
Speaker 2: is fascinating because sixty percent of the people that come
Speaker 2: to me saying I need a new job, I don't
Speaker 2: like what I'm doing, my manager sucks, I don't feel
Speaker 2: connected to what I'm doing, I don't have faith in leadership.
Speaker 2: Sixty percent of those people end up staying in their job,
Speaker 2: not because the content of the work has changed, but
Speaker 2: because there are ways of working and relating to the
Speaker 2: work shift. And that's really the power of healing our
Speaker 2: success wound and learning to work in a new way
Speaker 2: is that we experience fulfillment from the inside out.
Speaker 1: That's very cool to learn. I like how much research
Speaker 1: you share in the book. It's not overwhelming in any way,
Speaker 1: but you said that out of five thousand women at
Speaker 1: companies like Google and McKinsey, you identified these five types
Speaker 1: of unfulfilled achievers. Will you walk us through the archetypes?
Speaker 1: You have the grinder, the pleaser, the hider, the seeker,
Speaker 1: and then the work hard, play hard. So let's start
Speaker 1: with the grinder. Who is she?
Speaker 2: The grinder is the person that wants to have more,
Speaker 2: be more, and do more. One of my clients who's
Speaker 2: a grinder described herself as the type of shark that
Speaker 2: you see on Shark Week that's constantly in motion and
Speaker 2: dies if it stops. It's the person that feels almost
Speaker 2: like a high from crossing something off there to do list,
Speaker 2: and only feels valuable so long as they're moving, producing,
Speaker 2: and doing now. The grinder obviously has a great work ethic.
Speaker 2: The shadow side of the grinder is that they tend
Speaker 2: to work past the point of diminishing returns, like they
Speaker 2: spin their wheels on things that don't matter, and they
Speaker 2: tend to lose sight, lose the forest through the trees
Speaker 2: a little bit. The second is the hyder. This is
Speaker 2: the person who shows up most often. This is the
Speaker 2: person who seems successful from the outside but secretly harbors
Speaker 2: bigger dreams or aspirations for her career. She's playing it
Speaker 2: small in some way, and it might not be visible,
Speaker 2: but she knows it. She optimizes towards responsibility, loyalty, wanting
Speaker 2: to stay in one place so that she can be
Speaker 2: the expert at something and feel safe in her career
Speaker 2: comfort zone. But that comfort zone starts to feel like
Speaker 2: a prison because it silently kind of erodes her self esteem.
Speaker 2: The third is the pleaser. So this is the person
Speaker 2: who's constantly wondering are you mad at me? Or are
Speaker 2: they mad at me? Who's always in their inbox being
Speaker 2: like what was that tone? They used a period instead
Speaker 2: of an explanation point. They asked to see me, you
Speaker 2: know later this day. In their head, it catastrophizes. They
Speaker 2: tend to have an anxious attachment style and to have
Speaker 2: social anxiety in other ways. Then we have the seeker.
Speaker 2: This is the person we all have a friend like
Speaker 2: this who spends their mental energy on a spectrum of
Speaker 2: career confused to full blown existential crisis, maybe sometimes all
Speaker 2: in the same day. They have a million different ideas.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh my god, Danielle, I finally found it,
Speaker 2: like I'm going to do this, or oh my god,
Speaker 2: I have this business idea, or I have this investment
Speaker 2: opportunity and it's going to be so amazing. We get
Speaker 2: bought into their vision, but over time you see the
Speaker 2: pattern and realize that their restlessness, irritability, and discontentedness will
Speaker 2: never be solved because they keep looking for the shiny object.
Speaker 2: And then we have the work hard, play hard. This
Speaker 2: is what I was when I was at Google. This
Speaker 2: is the person who lives their life in extremes. They
Speaker 2: want to be booked and busy. They want to be
Speaker 2: enviable and extraordinary in every way, not just in how
Speaker 2: they achieve, but how they vacation, how they party. They
Speaker 2: love having eyes on them. It doesn't have to be
Speaker 2: just somebody in their twenties. The work hard, play hard
Speaker 2: that I use in the book is a working mom
Speaker 2: who lives on a farm in Texas. She just turns
Speaker 2: to unhealthy coping mechanisms and calls it balance. They tend
Speaker 2: to have addictive personality types, but they're also really fun
Speaker 2: to be around. Now, Akougla is more of a work hard,
Speaker 2: play hard, but today I'm more of a pleaser hider. Actually,
Speaker 2: I find that even though you know I'm writing this
Speaker 2: book and going on these podcasts and stuff like that, Like,
Speaker 2: there are so many ways in which I have that
Speaker 2: kind of perfectionism that shows up as hiding. Do you
Speaker 2: relate to any of these?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I appreciate you saying that. I was thinking, I
Speaker 1: think I relate most to the grinder. This year, a
Speaker 1: lot of my work, like self work, has been trying
Speaker 1: to unravel not doing it all, like actually saying yes
Speaker 1: to rest in some ways instead of doing more, accomplishing
Speaker 1: more other The question for you is, because this can
Speaker 1: this change throughout your life stages? But I'm hearing you
Speaker 1: say yes, so like you can identify most with one
Speaker 1: and then I don't know, maybe you become a mom
Speaker 1: and it totally shifts. If you identify with one and
Speaker 1: you don't heal the success wound, do you usually identify
Speaker 1: with something else later on?
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, it just shape shifts because all these are
Speaker 2: our protective coping mechanisms that we use to shield us
Speaker 2: from the pain of being seen as incompetent, inadequate, not enough,
Speaker 2: And so as long as that pain is still there,
Speaker 2: we're going to use all the coping mechanisms in our arsenal.
Speaker 2: And some people are like, why isn't there a perfectionist,
Speaker 2: Why isn't there an inner critic? Why isn't there like
Speaker 2: a self doubt? All of these parts have perfectionism in
Speaker 2: our critic self doubt laced throughout them. But I find
Speaker 2: that these constellations of behaviors are most common, specifically and
Speaker 2: high achieving women. And yes, we all cycle through them,
Speaker 2: maybe all the single day or depending on our phase
Speaker 2: of life or we have one career and then we
Speaker 2: switch careers, and that demands a different part of us.
Speaker 1: For example, I want to dig deeper into what you
Speaker 1: just said. You find that these show up in high
Speaker 1: achieving women most often, and you write in the book
Speaker 1: that women in power are more burned out, more anxious,
Speaker 1: and more depressed than men in power. My first question
Speaker 1: to you is is that really true?
Speaker 2: Yes, So the research says that women tend to have
Speaker 2: higher rates of anxiety and depression the higher that they climb,
Speaker 2: and at a disproportional rate to men. Now, it didn't
Speaker 2: say why. It didn't say why. I think that would
Speaker 2: require a sociological study. My hypothesis goes back to kind
Speaker 2: of this promise that we all had, especially as young people,
Speaker 2: that the higher we climb, the more we get to
Speaker 2: the top, the more satisfied that we'll be, the more
Speaker 2: power we'll have, the more autonomy or flexibility or responsibility
Speaker 2: we'll get. Right, Like, how many times have you said
Speaker 2: to yourself or have I said to myself, you know,
Speaker 2: when I get through this busy season then and then
Speaker 2: all relax.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Brooke, I'm embarrassed. That's all I said.
Speaker 2: I just got to get through that. I just got
Speaker 2: to get through the spread and then exactly, and then
Speaker 2: more things come on. You're like, yeah, I could take
Speaker 2: that on. Okay, well I'm already on the East coast,
Speaker 2: so I could just toss that in that grinder. Is
Speaker 2: kind of like a camel, right. But I think again,
Speaker 2: underneath that is the promise. That is a cultural promise
Speaker 2: that the more that we have, the better we'll feel
Speaker 2: about ourselves. And that's not a personal again, that's a
Speaker 2: cultural promise that has been kind of manipulated within us,
Speaker 2: and I think exacerbates our success wound, and especially for women.
Speaker 2: You know, I think we have so many other parts
Speaker 2: of ourselves that want to be expressed that can't be
Speaker 2: expressed the more demands there are on our time and
Speaker 2: our energy, and I think we feel that on a
Speaker 2: soul level.
Speaker 1: I agree with you entirely. And I have another part
Speaker 1: of the hypothesis I'm curious about. Please and you can
Speaker 1: totally tell me if you think I'm nuts. But one
Speaker 1: of my best friends from college just started dating somebody
Speaker 1: like six seven months ago, and she's a high achieving
Speaker 1: attorney and he's high achieving in his field, and she's like, now,
Speaker 1: that I have a boyfriend that I see works like
Speaker 1: just as hard as me, which she hadn't had in
Speaker 1: the past, and we're on a schedule, like so we
Speaker 1: wake up, we have coffee, we work out, et cetera.
Speaker 1: She was like, I see explicitly how much more time
Speaker 1: he has in the day than I do because I
Speaker 1: am a woman. And she adds up all these sort
Speaker 1: of invisible hours of like she has to do her
Speaker 1: hair and like she does minimal makeup, but like that,
Speaker 1: and then she has to go do an errand or
Speaker 1: two that he doesn't have to do. And I think
Speaker 1: all this time stuff adds up to women feeling just
Speaker 1: so burned out.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah. I love carin Low's research on this.
Speaker 2: She wrote a book called Having It All and like
Speaker 2: the behavioral economics behind the invisible labor that women take on.
Speaker 2: And you know, I was asked a question at one
Speaker 2: point which was, you know who has the hardest time
Speaker 2: succeeding in the workplace? And I cited some research about
Speaker 2: the fact that women without kids actually have the highest
Speaker 2: burden on their time because it's the people who are
Speaker 2: perceived to be as capable, competent, and flexible, right that
Speaker 2: end up being given so much of this invisible labor,
Speaker 2: and it struck a bit of a chord because the
Speaker 2: women with kids say, hey, wait, I have so much
Speaker 2: more invisible labor on me. But I think the truth
Speaker 2: is is that women in general have so much invisible
Speaker 2: labor on them, and we hold ourselves to an incredibly
Speaker 2: high standard because in school, we're really good at understanding
Speaker 2: what are the rules, what are the markers we need
Speaker 2: to hit, how can I organize myself and my life
Speaker 2: in order to charge through that? But there's been so
Speaker 2: much research to say that the world doesn't reward perfection,
Speaker 2: it rewards bravery. And I think that that bravery to
Speaker 2: have the difficult conversation or to set the boundary or
Speaker 2: to say no, I'm not going to do that is
Speaker 2: the thing that maybe we're not conditioned to do, which
Speaker 2: causes that invisible labor.
Speaker 1: Wait, say more about that. There's research to say that
Speaker 1: the world rewards bravery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, women are typically raised to be perfect. So Rene
Speaker 2: Brown did research around that that said, how do women
Speaker 2: and men experience shame along gender lines? Mostly for women
Speaker 2: it's around this notion of balance, appearance, perfection, and for
Speaker 2: men it's around being a provider, and so for us
Speaker 2: throughout our school system, it's very very much engineered for
Speaker 2: us to say, Okay, I hit this milestone, I get
Speaker 2: an achievement. I hit that milestone, I get in achievement,
Speaker 2: and that inculcates within us again perfection. If I study
Speaker 2: the perfect way, if I answer all the questions, if
Speaker 2: I follow the rules, then I will get rewarded. But
Speaker 2: the world really doesn't work like that, does it. Corporations
Speaker 2: work like that, but I don't think entrepreneurship necessarily works
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: I'm curious how you feel this wound, the success wound,
Speaker 1: shows up in relationships and health, in the way we parent.
Speaker 1: How do you see it showing up in other areas?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's interesting because my story of my
Speaker 2: success ideal, the image of the perfect, optimal or good
Speaker 2: working woman today looks like the effortless entrepreneur, right, somebody
Speaker 2: who's invited into all the right rooms, whose revenue goes
Speaker 2: up into the right quarter after quarter, who naturally signs
Speaker 2: clients and tracks people to her, who has all their
Speaker 2: systems on lock. But when I talk to people about
Speaker 2: this image, for others, it's I want to have this family,
Speaker 2: and I want to have this career and I want
Speaker 2: to have both, or for some people it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: I want to be traveling the world and I want
Speaker 2: to be involved in different cultures and different ideas in
Speaker 2: different spaces and places. I want this exotic life. You know,
Speaker 2: it really doesn't matter what your image is, but I
Speaker 2: think we all have it, and it's unconscious, and I
Speaker 2: share that just to say I think all of it
Speaker 2: pertains to success. And I don't mean just like achievement,
Speaker 2: but I mean like goodness, optimal, the vision that we
Speaker 2: have for the person that we're subconsciously comparing ourselves to.
Speaker 2: And the interesting part about the success wound is that
Speaker 2: if we don't set our standard for what's enough, our
Speaker 2: success wound is always going to set it for us.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, I had this moment where I
Speaker 2: was early on in my you know, recovery process and
Speaker 2: trying to make decisions from my good judgment and my
Speaker 2: intuition and you know, saying no when I meant no,
Speaker 2: and staying in instead of going out. And even though
Speaker 2: my work hard, play hard changed, wellness had become my
Speaker 2: new obsession and I was, you know, instead of working
Speaker 2: really hard Monday through Thursday and partying. On the weekends.
Speaker 2: I was going to therapy, I was going to meditation classes,
Speaker 2: I was going to yoga, I was going to breath work,
Speaker 2: I was going to cheegong, I was going on retreats,
Speaker 2: and I was doing all of that.
Speaker 1: We're going to be the best healer to ever heal exactly.
Speaker 2: I was like, I will ace my healing. But again
Speaker 2: it was coming from there's something wrong with me. There's
Speaker 2: something broken within me that I need to fix. And
Speaker 2: so once again I found myself crying in a phone room,
Speaker 2: and that was always my telltale sign. I was like,
Speaker 2: something's wrong if I'm crying in a phone room again.
Speaker 2: And so, to answer your question, you know, this success
Speaker 2: wound shows up everywhere, but it forms this image that
Speaker 2: we are constantly comparing ourselves to. And unless we consciously
Speaker 2: rewrite what that image is our success woond's always going
Speaker 2: to pick up the pen and draw a picture for us.
Speaker 1: You just said something that made such a light bulb
Speaker 1: go off for me because I have been feeling like
Speaker 1: a dating failure and and I recently had this realization
Speaker 1: like I was like, oh, I'm not the problem, I'm
Speaker 1: not broken, I'm not blocked. I just haven't found the
Speaker 1: person for me, And now I'm thinking maybe I need
Speaker 1: to switch cities, not forever, but just intermittently. But we
Speaker 1: can talk about that later. But you're really making a
Speaker 1: light bulb go off for me because I think a
Speaker 1: lot of times and I really love self awareness. So
Speaker 1: you know, thinking about your side of the street, as
Speaker 1: you so aptly put it early on, is important and
Speaker 1: sometimes you're not the problem. Like it's really nice to
Speaker 1: feel that.
Speaker 2: It's so true. And my favorite quality in somebody is
Speaker 2: this ability to be like self aware. What's my part
Speaker 2: in it? What can I change? Is there something in me?
Speaker 2: Because that inherently puts you in a position of being
Speaker 2: a creator in your life. You're not a victim, right
Speaker 2: Like Danielle is not a victim. She won't be a
Speaker 2: victim in her life ever, especially in dating. But I
Speaker 2: think there is a line where it's like, Okay, you've
Speaker 2: exhausted your side of the street, maybe you know, and
Speaker 2: still you're not a victim. Maybe it's just a matter
Speaker 2: if you haven't found your person, and that's okay too.
Speaker 1: Totally. Yeah, I always say I'm not a victim. I'm
Speaker 1: a volunteer, just because I like alliteration.
Speaker 2: I like that that's a good one.
Speaker 1: Before we totally get into how to heal this, I'm
Speaker 1: curious what your personal what Brooke Taylor's definition of success
Speaker 1: looks like now and how is it different from the
Speaker 1: version you were chasing at Google.
Speaker 2: Yeah, before, whether it was Google or my wellness obsession,
Speaker 2: it was always about, I mean, plain and simple, literally,
Speaker 2: what do other people think? What does it look like?
Speaker 2: What are the accolades that I can collect? And I
Speaker 2: know that sounds so obvious, but if you really were
Speaker 2: to observe your thoughts, how often are so many of
Speaker 2: us doing things, even very subtly for the What are
Speaker 2: people going to say? What does it look like from
Speaker 2: the outside? And I have to watch myself every single
Speaker 2: day not to promote my book about healing the success
Speaker 2: wound from my own success wound. It is my work
Speaker 2: every day, every minute of every day, because people can
Speaker 2: feel that, can't think. Wouldn't it be just so out
Speaker 2: of integrity if I was using this book as a
Speaker 2: way to get people to like me more, that would
Speaker 2: be such a missed opportunity. And so what do I
Speaker 2: do today? Quite literally, as long as my intention and
Speaker 2: my definition of success is about connection and what do
Speaker 2: I want to enjoy? So connection and joy? Then that
Speaker 2: is enough. That's enough, And I feel so blessed to
Speaker 2: be at a stage in my career where, quite literally,
Speaker 2: this is a life and a career beyond my wildest dreams.
Speaker 2: And I didn't have a playbook for it. So everything
Speaker 2: feels like icing on the cake just being able to
Speaker 2: have this conversation with you, like I'm so glad to
Speaker 2: be doing that, and so whether this sells a book
Speaker 2: or not, like I'm genuinely having a great time with you.
Speaker 2: And I think a lot of people might be saying, okay, great, Brooke. Well,
Speaker 2: like I have a family to provide for, and I
Speaker 2: have performance reviews and KPIs to hit and is AI
Speaker 2: going to take my job? All of those can continue
Speaker 2: to be realities, yes, And your definition of success can
Speaker 2: be something that's more esteemable and regulates your nervous system
Speaker 2: and puts you on a track that allows you to
Speaker 2: be creative, collaborative, and innovative. Because there is so much
Speaker 2: research that says when we are operating from fear of
Speaker 2: scarcity and stress, our careers do not go very well
Speaker 2: at all. So the realities can still be going, the
Speaker 2: storm can still be swirling around us. But how can
Speaker 2: you be the eye of the storm and kind of
Speaker 2: create what you want to within that so.
Speaker 1: Well said, and that you kind of give a five
Speaker 1: step process in the book. It's the heart of the book,
Speaker 1: I would say, And you say, the first step is
Speaker 1: to diagnose the wound. I have a personal investment in
Speaker 1: what you say. The anecdote to some of this is
Speaker 1: which everyone will find out soon. But how do you
Speaker 1: get to your true self? What does that actually look like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so those five types that I mentioned earlier, that
Speaker 2: is almost like your success wound diagnosis, right, Like, that's
Speaker 2: how your success wound shows up. And that is part
Speaker 2: of our psyche called our protector self. And our protector
Speaker 2: self is intended to protect any negative feelings from ever
Speaker 2: coming forward. So we have our protector self, which shows
Speaker 2: up as our higher grinder, pleaser, seeker, work hard, play hard.
Speaker 2: That's protecting our deep fear of inadequacy, our fear of
Speaker 2: being rejected or embarrassed or ashamed. But then we have
Speaker 2: this other part of ourself that's not just psychology. According
Speaker 2: to Brooke, there's a lot of psychological basis for this
Speaker 2: that's called our true self. And this is the part
Speaker 2: of us that every single human who is on this
Speaker 2: earth has the capacity for naturally and inherently. It doesn't
Speaker 2: need to be built, it doesn't need to be molded
Speaker 2: or modeled. You don't need to go to a retreat
Speaker 2: to create her. She is naturally confident, competent, clear, courageous, curious, playful, present.
Speaker 2: She's the part of you that shows up when you're
Speaker 2: naturally intrigued about something, when you're maybe playing with your
Speaker 2: little cousins or nieces and nephews, when you're having a
Speaker 2: really great conversation, and times expanding, when you're in a
Speaker 2: state of flow. That is the part of you that's
Speaker 2: called your true self. And so really I say that
Speaker 2: I'm a career coach that helps people to create fulfilling careers. Truly,
Speaker 2: my only goal is to get you back in touch
Speaker 2: with your true self, because she's there, She's just buried
Speaker 2: under these protector behaviors that show up at work because
Speaker 2: that's what we think we need to be doing and
Speaker 2: how we need to be behaving in order to get ahead.
Speaker 1: And then tell me about how curiosity is part of
Speaker 1: some of this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So according to a man named Richard Schwartz who
Speaker 2: came up with this model of the psyche called internal
Speaker 2: family systems. He was somebody who discovered that our psyches
Speaker 2: are inherently multiple, and a hallmark of the true self
Speaker 2: is curiosity. Is the part of us that you know,
Speaker 2: sees a little glimmer you know, to the right and says, ooh,
Speaker 2: I wonder what that is or is naturally, you know,
Speaker 2: interest is piqued when she's reading something and wants to
Speaker 2: read more about that thing. Who wants to ask questions
Speaker 2: and listen. When we're asking questions and listening, it puts
Speaker 2: our body into a relaxation response. Did you know that? No? Yeah,
Speaker 2: So even as you're doing this now, I'm imagining in
Speaker 2: your body, when you're really in the present and you're
Speaker 2: asking questions and you're listening, you're probably really relaxed and regulated.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing half and half because I'm also really wanting
Speaker 1: to give you the best interview I can. So part
Speaker 1: of me is like, oh, I should have asked that differently,
Speaker 1: or you know, but if I'm in regular conversation and
Speaker 1: not an interview, yes, I'm very relaxed.
Speaker 2: Yes, And so the beauty of curiosity in asking questions
Speaker 2: is that. Sure, we can do that with others, but
Speaker 2: part of our healing process is to actually be curious
Speaker 2: and ask questions to our feelings in our body. So
Speaker 2: one of the very first parts of healing. We heal
Speaker 2: on three levels. We heal on emotional level, mental level,
Speaker 2: and the level of behavior or action. And the emotional
Speaker 2: level is the level that a lot of people are like,
Speaker 2: you know, what does that look like? Is that therapy?
Speaker 2: How can I do that in a workplace? But curiosity
Speaker 2: is actually the way in because when our success wood
Speaker 2: gets activated. Let's say you're in a workplace, whether you
Speaker 2: work for yourself or for your boss, anybody has a
Speaker 2: stakeholder that they want to impress. Let's say that stakeholder
Speaker 2: in some way, shape or form says you know, you're
Speaker 2: really missing the mark, or you didn't do as well
Speaker 2: as you could do here. What does that create? That
Speaker 2: creates a pit in our stomach, a closing in my throat,
Speaker 2: maybe a tightness through our solar plexus or our chest.
Speaker 2: What I want you to do in that moment is
Speaker 2: I want you to identify that feeling in your body
Speaker 2: to give it three adjectives. So heavy tight, tingling rock,
Speaker 2: whatever that is. And I want you to ask it
Speaker 2: a question. I want you to ask it a question,
Speaker 2: this feeling, the question what do you want me to know?
Speaker 2: What are you afraid would happen right now? Why are
Speaker 2: you here? And that curiosity. When we are curious, we're
Speaker 2: naturally in our true self, and it creates a separation
Speaker 2: between our true self and the feeling. So even if
Speaker 2: you work in a corporate environment with thousands of people,
Speaker 2: even if you're in a desk job, even if you're
Speaker 2: a nurse, even if you're a teacher, you can always
Speaker 2: in the workplace, notice what's happening in your body. Give
Speaker 2: it three adjectives and ask it a question, because that's
Speaker 2: going to unearth the emotion that's underneath it and instead
Speaker 2: of pushing it away or developing a relationship with it,
Speaker 2: and over time, this relationship is going to strengthen and
Speaker 2: it's going to help you heal those negative emotions.
Speaker 1: So cool, thank you for blaming that beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think something that people are going to be like
Speaker 1: feeling and maybe scared to ask themselves or scared to
Speaker 1: ask you, is if I heal this, will I lose
Speaker 1: my drive? Will I lose my ambition. What do you
Speaker 1: say to that.
Speaker 2: That's part of a cultural misunderstanding that we need to
Speaker 2: be anxious in competition and fueled by scarcity in order
Speaker 2: to get ahead, And that couldn't be further from the truth.
Speaker 2: When we look at our ancestors or children, or when
Speaker 2: we think about how we are when we're doing our
Speaker 2: best work, we are in a state of flow, collaboration, creativity,
Speaker 2: and curiosity. So the goal of this work isn't to
Speaker 2: help you lose your edge, although sure a little bit
Speaker 2: of performance anxiety obviously can't hurt a little bit of
Speaker 2: you know, how is this going to go? Of course,
Speaker 2: that's going to keep you on your toes. What tends
Speaker 2: to happen is that anxious achievers tend to be four
Speaker 2: hundred percent more productive than average people, but to a point.
Speaker 2: So what happens is that once we hit that point,
Speaker 2: actually performance goes down precipitously. And that point is the
Speaker 2: point at which our protector self or our success wound
Speaker 2: has been running the show so much that we start
Speaker 2: to get burned out, exhausted, depleted. We're no longer coming
Speaker 2: up with innovative solutions. We're perpetuating a lot more of
Speaker 2: the old And so my work isn't to help you
Speaker 2: lose your edge. It's to help dial down the suffering
Speaker 2: and the emotional heaviness that we all put on ourselves
Speaker 2: through high expectations, through negative self talk, through what are
Speaker 2: they going to think? What's going to happen? Help lower
Speaker 2: that so that you can continue to perform in a
Speaker 2: way that feels esteem building and exciting. So I think
Speaker 2: we all kind of get to a point where it's
Speaker 2: like this doesn't work for us anymore. And if anybody's
Speaker 2: listening to this and is like, nah, I still got
Speaker 2: like you know, this is still working for me, then great,
Speaker 2: keep going. But I think so many of us are
Speaker 2: looking for a new relationship with work that actually works better.
Speaker 2: Do you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're saying, because I actually think
Speaker 1: if I had had this conversation with you a few
Speaker 1: years ago, I would have totally taken in everything you said,
Speaker 1: but also thought it's working for me right now, Like
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to be grinding, and I hit a point
Speaker 1: where it was impossible to maintain, and I don't think
Speaker 1: I'm fully on the other side, but somewhere like between
Speaker 1: the messy middle and the other side, and I can
Speaker 1: say that I'm starting to feel better and I'm actually
Speaker 1: more productive with help and with not feeling like I mean,
Speaker 1: you call it sort of like manic ambition versus a
Speaker 1: lined ambition, and I think I think that's a perfect term.
Speaker 1: So less manic, more aligned.
Speaker 2: You know. In addiction recovery rooms, they say we can't
Speaker 2: rob anyone of their bottom. I'm not here to convince
Speaker 2: anyone to do something different. This is for the people
Speaker 2: who have hit their bottom, and they're like, please tell
Speaker 2: me that there's another way to work. So you know, again,
Speaker 2: if things are working for you or you're not ready
Speaker 2: to change, you know, please keep going. But if you're
Speaker 2: somebody who's wondering, is there a way for me to
Speaker 2: work in a way that builds me up rather than
Speaker 2: breaks me down? Is there a way for me to
Speaker 2: feel good about my accomplishments instead of always doubting if
Speaker 2: I've done enough? If it is enough, then this is
Speaker 2: who that's for.
Speaker 1: I think yeah, I think so too. If there's somebody
Speaker 1: listening in their car walking wherever they are right now,
Speaker 1: and they're saying this is resonating, what is the first
Speaker 1: thing that she should do tonight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there are actually three things that you can
Speaker 2: do to increase your self worth consistently and over time.
Speaker 2: And these are behaviors that are going to help kind
Speaker 2: of fill that whole, that void, that emptiness that you
Speaker 2: might be feeling, that not enoughness. And the first thing
Speaker 2: that I think everybody can do is learn how to
Speaker 2: make decisions when they're fifty one percent sure. And what
Speaker 2: I mean by that is a lot of people tend
Speaker 2: to only make decisions when they're ninety nine point nine
Speaker 2: nine to nine percent sure, once they've gathered all the
Speaker 2: data canvassed for opinions, done the pro con list. I
Speaker 2: want people to get comfortable making decisions when they only
Speaker 2: are fifty one percent sure.
Speaker 1: Well that's very brave. Mm.
Speaker 2: Wait, first of all, how do you make decisions? What's
Speaker 2: your decision making process look like?
Speaker 1: I used to be a person who canvassed for lots
Speaker 1: of opinions. When I was a kid, my parents would
Speaker 1: actually make fun of me because they'd be like, Oh,
Speaker 1: she's asking a million people, and like she's asking her
Speaker 1: dance instructor. It's like, like that had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with my I you know, the question I was asking.
Speaker 1: But as I have gotten older and truly, I think
Speaker 1: because of therapy, I believe myself. I trust myself, and
Speaker 1: so I don't canvas as much. I canvas if I'm
Speaker 1: looking for, like a skill set I don't possess, but
Speaker 1: I don't canvas if it's a feeling or a gutter
Speaker 1: heart thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So typically when people fall into the seeker
Speaker 2: archetype or the higher archetype, they tend to rely on
Speaker 2: people who are experts to tell them what to do.
Speaker 2: And so again, one way to strengthen your self worth
Speaker 2: is to learn when something is pulling you just one
Speaker 2: percent in a certain direction or not, because more often
Speaker 2: than not, that will help you to trust your judgment
Speaker 2: and learn that your judgment is good and learn the
Speaker 2: internal mechanism of your intuition because I guarantee you, Okay,
Speaker 2: maybe maybe a couple times it might be wrong, but
Speaker 2: it's going to be more right than you could have
Speaker 2: possibly imagined. And that's going to create a better relationship
Speaker 2: with you and your judgment, and that inherently increases your
Speaker 2: self worth.
Speaker 1: That's a great one. It's so tactical. Thank you for that.
Speaker 1: I also want to share that something shifted for me
Speaker 1: because I like to come into everything curious. It's like
Speaker 1: definitely my nature. But also I think it served me
Speaker 1: really well in a lot of ways, So relationships, boardrooms,
Speaker 1: wherever I am. And somebody said to me one time, Danielle,
Speaker 1: sometimes you are the expert in the room, like curiosity
Speaker 1: is important, and sometimes you don't have to look to
Speaker 1: the experts all the time, like you can't. And so
Speaker 1: that was a huge shift. But please keep going because
Speaker 1: you have two more.
Speaker 2: That's a huge shift. Yeah, And everyone's an expert in
Speaker 2: their own lives. And again, of course that doesn't mean yeah,
Speaker 2: don't take on good opinions or if you're new at
Speaker 2: something and you want to learn about something, obviously, but
Speaker 2: I think especially as women, we can learn to make
Speaker 2: decisions from the fifty one percent.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The second is to get in the habit of every
Speaker 2: day taking one micro risk, and one micro risk is
Speaker 2: engaging in something that makes you feel twenty percent uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: It's one step outside your comfort zone. Because people who
Speaker 2: tend to have higher self worth and have higher fulfillment
Speaker 2: are people who are constantly expanding their comfort zone, not
Speaker 2: from a place of like not, oh I want to
Speaker 2: learn more, but from a place of I am somebody
Speaker 2: who can take risks and be okay when things don't
Speaker 2: go well, who has a positive more positive relationship with rejection,
Speaker 2: who knows how to respond to setbacks. So this is
Speaker 2: something that I always encourage my clients to do, is
Speaker 2: taking those micro risks. Okay, it could look like dming
Speaker 2: somebody that you admire and training voice notes, but it
Speaker 2: could also look like again speaking up when you have
Speaker 2: just a little bit of the information, or you know,
Speaker 2: turning to the person to your left in line and
Speaker 2: striking up a conversation something like that. My clients who
Speaker 2: do this on a consistent basis report feeling better about themselves.
Speaker 2: Their head hits the pillow and they're thinking about that moment.
Speaker 2: They're like, you know what I did the hard thing,
Speaker 2: and that feels really good. Do you ever do this?
Speaker 2: I'm curious.
Speaker 1: Yes. I will say though that this is something that
Speaker 1: I'm very grateful to my mother for. And I've told
Speaker 1: this story on the podcast before, But when I was younger,
Speaker 1: we would sit at a park and I was like
Speaker 1: five or six, very little, and she would say to me,
Speaker 1: do you see these people walking by and they are
Speaker 1: like holding hands or with their dogs. And she would say,
Speaker 1: they're all out living their lives and you can either
Speaker 1: sit on this park bench and watch them live theirs,
Speaker 1: or you can get up and go live yours. And
Speaker 1: I've always thought about that. So I struggle with a
Speaker 1: lot of other things, but the micro risks I think
Speaker 1: are more inherent because of her, which I'm so grateful for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how do you feel about micro risks?
Speaker 2: I'm so bad at it. It's the thing that is
Speaker 2: like the hardest for me. I'm good at trusting my judgment.
Speaker 2: I've always been quite decisive, and I know what my
Speaker 2: intuition feels like through years of practicing. It's the putting
Speaker 2: myself out there that makes me want to crawl up
Speaker 2: in a ball and never come out, Which is why
Speaker 2: this book has been such a huge expansion for me,
Speaker 2: because I've had to get rejected over and over again,
Speaker 2: you know, in the best way possible, and then I've
Speaker 2: gotten yes is that I never would have gotten to.
Speaker 2: But this is the hardest one for me for sure.
Speaker 1: Can you say more about this? Because I think my
Speaker 1: assessment of risk is probably less relatable to most people listening.
Speaker 1: I think most people feel the way you do, like,
Speaker 1: how have you micro practiced, how have you gotten better?
Speaker 1: What was the first step for you? And does the
Speaker 1: rejection feel less bad over time?
Speaker 2: It feels less bad over time, And I have to
Speaker 2: be honest because I've gotten some yesses. It's like, Okay,
Speaker 2: this does work. If I was dming people that I admired,
Speaker 2: saying hey, I really love your work and I think
Speaker 2: this book would really be interesting to you. Can I
Speaker 2: send you a copy, and literally nobody replied, I'd feel
Speaker 2: really discouraged. But the fact that I have gotten some
Speaker 2: people that I genuinely admire being like, yeah, I'd love
Speaker 2: to read your book, please send me a copy, I'm like, wow,
Speaker 2: this really works. So the positive feedback loop has been
Speaker 2: so rewarding, and it's made me realize, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: I do have this capacity that's greater than I did before.
Speaker 2: Because again, like I have had success from the outside,
Speaker 2: but I think I've been playing in my comfort zone
Speaker 2: professionally for a long time, only doing things that I
Speaker 2: know I could be good at. But intentionally putting myself
Speaker 2: into a position of being rejected has been really good
Speaker 2: for me.
Speaker 1: I love hearing that I have this phrase that I
Speaker 1: say to myself all the time that trying is winning,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of a mantra that helps me not
Speaker 1: fear the rejection as much because it's like, as long
Speaker 1: as you're trying. And I was also thinking as you
Speaker 1: were sharing that, you know, if there's somebody listening who's
Speaker 1: like I did send ten dms and no one replied,
Speaker 1: I would probably say, like, change the mechanism, change your approach.
Speaker 1: What would you say?
Speaker 2: I would say, change the mechanism, change your approach. You know, sure,
Speaker 2: go get some advice, talk to somebody. I've done that
Speaker 2: a lot too. I'm like, what would you respond to? Right?
Speaker 2: But I would also say, you know, if you're at
Speaker 2: a point of discomfort, that's when a lot of people quit,
Speaker 2: So keep going. So if you're at that point of discomfort,
Speaker 2: that's when you know to actually double down, like keep going,
Speaker 2: keep going, because that's when most people that's when most
Speaker 2: people quit. That's when I've quit. I'm like, oh, it
Speaker 2: doesn't work, you know. But it's the consistency. And so
Speaker 2: that's why again, self worth is built, It's built over time.
Speaker 2: And then the final piece, which I think actually can
Speaker 2: really help with both of these things is developing a
Speaker 2: relationship with faith. And you might be saying, Okay, what
Speaker 2: role does faith have in the workplace. I'm not religious,
Speaker 2: That's not what I mean. I mean trusting in something
Speaker 2: greater than your fear, Trusting in a vision that you
Speaker 2: have for your life or yourself that is really inspiring
Speaker 2: to you. Sure, getting a relationship with a god of
Speaker 2: your own understanding or the universe or a benevolence, that's
Speaker 2: all really great. But I think so much of our
Speaker 2: relationship with uncertain is because we don't have faith in
Speaker 2: something that's guiding us, or faith on what could be
Speaker 2: on the other side. And so that's how the book
Speaker 2: Ends is really on this note of like understanding that
Speaker 2: there's going to be so many leaps of faith in
Speaker 2: your career and that's what creates careers that are genuinely
Speaker 2: fulfilling and healing your success wound is inherently scary because
Speaker 2: you don't know what exists on the other side of that.
Speaker 2: You are wondering, isn't this going to take away my edge?
Speaker 2: And you have to have faith inherently in that. And
Speaker 2: so there's this quote by Phil Knight, who's the founder
Speaker 2: of Nike, that's on the Night School of Business at Stanford,
Speaker 2: and he talks about I'm going to butcher the quote,
Speaker 2: but it's in the book. He talks about the fact
Speaker 2: that there are two types of people, people who turn
Speaker 2: away from uncertainty and walk back into the known, and
Speaker 2: people who walk towards uncertainty. And he says, I can't
Speaker 2: tell you which one is right, but I can tell
Speaker 2: you which one is more fun. And I think there's
Speaker 2: so much fun in uncertainty, and once you can get there,
Speaker 2: it's like, Wow, the whole world really opens up to you.
Speaker 1: I really like that quote because so much of career
Speaker 1: stuff feels arduous and frustrating, and to flip it and
Speaker 1: think about it as fun and joy is very just
Speaker 1: like enlivening. I think me too.
Speaker 2: I know we take our careers in our lives so seriously,
Speaker 2: but ultimately it's just all about experimentation and connection.
Speaker 1: Speaking of very serious, I have some rapid fire questions
Speaker 1: for you.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's hit it.
Speaker 1: Okay, what is something every woman should try?
Speaker 2: Once my mind went really like it's weird there for
Speaker 2: a second.
Speaker 1: You're not the first person to say that I didn't
Speaker 1: have to change this question.
Speaker 2: I don't know Okay, what's something that every woman should
Speaker 2: try once? Working for herself?
Speaker 1: Really? Why?
Speaker 2: I think that there's this yearning and curiosity within women
Speaker 2: to create a culture of their own. And I think
Speaker 2: that's why we love creating communities, friendship, circles, and families.
Speaker 2: And I think I think having a creative project in
Speaker 2: our career. It doesn't have to be a full time gig.
Speaker 2: But I think you should work for yourself or create
Speaker 2: something of your own professionally.
Speaker 1: No one said that that's very cool. What is the
Speaker 1: biggest sacrifice that you've made on your path to healed achievement?
Speaker 2: Knowing that all my sacrifices were giving up one thing
Speaker 2: that I thought I needed, but getting everything else. So
Speaker 2: giving up alcohol, which was something that I thought I
Speaker 2: needed to get everything else, giving up you know, the
Speaker 2: sexy title at Google, and feeling awkward at dinner parties afterwards,
Speaker 2: but getting such a sense of validation. I've had to
Speaker 2: give up everything I felt dependent on in order to
Speaker 2: get more.
Speaker 1: Free, beautiful. If someone gave you a blank check to
Speaker 1: start a business or a passion project, what would you
Speaker 1: do right now?
Speaker 2: My husband recently started a construction business, and I've been
Speaker 2: obsessed with boring businesses, and you know, with AI kind
Speaker 2: of coming up, I want to create something. I would
Speaker 2: start probably like an electrical business, like something that's actually
Speaker 2: like physical and of the trades and something in my hands.
Speaker 2: I just love the especially with everything being so digital,
Speaker 2: I'd want to start something physical.
Speaker 1: What are you most likely to splurge on.
Speaker 2: A really great handbag? Like I love a designer bag.
Speaker 1: When was the last time you surprised yourself?
Speaker 2: I think it's been in this book process, getting to
Speaker 2: connect with people who I really admire and as somebody
Speaker 2: who used to feel like she was an outsider looking in,
Speaker 2: finally feeling like I belong in a community that I'm
Speaker 2: excited for feels surprising in a good way.
Speaker 1: Beautiful. What is a book something you've read that really
Speaker 1: impacted you that you think everybody should read?
Speaker 2: My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem. I loved
Speaker 2: that book. It really did change my life. And just
Speaker 2: knowing as a woman like where we kind of come
Speaker 2: from and the history that we have in this country,
Speaker 2: I think is essential.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to ask you the question. Everything question
Speaker 1: you tell me when to stop?
Speaker 2: Stop?
Speaker 1: Okay will eliminate the book because you just said that.
Speaker 1: So what is a class, a book, a movie, or
Speaker 1: a piece of art that completely changed your perspective on life?
Speaker 2: Legally blonde?
Speaker 1: I love this?
Speaker 2: Why Well, first of all, one of the characters is
Speaker 2: named Brooke Taylor, so I was like, it's just you know,
Speaker 2: this is me. I had this assumption. I don't know
Speaker 2: where it came from, but that woman could only be
Speaker 2: hot or smart. She genuinely was a model of like
Speaker 2: everything that I wanted to be in the most unexpected package.
Speaker 2: And I think about out Woods every day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so awesome. Well, Brooke, thank you. This conversation
Speaker 1: went way longer than it was supposed to, but it's
Speaker 1: because you're so interesting. So thank you, and thanks for
Speaker 1: asking me such beautiful questions.
Speaker 2: Oh thank you. I loved it. Thank you so much,
Speaker 2: such a great conversation.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know what time it is. Today's a good day.
Speaker 1: To have a good day. I'll see you next week.