If you've never heard Tara Mohr speak at a BlogHer conference, you'll definitely want to check out her book, PLAYING BIG. I've been to fourteen BlogHer conferences and events, and Tara was definitely one of my favorite speakers. Her book? A must-read, in my opinion. Tara talked to BlogHer about her Playing Big mantra, her book (now in paperback) and her webinar for BlogHer. Read on!
BlogHer: What advice do you have for a woman who can't identify what playing big would look like for her life?
Tara Mohr: There are lots of ways to get started:
Simply start to notice how your inner critic – the voice of self-doubt – shows up in your life, and begin to question the assumption that it is telling you the truth (Lots more tools on our webinar and in the book for this!)
Take some time to meet your inner mentor – an older, wiser, version of yourself, and see what she has to show you about what playing big looks like for you right now. (We’ll have some guidance on this on the webinar, too.)
Start to pay attention to your callings – the whispers of ideas that come to you about how some aspect of our world could be different, better. Pay attention to the needs and problems in the world that pain you most and tug at your heart again and again. Give yourself full permission to have the dreams and longings you already have. Usually our playing big is already speaking to us – we just might not have been willing to listen, or we’ve convinced ourselves, “That dream couldn’t really be meant for me. I’m not qualified, experienced enough, brave enough” etc.
BlogHer: How does time management support playing big?
Tara Mohr: Time management can be a nice way to support your playing big, but I wouldn’t say it’s part of the foundation. You can have the best time-management practices and schedule in the world, but if you are fundamentally caught in self-doubt and fear without tools/a suite of daily habits to help you manage self-doubt and fear, you will sabotage all your time management structures! Or you’ll convince yourself you simply don’t have the time.
My experience is that when women deal with the more foundational issues and get tools to help them work with their fear and self-doubt, the more tactical stuff like time management follows quite easily. In other words, truly take fear out of picture, and it’s suddenly not hard to find a few hours a week to move forward on that thing you want to do.
BlogHer: What's the most common reason women give you for playing small?
Tara Mohr: The initial reasons they share are lack of time, financial constraints, and not knowing what they want. That’s why we think we aren’t playing bigger. But, when we dig a little deeper, usually women discover that the real reason is a fear of failure, feeling not “expert” enough, avoidance of controversy and criticism, or not wanting to stand out from the tribe too much – even if because of success – because we want to belong and be connected to others.
BlogHer: Why do women want to be liked so much even when that desire gets in their way?
Tara Mohr: Humans share a universal desire to know we are appreciated, liked, and that we belong. But for women, layered on top of that is a much more loaded socialization that starts when we are quite young – to be likable and attractive, to come across as nice, and even to prioritize relationships and group harmony over our own needs.
Plus, up until very recently, we women could not protect ourselves through physical, legal, political or financial means. We simply didn’t have the rights and freedoms to be able to do so. Likability, fitting in, doing what was accepted, were our primary survival strategies. This memory, that it’s not safe to speak up, to rock the boat, to be criticized or disliked, still lives in us and we all have to do our own work to unlearn that idea.
Last but not least, the criticism that women get, studies show, is more personal, attacking, and even violent than the criticism men get. So we have more at stake in avoiding criticism.
BlogHer: Is there any emotional weight-lifting exercise a woman can do to help her stop depending on external feedback to feel good about herself?
Tara Mohr: In the Playing Big model, every woman goes through a brief but very powerful visualization exercise where she meets her “inner mentor.” The inner mentor is a vision of her more authentic, mature, wise self-- herself 20-30 years in the future. Most women are truly blown away by what they encounter when they do this visualization exercise. Once they have a sense of her and are guided by her, they automatically become a lot less dependent on what other people think. There’s another powerful compass guiding her.
A second thing we can all do is to recognize that feedback doesn’t tell you anything essentially true about yourself. It tells you about the people giving the feedback. This is a radical idea for most of us to consider. If your blog is struggling to gain traction, for example, that doesn’t really tell you anything about yourself. It tells you something about what your intended audience is, and isn’t looking for. When we start to look at feedback as information about the people we are trying to reach (and not as a verdict on ourselves) we can incorporate it as helpful information, and not go on the personal roller coaster with it!
BlogHer: How does being a good student potentially hurt women in the business world?
Tara Mohr: Early on in my coaching practice, I noticed a phenomenon that really surprised me. Many of the women struggling most in their careers had been star students. Being really good at school didn’t pave the way for their professional success the way we’d expect it to.
Over time, I came to understand why. School teaches us to adapt our work to an authority figure – the teacher. But in our careers we need to influence authority figures and step into our own authority. School teaches how to turn outside ourselves (to the textbook, the library, the teacher) for information, but in our careers we need to recognize and trust what we already know. School teaches us how to prepare really well – to study for the test – but in our careers, we need to improvise.
As students, we learn a particular way of working, but to play big in our careers, we need to add a whole additional skill set – improvising, trusting what we know, and influencing the authority figures around us. This is particularly important for women because all those good student habits overlap with the “good girl” conditioning we get.
BlogHer: Do you have any advice for us now that we can contemplate before we start 2016: The Year of Playing Big?
Tara Mohr: That if 2016 is your Year of Playing Big, be sure to make it about the deepest, most true definition of Playing Big. Playing Big isn’t about striving harder, or running to keep up with your inner perfectionist’s vision of what you should be achieving.
Playing Big is, quite simply, being more loyal to your dreams than to your fears. It’s speaking up, and welcoming the fear and self-doubt that will be with you as you do.
Your Playing Big may be something that looks “big” to others or it may be something –- the reclaiming of a lost creative hobby, or a community project, or a change in your lifestyle –- that others wouldn’t recognize as big but that you know is a brave, authentic move for you. Begin the year thinking of Playing Big in that way.
Playing Big, when done in this way, actually takes less of our energy than playing small, because we stop being in a push-pull conflict with our dreams, and get back on our own side.
Playing Big: Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create, and Lead
In this webinar, author, teacher, and blogger Tara Sophia Mohr will share three powerful ways you can develop and share your voice. You will learn practical strategies you can use in the moment to:
- Move past the voice of your inner critic
- Access a powerful source of clarify and wisdom, your inner mentor
- Unhook from praise and criticism - something all women bloggers and creatives need to do!
If you feel like you would benefit from being more confident, courageous, or productive in your work, this webinar is for you. It will take place on Thursday, January 21, at 12pm PT/3pm ET. Sign up here!
Tara's pioneering work on women's careers and wellbeing has been featured in publications ranging from goop to The New York Times to the TODAY Show, and has captivated women from all walks of life including Maria Shriver, Elizabeth Gilbert and Jillian Michaels. She is the creator of the Playing Big program for women, which now has more than 1,000 graduates from around the world, and of the global Playing Big Facilitators Training for coaches, therapists, leadership development professionals and other practitioners supporting women in their personal and professional growth. Tara regularly shares tips and inspiration on her popular blog at www.taramohr.com.
What questions do you have for Tara?
Rita Arens is the author of the young adult novel THE OBVIOUS GAME & the managing editor of BlogHer.com.
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