00:00:00.000Hey y'all, Joe here, and you are listening to Under the Influence.
00:00:09.440Quick reminder to order your copy of The Parisian Heist.
00:00:11.960If you like to hate on rich people behaving badly, this one's for you.0.80
00:00:16.440If you love a feminist art heist set in the 90s, oh my gosh, you're going to love it so much.
00:00:23.560Grab a copy today for you and none of your friends.1.00
00:00:26.440The Parisian Heist. It's not summer without it.
00:00:28.600All right, now on to today's episode. This one really hit me. I mean, I guess all of these
00:00:33.840episodes lately are hitting me because I think so many women are going through a lot of the same
00:00:38.920things. And I think a lot of us are carrying this around without having the right language for it.0.98
00:00:45.560It's this feeling that no matter how much we achieve, it is never going to be enough. And
00:00:50.980that your worth is somehow tied to your productivity and your financial success. And
00:00:55.260that if you just work a little bit harder and push a little more and finally hit the next
00:00:59.440milestone, then maybe you'll finally feel secure. I know I feel like this all the time. I've been
00:01:06.480talking about it a lot lately, and so has pretty much every woman that I know. My guest today is
00:01:14.500Brooke Taylor. She's an executive coach and author of Healing the Success Wound. She's a former0.98
00:01:20.140Googler, and like me, she's also the kind of person that chases success, that chases praise,
00:01:24.760that defines herself by what she does and maybe less of who she is. Today we're talking about what
00:01:31.340the success wound is and how to start healing it. We talk about pushing through burnout, ambition,
00:01:37.600addiction to approval, and that terror of not being enough that always seems to pop up when
00:01:42.500you're real sweaty at three in the morning and you can't get back to sleep. I know the traditional
00:01:46.680markers of success are making a lot of us feel very empty right now, and that's exactly why I
00:01:52.120wanting to have Brooke on today. Here's our chat. Hey, Brooke, how you doing? I'm so good. Thanks
00:02:03.140for having me. Thanks for being here. I want to start out by defining something that you talk
00:02:09.260about so wonderfully in your book. When it comes to women, what is the success wound? Yeah, in its
00:02:16.520most basic definition the success wound is the pain that comes from mistaking success productivity
00:02:22.920and achievement for self-worth it is a sinking empty cup feeling like no matter how much we
00:02:29.720achieve it never feels like enough and it makes us think thoughts like okay you know after this
00:02:35.740next busy season then I'll rest or I'm only as good as my last piece of feedback or you know
00:02:41.280is everybody mad at me? Everyone's mad at me. Am I going to get fired? Or if I don't keep my
00:02:49.000manager happy, then what's the point of anything? If I'm not the best, what's the point? All these
00:02:53.880thoughts that we have consciously or unconsciously about our relationship with work and success that
00:02:59.460we all feel, we all talk about, but we haven't had a name for before. And that is the success
00:03:05.380wound. And how how did we get here and why does this feel so unique to women? Yeah, the success0.99
00:03:17.680wound is in some ways a misnomer because it's really a cultural wounding that is the locus
00:03:22.580of control, but then creates a psychological, spiritual, emotional wounding that then impacts
00:03:29.920how we behave in the workplace. So, you know, I have been working with high achieving women
00:03:35.340in the workplace for the last 15 years, first as a person who worked at Google and now as an
00:03:42.640executive coach. And women would come to me with the very typical women's career issues, right?0.99
00:03:48.180I'm putting that in quotes, imposter syndrome, burnout, you know, low confidence, issues with1.00
00:03:55.000executive presence, underperforming, overperforming, and the rest of it. And I did a survey of over
00:04:01.16010,000, you know, high achieving women. And, you know, the data actually told a different story
00:04:07.780that these weren't their issues, but that they actually had three things in common. The first
00:04:12.520is that they all had a childhood experience of learning that the more that they achieved or
00:04:19.340lived up to a cultural or familial ideal of goodness, the more love and belonging they would
00:04:24.440receive. The second is that they all had this emptiness feeling, this almost like princess in
00:04:30.820the pee, 50 mattresses down, tiny little thought of like, hmm, am I enough? Is this enough? Am I
00:04:38.620good? It can also be misplaced as like almost like a yearning for something else, a feeling like
00:04:43.200wanting to come home or a searching for something, a desire for transcendence, presence, connection.
00:04:48.560And then the third thing that they all had in common was a habit of chasing more in order to quell this empty, empty feeling.
00:04:58.240And so that more was more approval, more significance, more validation, and on and on and on.0.97
00:05:03.760And so these three things are not unique to women.
00:05:06.880It's actually a human experience, right?0.99
00:05:09.400These three things making up our success wound.1.00
00:05:11.800But women, this is why you see women leaving the workplace in droves higher than, you know, ever before.1.00
00:05:17.720we are success wounds. We're almost like we're fed up with being in systems and in places that1.00
00:05:23.520are exploiting our success wounds to the point that they are. And I think we're in a unique
00:05:27.100position to heal these success wounds and to change our culture as a result. So that's how
00:05:33.300it impacts women. And, you know, of course, also men and women experience shame differently. So
00:05:38.560women experience shame as it relates to perfection and image and balance. Men experience shame as it
00:05:44.140relates to their ability to provide and be powerful. So our success wound for women really
00:05:49.080kind of hits at our desire for perfection, to be aspirational, enviable, perfect, balanced.
00:05:55.740And I think there's a cultural reckoning around that right now.
00:05:59.400I mean, I certainly hope so. I really do. How has this success wound impacted you personally?
00:06:06.840Oh, gosh. I mean, in a lot of ways, this book could be called Brooke Taylor's Success Wound
00:06:11.180because I'm an Enneagram three, which is like the achiever. I grew up in Silicon Valley. And
00:06:16.360certainly, I mean, maybe you relate to this. Do we I think we write the books we need. I feel like
00:06:20.660I was writing every word to myself, essentially. Fair point. Right. I was like, OK, this is a note
00:06:26.580to self is essentially the whole the whole book. But growing up in Silicon Valley, I was imbued
00:06:31.720with this culture of like, you know, if you can dream it, you can do it. Success is on the other
00:06:36.540side of your ability to work hard. And I was also a daughter of, you know, parents of the
00:06:41.500second wave feminist movement, a very fantastic, you know, encouraging idea that women could be
00:06:47.200anything and do anything. But in my childhood brain, I took all of this to mean that I had to
00:06:53.320be the best. I had to be the best at anything that I achieved. And I needed to ascend into
00:06:58.280these positions traditionally, you know, inhabited by men. And if I didn't, then I was a failure to
00:07:03.020my culture, to my mother, to my grandmother. I know that sounds extreme, but that's genuinely
00:07:07.200kind of like what was living in me at the time. And so I took this kind of gold star chasing
00:07:12.220mentality to a great college. But it's funny because I was always like an 89.5 student,
00:07:18.940like a B plus, almost A minus girl. And I went to, I didn't get into any of my top,
00:07:24.900you know, seven schools, but I got into McGill, which is the Harvard of Canada. I feel like I
00:07:29.500was always like just making it if that makes sense and so what I also took that to mean is like
00:07:34.900other people get to have success but I don't like I am just like you know I either didn't work hard
00:07:41.740or there's something constitutionally wrong with me and so I just set out you know I was always
00:07:47.620operating from that deficiency from that inadequacy from that desire to prove others
00:07:52.580wrong it's like no I am smart I am capable and so when I got my first job at Google
00:07:57.380it felt like the sigh of relief it was about thank god okay like i have this brand equity
00:08:04.060that i can borrow as my own i have the seal of approval i loved the question on dates or at
00:08:10.280dinner parties what do you do for work because i could tell them i worked at google and so you
00:08:15.400know understandably my week looked like this you know monday through friday i would work really
00:08:19.660hard closing deals i was managing 80 million dollars in ad revenue when i was 24 i really
00:08:25.240felt like I had arrived. And I was doing a good job. Like my hustle and my, you know, ability
00:08:30.900with people really translated well. But this success wound, this inadequacy, this sinking
00:08:37.560feeling, this, oh, you know, I'm not enough. I had to anesthetize on the weekends with drugs and
00:08:43.820alcohol. So I got really into partying as a way to blow off steam. And I wanted to be excellent
00:08:48.600at work. And I wanted to be excellent at the bar. I needed eyes on me in order to feel like I
00:08:53.340existed. And this, you know, I wanted to scream all the time, but I didn't know why I wanted to
00:08:59.880scream. I wanted to, you know, rip my skin off sometimes. I know that sounds extreme, but I was
00:09:05.640like I was living in this really confined reality, but I didn't know what to do about it. And then
00:09:11.100three things happened that kind of woke me up. The first is that I was sexually harassed by my
00:09:16.840direct manager, but I didn't report it because I was up for promotion and I didn't want to rock
00:09:22.260the boat. I didn't want to anger or embarrass the very people who could grant me the promotion,
00:09:27.920the recognition, the, you know, sense of place that I had at Google. So I buried it and I kept
00:09:33.820going. The second thing is that my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I think that was
00:09:38.700like maybe five weeks after this incident. And then from there, my drinking got worse and I hit
00:09:45.720rock bottom and realized I needed to get sober. So these three things really cause a lot of people
00:09:50.240to question. It caused me to question everything. I think only one of them would have been enough,
00:09:54.780but all three happening at once made me realize, okay, I have an addiction to alcohol, but I also
00:09:59.860have this addiction to approval and this insatiable need to belong to a culture that was just chewing
00:10:06.400me up and spitting me out. And so I really had to throw all of it out and start again.
00:10:12.100Yeah. And I just, I'm hearing this from so many women that I'm almost like, oh my gosh,
00:10:17.220wait am i doing this episode again oh no this is a different woman that has experienced this like
00:10:21.240this is insane i just i just finished an episode with my friend jane green the new york times
00:10:27.060best-selling author about literally the same thing wow she went through it 50 to try to heal this i
00:10:34.180mean it feels like an epidemic honestly i agree yeah an epidemic i think you know even online you
00:10:42.840see so many different schools of thought, right? It's like, de-center work, or here's how you get
00:10:49.080ahead, or, you know, you shouldn't be, you know, quiet quitting is kind of, you know, over right
00:10:54.240now more. It's like, I think they call it like the great hug. People are like hugging their jobs
00:10:57.820now. People are saying, you know, develop these side hustles, these other things. I think we're
00:11:02.680all just like looking for answers and confused about the role that work plays in our lives.
00:11:08.100But I think underneath it all is this success wound that's really driving a lot of it.
00:11:12.840Yeah, I think so. I mean, I also think that there's so much financial uncertainty and economic precarity right now that a lot of us, even those who would prefer to back away and not define ourselves only by different metrics of success, are terrified of what the future holds right now.
00:11:36.420Mm hmm. Yeah. I hear this a lot. I hear this from, you know, I work with a lot of women in tech, in finance, people who are entrepreneurs, people who are creatives. And yeah, there's this this feeling of uncertainty. What could happen? What could happen to my job? Am I going to be made redundant?
00:11:53.560And so, you know, I think that, you know, I don't have like a singular solution for all of these people, but some of the kind of ways that people are thinking about this is I think people finally realize that, you know, your work isn't your family. There's no such thing as a work family. Being loyal to an institution that's never going to be loyal to you back.
00:12:13.240And I think, you know, in a lot of ways, the corporation has been an incredible wealth creator, but I think a lot of people are trying to figure out, okay, what are other ways for me to be able to make money through times that change?
00:12:27.380Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Which is why I think so many of us are focusing on our own businesses, our own hustles and things that we can, that we have more control over. I mean, I know, I know that I am.
00:12:40.800All right. Great. Let's take a quick break. And when we get back, I want to talk a little bit
00:12:45.040about the healing. Where does the healing start? How do we even begin this?
00:12:56.180Okay. We are back. Talk to me a little bit about healing from what seems like one of those like
00:13:02.700gaping wounds, like that zit that you can't stop picking, honestly, from healing from something
00:13:09.400like this? How do we even start? Yeah. So let's take the wound, for example. If you were to fall,
00:13:15.860God forbid, fall, let's just say fall walking up the stairs in the subway, for example, and you
00:13:20.120hurt your arm, I might come with you and take you to the nearest emergency room. And what the doctor
00:13:24.920would ask is, okay, what happened? How hard did you fall? Where did you fall? What did you fall
00:13:29.340on? You'd get a diagnosis. And so that's the first thing that I do with my clients is I diagnose how
00:13:34.680their success wound shows up. How does it manifest in their life? And what are the consequences?
00:13:39.400And there are five primary ways that the success one shows up for working women in their lives.
00:14:37.240It could be the person who's, you know, languishing in the corporate role who secretly wants to be a fiction author but is too scared to even put pen to paper.
00:14:45.900It could be somebody who, you know, has been at middle management and wants to make it to the next level but isn't sure she can handle the pressure.
00:14:55.960I actually tend to be a little bit more of a hider.
00:14:58.620I have huge aspirations for my life and my career, but I also fear burnout and I fear not just failure, but will what I create matter? Will anybody care? And so that can sometimes stop me from going outside my comfort zone.
00:15:15.860Now, this book launch has been, I think, an exercise in exactly the opposite of that, which is healing for me, because often the healing comes in the opposite action, but that's the hider.
00:15:52.560this is the person who has an anxious attachment style and is constantly wondering like are they
00:15:57.620mad at me oh my god what does that tone mean what does the fact that my boss set up a meeting with
00:16:01.100me on friday mean to them success is being liked they want to be liked more than anything else
00:16:07.300and then finally we have a work hard play hard this is what i was when i was working at google
00:16:11.820this is the person who wants to be the best at what they do at work and the best and most elite
00:16:16.180in how they blow off steam, vacation, party, etc. They live in the pain, pleasure, seesaw of like,
00:16:23.640you know, that kind of like dopamine seesaw of trying to like balance things out. And the
00:16:28.440difference between the work hard, play hard and the grinder is in how they blow off steam. The
00:16:31.920grinder wants, does more work in order to feel more relaxed. The work hard, play hard puts the
00:16:37.340work aside and turns to unhealthy things and calls it balance. Now for a lot of women, they live in1.00
00:16:43.060this kind of like pleaser grinder combo that's very common where it's like I'll show you I'll1.00
00:16:49.240make you like me by how much I do and so it's kind of like an Enneagram where you could be like two
00:16:54.160at the same time if that makes sense but could you be all of them at the same time that is my
00:16:59.020dangerous question yes so you totally can so the psychological basis for this work is internal
00:17:05.460family systems if you've heard of this it's made the rounds kind of you know popular culture but
00:17:10.700It's this notion that we have these three parts of our psyche, and this one part of our psyche is called our protector self.
00:17:17.080And our protector self is aimed at making sure that none of that this wound or this fear of inadequacy, this gaping feeling of, you know, not enough, making sure that this wound doesn't get triggered.
00:17:28.900And so all five of these are actually parts of our protector self.
00:17:34.500And so our protector self can wear all these different masks, has all these different strategies.
00:17:39.980And so, yeah, none of us is a monolith.
00:17:43.840I've become so aware of the fact that all of these live within me and come out at different points in my career, different times, you know, when I'm on a deadline or a different project.
00:17:53.360And so, yeah, all of these are part of our protector self.
00:17:56.460And when we are working from our protector self, it means our success wound is calling the shots.
00:18:02.620And so the aim of healing is to restore this third part of our psyche, which is our true self, which might sound like an eat, pray, love term, but I promise is an actual psychological basis.
00:18:13.000Well, it does sound a little bit like our true self. I mean, honestly, this is just kind of a more regimented, psychological version of what I just talked about with Jane Green. Her new book is called Rewilding, and it comes from the phrase of, like, rewilding your garden and then trying to get to your authentic self.
00:18:33.080Mm-hmm. I love that we're all talking about this in different language.
00:18:37.400I know. I know. I mean, I think it's really important. And I think that's the reason, you know, that so many systems and so many men actually fear women of a certain age because we're finally figuring this out and coming into our authentic selves. And I think that when we do that, we're unstoppable.
00:18:54.820We're unstoppable. We're impervious to culture. We can't be controlled. We are emboldened and
00:19:02.480brazened. And yeah, it's a scary thing for somebody who's intimidated by that, for sure.
00:19:10.180Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So we've got all these different types,
00:19:15.120all these different wounds. Where do you even start?
00:19:18.720Sure. So we have these three selves, right? We have our true self, which is the part of us that
00:19:23.280is very naturally and effortlessly clear on who she is clear on what she wants and how to get it
00:19:29.420she's courageous she's confident she's able to connect with others in the workplace when you're
00:19:37.020connected with this true self you're regulated in your body you're able to have difficult
00:19:42.360conversations not without a flutter of fear but with clarity and being straight to the point
00:19:49.000You're able to get into a state of flow more often than not at work.
00:19:53.220You're able to be connected to a mission that you care about or the vision of where the
00:20:36.720And then we heal on the level of spirit.
00:20:39.020And so healing on the level of emotion is in chapter five.
00:20:42.980it's the chapter that I put off writing the most. I think I put it off. I just skipped right on over
00:20:48.740it. Does that ever happen to you where you just like have a behemoth and you're like, I'm going
00:20:52.100to come back to that one. Okay, I'm not alone. That was advice I got. I was like, okay, I just
00:20:56.680finished chapter four. Now I'm going to head into like, how do I translate this emotional healing
00:21:01.680that can happen in a session onto the page? And here's where I got to. So when our success wound
00:21:09.140is triggered for me what that feels like and I'm curious what this feels like for you it feels like
00:21:14.740a pit in my stomach and a tightness in my throat so most often these days my success wound sounds
00:21:21.480like um I've spent three years writing this book it's all going to be for nothing or if I just
00:21:27.060worked a little bit harder five months ago I would be having different results now or have I done
00:21:32.460enough have I really done enough is this all done um will this matter is it going to be crickets all
00:21:37.380the thoughts right and when i think those thoughts i get a pit in my stomach i get a tightness in my
00:21:42.920throat and i start to feel my energy just gets i i get drained i i get dazed my husband's like
00:21:49.300where are you like what's happening i'm like oh i'm just ruminating right ruminating what we do
00:21:54.460this is exactly what happens to me so this is my exact physical feeling my like the tightness in
00:22:00.240the front of my throat i just grabbed it so i probably sounded weird like right i'm like i must
00:22:03.900and then the pit in my stomach and then the spiral and I only get this I genuinely I get
00:22:12.720this around two things I get it around will my books be successful yeah and am I making enough
00:22:19.480money those those are the only two metrics that I really freak out about clearly they're aligned
00:22:26.960and I come from like an early childhood scarcity mindset so it makes sense I know all of this
00:22:33.840so rationally. And then I do exactly what you said. I'm like, did I do enough today to move
00:22:39.700the needle on the books? Did I, did I work hard enough? If I'd just done this, this could have
00:22:45.340happened. Did I fail at this? Yeah, I hear you. We're the same. And that's why I think it's so
00:22:52.080beautiful to bring language to the specificity of this because people can see themselves in it.
00:22:57.620um and so you know what you can do the next time this happens instead of trying to like
00:23:04.360logic your way out of it which is important that's you know that can be like the level of thought
00:23:09.200but what i'd like you to do first is i'd like you to put your hand on that area of your body like
00:23:14.900you already did and give that feeling three adjectives so for me it's like tight you know
00:23:22.700gripping throat or pit heavy pit in your stomach so giving that feeling three adjectives and
00:23:30.700asking the feeling the question not your head the question but the feeling the question what do you
00:23:37.380want me to know just that simple question what do you want me to know and having asked thousands
00:23:42.880of people having held people in the space where they're asking these feelings thousands of times
00:23:49.340the answer usually is i'm scared um i need to you know i'm scared what's going to happen next
00:23:59.000it's these survival fears it's i'm i'm alone it's all on me isolated it sounds isolated um and it
00:24:07.160sometimes sounds like a small child right like i'm scared i need a hug something like that
00:24:11.160you can also ask it the question um what are you afraid would happen if you know again asking
00:24:17.860feeling the question what are you afraid would happen and it often says things like you know
00:24:22.560it's all going to fall like you said it's all going to fall apart I won't be able to pay you
00:24:25.920know provide for my family I'm going to be embarrassed I'm a failure etc and so then you
00:24:31.440ask it the final question um what do you need what do you need in this moment and it the answer is
00:24:37.620never to work hard that's never actually the answer um the answer is always connection um I
00:24:45.680need to share this feeling with somebody else. I need a hug. I need reassurance. I need to be with
00:24:50.300this feeling. And so I find that so interesting because what this signals to me, you know, I'm
00:24:56.90010 years sober and they say in the rooms of recovery, the opposite of addiction isn't sobriety,
00:25:01.600it's connection. And the success wound is a spiritual malady that requires connection.
00:25:07.900A spiritual malady means it's like we're deficient spiritually in some way. And so it requires that
00:25:12.080reunification. And so that's usually what I do is I touch, I, you know, I ask the feeling these
00:25:18.760questions and then I give somebody a call or I share the thought with somebody else and I don't
00:25:24.600have them like placate over it. It's just being with somebody in that feeling. Does that resonate
00:25:28.480with you? No, it totally does. It totally does. But, you know, I will say on the flip side of
00:25:34.520that, sometimes you worry about bothering other people with these kinds of things, right? You
00:25:40.300ever feel that way um i guess insofar as like i am the i'm like outsourcing my therapy to others
00:25:49.380like i'm coming with more problems and solutions yeah i think um i i almost have the opposite
00:25:55.720problem actually i don't share enough um despite my profession i think because i'm a coach i'm so
00:26:01.340much more comfortable in the listening and helping stage than the being vulnerable stage
00:26:05.600but I think predicating the language on like this is just how I'm feeling right now I don't need
00:26:12.020solutions or you know this is this is what's happening right now and you know I just wanted
00:26:17.440to share this something like that and even if it's just like a hug or a friendly call
00:26:21.380that you're not even talking about what's happening I think that can be helpful too
00:26:26.200the key is to not get into the story the key is to not get into the story it's to stay in the
00:26:31.040feeling and to give that feeling what it needs in that moment. And often in those questions,
00:26:36.000we then unearth that kind of core belief, which we can then take to the next level,
00:26:40.200which is healing on the level of thought. So again, some of these core beliefs are,
00:26:44.880you know, if I'm not the best, I'm the worst. If I'm not booked and busy, then I'm not living.
00:26:49.720Okay, let's take one more quick break. And when we get back, I want to hear a little bit about
00:26:55.140how we can change this culturally. We've talked a lot about, you know, how we can change this
00:26:59.900on an individual level, but how can we shift the culture so that this doesn't happen to the next
00:27:06.200generation? Okay, we are back. Brooke, how can we shift the culture so that this doesn't happen
00:27:22.440to the next generation? Great question. You know, I became a mom 14 months ago. 15 months ago,
00:27:29.560I have a son, Crosby. And that is always the question that I get asked is like, OK, I'm aware of this in myself, but how do we raise kids that love to achieve but also love themselves, right, who like find something that they're passionate about, but not in a seeker way where it's like, oh, my God, I need this one thing in order to be happy.
00:27:47.260And how do I have them have a work ethic, but not in a grinder way where it's like their