Playing Big: For Women Who Want to Speak Up, Stand Out and Lead

“What’s the biggest challenge in your life?”

Which of the tools for quieting pachad might you like to try out?

The inner critic demands our attention. The inner mentor waits to be paid attention to.

Adrenaline coursing through our veins doesn’t help us deal with what feels emotionally scary—in fact, it makes it harder for us to cope because it interferes with our ability to think clearly. This gets in the way of our playing big because, of course, to stretch into playing bigger we need to take many emotional risks, doing things that expose us

Drop the idea of “self-promotion” and think about the concept of visibility instead.

2. Heightened awareness of others’ reactions. I call this “the noisy room.”

We feel pachad when the ego perceives something it feels will wound the ego’s fragile self-concept in some way. We feel yirah when the ego perceives that something has the potential to bring us into transcendence of the ego. Playing Big graduate Diana Tedoldi said it beautifully: “Yirah is the fear of dissolving a boundary, while pachad is the fear

What does she like to do first thing in the morning? How does she like to spend an evening? What kind of meals does she love to have? What kind of exercise or physical activity does she do, and what’s the attitude she takes toward it? How does she rest? How does she behave at family or social gatherings? What kind of clothes does she wear? We can a

Principle 4: Criticism Hurts When It Mirrors What We Believe about Ourselves