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

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

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

You don’t have to win the argument with your inner critic; you have to step away from the conversation.

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

name for her true essence.

This is the very heart of playing bigger: having the vision of a more authentic, fully expressed, free-from-fear you and growing more and more into her, being pulled by this resonant vision rather than pushing to achieve markers of success.

This is a complex issue for women, because in almost every professional field, the body of knowledge we absorb was shaped largely by male voices. In other words: becoming competent = becoming educated = learning and internalizing what men have said about the subject for the past few hundred years.

“It’s so helpful to have that distinction between life-giving fear/awe and lizard-brain fear. I deeply relate to the quaking sort of energy that comes with inhabiting a larger space. I like renaming it yirah rather than fear—and now I know to follow that thread. Now, I soothe myself when the pachad is up and step on in when it’s yirah.”

I started writing again and I held myself to one standard: trying to write the kind of work she would write—more honest, brave, and unconventional words than I would have written had I not had her in mind.

Feedback is vital not because it tells us about our own value but because it tells us whether we are reaching the people we need to reach.