Inside the Mindset of a Bitch on Shedding the Bitch Radio

Hello everyone and welcome to Shitting the Bitch Radio. This is Bernadette Boas and, um, sorry, I had a little bit of a— I dropped the microphone right on top of the laptop and it muted the radio, so, um, I wasn't sure where exactly I was. Um, anyway, welcome to Shitting the Bitch Radio on this wonderful Fall Tuesday. I hope everyone is doing well no matter where you are in the world.

I'm—

I am actually really good, but I will say really, really tired. So I'm going to use our discussion and I'm going to use your, um, energy. At least I'm going to pretend that there's energy flowing my way because a lot of you listen to this after I've actually held the program, but at the same time I'll listen to the, to the energy that you will flow as you're listening to this program, if you can get through it like as if I can get through it as well. But, um, because we're going to be talking about kind of what is in the mindset of a bitch, something I'm asked a lot about, something I was just asked about yesterday, so I thought I'd share it with you. And so that's what we're going to talk about today, but before we jump into all of that, I am attempting to test that video casting of the program. So it's not casting live, not live streaming at the same time. I'm just testing out another video application. So I will let you know on blogtalkradio.com/shadingthebitch as well as on Facebook and Twitter and everywhere else that we communicate with one another. Where you might be able to see that. But also know I'm kind of doing it— I'm doing it out of my home and I'm doing it out of pretty much my pajamas because I am so, so tired right now. And I'm heads down, as many of you know— haven't talked a great deal about it, but as many of you know, I'm heads down writing my screenplay with a November 1st deadline. At the same time, I haven't mentioned that we kicked off a Kickstarter campaign out on Kickstarter. You can look it up, it's Shedding the Corporate Bitch: From Book to Screenplay. And for those of you who don't know, crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, they're kind of ways to get your message out there, get your project known and, um, you know, made aware to a lot of people because they get a great following on those, um, type of sites, as well as to raise some funds for projects, in this case creative projects, that kind of need just a little bit of a push to get their project going or finished or even off the ground. So anyway, I won't spend a lot of time on that, but I would love for you to go check it out on Kickstarter.com. Just either— I believe you can just Google my name or just look under films and videos and you could probably even target down to Atlanta and you would find it. But that requires— the reason why I bring that up, and the only reason why I bring it up, is that requires a great deal of social media, social networking, social community building. And therefore, when I'm not working on the screenplay and when I'm not serving my clients or prospecting for new ones, I spend the 24/7 on kind of every social media site, blog, Tumbler, whatever the case might be, in order to get the message out, in order to kind of get support for that, for that campaign and project. So I'm just a tad overwhelmed, and at the same time I've got some— you'll see it if you see this video— I got— I have some eye issues going on, and so if my phone rings, it'll be my eye doctor. But so it's just kind of everything. You know, you ever have one of those days, you know, and I'm not bitching, that's not what we do here, despite the name. We actually look to shed any of that type of mentality, which again is our topic for today. Before I do that though, it is Tuesday, which means what? Ding, ding, ding! That Rich Tip Friday is right around the corner. Send me your questions, stories, challenges, anything that you need to know that I can provide you some tips, advice, or some tough love regarding your business or your life in any way, shape, or form. And if I can't answer it, I will get one of my many, many, many experts and resources. Although I want to shout out to all of my co-patriots that are out at CEO Space in Vegas at the moment. I'm sorry I can't be there. I definitely miss coming to the space, and hopefully maybe I'll see you at December. That is my plan. So for everyone, all of you out there in Vegas having a great old time, and know that for everybody listening, they don't gamble out there. As a matter of fact, it's kind of against, against everything about this, uh, entrepreneurial forum that they're attending. It's actually all the way out in Henderson, and there's no casinos to be found. So it is just heads-down business creation, business development, business expansion. It's quite phenomenal. And if any of you have questions in regards to that, feel free to include that in your Rich Tip question, and I'll take all your questions and answer them all throughout the day on Friday that you send in to me during the week. And you can send them in to me on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. I get a lot of them from LinkedIn, all the various groups that I'm a part of, as well as sheddingthebitch.com. And right here on BlogTalk, you can go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitch Bitch and leave comments there as well. Okay, so other than that, I found, you know, you all know how I love, you know, to kind of expose you of some new artists, new music, just tidbits of it. Don't want to kind of infringe on any copyright issues or anything, so I kind of often grab things off of YouTube, and I went looking I went looking and basically I put in the search bar, you know, video songs about bitches. That's what I'm looking at right now, video songs about bitches, being that that's what we're talking about. And I have got to play this for you because if, you know, you might respond as I did. And I won't tell you how I responded, but I'll just tell you this: on their face, on their video kind of main page, it says what they the hell? I'm not a misogynist! This song is just a tease— it's called The Bitch Song, and I was really excited to listen to it until I did. But here you go, here you got a few bars for ya. And from Morro Sovereign... Ahhh bitch!

Bitch! Ooh bitch! You smell like dirty bitch. Oh bitch, bathing will wash away the itch. Yeah bitch, when you explore the ridge, you shake your ass and show your boobs and do their hips of gold. You rich, but fuck the rich. Yeah bitch.

But, and I don't know how you reacted to that, but pretty much you heard me. I just kind of went, okay, come on, you know, like you, we spend a lot of times in our daily lives, especially if we have a business, we have a brand, a book, something that we're working on that we're trying to get exposure to, and we're trying to do it with kind of credible, you know, something to give to the world versus take from the world. And it's just not easy. You know, people think it's easy to create a million views or a million followers or fans, and you all know my, my year-long challenge around that and my effort in doing that. And here, so I go to Google this, and here this YouTube video has gotten 95,351 views. I'm responsible for like 3 of them because I kept kept having to come back in and out of it as I went on to search. And then there's these other songs, She Only Bitches When She Breathes, and there's a few I won't totally offend anybody. And, you know, so I'm sitting there, and of course Britney Spears comes to the top of the list because I guess she had a video call and a song called Work Bitch, and that's gotten like 28 million views. My point being this, I mean, you know, as much as I want something to go viral and I would love for something, you know, to be put out there and go crazy and bring a lot of attention to what it is that we do here at Chinas and Bitch and in our community, I'm not going to, you know, I'm not gonna do that. But at the same time, you know, I got a good laugh. I just kind of kept rolling my eyes, and he has disclaimers all over his videos that he does not mean to offend and he's just doing this for fun and all that kind of good stuff. So I guess he's gotten some backlash as a result of the very, very value-added song that he published. But anyway, it was fun. So, all right, inside the mind of a bitch. Let me know if you have any particular questions. What happened and how this came about? Was yesterday I was sitting with a friend. Thank you, Jennifer Georgioni. I always get her name wrong. Georgino? Georgino. Jennifer Georgino. And I was, I was sitting talking with her at my hangout, Caribou Coffee in Buckhead. Shout out to all of you. That's where I wrote my book and now my screenplay. And what I needed her to do with me in reviewing my screenplay is I really needed her to kind of acting as a fan or a moviegoer. I needed her to— I needed her to kind of ask me questions and as if she doesn't know anything about me, anything about the story, the book, but really just the concept of why would someone go down the path of becoming a nasty person. And basically, what would she want to know about that? What would she want to learn about that? What would she want to take away from that? And it kind of stemmed into a very, very active dialogue, of which, you know, she was kind of taken aback by some of my responses. And then she said that she had learned some things as a result of some of my responses. And therefore, I thought well, it's probably a good opportunity to educate all of you. So many people aren't sure of how to deal with a nasty person, a bully boss, whatever the case might be. And, you know, and I try— I tend to make it very simplistic, but I won't give that away just yet. And so I just thought that maybe it would be good to kind of get under the covers or under the skin of someone like myself who claims to be a reformed bitch. And, you know, I can't convince you of that. I'll send you to Amazon to read some of the reviews of my book and, you know, and, and whatnot. And hopefully just trust that my, you know, that I'm credible in my story. Why would anybody make it up, quite honestly? But anyway, so I thought I would share with you some of the questions she asked me and my responses to it. And I'm not even going to read the kind of the responses that I wrote down as a result of that conversation because I'll get to use it as content and kind of fuel my ongoing screenplay writing, but I just want to give you the responses right from my gut and my heart. So I'll just use the questions. So her, one of her first questions were, well, you know, what made you transform? And I'm going to put some words in her mouth, from a young sassy girl to, you know, a bitch at work or even at home. And so really, you know, why does someone just decide to start lashing out on people and being nasty to people and cruel? And it's not as easy easy as that. It's not as easy as someone, um, generally it's not as easy as someone makes a conscious decision in regards to it. Though I did surprise her when I did tell her that it was a conscious decision for me, uh, going down that path. It wasn't, you know, something that I was born with. It wasn't something that I was as a kid. Yes, I was very precocious, and you know, my brothers and sisters might not agree with my statements, that I wasn't a little bit of a pain in the rear end. I just don't know that they would actually consider me hurtful or demeaning or curt to anyone, you know, before I was off to college, off on my own, off to make my own decisions and, and pave my own path. So when she asks, you know, what made you transform, the only thing I could tell tell her honestly was it was for me a conscious decision. You don't find that for many, but it was for me. And her immediate response was like, "Why?" And it wasn't because of the typical responses. It wasn't because I was a woman and I felt like in order to compete in the business world with all the men, I needed to be. It had nothing to do with that. I have 6 brothers. And a father who never differentiated between a guy and a girl. I mean, certainly my dad didn't. I mean, did he have certain wants for the girls versus the guys? Mm, sure, but not— but again, not really. My older brothers and sisters might think so, but by the time it got down to me, I'm 8th in the brood, by the time it got down to me, I really never saw that difference. I never saw at all my parents, or my father especially, coddling the girls and getting the guys to like, man up. I mean, we all competed. We all— he kind of made that a mandate that we all play sports, we all play music of some kind, we all go off, and if it was up to him, we'd all go off and see the world before we even settled into college, let alone getting married, having kids. And so forth and so on. So it wasn't really that stereotypical gender issue, and it was more so the influences around me. And again, that happens with a lot of people. They see the influence of nasty people, or they experience, you know, the mean girls at school, and they did— they decide to to kind of take on that same persona in order to combat that person, in order to be able to confront and deal with that. And then of course you have the girls and the women, and I get a lot of them all the time, that come up to me and say, well, I like being a bitch because I can get what I want by being a bitch. And so we'll talk about that later because, you know, that I certainly just kind of very subtly tell them how wrong of an attitude that is. But anyway, so in regards to her first question, it was a conscious decision. The people around me had what I wanted. They had power, position, and prosperity, as I call it. You can kind of even, um, uh, narrow that down to basically it's ego, it's about greed, and it's about entitlement or entitlement. And that is what I wanted. I, you know, I wanted— I didn't care that I had an ego. I definitely wanted money, and if titles got me the money, then that's what I wanted as well. And the people around me during college, during my first years of my corporate life, that was the attainment of those people that I worked with. And of course, those people that were in higher positions than I had, than I was, certainly had those things as well, but more so because I wanted their positions at the same time. It all came together to kind of convince me that if they have the things that I want, then I need to be, I need to mirror that type of persona, that type of person. And that's what I went about doing. And so to answer her question, that was basically it. It was a conscious decision on my part and to become a person that, you know, did what she needed to do in order to get what she wanted. Now, some people might not have found me to be manipulative per se. At the same time, it was certainly one of demand, one of command, one of curttness and demeaning, and just outright bulldog, you know, pursuing what it was that I wanted. Her next question was, didn't it go against who you were and what you learned growing up? Oh, sure. You know, my family, my parents especially, I think they thought I was going through just a phase, you know. Oh, it's just a phase, she'll come out of it one day. Sure, it went against everything of who I was. And eventually I learned that, but it took me about 25 years to kind of really understand that and kind of snap out of it, so to speak. But yes, it went against everything my family taught me. It went against everything you're probably told each and every day to treat people with kindness. My dad's saying was always, leave people in places better than how you found them. You know, it was definitely against the grain brain. And, you know, my younger brother and sisters— I've spoken to you about this before— they used to call me their 3F sister: Foxy, Flaky, and Far Out. And then when I went off to Florida, it was Far Away in Florida, so it turned to 5F. So yes, you know, that person, that persona that I adopted, or at least I thought I was adopting, certainly did, um, did manifest itself, uh, purposely. And then over time, it kind of just seeped into my being, and it was no longer a mask, uh, at least not kind of a temporary one that I could take off and on very easily, as I had hoped it would be. It actually kind of became me. And, um, that's— that, that'll— we'll talk about that in a minute. Uh, all of you are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio. If you're just joining us. This is Bernadette Boas, and we're talking about getting inside the mindset of a bitch. I'm hoping to glean some light for you as to how to deal with that type of person. At the same time, what can you learn from kind of people that are— that struggle with being that type of person? Because trust me, we are not born— and that Jennifer actually asked that, do you think this is something Is it something that you're born with or that you learn? And I said, how many babies do you know are born bitches? So, but it was a good question. It was a good question. And so it's something that is learned, therefore it can be something unlearned. So whether you're the one, you know, projecting and lashing out, or if you're the one being the victim and having it projected and vomited all over you, I'm hoping to glean some light as to what you can do to either combat it or to shed it, as we say here at Shedding the Bits Radio. All right, so why didn't you fight against it and just be you? Now that's a little bit more complicated of a question and an answer. Again, you know, you get to a certain point, and it varies for people people, but you get to certain stages of your life, um, where you're— it's almost like what Miley Cyrus is going through right now. You know, she's trying to leave the Hannah Montana, you know, persona behind her. Therefore, in order to do that, as talented and as skilled and as smart and as good of a marketer and a business person she might be, she also recognizes that she needs to do something drastic in in order to get people's attention. And, you know, no one would ever, you know, accuse her anymore of being Hannah Montana, right? So it's kind of, you know, on that realm. I didn't fight against it because when I left home and went off to college and all of a sudden was amongst, you know, the wannabes of Boca Raton and the riches of, you know, Palm Beach, and I come from a family of 14, middle class, you know, wearing hand-me-downs my entire life, you know, I'm now exposed to something that actually is getting me closer to what I really want. Remember, power, position, and prosperity. And therefore, those ambitions kick in, those greeds kick in, those— the closer they get to you, the more anxious you get toward, you know, obtaining them, achieving them. So it's not as— it's not an easy thing to answer. All I can say is I didn't fight against it because the brass ring coming around the— the— what are those things called? Oh my God, I'm drawing a blank, but you know what I mean— was getting closer and closer to me, and I had rabbit. And to answer the other part of the question, I didn't remain me because I questioned whether or not the real me could actually obtain those things on my own, and we'll get to that in a minute. But basically, it was more so that brass ring was shining ever so brightly, and it was just hands, touches away. And therefore, um, probably— let me relate it to maybe what's some of you go through. If you're business owners or entrepreneurs of any kind and, you know, your food, your house, your well-being is dependent on you earning income and therefore getting clients, there's a tendency to get desperate when you need something really bad or you want something really bad. You tend to get desperate about it, so you'll grab at any client, any prospect, any money that is is giving you away, whether it's good or bad, whether it's good money, bad money, good clients, not so good clients, you tend to do that. Same within corporate, especially let's just talk from a female perspective. I had this conversation with a large group this past week, you know, even the women have a tendency that when an opportunity for promotion is up and it doesn't happen that often and whether it's a male position, female position or both, you know, there's a tendency to, you know, all of a sudden the claws come out, as they say, because everybody wants that position because the next one might not open up, might not open up for a while. So there's a tendency to kind of get a little bit desperate and, and anxious about pursuing that, and therefore people do and will get get a little bit bitchy about it, whether you're male or female, quite honestly. So there's a lot of dynamic, there's a lot of psychology, there's a lot of mental games that we play as things, as those brass rings get shinier and shinier in front of us. Hey Charlie, what's up? Charlie always wants to say hello, doesn't he? What's up? Why don't you go lay down, bud? Okay. Okay, so that is kind of the response to that because the other part of it will come in a minute and— 2 minutes, 2 seconds. Okay, so nothing like taking a break on a radio show. Okay, so, um, so didn't it bother you— I can't read this— didn't it bother you the other women— oh, didn't it bother you to intimidate or hurt or give pain to other people? Again, you have to keep my motivations in mind, okay? You have to keep those things in mind. We're in the inside the head of a bitch, inside the head of someone who's very greedy, inside the head of someone who is very self-centered, very selfish at the time, and not necessarily their natural self, going back to what Jennifer said. So you have to keep that that picture in your mind and then answer that question, or wait to hear the answer to that question. The question being, again, didn't it bother you to intimidate or hurt or wreak havoc on other people? And there's two parts to this. Of course, the, you know, underneath, deep in the belly, I would have to say yes. However, I just didn't think think about it. There were times that I absolutely didn't think about, didn't care about it, didn't anything about it. It was just the way I operated. It was just the way I went about life at the time. It was just the way I put my feet on the ground in the morning after getting out of bed and I went out in the world. You know, only until recently, the past 3 or 4 years, really learning about the Law of Attraction and some of those other things, have I really understood the whole meaning about, you know, the energy you put out in the world is what you get back. You know, how you serve other people or how— what you do for other people is what you get back from other people. The type of people you hang out with— or I'm sorry, the type of people you are is the type of people you're going to attract in your life. And if you were to look around your circle, they reflect you very much so. Male, female, old, young, it doesn't matter. Just take a look, break them down, and you'll see them being a reflection of you. So that said, you know, in that mindset, they're just not thinking about it. And quite honestly, they're not caring about it, because again, that brass ring is sitting right out there in front of them, and they're needing to— they're needing to grab at it. And when they grab at it, they need to make sure that they're able to actually hang on to it. So they're going to do anything, and anybody that gets in their way of that, including myself, is going to wreak havoc, you know, be wreaked of their havoc. Is that— that's not right, but you know what I'm saying. So they're going to fall victim. So that's the other part of the, of the equation that you have to think about is is that as people really, you know, kind of get closer and closer to their goal and their ambition, they're kind of losing sight of what that means to the other people around them. And again, innately, deep down inside underneath their heart and belly, they, you know, aren't people who are naturally haters. But at the same time their greed is getting the better of them. Um, so, okay, so the other part of that is why the question was, didn't it bother you that people were intimidated, scared, or even, um, hurt by you? The other part of that is, uh, and you'll, you know, you hear this when even young girls or women say, I like being a bitch because it gets me what I want. There's an element that is kind of a rush, and you know, you can look at any one of your— what you might consider to be your mean bosses or your bitchy bosses— and you're going to find an element that they get off on the fact that when they walk in the room, you squirm, or when they, you know, call you into their office, you get really nervous or anxious. Or when you leave a room, you know, a group of you gather together and talk about that person. There's an element of an ego trip in all of that. Many of, many of their behaviors are even very conscious, you know, when they are, you know, out and about, or when they're sitting in a room, you know, they're very much aware of their posture. They're very much aware of their behavior. Behavior. They're very much aware of how they're coming off. They're just not thinking and caring about whether or not, um, it's impacting you in a negative sense. Uh, they— that's more their desire than it is their concern. So you have to recognize that, that for some it is an ego trip. It is, you know, the fact that they really like the fact that people are intimidated by them by scared by them, grow insecure around them, get nervous with them, or even are subjected and hurt by them. It's kind of unfortunately narcissistic, and they kind of enjoy it in their own sick, pathetic way, which I I can now say since I was that type of person. It was, yeah, I mean, I got off on it. It was definitely an ego trip despite what my underbelly was telling me because I wasn't able to hear it. We don't hear anything until we are ready to receive it. We're not able to see things until we're able to, you know, really accept it. And therefore, it could have been yelling, screaming, hitting me upside the head, it wasn't gonna happen. You're listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio, and this is Bernadette Boas. We're talking about getting in the head and the mindset of a bitch and kind of trying to glean light as to their motivations and agendas in a way, in such a way that you're gonna be able to use it to your advantage in how you interact with them, how you deal with them, and then how you respond to them. And not literally necessarily responding one-on-one with them, but more so whether or not you allow them to control you or you control the situation. So, and that's really what I want you to gain from this conversation, is there are things you could be doing in order to not allow those type of behaviors to either rob you of your security, your self-worth, your confidence, or your, um, or your own kind of power, so to speak. And there's very simple things that you could do in order to achieve that, because this will bring me to a question that's coming up later, but I'll bring it up now. I wrote it in a blog this morning if you want to check it out on sheddingthebitch.com. You know, bitches, young or old, all they are are children, insecure children that are masking those insecurities, those intimidations, those negative feelings they have of themselves, and, um, any other negative, ugly belief system that they possess. It's, it's not about you in any way, shape, or form. Sure, could someone you come across not like you, especially if they actually know you, because those that don't know you have no clue, so they can't not like you. But, you know, those that maybe work with you on a day-in, day-out basis, experience you, can they draw a conclusion that they don't like you? Sure. The difference is, is when they take that to the next level and they're not just accepting you and adjusting or adapting to you if that is the requirement or the case, and more so they're just making judgment without any reasoning or cause and they decide to start lashing out or vomiting all over you. And what you need to keep in mind is anytime they're doing that, they're actually projecting their own junk, or what we call bitches here, that they can't face or they don't want to face or they're not ready and prepared to face themselves. That's all it's about. It's not about, in this case, let's say it's not about Ann Jones, it's about Bernadette Boas. I'll, you know, use myself and throw myself under the bus, but it would be about Bernadette, not about Ann, should that be the case. And if you can really, really understand that and believe that, and you'll be able to walk away and not let that individual and that interaction kind of steal anything from you emotionally, mentally, psychologically, spiritually, anything. But, and we'll talk more and more about that and as we go down this. So why did you maintain that persona for so long? So why would someone— we're not born bitches, it's learned. And so why would someone kind of hang on Now there's a few things around this as well. One is I can only think of two situations in 25 years that someone actually called me out as being a witch. That was a very good friend of mine, Deborah McCartney, who's now up in, up in New York. And we went to school together in Florida. We were in college together, and then we maintained friends— friendship since then. Lost contact with her for probably 10 or 12 years, but we definitely were close friends after we left college, and we continued hanging out probably into, I don't know, maybe late 30s— or I'm sorry, late 20s, early 30s. And I just can recall this one time we were at we were out at dinner and I guess I vomited— well, not guess, I vomited all over the waitress. And flat out, no hesitation, she just was like, you are such a bitch. And I just kind of looked at her like, where do you get off, you know, telling me, you know? So of course I'm kind of projecting back onto her, right? And I'm not taking that in. At least I didn't at that point in time, but obviously I did because I've never forgotten that conversation. The other time was a group of us— fast forward, oh geez, I'm aging myself— fast forward maybe 10 years, and I'm up here in Atlanta from Florida, and I'm out with the girls on a Friday night at Rock Bottom here in Buckhead. And I was running late from work, which I never do on a Friday because I always had this thing that Friday nights, you know, I could work 24/7, 7 days a week, but Friday nights at 5 o'clock, I'm done and I spend, you know, socialize with my family or my friends. So I'm running late. I'm all dolled up from work and I come into this bar and there's a couple of cute guys hanging out with the girls and so I join them. And, you know, obviously I'll just give you their view. All of a sudden, one of the guys, from whatever it was that I said when I approached them, and then what I continued to say or not say, or what vomit I projected all over them, turned and said, my God, you are such a bitch. Do you have some— do you have a broomstick up your butt? And just looked, and I just looked at them like, oh, it's one thing to hear that from a woman, it's another thing in public to hear it from a guy. And yet, you know, when he walked away and I just ripped him a new butt, you know, to my girlfriends at least, they kind of supported it. They were like, but again, I didn't hear it. It kind of was like, okay, whatever, who cares, he's worthless and he's not you know, he's not worth talking about. I did— it didn't, it didn't seep in, it didn't impact me in any way, shape, or form. It didn't influence me to all of a sudden change and be different, and I don't want somebody thinking of me like that, so forth and so on. I just kind of made— re-made, what would I say, excuses, I'll call them, of why it It's all about him. It's his issue. He's the obvious ass, you know. He was short. He's dealing with Napoleon complex, whatever the case might be. I made it up to justify that I'm not really that person he just claimed I am, and it's all about him, not about me. So think about that. How sad and pathetic is that? Seriously, I mean, I'm— I can admit that it's sad and pathetic. Now think about all the people that you've ever encountered and/or you know that act out in that way. They're masking, they're hiding, they're making every excuse in the book, they're playing victim, it's everybody else's fault except their own, so forth and so on. Whether it comes out as being a bitch or it comes out as being a lazy bum or it comes out of being whatever it is, they're, you know, they're wearing that mask, they're wearing that, that barrier because they're not ready and they're not prepared to look at themselves squarely in the eyes and in the heart to kind of really be honest about who they are and what they're putting out into the world. And it's significantly impacting themselves as much as it's impacting everybody else around them, which we'll talk about in a minute. So you're listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio, and this is Bernadette Boas, and our episode today is all focused on getting inside the mindset of a bitch and what can you learn from that for whether or not you're working at home or in an office, whether or not you're dealing with family, friends, or peers, whether or not you're, you know, a teenager or you're a grown man or woman. We all deal with it. Whether we are that person. And when I use the word bitch, it doesn't even need to be the extreme. It doesn't need to be— I'm drawing the blank, a blank on her name from Deborah Royce Prada. It doesn't need to be that extreme. It could be just subtle negativities, subtle insecurities, subtle ugliness that you're projecting out, or someone is projecting out. And I'm just trying to help you understand where that's coming from and what you can do to combat it if you're the victim, and/or shed it if you're the one, uh, kind of impacted or dealing with that type of, um, that type of attitude or persona.

Excuse me.

Getting a little dry. So, so that's just really important to understand is we're not talking the extreme here, we're just talking even the subtleties along the vein of someone who is putting out in the world anything but who they truly, truly are. And again, you're not going to see that I, you know, those two individuals are over 25 years, the only two who ever called me out for being such a nasty person. And someone asked me the other day, I was speaking to a large group of professional women, and they even asked me, "Well, you know, didn't your boss say anything to you, you know, when you were let go? Was that the reason that they gave you?" And I said, "No." I said, No, you know, if you looked at my performance reviews for 25 years, you're never going to see, you know, that I'm jeopardizing anything as a result of, you know, the person I was projecting out onto other people. You're never going to see it. You're just going to see that I'm a workhorse. You're going to see that— you might see that in some of the development areas. You know how on performance reviews it says that these are areas that you need to work on? You might see something in that respect, but you're never gonna— and/or you're never going to hear, or at least I didn't, someone sitting me down and saying, you know what, you're jeopardizing your career, you're jeopardizing your ambitions, you're jeopardizing that brass ring you're so consumed with, and therefore this is what I, you know, what I think you need to be doing instead. No one kind of coached me out of it or led me in a different direction. And it's sad to say, and it's sad to kind of acknowledge that, because again, when, when I was let go and there was no kind of— that wasn't the reasoning. There was a whole number of other things, but that wasn't the reasoning. You know, you kind of sit there and say, well, do I then discount it and never kind of confront and face that? Or do I confront and face that despite the fact that they may never have been willing to confront and face it? And I chose to do that. I chose to say, okay, so even though it, you know, flattening of the organization, didn't get along with Joe Blow, whatever the case might be, were being the reasons given, I also had to add the fact that I wasn't the leader, I wasn't the person that was going to be able to go to the next level with this organization, and probably any organization, as long as I possessed such a nasty, nasty leadership, or leadership style and attitude. Okay, so why, okay, so why did you, all right, why did you believe you maintained this mask for so long? So we talked about why I maintained it for so long. You know, when the money comes and the promotions come and the titles come, the office comes and the nice possessions come and the cars come, um, you're thinking everything's working, everything's just kind of humming along beautifully. So you just keep going down that path. There's no— nothing, nothing to, um, really kind of force you out and shift you out of that. And that was my case. There was nothing drastic. Like, I was actually talking to my editor of my book originally, and when I was, you know, asking myself— I knew I had to write the book because it's written as an apology. I knew I had to write the book, but then I kind of said, and I kind of questioned, you know, the kind of the popularity that it ever would be because I thought, you know, it's not as if I've had anything drastic happen to me.

And I—

even Jennifer and I yesterday I have had this conversation. It's not as if anything traumatic, you know, happened to me. It's not like I went off and all of a sudden I was faced with life or death, or I was faced with disease, or I was faced with, you know, a situation that was what people would call, you know, movie material, so to speak. Mine were more subtle, and yet I have learned over the last several years, and what I'd like you to learn too, is what's between your ears and inside your head and your heart can do either more good or more damage to you than anything, any illness, any, you know, dramatic event in your life. It's all about how you process beliefs about yourself, how you process experiences experiences and events and learnings and what you take in and how you take them in. And therefore, a lot of mine, as I did write the book and now the screenplay, and I'm kind of reliving these things, it's just shocking to me how these subtleties, how these very innocent, not even kind of overt situations in my life wreak such havoc on my on my mind, which, you know, caused me to then lash out in a way that I could hide what I was actually feeling and not feeling. And therefore, that's how a bitch is born, and that's how it lives on, is if it's working for you. I was on Mad Cow Radio, if any of you are familiar with that. Mad Cow Radio out of Chicago, very popular. I was on probably last spring, and he had, you know, was asking me about shedding the bitch, and he said, but Bernadette, you know, it's proven that women who are bitches make 12% more salary than those that aren't. And, you know, so why wouldn't someone, you know, why wouldn't someone want to kind of continue down that path? And I said, well, it just depends upon how you define success and how you define happiness and what it is that you want in your life. And he blew me off at that point because that was getting a little bit too soft and woo-woo for his audience, and actually for me, quite honestly, but it's the truth. It's, you know, it depends upon how you define success and happiness and what it is that you want out of this one life that you have. So he kind of said, okay, nice talk to You gotta go. But anyway, but it's true, it's true. Yes, I could have continued down that path and be a very wealthy woman and not have pursued my dreams and my goals these past 4 years, not have, you know, lost all my money, not have, you know, sacrificed a great deal in pursuit of my dreams and my goals. But I also wouldn't be as happy and content as I am I am today. Despite all the struggles and all the hard work that goes into pursuing your dreams and goals, I would never be here, um, doing what I'm doing. And therefore, you know, it just depends upon what your meaning of success is and happiness is. All right, um, so why did you maintain it for so long? What would you tell others who are confronted by a bitch or who themselves possess bitch-like behaviors. So the former, what would I tell others who are confronted? Again, we mentioned this at the top of the hour. We're talking about, for those of you who might just be joining us, we're talking about how to deal with, well, how to get under the covers of a mindset of a bitch. That's our first main core conversation. And then from there, what can you do if you're confronted or combat that, you know, you kind of have to combat that type of attitude and persona. And so on that part of it, of the question, I would say this: remember, someone who's projecting their junk on you and it's coming across as someone very cruel, very curt, very demeaning, very, um, antagonistic just very, very inconsiderate, disrespectful, they've got their own issues and their own bitches, as we call them here, that they're dealing with that's causing them to have that. And it includes attitudes and biases and bigotries and, and all that kind of good stuff too. There's obviously things that they have yet to deal with and confront for themselves and therefore they— the easiest thing to do is make judgment on other people and to lash out on them as opposed to lashing out on themselves. Now most likely you can probably look at that person and you would have looked at me and seen the same thing. Most likely not only are they lashing out on you, they are lashing out on themselves. Now it might not be as obvious or as visible as it is to you. But what I mean by that is, you know, when I looked at, you know, how I never— you know, I did not have a very, uh, uh, real long-term intimate relationship in all of those years. And I was drinking too much. I was socializing, like partying, going— I hate the word partying because it makes it sound like, um, Lindsay Lohan. But I was going out too, too many nights a week considering, you know, now beyond your 20s, now you're into your 30s and you're into your early 40s. It's got kind of time to grow up, and yet I still wasn't quite there yet. I didn't want to quite grow up yet because I didn't want to sit at home and kind of face myself in the mirror and have to deal with me and/or whoever it would be that I'd be with. It was much easier to just constantly feel like I had to be out. It was the same reason why I felt like I always had to be somewhere, everywhere, and it killed me for years to the point of like almost, you know, panic attacks that if I was missing out on anything, you know, I had to be somewhere because if I missed out on anything, which reminds me, that is a great— oh, you guys helped me find something for my screenplay. That I totally forgot about. Hold on a second. Cereal. I'm just gonna make a note of cereal. And you know, when you see it in the movie, you can say, oh my gosh, I helped her with that on Chasing the Bitch Radio. You can ask me about that on Facebook or something. What does cereal mean? But anyway, so what would I tell people? So just remember that when you're confronted and dealing with somebody is feel so feel pity for them, recognize that you really don't know what's going on in their own lives. And obviously something is, because the only reason— remember, bitches aren't born, they're learned, they're grown, you know, and they're transformed. And they can transform out just as— just not as easily per se, but just as over time, naturally. So you just have to recognize that and therefore don't allow them, even though it will impact you. If you all of a sudden have someone in your face and you have someone in your face every day for weeks or months or even years in the workplace or even at home, you know, it will obviously impact you, don't get me wrong. But yet if you could just also recognize that this is not about you, You know, that's why they tell kids and they tell wives and they tell victims, you know, of abuse, especially whether it's psychological or physical, it's not about you. You did nothing wrong. The same goes, the same goes, because it isn't about you. It's just them, you know, unsure and unwilling to deal with their own junk, and therefore they're lashing out on you.

Excuse me.

Okay, the second part of that question is, what if you're the one who possesses a bitch-like behavior? And all I can say is, shit it, bitch. No, kidding. Well, yes, I am serious, but, you know, recognize the fact that you don't want to be always in a knot, in a wad. You don't want to always be, you know, full of angst and attitude and negativity and And you know, you don't want to be the one that people don't want to be around because you're just too negative and you talk down about everything and nothing's ever, ever sunny and bright. It's always black and gloomy. You don't want to be that person. And so you have to do whatever you have to do to kind of recognize that in you. Ask people in your circle, you know, do ask for personal professional assessments at work, and from people that'll give you some straight constructive feedback. You know, go and do work on your own, see a therapist, whatever the case might be. If you sense in any way, shape, or form that you're not being who you truly are, then you know you owe it to yourself to seek the support and the help and the resources to help you Discover, confront, and shed those things. Because again, we talk about it a lot here, life is way too short and goes way too fast for you to live as anybody but yourself and to be unhappy and to be lonely and to be in pain and to be, you know, kind of hiding behind a mask of any kind that isn't who you truly are. So that's what I would definitely tell you. And then of course, reach out to me and I'll be— and I'd love to just even go into that even further with you. And then lastly, what do I do and what am I doing to kind of continue my shedding process? Or am I done? You're never done. Even our Shift to Riches Formula I talk about it every once in a while here, is you discover, confront, and you shed the bitches that are in your head and your heart so you can create and accelerate the riches you want in your life. So what I tell people is it's an iterative process. It's something that you might deal with certain insecurities, negativities, ugly belief systems about yourself, like I have over the years, and find the fact that you can create and accelerate new riches and whatever it is that you do want out of life. And then you go to pursue those new riches and those new goals and those new dreams, like I am with the screenplay, for instance. And new bitches crop up, you know, because remember, bitches are your internal junk. They're not people. They're that inner junk that you're dealing with in your head and your heart that's keeping you from something. So all of a sudden, you know, with my screenplay Play and my Kickstarter program, you know, people don't, don't reach out and support. People speak down and kind of try to kind of bust your bubble about whether or not you're going to be successful. People will criticize you and critique you in ways that you didn't ask for, or you didn't even ask to be critiqued or assessed. They'll have their own opinions. Or in a lot of cases, they'll just go quiet and not say a word, which can even be more stressing and disappointing. And so you're going to go through this iterative process of really being able to discover and confront those things, those feelings, those insecurities, those doubts, those negativities that you might have now developed as a result of the new path you're on. And your goal is to— now you have tools and resources and support from that first go-around, at least here in the Sheddin' the Bitch community you do. And therefore it's up to you to kind of use those tools, resources, and support to work your way out of those bitches so you can move forward and create and accelerate even new riches, or continue down the path of what it is that you're doing. And that's what I am doing right now, to answer your question. Or to answer Jennifer's yesterday, what is— I just go down the path of kind of facing those things head-on and not allowing it to impact me. And when it does, then I just reach out to many of my resources. I talk a lot about Joan, my business coach. If it wasn't for my Friday morning conversations with her, I'd probably be a basket case right now, laying on the couch in a fetal position, eating bonbons. So whatever you need to do, and I'll be that Joan for you if you ever need to. So that said, lively conversation, as lively as it could be with me. 90 seconds. And I am just hoping and hopeful that you'll be able to glean something out of this discussion and this dialogue blog with you. And if you have any feedback or comments or critiques, constructive ones, feel free to do that right here at blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitch. You can do it on Facebook, Twitter, or on sheddingthebitch.com when you either download this, listen to it, or watch it. At the same time, Rich Tip Friday is coming up, so pose your questions and your challenges and your stories there, and I'd be more than happy to to spend the day addressing those on Friday for you. And then of course, do check out our Kickstarter campaign, even just share it with your friends and your network, business and personal, and just kind of lend some support to bringing Shedding the Corporate Bitch to the big screen. So for everybody here at Shedding the Bitch and for me personally, thank you so much for joining us today, and I'll look forward to hearing from you hearing and seeing you right back here this time next Tuesday at noon Eastern time for another episode of Shedding the Bitch Radio. Thanks everybody, have a great week.