In this solo episode of the Redefining Your Superwoman podcast, Dr. Zoe Shaw opens by framing "strong woman" as an internal, quiet knowing rather than external display. She shares a personal win—signing up for UC Berkeley’s free Science of Happiness course—and a fail involving a misplaced sociology textbook, using both anecdotes to illustrate the importance of presence. The core of the episode centers on 2020 as a forced reckoning: a painful, uncomfortable year that can catalyze growth if we embrace discomfort. Dr. Shaw defines "reckoning" as confronting avoided unpleasant situations or the consequences of past actions, and argues that routine dulls perception while novel experiences forge new neural pathways. She invites listeners to examine four key life arenas (family, friends, faith, work), identify the hardest change needed, and focus on building one new habit rather than overhauling everything at once. Throughout, she weaves psychology, faith, and personal values, encouraging women to use the current discomfort to evolve toward their ideal selves. The episode ends with practical prompts, a call to subscribe, and a text‑in encouragement service.
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Hey there, welcome, welcome. I'm your host, Dr. Zoe, and today the topic is strong woman, it's time for some reckoning. What does that even mean? Well, stay tuned and you're going to find out. It's all good stuff though. Hi there, I'm Dr. Zoe. I'm glad you're here. This is the place for developing your strength as a woman and helping you navigate difficult relationships in your life, including that sometimes difficult relationship with yourself. Being a strong woman is not about what other people can see And it's not about how loud you are about it. It's a quiet knowing. This isn't therapy, but you may feel like you've been to therapy after one of my episodes. Here, we also explore the intersection of psychology and faith, all with the purpose of creating a new kind of strong. Welcome to Redefining Your Superwoman. So my last episode was really deep and raw. But hey, that's where I was. That's where I still am to some extent. And so I'm sharing it. Either you resonate with what I have to say or you don't, and I'm okay with that. So before we get started, my win and my fail. My win is that I finally signed up for the Science of Happiness class from UC Berkeley. And by the way, it is free. Dale Smith Thomas mentioned it when she was on my podcast a few episodes back, and I jotted it down and meant to sign up, and I finally registered. I also want to make sure I'm always continuing to cultivate happiness in my client's life. And I'm a lifelong learner, as you should be too. So I'm excited about the course. I've heard great things about it, and I encourage you to take it too. Did I mention it's free? Yes. If you don't want to get credits or you don't need credits, Then you can actually just audit the course for free. The link will be in my show notes. My fail is that amid all the distractions this week, my son had to return some rented and borrowed books from his college because, you know, when COVID happened, they sent all the students home, but students thought they were coming back. So everybody still has their books and all these kinds of things. And so the college gave him a deadline. It needs to be back by, I don't remember when it was, whenever it was, we packed it all up and we're ready to ship it out. I put it in the back of my car and somehow it promptly got covered up by a yoga mat, which shouldn't even be in the back of my car because who's actually going to yoga anymore, right? But anyway, it got covered up. I found it later after the due date. A $15 sociology book just got turned into a $300 sociology book that he's never going to read again. So maybe I will sell it somewhere. That's what happens when you don't pay attention and focus on staying present. But today we are talking about self-regulation. Reckoning. I saw this post on Sherri Hunter's Instagram page, and she was reposting a piece written by @LeslieDwight. So I'm going to read it here today. What if 2020 isn't canceled? What if 2020 is the year we've been waiting for? A year so uncomfortable, so painful, so scary, so raw that it finally forces us to grow. A year that screams so loud, finally awakening us from all of our original slumber. A year we finally accept the need for change, declare change, work for change, become the change. A year we finally band together instead of pushing each other further apart. 2020 isn't canceled, but rather the most important year of them all. I think that this is such a wonderful piece written by Leslie Dwight, but I noticed that she got some serious backlash about it. It was probably mainly because people thought that she was speaking from a place of privilege and that she wasn't acknowledging the difficulties and the plights of those oppressed, people grieving, people who've lost so much this year. The reality is, is that many people are in a desperate place right now as a result of the impact COVID has had on our country and the deep wounds that have been ripped open again as a result of the movement. So a lot of people have accused her of toxic positivity. Is it really though? Because this piece doesn't sound like Pollyanna to me. I'm not even sure that it sounds hopeful. I I think it's a direct call to wake up and pay attention to the direction that our lives have been headed and to make a change. Unfortunately, the sad truth is that we don't grow from a place of being comfortable. We have to be uncomfortable in order to choose change. And part of the reason is because change is unknown. We don't know what's going to happen after we've changed something, and the current situation is known, and so it's easy. But when we get uncomfortable enough that the current situation isn't easy, then that's when change can happen. So today, as a lot of us are experiencing various levels of discomfort depending on how 2020 has affected you, I invite you to reckon with yourself. What in you needs to change? What ways of thinking and behaving do you know are holding you back? Now I've personally been reckoning with myself a lot in 2020. I've looked at my marriage, my parenting, my friendships, my work, my relationship with God, and I can tell you I've made some pivots. It started with COVID actually, just recognizing that I needed to reduce all of our excessive activities going on because once COVID shut us all down, I realized That our schedule was really usurping a lot of our family time. Now, of course, now the pendulum has swung way too much in the other direction, and we need some activities. My kids are begging for activities. We want things to open up, but the uncomfortableness of the forced stopping of everything helped me to reevaluate my priorities, and I see how a slower life can be a healthier life. And I've had to look down deep at my own prejudices and ask myself hard questions. And as you know, if you're listening to this podcast, I've also had hard conversations with friends. And I've made some pivots in my work because I realized that some ventures I had begun to take were really taking me away from my core mission, my values, and my message. And so what's your core mission? What are your values? What's your message? You don't need to be an influencer to clearly state these for yourself. In fact, you need to state these for yourself because we're all here for a purpose, and if you aren't super clear about what your purpose is and what you stand for, now is your time of reckoning. What I don't want is for you to walk through 2020 feeling all of this uncomfortableness and not allow it to create change in you. Now I didn't say you needed to be productive today. Please know I am not calling you to productiveness. I'm calling you to change. And I know this message is for everyone because as long as we have breath on this earth, we should be evolving, changing, and growing towards our ideal self. And what is your ideal self? Well, that's something you need to figure out. But now is the time for reckoning. So let's look at that word reckoning. What does it mean? So there's a couple of definitions. One is a time when people are forced to deal with an unpleasant situation which they have avoided until now. Another definition is a time when the effects of one's past mistakes or misdeeds catch up with one. And it's also been described in the Bible as the last judgment of God after death when everyone is called to account for their actions committed in life. Now, I'm not going to get that deep here, necessarily. We don't have to die to reckon with ourselves, and we don't always have to experience dire consequences to reckon with ourselves either. But often, we do have to feel uncomfortable. Because our routines and our normal, regular life pre-2020 made us feel in control, right? Our routines are comforting. But what a constant routine also does is it dulls your senses. Think about times in your life when you've driven the same route over and over again. After a certain number of trips, you start tuning most of it out. I can think of times when I have driven home from work with the intention of stopping by a store, stopping by to get something, and the next thing I know, I'm sitting in my driveway because I completely zoned out and went on autopilot. If you don't get out of your comfort zone, you might find yourself tuning out much of your life on a daily basis. But when you choose to experience new things, or life disrupts you and forces change, your body creates brand new neural pathways that fuel your creative spark and also enhance your memory. So that's why being uncomfortable is something you should actually embrace. Here's the mind-blower: there's a unique region of your brain that's only activated when you see or experience completely new things. And if you think about it, that's why the best art, music, writing and other expressions come after really difficult periods in our history. So today I am asking you to take all of that discomfort, all of that dis-ease, all of the difficult feelings of 2020, and figure out how you can use those to make changes in your life. You know, right now as I'm recording this, we're in June 2020. Half the year is over, and it's been a difficult 6 months. But we still have half a year to go. So here's a suggestion. Write down the 4 most important arenas of your life. So for me, it's family, friends, faith, and work. You know what yours are. Ask yourself, what needs to change? How is what's going on in the world allowing me to see this differently? Are your relationships on autopilot? Are you ignoring elephants in the room? This is a time of reckoning. It's a time of feeling uncomfortable. Now you guys know that my mantra is always about speaking the uncomfortable things, right? Because there's such a freedom in not allowing your silence to imprison you in relationships. So I encourage you first, don't make all those changes at once. That's actually a recipe for failure, so we don't want to do that. Choose the most important one. Choose the hardest one and work on that until it first becomes habit. And I'm not really here to give you steps towards anything today, but just a gentle reminder. It's time for some reckoning. You've got this. Reach out if you need some help. Thank you for listening to the Dr. Zoe Show, Redefining Your Superwoman. New shows go up every Tuesday. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode and text the word strong to 38470 to get my weekly encouragement. I look forward to connecting with you amazing women on social media throughout the week. Have a super week!
