Build A New Identity, Own Your Truth & Love Your Life w/Jen Hatmaker EP 1113

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This is episode number 1113 with New York Times bestselling author Jen Hatmaker.

Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur and each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Zig Ziglar said, positive thinking will let.

You do everything better than negative thinking will. And Dolly Parton said, if you don't like the road you're walking, start paving another one. My guest today is the inspiring and funny Jen Hatmaker, who is a best selling author of 12 books, host of the podcast called Called for the Love and a sought after speaker who tours the country every year speaking to women. She's written a new book called Fierce, Free and Full of Fire the Guide to Being Glorious You. The book provides a detailed roadmap to reconciling our inner convictions and outer presentations and Jen poses tough questions and provides thoroughly researched psychological tools with the goal of helping women live lives that are honest and ultimately transformative. In this episode we discuss the lesson Jen learned after leaving a 26 year marriage. How to take control of your emotional well being at all stages of life. How to not rob yourself of those around you of your true value. How to become vulnerable within all areas of your life so that you can grow and so much more. If you're enjoying this, make sure to share it with someone that you think would be inspired by this as well. And a quick reminder to subscribe to the School of Greatness over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave us a rating and review with the part you enjoy the most about this episode as well. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Jen Hatmaker.

Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness podcast. Very excited about our guest. We've got Jen Hatmaker in the house. Good to see you.

Same. Thanks for having me.

Very excited.

You've written like a thousand books and we are talking beforehand about the amazing blessings that are happening in your life right now, all the benefits that have happened in your life. You've written all these books, you've learned a lot of lessons. You've got five kids, incredible mom, married for 26 years, and yet during COVID last year, you thought you'd be married forever. That's not the case. And what are the biggest lessons you've learned from going through a transition that you did not expect to have happen in your life?

I'm still learning, I'm still in it, still deeply, sometimes on the path, sometimes in the weeds. For me, everything was unexpected. I mean, obviously Covid was unexpected for all of us. Didn't see that coming. None of us were really prepared for a year long pandemic, but 100% didn't see the end of a decades long plus marriage coming. That was a blind side and a real shock and just compounded by so many other losses. So there was a moment last summer, early fall, where I thought, I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can handle this.

Like the. Handle what?

The pressure, the stress, the pain, the suffering, the loss. And then ultimately the changes that are, I didn't want them, but they came. What it was going to look like for me, what was going to have to change and immediately what I was going to have to learn, what I was going to have to figure out how to show up for in a new way. And I do remember a few weeks there having had no food and no sleep. You know, those little seasons, mercifully, they're usually short. And I just remember thinking, finally at the end of it, that, I can handle this. I can handle this. I don't want to handle this. I don't ask to handle this. But I know it. I know that I can. I know that I'm strong enough. I've got what it takes. I have it internally, I have it externally with my people. I'm gonna see if I can practice what I've preached, everything I've been saying.

I've been teaching this to women for years.

Oh, my gosh. All this time, all these words I've put out into the world about resiliency, about strength, inner strength, really, about our capacity to thrive, to overcome, to flourish. I'm like, was that. I don't know if we can curse on this podcast.

Say whatever you want.

I'm like, was that full of shit or is that real? Let's press on. Well, we're pressing on it. Let's see what happens in health. It held. And so when you ask me what I've learned, I'm, like, really happy to discover and report that everything I profess to believe about the human spirit, about what it looks like to have healthy community, about what integrity means, is true. It's true. You can put it to the most fiery test and it'll hang on. It'll hang on. It's almost shocking. But here we are.

On a scale of 1 to 10, pre pandemic, where was your self worth at? Like 10? Being like, I'm super confident all the time. My relationships are great, and work and.

Pre pandemic, marriage in hand, career thriving.

Where were you at?

Creativity blooming. I mean, I would have said eight plus.

Yeah, eight plus pretty consistently, right?

Yeah, pretty consistently.

And then where were you when everything hit?

I don't even know. I actually struggled to assign a number to it. It was such, for me, uncharted territory.

You've always been pretty confident, and you've had some bad days here and there.

And some moments are high on positivity. I am glass half full by any measure. Annoyingly so. Yeah, frustratingly so.

Friends don't like to be around you at certain times.

I am my dad's daughter. We just. We were born this way. Like, we just. We see the good in people. We see the good in a scenario I'm constantly able to, or at least prepared to pivot toward. What can it be? How can we recover? How can we. What can we make out of this? And so having walked through life with that kind of outlook for so long and then really being knocked down to such a level that included rejection and the loss of love and the loss of family and the loss of. And then, of course, all the losses that came with the pandemic. I don't even know how to assign a number that was literally a zip code. I've never lived in. Never. And we suffered. So I don't want to paint the picture that I have managed 46 years of life without any suffering, because that's not true either. We have really been through it in our family. This was a whole new level. And so, yeah, sometimes you find yourself in a moment in your life where you're like, do I mean what I say? Am I just full of it? Is this real or not? Because if all the things we're telling our community on what it looks like to be a human at his or her highest capacity, if that doesn't hold in suffering, if that doesn't hold in setback, if that doesn't hold in loss, then it's not true. Like, it's true all the time or it's true never. Right. And so when I had to overlay the suffering bit on top of all these values and tenets and then see what's left, well, I'm here all these months later, thrilled to report that it is. We're not. We. We mean it.

Yeah.

This stuff is true.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What would you say you're at now?

Hmm?

You're still in. It's not out. Clear the weeds, I guess. You're still in some good days, some challenging days.

Totally.

What's. What's the level now? And what have you done to get yourself back up to a certain level?

It's interesting because I've had to step into this whole new realm of adult adulting.

You weren't doing this before.

No, just a division of labor. Listen, this is insane. It's insane to even say this sentence, but I got married when I was 19, and my husband was 21. Just babies. Literally a teenager. So, I mean, I wasn't even an adult. And so I never developed a lot of those chops to adult to adult.

Like, what chops are we talking about? Cause you got five kids.

Financial responsibility.

So your husband took care of the finance.

That was our division of labor.

I'm making the money. And then you figure out what to do with it.

Yeah. And for a while, I'm going to raise the kids. I'm going to keep the wheels on. And then later, surprisingly, I'm going to make some money. I didn't see that coming. I was a teacher and I'm just going to hand off these things and I had a little, I mean, I can admit this now, but like I had a little shtick that I did, like this little soft shoe, two step I did. Like, I don't know how much money I make.

Right.

I don't know what our bills are. Like, I don't know how much electricity costs. This little damsel in distress bit that I did, which really isn't even true to me. I'm not even like that. That's not actually true. It was a bit of. It was a way for me to abdicate personal responsibility. In a cutesy way. In a cutesy way. Meanwhile, I'm literally running a huge operation. I am a business person, I am a content creator, I'm smart, I am incredibly capable and I'm acting dumb.

But you didn't know what your bills were for your house or something.

I'm acting dumb.

Right.

And it served me well because then I didn't have to work at it. I mean, that was my ticket out. And so now having had every single one of those pillars crash around me and I am all by myself left to figure out how to pick these up and reconstruct them. I have learned in the last six months what I'm capable of. And it's a lot. It is a lot. I'm actually good at this. I'm not dumb, so.

Yeah, you're not. And so finances were one of them. Like financial huge was one of the things for adulting huge. What was another thing?

Restructured my business. What does this look like for the long term? How can I be more financially healthy? How can my employees be more financially healthy? What's our work culture? I'd also outsource some of that even. What is our work culture? Where are the pain points inside of here? Just absolutely restructuring our professional working relationships together, which not surprisingly has fleshed out a handful of like tension points. Shine a little spotlight on those things where you just kind of go.

That.

Weren'T like, well, since you're asking, this is pretty crappy. So a lot of business restructuring, even from a financial, financial standpoint, long term planning. I'm just going to assume now I'm going to be delightfully surprised if I have a whole second chance at this, at love and at relationship. I suspect that I will. I'm going to assume for right now that I'm on my own. And so I have now sat down at the table and went, I'm in charge of me. I'm my person. I'm my own person. I'm my best person. I'm my own partner. I am my own long range planner. And so that has been a complete and total overhaul to consider what it looks like to be responsible and well taken care of from right this day until I'm dead, including my kids. Total overhaul. I now have so many people that I work with and who work with me who are like, let's plan. And so I could have been doing this all along. It's not that I was incapable. No one is incapable. So when I think about the, you know, I lead largely women. You kind of have this mix of men and women in your community. I largely lead women. And when I think about the amount of perfectly capable, smart women, married even, who would say, I do not have the first idea. I don't know what our bank account is. I don't know what the login is. I don't know what our password is.

What do you think in your audience, what do you think that percentage is of women?

Well, it's interesting because.

Did you do a poll already?

Well, I've been sort of living this evolution publicly in front of my community. I don't really know how else to do it. It's not performative for me. It's just whatever's really happening in my life is what you're gonna see. I don't have a different gear. So I've been talking about, guys, this is what I'm learning. This is what I think you should be learning. This is. These are the levers every single one of us should be pulling. I don't care if you're the happiest married person that ever lived in the place of there. These are things you should know. This, this, this, this, this. Do you have your passwords? Do you have access to every account?

Can you get your money out?

Can you get your. Are you regularly checking your bank accounts? What does your savings look like? What are your investments? And all the women are like.

They'Re playing like you.

Well, oh, my God. Except for I have this whole category of women too, who are like, oh, I appreciate these questions. These are questions my husband could not answer if you paid him a million dollars. So I need to sit down with my husband and teach him what the passwords are. You know, these women who are in charge of the financial, like, solvency in their own homes. But. And so it is interesting to watch us sometimes drift into these female tropes.

The stereotypes of old.

We'll just hand over the keys, assume it's all going to go well. And guess what? It doesn't sometimes.

Right.

It's not like men are educated out of high school about financial literacy. They don't teach us, either of us.

They don't teach any of us.

How are we supposed to figure this out?

We're all dumb. We all got. We're all dumb dumbs. Going into the adult world, like without a clue on how to do this. And so, but that is like a. That's a stereotype that I see a lot of us have drifted into, myself included. And like, I'm just here to say if that can be my story. Somebody who is also very independent in other ways, like as a business person, as a. As an author, as a leader, as a teacher, as somebody who really prizes personal development and growth. This is just probably work that a great deal of us need to do. And it's so empowering.

Yeah.

One of the. It's been one of my biggest lessons in the last six months.

Wow. What else with adulting besides the financial, Besides long term planning?

Yeah.

Is there anything else?

Well, unfortunately, and I'm furious about this, but turns out the only person really in charge of my emotional health, of my mental wellness, of really even my trauma recovery is me, unfortunately. That's a bummer. Well, it's easier and more preferential to blame somebody else. That's an easy reach for me. Everything would be fine if only you would behave. Right.

Was that how you were before?

Well, I think that's how I just drifted in, like these patterns in my own life.

If you don't do what upsets me or triggers me, you're difficult.

And so you make me bad. You know, you're difficult. So you make me respond this way or you create these entrenched relational habits that now I'm just stuck with. Because you're difficult.

Was that how you were living?

I think that was definitely one plane of it.

Right.

And that's mine to own. Right. And it's mine now to deal with.

To process and heal and overcome.

Nobody can do this for me. And so also having to take my own health and recovery by the horns without blame, without shame, even internal shame and without excuses is. That's new work for me. This is new work for me. I've never ever been on my own. I have always had a partner for whom I could offload however much of the responsibility I wanted to pick a year, pick a percentage. And so now having now being as I said, my own best partner. Now it's me and me. I am left with this truth that this was always my work. Always. It always was inside or outside a marriage. This is my work, inside all my relationships.

What work?

This work of being incredibly. Having entire ownership of how you feel or how you react, how I react, how I'm willing to perceive my own self, how I am willing to perceive other people, what level of grace I am willing to give not just myself, but others, what narratives I am going to refuse to keep listening to, and which ones I'm going to pick up. These are mine. This is my work.

What was a narrative you were listening to strongly that didn't work for you after the last six months, realizing it didn't work for you now was one, you held on one or two, you.

Held onto kind of jumping right back to something. I just sort of mentioned this narrative that any given relationship, just pick one. Any given relationship, it can be with your kid, it could be with your spouse, it could be with a co worker, your boss, whatever would be different if only that person would fix A, B and C didn't make you think we were here. Then I would be happy. Then that would make life easy. That is all I ever wanted, is for you to be better.

Right, Right, right.

That's not true. That's not true. Because really, it's still on us, what we're going to allow and how we're going to respond. And I'm learning so much right now. I don't know how much work you've done around, like, codependency.

I feel like the last eight years I've been in an emotional boot camp. Every couple years I go through something that I then say, okay, like what's. The therapies, the workshops, the coaching, the, you know, process that I'm going to take on to continue to peel back the onion, become even more vulnerable, take even deeper ownership and responsibility, and figure out, why am I reactive to this? Why do I get angry or resentful or unforgiving in these places? Why does that trigger me? Why does it dis trigger me? Why? Is it just because it's me or is there something underneath it?

Yeah.

And I think being, you know, the last year brought up a lot of that for a lot of people. You know, I started a new relationship a couple years ago. The first year was amazing. Second year with the pandemic and all these changes of identity and, you know, all these things happening was like, okay, there's a lot of work that I still. I thought I'd done a lot of work until now.

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And it's like been intensive therapy. But not for, for the relationship.

Sure.

But for each one of us.

Totally.

It's not about the relationship. It's about like why am I reactive to that? Or they're frustrated with this or why is she, you know, it's so which I am. I resist. But then I'm like, well if I resist it, it's just going to keep coming up in every area of my life until I embrace. The embracing is painful.

It's painful. And again, because it's not ever really about that other person. Wherever you go, there you are.

And you repeat the pattern with the next person over and over.

Of course you do. And in any relational dynamic, it's not only romantic. Business, friends, family, it will repeat one thing I'm working on with my therapist right now. And I have a battery of therapists, may they all help me. Some of them are like woo woo body people. And some of them are like talk therapists. And some are emdr. I mean I'm like anybody, Everybody in the pool, Everybody come in. Any tool, any tool, any resource, whatever you can help me understand about myself. And so this work of what I'm working on and this is hard for me. I didn't realize this was hard for me is I'm incredibly judgmental.

And so yourself or others.

Yes.

At all.

Anything.

Yes, anything.

That's not what right. Or the way it's supposed to be.

Deeply judgmental of myself. So when I have a thing come up, as you said, like why is this coming up in me? What is this reaction I'm having? What is this? Why did I just spike to like level 100 right now? What is this about? Like the punishment doesn't fit the crime here.

Right.

You know I am judgmental of my own behavior, my own response. I am learning that I prefer status. I prefer stability. I prefer things to be nice, safe and protective equilibrium. I like it right here, right around the same equal line, give or take a degree.

Yeah.

So I struggle to let hard things be hard. I struggle to let bad things be bad. I struggle to let sad things be sad. I judge those things. I judge them that hard is bad. Sad is bad. Mad is bad. Disintegrated is bad. Disruptive is bad.

Anything that's uncomfortable for you is bad.

Because it's uncomfortable.

Yeah.

And so this work of learning to be less judgmental of the thing that's not good. Good's my favorite. Good is my favorite good. And happy. That's my favorite space. So anything that's outside of that, rather than say something's wrong with me to feel something is wrong in me that I'm feeling this. How can I hurry up and hustle this back to good and happy, but rather non judgmentally observe it. Like, why is this coming up in me? It's not bad. It has no morality. It's not. It just is what it is. There's something here willing to teach me something if I'll listen instead of just shove it back into a corner, cover it with a blanket and pretend like it never happened. And so this is really hard work for me. I mean, I have really practiced the art of compartmentalization, I guess, for 46 years.

Your whole life.

Yeah. So I am good at it. Like, I am really good at it. I can hustle a story into its tidiest version in like half a minute. Wow. You know what I mean? I can soften the blow of a really serious letdown quickly and be like, but here's the silver lining. But here's what I've learned. But here's why I'm happy. And so sitting in the discomfort and not judging the discomfort, but rather asking it. You're here for something. Are you trying to protect me? Are you trying to show me something? Are you. Are you trying to keep me safe? Are you a warning sign? Because I have learned incredibly deeply that my body, my soul and my mind have been sending up so many flares for me for the last few years. And I was like, nope.

About what?

All kinds of things. Things that any other normal person would say. This feels like a red flag relationally in some family rhythms, even just as somebody who loves and is observing another person very close to you. Flares, flares. And I'm like, nah, not here, not Us, not this. We are outside of that story. Beyond that, we're outside of that narrative. And so learning to trust myself again is new. That's new. My body is one agenda. My body is Team Jen. That's it. No other agenda except to keep me safe and healthy, out of harm and flourishing. So if my body's telling me something, I don't listen.

Yeah. You weren't listening.

No.

What were you doing?

Judging. I was judging those signals. I was judging those instincts flaring up, trying to, like, get my attention, say, something's wrong here. I don't want things to be wrong. I want them to be good and happy. And so this is all new work for me. It's taken me half my life to get here, and I'm not great at it yet, but I'm learning. I'm learning. I don't know. Do you listen to your own instincts a lot? Do you have. Have you learned at this point to really trust what it is you are seeing, responding, or hearing?

I listen, I feel and I notice, but sometimes I don't take action on it.

Right. Why? Like, why not?

My pattern has always been, I don't want to upset someone, people pleasing, up.

Until now, relational disruption.

It's been like, well, I'm doing this to make the other person happy. I'm saying this to make the other person happy. Or I'm not doing this because the other person would be mad if I did this, which then I'm out of integrity with myself and who I am. So I'm kind of resenting myself, resenting the other person and resenting that context of the relationship. If I don't live my authentic self, and this is just outside of agreements and boundaries and whatever the relationship is. And that was my pattern for years, up until recently. And it's been. It's extremely painful to do that to yourself. But I was aware of it. It wasn't like I was like, why am I feeling this pain and this nagging thing in my chest and, like, tension or my throat closing up or whatever the pain was, was like, I know exactly why this is. But I never had the courage to actually say what I wanted to say because I was afraid of the response.

So I'm so curious, once you started putting some of that into practice.

Yeah, it's foreign.

How?

Because I've got a thought here and a thesis. I'm curious if you found that that actually served your relationship, what serves you.

And it will serve the relationship at a greater level if you're being more authentic.

I think so too.

Or that relationship will dissolve if it doesn't work. Yeah, but you not being you doesn't serve the relationship.

Totally. I was just telling Heather this earlier that I think when we operate out of that sense of pleasing that person, other people all the time, that's our general operating system.

And would you say most women come from that place or is that too general?

You know, it is general, but I don't find it too unfair. We were conditioned to keep the temperature in the room stable at all times. Whatever room we're in, we are the temperature stabilizers.

I feel like that's how I haven't been up until now as well too.

But my sense of it is. I mean, having now also, really, I'm pressing into this as well. Is that ultimately. And maybe not at first, because the truth is, living authentically like that, especially inside of a relationship where you have been trying to keep the peace, but you have no peace.

That's been me my entire life.

Initially. It does create relational disruption. Oh, of course it does. Of course it does.

However, things are changing.

Well, yeah.

I mean, they don't like that.

Who does? Yeah, you've been keeping some little world tended that they like how it is. And so. So I do think there is a courage required for that initial stage. But my thesis is that ultimately, if that relationship is healthy and cohesive and collaborative and stable, that it ultimately serves the relationship that that person. We're actually robbing our best people of who we are. Of course we are. We're robbing them of what we are thinking.

Robbing ourselves.

We're robbing ourselves. We are not telling the truth. We are out of alignment. Which for me, when I'm out of alignment, when I am not living in integrity, when I'm saying one thing but thinking another, when I'm saying yes and I mean no, it comes out sideways. It comes out in my body language. It comes out, I'm resentful, I'm pissed. It means I'm always idling high. And the teeniest little thing like. And I'm just through the roof. That doesn't make sense. That's why, if I could pay attention to that, I'll be like, wait a minute. That was too much of a reaction to what actually happened. Why? Why?

When bottling something up, resentment or shame or whatever.

Totally. I'm just bottling up some resentment. And it just eventually has to come out.

Isn't it amazing how we can still be very achievement and succeeding in our careers and businesses even though we hold on to these Things I know.

What in the world?

Isn't it crazy? It's almost a false sense of success.

Yeah.

Not saying that what we've created isn't successful in its own right, but it's like, if we aren't able to emotionally be 100% authentic to ourselves and find inner peace in the process of achieving and building the business and everything, then is that true success?

It's tricky for, like, people like you and me because we have kind of innate skill set that is rewarded. We just do. We've got the thing that the people like, and it's rewarded behavior, it's rewarded language, it's rewarded leadership. We get to belong, we get to be in charge, we get to be admired, we get to be, like, genuinely liked. And there's a lot of merit there. It's not like we're just completely full of, like, there's a lot of goodness that we are bringing to the world, but because our. The rewards that we. The ROI on, the way that we are just kind of moving through the world, the way that we are formed, is so high, it can eclipse some of this really important work that needs to be done.

Absolutely.

Or you can sweep it under the rug and be like, I'm just going to focus on the things that I'm getting good attention for and the rewards. That's why I think it's so important, no matter what stage we're at, is to really surround ourselves with people that check us, that keep us grounded, that I'm just so grateful for, like my family, my team, or even just like, if something happens on social media where I'm checked and reminded, like, hey, that wasn't your highest level of authenticity or integrity. Like, you're gonna get discounted because of that for a week or two. What you said or what you posted, like, people noticed and they felt it was off, you're gonna feel some of that. And I think it keeps us honest with ourselves if we don't do it consistently ourselves.

Absolutely. And there's really good life is gonna.

Humble us if we don't care. Continue to stay.

Oh, sure as hell will. Everybody's not blind, right? Eventually a fake person, someone who is insincere, who is not genuine, who is incredibly outside of their integrity, that just eventually shows up for what it is. Eventually.

Eventually.

And the most sensitive and tender among us can see it early. Right. They're usually the ones waving the, like, sound of the alarm bells earlier than most. But I'm grateful for the sort of communal accountability. And of course, in my Life. And I'm sure in yours too, my real people, like my in real life people are. We're in lockstep, like at every moment they could be like, that's stupid.

Right.

The way that you're being right now is mean. Or the thing that you're saying right now is not true or you should apologize for that. They say it to my face all the time because I ask them to. I ask them to and I'm grateful. And so that keeps me grounded too. And I'm always open to that feedback from people who love me and who I trust. That's the two pronged approach there.

Where would you say has been the biggest shame in the last year for you?

I have. Can I pick more than one?

Sure.

Can I have a couple of shames?

Sure. What's the thing that stood out the most for you? That you felt the most shame?

Yeah, I have this unhealthy instinct to be responsible for everybody in my life. This is going back to what I said earlier about codependency.

You mean responsible for what?

Their happiness, their joy, their good decisions. Thus when they make bad decisions, that's also my fault.

Oh, wow.

So it's a real.

I wasn't a good friend, I wasn't a good mother, I wasn't a good.

Now you got it, daughter.

Whatever.

Had I done this, they wouldn't do that. Had if I just said this, they wouldn't have felt this.

That's a lot of pressure.

It's. I'm a big self blamer. My. I'm always telling my counselor this. She's like, are you blaming so and so for this? I'm like, no, I'm blaming myself. Who are you talking me? It's me.

Man. It'd be nice to be in relationship with you.

Yeah.

Take all the blame away from me all the time. Just, hey, it wasn't my fault.

Self claim's hard.

Jen did it all.

Yeah.

If she wouldn't have done this, I'd be fine.

This is what codependency is. Like when I started learning that I was a codependent. And I'm going to get back to your question. I can see that I'm taking the circuitous route, but I thought codependency was a word that meant needy and like not independent, clingy, fragile. And I'm not any of those things. And I've never felt any of those things. So I'm like, I'm definitely not codependent. I stand on my own two feet. I have my own dreams. I Live my own life, I got my own vision. But when I discovered that codependency is really about control. It is about being responsible or trying to control outcomes that aren't yours to control. It is trying to control somebody else's behavior through whatever. Pick a thing. Shame, withdrawal, nagging, bribery, manipulation. Pick it. There's a whole battery of things you can reach for, but you're trying to control somebody else's choices, outcomes. And then you take this disproportionate amount of responsibility for it. And the unfortunate thing about that is it doesn't work. Like you actually can't control somebody else. So that's a stupid thing to find out. You actually can't control outcomes. You're in charge of you. And so because this is also my work right now, I have felt like really deep shame this year. Not surprisingly first of all around losing a 26 year marriage. I'm a lifer. I'm a lifer man. My in laws, they hit their 50th anniversary last summer. My parents 50th anniversary is next month. Like in it to win it. I come from a long line of committed married lifers. Committed lifers. And that's in my like that's my value too.

And so, and it's identity too deep. I mean so that identity is not there anymore.

Well, I was a 19 year old bride. I had no other identity. I never had an identity outside of it. I was a kid and then I was a wife. And so that sense of what I perceive to be failure. And then of course now watching the ripple effects on my kids, our families, our friend groups, this is devastating. And it feels like deep shame to me constantly working through this. I know this is not mine. I know it. I know enough to know what's true. But it's still in there. Of course it spikes up. I feel it. It keeps me awake at night. I'm pretty good during the day. Nighttime is my worst self. That's my meanest self. Wants me to stay awake and think about all the things I could have done differently.

I won't call you after 9 or.

Do call me at 3am and talk me off the ledge. Hey, get some sleep, go back to bed, put on your meditation app. And then around parenting because I am watching my children suffer so much this year and in pretty major ways. And their pain is so acute and their dreams are all busted up too. You know, their home is never the same. The home they thought they were going to come home to the rest of their days is gone. It's never going to be the same. So their pain, I told you earlier, for me, pain is bad, right? Bad. Sad is bad. And so I'm assigning morality to my kids pain and somehow finding myself at fault. And so those are my deep shame wells right now that I'm just clawing out of. How about you? We've all lost this year.

My biggest shame, I would say, realizing that I've never had courage in any relationship, intimate relationship, up until now, and staying in relationships for much longer when I knew that I wasn't meant to be with those people anymore out of fear of hurting someone, me being sad or alone or lonely or whatever might happen from the fear of that not being there anymore and being able to reflect back on the pattern I've lived for, I don't know, two decades, I guess, and realizing like, man, I wonder what life would be like if I didn't hold, if I didn't live that way and if I could have learned this lesson sooner, like, could I have not felt this pain? Could I not hurt other people by staying whatever, like whatever I did? And so I think about that. But I'm also like, you know, our lessons come to us when we're ready for them. And so I'm also just like, okay, well, I'm learning, I'm learning it now at 38, and now I get to put it in practice for as long as I get to live. And so I'm trying not to hold onto the shame and blame myself because that doesn't do any good.

My counselor, Carissa, she says to me, at least, at least every single week, whatever it is I'm walking through, I'm telling her how another new way I failed. This is just a normal. This is what I could have done better. This is what I. I'm also an enneagram. 3. I don't know if you watched, I don't know if you know Enneagram, but this is just part of my makeup. Every single week, she tells me, she leans into the camera, you know, we're on zoom, leans in really close and she's like, you just haven't learned this yet. She's like, you're just now learning this? Yeah, you just don't have practice at this yet. You're practicing like, be gentle because now you're learning it.

So you're learning how to walk at that thing?

Yes. It's so nice. It's this like very sweet, like self compassionate way to think of it. Like, do I wish I would have known this sooner? I Do do. I wish I could have put this into practice a decade ago. I sure do. But I'm just now learning this. It is what it is.

Have you seen that meme online of like a child, like a toddler that's learning how to walk something like, you know, as a kid, they fall over 100 or a thousand times.

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And never do they say to themselves, maybe this walking thing isn't for me.

Totally. That's good.

And we haven't learned how to walk in other areas of our life, whether it be the financial literacy, because we're never taught it. So it's like we're gonna stumble and smack our face and bloody up the back of our head and skin our elbows in the process of learning the new thing.

Yeah.

But it doesn't mean we should say, I fell once. Maybe this thing isn't for me.

Totally.

You know what I mean?

Failure can be such a good teacher. Such a good teacher.

Greatest teacher.

Yeah, I know that's been.

Besides the relationship you're in.

Yeah. Oh, yes. Our relationships have so much to teach us. If we want to pull up a chair to that table as a learner. The problem is most of us want to just be right. Right. I just want to be right. I want to be vindicated. I want somebody to look at this and go, yes, you are.

You were right here.

They're obviously wrong. How can you put up with this? But that just doesn't have a strong return. That really doesn't deliver what I want it to. I always think, you know, do I want to be right or do I want this to work?

Yeah.

You know, which is it?

Do I want peace? I'd rather have peace than being right.

Do I want to be right, or do I want to understand you? Do I want to really? In the same way that I'm able to say, whoop, where did that come from? Can I hold it loosely enough to also look at you and go, wow, that reaction is something.

Something's there and not be triggered by it.

Not be triggered. Not be defensive.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've been guilty of that for my whole life.

So guilty. I keep a whole pinned board of offenses that I can go back and look at me. You know what? I got some stuff.

Yeah.

So, yeah. That, to me, is the work of, like, being a really healthy, mature adult.

Yeah.

And a lot of people don't do it. Some people never do it. Honestly. Never.

Yeah.

Yeah. They go to the grave bitter and disappointed and feeling wronged and really having never looked in the mirror. I just don't want to do that. You know, I may be at some of this work later than I wanted to, but I'm glad I'm here. Yeah, I'm glad I'm here. I Got a lot of pavement left.

You know, when there's a lot of people, I think, in the world that have experienced shame or loss or identity crisis in the last year with whatever relationship, career, all these different things.

Health.

Yeah.

What feedback or thoughts would you give to someone who is experiencing deep amounts of shame and trying to build their self worth?

Man, it's tricky because the levers that we typically pull towards self worth can be arbitrary, they can be constantly in flux, they can be outside of our control. We don't get to control what other people think of us. We don't get to control how the industry that we work in is going to ebb and flow in a corporate pandemic, you know, we don't get to control what our grown adult children choose, you know, and so. But these are our markers. These are our markers of identity, you know, and so I think funneling down to the raw material of identity is hard. It's so hard because I tend to reach for the more external things that my roles, my relationships, obviously my career. And so, yeah, pushing some of that aside and going, what's actually the thing? What is the thing? What is the core of me? Who am I in my heart and soul and mind?

Who am I not? What do I do? The roles I play.

Totally. And that's my preferred mode of operation. Yeah. Because I'm a doer, I'm a hard worker, and I'm a person who externalizes a lot. That is, it's more natural for me to look this way out to my community, to my people as a content creator, as a leader, then it's work for me to be introspective, that's not natural for me. And so that work of having to say outside of what I do and honestly, outside of what anybody else thinks of me. And I don't mean that in a trite way. You know, there's this just the trope of, like, who cares what anybody thinks of you? Well, we all do. We care. We care what our kids think of us. Like, we care what our partners think of us. We care what our co workers think of us. But even outside of those opinions, when we can sort of funnel it down to, like, who am I? What is so good and beautiful about me? What am I meant to do on this earth? How do I bring, like, life and love to this world? What's at the essence of what is, like, good and lovely about who I am? Now we're getting somewhere. But we're not really good self reporters.

How does someone say, what's good and beautiful about them when they hold on to shame.

Oh, man, shame will take us out. I feel like shame is probably one of the, if not our greatest enemy on self compassion and on really living out of our own identity. It's so powerful, shame. So powerful.

So what have you done to recognize the good and the beauty inside of you with the shame?

Well, I can tell you one thing that's helped me sometimes, and even though I just said not to look at this, one thing that has at least moved me toward a healthier space around this question is being willing to listen to a very small handful of people who love me most, who know me best. I'm not talking about Facebook followers.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, my people who love me and know me. And to say, jen, this is what I see in you. Like, this is who you've always been. This is a thing that makes you You.

Right.

That helps me. Like that mirror.

When you can't see it for yourself, Sometimes you need someone to see inside of you.

We have to be careful who we. Who we hold up as a mirror because sometimes those voices can also be unreliable. So that's a small. That's a small little pocket of folks for me. But if I can be courageous enough to take them at their word and not let the shame just immediately negate whatever it is they have to say, that, for me, is a powerful mechanism to move into a more tender, authentic space and then see what I can do there. Like, what can I learn here? What. How do I respond here? What does this feel like in my body? What does this feel like in my bones? Like, what does this feel like in my rhythms, which is all, you know, it's some heavy lifting. I don't know. What do you do?

You got a solution for self worth?

Yeah. How do you get there? How do you get over shame?

Yeah. For me, it's in. If there are. If there are moments of my life where I just feel like I'm a piece of crap or I'm worthless in this moment, or I'm sad, I'll take a day or two or whatever I need to. To just, like, be and not do.

Yeah.

Because I'm such a doer. So that's like, something that's uncomfortable.

Yes, me too.

But I can reflect in those moments. I can feel it and I can reflect. I can have intimate conversations with people and get perspective in that time. If I'm always doing, it's hard to gain perspective.

Yeah.

So taking some reflection time and being okay with not being productive is One thing, another thing. Once I'm ready to be more active, it's just following through on the things I say I'm going to do. So like whatever is a valuable value in my life, am I following through on those values? So physical activity is a value of mind play. Eating healthy is a value of mine. Being my word with people is a value of mine. So can I follow through on that on micro or macro levels on a daily basis? Being my word to myself. What I say is value is a value for me. I think then the third thing is how do I get out of myself in this moment and help someone else? How can I serve? That's big for me too because I think you're, you know, your self worth will be, will rise when you continue to get out of yourself and help someone else with whatever they're going to through any challenge. Small, big or even just like a smile or a handshake or a hug type of a service.

Right.

So being in service again, whether it's a smile or donation is huge.

Yeah, it is for me too.

If you hug 20 people a day pre pandemic, you're gonna feel pretty good about like making someone else's day.

Yeah. And our bodies are like meant for that. Like they have built in rewards for that behavior, for that connected behavior, for that behavior of service. You know, we are intrinsically rewarded in our brains for that good, that good behavior. I would also add to that list, which is an incredible list. I find a lot of healing and I get to eject out of shame pretty quickly. If I can choose to be even painfully vulnerable, if I can do it, if I can say this is how I'm feeling, this is why I'm overwhelmed. This is how it's making me feel about myself. This is where I'm, this is where my shame points are. And I, for me, approximately 100 times out of 100, vulnerability has a beautiful return. It's contagious.

Is it hard for you to be vulnerable?

Yes. This is not natural for me, but I'm better at it because I've practiced so much.

What's the hardest thing for you to be vulnerable about?

For me, it's this sense of admitting for public consumption, be it the big public or my normal public, doesn't matter, and possibly exploitation points where I have either failed or I have regret or I got something wrong and have shame around it or I'm scared. Those to me are so vulnerable and I'm always worried somebody's gonna use that against me, but they don't they don't use it against us. What it does is it draws people to us, you know, And I know this is true when I put myself on the other side of it. Because when somebody else that I love and respect is vulnerable in front of me, when they say a tender, fragile.

Hard thing, you don't say, get away from me.

Never. I'm so drawn to that.

You're like, what can I do that.

Tells me, you know what? I don't have to hide from you. I don't have to hide from you. You just showed to me that you can be safe, that you are truthful, that if you are willing to say that hard thing in front of me, then I can say my stuff in front of you. And it really creates this beautiful dynamic. I think I find a lot of good contagion in that sort of vulnerability. And so that to me is a shame, Buster, because of course what you get back every single time, no matter what you say is, me too. Every time. Oh, me too. I've said that.

I've said that.

I felt that. I'm there now. I've done that. And you don't feel alone in it anymore. Loneliness is scary. And so vulnerability is this weird, counterintuitive way to like dig our way out of shame.

It's hard. It's really hard. It's hard to be that if you've never done it before. It took me 30 years of my life to learn vulnerability.

Did you grow up in a family that was vulnerable at all?

I feel like they showed emotion, but I think I grew up in a.

Society.

Or a culture society in middle Ohio as a boy that boys aren't supposed to do. Certain boys don't show emotion. Don't cry. You're playing sports, like, get yourself off the ground. Don't cry about that. You know, kids making fun of kids, like for showing vulnerability. So I don't think it was my family. Like, it's funny because my dad would cry. I'd see my dad cry in movies sometimes or in like vulnerable moments. And I would always watch it and be like, is that weak or is that strong? I didn't know because it was talked about as a week with my 12 year old friends or whatever. You know, it's like just because we didn't have the language or the emotional capacity to really accept those tender moments as at least I speak for myself or my peer group, I and our group, I didn't feel like we had the capacity or the emotional agility, as Susan David would say, to really Allow a nine year old boy to cry in front of you and be like, hey, I got your back. Like, there wasn't. It was more like, get off. You know, it was like, you're a p. S. You're a wuss. You're a little girl. Don't be a little girl.

Exactly. Of course.

So it was name calling and shame around emotion.

Yeah.

And so. And I remember as a kid just feeling like all I want is people to like me and have friends. So if I'm vulnerable, people don't like me and they shame me and they outcast me because they were not comfortable with it, whatever. So I'm not blaming anyone here. I think it was just our level to feel and to receive that type of emotion as kids. We weren't trained that way. At least I wasn't trained that way.

It's interesting because, you know, I have five kids and three of them are boys and two of them are girls. And they're all like young adults and upper teenagers. So, like, we're up there and, you know, I lead women, so that's. My community is almost entirely women. And so I spend a lot of emotional energy dissecting the narratives we were handed as little girls, helping us unravel some of these tropes that we were expected to just fall in lockstep with. But being a mom to sons who are now 17, 18, and 23, I am dead serious. The narratives handed to boys, just as destructive.

Of course.

Just as destructive. And I know it because I raised real human kids. Like, I watched them go to their bed and cry for three days after a breakup. I watched them write love poems. I mean, they're 10.

I was the biggest SAP. Yeah.

Tons of boys are. It's not a true thing that boys aren't.

But this, like, they're conditioned to be hardened.

You are.

And not show emotion.

And, you know, because you even pretended. Of course it wasn't real for you, but you pretended.

And so I feel like I had to to survive.

Totally. I believe you.

It was like, you're either gonna be authentic and have no friends.

Yeah.

Was either the narrative or the truth. Whatever I was telling myself, it's how it felt.

Yeah.

Or you put on a mask. That's why I wrote a book called Mask and masculinity. Because a lot of boys did this to belong, to feel like you belonged.

Of course.

Even though it's a false sense of belonging, I think that's hard and it takes courage to say, okay, I'm gonna be alone. And like, maybe I find a friend or not for my high school life, and maybe a girl likes me or not or whatever, and I gotta be comfortable in my own skin alone. Hopefully you attract some friends that understand you and you understand them. But I don't know what it's like today.

I don't know. I don't know if you've got your finger on the pulse of, like, teen teenagers and young adults right now. I definitely do. It's my world. And I feel. I feel a little hope that some of these gender stereotypes are reversing in a million ways. Like, just in a million ways.

Like, for good or bad. Yeah.

Gender and sexual identity. Of course, that's completely. That looks completely different now than it did when you and I, when you weren't schooling. Even when I was in School at 10 years old.

What's acceptable, what's not?

You get to be who you are now, more or less. You get to kind of be who you are in your body. And I'm hopeful that some of this is folding in on itself. The good news is there's a lot of role models to look toward now. I'm not sure that there were that many when we were growing up.

This is what I talk about all the time. I was like, I never saw an example of a man who had been sexually abused publicly talking about it.

That's right.

Especially, like, an athlete archetype that looked like me, that was like the jock and whatever, like, played sports. There was never someone that went on TV and was like, I was sexually abused.

That's right.

And here's how to deal with it. So I didn't have a model, and I think a lot of boys didn't. I'm not saying it's easier for women, but I feel like for men, it was like, zero, zero model. And again, maybe. Maybe it was there and I just wasn't able to see it. But I don't remember seeing it. And so when I. When I opened up a 30 about it, I still was like, I feel like I'm the only one in the world because I just never seen it. Or maybe I was just resistant to seeing it. Whatever it is. I know Oprah did something with a.

Bunch of mental health. I was just gonna mention that, but I didn't see that first I ever saw that in my life.

Exactly. And I don't even think I saw that because I wasn't watching Oprah at that time growing up. But so it's like, unless you're seeing it consistently, it's hard for us to like connect to any type of shame or vulnerability that happens to us with sexual trauma or divorce or whatever. If you never saw anyone else get divorced, you'd be like, my life is over.

That's right.

I'm the only one.

I'm the only one.

Yeah. And so it's.

This goes back to that like positive contagion. Because I'm sure you've seen this in your life, having been so vulnerable as you are, shared your story with such like tenderness and open handedness and in such a public way. I can only imagine how many men have now come to you and said.

Hundreds of men have emailed me essays about them opening up.

Of course they have.

And it was when I started opening up like eight, seven years ago. I guess I had this emotional hangover for months because I didn't know how to handle the essays that came in from men saying, I'm 55, I've got, you know, I've been married for 20 years, I've got three kids, my wife doesn't know. And I'm like, what am I supposed.

To do with this?

You know, and just receiving it and feeling it. It's like man, for months. It took me a while to like emotionally get back to kind of baseline. And I think, yeah, we all need, whether it's men needing to talk about their traumas, women talking about their traumas, we all need a place where we can feel safe to talk about it in general.

Yes.

Communities, groups, forums, whatever it is, it's not that complicated.

Complicated. Like as we look at all this pent up rage and trauma and absolute suffering that people are walking around with, turns out sharing it with people is a pretty low hanging fruit solution.

It's not expensive, it's not. You don't have to go anywhere to do it.

It's effective immediately.

It helps release pain.

It's really the solution I think we're all looking for. Yeah, it's just tricky because somebody has to go first, you know, so hard.

To go for the courage.

Go first, the courage. But then it's exciting because it's such a ripple effect like what you have set off in the lives of all those men, you know that so many of them went back, they told their wives, they told their children, they started to heal and they went to counseling, they did the work, their friends started to come to them. It's like, me too. Thank you for saying that. I never have never told anybody. It just the effect, effects of that, the domino effects are really so powerful. We can all do this. This isn't just the work of influencers. This is just the work of humanity.

It is.

I believe in that. I really believe in that. And I think setting that example constantly for our communities of sincerity, of tenderness, of vulnerability is probably more powerful than we'll probably ever even know. I know, you know, that that sort of courage gets seeded in the hearts of our. Of our people, and we just don't even know what they go back and do with it. It's exciting to think of.

What do you think is the biggest challenge that women face today? Women in their, like women after their late 20s face today whether they're single, married, and have kids or not, but just a generation. Not in school, you know, after school, man.

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What is the biggest thing that women get to let go of that they're holding onto?

You know, we're somewhere in the middle of a lot of shifting, which is exciting. I feel like I am both a member of a generation getting to watch in real time, some incredible shifts for women by any measure.

When did this start? What was the catalyst?

Was this pre.

Me too.

Was this feminist movement? MeToo?

Yeah. And it would be unfair to ever say, like, it just started on our watch. You know, we owe the women before us a huge debt of gratitude. Generations before us, our moms, our grandmas.

Our great grandmas, they went through crap.

They went to the mat. They went to the mat.

I'm not trying to laugh at it, but it's just like they had to go through a lot of crap, oh, my gosh, for the world to get to where it's at now.

The gains that they made, like, at the base level, created ultimately a foundation for, I think, our generation. Not just to stand on something sturdy, but to climb. Really. It's exciting. And of course, you know, two of my girls are Daughters. I've got a 20 year old, I have a 14 year old. And watching their age group, I'm like, oh, it's a completely different day.

Like, what are they doing that's different?

They're unafraid. It's interesting.

Like, I can do whatever I want. I can create.

They are smart. We've been telling them since the day they were born that they're equal to men, that they are just as smart, that they are just as capable, that they can do anything. You know, we've been telling them that since they were on a bottle. And they believed us. They believed us. And so they are growing up with these dreams that are not encumbered by fear and by sort of feminine stereotypes as much as we did. They are absolutely not interested in joining the patriarchy as a co conspirator. Right. As just a submissive partner to the patriarchy. No, thank you. They'd rather be single.

A conscious partnership or a conscious relationship.

And the boys are kind of coming up like that too. So it's interesting to watch some of the deep, painful work of the last generation, few generations really take root right now. That said, still have a lot to do. Pay parity is still a disaster and we can't have this conversation. I can't even speak for women personally because I am still so incredibly privileged. I live in almost every category that's favored except being a man. I'm white, I'm straight, I'm charismatic, I'm.

Well, that's debatable.

It is debatable. It honestly is. I make money, I'm educated, I have the look. So I'm.

You have no state tax. Yeah.

Never moving. So I mean, when we start talking about like the pay disparity for women of color, when we start talking about what it looks like for Hispanic women who are at the absolute bottom of the pile, you know, we have a long way to go. We are still not there. I'm hopeful and excited to begin to watch what our representation looks like at the government level shift. It's more women than ever right now representing us. That's good because we're half the country. So it would make sense that we would see women, more women in leadership, in state and federal government. And so for me, that's incredibly exciting to watch those numbers just take up every single election. That's going to matter. That's going to matter. Our girls are watching that too. Having women's voices at the table, particularly women of color's voices, is going to be an absolute change agent. And so we got to keep our foot on the gas. But we are. So that's the good news. This is a really fun time to be a woman in leadership, because my colleagues that kind of do more or less what I do. We're sort of in this work together. What in the world. Best, best, best women on earth. And so that these are the role models for my girls. I'm hopeful, incredibly hopeful. My girls don't know that they're supposed to play it small. That would never occur to them. Yeah.

That's awesome. And what would you say is the biggest limiting belief that you get to still let go of?

Me. Yeah, me personally. How rude. How dare you ask me personal questions on your podcast.

The one that you feel like is maybe you're not even aware of it, but something you feel like, gotta keep holding you back from your greatest self if you keep holding on to this limiting belief.

That's a great question. Probably. I would say that a limiting belief that I continue to kind of cling to is that some of the choices that I've made historically, some of the ways that I have related to important people that I love. Kids are going to. I'll never be free of them. I'm going to pay those. I'm going to pay the price. I don't even know what the price is yet. I'm still waiting for some of those shoes to drop because remember how I'm in charge of everybody and that something about my life is going to hit a ceiling because of things I got wrong? I still think it. I tell people not to think that. I tell people it's not true.

But you're still thinking it.

But I still think it. I still think that some of the ways in which I failed myself, I failed other people. Things I didn't know, practices I didn't have into place yet, ways in which I could have responded completely differently are gonna somehow bend the arc of possibility.

Really?

Yeah. For other people, for myself. And then I'll never really have full absolution from it and be like, I just didn't know that yet. As Chris would say, I just didn't know that yet. So I still worry deeply that I've gotten enough wrong that I'm going to pay for it.

If your daughter said that to you, what would you say to her?

I know it's absurd. I hear it. I hear that coming through her mouth, and I'm like, you're acting crazy. You're acting crazy. This is just four plus decades of conditioning for me. I grew up in A Christian subculture.

What does subculture mean?

Meaning a subculture of our greater culture at large. So it has its own set of rules, its own operating procedure, its own hierarchies, which are very well known. Girls at the absolute bottom. And one of the things that I learned early on in a hundred different ways was that girls were responsible for the bad behavior of us.

Oh, wow.

Girls were responsible for the bad behavior, particularly of boys and men. And so if you were harmed by one, what were you wearing? Did you have a spaghetti strap on? You know, like, what did you say? Because.

So the blame was back on you always.

And our system reinforced that because men were always protected and victims were blamed and ostracized. So we.

Is this the Christian community you're talking about?

Yeah.

Wow.

And so I learned some pretty destructive messages pretty early on that women, girls and women were responsible for their own bed choices, and they were also responsible for everyone else's bed choices.

Wow, that's crazy.

It is steep, steep root, hard to pull up. And so that's still a largely patriarchal work.

How does a Christian woman who maybe was raised with similar beliefs still love their faith, but let go of the beliefs of the religious that held them down and made them play? Well, not made them, but influenced them, that it was their fault?

That's a great question.

How do you not get out of that and say, well, I'm just not going to be a Christian? Or do you say that and say, I'm going to set a new standard for myself, a new set of beliefs that work for me and my family and my life?

Yeah, that's it.

Without making someone wrong or bad.

But if you kind of peeked into this subculture, as I called it, particularly around my age, more or less, which.

Was like 31, right?

That's right. You got it. You nailed it. You would see this whole generation of people who are going through or considering going through this sort of spiritual deconstruction and talk about painful. Laying some of that down is terrifying. And it feels like a. Is this bad? Am I betraying something precious? But one thing, I've been doing this work for years, and so I'm on the other side of that quagmire. But it's not the very beautiful, loving, beating heart of faith that I'm pushing hard on. It's the system, it's the structures, it's all the man made stuff wrapped around it that was obviously just like any other system we have. Steeped in white supremacy, steeped in misogyny, power, privilege, hierarchy. It's no different than any other system we're looking at right now with critical eyes. And so having to really do this work of integrity, of parsing that out, it's challenging so hard. It's really challenging. Like what goes and what stays, you know.

Is this why you feel like some of the younger generation is like, I'm just not going to church?

Oh, 100%.

Yeah. I'm just learning other spiritual practices on my own. And not being in a system, the data is unambiguous.

The next generation, having already been taught to question systems, having already really, frankly been very let down by authority. They've been let down by their power parents. They've been let down by government. They have been religious leaders. Religious leaders. And by the religion period. And so there's. They're a little bit more. They're critical thinkers at an earlier age than you and I learned to be that. I didn't move into critical thinking until I was grown.

We just obeyed the rules.

Of course. I was an A plus girl. I mean, you give me a rule.

I was like a D minus, but I was like trying to.

I love rules. I loved. Give me a rule. I never met a rule I didn't like.

Wow.

And so I was set up to flourish in that system on the outside, but I died on the inside.

Yeah.

And so that is. Oh, that's a. That's a heavy lift and. But a good one. And what I've discovered is that I have emerged with so much less shame than I grew up. Up with. Because shame and fear are the two levers to pull. They work too. They're powerful incentives. And belonging. Shame, fear, and belonging. Those three things, you just can touch the button and it'll work.

Yeah.

And so putting and setting aside the concern about I'm going to lose my belonging. I'm afraid of this and I'm ashamed of where I'm at is. Wow. But it's. It's freedom. I'll tell you that. It's exciting. Feel really free in that for sure. And so that is. So back to your original question. That's a limiting belief of mine because I learned it from. I mean, I used to go to church three times a week as a fetus.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? So those are deep, deep, deep waters for me.

Wow.

A couple final questions for you before I ask them. I want people to get your book. Fierce, Free and full of fire.

I tried to just name it something impossible. Nobody can say it or remember it.

Fear, Free and full of fire. Yeah. You Got it. The guide to being Glorious. You. And is there anything in this book that you wish you would have written now, after going through more and more of this uncovering and experiences in your life, you know what's funny? Isn't in here yet.

That book came out last April. Terrible time for a book to launch. I don't know if you know that. I don't know if that seems clear. Camera out. Last April, my life fell apart after the book in July.

I'm not laughing at this.

Right. It's just. This isn't so lifelike.

You gotta laugh sometime.

Fell apart in July and I was in just absolute. I was in the ER for several months. Couldn't even. I mean, the emotional er.

I was gonna say the physical, er.

Emotional er. So I picked this book back up probably in December, having emerged just a hair, and I was like, holy Lord, what did I write in here? You know, like, what did I write? Did I. What did I say? Having now I am in a completely different place in December than I was in April. When it came out, what did I say? And like, with trepidation, I opened that book and I was like, it's all true.

Oh, that's good.

Every page. It all held every bit of it. And when I read it through, through the lens of what I experience, it's as if I wrote it in real time.

Really?

It's in there. It's in. I knew it.

So was everything you needed to hear for yourself?

I had what I needed.

Okay.

I'd learned it, I'd shared it, I'd written it. It was in there. I was so relieved to find out that that book held up.

That's nice.

Yeah.

Were you able to use the thing, the.

Totally.

I read it cover to cover.

And you started applying?

Yes. Like, I taught myself cover to cover. Yes.

That's good. That's good. Well, I want people to get the book.

Thank you.

Tears free and full of the guide to being glorious. You. If you want to be inspired and entertained and learn more, you've also got a great podcast that I've been on. I'm not sure what episode that was, but people can check out your podcast. And it's called for the Love Podcast.

Right.

For the Love Podcast. You're all over social media. Jen Hatmaker. What's the main channel that people probably.

The main two are like, probably Facebook and Instagram.

Facebook and Instagram. That's your jam.

That's my jam.

YouTube you've launched.

I go to Twitter when I'm feeling very spicy. When I want to get in trouble and maybe get in a fight.

Okay. Okay. All right.

There you go.

So go to Twitter.

First.

I've got two final questions for you, okay. This one's called the Three Truths.

Okay.

So I'd like you to imagine a hypothetical scenario. It's your last day on Earth, many years away from now. Sure, you get to live as. As long as you want to live, but eventually, you got to turn the lights off.

Okay?

And you have accomplished and created every dream of yours. For whatever reason, you got to take all your work with you. Every book, every word, every video, audio. It's with you to the next place. So we have none of your content available. And you get to leave behind three things you know to be true. This is all we would have of yours to remember you for the history of human existence. I know it's a big hypothetical scenario. Your three biggest lessons that you would leave behind, what would you say are those three truths for you?

I would say, first of all, I would want people to hear from me that they were always worthy. They were always good enough. From the day they were born, they couldn't add or subtract a single thing from it.

Yeah.

I would want them to hear me say, your people matter most. If you're gonna go to the grave or something, go for your relationships, the ones that you love. That's what'll last. That'll last long after. A bestseller.

Yeah.

And then I think I would say have a little bit more fun than you're having. Everybody calm down a little bit. This is it. We get one shot. Sit. I mean, do we really want to end it going? I wish I would have worried more. You know, I wish I would have gotten more arguments. I wish I would have gotten the weeds more with my family members. Like, this is it. I know this now because I feel like I'm at about the halfway mark, really. And I'm like, whoa, this thing zips past. So have a little bit more fun we get these days on this beautiful earth. I think that's it there. That's my life's thesis. You forced me to think of it.

There you go.

That's the next book. That's the next book, yeah. Why do you think we don't have fun?

God, we're such worried little creatures. Our poor little mangled minds. We just worry when we fret and we see squeeze and we fuss and we. We rage, and we are just so existentially in crisis all the time. And I just wonder if this life wasn't meant to be full of love and joy and possibility and happiness. I just think we're getting it a little bit wrong. So life is hard. None of us get out of here unscathed. It is hard. I'm not a Polly and a minimalist on the things that cause us suffering, but wow. What? I just know for a fact, I know for dead fact. When I'm 95, I just gave myself a lifespan.

There you go.

When I'm 95, on my deathbed, I am not going to wish I worried about all the things I worried about. I bet I could get rid of 80% of it. I bet I could look backward and go 80%. That was stupid. It didn't matter. It didn't have longevity. It was imagined. I'll make up something to worry about. I'll invent it, I'll write a whole story. It's not even real. So I already know that. I already know that looking back from just my vantage point right now. So it's gotta be true that we gotta let some shit go. Let's just, let's hang on to what matters and let's go, let's just let go of as much as we can.

Before I ask the final question. Jen, I wanna acknowledge you for, for being vulnerable, for showing up in the still messiness of everything in your life and being here, being raw, being real and not having it all figured out, but being in the process and showing yourself and talking about it. So I think it's going to inspire a lot of my audience and people listening that you don't have to have it all figured out. You can still be successful and create and build and grow and be in the journey of something that you're challenged with as well.

Thank you.

No matter what age you're at or how many books you've written about the thing, you can still feel and experience something and you probably will feel more of this for the rest of your life at different stages.

Pretty sure that's how this goes.

So I acknowledge you, appreciate you for being here. I've got one final question and that is what is your definition of greatness?

I think that my definition of greatness for me, again, I'm going back, I'm going to my 95 year old self. Yep, the one who's going to look back on a whole life and it is going to be, I hope that all the people at my funeral, every single one of them is like, oh, she loved me so much. Like, she loved me so much. I was her favorite. I hope they all fight over who they think was my favorite, that they all think it was them. You know, that'd be great for me.

That's great.

That'd be great for me.

Jen.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

Appreciate it. Amazing.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode.

I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, spread the message of greatness to a friend, friend or two right now. You can copy and paste the link wherever you're listening to this podcast and share it with friends or use the link Lewishouse.com 1113 to get the message out there to help other people be inspired as well.

And I would love to hear your.

Thoughts on the part you enjoyed the most about this episode. So please leave a review over on Apple Podcasts with your thoughts and leave us a rating as well while you're at it. And if this is your first time here, click that subscribe button to stay active. Up to date from the latest and greatest from the School of Greatness podcast. And if you want inspiring text messages sent to your phone every single week to help you stay on track, motivated, inspired with your goals and text the word podcast at 614-350-3960 and I want to leave you with this quote from Les Brown, who said, you are never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream. Yes, my friend, no matter what, what stage of life you're at right now, it's always a good time to go after your goals and dreams because that's what makes you feel alive. That's what makes you feel excited, adventurous, courageous to go after what you want. So start planning, start taking action towards your goals and dreams. And I want to remind you, if.

No one's told you lately that you.

Are loved, you are worthy, you matter. You know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.

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