Turning down the noise of the world ... how to go on a retreat
By Tara
Tara Sophia Mohr advocates going on your
own personal retreat to reconnect with yourself and re-evaluate
your life.I've just returned from Jen Louden’s week-long writing retreat in Taos, New Mexico. It was the first time I’ve taken a retreat that long for myself. I’ve gone on weekend workshops before, but nothing like this.
I went because I wanted to break through some 'stuckness' around a writing project. But also, I went because when I looked at the schedule – full of writing, yoga, dance, something inside me squealed: “that sounds like so much fun!” From that moment on I was calling it “summer camp for grownups” because it felt that delightful to me.
It was delightful, and fun, but more than that it was incredibly powerful. I think there's a real reason that every spiritual path has a retreat element to it, whether it’s keeping the Sabbath, a geographic pilgrimage or an intensive meditation period. All spiritual traditions recognize that, while daily spiritual practice is extremely important, spiritual and personal development is uniquely enhanced, moved forward, during intensive periods on retreat.
For me, retreat is about leaving the day-to-day, leaving the noise of the world. Its benefits come as much from what we do at the retreat as they come from what we see about our usual lives when we return with our retreat perspective. On my return, I see how overcrowded my life is, and how much I could benefit from simplifying it. I see how much I miss living in a beautiful natural environment. I see how living in a community makes me such a happier camper and—paradoxically—makes me more comfortable with taking time alone.
Retreat is also about, in Jen Louden’s words, “the container.” Creating a simple, empty space and allowing things to happen. I saw so clearly on this retreat that we don’t have to do much for the soul to emerge. Thoreau said, “the soul grows by subtraction, not by addition.”
On our retreat, the container looked like this: living in a place with limited internet and phone reception. Simple spaces, in a beautiful natural environment. Time devoted every day to connecting to the body, open time for writing, time for sharing in small groups and in the big group. There was lots of time and space to be present to oneself.
I want to encourage you to try some kind of retreat. A retreat is not a holiday. It's directed more inwardly, the noise of the world is purposely turned down. There is structure. It is a container, consciously created.
You can go on an organised retreat like I did, with a group and a teacher, or you can create your own. Jen, who led my retreat, wrote a book on this, called The Woman's Retreat Book: A Guide to Restoring, Rediscovering, and Reawakening Your True Self--In a Moment, an Hour, a Day, or a Weekend
, which gives
you ways to retreat for a week, a day, or even in a moment. It
doesn’t have to cost a lot of money, or even involve a lot of time
away from family and work to retreat. But please, in some way, give
yourself the huge gift of retreat.Love,
Tara
Tara Sophia Mohr is a writer and coach. She writes the blog Wise Living. You can sign up for her free Goals Guide, "Turning Your Goals Upside Down and Inside Out (To Get What You Really Want) ” by clicking here.
How to get the best out of your most productive hours
By Tara
Do you work best before breakfast?
Does your brain start whizzing around late at night?
Tara Sophia Mohr looks at how to
make the most of when your brain's at its
best.Between 5am and 7am, my mind is different. Life looks different. I have access to longer, sustained focus. I’m more likely to feel the miracle of the world, and well up with tears from it.
Between 7am and 8am, I’ve still got a shot at writing, but there’s more resistance, more mundane stuff tempting me.
After 8:30 or so, if I haven’t written, the appointments I know are coming in a couple hours start to crowd into my mind, the noise of the world gets louder, and it’s likely to be one of those days when all kinds of emails and logistics get done, but very little writing, very little deep creative work.
I’m not certain why the early morning hours have the power they do for me. I think it has something to do with the quiet of the world at this hour, the stillness I see when I look out of the window. I really do feel, in those hours, like the world and being alive are glorious secrets, and I get to witness them.
I think it also has something to do with being closer to the realm of sleep and dreams, which is why I always try to write as soon as possible after rising.
Third, I think it’s genetic. I think we all have unique biological rhythms that impact when we have the physical, cognitive, emotional energy to create, and when our spiritual channel is most open. My mother is also an early morning creator, and we both turn off, mentally, at about 9pm.
For all of us, there are “best hours” for whatever important things we do in our lives. There are best hours for creative work. Best hours for the work that requires sharp focus and deep thought. There are best hours for being present to and generous to our loved ones.
For me, the dance is to honor that, and not get too caught up in it.
It is to arrange my life so that I get to do things during their best hours. That means speaking up for my needs, setting boundaries, establishing routines, and often, departing from the herd – doing things on a different schedule than friends or clients, and being okay with that.
But my work is – just as much – to not beat myself up or panic when it I don’t get to do things in their optimal times – when I end up sending emails during my best “big picture thinking” hours, or using my most alert and creatively inspired hour to wait for the repair man, because hey, that’s how things worked out that day. The fearful, ever-panicking part of my brain can turn the simple truth that early morning is best for writing into “TARA, YOU HAVE TO GET WRITING BY SIX A.M. OR YOU HAVE FAILED YOURSELF” or, at 10pm, “IF WE DON’T GO TO BED IN THE NEXT FIFTEEN MINUTES, I WILL BE FOREVER CREATIVELY DOOOOOOOMED. Not so helpful, those thoughts.
But I do know, that I really love to write, and that writing happens for me much more fluidly and easily in the morning. I have the sense that I have access to better material then. So I do what I can to make it possible. If you're having trouble getting out from under the duvet and getting productive, here are some tips:
1. Try not to schedule appointments before 10am, because before that is writing time. Of course, sometimes an appointment needs to happen in that window, and if it does, I try not to worry about it too much.
2. Do your very best to go to bed by 10pm. This is a fabulous way to practice, everyday, setting boundaries and speaking up for my needs.
Hip person: “Want to meet for a dinner at x hot new restaurant at 9?”
Me: “Well…how about dinner at 6….or tea at 4?”
But sometimes, a big desire to watch a second episode of The Good Wife gets in the way. Or a late dinner with friends that I really do want to go to. Or being wide awake for who knows what reason. But as much as I can make it work, I do bed by 10pm, or even 9:30pm. I get my best rest when I go to sleep early, and it sets the stage for early morning writing.
3. “Conclude” the day at night, and create space for tomorrow. That could take any of a wide variety of forms: straightening up the home office from the day’s activity so there is a physical “clean slate” for the day, making a to-do list for the next day, reviewing the day in my mind and thinking about the significant moments, making a list of things I’m grateful for from the day, saying a prayer.
So the questions for all of us are:
• In whatever activities are most important to you, are there “best hours” for them? If you don’t know, experiment with doing them during different windows and find out.
• What can you do to set up your life so that you get to do those important things during their best hours? (Hint: you will probably need to be courageous in setting boundaries and creative in thinking about how to rearrange things in ways you haven’t previously considered, and that may be unconventional)
• What’s a truly helpful-to-you way to respond when it doesn’t work out – when you don’t get to use best hours the way you’d like? Instead of beating yourself up, how can real and loving curiosity about what happened and what you might do differently help you? What does it look like to respond with lightness of heart?
Tara Sophia Mohr is a writer and coach. She writes the blog Wise Living. You can sign up for her free Goals Guide, "Turning Your Goals Upside Down and Inside Out (To Get What You Really Want) ” by clicking here.
Coming Home to…
By TaraNothing could be further from the truth. We aren’t merely “enough,” but so much more than enough. Human beings come into this world overflowing with brilliance, shining with the sacredness that all human beings are.
As the world reflects back to us messages that we are flawed, we believe what the world tells us, and we begin a new way of looking at ourselves – full of stories about where we don’t measure up, how we are this type of person or that – and the light of us gets dimmed.
If there is any transformation to make, it is the one of coming back to awareness of our own goodness, wholeness, enoughness, trustworthyness, sacredness.
Those of us interested in inner work might talk about the glory of human beings and our souls and all that – but underneath that, we are saying: I need to change. I need to fix x about myself. There’s actually a lot of striving in the self-help world. The overarching paradigm is “I’m at point a, and I want to get to point b.”
I get that – because we all end up in adulthood carrying a lot of junk. Unhelpful fears, limiting beliefs, coping behaviors that don’t serve us, etc. We have an instinct to seek a freer, lighter, more joyful existence.
But it matters if you know, at the foundation, that you are shining and sacred and incredible and whole and nothing can take that away from you. You are already that. And life too, is already shining and sacred and incredible and whole, and nothing needs to change for you to awaken to all of that. You just need to ask to awaken to it, and to find doorways – whether reading scripture or meditating or painting or running – that helps you wake to it.
I’ve been noticing this distinction – striving for the goodness vs. coming home to the goodness that is – more as I’ve been writing more poetry. I trust what shows up in the poetry because it comes from something bigger than me, and it seems to speak to something deep in people. I started to notice: what shows up in the poetry feels so different than what shows up in my coaching or workshops. The poetry is really not about what could be, with “inner work” and change. It’s about the glory of what is. It’s not about who we could become – the potential we could fulfill. It’s about the miracle that we are.
Beside all our meager chatter about changing ourselves, a quieter voice endures, and it speaks with authority. It’s the silent, powerful mountain next to all the skirmishes happening on the land. And the mountain is whispering to us about our fundamental shining sacredness.
If there is any “transformation” to be had, it is only that, the transformation of coming home. Of seeing the utter sacredness that is present in our midst. I want to offer work that speaks to this.
Love,
Tara
Tara Sophia Mohr is a writer and coach. She writes the blog Wise Living. You can sign up for her free Goals Guide, "Turning Your Goals Upside Down and Inside Out (To Get What You Really Want) ” by clicking here.
Women: Stop Calling Yourselves 'Controlling'
By TaraLately, I'm seeing a pattern among the women clients that walk into my office. There's a lot of talk about "not being controlling."
"I'm trying not to be so controlling," these women are saying. "I'm trying to just let go, and not have to control everything."
I get the sense they think I'm going to nod along enthusiastically when they say this. After all, I'm in the personal growth world. I'm a "life coach." I believe in the power of surrendering to something larger than ourselves. So wouldn't I give them a big round of applause for their attempts to "let go"?
Nope.
Instead, when I hear them say this, I'm suspicious. I'm suspicious because these brilliant, powerful women are sitting across from me, telling me and themselves that they are being "controlling," but I don't see it.
I don't see high-strung women walking around the world trying to control it. I see intelligent women trying to have a voice in the world and take care of themselves. When they are met with disappointing results -- other people not listening to them or respecting their voices -- they are turning their disappointment inward, labeling themselves "controlling" and thinking they need to change.
It's in vogue "to just let go." But there's a thin line between letting go of an unhealthy desire to control and letting go of the healthy drive within all of us to be heard, to influence, to have impact.
I'm also suspicious because controlling is a term that's rarely applied to men. It used to be I mostly heard men referring to women as controlling, but now I hear more and more women applying the term to themselves, in "personal growth/self-awareness" guise.
Men who stand again and again for their own desires and needs aren't deemed controlling. They are called bold, persistent, committed, strong. I've yet to hear a man grapple with and be hard on himself for being "so controlling." I've yet to hear a man talk about "trying to just let go" at work.
I'm also suspicious because I hear the "I'm trying not to be controlling" line coming up in two contexts:
1) Romantic Situations
When he's not calling. When he's not acting caring or excited about her. When she's expressed something and is left feeling judged, dismissed or unheard. Next comes, "Well, I'm trying to not be so controlling, to not have to have everything go my way."
Two things are getting conflated here: letting go of unhelpful rules about how a relationship needs to go, and squashing one's own needs and voice.
2) At Work
The second scenario women are usually referring to when they talk about "not being so controlling" is work, but the underlying dynamics are the same. When they've expressed their voice and are left feeling disrespected, dismissed or not valued as much as their male colleagues, and they have to decide what to do next, up comes the "trying to not be controlling" thing.
Wanting to have a voice is not being controlling. Wanting to influence others, to be heard, to make an impact is not being controlling. "Letting go" isn't leaving your own side and settling for something that makes you feel bad. Letting go might mean letting that guy be himself and deciding he's not the right guy for you. Letting go is not letting him be himself, and staying around, even though you feel unloved, not cherished, not heard.
Here's my recommendation: strike the word "controlling" from your vocabulary. It's loaded, it's gendered and other stuff is hiding underneath it.
Take away the word, and look deeper: what's actually happening in the situation at hand? Are you actually trying to control things outside of your control, in a tight-fisted way? If so, that means you are afraid. Something about the situation has put you on alert. Maybe you are afraid of failing, or of being hurt, or of compromising yourself in some way, so you are trying to "control" to prevent that from happening. If that's the case, call yourself afraid, not controlling. It's kinder to yourself and more compassionate. It gets to the heart of the matter. From there you can start to explore what the fear is and what you need to do to soothe that fear and find safety for yourself.
If you look underneath the label of "controlling" and find
not fear but simply a desire for agency, for expression, for your
own needs to be met, if you find your voice and your heart, know
that that's not something to let go of. It's something to
cultivate. Agency is a gift, and it's something very different
from control.
Tara Sophia Mohr is a writer and coach. She
writes the blog Wise Living. You can sign up for her free Goals
Guide, "Turning Your Goals Upside Down and Inside Out (To Get
What You Really Want) ” by clicking
here.
How to Recognize Your Calling
By Tara1. You feel an unusually vivid pain or frustration around the status quo of a particular issue or topic. You strongly feel or clearly see what’s lacking.
2. You see a powerful vision–vague or clear–about what could be. That vision keeps filling your mind or tugging at your heart.
3. You feel inspired or even compelled to act. You have a mysterious, felt sense of “This work is mine to do.” You feel as if you’ve received an assignment, rather than that you chose the particular task or cause.
4. You find that actually doing the calling is a magical, strengthening process. While your inner critic might show up now and then, and while it’s hard work, you receive energy and a sense of meaning, and rightness, from doing it. You feel a kind of flow while working on it.
And… (these are the most important – and most surprising qualities of a calling)
5. You feel huge resistance. A part of you wants to run the other direction. You feel like the task is huge, and you just couldn’t possibly be up to it. It feels like this upends your plans, and doesn’t quite fit with what is convenient in your life. Keep this in mind: in the archetypal hero’s journey, step 1 is “hearing the call”. Step 2? “Resisting the call.” It’s normal. It’s part of the process. The key is eventually surrendering that resistance and stepping into the calling.
6. You don’t – yet—have everything you need to have to complete it. It’s not just irrational fear talking. It’s the truth. You don’t have everything you need. There is work to do, resources you will need to gather, and things you will need to make happen. That is a part of the beautiful stretch of the calling.
7. You aren’t – yet – the person you need to be to complete the calling. It’s true. It’s not just your inner critic. You aren’t quite up to the task. You don’t have all the qualities and strength you’ll need. And you’ll get them by doing the calling. Callings always grow us in some meaningful way. You will have to evolve, develop new capacities, and show up to life in new ways.
Now that you know about qualities 5, 6, & 7, what looks different in your life? What might you do differently, when it comes to that which you feel called to do?
Tara Sophia Mohr is a writer and coach. She writes the blog Wise Living. You can sign up for her free Goals Guide, "Turning Your Goals Upside Down and Inside Out (To Get What You Really Want) ” by clicking here.
How a simple exercise to connect with yourself can make a dramatic difference
By Tara
Tara Sophia Mohr looks at why reminding
yourself of your values can actually improve your performance and
abilities.
A University of Colorado college physics course. A persistent
gender gap: the girls get worse test scores than the boys, and
end up with lower grades at the end of the semester. The
teachers try various things to fix it – extra tutorials, etc. –
but nothing works. Until one surprising intervention made
the difference. From Discover
Magazine,
“Researcher Akira Miyake recruited 283 men and 116
women who were taking part in the university’s 15-week
introductory course to physics. He randomly divided them into two
groups. One group picked their most important values
from a list and wrote about why these mattered to them.
The other group – the controls – picked their least
important values and wrote about why these might matter to other
people.
“This happened twice at the start of the course, and the whole
thing was led by teaching assistants who didn’t know what was
going on (it was a double-blind experiment). They, and the
students, were all told that the exercise was meant to improve
writing skills.
“During the rest of the semester, the students sat for four exams
that made up most of their final grade. Among the control group,
who wrote about other people’s values, men outperformed women by
an average of ten percentage points. But among the students who
affirmed their own values, the gender gap largely disappeared.
Their final grades reflected this shrunken divide: if the women
took Miyake’s exercise, far more got Bs and far fewer got
Cs.
Miyake also gave the students a standard test called the Force
and Motion Conceptual Evaluation (FMCE), which checks their
understanding of basic physics concepts. In Miyake’s control
group, the men outscored the women, as they usually do. But the
women who wrote about their values closed the gap
entirely.”
Wow. The complex, intractable science gender gap…the thing that
is born of years of conditioning, the thing we keep debating
nature vs. nurture about – was erased because of 30 minutes of
writing – and writing that had nothing to do with physics?
Remarkably, this study was modeled after another one that showed
that the grades of black students improved after they did the
writing drill – and their grades were still lifted (relative to
the control group) two years later.
As a coach, every day I see the power of people clarifying and
connecting to their values, reconnecting to what is important to
them. I’ve seen that it brings them energy, clarity, a kind of
peace, and a lot of joy. But it turns out it really effects
performance too.
In the academic world, these experiments fall under a domain of
research about “stereotype threat” – which is this: the culture
has a stereotype (i.e. women aren’t as good as men at science)
and then women internalize that stereotype, and either 1) hold
that belief about themselves, which then affects their
performance or 2) are afraid of confirming the stereotype through
their own mistakes/poor performance, and therefore experience a
lot of extra stress in doing the task, which creates poor
performance. I’ve personally felt both of these – and I’m
guessing you have too.
Researchers look at the writing exercise as a kind of
“psychological shield” against stereotype threat. Women who
believed that men were better than women at physics most
benefited from the exercise – their grades showed the
biggest change. Researches haven’t yet identified
exactly why the writing exercise functions
this way, but I would say its some combination of:
1) The writing exercise helps you disidentify with the
stereotyped group, and conceptualize yourself as an individual —
thereby distancing yourself from the stereotype
2) By putting your attention on the things that are important to
you, you shift your energy out of fear/stress and into
centeredness, inspiration, and even love.
3) You literally connect to yourself, and when we do that, our
natural intelligence and abilities flow forth.
This study illustrates so beautifully one of my most deeply held
convictions: to do great things in the world, we need a
combination of inner work and worldly work. Frankly, that’s what
I’m most excited about in my new women’s leadership
program, Playing
Big, and what I think is most pioneering about it – the
fusion of inner work and outer work.
We have to be in the right energetic place, inwardly, to do
remarkable things. We have to have cleared the cobwebs of fears
and negative beliefs about ourselves – and rooted ourselves in
our authentic passions.
But we also need the “outer work” – the skills training. We need
to know skills that allow us to use our genius effectively in the
world. Only taking the physics class (just doing the wordly work
part) left women underperforming in relation to men, and
literally disconnected from their own brilliance. But if they
had just spent time writing about their values, without
taking a physics class, those women wouldn’t have the impact
they want to have as doctors and scientists.
So here’s the headline: you can dramatically impact your
abilities by connecting to yourself. I mean geez, it lifts
physics test scores — can’t get much more concrete results than
that.
Take fifteen minutes and write about your most important values
and what is important to you about them. Do it twice over the
next couple weeks. See what happens.
More broadly, notice in your life, how fear of poor performance,
or negative beliefs about yourself, literally disconnects you
from your own voice and your own brilliance. And develop some
simple practices that help you click right back in to the heart
of you.
Love,
Tara
Tara Sophia Mohr is a writer and coach. She writes
the blog Wise Living. You can sign up for her free Goals
Guide, "Turning Your Goals Upside Down and Inside Out (To Get
What You Really Want) ” by clicking
here.
Should we release our inner Arrogant Idiot?
By TaraLast summer I wrote an article called "10 Rules for Brilliant Women" at The Huffington Post. I receive a lot of email about the article, but of the ten rules, this one seems to resonate the most:
Rule #5: Be an Arrogant Idiot: Of course I know you won’t, because you never could. But please, just be a little more of an arrogant idiot. You know those guys around the office who share their opinions without thinking, who rally everyone around their big (often unformed) ideas? Be more like them. Even if just a bit. You can afford to move a few inches in that direction.
Of course, I don’t really want more arrogant idiots in the world, male or female. Arrogant idiot behavior is taxing to be around, and it causes incredible amounts of waste – of human and financial capital –as people throw out a big idea, generate enthusiasm – and lead a team or company or organization into failure, wasting thousands or millions of dollars along the way – because they didn’t do the right kind of research, feedback-gathering, or humble assumption-testing first.
But many women err in the other direction. The “little voice” in our heads pops up, to say that if it was a great idea, someone else would have thought of it. That we couldn’t possibly have the expertise or qualifications to put forward an idea that will transform our company or industry or country or world.
I want to say: if not you, who? I mean that quite literally. If not a well-intended, caring, ethical and thoughtful person like you – then who?
Your idea doesn’t need to be perfect now – but it does need to be put out there – so that it can mature, get more nuanced, and have it’s impact on the world.
I recently got this note from a blog reader, in response to my post on Playing Big:
“One thing I’ve noticed with women is how frequently we feel the need to keep preparing: “I don’t know enough, I need more classes” when many men will jump in half prepared and just “go for it”!
What’s strange is that I see this same behavior in my children, my son will raise his hand first thing in class when he doesn’t even know the answer – he just wants to be called on and then he’ll figure something out! My daughters on the other hand would not even raise their hands unless they were sure about the answer. It seems in the nature versus nurture debate – nature definitely has the upper hand.”
I suspect the “why” is some combination of nature and nurture, but who knows? What matters is that we need to be aware of this tendency in ourselves and to respond consciously to it.
Many of us need to be should be saying things that make us feel as if we are being arrogant idiots – doing the things that activate the little voice in our heads that says, “Don’t say that! What do you know? Leave it up to them (the boss, the experts, etc.)…they must see something about this picture you don’t...
So here’s a little quiz for you. Choose A or B, whichever you feel best applies to you.
A: I propose my own unique ideas when they are well researched, fully formed, and tested in some way.
B: I propose my own unique ideas when they are still forming, untested, un-researched – and I’m not sure if they are right or not.
***
A: I feel qualified to speak mainly on the things I have formal training or deep expertise in.
B: I think my common sense, critical thinking skills, and unique way of looking at the world give me something valuable to contribute on a wide range of subjects and I share my opinions and ideas – even when I don’t have training or deep expertise in the topic at hand.
***
A: It’s my responsibility to do all the due diligence I can to make sure an idea will succeed before I ask others to invest time or resources in it.
B: I’m willing to take a team along with me to pursue my vision or idea – even before I’m sure it will work. I mean, who can predict what will work?
Where did you answer A and see that you’d like to move more in the B answer direction? What would that look like for you?
This isn’t just about being successful at work. The spiritual side to this is that it’s really about being true to yourself, honoring your voice, honoring the point of view that life/God/the universe gave you – and trusting that it is your path to share that point of view. It’s also about being vulnerable, and about getting in the sandpit to play with the other kids.
It’s also about serving the world. I’m tired of feeling, after I came home from a walk with girlfriends on a Saturday morning, that I just heard ten brilliant insights and ideas that could change the world –from sane, ethical, smart, humble women. The problem is that those ideas are getting heard mostly on walks and over coffee and on phone calls among female friends around the world –when they also need to be taking center stage in op-ed pages, in boardrooms, and on the floors of congress.
I think this is the era to change that, to take the points of view and perspectives and questions and ideas and new frameworks and innovations that are present but latent within us, and bring them forth—big, bold, revolutionary—into the culture.
p.s. My new women’s leadership/sharing your voice/living your brilliance/following your calling program, Playing Big, is opening for registration in a just a couple weeks. Click here to sign up for more information, special discounts, and all that good stuff!
Love,
Tara
Tara Sophia Mohr is a writer and coach. She writes the blog Wise Living. You can sign up for her free Goals Guide, "Turning Your Goals Upside Down and Inside Out (To Get What You Really Want) ” by clicking here.
Why women don't like negotiation, and how you can learn to love it
By Tara
Tara Sophia Mohr looks at why the different
ways men and women negotiate might be the secret behind the pay gap
... and what we can do to change that A question for you: what is your relationship with negotiation?
What happens in your body when you hear the word? What happens to heart rate, body tension? What memories come up – positive or negative?
If you don’t like negotiation, you need to know:
1. You aren’t alone
2. It can be different.
It’s possible to transform that squeamish, get-me-out-of-here attitude to a totally different experience where you feel comfortable – and even enjoy – negotiating. That’s my story.
I started as someone who figured out how little she could live on and then suggested that for her salary (nice, huh?) and now am someone who actually enjoys a serious salary negotiation.
What made the difference for me was simply this: training in negotiation, specifically for women.
Research shows that while men think of negotiation as something similar to “wrestling a match” or “winning a ballgame,” women tend of think of it as something like “going to the dentist.” Sounds about right – doesn’t it?
Women find it so unpleasant they often opt out. Over their lives, men initiate negotiations about four times as often as women, and 20% of women never negotiate at all.
And listen to this: in many industries the pay gap between men and women is equivalent to the amount that men’s salaries were increased through their negotiations – suggesting that the pay gap in those industries in mostly due to women not asking for more money.
Of course, negotiation is not just about money. We need negotiation to get the work flexibility we want, and perhaps most importantly – to determine what responsibilities and projects our jobs will and will not involve. Entrepreneurs need it to. Women not working need it to – to deal with the insurance company, the neighbors, the other people on the volunteer committee, your kids’ doctor…you get the idea.
Like many women, for a long time I made the mistake of just not negotiating. I also made the mistake of thinking negotiation is something special that happened rarely – when I got a new job, for example. I came to see that negotiation is actually a kind of conversation that happens every day – as we interact with other people, who have different needs and preferences than we do. Without negotiation, people’s needs get squashed. Resentment festers. Passive aggressive and manipulative behavior arises in an attempt to meet needs that were not discussed – explicitly – in negotiation. All kinds of dysfunction happens! Women make the mistake of thinking we can keep relationships clean and harmonious by keeping negotiation out of the picture. Nothing could be further from the truth.
When you think about the impact of going through all those situations in your life day in and day out without a negotiation toolkit – and a concept of negotiation – that really serves you well – that’s big.
So why is it so tough for women to negotiate? Several reasons. We have a screwed up concept of what negotiation is ( that is a kind of high-risk, adversarial interaction) and that makes us freaked out about it. We value harmony. Highlighting areas where our desires or preferences conflict with another person’s? That can feel totally odd, crazy, impossible.
Second, we underestimate ourselves. Even if we’ve been offered the job, even if we’ve been invited into the partnership (or whatever the situation may be) we aren’t likely to see we are wanted, valued, and that we have leverage. Power. Influence. And we really can’t see that asking for stuff could actually benefit our relationship with the other party – deepen it, allow them to feel they’ve given something important to us, allow them to know the exchange is really working.
And then of course for women, there’s always the specter of the things we don’t want to be called. We don’t want to be called a bitch. We don’t want to be seen as “not nice.” We don’t want people to say “who does she think she is?” We all know that we don’t say and don’t do a lot of things because of those fears.
What helped me tremendously in my own life was getting some real negotiation training, training specifically designed for women. I went from hating and being scared of negotiation to kinda looking forward to it (really!) and seeing it as a time when I got to feel great about myself, ask for what I needed, and have a rich and real dialogue (usually over days, weeks – not minutes) about what the other party could do to ensure everyone’s needs got met.
Negotiation is not just a business or life skill. It’s much deeper than that. For women, it’s about how we are able to know and honor our own needs, and then deal with those needs in the (ack!) real world where people might have a thing or two to say about them.
It’s also about, spiritually, a kind of coming into the light – the light of realizing how much we are worth to the people we work with, the light of how much power we have to get our needs met. It’s about getting rid of the beliefs we have about how we have to compromise here and there – and seeing that the possibilities are greater than we thought they were.
That’s why, I’d ask you today to take a look, or do some journaling about:
What’s your relationship with negotiation?
What comes up for you around it?
What kind of negotiator do you want to be?
Where in your life is negotiation called for – and you are turning away from it?
Love,
Tara
Tara Sophia Mohr is a writer and coach. She writes the blog Wise Living. You can sign up for her free Goals Guide, "Turning Your Goals Upside Down and Inside Out (To Get What You Really Want) ” by clicking here.
Speaking up: the benefits of bringing your true voice to the table
By TaraSeveral years ago, I was attending a conference for professionals in philanthropy. I attended one session focused on one of the big challenges in the industry. I knew I held a very controversial view: that the older generation of professionals and institutions was preventing the very kind of change they were calling for, because of their attachment to realities that no longer existed. Normally, I would have kept quiet about that. After all, lots of those older generation folks were in the room – and they were powerful. Plus, no one else was mentioning it. And what would it do to my professional reputation to say something so confrontational?
But for some reason, that day, I raised my hand and spat out my view to all 50 folks in the room. Quite honestly, the main reason was fatigue – I was too tired from a 5am flight to operate with my filter on. I said plainly what I thought was wrong with the situation, and how the older institutions and professionals weren’t dealing with changing realities. I spoke about one particularly hot-button issue that people tended to avoid talking about. I was blunt and passionate.
What happened next shocked me. People in the session became energized, and starting talking about the issue I had raised. People kept referring to me and my comment, talking about me like I was an important person: “The issue that Tara raised” … “As Tara noted in her comment…” “I want to respond to what Tara said…” When the session closed, many of them came over to me. They wanted to get coffee later in the conference, invited me to sit on this committee, handed me their card. That group included many of the more established professionals and institutions I’d criticized in my comment.
As I wandered back to my hotel room, I realised: everything I had believed about the costs of making that comment was wrong. In fact, in making my controversial comment, I found visibility, connection and belonging with the group.
I realised: I was making this kind of mis-estimation every day, keeping my most radical views to myself, not sharing ideas or critiques of the status quo. I thought I was “being appropriate,” maintaining relationships, and doing the professionally wise thing, but actually I was preventing myself being known, from standing out – and from being seen as a real leader in my field.
For me, this experience was about authenticity and professional success. But more deeply, it was about participating and belonging. Sometimes I fall into the illusion that if I show up in the room (if I attend the conference, the dinner party, the meeting – whatever it is ) and be friendly and nice – then I’m participating and as a result I’ll feel a sense of belonging. Not so. Belonging depends on authenticity, vulnerability – because it’s only in being ourselves that we get to feel we truly have been seen, that we truly belong. For me, that always feels scary, but it also makes life exciting. The mostmundane-feeling experiences become exciting when we challenge ourselves to really show up authentically and share our point of view. The conference experience was so illuminating for me because it said to me so clearly: in ways beyond what you think, you can be you and belong.
When I’ve decided that my view is so far from what is mainstream I can’t even share it; when I’ve decided that the changes I’d like to see are just never going to happen, when I’ve decided that they are idiots, or that they just don’t get it – and then out of that judgment I don’t even share my point of view (except when ranting to friends on the phone after the fact, of course)– it only ends up isolating me, and reinforcing the idea that I have to somehow hide myself in the world. It robs me from that incredible experience of being seen and welcomed.
Maybe, at some earlier points along the way, I just didn’t have what I needed, internally, to speak up. I didn’t have the skills or the inner strength or the insensitivity to praise and criticism. Maybe you didn’t either. But now we are grown up. And we want to play big and change the world. We aren’t powerless kids or teens fighting for social survival any more. We’ve recovered from earlier experiences when we shared our ideas and got hurt or rejected. We are educated, wise, and diplomatic. We can start really bringing our voices – big, bold, bright – to the table.
Where in your life have you been shrinking or covering up your voice?
Are there areas in your life in which you are assuming that conforming is the path to belonging and connection – when in fact maybe sharing your real ideas/voice/feelings might be the path?
Where in your life are you willing to experiment with sharing your voice more fully?
Love,
Tara
Tara Sophia Mohr is a writer and coach. She writes the blog Wise Living. You can sign up for her free Goals Guide, "Turning Your Goals Upside Down and Inside Out (To Get What You Really Want) ” by clicking here.
Turn up the dial 25%: how to work out what you really want
By TaraIn my work coaching clients, I often ask: "What do you want?"
When I
ask clients "what do you want?" I often use a tool to get at the
answer: the dial. Here's how it works:
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