Leverage Your Fear to Fuel Your Growth
Episode 436 | Host: Emilie Aries | Guest: Farnoosh Torabi
Reframe your relationship with fear.
Content warning: this podcast episode includes mentions of pregnancy loss.
Fear. We all experience it—it’s an emotion we’re innately wired for—which makes it all the more shocking that we’re not taught how to deal with it productively growing up. Instead, we often learn to pack it down, ignore it, and fight against it. We’re taught to be fearless instead. Since that’s all but impossible, we start our professional lives with a foundational misconception about fear—and that’s no way to flourish!
Farnoosh Torabi, a personal finance advisor, journalist, and author, explored the role of fear and our pursuit of success in her latest book, A Healthy State of Panic. I spoke with her about the inspiration and intricacies of the book in the latest episode of the Bossed Up podcast. We explored how to identify and engage with our fear and use that relationship to bolster our aspirations and pursuit of success.
Explore your fears
Society teaches us to run from our fear, to fight or ignore it. But what if we questioned it instead? Farnoosh isn’t talking about getting confrontational; rather, she’s suggesting we observe and ask questions like, “Where did you come from?” The answer to this question can make a big difference.
Upon closer inspection, you might realize you’ve tuned in to a fear your mother felt 30 years ago that’s not really relevant for you today. Or, you might discover this particular fear was taught to you in school as you grew up, but your own lived experience disproves its legitimacy. Fears like these could be tamed by recognizing that they don’t belong to you.
If the fear is true to your experience of the world, Farnoosh says it’s time to reframe. Instead of denying our fears, ask them, “What are you trying to get me to protect?”
Fear tends to rear up when our livelihood is at stake in the form of a career or relationship change, for instance. It’s good sense to think long and hard about the risk you’re taking. How might you lay out clearer steps, stronger contingencies, a more solid strategy that will reassure your protective instincts that you’re recognizing this risk and protecting that livelihood? Consider how you might come out of this fear tête-à-tête with an iron-clad game plan for the next steps.
The power of naming your fear
A few years ago, Marc Brackett and I talked about emotional intelligence and the practice of labeling our feelings to take away their power. This tactic works for fear, too. Knowing what flavor of fear you’re feeling, as Farnoosh puts it, and categorizing it puts the power back in your hands. Now that you know this is a fear of rejection, a fear of loneliness, a fear of failure, you can wrap your head around what it’s trying to tell you and start to take action, which is really what your fear is trying to get you to do in the first place.
Transforming our fear of failure
High achievers often have pretty chronic relationships with a fear of failure. Aiming sky high is amazing and terrifying at the same time, but Farnoosh suggests that the trick to mitigating that terror could be to remove the possibility of failure altogether.
What if your scenario for each future endeavor had success baked in? Because let’s face it, even if we don’t hit our end goal, we still come away from each and every attempt with fresh proof that we can give it our all, we can face challenges, and new lessons learned. When you put it that way, doesn’t it sound a lot like you’ve succeeded, wherever on the path you wind up?
Related Links from today’s episode:
Bossed Up episode 323 with Marc Brackett
FACE YOUR FEAR AND LEVEL UP YOUR CAREER:
-
EMILIE: A quick trigger warning before we dive in, today’s episodes does include mentions of pregnancy loss. If that is not a safe subject for you to hear about, this is an episode to skip.
[INTRO MUSIC IN]
Hey, and welcome to the Bossed Up Podcast, episode 436. I'm your host, Emilie Aries, the founder and CEO of Bossed Up. And today I'm so excited to share with you a conversation all about fear and striving.
[INTRO MUSIC ENDS]
What role does fear have to play when it comes to being a high achiever? And now, at the start of a brand new year, if you are setting your sights for achievement, what you want to get out of this brand new blank slate of a year we have before us? Today's episode is for you. Those feelings of ambition and excitement and energy can quickly be followed by pangs of fear, anxiety, fear of failure, fear in the pit of our stomach. That's asking, what if I fail? What if I can't? What if? What if? What if? If those what ifs keep you up at night, then my guest today Farnoosh Torabi, has an incredible set of questions and reflections for us to think about when it comes to understanding fear's role in living our best life. And she really is pushing back on patriarchy and so many other systemic norms around achievement that we are taught in this country and in this world as she navigates what it means to embrace the power of fear. My guest today, Farnoosh, is an Iranian American journalist and one of the country's leading personal finance experts. She hosts the Webby-winning podcast So Money, which has earned over 30 million downloads. And on the program, she interviews CEOs, leading entrepreneurs, creators, and celebrities. She's a sought after speaker and author of multiple books, including Psych Yourself Rich and When She Makes More, all about women breadwinners, which we will absolutely touch upon today. And her newest book is A Healthy State Of Panic, part memoir, part guidebook on how fear can be a superpower to achieve true wealth and career success. I'm so excited to dive into this book and its powerful principles. Farnoosh, welcome to the Bossed Up podcast.
FARNOOSH: Emilie, thank you for having me.
EMILIE: I'm so delighted. It feels like I've been following your work for quite a long time. This is a long overdue conversation on air. And, uh, first of all, congratulations. This new book,
FARNOOSH: Thank you.
EMILIE: A Healthy State Of Panic, is, what, your third book?
FARNOOSH: My fourth book.
EMILIE: Your fourth book.
FARNOOSH: But it's easy to lose track because I’ve been, as you said,
EMILIE: [LAUGHS]
FARNOOSH: you've been following me for a long time. I've been working for a long time. It's my 15th, 16th year in business, and I've written four books, and this one is a late bloomer. It came, it's like nine years after my last book. It feels like the first one. And if I had to pick my favorite, I guess it's this one, A Healthy State Of Panic.
EMILIE: I feel like that's appropriate. I would hope so. You got to keep, you know, writing the book that you're dying to get out.
FARNOOSH: Yeah. You got to find new loves. [LAUGHS]
EMILIE: Yeah, well, congratulations.
FARNOOSH: Thank you.
EMILIE: That's quite a feat. 15 years in business, fourth book. What inspired A Healthy State Of Panic?
FARNOOSH: Wow. Well, it's a passion project, but you really need more than just passion. You need conviction. You need time. And [LAUGHS] I didn't have a lot of that over the last nine years. I was raising two kids. I had started a podcast. I was busy, and not that I wasn't busy during my last three book writing experiences, but I think also it's important to mention that I was turning 40 at the time that I got this book deal, and I felt as though I had more to talk about, more to share than just personal finance. My previous books were mostly well positioned in like, on the business shelf in Barnes and Noble or the personal finance shelf in Barnes and Noble, and this one straddles the memoir sort of mental health space, as well as self help and personal finance. And the biggest question I've been getting increasingly in my line of work is not, how do I roll over a 401K. Those are all excellent questions, and I love to answer those questions. The biggest question is much deeper, and it is, how did you become you? People want to know the genesis story of a woman who became the breadwinner in her family, who was raised by immigrants and didn't have a lot of resources growing up, and even came into some debt in her 20s, yet still managed to create a business, create multiple revenue streams, and seemingly live, uh, a fulfilling life. And not just, I am happy most days, some days not. But I'm putting one foot in front of the other. And I think that when I looked at the why behind that, the real why, like it's not like, oh, I studied finance or I had great bosses or anything. Yeah. So it's all true. But the why of why I did that, it goes to the who I am, which is that I am a scared and terrified woman, and I have a very close relationship with fear that dates, predates me, actually. Like, fear is a legacy in my family, and it is that relationship that I wanted to examine, because through that, you can talk about money and life and work because we're afraid 24/7. And so I thought it'd be kind of a fun slash funny slash interesting way to approach my work in, through this lens of fear in my upbringing.
EMILIE: Well, deeply courageous in doing so, if I might add. Because, you in so many ways, embody what we've been taught, is the American dream that feels very elusive right now and feels very tenuous for so many people right now. So, to point to fear as an asset instead of something we're supposed to overcome or some weakness that we're supposed you know, ignore and do it anyway, but actually, to harness the power of fear is a really, I'd say, different and radical approach. So let's go back to the beginning. You're a daughter of immigrants from Iran. You grew up in Worcester, which is just north of where I grew up, south Windsor, Connecticut, Cowtown. Right. My mother's from Colombia, South America. My father was raised outside of Paris. And so I can attest to the parochial, very white environments that we probably were raised in as being one in which we were taught you can be anything you want to be. And so how was that different for you?
FARNOOSH: Well my parents, obviously came here with the ambitions to achieve the American dream, but they also came from a country that was war-torn, and they knew very well, unfortunately, that your life can be turned upside down in a minute and that life is precarious. And so I kind of live these two ideologies of like, go out there and give it your all and be ambitious and take advantage of your freedoms. Also, recognize that life is uncertain, life is hard, and you're not going to just get things because you think you are entitled to them or deserve them. That latter ideology, I don't think most young kids grew up with. And as a parent you know, I have to think about, do I want to tell my kids that the world's a scary place, so I have to toe that line and we can get into that later. But I think there are certain things I'm really indebted to my parents like for instilling in me that were not, there were hard truths. Hard truths, you know.
EMILIE: It's sort of like there's no playbook for teaching your children about injustice in the world.
FARNOOSH: Yeah. And they would do it subtly. Like my father, I remember when I was my daughter's age, who's six, he and I, we like to go for walks after dinner around our apartment building in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was a professor in grad school at the time, and my mom was a homemaker, and we had not much, and we lived off of his graduate student stipend. And he, um, loves to tell me, he's like, do you know that a McDonald's hamburger was only like, 97 cents or whatever? Those are the days. But we would have these father-daughter walks. And he would say to me, you will realize one day just how lucky you are. And I didn't know what he meant, but he clearly meant that even just the ability to, as a young girl, prance around in shorts and a tank top in a country that no, sexism is real here, too, but it's nothing like Iran. And to be able to make a goal and accomplish it of any size, stature, cost, I mean, that was the promise. And I think that I was able to achieve that. And certainly now realizing just how scared my father must have been, um, in those early years, especially coming here and not knowing, like, is this real? Can we actually do this? Are we really not experiencing the horror that is our previous country, where my brother still lives, my parents still live in this, that old country. And so, yeah, I feel very lucky in some weird ways that I was raised that way, because what it really, it meant for me was that I grew up to become a woman who never assumed that things would just be handed to me. I just knew that life was uncertain, and I knew that life is going to be full of failure and rejection and loneliness. But it didn't make me want to live life any less. It didn't want me to stay in bed all day. It just made me more prepared. And that sort of mindset, I think I got to give it a lot of credit for how far it's taken me.
EMILIE: Well, I'm curious to dig into that, because what I'm hearing is a tolerance for risk, which is not something that's taught to us in our public education system. Right? We're taught, you do this, then that happens, then you do that, and then that happens. I was just on the phone with someone in our community who got her PhD because she always had the next path laid out for her academically. She knew, next year, I'll be doing that, and the year after that, I'll be doing that. And there was some comfort in the predictability of her path. And now she's got this amazing PhD. She's landed her first full time job. It took her across the country, totally new environment. She feels adrift. And I think there's something, the appetite that you're raised with around risk tolerance and, like, diving headfirst into taking risks, not knowing what the outcome will be, can be very productive as long as those failures along the way that are inevitable don't crush us. And so I wonder like, what's the line of anxiety where fear is part of who you are versus when fear can become paralyzing?
FARNOOSH: Well, in the book, I really want us to face our fears. And really, what I mean by facing them is questioning them, observing them. It's not because you want to have a confrontational relationship or an angry relationship with your fear or a feeling of, like, what are you doing here? We've been conditioned to not appreciate fear. We've been raised to not think of fear as anything but a weakness and a sign of cowardice. And so when it arrives in our lives, our instinct is to want to run away, fight it. My offer is, what if you don't do any of that? And if nothing else, you just take a beat and you sit with it for a few minutes. And beyond that, maybe we start asking fear questions like, where did you come from? Which we'll get to your question about, what is the line between, okay, this is my fear, or maybe a fear that I acquired from the external world, which is not doing me any justice, because it's an antiquated fear. It's a biased fear. It's a fear rooted in somebody else's life experience, not mine. But the world is influential. I mean, I grew up with a lot of the fears that my parents had. And it wasn't until I became an adult woman with agency now with my own set of decision-making tools to say, okay, that fear is my mom's fear from the 70s. It's got no room and space anymore in my modern life, as an ambitious woman who wants to maybe become the breadwinner in her marriage. The other thing I think we should ask fear is, what do you want me to protect? Because that's also a way to get to the healthiness behind the fear. Fear is primal. It predates us by eons, and it is a survival mechanism. And I think that while we have evolved and our relationship with fear has evolved, so it's not just there to try to protect us from life and death situations, but more often when our livelihoods are at stake, when we're at crossroads in our lives, and we're about to make a really high stakes decision related to our careers, our money, our relationships. And so in those moments, that's when I think it's important to understand what this fear that you're feeling might want you to protect, because what's on the other side could backfire. Maybe there is something risky that you can't necessarily afford without a plan. So take a minute to analyze this fear. Really what I'm saying is, get to know yourself, what you value, what you want to protect, and how might you be able to go still, cross that bridge, do that, cross that intersection. But now you've done it in a more thoughtful way, recognizing again what is sacred to you and how to do the thing. Feeling more certain along the way.
EMILIE: I love the use of the word protect in that.
FARNOOSH: People love that because we don't like the word fear. So I'm like, okay, find the synonym. If it's not about I'm afraid, what if we said, what I want to protect is blah, blah, blah?
EMILIE: Right. Because I always say to folks when I talk about burnout and stress, stress is designed to get you to take some kind of action, and fear is very similar. Right? Fear is saying, there's something I need you to protect, and it's our job to just take that moment. And this is where 99% of us, you know, don't. We fail to take that moment. Maybe it feels impossible when you're juggling, you know, two kids and a household and a job and a book and all those things to just pause and say, oh, that feeling in the pit of my stomach, that's fear. And that fear wants me to protect what? And that little inner dialogue is radical. Has that come up for you personally?
FARNOOSH: Oh it, I mean is it? What day is it? Tuesday? Wednesday? Yes.
EMILIE: [LAUGHS] Yeah, how many times this week? Yeah.
[BOTH LAUGHS]
FARNOOSH: It's a daily practice. And, I love that it can become this habitual engagement, that it doesn’t, fear doesn't have to be fearful. It doesn't have to be scary. We don't have to be afraid of fear. When fear shows up, we can go, okay, here we go. This is me, being me, doing me. And sometimes it's not to say that all your fears are legit or every fear has a place in your future or your present day, but I think even just exploring the root of our fears to realize, like, oh, this is, uh, maybe not a fear that I should pay attention to or is not worthy of space in my life, even just that recognition is more than what we ever do with fear. We just always write it off.
EMILIE: And I like the origin story of that fear, too. You're like, where did this come from? Is this my baggage to carry? Is this real? And saying, you know, I think Liz Gilbert writes in one of her books on creative pursuits. Like, you can ride in the car with me, you know, but you're not driving. You can't take the wheel. And I think that acknowledgement is so helpful.
FARNOOSH: Exactly. And in the book, I try to personify fear in a way where, again, we're putting the power in our hands. We're putting the power where it's supposed to go, which is in our domain, not with fear. So I give fear names in the book, and not just like George or Bob, but the fear of loneliness, the fear of rejection, because that's the other thing that we never, ever do with fear, which is to go so deep is to say, what is the actual flavor of fear that I'm experiencing? When we can understand that specificity, to that specificity, then we're able to more wrap our heads around it and understand what to do with that particular fear.
EMILIE: I mean, Mark Brackett was on this podcast talking about his ruler method for emotional intelligence and really labeling the feeling takes its power away, and it sounds exactly what you're doing.
FARNOOSH: Yeah, I remember reading a book, and I, uh, don't remember if I ended up quoting her in my book, but it was this woman who wrote a memoir about her relationship with panic and anxiety. And she came up with this crazy name for it that would make her laugh every time [LAUGHS] she would think about it, it was like Mr. Bobby Pants or something. Like, like, it was this really comical, cartoonish name. And she's a comedian, so it was very much like, obviously that's what she would do. But it was just such a small, powerful way to rebalance the power in that relationship that you have with an emotion that often we don't trust to be on our side.
EMILIE: Yeah, it's almost like a way of lightning it a little bit. Fear can be so heavy.
FARNOOSH: Yes.
EMILIE: And it can drag you down and make you slow. Right? Like fight, flight, or freeze. There's so many. Or what is it, fawn?
FARNOOSH: Well, I have a fourth one that we don’t, this is really the book. It's like, let's figure it out. Like, when fear shows up, let's not try to fight or flee or. I don't even bother what those are.
EMILIE: Freeze?
FARNOOSH: Freeze. Yeah. [LAUGHS]
EMILIE: Yeah. Yeah, that's my go to. I get really paralyzed I think.
FARNOOSH: There is something to be said about doing nothing when the fear shows up. But it’s this, the problem is when we do nothing forever or we do nothing, and then we resort to flying away and, or running away. So I say, when fear shows up, your job, the work now is to figure it out.
EMILIE: I love that. How does that relate, I wonder, to striving, to ambition? You're an ambitious woman. Everyone listening to this podcast is ambitious. And this is the time of year when so many of us are setting our sights on our goals, on our visions. And I think there's such vulnerability in aiming high, right, in overcoming let's say, our fear of rejection or fear of failure. What is the relationship to striving and fear, from your vantage point?
FARNOOSH: Oh, there's so much there. I think that while I don't have a fear of striving chapter in the book, I do have others that I think dovetail it, or there’s a, it's an amalgamation, I think, of FOMO, of the fear of failure, of the fear of uncertainty, and even, to an extent, the fear of money, particularly the fear of wanting too much money or wanting too much success, which I definitely have, had to reconcile with in my own personal life. This idea that, how could I be accepted? What will people think of me if I am this woman who projects to want to be financially ambitious when that is so culturally not the norm? [LAUGHS] Right?
EMILIE: Well, talk about inherited baggage. I feel like everything you're saying about embracing fear is contrary to everything we've been taught, is a brave, frankly, male archetype of leadership is to be fear-less. So talk about, like, bucking sexist stereotypes.
FARNOOSH: Well, we live in a patriarchy. Everything goes back to patriarchy.
EMILIE: [LAUGHS] Yes.
FARNOOSH: And it is. It's really interesting. I think men have been sold a false bill of goods, too, that you know why shouldn't men be in touch with their feelings? All of them.
EMILIE: Including fear.
FARNOOSH: [LAUGHS] Including fear. Including sadness. Including grief. I think that our culture has been so obsessed with just being happy all the time. I mean, I don't know, Raise your hand if you grew up with a parent that was like, why are you crying? Stop crying. Just be happy. You should be grateful 24/7. I think, yes, you can be grateful and also be grieving at the same time. Is that such a radical idea? Like we're complex human beings with multiple sides to us. To go one emotion all the time is like, that's psychopathic. So let's just recognize how our bodies are composed and then start to give the advice. But back to your point about ambition and striving, I think that a way to check yourself. If you're fearing what's going to be on the other side of that hustle, of that striving, whatever like maybe is that you're fearing failure, then I think that ahead of attempting to do anything towards, uh, those goals, I think it's important to get very clear on your definition of success and to almost create a scenario for yourself where no matter what happens, you will feel successful. Because even in the, just in the doing and in the learning and even in the challenges, you're being stretched, you're being challenged, you're growing, and so could growth be a measure for success for you? You know? You're going to hit that target. Like you got to almost bake in the wins, because what you're really fearing is failure. But what if I were to tell you that there's a way to set yourself up for success if you just sit down and have a better plan and a vision and a real knowledge of what winning would feel like to you. And of course, we all want to make all the money and make more money, but I would also caution that more money is not, more is not more.
EMILIE: Right. And I want to dig into that in a moment. But I just have to say that sometimes that requires a ton of self-compassion. And in retrospect, right like, I had a vision for last year 2023, and none of it came to fruition. Right? Like, my strategic plan got chucked out the door by March of 2023. And I'm going into this year thinking about how am I internalizing what just happened. I failed on so many fronts, business, and I've been very candid with my listeners. In the past six months, I've been dealing with a lot of pregnancy loss, recurrent pregnancy loss, and so you know, talking about sitting down and making a plan for life, seeing growth and everything, that is sh** is hard, Farnoosh, like what you're describing is so hard, it requires, and in my instance, in retrospect, taking stock of so much growth, so much learning, and frankly like landing at the end of last year and saying, wow, there's so much that I'm grateful for learning and for doing this past year that I never would have aimed for, that I never would have put on my vision board, that I never would have been striving towards. And you know even in grief, you can be grateful, as you just said, and look back at the growth. For me, growth is such an emotional friend in those really challenging years.
FARNOOSH: I'm so sorry to hear your losses. Even the fact that you're able to do a podcast, people like you should know. I mean, I'm sure listeners know this if they have gone through it themselves or I've gone through you know miscarriage, but I know you don't want to get out of bed. It's impossible to face life in those weeks and months. But there is space. Your heart is big, your life is big. You can hold space for that. And honestly, that can also be. It's sometimes great to have a distraction you know [BOTH LAUGHS] from all of the grieving, but I think there's a whole chapter in the book called the fear of endings. That's where I get into my own pregnancy loss and other kinds of things ending that we hold dear in our lives, whether it's not just people's human lives, but the loss of something you had your heart set on, whether it was a love, it was a job, a business, a relationship, sort of like a friendship I like don't have a best friend anymore that I did growing up. So sometimes fear wants to teach us in those moments, is not to ignore the grief. Like I have a whole section called like, please, like cry.
EMILIE: Yeah. [LAUGHS] Yeah!
FARNOOSH: Like cry as much as you need. You need to give yourself permission to feel that grief and know that your life has now opened up. And I know that's hard to want to accept because we feel like maybe we're being dismissive of what we just lost, but that's the truth. Like life is all about renewal. So one thing didn't work out, or is not what you thought it would be, or has the vision of that, the idea of that, or the actual thing has ended. And so your sort of opportunity, which I’ll again, sounds like maybe a gross word in that moment, but let me be the one to use it. I'll use it for you. Your opportunity is to step into a new something. And what will that be? What will that be? That’s your choice.
EMILIE: Right. And I think that is so powerful in recognizing fear of endings, fear of loss, fear as sort of a constant companion for anyone who's, uh, who’s trying to do anything right, who has any want or goal that we're pursuing, comes with a healthy dose of fear.
FARNOOSH: And to not let that apprehension, that fear of losing, to prevent you from trying, to prevent you from getting back up and producing, creating, ideating, delivering again, trying again. But just know that it's sometimes what keeps us going. Like, the idea of having loss in our lives is what makes us try to go for the wins. It's what makes us try to live today, to control what we can. Because a lot of times, these losses are not, 99% of the time, they're not within our realm. We can't control them.
EMILIE: So, on the flip side of that, I want to understand more about the fear of too much success. I don't understand that. Well, so help me break that down.
FARNOOSH: All right, so I think the best way to start this story is to tell a story. When I was in graduate school for journalism, I'd already given up the idea of maybe making a lot of money because I was a finance major in college. And then I said, no, let me go and try to write some articles, because that'll make me rich. And let me go to graduate school for that and get a $30,000 student loan. And so I'm in graduate school, and I have a boyfriend, and he's a lovely man. And, um, one day, I come into spring semester, and I come to campus, and I see him. I'm like, oh, my gosh. I just heard back from CNN, and they want to hire me as a, wait for it, unpaid intern. [LAUGHS]
EMILIE: Oh my god, what an amazing opportunity for you. [LAUGHS]
FARNOOSH: I know. I mean, in my mind, I'm like, my life is made. But in his mind, it was score Farnosh, zero me. One point Farnoosh, zero points me. Like he was scorekeeping. And then he internalized it, and he was like, well, what am I going to do? And I was like, I don't know. Update your LinkedIn, dude. Go do something. This isn't my problem, can we just, but can we celebrate me for a minute? And that wasn't possible.
EMILIE: The literal image that came to my mind was a t-shirt I've been trying to buy for many years that just says, dump him. [BOTH LAUGHS]
FARNOOSH: Well, that did not last, the relationship.
EMILIE: That did not last. Okay. I'm like, wait, she's about to say, this is who she married. Oh god, oh god, oh god. [LAUGHS]
FARNOOSH: Emilie you know that sunken feeling that I got in that moment, it endured. And, uh, it carried into the dating world beyond that, and I went on to continue to make strides in my career. I worked in various newsrooms in New York. I worked as a producer and then on camera, and along the way, I paid off my student loans, and I got a book deal, and I bought an apartment. And I'm now, like, 25 years old, and I can't even believe I did all this. And I'm trying to find love in New York City and striking out. And I'm at work one day, and one of my colleagues, who's an older, wiser gentleman, he's like, I know what your problem is. You're telling these guys too much, too soon about your ambitions and all of your accomplishments. Like, what are you talking to these guys on the first date about anyway? And I'm like, listen, bud, the guy across the table is ambitious. So am I. This is what we talk about in New York. What are we talking about? Our flower gardens? Like, we're talking about our careers. And he goes, yeah, I just think it's just coming on too strong in terms of who you are. And so I kept getting these messages that I was too much, that I wanted far too much, and that sharing and exposing this stuff too prematurely to the wrong person could backfire. And the truth of it is that I bought into that fear. I was like, well, maybe I should just temper my enthusiasm and
EMILIE: And downplay my achievements, yeah.
FARNOOSH: tell them my rent and maybe I didn't work where I worked. I don't know, lie. And so what I realized was that in trying to play dumb-dumb with this fear, I was turning into a shell of a person that if I looked ahead into five years from now, ten years from now, and let's say I did get into a relationship because I made myself smaller, and I would be devastated. I wouldn't be a happy person. And so that fear of the future, of what my future would look like, was the healthy realization because it's what actually woke me up in 2005. To be like this is not, I’m not, I would rather face the rejection today than a much bigger rejection in the future, which is the rejection that I've given to myself and who I am and what I want. And that's what I mean by this fear of wanting too much. And I know I'm not alone. I wrote a whole book about being a female breadwinner in your relationship. That was in 2014, and it's like a perennial seller, because it’s just, the problem is, complexity that's just getting more complex and as more modernized as we become, I feel like, actually, have you seen this whole tradwife movement on social media? Hashtag tradwife. It’s called, it's short for traditional wife.
EMILIE: Yes. Gen Z is ready to go back to churning our own butter I think.
FARNOOSH: They all want to be Betty Draper. They all wanna be, you know, they want to be Leave It To Beaver. They want to basically relinquish their power to the patriarchy. For reals.
EMILIE: I mean, that's f****** terrifying. Yeah?
FARNOOSH: Yeah. I mean, some of it's parody, but some of it's very very real and authentic and millions of followers and likes and that. I just feel like the work will never be done.
EMILIE: Well, our supreme court is taking us back! I think like, I think the public narrative is on their side and like.
FARNOOSH: Yeah, they're not the only ones that are espousing these beliefs. It's everyone from the Supreme Court all the way down to TikTok.
EMILIE: Right. And I feel like masculinity is in question at the core of all of it. And to your point, I think we are going to be having focus groups as millennial women for the rest of our lives on like love versus ambition. And like there has been many a podcast episode of this show recorded on that.
FARNOOSH: Well, here's what it is. I feel like this idea of breaking from gender expectations is a modern phenomenon. I mean, it's not like we just turned off a switch. Like, we are struggling to find our sense of self and our sense of identity and our self-worth outside of this box that we've been put in for so long. And I think as humans, to an extent, some of us, I can't speak for all of us, but I think there's like a cohort of humans who really get a sense of self-worth from being able to check off boxes and feeling like they're meeting expectations and they're following rules. And look at, that's what school is, first of all. [LAUGHS] But more like the school of life, projects this like, winning means doing what you're supposed to do as a woman, as a man. We're revisiting all those rules as we podcast, but it's going to take time for everybody to, A, get behind it, B, feel the trust that that can be a winning formula. And meanwhile, we also have systems and structures that fight against all of that evolution. So it's a long road ahead.
EMILIE: It's a long conversation to have, yeah. And I feel like gender looms so large in these conversations. Even what you were describing, the fear of loss versus the fear of being alone really, kind of reminds me of your own inner expectations for yourself. And obviously every healthy relationship is not built on a bedrock of lies. So when we say, like am I betraying myself to try to check off somebody else's set of checkboxes? And at what cost does that come? Versus my own inner expectations for myself, I think that's really, there's a healthy tension that requires some mindful reflection for us to state, okay, am I losing, am I fearing the loss of my own dreams and ambitions, or am I losing or fearing rather, not living up to someone else's expectations to me?
FARNOOSH: The thing about that comparison is that as women in particular, we have not been given the permission to put ourselves first and to value what we want above anybody else's wants. And so even just maybe hearing that way that you just posed those two questions out loud, like, oh, yeah, of course you're the most important person in your life. That's not how people believe.
EMILIE: Well, when you become a mother, especially.
FARNOOSH: Yeah I mean, but they say you're only as happy as your saddest kid you know [LAUGHS] on a Tuesday.
EMILIE: I haven't heard that one before. Now I can add that to the list of mom guilt.
FARNOOSH: And that's true. I don't want to be happy at the expense of other people's happiness. But we're talking about other, maybe let's take it out of the child parent relationship and let's talk about work. Let's talk about being in a dating relationship. I mean, to some extent, yeah, you got to put yourself first because no one is going to advocate for you better like you. And this is very true in your financial life. It's very true in your career. So I think that's really what we're trying to say.
EMILIE: Farnosh, I would argue that ain't nobody happy if mama's not happy, too. Right? My mom being happier, taking care of her, making sure her needs are met, means Christmas day is more fun, you know.
FARNOOSH: Yes. Well, this is interesting. Um, back when I was doing research for When She Makes More, my previous book, I interviewed an NYU professor who had looked at the dynamics between mothers who worked while their children were growing up and then mothers and the dynamic that they had with their adult children, and then mothers who were homemakers, and then what their children, their adult children thought and reflected on their moms. And in conclusion, and this should be good news for everybody, regardless of where you are in your life, if you work outside the home or you work at the home. Kids, they didn't undervalue or overvalue the mothers who worked or didn't work outside the home. What they remembered was, was mom happy? And if mom was not happy and was a stay at home mom, then they had a negative association with stay at home parenting. If they had a mom who worked and was unhappy, they have a negative association with a mom who has children who has to, who works. And so whatever you choose, choose it for you. Choose to be happy and show your happiness to your kids. Also show the struggles. I don't think it should always be like mommy's having a beautiful, blissful day every day, but you got to show how you're working through the hardness. In another study, they found that children who witness their parents argue, it's not the arguing, it's the unresolved arguments that end up traumatizing them. Because if they can see two parents having conflict, but then working through the conflict and coming to a resolution that's healthy.
EMILIE: That's like, powerful. Better than no argument. Wow. First of all, thank you for sending me a postcard from my future, as we mentioned before we hit record because you've got two kiddos, what, nine and six?
FARNOOSH: Yes.
EMILIE: Yeah, so it's just brilliant to hear how this shows up in your work in so many different arenas. And I definitely want to check out those prior books. There's been so much we've covered here today. What's one thing you want people to take away when it comes to having a healthy-er, I'll say, state of panic, uh, and relationship with fear in our lives.
FARNOOSH: I just want you to know that you feeling fear is 1000% normal. I'm afraid right now. The world is a scary place. Your instincts are right [LAUGHS] and very important to not live an isolated life of fear. Like, there's being afraid, but then there's being alone in your fears, which is not healthy. You want to confide in someone you trust about how you're feeling. Get help, find a friend, a teacher, a colleague who you feel comfortable opening up to, because that's the next healthy move. My daughter, who is six, didn't want to go to school one morning because she had fallen off the swings and had scratched her face and was worried to go into school because why? She feared rejection. So, as I talk in my book, when you're fearing rejection, you got to go where you're loved. And maybe she didn't feel like school was going to be the place where she'd find that empathy. But there's always somebody who's going to have your back. And I said, you need to go and talk to your teacher. First thing, you're going to walk into school and you're going to find your teacher and you're going to tell her how you feel. She will know how to protect you. And she did. The next thing I know, I get an email that morning from the teacher. Thank you so much for having her tell me her fears. With her permission, asked her to share it with the class. And once she did, all the kids were raising their hands, talking about how they were afraid of the similar thing. Oh, I got scratched up on the playground, too. Oh, this and that. Hugging. Oh, my gosh. She was like, I couldn't have planned for a better morning. Thank you for giving me a lesson plan this morning through your daughter. And I think that, first of all, what that taught me was kids are so resilient, and we can start teaching this as young as six years old. Imagine going through your life not feeling weakness when you feel fear and knowing exactly how to find resources and get help. But as adults, we can learn from this, too. If you're feeling fear, the solution is not to hide and get more isolated. It's to find your people, find even just one person who's going to know how to help you or can at least be a sounding board. And sometimes that's all we need. We just need our fears to feel like they're being heard.
EMILIE: I love that. Thank you so much for that story. Where can our listeners learn more about you and all the incredible books that you have to your name?
FARNOOSH: Well you can visit my book website at ahealthystateofpanic.com. It's available in, I love seeing photographs from airports and little bookshops all over the country. It's really special to see it out in the wild. And I have a podcast three days a week. It's called So Money, and you can listen to that wherever you like to hear podcasts. I'm also on Instagram at Farnoosh Tarabi, you can slide into my DMs. I love answering questions or saying hello. Whatever you want to get in touch with I’m, um, I love it.
EMILIE: Amazing. I will drop links to all those wonderful resources in today's show notes. Thank you so much for helping us normalize fear and for the amazing work you're doing.
FARNOOSH: Thanks, Emilie.
EMILIE: For all those links Farnoosh just mentioned and many more, head to bossedup.org/episode436. That's bossedup.org/episode436. And now I want to hear from you. What are the fears that are rolling around your mind? How have you been addressing them or suppressing them? Um, and what stood out to you today about Farnoosh’s advice on how we can embrace and not push aside fear when it comes to achieving what we want to achieve in this one and precious life?
[OUTRO MUSIC IN]
I'm so excited to keep the conversation going, as always, in the Bossed Up Courage Community on Facebook, and in the Bossed Up LinkedIn group. And until next time, let's keep bossin’ in pursuit of our purpose. And together, let's lift as we climb.
[OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]
