Episode 27: Modesty is Dangerous

Transcript

Transcript
00:00:03
Welcome to meaningful work for remarkable life. I’m your host, Brooke McCarthy, and I’m a business coach, trainer and speaker. Living and working on the unseeded lands of the Cammeraygal people here in Sydney, Australia. In this podcast, we explore the paradoxes inherent in working for love.
00:00:23
And money, magnifying your impact and doing work. If you’re born to do, we explore the intersections of the meanings we bring to work and the meanings we derive from work.
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It’s a big one today. I hope you are strapping yourself in wherever you are. Maybe you’re in the car. So you’re already strapped in. We are talking about modesty. We’re talking about power. We’re talking about humility. We’re talking about boldness. We’re talking about all the big stuff, all the big stuff. Because I’m fun like that.
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I love just diving in the deep end. So Are you ready?
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Modesty is dangerous. It’s a learned affectation. These glorious words are not mine. I wish they were. They are Maya Angelou’s. If you’ve never heard of Maya Angelou, go ahead and Google her immediately. Not while you’re driving.
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Because you can thank me later. She is awesome and she goes on to say that modesty is not humility.
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Modesty is a behaviour that babies are not born knowing, and if you’ve ever seen a one year old or a 2 year old, you know that modesty is just not even vaguely. In their world. There is so much socialisation, so much social conditioning that goes on not just in your family.
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Not just in mine, but for thousands and thousands of years for thousands of years, we have been taught.
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That humility, modesty is a virtue.
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That the meek shall inherit the earth.
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That we need to be kind, we need to donate a portion of our money. Our time to others.
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And what are we doing while we’re doing this? Well, you know, some of it’s fine and fabulous, but of course, we’re keeping the status quo intact. We are tithing.
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Two religious or otherwise powerful institutions.
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To keep the status quo intact, because of course it’s much easier.
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To keep power over others.
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When we use propaganda, when we use their minds and thoughts and we make them think that it’s their idea and it’s an excellent one at that, that there is virtue.
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To be gotten and a place in heaven is surely assured.
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Than you know to wield power in a kind of a forceful, obviously forceful manner.
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So these ideas are not natural, they are planted, they are taught, they are learnt, they are reinforced.
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Well into adulthood, well into adulthood.
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And of course, we bring all that baggage to business when we start our own businesses and when we attempt to grow our own businesses, we oftentimes get a.
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Lot.
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Of.
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Pushback inadvertently.
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By our clients, by our suppliers, by our colleagues, by our friends, by our family.
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Because it goes directly against the grain of everything that we’ve been taught.
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So the other thing that of course we see a lot of is big personalities in the media. We see celebrities acting badly. We see narcissism on plain and obvious display.
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We see, you know, we see a lot of this on social media, which of course rewards divisive behaviour.
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And so we have this weird dichotomy between, you know, the rich, the powerful, the famous, you know, acting badly with these overblown egos.
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And of course, it’s something that, at the risk of, you know, being derisive, derivative and normal person wants to distance themselves from right. You don’t want to be Gina Rinehart.
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Anyway, we have been weaponized. Our values have been weaponized against this. I I I talk about this a lot. I’m gonna be devoting whole podcast episodes on this topic.
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Our values are weaponized against us.
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When we are told, well, if you really wanted this work, if you really cared about this job, if you really cared about me, the client. If you really cared about getting the best possible outcome, if you were actually conscientious, so many other people would kill for this job. This is fabulous work, fantastic opportunity, you know, exposure.
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Body blah blah blah blah.
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When this is being done, when you’re hearing these words, it means your values are being weaponized against you, and for people that.
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Tend to take modesty seriously. You know, they kind of everything is a spectrum, right? There aren’t any black and white. Everything is a a spectrum or a continuum for those at the modest end of the modesty scale.
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They tend to be doing it for all the right reasons, right? You’re volunteering? You’re giving, you’re donating. You are thinking of others. You are taking responsibility for the well being of others, whether they’re known to you or not known to you.
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These are all fine and fabulous things. You know, there’s there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. There’s everything right with that. We are interconnected. We all do, depend and rely on each other.
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And if I can be so bold as to say to think otherwise would be patently wrong.
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We are deeply interconnected.
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So of course, you know some of these attributes are fine and fabulous, but the point that I’m making is that when we downplay our achievements, when we don’t advocate for ourselves, when we fail to mention the fabulous things that we have done when our true story, we argue with our business.
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Approach about why we couldn’t or shouldn’t or wouldn’t use our PhD and our our name and our title despite having spent many years and you know a lot of effort and blood, sweat and tears to get the PhD.
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When we argue with our business coach, true story about how we shouldn’t possibly couldn’t possibly raise our prices, you know, I’ve I hear stories every other day. Every other day I hear a story from clients or others, other business owners.
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Talking about things such as I’m not greedy, I’m not interested in money. I’m here for the lifestyle. I value freedom and flexibility above everything else.
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You know, I’m doing it for all the right reasons and money is the least of it, and opportunity is the least of it, and I cannot possibly talk about myself in a positive kind of a way.
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This is what we’re talking about when we’re talking about modesty or when Meyer is talking about modesty being dangerous. It is dangerous because it keeps you small. It keeps you meek. It keeps you exactly where you are.
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And.
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Left turn coming up in the conversation, indicating blinkers turning left, turning left.
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A lot of it has to do with our relationship with power.
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So.
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Earlier I was talking about the status quo and how this keeps the status quo intact.
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But if we think about it from the perspective of a new business owner and typically you know a business owner as we talked about in the last episode, a business owner is oftentimes they started a business for negative reasons, not positive reasons.
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But because they’re trying to get away from a ****** situation, they’ve perhaps been bullied in the workplace.
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They’ve found work completely, you know, incompatible with family.
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Or with health needs they have not found a job that’s can measure it with their ability and seniority expertise.
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You know, there’s a variety of negative reasons why people start businesses.
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And so we bring these vexed relationships with power, whereby we’ve oftentimes been in an exploitative relationship where it’s clear and obvious to us it’s been signalled to us over and over again, oftentimes for many, many years that we have to continuously prove our value.
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That we are only as good as our last job or our last, you know, accolade.
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That we are constantly having to justify and negotiate and advocate for conditions which you know should could be completely reasonable and normal, or appear completely reasonable and normal.
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And that, you know, in fact, we’ve been surrounded by people that take a very extractive hierarchical view of power, where it’s all about.
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How do I extract the utmost value from all of those around me? How do I what’s in it for me? How do I get out of people what I need as quickly as possible so I can move on to the next thing?
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Now.
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I argue that one of the reasons why we are not more bold in business, why we are not more courageous in our decisions, why we are not.
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More clear and more direct with our ambitions and also with the way that we communicate the way we message the way we market our businesses.
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Is because we do not want to be that person. We have had these negative experiences over and over again.
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And we’ve decided that I don’t want anything to do with that and we’ve thought about power as a very exploitative hierarchical thing because that’s what’s been modelled to us. That’s been our experience thus far.
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Now this is the old school way of thinking about power and I owe a hat tip, tip, hat, whatever.
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I would like to acknowledge the work of Kelly deals with conversations around power and and approaches to power.
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Because the new way of business.
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The new way of business is power, with power to not power over. It is collaborative. It is cooperative, it is community focused. It is seeking win, win, win, partnerships. It is seeking to minimise harm to.
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Any and everything involved.
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And it is seeking, you know, a progress.
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Yes.
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Where nobody loses, or if at the very least we can minimise losses that we are creating institutions, systems and interpersonal relationships that are from mutual flourishing mutual benefit.
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So this is a big shift in the way that we think about this kind of stuff. And then we layer on top our own power and this is where things get interesting.
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Have you ever had an experience? Maybe it was an epiphany, a moment of clarity.
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A moment where it felt like the top of your head had opened up and you were flooded.
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With insight and for a brief moment in time you felt.
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The potential and the purpose and the power and the possibilities and all the other peas.
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That was within you because you are a vital part of the interconnectedness of the world.
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And if you’ve ever had that experience.
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And if you’ve ever seen how easy and effortless some really meaningful, interesting, well paid work can actually be.
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Then it’s very, very difficult.
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To kind of deny this and go back to the way things.
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Were.
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Yeah, it’s very, very difficult to go back to Netflix and Chill to devote, you know, weeks of our lives to watching TV series. I’m talking about myself here. Well, you get to the end of it and you’re like, wow, I couldn’t tell you much about that. And two months later.
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You’ve got almost no information, despite having dedicated a whole week.
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Of your life to this thing. So we are scared of our own power. I would suggest we are oftentimes scared of our own power. We’re scared of what’s possible. We have let’s other people and the propaganda all around us.
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Keep us exactly where we are because it’s in their best interests. It’s not in our best interests and so we have, for example.
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Decided that success looks like working weekends and never seeing a kid.
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Having a broken relationship, having friends that are alienated from you, being a graspy, needy, horrible kind of a person that people talk about behind their back.
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We have decided that success comes with too many things that we’re not willing to to do, and this of course is part of the propaganda, right, because.
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If we truly.
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You and appreciate it.
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That we could double our income, we could triple our income. We could quadruple our income working with clients on meaningful projects, meaningful work that where we really felt like.
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Our skills and expertise, our experience was finally making sense that we were, you know, exactly where we needed to be.
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We were absolutely, definitely working for love as well as excellent money.
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Without sacrificing our soul, without compromising our integrity.
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Or, you know, having a values clash, a values misalignment. Well, imagine what would happen then, so it is possible for those of you who might be, if you’re sitting there scratching your head, going well, is it is it possible or is it not possible? I don’t know. She didn’t say absolutely. It’s possible. Absolutely as possible.
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But not when we continue with this conditioning that we have been fed, not when we continue believing that wanting more is greedy.
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That we are somehow ungrateful, that jealousy or resentment are distasteful, which you know I have to say. It doesn’t feel fun. It’s not a fun emotion. I don’t enjoy feeling resentful, and I certainly don’t enjoy feeling jealous, but these are really useful emotions. These are emotions that I have found.
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Great use for alongside anger.
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In making change.
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When we experience jealousy, when you experience jealousy, I want you to think about that. Think about the last time you felt intense jealousy.
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This is super useful because it acts.
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As a spotlight.
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To show what you want and this is where.
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We’re headed, right? Because when we are continually taught and rewarded for being modest, we are denying our desires. We are denying our greatness. We are denying our potential. We are denying the possibilities of, you know what is.
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Able to be done with our own sweat and smarts.
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So if you are ready to be bold, if you are ready to throw off the shackles of modesty, if you are ready to embrace all that you are, and you are looking for coaches and a community of people who get it.
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Who see you at your biggest and at your best, who can hold a vision for you that is much bigger and greater and stronger and larger than you can hold for yourself?
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Then I invite you to join myself and Belinda Weaver of copyright matters in Joshua Tree, CA this October.
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We are running the kind of retreat that we wanted to go on and between us we’ve been on many. So the retreat is called vision unbound.
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And it is all about plotting your next high impact move. We are retreating much like a catapult does before it springs for.
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And this retreating back is really, really important.
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Because make no mistake what I’m talking about today is radical stuff, and you will inadvertently, through no fault of your own and absolutely no responsibility.
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**** people off.
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Yeah, and that tells you more about them.
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Than it does about you.
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But of course, we don’t want to do this. Of course, we don’t want to **** people off. Most people don’t want to pick people off on a bad day. I I love ******* people off.
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But if you are looking for a cocoon where you can go into the great vast potential of yourself of your business of your next year in business and for many more years to come.
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Where you can step out of your day to day reality, retreat from friends, family, the daily operations of your business and clients.
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To envisage and dream up the next iteration and.
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To Co create a path to get you there.
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Well, we would absolutely love to have you. You’re going to get so much value from this retreat now. The way that we’ve designed the pricing is that we’re rewarding fast action takers. The earlier you commit and you only need to put down $1000 deposit to hold your spot.
00:19:25
The earlier you commit, the better price you get. So if you have any questions about anything at all, you can always find me on Instagram, Brooke Noe, McCarthy, MCC, ARTHY come and find me on Instagram. Say get a. Introduce yourself. Let’s kick off a conversation.
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I would love to see you and Joshua Tree in California in October. Bye real quick before you go. If this episode has gotten you thinking, gotten you excited or has you changing the way that you do business or life?
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Would you do me a super quick favour and write me a short review? Your podcast review means so much to me and it helps other values based business owners just like you to find this show, which is a fantastic.
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Gift to me.