Proven Not Perfect
Proven Not Perfect
Small Dreams, Big Impact: Rethinking Success with Liz Bohannon
What if dreaming small could actually lead to greater impact than chasing grandiose visions? Liz Bohannon challenges conventional wisdom about success, ambition, and fulfillment in this thought-provoking conversation about finding meaning in a noisy world.
Bohannon shares her evolution from an externally successful but internally lonely achiever to a community-focused entrepreneur who champions the power of starting where you are. She introduces her revolutionary concept of "dreaming small" - not as a limitation but as a permission to pursue the things that genuinely light us up without the paralyzing pressure of world-changing expectations.
With fascinating research and personal insights, Liz explains why "owning your average" might be the most liberating mindset shift you can make. She reveals how praising inherent talent over effort actually hampers growth and why embracing our ordinariness paradoxically leads to extraordinary results. Her perspective frees us from the exhausting pursuit of specialness and invites us into authentic contribution.
The conversation takes a compelling turn toward community as Bohannon makes a powerful case for social health as the missing pillar of human flourishing. With eye-opening statistics showing that regular friend connections provide happiness equivalent to a $150,000 annual raise, she illustrates how our individualistic pursuit of success undermines what truly makes us thrive. From suburban design to workplace expectations, she traces how we've systematically dismantled the community structures that once provided belonging and purpose.
Perhaps most refreshing is Bohannon's nuanced take on gender and achievement. Rather than advocating for women to simply climb higher on existing ladders, she envisions a world where success is redefined for everyone - where men feel empowered to prioritize family and community alongside career, and where "having it all" means having what truly matters.
Ready to reimagine success on your own terms? Listen now and discover how aligning your daily choices with your deepest values creates a life of authentic impact - no matter how small it might seem to others.
Drive, Ambition, Doing, Leading, Creating... all good until we forget about our own self-care. This Village of All-Stars pays it forward with transparency about misses and celebration in winning. We cover many topics and keep it 100. We are Proven Not Perfect™️
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I'd love to hear what you think!
Liz Bohannon how are you? Good, I'm even better now that I'm hanging out with you, so thanks so much for having me on your show.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness. Honestly, it is a privilege to have you here and I want to jump right in because there's so much to unpack and explore with you. Folks have to know who you are. You're very well known and recognized for business startups of women in the community, for VC-backed businesses, when, quite frankly, that wasn't even a thing, when the number was so very low. You have boldly started businesses, you've boldly created concepts, you've written books. You've written books, you've done podcasts, you've done everything and you've even branded yourself with the funniest and best brand. Honestly, I love it. Pluck it up all the time. I mean, it doesn't get better than that. So I want to do justice to your origin story by just asking you would you share? Who is Liz Bohannon today as we talk? And then, who were you in your earliest years, your younger years? Who were you then and how'd you get here?
Speaker 2:Okay, so who am I today? I am Liz Bohannon, wife to Ben Bohannon, mother to three young boys. I am a dedicated community member and friend. That's a really important part of my life. I am an entrepreneur as well as a other people call me a thought leader. As a other people call me a thought leader, a book writer, a podcaster, a public speaker, I would probably, I think I shy away from the term thought leader because I think what I actually bring to spaces is a insatiable sense of curiosity. I don't consider myself an expert, but I consider myself insatiably curious and then somebody who gets really curious and then actually puts principles that she's curious about and discovering into practice, and that's why I would call myself a practitioner.
Speaker 2:Who was I in my earlier days?
Speaker 2:There was a season of my life where I would have said I was externally really thriving and outgoing and had a lot of friends, but was very lonely, very lonely, very isolated, probably spent a lot of my life kind of in fear of being found out and in hiding, which I think really contributed to my passion for community and for belonging.
Speaker 2:I don't think we typically set out to solve problems that we haven't actually experienced ourselves, and in a later season I would have said I was like a world changer. I think that would have been something that I really identified with. I wanted to go out and I wanted to have big ideas and I wanted to make a big impact in the world and I still believe very deeply in creating a very big impact. But I think I'm a little bit of a big. I think I have some reformation around dreaming big and changing the world and I'm a little bit more excited about starting small and changing a small corner of the world than I am the entire world, and so that's a little bit about where I've been and where I am now.
Speaker 1:Liz, honestly, I think that's beautiful and I think that was one of the things that really drew me to your story the fact that you talk about dreaming small, and that is absolutely the contra of the concept that we've all heard forever. Right, yeah, but you talk about that and you tell the story of your journey around the world. Tell me a little bit, tell us a little bit about what's dreaming small and why do you say dreaming small and not dream big?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, listen, I think there's probably some people who are listening to this that the dream big messaging has really served them, and if that is you, I'd say who am I? You go for it. If you feel like you are dreaming big and you are executing on those big dreams, I am rooting for you. However, over the course of the last probably 20 years, what I've realized is I've really leaned in and paid attention is that oftentimes a lot of the kind of ubiquitous self-help inspirational platitudes that I think we think are helping people dream big and find your passion and find your people, and you know, you just have to believe that you're really special because you're amazing. Go out and then you can make a special, amazing difference in the world, every single one of those that I just listed out.
Speaker 2:I think, when you actually kind of pause and sit with it and then go, how is this actually impacting people? I think a lot of it actually creates and completely unintended, but the impact is like it makes people feel overwhelmed and makes people feel like they're lost, they're far behind, that everybody else has got it going on, that they're broken because they don't know what their passion is or they haven't had a big dream yet, and so I think that part of living a really beautiful life and ultimately making an impact is letting go of some of those like kind of grandiose maxims and instead giving ourselves permission to be faithful to what, for some of us, might be what the world might look at and go. That's not a big dream. You're not going to win a Nobel Peace Prize for that, like you're never going to get on Oprah Winfrey for that.
Speaker 2:But if we treated our small dreams the kind of still small dreams in our hearts that make our hearts beat a little bit faster, that make us come to life, that are solving a problem that we think at least a few other people in the world might have experienced, and we are faithful towards that, and give those dreams the energy and respect that I think we tend to think we would give big dreams if we happen to have them that that can actually really launch us out of this state of kind of paralyzed waiting or analyzing or being in a paralyzed kind of imposter syndrome state and into a state of creating, and oftentimes that creating and just the act of creating, I think creates momentum. It creates momentum for us. I think it creates momentum for the people around us and I found that it's just like a little. It's kind of just like can we all just chill out a little bit?
Speaker 1:Girl, can we say that? Can we all chill out? And I love that because I think for me, when I think about that dream small concept, it does take a little bit of the pressure off, yeah.
Speaker 2:Doesn't that just kind of feel like, oh, we're allowed to do that, we're allowed to do that, we're allowed to do that protecting them and their nuclear family? But generative in the sense that they are living healthy, thriving lives and, as a result, the folks in their orbit seemed to be healthier and more thriving, aren't necessarily the ones that are doing the biggest stuff or the busiest work. Sometimes that absolutely is a calling and sometimes that's. You know, you've got people that pursue small things and then momentum starts to you know, gain, and it becomes this huge thing, and that's amazing when that happens. But it's size just doesn't really seem to be an indicator of health and thriving. What seems to be the strongest indicator is values.
Speaker 2:And have you stopped and gone like? Who am I? What do I care about? What do I want the world to look like? And does my life? Is my life actually a reflection of that? And when I say life, I really like to even tap further and further into that, because even like, does my life reflect these values? I don't know. I would go well, let's make it smaller and smaller and smaller. How do you spend your hours? Because that's how you spend your days, which is how you spend your weeks, which is how you spend your years, which is how you spend your lives. And the folks that I think are making the biggest impact in the world sometimes from a metric standpoint and sometimes maybe not are the ones who have the most integrated intentional values, aligned life, and so I'm much more concerned about folks going after their dreams that are aligned with their values than I am about the size of said dreams.
Speaker 1:Girl. Honestly, there's so much that we can talk about there. But I want to also explore this notion of own your average. That's another phrase. You don't want to be average. Who wants to be average? What?
Speaker 2:I didn't buy that T-shirt, liz, at all dis right when it's like no, we were all meant to be special. And listen again, this is like messaging that I think I don't think anybody was like sitting around a boardroom table being like how do we come up with some platitudes that actually end up discouraging people? I think it's all very good natured and we're all doing the best we can with the information that we have at the time, but I think at a certain point and I don't know I want to say that millennials were the first that really got this messaging hard. There was kind of this sense that was like okay, in order to convince kids to like go out and to have big dreams and act on their big dreams, first we have to convince them that they are especially special. So once they believe that they're special, above average right, I don't know, especially smart, especially talented, especially gifted, whatever it is that's going to give them the confidence that they need to then go out and like make this big impact and be successful in the world. And what the social science shows us very clearly is that that's actually not how human psychology works and that actually, the more we're fed a message that we are above average and we just need to like believe that we're above average, we actually start to kind of subconsciously act out of fear. So there was a really interesting study that I love it's influenced how I show up in the world, how I parent my children where they gave two groups of kids a math test or puzzles I think it was actually puzzles and they told the first group that they were chosen because they were like, specifically like you're smart, you've been identified as really smart. They didn't tell the second group anything. They're like do these puzzles right? So then they get the results back. They're looking at the results. As they're looking at the results, they're reaffirming that message.
Speaker 2:So the kids in that first group that did good, they're like wow, you did really good solving these puzzles. We knew you were really smart. And the kids in the other group they were like the ones that did well. They were like good job, you did good. You must've worked really hard on that, you must put in a lot of effort because you did good on that. What they found was that then they went back and they asked each group of students. They were like okay, we've got a second round of puzzles going. Would you like the more challenging set of puzzles or would you like the easier set of puzzles? And the kids that were told that they did well because they were inherently smarter gifted chose the easier set of puzzles. The kids that were praised for their ethic, for their stick to it-ness, for trying really hard, rose their hands and said I'll take the challenging one. And then when they actually did the puzzles, not only did they choose more challenging sets of puzzles, they actually performed better than the kids in the first group.
Speaker 2:So this whole kind of messaging that it's like oh, you're uniquely gifted, you are uniquely talented what it often does is it actually creates kind of this sense of fear that like, oh, people think I'm smart, I need to only say yes to things that are going to reinforce people's ideas of who I am. I'm only going to say yes to things that I think I can thrive at, that I think I can be good at from the beginning. That will make other people go oh yeah, see, she's just so gifted, she just picked that up and she got so good at it so fast. Whereas, see, she's just so gifted, she just picked that up and she got so good at it so fast. Whereas the kids who are really praised for their work ethic, for their tenacity, for their problem solving. They're eager to show that part off of who they are, and so they'll take on a big challenge and go, even if I suck at first. Here's an opportunity for me to show that I'm tenacious, that I'm gritty, that I can problem solve, that I can persevere, which of course that's growth mentality, and we know that that serves us so much better in the long run.
Speaker 2:And so my whole principle about owning your average is is it sounds kind of harsh that it's like, well, literally math, math, mathematically speaking, we can't all be above average, like that's literally not how averages work, like there's a bell curve and the vast majority of us are kind of somewhere in the bell curve.
Speaker 2:So let's just own it, let's be like. You know, let's just imagine we're all kind of jumbled up in there together. That's not a precursor to living an extraordinary, above average life. And so I think all of this stuff about self-talk and, like you know, whatever power, posing and standing in front of the mirror and telling yourself you're amazing, again, if this stuff works for you, go for it, like by all means, like if it serves you absolutely. But what the science would actually show is a lot more helpful is like let's take it down a notch, let's be like what does it look like to walk into this space and not be the best, but maybe to be the most curious or the most aware of other people and how you can serve others? There's so many other trains of thought that serve us so much more than how do I walk into a room and show that I'm above average, that I'm smarter than everyone else, that I'm more talented, that I'm more gifted, because that means that I'm special.
Speaker 1:I think anchoring on these words, on these concepts, has a way, both of these phrases, of not only taking the pressure down a little bit but also making it easy to sort of anchor and focus and prioritize. We like to tell my brood of athletes in my family keep the main thing, the main thing.
Speaker 2:That's good.
Speaker 1:Period Right, and to me, these concepts that you have put out into the world as a practitioner really, really do allow a solution for how people can better keep the main thing, the main thing.
Speaker 1:In particular in a time where I don't know, as the clock turned 2025, it just truly inherently feels like the Earth's orbit just kind of sped up right and I know I'm not the only one that feels that right and there's so many energetic influences that are happening right now, whether it's our phones, whether it's whatever. It is right, it's everything right, new cycles on tilt. I talk to friends and members in my community where the big struggle right now is it feels so noisy that I'm now losing my own anchor on what actually is my priority, losing my own anchor on what actually is my priority.
Speaker 1:Yeah, did anybody say anything like that to you?
Speaker 2:or oh, absolutely, yes, I think there is. You know, the reality is we've never had access to more information than we've had, like in the history of humanity. And I think that there was like this brief moment where we all, because we knew so much, we kind of cared about so much and it was kind of like this is happening and this is happening, we got to do this and we got to do that, and then it caught up with us and it was just like, oh, actually, the like us as humans, we weren't made, we were not made to know this much, to process this much, to have an opinion and a hot take and an action that relates to each of these things. And so what I'm seeing now is an extraordinary amount of overwhelm, of apathy, of numbness, and I think we thought the more we know, the better we'll do, the more we know, the more we'll care. But I think what actually happened is we just got completely overloaded. And so, you know, I think keeping the main thing, the main thing, when I think about it in the context of kind of our purpose and our calling, is like you have permission to care about one thing and to have your heart really break for one thing and to stay tender towards one thing. And it's okay if you can't have that same amount of tenderness, awareness, empathy towards every issue in the world, but please don't let that reaction to the overwhelm actually close you up so much that nothing breaks your heart anymore, that nothing brings you to life anymore. And so when I'm coaching and encouraging folks who are out there looking for their passion, you know, I actually just did a podcast, like a couple minutes ago, with an entrepreneur who is focusing on mental health and I was trying to understand a little bit more about kind of like what piece of the puzzle, because you know, on mental health, and I was trying to understand a little bit more about kind of like what piece of the puzzle, because you know, mental health is obviously like a huge thing that you can tackle from so many different angles.
Speaker 2:And I was asking he was like okay, well, we do this. And I was like okay, and then after that, is there any opportunity? You know, are you doing this? And he was kind of like well, no, not yet, but you know, eventually we will. And I just really encouraged him. I was like you might grow in that direction to offer that different piece of the puzzle, but also it's really brilliant if you can go. This is kind of the specific missing piece that we play and we're going to do that part and we're going to do it excellently and we're going to do it to the best of our ability. And just because, again, just because you care about one thing doesn't mean that you can care about everything, and so that is I think my greatest hope for where we're at now is that there can be a return to kind of just like more protected tender spaces where we allow ourselves to be impacted and to have our hearts broken and to get really excited about something without feeling like it has to be about everything.
Speaker 1:A whole conversation there and I know we don't have time for it. I want to. I want to touch on, even for a few minutes, this notion and this idea of community, because I think also that's a very relevant and timely topic where, in incredibly rich and experiential for multiple cultures, multiple walks of life, multiple economic backgrounds based on school choices that my family had for us, all the things right that I know single-handedly underpinned me being able to successfully navigate a move from the bayou to business in New York City and on around the world. That being said, my concern for those in next two generations is that they will not have that memory that I do when it could be that way. So community is a hot topic. So tell me, what does community mean to you first, and then, how are you owning that value in your life in the way that you choose to be?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, you've touched on something that I care very much about and I would say kind of opposite to you. My passion for community probably is more linked to the lack of it that I had growing up. So I feel like by the time I was born I was already born into and of course you know it's like, yes, this was happening at culture at large, but subcultures matter so much and norms within neighborhoods or families can really impact our understanding of the world. But I grew up in a very classic like middle-class Midwest suburb where the aspirational goal like really the more successful you are, which really is measured by how much money you make, the further out and in my I grew up in St Louis, missouri, and so there's even this really, really strong kind of like city county dynamic that it was like the road to success was be successful so you can make more money, so you can move further away from the city and from people and have more space, more privacy, more safety, more comfort and so that kind of like suburban, the dream of the suburbs and the bigger lot with the taller fence, and you know, even we see this even in city planning and kind of architectural design and you know all of these like very, very tangible things where it's like, well, we used to park our.
Speaker 2:First of all, we didn't have cars, okay, and so then we were like that's a whole nother era where it was like we were truly. It was like the town square and we had to live in proximity to one another because everything had to be within walking distance. And then when we got the automobile, it enabled us to really spread out. And then there was a while there that we were all parking our cars on the street and then we were like, oh, we don't want to do that, let's, we want to have a little bit more privacy, so we're going to put our cars under carports. And then carports turned into garages, but garages were still typically, kind of the fashion was at the front of the house, so your garage door would open up towards the street and then eventually, kind of, the peak of aspirational living is that you had a house that was big enough that your garage was actually behind your house, and so that seems like that's like, okay, it's aesthetics, it's design, it's like architecture, it's city planning, and it's like it's actually so much more than that, because when we think about the actual human experience that that design facilitates is, all of a sudden we went from. We literally run into our neighbors multiple times a day because we're all walking to the bakery, the cobbler, the banking institution, the school, to we're driving off to our separate places to when I get out of my car, I actually literally go from my own little private pod of my car, drive into my driveway, go behind my house, drive into my garage, shut the garage door behind me before I exit out of my little private armored vehicle and what that enables me to do is to never have to see or interact with a single person.
Speaker 2:And that seemingly small design choice has, amongst hundreds of others, have an incredibly profound impact on our sense of belonging, our sense of community, our sense of safety. We've been sold this tale that, like we want to be safe, we have to move away from people, we have to invest in things like security systems, and it's like what actually makes people feel safe is a sense that I know my neighbors, my neighbors know me. We're all watching out for one another and I'm not alone. There's people that I can ask for help from, there's people that we're living in close enough proximity that we're actually able to observe one another and to provide and to ask and to give help to one. That is actually what creates safety, and the science and the data is, like so clear.
Speaker 2:I mean, there was a study that showed that people who see their friends at least three times a week which, by the way, was average like about 15 years ago, the average American was spending about six and a half hours a week with their friends. Now, 15 years later, that has plummeted. It's less than two hours a week. So that's a 60% reduction, an enormous social behavior shift in a relatively short amount of time. So the time that we've spent with our friends has decreased by 60%. However, people who see their friends three or more times a week report an average life satisfaction increase that's equivalent to a $150,000 a year raise.
Speaker 2:So, like what do we think is going to make life better, easier, happier, less stressful, like if I just had more money right, and it's actually like you know what actually makes you feel better, more fulfilled, less stressful, like life is more doable. It's feeling like you're a part of a community and that you're not, that you're not on your own. People that just see and interact with their neighbors I'm not even talking friends just are friendly with their neighbors, report an average kind of wellbeing score that's equivalent with a $60,000 a year raise. So we're just going after the wrong things and listen. We're going after the things that we think are going to make us happier, less stress, more fulfilled, and at the end of the day, I deeply believe that it is a return to social health and communities, these dense networks of support whether that's really close friend groups, whether that's how an organization operates, whether that's an actual proximate neighborhood that in order to be fully flourishing humans, the actual third pillar of human flourishing, we know about physical health and we've grown a lot in our understanding about the importance of physical health, about, you know, probably starting maybe like 30 or 40 years ago.
Speaker 2:The last two decades has really been a rise in understanding the importance of mental health. But both physical health and mental health, a lot of the ways that we talk about those, you can pursue those things in isolation, like you can go to yoga five times a week, you can have a super clean diet, you can meditate for an hour every morning. You can do all of that on your own. But the third pillar to human flourishing is social health. And if our physical health and our mental health isn't alongside a pillar of social health, then actually, all of the benefits that we've been promised from increased physical health and mental health, we actually don't get to access the full benefit of that, because we're missing a really big piece of the pie.
Speaker 1:Okay, so there's so much more here, we do not have enough time, I'd love to keep.
Speaker 2:I can really run my mouth about things I'm passionate about.
Speaker 1:And I'm as curious as you are. So this could, this could we probably have.
Speaker 2:I think I can hear my kids outside. So my guess is, we have like another 10 minutes oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:All right, so we won't rush completely, but I do want to ask you this, in particular in a landscape where we're seeing shifts of women in business and corporate and leadership positions, where there was a big movement for the climbing of the ladder and the ascension into C-suite and senior leadership positions, which you know many of us have, just that has been the goal right. And then a little bit of a backtracking starts to happen around COVID time. And now you've got this blended existence right. Community initially, as it related to women in career, involved resource groups that were all driving toward the same mark.
Speaker 1:But if I'm taking nothing away from this conversation, I'm taking this idea, this notion for us all to unpack. That goes to what are you driving for, what are you passionate about? And then how do you create the community that shares that belief and is working toward that thing and becomes a little bit of a right muscle for you as you're building toward your own future? Tell me your thoughts on that. You know, as you think about how things are shifting and have shifted and these communities take on new personas, do you see them emerging to have different offers and value for women in career or do you think you know it's still very homogenous.
Speaker 2:You know it's interesting specifically as we think about women in the workplace. I feel like you're right. So much of the language for so long. Well, I mean, I guess it started out with like women don't belong in the workplace, and then there was a movement towards we do belong, belong in the workplace and we belong at the highest echelons of leadership, and so in order to do that, we have to what we have to lean in, we have to play the game that the men designed and we have to sit at the tables that the men designed and we have to play the same game. And I think you're right.
Speaker 2:I think COVID was a really profound both opportunity for some women who were going. I don't know if this is working for me, but also a lot of women were forced into having to pull back from their careers who didn't necessarily want to, because the burden of kids being out of school and daycares being closed down and family members needing to be cared for the burden of that really fell on women. But still the conversation was kind of like it's still all about playing by the men's rules. I think what I'm interested in is like I think the next wave of progress is like less about. When are the women gonna like? Are we acting more or less like men and more? When are the dudes going to start playing more by the rules that we've actually been playing by for a long time, which I think is typically more thoughtful, more intentional? I think women are much quicker and these are all generalizations because we're all on a spectrum and wired very differently but in general, I find that women infuse and have a little bit more intentionality around. How am I spending my time and my energy, and is it the highest, best use of my time, and when is enough enough?
Speaker 2:I think that that is a problem and I don't think that men are completely at fault for this, because I think society has conditioned men. The lie that men believe is that you will feel better, more whole, healthier, thriving, more respected. The answer to all of your problems is just more. It's more success, it's more power, it's more money, it's more prestige, it's more privilege, and I think that's a load of shit that we've given to men, and I also think we don't talk enough about how that messaging is impacting men. I think that's a very dicey conversation that people are afraid to have because no one wants to be the person who's like oh, the poor men. And also I feel fine with being like when we look at the data, men are not doing well right now.
Speaker 2:Men are five times lonelier in friendship than they were in the 1990s suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction, anxiety, depression and I think a lot of that comes from the message that we've given to men, which is what I just said, that it's just like it's never enough and there's always going to be another mountain to climb and always going to be somebody else for you to compete with, and so I think the next level of progress is actually going to be unlocked when more men start going okay, I'm, I am working and I'm working hard and I am working faithfully and towards excellence to this thing that I've been called to out in the workplace.
Speaker 2:And you want to know what else matters to me and what I envision as a successful life having a healthy relationship with my partner and having kids that feel like I am emotionally, physically, relationally present in their life, being a community member where my neighbor, my fellow church members, the parents at my school would say oh, this place is better and more connected and more safe for everybody because Jack is here and is a part of it and really redefining what success looks like. I think there's so much conversation about how women have fallen prey to like well, you can't have it all, and I'm like I think the world would be better if men were more interested in having it all, you know, and had like a broader view of what success looked like. And so we put so much like emphasis on like mommy guilt. Women have all this mommy guilt and it's like okay, we can have a whole conversation about that, and I think we might do well if some more men had a little daddy guilt happening right, like when's the daddy guilt?
Speaker 1:movement going to come Right. There's the money shot, because I think that for so many families right now, the missing element is very much the fact that the lie that's been told, right for men is as impactful as the lies that have been told for women. And at the core, it's what is your value, what do you believe, and have you assembled a life that allows you to live truly and committed to those values? Right and man? I love that. This one's going to be good for our guys because they're important. They're important to our families, they're important to the next generation, and the minute we take them out of the equation, the minute we we lose, we all lose, right.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, that's good. When we do that, we're just we're playing by the same rules of the game that so many of us for so long said were wrong and oppressive and marginalizing women and were harmful, and we're basically just playing by the same rules, but we've flipped the sides of the field and I'm just completely uninterested in that game. I just do not believe that it's zero sum. I believe that true flourishing, anything that actually creates a better world, has to be better for everybody. All the players have to benefit from that, and so I think women will benefit immensely when they don't feel like they're the only ones that are carrying the weight of the family and of children and of aging parents on their shoulders, and that's why so many women feel so burnout, so resentful, so angry.
Speaker 2:But I actually think that that will be an unlock to health and to thriving for our brothers as well as when they go. Oh, you mean, my worth in the world doesn't actually just come from how much money I earn and what kind of car I drive and what position I hold, because I know so many men who are really silently suffering because there is one definition of success and they feel like they aren't a picture of that, and the consequences of that are dire for them and then, by nature, for their families and for the people that they depend on, and so I'm wholly uninterested in a narrative that says it's time for us to take it back, or now to be the ones you know that are in the position of power and instead going. I'm much more interested in something that actually creates flourishing for all.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm going to let you go after this one rapid fire question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right, here we go.
Speaker 1:So, when you are thinking about a great time, what's your favorite thing to do for fun? Favorite thing to do for fun.
Speaker 2:Okay, For me a great time would be having like five of my best girlfriends over some great snacks, preferably savory, and honestly like sitting in my hot tub in my backyard. I love hot tub time because I love feeling like everybody's kind of like captive, you know, where people aren't like having side conversations or coming in and out, it's just like a handful of people that are kind of in one contained area and the conversation that kind of involves everybody. Everybody has a voice because, again, those little side conversations are happening and you know you're in a hot tub so things start to flow and stories get shared. That is my idea of a great time.
Speaker 1:That's a good one. One more what's the craziest workout phenomena right now that you've engaged in at least one time?
Speaker 2:Oh well, I don't really work out. So I now, I say that and I have done this, Liz.
Speaker 1:that's what you're telling me, girlfriend.
Speaker 2:I here's the thing I don't engage in normal workouts. Probably the only workouts that I've engaged in are things that the average person would be like that's unhinged, and I'm like those are the only things I would consider. So the thing I've done most recently is something called dance church and you like go to this dance studio. You don't stand like in a line all looking at the instructor and then looking at yourself in a mirror.
Speaker 2:The instructor stands in the middle of the studio, everybody is in a circle around them, the music is blaring, the lights are low and it's not like a choreograph dance. It's like she's doing kind of a repeated move, but it's like to the beat and to the rhythm. So then the entire group is kind of dancing in unison, ish, and then the song changes, the beat changes, so then the instructor kind of changes and you're just kind of like circling around the room and so it's very not performative, like it's not like. Look at me, I'm doing all the moves right. It feels just like kind of the shared. We're all engaging in music and in this embodied experience, but in a way that feels very like, just like welcoming and inclusive and not kind of like you got to do it this way to look great or to be cool, and I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God. Ok, that's a good tip, a great tip for everybody. If you have not already done a Google of Liz Bohannon, you've got to do it. There's book, there's podcast, there's resources. I think she even still does a two to three day experience where you can sit with her and start to unpack your own small dreaming, small opportunity, right and from the beginning. So I'm super excited to continue to get to know you through the journey and I just wish you the best.
Speaker 2:You're the coolest's, a special place and I'm just grateful for the gifts that you are bringing to the world in your own way. So thanks for being you.
Speaker 1:Oh, bless you, Thank you, bye.