10 Habits of Highly Feminine Women

When our culture talks about “highly feminine women,” it usually points to appearances; how she dresses, how she speaks, how she carries herself. But true femininity goes far deeper than lipstick, heels, and perfect manners.

In this episode, we uncover the 10 habits that genuinely feminine women embody - not as performance, but as inner strength, emotional intelligence, and relational skill. These are the qualities that inspire devotion, deepen connection, and transform marriages from the inside out.

Today's tips are grounded in our family legacy and best-selling Fascinating Womanhood book series and principles that have helped women for over 60 years. We’ll break down what real femininity looks like, and how you can begin developing these habits in practical, everyday ways.

If you’ve ever wondered what it truly means to be feminine in today’s world, this episode will give you clarity, direction, and confidence. 

Have something to tell us? Send us some fanmail! Visit www.fascinatingwomanhood.com to learn more about our message, books and life-changing principles. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Hello everyone and welcome to the official Fascinating Womanhood Podcast, where we explore timeless principles for developing true femininity, inspiring authentic masculinity, and building strong, loving, and lasting relationships. I'm Cherry Lynn and I'm here with my mom, Dixie Andalyn Forsythe. Together we'll dive into the heart of what makes relationships thrive, offering practical wisdom and heartfelt conversations to help you live a more fulfilled and fascinating life.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

Today we are talking about 10 habits of highly feminine women. Why is this topic important to you, Mo?

SPEAKER_00 0:40

It's like I talk about in my book, uh, goes back to feminine power. Feminine power is something that is a real important feminine attribute, but most women don't even know what it is or what it's for. And we're we can't be men, we don't want to be men. There's a power in being feminine. So when we're talking about highly feminine women, that creates uh a power and an influence for yourself that you can use for good.

SPEAKER_03 1:09

Yeah, and I think a lot of the women that are out there searching to be more feminine are not necessarily thinking about power. I don't think they're going, I want to be more powerful. How can I be feminine? They're not tying those two together.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

But we want to be happy and we want others to like us and acknowledge us, and we we want to feel good about ourselves. And because femininity is who we are at our core, then the more we understand it and tap into it, the more confident we'll be, the more happy we'll be.

SPEAKER_03 1:42

Yes, I agree. And I think most of the women out there that are searching for this topic are really widely finding advice about how to look feminine, which is great. But what I find more valuable about this conversation is talking about the internal part of being feminine versus just the outward part of being feminine. You know, we like to compare this. We've done this in several of our YouTube videos. We like to compare this to cake, the outward part of femininity, meaning, you know, the way you dress, the way you present, is kind of the icing on top of a cake. And the cake is the inward, and you kind of need both.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:25

A delicious, wonderful dessert. But and you can have one without the other, I guess, but you don't have the balance.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Well, actually, bringing that up, if you had a big bowl of icing, it'd be better to have a piece of cake without the icing than the icing without the cake.

SPEAKER_03 2:40

I would far more choose the cake without the icing. Tons of people that love to eat icing, but I think the point we're making here is that you really are the goal is to have that balance and have both. You want it both, and you don't want too much emphasis on the icing. You really want that that perfect kind of balance of the icing. So we like to kind of give you that fun little comparison to help you understand just really what the root of this topic is about. So we're gonna go through our 10 tips for high being highly feminine and practicing this in your daily lives. And keep in mind this isn't about putting something on. This isn't about becoming an actress. I think a lot of women listen to our advice and they they say, Well, I'm trying this or I'm doing this, or I'm trying to get him to do this. And we just want to encourage you to think about this topic as something that you are learning to be become a part of you.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Yeah, it's like um you learn to be uh a tactful person. That isn't something that you try or you uh, you know, how can I control this? You you can this is part of character development.

SPEAKER_03 3:55

Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:58

Okay, so we'll go ahead and jump in. So the first one is embracing the art of gentle disclosure. This is about expressing yourself in a manner that is considerate, tactful, and sensitive to the feelings and well-beings of others. I think there's so many women that think that in order for them to be heard, they have to raise their voice or they have to suddenly control the room with loud volumes, loud laughter. And I think that message of being loud is not the message of being influential, feminine, powerful, or likable.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Has somebody ever you've made a statement or say what your opinion is about something, and somebody comes back at you really loud and pushy. What how does that make you feel? It makes people feel defensive uh immediately because nobody likes being attacked.

SPEAKER_03 4:55

Right. Yeah, I think this one is has the most to do with this just simply the gentle way that you're speaking and the volume, like you said, and the way that you're speaking, your tone. We actually did an entire video on YouTube about feminine tone, and I think that's something we'll probably do a future podcast about. But this one is about that huge topic of tone.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Some women, um, a lot of women, in fact, from my experience, get used to yelling at their children. Um and and if if you look at it, if you really look at it, it's like a uh layers of an onion. Children don't listen more if you're loud. Because they get used to you being loud, so that's just normal. And it just reminds me of um my mother's brother, uncle, who was who was a doctor, and he she said that when children in the in the hospital were misbehaving, he would he would bend down and whisper, you're not allowed to do that in here. And she said they it it really affected kids because they're not used to that. And it was very controlled, very gentle. He didn't sound angry, but it it always my mom said it always made them uh be uh quiet. And it was just gentle and and he whispered it because they you have to listen more when one someone's whispering. Not that you want to whisper in a party all the time, but the idea is that you're not people aren't gonna listen to you the louder you are. Right.

SPEAKER_03 6:28

And the same thing goes for your husband, you know. I think there's a lot of ladies out there that feel like they get frustrated, which I understand, but then with that has to come this emotional expression. I hear this all the time. Well, it's just me, it's just who I am, it's just the natural me. Well, you didn't really, you weren't born yelling at people. You didn't, that's not really technically natural. Maybe it feels natural because you're used to it, but the yelling culture and the let's just draw and be ourselves culture. I want to be authentic, but that doesn't mean that you have to give in to some of these bad habits that you've probably learned throughout your life.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

But you may have learned it from growing up. I mean, there's a lot of things that happen, but we we could we should consider ourselves in some ways always kind of a fluid concept because we're growing and become a better and better version of ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 7:25

Right. And let's just be honest, we've made mistakes. We all make mistakes. You've probably made mistakes, and this is something that you have to just work on. And if you slip here and there, this is a reminder. Don't be hard on yourself, but to start to develop this habit of, you know what, I'm just not gonna be loud anymore, or I'm not gonna yell anymore, or whatever it is, because it it isn't influential, it isn't positive, it isn't actually changing anything.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

Maybe that's I don't know if you're not especially if you're a boss to somebody. But but the thing is if you um we're saying it's gentle disclosure. So you can you can do things in a very controlled, mature way, and this is uh a part of a part of femininity too. Without it's controlled, and you can still be considerate, you can still be tactful, and you can still be sensitive to the feelings of others. And always remembering that if you get into an actual argument, nobody wins those. No one does. It just goes back and forth.

SPEAKER_03 8:38

And I think there's a lot of ladies that might be like, Well, I need to get my point across and I need to be direct. What do you have to say about that?

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Direct can also be gentle and sensitive. You can be up front, and direct doesn't mean you're a horrible person or or anything like direct can be uh something like I f I really am upset about this because of this. How can we resolve this? If it's in a relationship, if it's like you you have had to be in um retail, you worked in retail, so you had to be very direct with colleagues and customers at times, didn't you?

SPEAKER_03 9:17

Just say we're we can't do that in here or well, as a manager, you have to be direct with anybody, anybody on your team. I don't think with customers as much, unless it's like a customer service problem, but you're never that's a good point to bring up customer service, because if you would have someone come, like say they would complain to me about another individual, I mean, I would have lost my job if I would have yelled at that customer, even if she's completely out of her mind, which nine times out of ten, they kind of sound like they are. Um you really can't do that. So if if I can learn to do it, I think anyone can learn to do it. And I, you know, it's just a again, it's a habit that you have to develop. And most of it is the tone. And we're gonna talk a little bit more about the actual words coming out of your mouth later. But this one is just more about the tone, the volume, those defensive kind of loud um situations that we might be getting ourselves into because of emotion, which I know we've all been there, but it's just about striving for that softer, gentle, but confident at the same time. You know, you don't want to lose your confidence.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

It's more effective to do it this way. It's more effective, whether it's your relationship with your man, with your children, or whether it's at work. And even with a colleague at work, that wouldn't be a good thing to do is to be loud and and yell, or even accuse, like not be tactful.

SPEAKER_03 10:46

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

It's not a good look.

SPEAKER_03 10:48

So I'm watching this series right now. It's called the I'm sure a lot of you probably heard of it. It's the like America's next top model documentary. And there's an episode where the host of the show, Tyra Banks, just loses her mind. This what we're talking about reminds me of this. The whole show, she up up thus far until this point, she's poised and you know, she's a supermodel. She talks very, you know, gently and and eloquently. And then all of a sudden, she's at a judging panel and she just starts screaming at one of the contestants. Wow. Wow. And I was watching this episode last night, and it made me think of this the art of gentle disclosure and being tactful and considerate. All of her other judges behind her, and they interviewed these people in present day. They were scared, they were shocked, they were basically they weren't really listening to her in a sense. And and they're all being filmed on TV. Um, and she said, Tyra Banks, she was being interviewed about that. She said that it was one of the worst moments that she's ever had in her career.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 12:01

It's all because she was shouting and she lost herself. And I can sympathize with the fact that we've all kind of had those moments, but I think this is why it's important to practice this.

SPEAKER_00 12:14

Yeah, and she was not glad she did that. You you you said how she regretted it, and most of us regret it at some time, but it is something you can learn to do, and it's it's you'll you'll be far more effective in your dealings with anyone if you if you can work on in mastering this, embracing the art of gentle disclosure. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 12:37

Okay, the second one, number two, is called the character collector. This has to do with that delicate effort to develop a genuine understanding and respect for the complexity of other people's personality traits and behaviors, and what we usually call it in fascinating womanhood is treasure hunting. What does this mean?

SPEAKER_00 12:57

Yeah, it means that, okay, there are some unpleasant people in the world here and there. Yeah. And um, when you come across somebody, even if it's somebody you don't know, like some figure in the news or something like that, it's a good habit to realize that all people, very few people are truly and totally thoroughly evil, that they have they have good, good parts to them. And so treasure hunting, and we're we're taking it to more just your personal relationships, is recognizing something in it's not it's not denying or putting it under a rug or something like that, recognizing that someone may have a weakness here or a weakness there, but also balancing it out with the things that are really good about them that you admire about them, and not just thinking that person was rude to me, therefore this.

SPEAKER_03 13:53

Yeah, this is harder for some people than others. Some people are just naturally really gifted at seeing the good in others, and it's just so innate, and they don't even have to think about it. Whereas most of us, I think more of us, it's a little bit easier to see the flaws in people, and it's natural in a way, because we're just as humans, we just see problems and we we kind of see a problem and we call it out, or we immediately see it and we we verbalize what we see and we or we we might even dwell a little bit on the things that we see. I think especially when it comes to the men that we marry, we we marry them and then we we kind of take them for granted down the road after a while.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

It's easy to fall into that, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:41

Yeah. And I think this one is is really it's all internal. This is all in your head. This is not something that you can really show people other than just expressing the appreciation that you have or the the nitpicking that you have around other people. But I think a lot of ladies hear this topic because we've talked about it so many times, and they kind of roll their eyes a little bit and they think that we're telling everybody to be kind of like Pollyanna, the glad. Polly, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

Actually, the character of Pollyanna was actually really like that. I mean, she wasn't she wasn't faking it, but uh, but we believe that you should uh recognize the good and appreciate the good without pretending, having to pretend there is no bad. Because that's that's not helpful either. Like it's one of the side effects. It isn't the reason we made the romantic journal, but I've discovered it as a side effect of it. If you're if you're ever let's say one of your husband's weaknesses or what would you call it? Flaws. Flaws, something you don't really like. Like say he's really messy and it's irritating you. You can go to your romantic journal and see all the wonderful things you've written about him, if you're having trouble remembering them, and and you can realize that he's way more amazing than the thing you were irritated about. And it doesn't have to be he's messing. I picked it because it's um kind of an obvious one, but it can be if you're irritated with something he does or doesn't do, you can think about the the his character qualities that if you if you have that journal, if you don't, you can you can uh write things down or think of them, things that you love about him. And then pretty soon the thing that you didn't like fades into the background as comparison. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He he doesn't do this or he does do this, but boy, he does this, this, and this. He's loyal. He he he does and and I can think of a lot of things about my husband, Bob, like I'm sure you can yours, that you absolutely love and appreciate about that person and hope that you never take him for granted.

SPEAKER_03 16:43

Yeah, that's a good best practice. I think anybody that wants to get better at this, and maybe you're having a hard time getting into the habit of it, or you just forget to when you you kind of have to remind yourself when you're thinking about something that is annoying you or bothering you, you kind of have to immediately flip the table and think about something that you love about them. And you have to do this every single time, if you can, that you are finding yourself uh picking on him. Like you said, the messy thing. Like if you find a pair of socks on the floor, or if you find like laundry on the floor, or like, oh, for my biggest pet peeve, it's trash right next to the trash can. It's like on the floor, but it's like you missed as one of my biggest pet peeves. And it's so easy to be like, oh my goodness, you know, why is this happening? Why does he do this? But you have to just immediately say to yourself something wonderful about him because there are wonderful things about him.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

You know there are, and he's way more wonderful things than there are things that annoy you.

SPEAKER_03 17:42

Exactly. And this isn't just your husband, we're just using your husband as an example because we kids could be kids, kids, kids is the same thing. We talk about uh marriages most of the time in fascinating womanhood, but this could be anybody in your life. This could be your children, this could be your friends, this could be your family. Yeah, your parents, it could be anybody, really. Um, but I think when it comes to your husband, this is a really great best practice because you want that relationship to be number one in your life and you want it to be happy. And we're all striving for that. And part of that comes into these everyday little annoyances that kind of creep up on you, and they can really swallow you if you dwell on them. Maybe you're not getting enough sleep, maybe you're stressed, maybe you don't have a very good work-life balance for the ladies out there that are working. It's there's so many things that could cause you to kind of fall into this negative pit, and you have to kind of stay on top of it by treasure hunting.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

And when you do, the uh the the effect of that on your highly feminine women is that you will be you will be so appreciated for that. People will want to be around you, and um because you see you see the good in others, it's it's not like you're a person that someone says, Oh, this person really hurt me because they did A, B, or C. You're not able to um empathize with them. You say, Oh, but look at all these good things. And so you that can kind of undermine them or invalidate their hurt feelings. You can up you can empathize with the hurt feelings, but also when you get a chance to appropriately uh you know remind a person of of the more of a rounded, well-rounded picture of that person. Because really there's there's been very few, and I can't say that I can name any, who are thoroughly bad through and through. And I mean I just don't know everybody or have studied everyone in history, but most people have redeeming qualities.

SPEAKER_03 19:42

We don't want to send a message that if somebody is mistreating you, you just like truly mistreating you, that you just want to go, oh, well, I'm gonna treasure hunt. Like we don't want to that's not what we're saying. We're not saying if somebody is um abusive or toxic in your life, we're not saying, oh, well, you should just treasure hunt and all that will go away. That's not what you're not.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

It doesn't work.

SPEAKER_03 20:03

We're talking about the we're talking about basically generally good people and people in your lives that you are you're upset about little things and and they're kind of consuming you and it's causing contentious problems in your relationship, and maybe you want to just improve the relationship, not relationships that kind of are toxic, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

Right. We're not saying don't that's what I say. Um you see the good without it, but you also do not ignore the bad. Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:33

Okay. Uh number three is to become a genuine nurturer. This is demonstrating or embodying characteristics associated with nurturing, caring, and supporting others.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

Now this is something that is uh pretty uh mostly unique to women is our natural tendency to be a nurturer. Not not all women are exactly like that, but most are. And it's one of the reasons we know that women are by far the ones that start um community outreach, things that don't make money, you know, um uh feeding the hungry and um things like that. Women tend to tend to want to uh help the homeless and and and run organizations that do that. But it's also nurturing other people, like if you're in a whether you have children or not, if you're in a work situation, you don't like to see people feeling bad when you when you can see it. And it and now we can go too far and mother people like our husbands when they don't want to be mothered, but we're not talking about that. We're talking about nurturing.

SPEAKER_03 21:47

What about the ladies out there that have never had babies? Why should they develop their nurturing side if they don't have kids?

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Well, I think it's something that a uh a lot, maybe even most women do have in them, whether they recognize it. Or not. They they we tend to be concerned about people who are sad or distressed, you know, people in your office, whether you're a mother or not, but women have nurturing tendencies towards others, just towards others, and not even children, children, but also adults. So let's just say you're not a mother, but you're at work, you you can see whether someone looks tired or stressed, or they may not even say anything, and you become women tend to be more sensitive to that, whether they've had a child or not. It's just built in.

SPEAKER_03 22:32

Right, right. Women are are generally a lot stronger nurturers. I think there's a lot of women out there that might be listening to this and saying, Well, why is this feminine? And men are nurturing too. Yes, men are very nurturing, but they're not quite generally, they're not quite as nurturing, nurturing as us ladies are. Which is a natural ability. Whether you've discovered this about yourself or not, this is something that you can develop.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

Well, women, women are the ones, like I said before, that are the main ones that start these uh places for the homeless and feeding the hungry people because of their more uh sensitive nurturing nature. We can't have people starving to death around us. Whereas a man might get to it, but he he more often will want to make it a business. Women will do it for nothing if they find that they'll volunteer. Women volunteer for all kinds of things like that, that make no money. What men can nurture, but uh not even near on the level. W like I could we say women are like ninjas at it. Men can do it, but they're not like they're not like women.

SPEAKER_03 23:38

One way that I really love to invest in my nurturing side because I wanted to have more kids and I wasn't able to have more, I just have the two. So I kind of felt like there was this small kind of hole uh a bit in my life. And one thing I started doing a few years ago that's really helped me is, and I'm I'm glad you brought this up with the community kind of mindset is volunteering. And I've been volunteering for several years now at my kids' schools and uh helping the schools raise money. And it's so funny that we're talking about men versus women because I do so many of these events and hundreds and hundreds of families, and 99% of the events, women are there volunteering. And you know, you get your straggler guy come in, and even the ones that do come in, let's just say, okay, well, that guy's, you know, doing the same thing that the women are doing. He's not doing it in the same way. He's not chatting, he's not finding as much joy in the chatting and the community and the the kind there's a lot of lull time in volunteering. You know that there's a lot of kind of uh creative time, and uh there's also tasks and there's also accomplishing time, which I think men tend to be a little bit stronger with, but there's there's kind of this need to adapt and to figure things out and to be social and really bond. And I think I really love that idea for women to volunteer and to get involved in charities and get involved in their community because it really does develop that side of you that you maybe perhaps don't even know is there.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

And and you know, uh it's another side note to that women don't tend to mind that it's pretty thankless. They get their own rewards. Right, exactly. And and it's kind of fun to think about that women dominate nurturing fields like nurses and teachers. Not to mention, not college level as much, but even in college, but uh the primary school teachers are are almost all women.

SPEAKER_03 25:44

Yeah, and why is that?

SPEAKER_00 25:47

They they like it, they're good at it. It it requires, especially with young kids, it requires a lot of patience. And and you want to you want to kind of help these children and get to know them and see them grow and women have the patience for it because it's part of nurturing.

SPEAKER_03 26:04

Exactly. I think the women out there that do nursing and do teaching, I'm sure that they could probably speak about their jobs. And I wish we could have one of them on here and talk about this nurturing topic with their jobs. I'm sure there's parts of their job that are drudgery and terrible, but I'm sure most of them would probably say what they love a lot, in fact, maybe even most about their jobs is helping and taking care of improving. Yeah. Educators love those moments with their kids where they've made a difference and they feel, you know, it's that same nurturing feeling. And I think that's important to recognize that women really, really love that and we're good at it.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

We're we're amazing at it. And you know, I I imagine as a teacher, uh, because as a mother, I I was a teacher too to my children, but you to to see a child learn to read and realize you've helped them learn to read or spell and you help them overcome something.

SPEAKER_03 27:00

And men enjoy that too. I think there's parts of this that kind of bleed into, you know, things that men love too. But I think generally speaking, we as women, when we can show this nurturing side and develop it, it's not only a great fulfilling feeling for us, it's also a bonus of being attractive to men.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

They see very attractive. Well, okay, and I'm gonna bring this up. Um, daycare is virtually all women. Now, the obvious thing is, you know, um abuse situations. But look, take that aside. That's like that wasn't you didn't talk about that. But men, if you talk to most men about how would they like to run a daycare, they would be kind of horrified because little kids, preschool kids, are difficult. They cry, they need uh sometimes they're need diaper changing, uh, they've got to be fed. The the things that are not men don't tend to like to do, but requires a lot of nurturing.

SPEAKER_03 27:59

Well, isn't that why men tend to want to be more in that principal administrative role? Because they're better at that.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

Yeah, they don't know.

SPEAKER_03 28:07

Not that women aren't, but I I guess women, tons of women principles, but there's a lot more male principles than there are. I mean, I could look up the statistics, I don't know, but in at least in my lifetime, what I've noticed.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

A lot more. Yeah, men the idea. If you ask a hundred men if they would like to work in a daycare center, even if it paid a lot of money, how many would say they would like to? You'd probably not get too many. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 28:34

Okay. So moving on to number four, physical grace. This is about the act of expressing elegance, refinement, and poise through subtle and refined physical actions or gestures. So we're really talking about kind of the fun stuff, the manners, the manners, yeah. All the all the icing stuff. So, what is what is this one mostly about for you? What is the most important part of physical grace for you?

SPEAKER_00 29:00

Um probably your body movements, but it could also be the way you eat. I mean, if you too loudly and with your mouth open. I mean, it could, but most most of the time you're not doing that. It's the way you walk, the way you speak, your politeness. You are you polite to people? And part of that bleeds into the first one about not being loud. Because if you're if you're polite, that your your mannerisms do not include loudness.

SPEAKER_03 29:27

Well, I love this one when you're talking about the cake and icing kind of comparison, because this one is kind of both. It can kind of embody both, because the way that you look, maybe you're a woman out there that's very feminine and you take really good care of yourself and you present impeccably and you really put forth a lot of effort into how you look, but then you walk in a room heavy-footed and loud and you plop down in the chair, and it changes the way that you look.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

It it does. It it really does. And also, if you're impolite, like you say, you know, you really your hair looks terrible today. I mean, that affects it too. If you're if you're polite. It's it's all a matter of um grace. We're talking here specifically about physical grace. And it's something that you can cultivate if you don't have it, if you weren't taught it from childhood, because a lot of us weren't taught that. Um, you don't want to move like a locomotive, and you don't want to be real brash and bold. And you know, all these things are things that are very attractive when you can be good at them. They're all very attractive. And they improve your own self-esteem.

SPEAKER_03 30:42

Yeah, for me, this one is mostly about movement. Like when I, if I were to say, okay, what's the number one kind of thing I think about when I think about physical grace and what what the ideal would be is just about your movement in general, the way that you the way that you sit, the way that you walk, obviously, but also the way that you grab things, the way that you, you know, you you jump in and take things in front of people, or you you cut in line, or you you know what I mean? Like it's just about how graceful you are and the way that you're communicating through your movement. And you know, we all love to watch, uh, you know, or at least I do, love to watch the old actresses because I think not quite as many in modern day that have this wonderful physical grace. I loved watching as a child Marilyn Monroe, and I couldn't believe the way that she walked and how it kind of was mesmerizing to me the way that she moved, the way she moves her hands. Anyone that wants to kind of get a picture of this, watch really any Marilyn Monroe movie. You can see just the moves is just so so feminine and so delicate, but not underconfident, not weak either. You can see that she has a lot of influence simply in the way that she moves.

SPEAKER_00 31:59

Well, another one is going back further than Marilyn Monroe, is Jeanette McDonald.

SPEAKER_03 32:04

But she don't think as many people know who that is.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

No, they don't, they don't, but I I she and she's way back. She's like, gosh, it's gonna be a hundred years before too long. But she everything she did was feminine and graceful, and she played a lot of different characters, but I think she really must have been. And same with Marilyn Monroe because that's what they always did in all their films.

SPEAKER_03 32:26

Well, and this is also facial expressions. Like when you think of Jeanette McDonald, I hope everyone will look her up because she is really someone special to look up as far as physical grace goes. But when I think of her, I just automatically go to this place of wow, she's so graceful, just like amazingly graceful and inspiring in in many ways in the way that she moves. And and it's not like someone probably taught her all those things, although they're probably things she developed in herself. I think they're rather natural for her.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

Well, I think Audrey Hepburn was also very good at that. And she's not quite as old as as Jeanette, but um anyway, um, you're right about Marilyn Monroe. And take aside the fact some of the parts she played or some of the choices she made in her personal life. That's completely separate. Right, right.

SPEAKER_03 33:20

Of course, yeah. I think we can hear everybody being like, why are you using these people? They were terrible human beings or whatever. No, we're not talking about them in their real life, we're talking about just what you see on the outside as far as how graceful they are.

SPEAKER_00 33:33

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_03 33:35

Okay. Number five is this has to do with what you're saying. So say what you mean is what we're calling it. Say what you mean with grace. It's about achieving a high level of skill and proficiency in the use of language to create artful and nuanced conversations. This is a really tough one. I think in today's society, this is probably one of the hardest ones when it comes to your femininity, is the things that you're saying.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Yeah, and uh, the first thing that you can think of is uh allowing yourself to be wrong and admitting it. Some people, that's that's actually a really good quality to have. So, you know, you're right. You know, you don't always have to be right in order to be um intelligent in order to have a point. Uh, none of us are always right. So allowing yourself to be wrong, people appreciate that if you can admit when you've made a mistake and and also looking to be empathetic with others, especially if you disagree. You know, you have more of a a chance to put your point across if you can see the value in some of the things they're saying. I understand what you mean about this. You're absolutely right, but would you consider this? But what about this part? So if you give people some allowance for being right about some things and then bring up the things that you think you disagree on, they're more apt to first of all think you're charming and second of all agree with you.

SPEAKER_03 35:05

Well, I think there's a lot of people out there that get very fired up and very emotional, emotional about certain topics, and therefore, in their mind, this all of this goes away. This turns off. And because uh what I'm talking about is I am so passionate about this and it fires me up or it triggers me, or whatever it is you want to call it, they therefore throw this out the door and they become this kind of overbearing version of themselves. And the you I can share my problem with that, but tell I already know you're gonna what you're gonna say. Well, tell us what's wrong with that.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

It doesn't, it doesn't have the desired outcome that you want.

unknown 35:45

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 35:46

Or one thing, and you want back off from that for a minute and just think, what do we want to be? And that we we all have these, not all of us, but a lot of us have these things, like you said, that uh trigger us. I mean, politics is a big one. You do that's why we say in FW Timeless, we say don't talk to somebody about politics unless you are on the same page, because it's it's not gonna go very well unless, you know, um, I know some people that are able to talk with friends of an opposite persuasion than themselves, but they have more like debates. They don't they don't do that.

SPEAKER_03 36:24

There's an understanding there, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:25

Yeah, yeah. They're able to say, well, what about this? And what do you think about that? Yeah, you're right about this, but what about that? But when it's really emotional for a person, uh it's better if you don't are not on the same page with them, it's better to to either not talk about it or in this in this sense to say what you mean with grace, you look for some ways to be empathetic with them. You don't want to make an enemy of someone in your language and and using sarcasm. Sarcasm is not is not an aspect of grace.

SPEAKER_03 36:57

Right. Sarcasm, there's also putting people down or making fun of other people. I mean, this happens to me all the time in public settings with women. You know, you may misspeak and they may make a joke, and there's a certain element of humor that you've got to have. I I'm totally supportive of that. But I think the ladies out there that are quick to criticize, quick to disagree, quick to judge, I think that those things are are making you less feminine and they're making you less uh kind, they're making you less of a valuable person, they're causing damage to your friendships, they're causing damage to your relationships, and you probably don't really even realize that you're doing it.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

And you can you can overcome this by if there if somebody brings up something that really uh triggers you, um because politics does that for a lot of people. We're so polarized as as a people, um, you and you don't want to get into it, you you can kind of get out of it with grace. You don't have to go all the way into it. You could say, I I there's many things you could say, but um you could also find ways, you know, you can treasure hunt with that too, find ways to understand where they might be coming from before you say anything at all.

SPEAKER_03 38:18

Yeah, this one also I do have to say, it also has to do with your language. I think there's a lot of ladies out there that really love expressing themselves in, shall we say, very colorful ways.

SPEAKER_00 38:33

It reminds me of a sailor.

SPEAKER_03 38:35

Yeah, I I mean I have lots of friends that do. And and and I honestly, it doesn't really bother me that much. I I guess it does if it becomes really excessive, but I think ideally you need to remind remind yourself that when that language is gone, nobody's missing it. It's not like when you stop swearing, everyone's like, oh, I'm disappointed you don't swear anymore. Like it's not really necessary in conversations.

SPEAKER_00 39:01

I think it's interesting that, and you know, I'll get back to politics again in the media. No everyone knows that you're not supposed to use that kind of language on the air. They also know any job. And they're also yeah, they also know that people do it in their private life. So, and yet there's this area you can't imagine King Charles, for instance, using some of this language because it would be all over the news. But yet, I don't know whether he does in his private life or not. But there's no reason that we need to ever not be feminine and not have these attributes of saying what you mean with grace. It it won't hurt, it won't make you less effective.

SPEAKER_03 39:41

It makes you double there's a double standard with what present out there in your job, anywhere, um, like us right now. If we were to in our podcast use tons of filthy language, there's a standard. It's not really written anywhere, but there's kind of a standard of like, well, we just don't do that. Everybody well, yeah, it's just that we don't want to offend people, but then why is it suddenly switch when you're just at a family gathering or you're out with friends? Like then everyone feels like they can just say what they want. Why not just Why not just be that way all the time? Yeah, why not just make it that a standard for you all the time? Because it's not really the best way to go about it. Otherwise, we wouldn't we wouldn't have those kind of unwritten rules to begin with.

SPEAKER_00 40:23

Yeah. Yeah, we all kind of know what they are. So why ever use them? They're not more effective.

SPEAKER_03 40:29

Yeah. And I and I get that that you get into the habit of it, uh you it's kind of contagious. When you're around a lot of swearing, it can kind of get get you. Um, but I think this is one where, like we said before, it's it's it's not really something that anyone's gonna miss about you if you suddenly kind of like start eliminating it. And this one affects your mood. When you're around a bunch of swearing or you're doing a lot of it, it's gonna affect. We're talking about all these femininity topics, it's gonna affect your mood. Are you s are you able to treasure hunt while you're in that mindset of sarcasm and language? And it's kind of hard to do both at the same time. It's kind of hard to be really feminine in the way you walk and sit and move, but then your language is all filthy and foul.

SPEAKER_00 41:18

Yeah, and you know it also It also um when you when you behave in a uh more feminine, graceful way, it actually improves your self-esteem.

SPEAKER_03 41:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:29

It's it's kind of amazing how it works that way. Because all this is about you being happier, you being more comfortable in your skin, and being more and being more able to express yourself and be heard.

SPEAKER_03 41:42

Yeah, and and we have to, before we move to the next one, we have to acknowledge that this also is very much online. This isn't just what you're saying out of your mouth, it's also what you're typing. And when you're typing to ladies, oh my goodness, I see this almost every day, probably every day, especially in our Facebook group for Fascinating Womanhood, these ladies that I think are so kind and I've seen them be so kind, will suddenly be triggered by a topic, and they will start to say all these mean aggressive things uh to complete strangers on the internet. And I'm just thinking, why are you doing this?

SPEAKER_00 42:20

I'm glad you brought that up because it's it's really strange how people, when they don't have to face someone, are more willing to be unkind and cruel and um kind of you know, even even to the sarcasm, bad language. And I've often wondered if they saw that person face to face, would they do that?

SPEAKER_03 42:42

Right. Right, exactly. So this, yeah, this includes online debates, online language, online conversations.

SPEAKER_01 42:51

Right.

SPEAKER_03 42:52

Okay, number six is a fun one. This is the domestic goddess, which all the fascinating womanhood fans will probably know about because we have chapters about this and we talk a lot about it. And this just has to do with the role and responsibility of managing and caring for your home uh with exceptional skills, dedication, and grace.

SPEAKER_00 43:12

Mm-hmm. Okay, so this the obvious is being tidy, but it isn't only about being tidy, and it isn't only about being a good cook, but it's about caring for the atmosphere in your home. Not too many people talk about that, and the atmosphere is where you actually are creating kind of a sanctuary. It doesn't mean children don't cry or have problems. It it's it's an overall thing where you're creating a sanctuary for not only your your family, your husband in particular, to come home and feel like they can relax, regroup, feel good. Um, but it's also others coming into your home. When people come into your home, you want them to feel like, ah, I'm accepted here, I want to sit and stay a while. And and you create that atmosphere every day. It isn't one and done with the domestic goddess. It ne it never is. From either being even if you had a a full-time maid and your house was always tidy, vacuumed every single day, and you had a cook, you still have the atmosphere.

SPEAKER_03 44:19

Exactly. Yeah. When you think of the most feminine woman out there, and you think about your ideal, maybe yours is different from mine, but you think about your ideal, you're going to think about walking into her home and feeling not only that it looks nice, but you feel nice when you're there. You feel welcomed, you feel warm, you feel safe both physically and emotionally. Meaning you can share your ideas, you're not going to be ridiculed for them. You can dream, you can laugh. I think a lot of ladies do think this is about like a woman in an apron holding a pie. And I just I didn't, I I I mean, I guess it could be, it could be a woman if that's what your ideal is. But I think that we all have that different picture in our heads, but the goal is is to have a house that's loved and cared for, and that everyone in your home feels welcome and safe.

SPEAKER_00 45:17

Yeah, and yeah, and they're they're validated and obviously physically and emotionally safe. And I feel bad for children who grow up in homes where they do not feel this, but most of us here don't have to deal so much with that as just just taking care of the atmosphere in your home. And some of it does include it being tidy and having good food. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 45:44

Yeah, and I just we're not meant to say this may sound in your in your head if you're not used to hearing this, this may sound like this picture of being a slave. And that's absolutely not what we're saying. We're not saying that you need to quit your job if you if you have one and then just dedicate yourself to your home. This is about being smart. This is about elevating your skills. And a lot of women are actually just naturally really good at this, believe it or not. We're really good at multitasking. We're we're almost kind of able to create magic in a way. And our homes, a lot of women are very dedicated to how their home looks, which is great, but they're also dedicated to the the uh maintenance of their homes and updating their homes. Oh, it's Christmas, so I want to decorate it like this. Like men aren't you typically they're not as good at that. There's tons of men that are good at it, but they're they're not typically as good at it, and they're not as good at being able to kind of multitask it all, taking care of the kids while planning what you're doing for this, while you're maintaining this.

SPEAKER_00 46:48

If there gets to be an oppressive atmosphere at home, like say father has uh real stress at work or loses his job or something, then mother can come in and help elevate the atmosphere in the room so children aren't depressed. And some of those are done in little ways because you can't help the things that happen to us sometime in life. But creating and caring for the atmosphere includes trying to keep the atmosphere as being someplace that they still can feel emotionally safe and that they're free to laugh in and feel good. Is is things that women, like you said, we tend to be good at it. And I this is you said this is fun because I actually enjoy this. This is what I love.

SPEAKER_03 47:31

It is fun, and it can be hard if you have a tiny little place that you live. Maybe you live in a studio apartment and you're thinking, well, I can't do hardly anything. Well, yes, you can. You can still love the space that you're in and care for it and make it a place where you can rest and those that you love can be welcomed.

SPEAKER_00 47:50

Well, and I have to say, you could think, well, at least I don't have to clean a a 30-room mansion every day.

SPEAKER_03 47:56

Right.

SPEAKER_00 47:57

Even if it's tiny, it's fast to clean.

SPEAKER_03 48:00

Well, and I do have to say too, there's a lot of men that are good at this. And I do know lots of couples myself that uh the men, the the the guy in the relationship is is someone that likes to participate in this. And I think that that's great, but I think it's just about partnering with him. If he's an amazing cook, maybe he does the majority of that, but you still have a pulse on the way that the the home atmosphere feels, the peaks, the maybe you're more a part of the maintenance. It's okay to split these things up, but I think the main point that we're trying to make here is that you want to develop this in yourself and learn new skills. If you don't feel like you know how to do a lot of domestic skills, learn new ones.

SPEAKER_00 48:42

Yeah, and and you know, even if a man is good at being a good cook or is very careful about being tidy, they don't tend to be as sensitive about atmosphere. Exactly. Or even what to do about it. I asked, I asked my husband once, not long ago, I said, if I didn't say, uh, let's strip the sheets off the bed, I'm gonna wash the sheets, how long would you let the bed go if I left it up to you? And he said, I don't know, a year. He just doesn't think about it.

SPEAKER_03 49:13

I don't know how common that is. I don't think my husband would do that, but I I'm sure it probably is pretty common. I mean, I guess I could say I guess I could say the same thing with like if I were to ask him what he would do for Christmas, I don't know that he would do much more than putting up a tree or something. He probably wouldn't think to hang uh lights in different places, and he probably wouldn't think to bake cookies and I don't know, he probably buys cookies. It's it and that's fine. It's totally fine to buy cookies. I guess I'm just we're just saying that I think women generally we're really we can really spearhead this kind of I don't want to say do it all, but we kind of we kind of are are are we thrive at getting a lot done and we we're good at it and we we have this talent for recognizing it all.

SPEAKER_00 50:02

Yeah. And like you said, multitasking. Uh men might be good at one thing or another thing, but women tend to be good at all of these things.

SPEAKER_03 50:10

Okay, the next one is number seven. The next one is understanding men. This is about possessing an innate understanding and genuine comprehension of the thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and basic needs of men.

SPEAKER_00 50:26

Yeah, this is um this is very fascinating, womanhood. And understanding men because they are very different than we are, is a skill that we have to most of us have to learn. It's not just innate, because they're they can be very different from us. And once you understand generally men, because they're all a little different, um, you can you can apply this to all men, not just your husband, not just family members, but all men.

SPEAKER_03 50:54

I think this one has a lot to do, like with at least in my mind, when I think about this one, the most important overarching theme with this one is understanding the strengths and value of a man versus the strengths and value of a woman. And if you can put your finger on that and really identify it and know it, that's a good first step. I there's and this topic is so big. This is a whole book. And for those who kind of want to learn more about understanding men, we've done lots of YouTube videos on this topic. We could go on for hours, we could go on the rest of our lives talking about how to understand men. Um and we're not gonna do that today. We're just gonna talk about kind of the overarching themes and and top kind of key points that you need to be thinking about and recognizing because it's just too long. But that's what I think of is the kind of the two value between men and women and why it's important that we have different strengths.

SPEAKER_00 51:48

The whole middle section of Timeless is on understanding men.

SPEAKER_03 51:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:53

And so it's it's a whole thing because they're they're very different for them as their brain is different and their thoughts are different. The way they think, the way they handle stress is different. And um, one of the things that comes to mind is that we need to learn not to compete with them.

SPEAKER_03 52:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:12

It's not it's not an attractive quality. They they have plenty of men to compete with.

SPEAKER_03 52:19

I watched I watched a video the other day. It just like popped up on my phone. I don't know why, but it was these people interviewing women at um college campuses, yeah. And said, What is the value of men? What is the value of men? And they just went around and they asked that same question to all the it's so funny that we're preparing for this podcast because that just like that video popped up for me and I watched it.

SPEAKER_01 52:43

Interesting.

SPEAKER_03 52:44

And all of these girls or young ladies would say, There is no point, they aren't needed, they aren't necessary. There is no point, they're pointless. And it really was shocking to me to see so many young ladies saying that.

SPEAKER_00 52:59

And yet they marry them, they fall in love with them, they have children with them.

SPEAKER_03 53:04

Well, finally, finally, at the end, they ask someone and she says, Well, I think men are very important because without them, none of us would be here. We have to have men and women to have babies. And she was the only one that even remotely recognized that men are valuable. It made me sad because I just I kind of wanted to like jump in there and grab the microphone and say all the things that I think are so valuable about men.

SPEAKER_00 53:26

And like they're they they're the ones that are that form our armies, they're the ones that protect us, they protect us, they also build our roads. Women don't like doing that. They build high rises, they uh they protect us and and we take that for granted. Uh and you know, we're not physically having to be protected every day, but there's a lot of little ways that they protect us.

SPEAKER_03 53:49

Well, I think this one too has a lot to do with not only understanding their strengths, but understanding how they think. They don't think the same as us. I hear this all the time. Why isn't he? I told this is a perfect example. I told him that I needed things to change in our marriage, and nothing changed. Well we laugh a little bit because Well, it didn't give him a task. It was things, what it wasn't he doesn't know what needs to change, and yes, he probably should, but he doesn't look at it the same way as you do. And and yeah, maybe he should, but you can't force men to think the same as you, they don't, and they're never going to. Yeah, and when a woman can understand that, even if it's not just her husband, even if it's just a man that she meets on the street or or a serviceman coming to your house, if you can understand them, you are a much more valuable feminine woman. And and it's it's going to be when you realize how wonderful this is, this is a skill, by the way. This is a skill to be in life. When you learn the skill of understanding men, it will make you so much more influential. You will get more of the things that you want in life because you just understand them.

SPEAKER_00 55:03

You understand them. And and like Bob still says, men are fairly simple compared to women. They're they're fairly simple. And also men don't uh don't have the problem as much as women do of being catty. They don't they don't get together and gossip about how horrible this person was. They tend to talk about things like business, sports, politics, things like that, even the weather. But they don't uh because they don't tend to talk as much about relationships, they also don't worry about it as much as we do. And and so it to me it's easier to trust a man with um with something I don't want to get around than a lot of women.

SPEAKER_03 55:48

Right. I I think when we can really d learn and develop what makes them tick, what what do they appreciate, what causes them to kind of feel like they need to push you away, or what motivates them? All these things. These are things that we talk about all the time. Fascinating women, and like I said, is way too big of a topic for us to go through at all. But if you haven't read Dixie's book, you should absolutely read it. We go into so much more. Dixie has masterclasses on YouTube where she talks about this and goes through it in detail. You can rent those. If you want to learn more about this topic, you know, all of those things will be found on our website. Um, and I hate to just plug all that stuff, but it's just entirely too long.

SPEAKER_00 56:32

It's just too much of it. It is, it is, and and as you learn to understand masculinity and help to encourage it in the men in your life, we need more masculinity. We're not talking about toxic masculine. There's no such thing as toxic masculinity, it's just bad behavior, has nothing to do with males. Toxic people, yeah, toxic people, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:53

Okay. Number eight is a joyful outlook. This has to do with your demeanor or your attitude that's characterized by expressing your happiness, your positivity, and your strength in the face of challenges or adversity. This one is probably one of the hardest ones for me personally because this one kind of goes back to the treasure hunting one a little bit, the kind of were like sister, kind of sister tips. Um, but this one has a lot to do with kind of battling those inner demons in your life and being able to generally be not just a happy type of person, but a person that has joy and the person that is pleasant to be around.

SPEAKER_00 57:35

Yeah, and and you're not meant to be fake. I mean, obviously, um some people know we've been going through a lot of grief in our family, and it doesn't mean that you can't um you have to stuff those things, and you can't genuinely be kind of shattered. But um, that's why we say generally, because it, you know, life can be tough at times, but your general demeanor is one that's more um expressing things that you're grateful for. Gratitude is actually a big part of this, is balancing out the difficult things, the things you're worried about, with gratitude genuine gratitude about specific things.

SPEAKER_03 58:16

Yeah, and I think you kind of have to treasure hunt in life. It's not treasure hunting in people necessarily, it's treasure hunting in your life, treasure hunting in yourself, which can be really challenging. I think it's so much easier to treasure hunt in other people than it is to in myself. And so this one can be really challenging, but why is this so important for your femininity? Why is this just going back to kind of like the Pollyanna thing? Is it like, is the goal to just be always positive and optimistic? Like, what is the goal?

SPEAKER_00 58:48

No one no one would expect you if going through a difficult time in your life to pretend nothing happened. That would be weird. People would think that you didn't have any feelings if you did that. But it's but like like I said, gratitude for specific things is real and it's genuine because no matter what you go through, you can be grateful for so many things and express that gratitude.

SPEAKER_03 59:11

Yeah, and I like what you brought up earlier about being fake because I think so many people are good at faking this. Yeah, I'm not, but I know a lot of people Well, there's a certain amount of healthy faking that you have to do, and that's fine. But I think generally we don't want to be wearing a complete costume when we're out in public. We don't want to be wearing a mask, costume, hat, and boots. And then when you take all that off, you're you're exhausted because none of that is real. That I think there's a difference and there's a balance that you want to strive for. And this this comes from within. This is all inside.

SPEAKER_00 59:49

Yeah, it's all all inward. And for me, gratitude is probably the key thing you can always have, no matter what happens to you. You can always think about things you're grateful for and express things you're grateful for.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:01

Well, and I love it in the we did a video about this topic on YouTube, and I love in that video I rewatched it if while we were preparing for this podcast. And I love how you said this is also about allowing others to be sad. And you explained how someone in your life had not really kind of been there for you when you were having a bad day, and they kind of they were they were kind of trying to convince you to stuff everything away and just be positive. And I think that was such a key moment for me when we were doing that video because it was a light bulb of what I can do for others as well as what I expect from or what I would hope others would give me. When during dark times in your life, you want someone that's gonna listen, not someone that's gonna be like, well, let's be positive. You you really want to listen. But there's a balance between dwelling on sadness, meaning every time we talk, it's all about sadness, and having that time to express your sadness.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:04

If somebody's expressing their sadness to you, it is invalidating to kind of act like they shouldn't. Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:14

Well, it's that feeling of, oh, you know, I was listening to this podcast the other day, and we need to have a joyful outlook. So we need to be positive. We need to always be po well, that's not really what this is about. It's not always about being positive.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:26

No. It's it's it's a general outlook on the world. And and not it doesn't mean that every day, like you find out from somebody that they were in a car accident that you have to then you can't talk about that. You have to bring up what joyful happened. That's that's insensitive and invalidating. Yes, and that's not what that means.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:47

So well, there you don't want to be avoidant of things, you want to uh address them and face them head on, but you also want to have that uh never give up hope kind of outlook. Yeah, and and like you said, gratitude and and having a positive outlook. And and when you're talking about marriage, your husband needs for you to have this joyful outlook. I think this one's really important in relationships. He needs to see you happy, not bouncing off the walls necessarily, but he needs to see you generally expressing joy over things, optimistic. Or looking for the good in situations, you know, maybe you have a terrible bill that you have to pay, and your woe is me attitude pulls him down. This is something that we're challenging you to develop is can you look for the bright side of this? Can you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and try to be positive? This is something you can work on for every day. This is a hard one for a lot of us.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:53

It is, it is, especially at different different seasons of your life because life is not one thing. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:01

Okay, number nine is a fun one. It's finding comedy in your life. It's an approach to understanding life that involves recognizing and appreciating the humor and absurdity and human experiences and interaction.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:15

It is generally having comedy in your family, having things you laugh about, whether you're talking about past silly things that happened or jokes you heard or something. Real laughter is, and you know, laughter decreases stress and cortisol that's in your body. It's it after you've laughed, do you notice how good you feel? It feels good, yeah. So finding comedy in life in general is a real it's a real skill and it's a real good thing to have. It it helps you to heal.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:49

Yeah, we have a lot of ladies asking us about this one and kind of challenging us on it, saying that being funny is not feminine. And I think a lot of those ladies are maybe thinking that we are talking about being a comedian. You're looking for everyday happenings and you're finding the funny in it rather than humor in it. Yeah, like stress. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:09

Especially things in the past. Sometimes during it, it's hard to laugh about it, but then say, remember that time when this happened, and everybody lives sit around and you'd think and remember this time when this well, sometimes it's with uh remembering things our kids did or said that were so funny. We laugh about them through the years, and you bring them up, and everybody knows, and it's just so hilarious. Sometimes I wish I was better at writing all those things down. I'd have a whole treasure trove at the cute things kids say that we laugh about. They're not always so much funny as they're cute, they're funny because they're so innocent and cute.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:43

Well, and some people are just naturally really good at this. We know a couple that is just so good at humor. I mean, I'm telling you, you'll be talking to them about something and it's really serious, and you're talking about like people being hospitalized, you're talking about all these serious things, and they'll somehow always find something to make me laugh. And I I just really admire that skill. I'll probably never be as good at it as they are, but I feel like when I'm around that, it uh it inspires me to look for humor more. And you can learn this. This is all kind of skill set stuff. You can try to develop this in yourself and realize that it's something that will really lighten the mood. Now, you don't want the laughter to be hurtful laughter or making fun of people. Try to stray away from making fun of people. I think teasing is fine if it's cute, harmless teasing. But I think sometimes ladies hear laughing and then they might use that in a catty way. Um, how can a how can a woman develop this in herself if she's not good at it?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:48

You can start to see what others do. Look what others do and and how they do it. And think about how is this situation kind of an irony? People actually heal better. When they laugh.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:01

One of the things that I do, because I'm not particularly good at this, is I like to try as hard as I can to watch things that make me laugh, whether it's movies, TV shows, listening to things that make me laugh. Because if you go, I mean, sometimes I go several days in a row without laughing. I'm not even kidding.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:21

Well, you have kids that make you laugh, though. They say such cute things.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:24

Not every day, though. Yeah, not every day. And so sometimes I I mean I've I have a very serious, more serious kind of family, I guess. And it's just how we naturally are. And so to get that humor can be kind of hard and challenging for me sometimes. So uh surrounding myself with it as much as I can, whether it be a TV show, whether it be something I'm listening to, um, surrounding myself with people that make me laugh if I can. Um, even if those people don't necessarily, maybe they're not even my best friends, but just, hey, I want to go out to lunch with so-and-so. I really need a good laugh, or I need to I need to have a good time and just not take everything so seriously. I think that really helps me. But but what I wanted to ask you about this this question is why does this make someone more feminine when laughter and comedy isn't really necessarily masculine or feminine? Why does this develop your femininity?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:18

It's it's um it's attractive to do it. And and people appreciate it. Uh if somebody who can who can see uh the the wry side of life, who can see the the embarrassing stories that happen, hopefully to themselves rather than to poke at somebody else. Say, do you remember oh the most embarrassing time in my life was this that can uh they can see the humor and vulnerability in themselves. It's it's a it's an attractive feminine quality.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:50

Yeah, I also think that being looking for these funny things in your life also helps you achieve that one we just talked about, the joyful one. It's really hard to find joy and happiness in your life when you can't kind of almost kind of like make fun of yourself a little bit. I don't know if that's the right way to say it.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:12

Laughing at yourself is very attractive. It's very attractive.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:16

Not take yourself so seriously. I think that's so it can be kind of I mean, just thinking about that kind of stresses me out a little bit. Like thinking about everything so seriously and not seeing the lighter side in life. And I think to me, that's what makes you more feminine is that you're able to see the lighter side of life and you're able to laugh with people when it's appropriate, and it creates so much joy.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:40

It does, it does, even if it's just a little bit like say uh I read stories about people in concentration camp. Now that's pretty serious as it gets, and there'll occasionally be one person who sees some humor in something, and it helps lighten people load, even if it's just for a few minutes.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:59

Yeah, exactly. Okay, uh the last one, number 10, is about your solid work ethic. It's about consistently displaying qualities such as diligence, dedication, reliability, and professionalism in one's work-related activities.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:18

Which is almost everything for me. In my life, work-related activities is the majority of it because I'm running a home and we've got past day womanhood, and for me, a lot of my work is people, and that's uh that's important to me. But like we say in in the chapter in in Timeless on the brain, uh you do what needs to be done when it needs to be done, whether you like it or not. My mother taught me about that, and my dad was good at that too. She she committed to do something, she did it, and she didn't she uh she wasn't the kind of person, if you said, Oh, um, Helen said she would uh she would do this, she would come and speak at this thing. You know she would come. She did she didn't develop a a reputation of being someone who said, Oh, she says she does, but she only does it about half the time.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:10

Yeah, we all know those people. We all know that's it. She always did. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:15

Like what?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:16

You know, the flaky people out there.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:17

Oh, yeah. You know, we all know. That's right where I went, was like, oh boy, I can't stand someone that's flaky and not.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:24

So what you do when it comes to that person, they say, Yeah, I'm gonna we're gonna get together here, and you just think, uh, maybe, maybe not, probably not. And you just sort of accept it as a reality, but it isn't pleasant. And so when you're a person who is known for a solid work ethic, you will either do what you say you're gonna do or you'll you'll call and take care of it. You don't just disappear. You'll say, you know, I'm I'm sick. I'm sorry, I can't, can we reschedule or something? You'll you'll be responsible, I think is kind of what that means is reliable, responsible. How important is is this ability in working and being have being a good employee?

SPEAKER_03 1:11:04

Well, any job, you have to be reliable. I mean, that's just the ABCs of life. You have to be reliable, you have to be dedicated, you have to be on time, um, because you need to earn a paycheck. But I think what women tend to misunderstand about this hardworking part is when you're not earning a paycheck, quote unquote. You're just you're just being you. You like you said, you you miss dinner, you don't show up for dinner. We call it a no-call, no show at work. Like when you do a no-call, no show with your personal life, you're still going to have to pay the price of some of those relationships, especially if you make a habit of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:41

Well, those of us who uh belong to a church or go to a church know that a lot of those um jobs, so we say, are volunteer kind of thing. Um and you volunteer, like you said at school. If you got known for a bad work ethic, people wouldn't really even want you to volunteer if they couldn't count on you.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:01

Right. Well, I think uh the misconception with femininity and developing femininity is that women have this idea in their heads that they need to be this delicate flower all the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:15

I don't know where that comes from. I don't know what women can be done. Okay, if you go back to uh the early days of the United States, where we had in certain parts of the country, not everywhere, some and not every person had slaves. The lady of the house, the idea that she sat around. I used to think the lady of the house didn't have to do what shall I do today? That wasn't even true then. They had to manage everything. They had to manage, they had to uh make sure all the slaves had clothes, that they they were if they were sick, they were taken care of, they had to manage meals.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:48

Well, that's not femininity to me, though.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:50

That's like that's it has not I don't know who can be a delicate flower. I don't I don't know who can be a delicate flower all the time. I don't know of anybody like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:00

And well, we we put this message out in society, especially with princesses, and and when ki when when our daughters are little, there's this idea of being a princess and being treated like a flower, and it's cute because they're little, but this really doesn't apply to mature femininity. We we need to at some point grow up and we need to be responsible and we need to commit to things and make goals and we're the one women are the ones who raise uh civilization.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:32

We give birth to and raise every person who's ever lived, uh except for with a few exceptions. But women, feminine women are very hard workers. Uh and and even if you got, I mean you mentioned uh like princesses, even modern princesses have a lot, their schedules are full. They do a lot of charity work, they do a lot of speeches, they have full calendars. They don't just sit around like we picture them sitting around. So accepting that part of life in anything you do is part drudgery. Who is considered by society? They they just have a really fun career and everything is fun. There's a lot of parts of acting, even though you think, oh, there's a they're a star actor. There's a lot of parts that are really drudgery and sitting around and waiting for to be called.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:17

There's drudgery in every job, I think. Every job. That's the the part that is missing. I've heard so many women over the years saying, Oh, I couldn't be a stay-at-home mom because I couldn't stand some of the the household things that I had to do, or it's boring. I couldn't find enough to do. And I just think to myself, where is that work ethic? Because you you can learn things. You can learn like, my goodness, you can you can learn new skill sets. You can and yes, it is it is kind of sad that you have to do a lot of those drudgery things at home. You do end up kind of becoming the ha the maid or the but everybody has the drudgery and everything. Everything has that exactly. Like when I worked, uh, because now I work from home, but when I worked outside the home, I had tons of things that I loved doing that I missed, but I also had tons of things that I didn't like doing that I don't miss, like driving to work, the actual commute itself, talk about not fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:19

And what are the things about what things about your actual work did you not enjoy? Was it having to deal with difficult customers or well?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:27

I didn't really help customers. I was I was a visual director. The the thing that I didn't like doing was some of the paperwork. I didn't like uh budgeting as much. I mean, I was fine. I didn't, it's not like I was complaining, but it's not the part of my job that I was looking forward to is doing a bunch of Excel spreadsheets. Like I just didn't love that part. But you this is this is the thing with being a hard worker and having a good work ethic, is that you get it done because it needs to be done, because you're adult. I mean, we don't want to become children and you know, I don't want to make my bed. Well, you need to. It's that same mindset.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:04

You just need to do it. See, it's just gonna get messed up tomorrow. Well, whatever you have to do, if you try to do a good job, the way you fold your laundry, you don't wad it up, then you actually feel better about yourself, and you can look back and feel some I did it kind of pride in anything, no matter how drudgery it is, if you do it well, as well as you can, then it's not as bad. It is, you don't dislike it as much, and you feel a sense of accomplishment, and it's it's uh and you accept that part of life, you accept gracefully that part of life is just drudgery. You just say, that's just how it is. My bed gets messed up every day, the clothes get dirty. I have to wash them, dishes get dirty, I have to wash them. So you learn to do it well, and then you don't mind it so much. It's weird how it works.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:55

What do you have to say for the women out there that are not motivated? Because I hear this all the time. I think this is extremely common that they're just not motivated to get things done.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:08

Uh, I think I think you have to learn to be self-motivating. I having someone poke you with a cattle prod isn't the best way to do it. To be m self-motivating, I mean, I guess and everybody isn't the same. Do some women not mind living in um a really messy, dirty house? I can't stand it.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:26

I personally know, but I think there's you and me don't pro we don't struggle with this, but I've talked to lots of ladies that struggle with this. And it's like, how do you find that motivation?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:36

What do they do instead? Because they're what do they do instead when they're not motivated to do it? What do they do instead of doing what they probably feel they should do?

SPEAKER_03 1:17:48

I think that could go off into a long tangent, but I think generally speaking, when someone lacks motivation, I think they're they're not rewarding themselves. Because at the end of the day, I think what you're saying is like when I get things done, at least I have that satisfaction that it's done. Well, some people don't feel that satisfaction of it being done. They just lack the motivation. So where is the reward? Where is the satisfaction? For me, that's what's missing, is that you don't have something at the end of the tunnel that you're running towards.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:18

Sometimes when a person is really depressed about other things in their life, that can make these other things difficult to become motivated to do. So depression can do that. That's why some people who are depressed are hard to get out of bed. It's not that they feel that they it doesn't matter, but they just stop caring as much. And and if that and that happens, that needs to be addressed because uh, you know, it's a real thing. Depression is is a real thing, and anxiety is a real thing. And some of those things can can contribute anyway to just not just ex it other thing, you can become exhausted easier if you're you know, and and so that those become side things that you have to deal with that um to to help you get to this other other point. But m pretty well everybody would agree that a a good work ethic is a positive thing to have. It helps you, it's it's uh feminine, it gives you better self-esteem. And um it it helps every area area of your life. You're known as reliable, um, you have diligence, you're um, you can be counted on, trusted. I mean, all those things contribute to a good work ethic.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:36

Yeah, for the ladies out there that are struggling with motivation, I guess my just my two cents on that is to really try to find what motivates you and put that at the end of that tunnel that you're running towards. Because if you don't have something that motivates you, I'm sure you just haven't found it yet. It may be as small as your marriage improving or your relationships improving and you saying, Hey, you know, I really want my house to look better because I want to have people over and I want to throw a big party or I wanna, sorry, I wanna um I there's goals that I have, but I don't know how to get to them. And maybe you can just try to make that a mindset shift of yours that well, if I get this done, I get to have this.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:20

Yeah, I've I've done that in in dieting. I've thought, okay, when I when I uh lose whatever two or three pounds, I'm gonna give myself, I'm gonna buy myself a new something. It doesn't have to be something expensive, a new tuba lipstick. Uh and and you you can reward yourself in many ways that are things that will reward you that maybe wouldn't reward someone else. But something that's positive. If I if I if I clean this bathroom I've been putting off, I'm gonna reward myself with this. Um you can you can do that to yourself, and uh and it actually works. And you can't say what to do for every person because it's different.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:59

Right. Yeah, I just hear that so much, and I just wanted to bring it up because it just it keeps coming up and it keeps coming up. And so I just really wanted to make sure that we taught touched on that because not everyone is the same. And no, really, I don't struggle with this one personally. I I I've kind of shared what I've struggled with with this list, but this is one that I actually feel really confident in, and I feel like you and I and our family, it's something that we tend to be good at, and I want to make sure we're sensitive to the the group of people out there that are not as good at this, and it is a challenge.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:32

I have to say that uh during this past while when we've been going through so much grief, I have noticed it's harder. It's harder because I just lack energy, right? And there's periods of time with like when I get waves of grief, I it almost is paralyzing. But I think because of the habits I've developed over so many years, I just can't stand to let everything go. I I just it's for my own peace of mind. I just I just can't stand it. But maybe it's because I've developed the habits, and like you say, people are different. Recognizing and being kind to yourself without being so kind that you say, I'm just gonna not do anything, you know, because that will that'll hurt your self-esteem.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:18

Right. And you know, if you have some imbalances to health-wise, I I totally support that. I get what you're saying about having to kind of go see someone. I think this is more a general kind of find some help. Yeah, this is more of a general piece of advice about motivation when we're talking about that. And then if it goes beyond that, you obviously have to seek out um outside help.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:40

But sometimes you need uh sometimes you need a better health, uh, like uh to get in a better regimen of exercise, vitamins. Sometimes it's something like that, that's just not great health.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:51

Yeah. Well, I personally believe this is just my personal belief, that if you don't exercise, especially as we get older, like over the age of 30, it's as young as even 30, you're gonna start to your energy is gonna naturally just be fight against you. And if you don't exercise regularly, your energy levels are just gonna be your enemy. And I know that a lot of people say, well, I don't want to go to the gym because I'm tired. Well, that's the problem, is that the gym is actually gonna make you not as tired. You just have to go regularly. And it's it is so hard. I understand it is so, so hard. We have so much in our lives that we're juggling, but and not to get off on a tangent about you know, exercising, but I think that for the ladies that are struggling with this one a lot and they don't have a lot of motivation, where is your physical health? What get that in check?

SPEAKER_00 1:23:40

What are mental health and mental health?

SPEAKER_03 1:23:42

Yes, and and yeah, where is your physical and mental health at? And that maybe that's something you need to kind of investigate a little bit more. All right, so that's our list. I hope you all enjoyed. Please be sure to drop us some fan mail if you like this episode or if you have any questions for us, if you have suggestions for other episodes that you'd like us to cover. I know we kind of delved into a lot today. So if there's anything you want to say or add, we'd love to hear from you. Everywhere you can connect with us can be found at fascinatingwomanhood.com. So be sure and check out our website for our books, master classes. Everywhere you can connect with us, be sure to check all that out. Exactly. We'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:26

And stay feminine.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:27

Bye.