Show Notes
Patricia and Nicole chat about imposter syndrome, how many of us underestimate our abilities, bartending, and high ropes courses.
This episode is based on Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice “Volume 2, Issue 1: You Can Do the Thing”
Mentioned on the show:
- Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo
- The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by Mona Eltahawy
- For the Love of April French by Penny Aimes
- The Risk It Takes to Bloom: On Life and Liberation by Raquel Willis
Find the full show notes and official transcript on our website: eedapod.com
Become a patron! Patreon.com/eedapod
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Subscribe to the ongoing Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice Newsletter
Sound editing by Jen Zink
Transcript
Music: [Intro Music]
Patricia: Hey there, cheese lovers! Welcome to Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice, the podcast for folks who would rather curl into the fetal position than lean in. I’m your host, Patricia Elzie-Tuttle
Nicole: And I’m your cocaptain, Nicole Elzie-Tuttle. We are recording this show on March 11th, 2024.
Patricia: Oh my gosh. It is well, first of all, March 11th is my friend Jeremy’s birthday. So shout out to Jeremy.
Nicole: Happy birthday, Jeremy.
Patricia: It is a very complicated time of year in our household.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: We’re coming up on the one year anniversary of losing my mom, and at the same time, my birthday is really soon, and spring starts, which, I love flowers, flowers don’t love me. [Laughter] And it’s just, it’s a stark reminder that, like, hard things and excellent things happen concurrently.
Like, things happen all at the same time.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Like, there’s always good things, and there’s always bad things, and life is never 100 percent one thing. I can’t even remember what book I read that in, but it’s just, yeah, it’s the dichotomy of the good stuff and the bad stuff.
Nicole: We talked about that a little bit in an earlier episode.
Patricia: I think we did. It’s just, It’s just very present right now, this time of year.
Nicole: Oh, and also it just, I can’t believe it’s been, like, a year already. Like, time just keeps on going.
Patricia: Yeah. Yeah. It’s flown by. And at the same time, it feels really long.
Nicole: Yeah. It’s very strange. It’s a very strange feeling.
Patricia: But, as I mentioned, my birthday is coming up.
We did have a listener ask about our astrological signs. So for the folks who are curious, I am an Aries Sun, an Aries Rising, and a Gemini Moon.
I’m a Sagittarius Sun. Yes, I’m pointing and getting nods, yes. A Sagittarius…
rising.
Nicole: It’s rising? Okay. So I’m like double on that.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: And then a Taurus moon?
Patricia: Sure.
Nicole: Yeah.
That’s not a very good car.
Patricia: A Taurus moon. A Ford Taurus moon.
Nicole: Mmm.
Patricia: [Laughter]
Nicole: That’s kinda sad.
Patricia: So, yeah, for for the people that pay attention, it’s a lot of fire signs in this house, and basically, this just means that we shouldn’t be left unsupervised.
Nicole: Which is bizarre, because everybody leaves us unsupervised.
Patricia: Yeah, I don’t know what they’re expecting.
Nicole: My day job made me a supervisor!
Patricia: I know. It’s phenomenal to watch. [Laughter] But my birthday is I don’t know if other people love the day their birthday is on as much as I do, but my birthday is on April Fool’s Day, and I just I have the best birthday. I don’t care. I just I love that it’s on April Fool’s Day. I think it’s appropriate that it’s on April Fool’s Day.
It’s also a day where it’s like, oh it’s my birthday so you can’t prank me. Except when I was a child, my mother, oh my gosh, it had to be like my fifth or sixth birthday.
Nicole: [Laughter]
Patricia: And department stores like Mervyn’s, we were a big Mervyn’s family, they would give you, if you bought clothing as a gift, they would give you these little wide flat boxes that were about the size of a quarter sheet cake.
My mother got one of those boxes and frosted it like it was my birthday cake. And so, when I was, whatever it was, six years old, I cut into this cake and it was cardboard.
Nicole: [Laughter] Was it just empty?
Patricia: I think it was just empty.
Nicole: So, like, It just, like, crumpled.
Patricia: Yes, but I was six, so pranks are kind of lost on six year olds.
Nicole: [Laughter]
Patricia: And now you know a lot about my mother. [Laughter] But after that one, she’s like, you know what, okay, uh, after, after the meltdown I apparently had, she’s like, you know what, no more pranking my daughter on her birthday.
Nicole: I could see that being a pretty epic meltdown for, like, a five or six year
old.
Patricia: Absolutely. But you know what?
My mother is a photographer. I’m sure there are photos of it, uh, in her storage somewhere.
Nicole: Somewhere. We’ll have to go out and find them at some point. But if our listeners wanted to get you something for your birthday, what could they do?
Patricia: There are so many free things our listeners can do. Like, rate our podcast. Share the podcast with someone who you think will actually listen or maybe benefit from hearing what we are sharing. Go through YouTube, now we’re on YouTube, and just like, go through and like all the videos. Like, you’ve listened to the show already, just go through and like all the videos.
You can subscribe, these are all free 99.
Nicole: Subscribe across multiple platforms.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: On YouTube, on Spotify.
Patricia: And then just mark them as played.
Nicole: Apple Podcasts.
Patricia: [Laughter]
Nicole: On Google whatever it does.
Patricia: Yeah, one of my ride or dies who I have to brag about this. He apparently let our podcast play through like he listened on one platform, but he let it play overnight on Spotify. So they were all played so then he could then rate us. Which, that is some friendship right there.
Nicole: Yeah, we have very small ratings, so this isn’t really that manipulative.
Patricia: No, we, we have so few ratings. [Laughter]
Nicole: But we’d like you to help us get more!
Patricia: Reminder from last show, we will send a rainbow prism to any of our 61st subscribers to Patreon at the Helpful Helper level, which is the only level, it is three bucks.
And I realized, I was like, oh, no one knows what these prisms look like. So hopefully by the time you’re listening to this show, I will have gotten up a picture or two of what these things look like, because they’re pretty heckin cool.
Nicole: Yeah, they really are. Every time you get ones like these, I’m really excited at how well done they are.
Hey, Patricia.
Patricia: Hey, Nicole. What?
Nicole: This is our tenth episode.
Patricia: Oh, we’re in the double digits now.
Nicole: Does this mean our podcast is like a a tween?
Patricia: [Laughter]
Nicole: Is that a thing that still happens?
Patricia: I don’t know. I don’t know, but I’m pretty proud of us for making it this far.
Nicole: Yeah, ten episodes! We’re doing well! And there’s plenty for us to still talk about, right?
Patricia: Oh my gosh.
Nicole: We haven’t exhausted all, what, many, many years of your newsletter worth of material yet?
Patricia: Not even, not even near exhausted.
Nicole: Fantastic. I love it. And it’s weird, but things keep happening and you keep making more newsletters.
Patricia: Yeah, I don’t know if I’ve ever really missed a week, even on hard weeks, I put something up like, taking a break this week, but…
Nicole: Hey listeners, that’s another thing you could do. Go subscribe to the newsletter also.
Patricia: Oh, at theinfophile.com. That is something you could do.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: It’s like reading Game of Thrones years before the show came out.
Nicole: Yeah. We’ll eventually get around to an episode out of just about all of those, but.
Music: [Music]
Patricia: Well, today’s episode
Nicole: features a lot fewer people getting murdered than Game of Thrones.
Patricia: And hopefully has a more satisfying ending.
Nicole: Spoiler, we’re both going to be alive at the end of this.
Patricia: We better be.
[Laughter]
Nicole: There’s no, no red wedding happening in our living room.
Patricia: No, no. Today, we’re really going to lean into the enthusiastic encouragement part of our title.
Nicole: And this is because we believe that each other can do anything we want, and we want to spread that around. We enthusiastically encourage and support each other’s endeavors.
Patricia: Going back to being left unsupervised.
Nicole: Yeah, we really just…
Patricia: We, we don’t say no to each other a lot, and we just hype each other up over everything.
And I just believe Nicole can do anything she puts her mind to and vice versa.
Nicole: Yeah, likewise, you came to me and you’re just like, I want to do this. I’m like, yes, absolutely. Let’s do it.
Patricia: [Laughter] So this not only is us with each other, but for the most part, we think people are generally more capable than you think you are.
Nicole: Yeah, this is one of those like core beliefs of enthusiastic encouragement.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: The other thing that kind of feeds into this though is, part of what holds people back is that they often overestimate the amount of time something takes or the amount of effort it’s going to take.
Patricia: Absolutely. There are so many productivity hacks out there that are about, you know, make your to do list and then write down the time you think the thing will take and then write down the actual time that the thing takes and the time it takes is almost always less.
And I’m sure a lot of listeners can kind of identify with putting something off and putting something off, and then finally doing it, and it takes 15 minutes, and we’ve learned nothing from this experience, and we will put things off again. And I’m notorious about building things up in my mind, like the more I put it off, the more I build it up in my mind, like, it’s going to be this huge ordeal or this huge thing, and I get trapped in that if you give a mouse a cookie spiral.
Nicole: Oh yeah, that’s a harsh spiral, but I also do this all the time. And I think I don’t think of it so much as like, oh, it’s gonna take so much time to do it. I just have a tendency to build things up in my head to be a lot more effort. Like they’re going to take a lot more effort or they’re going to be way more challenging than they really are.
Patricia: Yeah, we were just talking about this recently. I know y’all are tired of hearing about it, but I really thought getting my nose pierced was going to be a longer healing period and a bigger deal.
Nicole: Okay, but mine is going to be a longer healing period.
Patricia: Well, that’s yours. I’m talking about me and my adorable nose.
These kinds of overestimating, overestimating time, overestimating effort can be for a whole range of things, right? It can be dragging your feet on applying for a job, or making art or the crafts that you do, or if you are a writer actually sitting down to write, starting a business, starting a podcast.
Nicole: It can also though be more common things, like cleaning the bathroom, or vacuuming, or even just going out and grocery shopping.
Patricia: I know laundry is a really common one.
Nicole: Yeah, laundry can be a really common one.
Patricia: So, I want to share a little story. Back in 2020, it was November sometime, and I had heard in one of my work slacks, they were like, hey, didn’t I hear that someone here had… Was a bartender or had gone to bartending school and I was like, that’s me.
So fun fact, after my junior year of college, once I turned 21, I went to bartending school over the summer. It was like a two week situation. It wasn’t like this whole huge thing. So, what it was, was there was a non profit who was having like a virtual holiday celebration and they wanted someone to come up with thematic drinks and basically host over Zoom a little how to, uh, make these drinks with their work group. And so there needed to be a non alcoholic and then maybe two different alcoholic drinks. And I was like, okay, I was saying to myself that bartending school was almost 20 years ago and I’m not the right person for this. Technically, I’ve never worked in a bar. I used to do private parties in Bel Air. That’s how I got like pocket money my senior year of college.
Nicole: Bel Air, like, where the Fresh Prince lived?
Patricia: Yes. And sometimes Beverly Hills. I have definitely made drinks for Neil Patrick Harris at a party before.
Nicole: What about Carlton?
Patricia: Never met Carlton.
Nicole: Mmm.
Patricia: And then I was telling myself, like, they probably want someone who is actively bartending. So I’m not the right person for this. And I just kept telling myself, like, I’m not the right one. I’m not the right one. And this is when I was kind of like trying to take my own advice, which is don’t be the one to reject yourself. Like, don’t do the work of telling myself no. Let other people tell me no, which I fully understand that rejection sensitivity is a thing for people, and so this isn’t necessarily accessible for so many people.
But, you know, if you don’t try, then it’s automatically a no.
Nicole: Yeah. It’s one of those, like, reframes that just, for me, it kind of is just like, oh yeah, that makes sense. And not just like, it’s an automatic no, but why are you the one stopping you from doing it? If you’re thinking about it and you want to do it, why are you the one stopping yourself from doing it?
Patricia: Because I like to get in my own way.
[Laughter]
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Yeah. I mean, that’s the takeaway, right? Like, get out of your own way.
Nicole: Oh, totally. Get out of your own way. Wow. I never realized. I guess those two things are pointing at the same thing. Oh, goodness.
Patricia: Well, in another reframe, and I think this is one of the many, many ways we compliment each other, is I’m very much the person to say, like, what’s the worst that could happen?
And is that actually going to happen, or am I just catastrophizing? But like, what’s the worst that could happen?
Nicole: Yeah, and then I kind of just stepped into your whole world one day and was like, okay, but what’s the best that could happen?
Patricia: I was like, huh.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Yeah, I think it, I was just telling someone today, it almost reflects in the way that you and I walk around.
I always walk looking down. So when I’m looking down, I make sure that we’re not stepping in any dog poop. But also, I’ve found so much money on the ground. [Laughter] But also, like, I could see when a cat is coming towards us. But when you walk, you’re always looking up. You see what’s happening in the sky. You see the sunsets. You point out the rainbows and you see the birds.
Nicole: And all the flowers and the trees and everything else that’s going on.
Patricia: Upward.
Yeah.
Nicole: Up. Yeah.
Patricia: Yeah. And it’s not necessarily like, oh, people who look down are pessimists and people who like, no, we’re not playing that game. But I think it is a way that people can compliment each other.
Nicole: Yeah. Which is good because sometimes I get a little dizzy when I’m looking up too much and I can’t walk in a straight line anymore.
Patricia: [Laughter] So with this bartending kind of opportunity, I finally sat and I was like, okay, I have bartending experience. I also have experience teaching. I have theater experience. I have public speaking experience.
I was wildly qualified for the gig and what finally kind of convinced myself to hear this person out was, I could still say no after they say what they want.
Nicole: I think that’s a really important point in this, is all of the self doubt and saying no to yourself. Was, before you had even talked to someone about…
Patricia: Totally.
Nicole: what it is they were even asking for.
Patricia: Yeah, I hadn’t even talked to someone from the non profit yet.
Nicole: It’s like you talked yourself out from even applying for the job.
Patricia: Yeah. I also try to think about, if not you, then who? And, like, there are so many of us who are like, oh, they’ll find someone else, they’ll find someone more qualified, but it’s always this nebulous kind of wishy washy imaginary someone, and we can never actually pinpoint that there is an actual someone that is more qualified, or that should have the opportunity, and we’re just giving things away left and right.
Nicole: Yeah, the other thing I think about a lot with, like, so much stuff like this is there are mediocre people out there doing that thing already. They’re doing the thing you want to do and many of them are getting paid for it as well.
Patricia: Yeah, I think about that all the time.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: I do want to have, like, the tiniest of rants.
Nicole: Ooh.
Patricia: Right here. Because if you are a person who has read a lot of self help or has even listened to other self help podcasts or reads, I don’t know, self help-y things on the internet, right about here is where some people might throw out this statistic that is all over the place that says men apply for jobs when they meet only 60 percent of the criteria versus women who wait until they meet a hundred percent.
When I first heard this, I quoted the heck out of it. And I finally dug a little deeper, which is something I should have done in the first place. Shame on me. As much as this is a just delicious morsel of data. It’s not actually true.
Nicole: Gasp!
Patricia: Or at least it’s not based in any kind of valid research. It actually came from some internal observations from Hewlett Packard.
Nicole: Ew.
Patricia: But then it got put in the book, Lean In, and then it’s been in all kinds of articles. I’ve read it in multiple books. And one book actually said, I know it’s been disproven, but I’ve chosen to believe it anyway, which again, yes, I’m on my librarian high horse, but that’s really irresponsible to knowingly spread misinformation.
And so one of my things as a library person is like, oh, information literacy and trying my best. If I read a statistic, I’m going to want to see that citation.
Nicole: Eugh. Knowing it’s disproven, but I’ve chosen to believe it anyway. [Laughter] If I was still teaching research methodology in grad school, I would tell that person they’re going to science hell.
Patricia: [Laughter]
Nicole: That’s just, as you said, incredibly irresponsible, and that’s not good sciencing.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: And it makes me, makes me sad. The thing is, with that rant and false statistic, is that there are so many actual examples of people, and in particular men, being mediocre and underqualified. Like, we don’t have to make things up about this.
I mean, Ijeoma Oluo wrote a whole book about it. It’s called Mediocre, The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America.
Patricia: I love that book so much.
Nicole: [Laughter] Oh my gosh, I remember when it came out, we both just devoured it.
Patricia: Yeah, well, and I think it also, I know this is just a complete tangent, but it talks about cowboys and like westerns and also football. And like, I definitely have had elder men in my family, like definitely in that, like reading Louis L’Amour and westerns and things like that. And I think it gave me a different understanding of how that time is viewed.
Nicole: Yeah, I’m gonna jump on with, we’ll, we’ll jump on a cotangent here. Um, that’s a math joke. Anyway, no, I came from a house, like my home, one of my homes growing up, like, also had that idealized western cowboy view that came from John Wayne movies and Bonanza and all of that kind of stuff, like.
Patricia: Yeah, my grandpa was super into it.
Nicole: Yeah, so that whole chapter was just like, very eye opening.
Patricia: Yeah, my jaw was just on the floor the whole time I listened to that chapter.
Nicole: I remember reading it and just like, storming into whatever room you were in and like,
pointing at the book and being
like, did… oh my gosh!
Patricia: Anyway, let’s bring it back. About audacity, I had so much audacity as a child that seems to have, like, kind of fizzled away, and I’m trying to really unearth that kid again. I remember in sixth grade, there was no girls basketball program at the school, and there were only boys basketball teams, but I wanted to play basketball. So I just played on the boys team.
Nicole: Side note I love when girls do this Especially in like very male dominated sports the whole movement of girls just starting to do like high school wrestling…
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: Ah that just like, I love that.
Patricia: The other thing I was reminded of recently I was talking to someone and I went to a school that was kindergarten through eighth grade, all in one school, there wasn’t a separate junior high, and the principal used to do the morning announcements, so at the beginning of eighth grade, so top of the school, oldest kids, I decided I wanted to do the morning announcements. So I went to the principal and said, hey, can I do the morning announcements?
I was one of the kids with the best grades in the whole class. I hardly ever got in trouble, and he had no reason to say no, and so that whole year, I got to school a little early, and I did the morning announcements, and made the entire school listen to my voice, and now I have podcasts.
Nicole: You see, listeners, Patricia has always been this way.
Patricia: [Laughter]
Nicole: I, on the other hand, have not. I had a lot of anxiety growing up. I still do, and I’m working on overcoming it. And so I have not frequently been like forthcoming. I have frequently gotten in my own way
Patricia: [Laughter]
Nicole: towards like higher achievement stuff or just doing things like the morning announcements. Like, even recently, it took me several months to recognize that like I was wildly qualified for my current job.
It was a move up in role at my, at my place of employment, at my day job, but I was probably also like the most qualified person not just based on like experience, but knowledge around the job. And it still took me months to even accept that.
Patricia: Yeah, I, I remember. And I remember when you were even job hunting and we were just like, yeah, let’s, let’s go for these things.
Nicole: Yeah, it was, it was a hard, it was a hard thing to overcome.
Patricia: Something I’ve been saying to myself lately, and I did see, you know, um, had to be a TikTok or something that had a woman who was an electrician and she was like, she was like, I want to be electrician, like, uh, if, uh, if a guy can do it, how hard can it be?
Which is ridiculous, but like, I’ve been saying to myself, like, if a guy can do it, I can do it. And it’s not a, even necessarily gender based, but it’s more like, uh, I have a lot of anxiety around calling the mechanic or calling my insurance adjuster. And I was like, okay, just like some random guy would have no problem just picking up the phone and calling the insurance adjuster or whatever.
And so in my mind, there’s just like a generic bro in my head that could just do things. And I’m like, well, if that guy can do it, I can do it.
Nicole: You have an imaginary mediocre bro.
Patricia: I do. I do. Yeah, he inspires me to do things. Cause, like, if he could do it, I could do it.
Nicole: Does this guy have a name?
Patricia: No.
Nicole: Ah.
Patricia: No.
Nicole: I’ll call him Jesk.
Patricia: Jesk.
If anyone thinks of a name that, uh…
Nicole: Maybe this is, like, our first contest.
Patricia: No, not a contest.
Nicole: Well, no, we’ll just announce the name and the person who picked the name.
Patricia: You get the satisfaction of a name well picked.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: [Laughter]
Nicole: I know it’s funny, but this is also kind of how we approached podcasting.
Patricia: It is.
We were just finally like, you know what, there are a bunch of dudes with podcasts out there.
Nicole: Oh my god, there’s so many.
Patricia: I was like, we could do this.
Nicole: We can totally, if, this is not just dudes, but all of those, like, mediocre podcasts out there. Like, if they could even get a couple episodes up, we could.
Patricia: I’m like, at the very least, we can be mediocre too and get, hey, 10 episodes up.
Nicole: Yeah. Totally.
Patricia: Even, you know, when Book Riot asked me to be one of the cohosts on All the Books, I had never actually podcasted, and I just kind of flew by the seat of my pants and figured it out. And this goes back to, like, I think we’re all more competent than we allow ourselves to think we are.
Nicole: Yeah, I think this lands us at one of the other, like, tenets of enthusiastic encouragement, which is just do the thing. Just start doing the thing. You can learn along the way, but you’ve gotta actually do the thing. We’ve talked about this before.
Patricia: Absolutely. We’ve definitely talked about just allowing ourselves to be learners.
Nicole: Yeah. I’ve probably mentioned it then, but this is really hard for me. But you have to allow yourself to be a beginner. Not just a learner, but a beginner also.
Patricia: How do you differentiate the two?
Nicole: Well, I think about it like, someone can be in the middle of their PhD program and still be learning.
They are a learner. They’re also as close to an expert in their subject matter as you can be. But a beginner is not an expert. They’re at the start of that journey. They are also learning, but they’re not as far down the path as that approaching doctoral degree
Patricia: yeah
Nicole: learner.
Patricia: Yeah, I get that.
Nicole: That’s the difference I was thinking about.
Patricia: Yeah, I definitely, I’m pretty good at allowing myself to be a learner. I have a hard time being a beginner.
Nicole: Yeah, for sure.
Patricia: In our house, we have a little light up sign where I could change the letters around. And right now, it has like a little ghost on it, and it says, Do It Scared.
Nicole: I’m pretty sure that’s an, a ghost emoji.
Patricia: Oh my gosh. So it says, do it scared. And that’s kind of my MO, it’s kind of my way of being, do it scared, do it anxious. Like I’m literally terrified all the time and I do things anyway, and also recognize like some things are going to be terrible and it’s not the end of the world.
Like, and recognizing like yeah, I’m going to have to, I don’t know, eventually clean out the office so that Nicole can come sit in the office with me. And it’s not going to be fun, and it’s going to make me really anxious to go through all that stuff, but I think that’s okay. I don’t have to like it while I do it. Like, do it anxious. Do it unamused.
And I think that sometimes we are so averse to discomfort that it is keeping us from living. It’s keeping us from doing things. And I don’t know if it’s related to the idea of immediate gratification. Maybe a bit, but we’re also just like so averse to anything being even slightly uncomfortable.
Nicole: Yeah, I really appreciate the do it scared or do it anxious. I mentioned earlier that I’ve had anxiety that has kept me from doing things, but I also think about the number of things I’ve done where I’ve been like physically trembling. And I still get it done. This is one of the ways that, like, when my anxiety gets really bad, like, my hands will tremble, I will tremble, and the amount of times I’ve done things where I’ve just been, it’s almost like I’m shivering.
But sometimes you just gotta do things, like getting a job was one for me very early on.
Patricia: Like when you were a teen, right?
Nicole: Yeah, when I was a teen. Like, my first job was at, like, a Burger King in the mall food court. Like, it was not exciting or glamorous, but, like, I knew I needed a job and it was hella nerve wracking being like 16 and getting out there trying to find work and being like, well, I guess I work at Burger King, like,
Patricia: yeah,
Nicole: and it was hard to get to that point, but I got there and had a paycheck for a while in high school, which was pretty cool.
Patricia: Yeah, that is pretty cool. For some people, it’s like, the more you do things scared, the easier it becomes to do things scared, and maybe it doesn’t, but again, returning to what you said earlier, like, what’s the best that could happen?
Nicole: Yeah, what’s the best that can happen is, is really a good one. The other one that I hold on to a lot, Is shifting my frame of reference to, like, what is the hardest or scariest thing I’ve ever done?
And how does this line up to that?
Patricia: Right.
Nicole: Is this worse? Because I managed to get through that other thing. I came out the other side, like, and I’m, I’m doing pretty good now. So, like, is whatever I am worried about harder than that?
Patricia: I’m pretty sure that calling the mechanic is not harder than the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
Nicole: I think about that a lot. Like for me, one of… My reference for this question a lot is like, I came out and I transitioned like in my early 30s.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: It was terrifying. But I was able to do that. So like,
Patricia: Yeah, that was the big, hard, scary thing. So like anything else.
Nicole: I can host that meeting on Wednesday. Like, [Laughter] comparatively…
Patricia: I can give a presentation.
Nicole: Yeah. Comparatively, those are not like anywhere in the same ballpark. I can do the dishes.
Patricia: Yeah. Yeah. Right. I think another one of the things. that people think about a lot is how they are perceived by other people. Like, what if I look silly? What if I look ridiculous? And I am definitely not going to tell you to stop worrying about what other people think of you.
Like, that’s not helpful advice at all. But what I will tell you, and maybe this is like the tiny nihilist in me, is that other people often aren’t thinking about you. They’re not thinking about me. We’re not, like, because we’re all so caught up in our own heads of what are, what are other people thinking about?
Like, most of us aren’t on most people’s radars.
Nicole: I’m thinking about you all the time.
Patricia: Yes, I know. I’m thinking about you all the time. And so I’m not thinking about other people and what they’re doing. But I think it’s so easy to fall into that trap of everyone’s looking at me and, like, no one everyone’s too caught up in themselves.
Nicole: Is this you basically telling us to dance like nobody’s watching?
Patricia: Maybe, because nobody actually is watching. In the whole of human existence, we are such a tiny blip on the radar.
Nicole: If you remember in episode one, I only dance when nobody’s watching. [Laughter] It’s when I do my best work.
Patricia: Thats when you… oh my god…
Nicole: Okay, so I’m not gonna advocate for the devil here, but I can hear
Patricia: You could hear the devil speaking.
Nicole: Yeah, or at least someone out in listener land saying like, Nicole, Patricia, what about imposter syndrome.
Patricia: [Hiss]
Nicole: [Sigh] And so, before we get into this, I have to go grab my old psychology degree hat.
Patricia: [Laughter] Just, just in case there’s someone out there who is listening to a self help podcast and doesn’t know what imposter syndrome is.
Nicole: Right, yeah. So, it was first introduced into the psychology literature in 1978, and the authors Clance and Imes defined it as quote, an internal experience of intellectual phoniness, which that is a really good word, too.
Patricia: That is. Yeah.
Nicole: Or a good phrase, intellectual phoniness. But what this is often kind of used or the way it’s used in a lot of common discussions of these things is just like the sense or feeling that you aren’t good enough at what you are doing and therefore don’t deserve to be doing it.
Patricia: Right. Or you got there by luck.
Nicole: Yeah. And not, it is not your actual skill at whatever you are doing that is, has gotten you to the point you are at.
Patricia: Right. And it is very focused on the individual and that’s when I’m going to put on my tinfoil hat. And I’m not saying imposter syndrome doesn’t exist, but I am very skeptical about the kind of wideness of its use, because it’s trying to force that individual responsibility for what is essentially the effects of white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism.
Like, who is giving you these messages? Like, it’s, of course, like, it’s like, oh, it shows up mostly in women. You don’t say, you don’t say that women have perhaps internalized from society that we’re not good enough. Even if you’re like, oh, I got it from my parents. Where did they get it from? Is it internalized misogyny?
Is it capitalism and their ideas of what a worker should be like? And I think a lot about beating myself up or blaming myself for having this imposter syndrome. And I remember like the thing that clicked. It was a few years ago, which is, I had met back when I used Facebook still, I mentioned imposter syndrome on Facebook.
And someone I really admire who is also a Black queer person asked, what is imposter syndrome? And I defined it and they were like, yeah, you don’t have that. And I was so taken aback. I’m like, but my syndromes, like, [Laughter] like I was so taken aback by someone trying to tell me what my deficiencies were and were not.
But then I was like, no, I do believe I could do this. It’s just, it’s just the white supremacy. It’s the capitalism. It’s the patriarchy that tells me that I shouldn’t be able to do these things. And I’ve internalized that.
Nicole: I do want to also note that sometimes this is a lot more direct, and it can be, like, actual people or companies or even your boss that will just straight up gaslight you into thinking you’re incompetent.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: Like, sure, this is a function of white supremacy, patriarchy, whatever archy you want to, you know, pin this on, or the intersections thereof, and not to discount that, but sometimes people are really terrible, and they will just straight up be agents of these oppressive forces.
Patricia: What is it Mona Eltahawy calls people? Foot soldiers of the patriarchy?
Nicole: Yes, foot soldiers of the patriarchy. Yes. Oh, Mona. If you haven’t read her Seven Necessary Sins book, mm. That is a must read.
Patricia: I’m gonna link so many books in the show notes.
Nicole: That’s fine. You are getting Nicole dropping books today.
Patricia: I know. It’s very exciting.
Nicole: So before we kind of jump off of this subject, I do want to kind of bring it back a little bit with a story about a job I used to have in that I used to be a facilitator for high ropes courses and experiential learning.
And I want to talk about this because we had a framework for kind discussing how to get people to learn and grow and how to encourage that. And it’s a really basic model and I’m hoping I can describe it in a way that you all can visualize. It was taught to me as as the Comfort Zone, the Growth Zone, and the Panic Zone. And the way we visualize this is think of like yourself just standing there and draw a circle around yourself. You’re standing inside that circle, and we’ll call that circle your Comfort Zone, and this kind of represents all the things you can do that you’re very comfortable doing. No problem doing it. You could do them all day long. You’re very comfortable. It’s pleasant there.
And then we would draw another circle around and outside that first one. So that first circle is inside the second circle as kind of the midpoint. And this we would label the Growth Zone. And we called it this because It required people to step out of their comfort zone a little bit, and this represents an area where you could move away from the comfort zone a little bit and still be okay, might be a little uncomfortable, but this is where learning and growth happened.
This is where people tended to discover that they could do some things that they didn’t think they could do before. And the last thing we would do is draw one final circle encompassing the other two. So it kind of looked like a concentric circles, like a target. And we’d call that final circle the Panic Zone.
And this is representative of that area that is now too far from the comfort zone. It’s that space you get to where you’re no longer learning. It’s just straight up panic. It’s, it’s a full out anxiety attack. It is a meltdown. It is It’s no longer beneficial to be out there. No growth happens there. And we talk about this in this way because part of one of the goals was to get people to spend enough time in the growth zone that it actually grew their comfort zone.
So if you spend enough time just outside of your Comfort Zone in that Growth Zone, what happens is your Comfort Zone expands to include that space that used to be outside of it. And when that happens, it may also push the boundaries of the Panic Zone. And this was our goal throughout the day. In these experiential courses, because one of the last activities in a high ropes training day is you would put people in harnesses and get them to climb trees and be 15, 20 feet off the ground.
And sometimes you just have them jump, jump off because they’d be hooked up to a rope and pulley system. And. It was safe to do so, but it required a certain amount of trust, not just in themselves, but the people they were there with that day and ourselves as a facilitator.
Patricia: But of course, that was the end of the day.
Like, if they just showed up, and you were like, okay, go 20 feet up in this harness and jump immediately.
Nicole: Not everyone could do it.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: And our hope was, by the end of the day, we could get more people to do that than at the start of the day. And, you know, that was our role as a facilitator of these days, was to help people understand and grow these boundaries.
But of course, you don’t have a facilitator like this, whose explicit role is to sit there and kind of nudge you and give you encouragement and have fun with you and, and help you grow these. And it’s really hard to do that yourself sometimes. It’s great to have a facilitator. I mean, you could pay to go participate in one of these days, but you can also have just like a good friend, or a mentor, or a coach, or you can even hire a therapist.
There’s a lot of people who can play this role of facilitator in helping you grow the boundaries of your Comfort Zone and your Growth Zones and learn that at the end of the day, you can do a lot more. You’re way more capable than you initially believed you were. And that’s where I’m gonna put a button on it because we talked about it that at the top of the episode.
Patricia: [Laughter] So yeah, I feel like we have 10,000 takeaways for this episode, but I think my top takeaway, like the things I want you to walk away with, are that we as humans are notorious for overestimating the amount of time and effort something can do, and maybe you just need to also tell yourself, hey, if a guy can do it, I can do it.
Nicole: Yeah, and really, I think my takeaway is that it’s okay to step out of your comfort zone, and in fact, it’s important to do that. We need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, and it’s only in doing this that you can recognize that you are way more capable than you think you are.
Music: [Music]
Patricia: So we have recorded quite a long episode, so we’re going to save this resource I had planned and we’re going to put it in a future episode.
Nicole: That’s a good idea. In that case, Patricia, what’s filling your cup?
Patricia: I finally, after like 10 months, I finally have my vehicle back. I am so excited. I feel silly for the amount that I just love an object, but I really love my vehicle.
And it was shortly after we had moved into this house and we had moved because my mom was sick that my truck got caught up in the catalytic converter thefts. So it was just bricked for months. And then it’s not that there weren’t mechanics who were willing to work on it. But all the parts were back ordered, and so Nicole has just had to drive me around everywhere.
Nicole: Yeah, we were a one car household for…
Patricia: Which isn’t the end of the world. Like, there are plenty of one car households, and we made it work, but it is definitely easier having my own vehicle.
Nicole: Yeah, yeah. I am also very excited about that.
Patricia: [Laughter] What’s filling your cup?
Nicole: I’m gonna drop more books.
Patricia: Aww, yeah.
Nicole: I just finished a reread of For the Love of April French by Penny Ames, and I am very close to being done with The Risk It Takes to Bloom, On Life and Liberation by Raquel Willis, and there’s just really something special about books by trans authors.
And it’s just been a delight to read. It’s been a little while since I’ve read books by trans authors. I say a little while, it’s probably been like a month. But also reading two at the same time has been really great, especially one being nonfiction. Raquel Willis’ book is her memoir. And that also reminded me I need to read more nonfiction. Also, just a side note for anyone looking at these, for the Love of April French is a very, very adult book.
Patricia: It is a romance and it is very steamy.
Nicole: It is very on the page.
Patricia: It is very doors wide open, very spicy.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: And also an amazing book.
Nicole: It’s fantastic, yeah. So I’m just kind of in that little after book glow.
Patricia: I love it.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Well, that’s our show for today. We’d like to thank our awesome audio editor, Jen Zink. You can find her at loopdilou.com, and we’ll leave a link to that in our show notes.
Nicole: You can find the full show notes and transcript at eedapod.com. That’s E E D A P O D dot com. There you can also find a link to our Patreon, our bookshop link, the podcast email list, and a link to the ongoing Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice newsletter. You should subscribe to that too for Patricia’s birthday.
Patricia: [Laughter]
Nicole: You can also find us on Instagram and Bluesky at eedapod, and you should also go interact with those accounts more for Patricia’s birthday.
And you can email us at eedapod@gmail.com.
Patricia: We are nothing if not consistent.
Nicole: We would appreciate it so much if you would subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts that allow ratings. It would be a wonderful gift for Patricia’s birthday.
Patricia: Stop!
Nicole: It also goes really far in helping other people find us.
Patricia: We would also appreciate anyone who can subscribe to us on Patreon. Support is going to help us keep this show going, especially without ads. You can find us at patreon.com/eedapod. In the meantime, we hope you find ways to be kind to yourself. Drink some water and read a book. We’ll be talking to you soon.
Nicole: Oh gosh, I don’t think I have anything silly to say this episode.