← The Journey with Morgan DeBaun
The Journey with Morgan DeBaun
Balancing Career Success and Love: Morgan's Relationship Advice for Ambitious Women
00:31:48
Ambitious ladies, this one is for you! This week, Morgan DeBaun is exposing the intricacies of navigating romantic relationships as an ambitious woman and sharing her own experience balancing a successful career with intentional dating. ...
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Morgan Debon
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Journey podcast. I'm Morgan debon, your host. Today we're going to talk about relationships. This is a solo episode because I've been getting a lot of questions in my Work Smart group where we do live calls once a month. And also just in passing as I'm meeting you all, whether that was at Afro Tech or at some of the speaking engagements that I've been doing recently where people are saying things like congratulations and I'm like, thank you. And then they're like, congratulations on the baby and on Blavity. I'm like, what an interesting thing to congratulate me on. Being the CEO of Blavity, which I've been doing for 10 years now, and then also on having a baby. And so as I like talk to them about it and I'm like, tell me more like what's up with you? And you know, do you listen to my podcast? It's typically from high achieving women, women who are doing well in their career, who may be managing people or they are growing their business and their business is doing over six figures and they're trying to figure out this other phase of their life. They have achieved a lot at work and they feel like they're on the right path, but somewhere along the way they feel like they are behind with their relationships and finding their match in life, or they are in situations where maybe there's some men that they're dating that they're hopeful about, but they're not really sure if this is their person. And I think when I'm really sitting and listening to the women that I'm talking to, the question that they're really trying to ask me is how do I balance it all? Like, how have I been able to have both a business that is seemingly successful, a relationship that is seemingly successful with a partner who values me, and also with was able to have a baby. And I always tell them, look, what things look like today is not necessarily how I got here and certainly not what things look like when I was 25 or 28 or even 30. And it was a sequence and a series of choices that I made that gave me space to be able to create this world that I'm living in today. And not even to say that the world I'm living in today is perfect, but to say that it took a lot of effort and mostly self work for me to be able to create space as a high achieving black woman or woman of color at all to be able to create a home life that also matched my own ambitions. And I think for a lot of us, it's hard to do that because we have to give so much to the careers that we've chosen. And we know that we can't even be mediocre in the jobs that we've chosen. It's not like we can just exist as women. We have to be better than the men. And to do that, it oftentimes means working harder, it means making less mistakes, it means applying a level of pressure, of excellence in order to continue to improve our financial standing or our power within whatever system we decided to work in, whether it's, you want to be a doctor, you want to be a lawyer, you are an entrepreneur, whatever it is. And I think that's a universal women experience. A woman in business experience. I also think that it's universal for, as we all get older, for there to be pressures internally or externally, that is like, you need to find your match and settle. Settle down, find the person. And I'm not even just talking about heterosexual relationships, although today I might just focus on relationships with men. I think this applies to any sort of partnered dynamic that you want to have. So that is a really long intro, you all. I am so sorry, but I really just wanted to provide context and also signal to anyone who's like, if this is not the episode for me, that is totally fine. Listen to my other episodes. I will see you next week. Feel free to sign off now. But for those who are listening to this, who is like, I'm that girl. I'm in a current relationship where I'm like, they're good, but maybe not great, or I'm in pursuit of trying to prioritize in this new year, finding my person and feeling secure and happy with that person. This is the episode for you, and I'm just going to walk you through what I did and how I invested in myself so that I could create space to be able to have a more holistic version of my definition of success, which did include being in a partnership with someone else and going through life with someone else. Hey, everyone. I'm Morgan Debon, a passionate entrepreneur and life advisor. With the Journey podcast, you'll discover that success is isn't about the destination, it's about the journey. I'm sharing stories of amazing people who've taken control of their lives. Join me on my own journey to discover the secret sauce behind reaching success with permission from no one else. One point I was like, I might not get married. I might not have kids. I decided that it was important to me, because I live such a beautiful life and I have so much privilege because of the work that I do to go to incredible places and to meet incredible people and to stay at incredible hotels and travel all around the world. And I was doing that, I was doing all of those things, but I felt like I wasn't experiencing that with someone else. And I get my enjoyment out of companionship. And I'm not necessarily an extroverted person. So it's not like I'm always around 20, 30, 40 people. I really enjoy partnership and I really enjoy having a companion and having a best friend. I grew up with that too. My parents were high school sweethearts and went to college together and got married and all the things and had me and my brother. So I grew up also with models of partnership and marriage being about being best friends as well as of course, being in love, but more importantly, deciding to do life together. And I think that for me, I was not sure about marriage or partnership because I had never met anyone that I felt like could love the full version of me and where I felt like I could expand and didn't have to shrink to meet him where he was in his career or his self esteem. And that work of being able to say I'm going to choose not to shrink is what I want to talk to you all about. When I decided that I was going to create a life for myself before I tried to bend or mold into anybody else's definition of success or happiness or what partnership could look like, was that I was going to create a life for myself that was my happiness was 100% determined by me. And once I made that commitment to myself that okay, yes, you want to find someone, but more importantly, you have to be good with you, that's going to create space for whatever happens next to be amazing. When I was basically saying, hey, I would rather be with this person who's not a good fit for me so that I'm not alone because I feel like I should be with somebody because I don't feel like I can enjoy these things unless I'm with someone. That actually was more damaging the moment that I said, and I know I'm contradicting myself a little bit here, but just rock with me the moment that I said, I am going to choose to be 100% happy by myself and with me and I'm going to create an environment for myself and I'm going to work on myself so that I can create that environment. And I have faith that once I'm at A place where I'm 100% happy with me that then I will be able to hold space for someone else, and that person's gonna be a better match for me. That is when everything worked out in my favor. Someone was talking about this analogy online, and I think it's a really good analogy for you all, which is imagine that you have a house, and your house has no food in it, and you're super hungry, and you haven't eaten in three days, and you can't afford to go buy food. And then someone comes to your door and they have a pizza, and it's warm and it's oozy and it's cooz. Your favorite pizza. And they say, hey, you can have this pizza. You're gonna be like, thank you. I really needed this pizza. I'm so hungry. I've been eaten in days, and it's my favorite pizza. And they're like, okay, well, in order to get this pizza, like, you have to let me in. And you're like, okay, come on in. And then you have the pizza, but now you have this other person in your house. But the pizza tastes good, right? And then imagine that you have a house full of food. You have pizza all the time because you know how to make your own pizza. And you just ate, and somebody comes to your door, and they're like, here's this ooey gooey pizza. You might be like, I'm good. I just ate. Or you might be like, okay, that is my favorite pizza. I would love to eat this. But then when they say, and I need to come in, you're like, absolutely not. You cannot come in here. I'm good. I got. We got pizza at home. This analogy is basically saying when you are full and you have a beautiful house filled with every resource that you need, you can become more discerning about who you let in your house, even if what they're offering you is something that you absolutely want, because it's your most favorite thing ever. And what people's most favorite thing is to be loved and to be seen and to be offered something of value. If you are in an empty house, if you don't have a lot of things filling you up because you don't have a spiritual foundation or you haven't worked on your health and your wellness and your body and your appearance in a way that makes you feel good about yourself, or you don't have financial stability, so you need somebody who's going to help pay half your rent because you live in New York or la, and it's just too expensive to live by yourself. So you're desperate, right? If you have all of these things that are factors, then you can't properly decide when somebody shows up at your door if this is the right person or not, or you just need somebody who's going to help fill a void that you have internally. And this is really what I want to talk to you all about today. I want to talk to you about how you can feel like you're not alone and why really putting yourself in a position to have a relationship that you want is most importantly about investing in you. So here are the things that I think you can think about first. I feel like most people listening to this or watching this, you're giving away way too much in your life, like, to the other person you shouldn't be thinking about, like, oh, if I do this, then this outcome will happen. If I do this, maybe if I cook more, then, then I'll attract the man that likes me. Maybe if I dress a certain way or post more thirst traps or I'm. I post all this content, then I'm going to attract more men on my feet. Or maybe if I do this or I do that, you need to stop doing all of the things and trying to control the output and the response to that output. And the reason for that is that you, when you focus on just doing what makes you feel good and show them as your best for you and as your authentic self, then you're going to naturally attract people who appreciate you for you. So if you ever feel like you're bending over backwards or you're reading through text messages and you're like, what should I say? What should I do? What should I say? Oh, am I responding to this text too quickly? Oh, maybe I shouldn't double text. Oh, like, if you feel like you're thinking through all of these things, I need you to just literally do less and think less. Okay. I remember one of the things that was so refreshing when I was dating Josh was that he would, like, double, triple text me and he wouldn't even, like, think anything of it. I had been around so many toxic men that I was scared to even be like, hey, did you get my text? Or like, hey, just following up. Like, I was like, terrified that I was bugging them, you know, because they were so busy. Versus Josh would be like, hey, making sure you got home okay. Hey, what are you doing? Hey. Right? And he was, he was so unbothered by what, how I would review his double text or triple text that he just didn't even think about it. And this might seem so petty. You might be like, yeah, girl, you was, you was off the rails. But I'm just telling you where I was. I, maybe I was off the rails, you know, but it was so refreshing that I was like, oh, maybe I shouldn't overthink, like how often I'm communicating with this person. Like if we're in the right fit, that it shouldn't matter if I double text or triple text. It shouldn't say anything about me. And so I started to like really get rid of even the things that were driving me into some anxieties. And I had already done two years plus worth of self work, but there are still things that I think I had to unlearn as I was approaching this new relationship. So some of the other things that I had to work on was like, okay, what are the things that I can fill my house up with? So for me, hobbies was one of the big things. And that would be one of my recommendations for you. What do you love to do outside of work? As a high achieving woman, oftentimes we spend so much time at work that when we're not at work we're like just trying to relax. We're doing all the self care things, getting our hair done, getting our nails done, sitting, watching Netflix. And that's all good, but that's like a baseline. We're. What are the other activities that you do that bring you joy? And I've talked about hobbies before, so you can listen to my other videos and I even have a quiz on my website to help you identify what hobbies might be fun for you to try. But for me it was painting. So I just really made sure that I created more space in my life to paint on a regular basis. And then I also started to do things like gardening. So very mediocre gardener. You guys know, I'm intentionally, you know, I don't take gardening that seriously. So I kill plants all the time. Some years I have tomatoes and carrots. Some years those tomatoes are on the ground, like the ones that I'm looking at right now because we never pick them. But I did plant them. So what are the things that fill you up? Maybe it's hiking, maybe it's solo traveling. Maybe it's working your way through a cookbook. At one point I was like, I'm going to become a better cook. And I bought a cookbook and started working my way through it and started making salad dressings from scratch. Whatever it is outside of work, who are you and what do you enjoy? What are the activities? Because in those moments when you might be find yourself alone because a situation didn't work out, or in those moments where there's space in your life for you to pour into yourself, how are you doing it in a way that makes you happy. And because happy people attract happy people, people with rich lives attract people with rich, juicy lives. That is like just the law of attraction. If you don't have nothing going on, you want to attract other people who ain't got nothing going on. If you don't value your time, you're going to attract other people who do not value your time. If you don't care about health and wellness, you're going to attract other people who don't care about health and wellness. So you need to do the things that are important to you and then you're going to naturally start to create more and more spaces in your brain and into the universe that's going to attract other people that value the things that you value. The other thing that I want to talk about is being more feminine. And as high achieving women, because our work requires us to operate in a male dominated patriarchy, we oftentimes have to strengthen our muscles in our masculine. That means being direct in our conversation, you know, removing feeling statements. When someone's like, what do you think? You say, what do you think? I don't say, how do you feel about that? What do you think? Think about that. We start to sit more in our masculine energy because that is the system in which we are operating in. And again, I'm saying a lot of these things, not saying, you know, we could have a whole nother conversation about the patriarchy. I'm not fighting that fight with y'all today. Today I'm just telling you the reality of the world that we live in. So for me, I lived in a male dominated world and I still do, where I was raising money for men. My co founders were mentioned, the bankers that we're working with, men. My lawyers are men, my board is men. And so I was operating in a male dominated power structure and therefore I had to adopt more and more male language, more masculine tendencies, masculine vocabulary. I had to really sit in my masculine which then at home in my personal life, I had to learn how to turn it off. And for me, this may not be the case for you, but in what I wanted in my life, in my relationship, I did not want to be the one problem solving everything in my home life. I did not Want to be the one who was making all the decisions in my home life. I make all the decisions at work and at home. I wanted to make less decisions. And in a lot of the relationships that I was in, I felt like I was the one who had to be the doer, either because that person was not equipped to make their own decisions, I did not respect their decision making, or I did not like their decision making. Like, if we were going on a trip and I'm like, what hotel are we staying at? If I don't trust that you're going to pick the right hotel, then I'm going to pick the hotel. So I was creating spaces where I was more in my masculine with the people that I was dating, when actually I don't want to think about it at all. Just buy my ticket, pick me up, tell me what. What weather are we going to? Cold, hot. What are we doing? I'll be there. Okay. That's the kind of energy that I wanted. So if that's the kind of energy that I wanted in my personal life, then I needed to learn how to fall back and do less. I had so many opinions, y'all, and I had to really unlearn. Do you actually care about that, or should you need to learn how to sit back in your relationship? And I think that again, even Sheryl Sandberg wrote a whole book called Lean In. I need y'all to lean back. I'm a write a book called Lean Back, Lean Back, Lean Back. Anyways, so that is my recommendation for you all is to learn how to receive, to learn how to get into a position at home where you are doing less, because then you can just exist in yourself, exist in your softness. There used to be this ritual that I did, and it's so funny, but basically every time Josh would come over after work, I would. Before he would get here, he would text, hey, I'm on my way. And I would stop what I was doing. I would light all the candles in my living room, and I would go jump in the bath. I did that because I knew that I needed to switch off problem solving, responding to emails, answering these questions, giving orders, all the things that I do during the day. I needed to change my own energy for myself, to be more soft, more relaxed, less intense, just more like, just. I wanted to be a breath of fresh air. I wanted to be a sigh of relief. I wanted to be warm and cozy because that's actually what I needed, regardless of him. But that's what I needed after work. And so in some Ways the other person you're dating is really just a placebo for you to just have more of a reason to be more how you want to be in your personal life. My ritual was so consistent that one time I was still in the bath, he came in the door, and I walked out, and he had lit all the candles for me. And I, like, got upset. I was like, why are you lighting the. Why did you light the candles? And he's like, oh, I noticed that you always had the candles lit. And I was like, oh, yes. In my head, I was like, I want to light the candles, because that's the thing that I do. And he saw it as, oh, my God, look at this girl. She always has candles lit. Let me help her out and help you light the candles. And I'm like, that is, like, the sweetest thing ever, you know? And I also did one other thing. Again, I think Josh probably is like, you tricked me. I stopped cleaning the house when he would get there. So, like, there used to be a part of me at one point that would, like, clean up everything and make sure that there's no dishes in the sink and all that stuff. I stopped doing all of that when I started dating him because I was like, I don't want to live a world where I have to perform and have this clean environment. Let me actually be who I am, which is, I got a couple of dishes in the dishwasher. My suitcase is right here. I just got home. You know, I really didn't want to overthink anything. I wanted to just be me. And again, that's all I'm really trying to tell y'all, which is, the right person will accept you as you are, but if you don't show them who you are because you're too busy trying to morph into this other person that you think that they want, you're actually just creating more and more of an environment where you have to do more and more to keep up with this projection for yourself and the other person. And they may not even care, right? They might not even care. The right person is going to be like, I love all your quirks. I love taking care of you, or, I love that, you know, you don't do the dishes. I don't want my woman doing the dishes. Whatever the it is, you're going to find the person that is okay with you as you are. So you have to learn to do less. Now, for me, in order to learn how to do less, I needed to fill it with other things. So that's why I'm saying, have hobbies, paint, go to the gym, do Pilates, go in the garden. So instead of doing all the stuff I didn't want to do, I'm outside painting. Okay. Or literally, this podcast. I was like, hey, honey, I got to do the podcast today. I'm behind on episodes. I'll do a solo episode. He's like, okay, cool, I'll put the baby to sleep. So he took care of putting the bab sleep because I had something else to do if I don't have nothing to do. Why would he be doing anything else if I have nothing else to do? So, again, it starts with you. It starts with you. And you have to live a beautiful life for yourself. And sitting in your feminine means that you have to find joys and hobbies outside of your relationship and outside of this man. You need to do things, listen to music, creative stuff, like things that fill your soul. Dance, go take a salsa class. Go do things in your creative. Okay, I'm not talking about go lift 100 pounds at the gym. That's not in your feminine. I mean, you could do that for your muscle mass. I'm not mad at you, but that's not really a feminine activity. Okay? So do things, at least temporarily, while you're, like, in the season of trying new things, try to do things that are more in your feminine, that bring you joy and that play with your creativity, with your mind, and that just allow you to relax a little bit, because we do live incredibly intense lives at work. And then the last thing that I just really want you to think about is what is the work that you need to do in order to receive the love that you want? And for different people, this is going to mean different things. Oprah did a wonderful podcast series on this a while ago about finding your soulmate. I can't remember the exact framing, but basically, it was like, in relationship, we're either in pursuit of healing the relationship that we didn't have with our parents, or we're in pursuit of trying to change the outcome of the relationship that we had with our parents. In other words, if you had a relationship with your father and your father constantly belittled you, you'll find a man who constantly belittles you, and you'll either try to change the outcome and have him not belittle you, or you'll have a situation where he constantly belittles you, and then that's just what you're used to, so you accept it because it doesn't feel abnormal or you Become the belittler. You create a scenario where you're the father in that relationship and then you emulate the belittling thing that was done to you. Obviously we want none of the above. We want to break that entire chain of what that thing was. To do that you have to acknowledge it, you have to understand where it comes from. You have to then heal it and then you have to proactively replace those habits, habits that you have in your life with other things. That is some super deep work. I truly believe that more of us would find our person if we make the time for ourselves to do that type of deep work. So for me I had to read a lot of books. I read a book called Trusting you are loved. I read a book out dating as an alpha woman. I think one of the reasons I'm so ambitious as a woman was because I grew up in a household where my mom was a stay at home mom. And growing up, this is not how I feel today, but growing up I viewed that as lack of ambition. I didn't view it as a woman of strength that she took care of me and my brother. And actually in reality now having full consciousness, my mom is incredibly strong, knowing now what I know. But growing up, that's not how I felt. And so as I grew up, I said, well, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to pursue my career, I'm going to prioritize myself, I'm going to prioritize my financial independence, I'm going to do these things. I also was modeled that from my father. So it was, he was ambitious, he had a successful career at a young age, he was able to do all these things, he was able to travel with work. And so that's what success looked like to me. I've had to unlearn. Okay, what about those relationship dynamics was hurtful to me from my perspective. And then what are the things that I want to make sure I do not emulate? When I was first dating, I dated a lot of men that were workaholics, that work in their career was their number one priority. And I was hoping to recreate a relationship where all of a sudden they picked me as their priority instead of work. Again, this is after so much therapy and a lot of deep work. And again I say this, this is not because this is actually what happened in my parents relationship, but this was my perception of different things, was that I was second at times, I felt like I was second at times to work. And I've talked about this. If You've listened to my podcast before. Go back to my episode with Gabor, Mate, My dad's a doctor, so I just felt like at times there's nothing more pressing than a sick child, and I'm not a sick child. So the sick child was precedent at times. So I had relationships with men where they had something intense going on that was admirable. And I was number two. And I was stuck in this cycle where I was trying to do all these things so that I could all of a sudden become their number one, which literally was never going to happen, which then the relationship wouldn't work out. So even though I was technically dating different types of men, like, if you looked at them on paper, you'd be like, no, you've dated a wide variety of men. I did not. They were all the same. They were highly ambitious black men who made a commitment at a young age to pursue their career, to be the best of the best in their career. They're incredibly intelligent, and I was hoping and praying that they would think I was a pick me. Anyways, that didn't work out. I had to really think about this. I had to work through with a professional, how to work through what was going on with me. And then I had to learn to make different choices. And I took a lot of. I kissed a lot of frogs to get there. I dated, really men who had very little ambition, who was very unclear about where they were going. I dated creatives. I dated actors. I dated trust fund babies. I dated men 10 years my senior. I dated all types of men. That was really helpful experience for me because then I really got clear on, okay, I don't want, like, somebody who literally is, you know, mommy and daddy's money. That's not going to work for me. And I also don't totally want someone who's, like, you know, c'est la vie, like, just going with the vibes. Like, I need a little bit more structure than that. So. So, yeah, it really helps me. You got to figure it out for you. I'm not going to go too much into my whole life. I know y'all want me to, but I'm not going to do that today. My point is to just share this with you, is that you are in control of your relationship dynamics. And if it's not working, you can seek professional help to help you literally work through how you can approach your relationships in the future so that you're not repeating or inflicting the trauma that you have. Again, no judgment zone or the trauma that you think other people inflicted on you or you are inflicting on other people regardless. Right? So that is what was helpful for me. And in doing that, I then was able to receive the love of a person who was going to prioritize our family first and me first. And that feeling of being prioritized first was exactly what I needed to be able to move forward and be the most expansive version of myself. For me, part of that, again, is being able to do this work, put yourself in that position, live a beautiful life for yourself, and most likely it's gonna work out from there. So I hope this episode was helpful for you. Sometimes I feel like I share too much on this podcast and I get really nervous or worried that people are gonna take these things out of context, including my own family. So I just wanna be clear. I love my parents. I have fantastic parents growing up. I love my dad. I. Mom, I'm like the luckiest girl. I live five minutes from my parents, you guys, you know, I'm the luckiest girl. Just because I'm a lucky girl and just because I grew up in a happy home doesn't necessarily mean that I didn't have experiences. And I would say the same thing for you. Just because you didn't grow up in a traumatic situation doesn't necessarily mean you don't have your own things that you need to heal and work on. And it's absolutely okay for you to be in pursuit of the best version of yourself and to stand in your own truth, even if that means that you have to work through things that to someone else you'd be like, that's not a big deal. Don't let anybody else's leveling of trauma or triggers or baseline impact your baseline. We're all starting at different baselines. Someone might listen to this and be like, girl, anyways, I'm not going to get into it. My point is, no one else has to pass judgment on your own life. You get to decide for yourself what is important and who do you want to be and how do you want to get from point A to point B, and how do you want to level up your version of yourself? That's literally why I wrote my book, rewrite your rules. Because we're all living with all of these judgments and all these expectations and all this, well, that's not good enough, or this is good, or you didn't have it that bad, or, oh, my God, you had it so bad, or you shouldn't do this, or you shouldn't buy a house. You gotta let go of all of these things, all of these things that are imposed on you and figure out for yourself what your own principles and your own values are and then build a baseline from there. I want that so deeply for each and every single one of you listening to this and watching this, and my hope is that I can continue to share my journey so that you can be inspired to take action in your own journey. Let me know if you like this episode. Send me a DM. You guys know I respond to all my DMs on Instagram. Join the the Work Smart group call once a month. Also definitely pre order my book. The pre orders go a super long way. It really helps me as a first time author for our publisher to see that people are interested in this content, that people are interested in learning these methods and these tools so that they can get to the next level. So please do pre order my book. You can get it on my website morgand.com and I look forward to seeing you next episode. Bye y'all. Thanks for listening to the Journey podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you leave a review and head to our Instagram and YouTube to leave a comment. I look forward to hearing how this podcast has made an impact on your own journey.