← This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil
This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil
Stop Waiting For Permission: Did You Know You Can Just Do Things? with Cate Hall | 424
00:37:28
Former Supreme Court attorney, poker champion, and author Cate Hall shares how high-agency people create opportunities, overcome fear of rejection, and stop waiting for permission. This empowering conversation explores confidence, personal growth, resilience, and the mindset shifts that help women take action before they're ready.
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- [00:01]
A
This message is sponsored by Greenlight, and while I could tell you why I love it, I thought it'd be much more fun to hear from a kid who's actually using it. So here's J.J. hi.
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B
So basically Greenlight lets me have my own debit card, which is very exciting because it means I can buy my own things instead of asking my mom every five seconds. Because apparently according to her, I don't need 17 lip glosses, which honestly feels debatable, but I can also use it for chores and saving money. It's cool because I can actually see how much money I have on the app and track what I'm saving for instead of just guessing. It makes me feel more responsible, which my mom probably appreciates too. Your kids might not need more lip gloss, but they definitely need green light
- [00:41]
A
because every day our kids are handling money without guidance is a missed opportunity. Start your risk free Greenlight trial today@greenlight.com TIW don't wait to teach your kids real world money skills. That's greenlight.com tiww to get started, greenlight.com ti w w quick pause. We expanded to YouTube because we keep hearing I needed this 20 years ago and the next generation shouldn't have to wait. So tell the young women in your world who are scrolling and watching to subscribe to this is woman's work on YouTube. I am Nicole Khalil and you're listening to the this Is Woman's Work podcast where we're redefining what it means, what it looks and feels like to be doing woman's work in the world today with confidence, curiosity and a wicked head cold like I have today, and the occasional middle finger to all the expectations and opinions about what we should and should not do. Because society seems hell bent on making us believe that life is some complicated obstacle course, a series of steps that we need to navigate in a specific order to finally arrive at some mythical place where we're happy and successful and everything comes easy. And if you don't take those steps in exactly the right order at exactly the right time, well, clearly there is something wrong with you. And now you're relegated to a life of being behind and falling short. We've been sold this idea that successful people have cracked a code the rest of us just haven't earned access to yet. But one day, when you're ready enough, when you have the experience, the credibility, the credentials, the right circumstances and budget, when everything lines up just so, then you'll be able to do the things you really want to do too. Meanwhile, while you're out there getting ready, there are people who are out there just doing things. They're starting companies they have no business starting, pitching themselves for opportunities they're not totally qualified for calling people no one told them they were allowed to call moving across the world because they feel like it's signing up for improv classes, training for marathons. I mean, voluntarily running even though nothing is chasing them, which blasts my mind. They're learning Italian for no practical reason other than it sounds sexy. There are people out there just trying. They're risking rejection and failure, possibly feeling and looking ridiculous, but cutting themselves some slack because that's part of being a beginner. There are people out there doing things without being ready. I mean, the audacity. I hope, by the way, that you're sensing the sarcasm because, friend, what if the biggest thing standing between you and the fill in the blank of whatever it is that you want isn't lack of ability has nothing to do with readiness or ideal circumstances? What if it's the invisible rules we keep following without question? What if it's because we spend triple the amount of time arguing for our limitations than we do for our potential or possibility? Today's guest has built an entire philosophy around that exact idea. That many of the so called rules we follow aren't actually rules at all. They're just invisible agreements we've been taught not to question. Kate hall is a former Supreme Court attorney, the former number one ranked female poker player in the world, co founder of a biotech company that broke records bringing a drug candidate to clinical trial, A former CEO of the Estera Institute, a multibillion dollar private foundation. She is also the author of the new book you can just do things, how high agency people get what they want out of life. A practical guide to recognizing the invisible rules holding you back and learning how to break them. So, Kate, clearly I have feelings on this topic. Thank you for being here. And I want to start by asking you to explain what you call high agency people. I'm guessing we may have seen them, but not totally understand what it is that you're talking about. So how do you define a high agency person?
- [04:59]
C
Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on and what an intro that was. That was absolutely mind blowing. Thank you so much. Okay, so I loved a lot of what you just said there and I think about agency to a great extent. My like internal tagline for it is the art of getting what you don't deserve. Which I, I think is very Much not how we're trained to think about progress and success in life, but it is the way that a lot of people who achieve outlandish things operate in the world. It's this freedom from scripts, this freedom from expectations about what is reasonable or not reasonable. The art of permissionless action. I think it's the ability to recognize that a lot of things that we think of as constraints are not actually constraints, they're sort of conventions. And to defy those constraints by ignoring them and doing things that might lead to embarrassment or doing things that might be a violation of identity. These are the things that really allow people to make these big leaps in life. And I think I personally moved from a mindset where I was much more rule abiding and focused on the correct sequence of events earlier in life to one where I'm not doing a lot of that now. I think it's a very learnable thing and that's what I'm all about.
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A
Okay, I love everything you just said. Especially that's a learnable thing. Because I think sometimes we make up that people are either born risk takers or they're not, or they're rule followers or they're not, as you mentioned earlier, kind of an identity thing. But before I dive into how we learn this skill, I want to go back to the art of getting what you don't deserve. I'm curious because I feel like I know I did it, so I'm going to assume maybe some of our listeners did it too. Is the don't deserve in air quotes? Is it more of like a we think we don't deserve it, but we don't know or we're putting too high of expectations? Or are you actually saying like get out there and go after shit that you have absolutely no business going after?
- [07:13]
C
Yeah, I think it's a little bit of both. I think it's like. It is definitely part tongue in cheek. But the core idea is basically like we have this idea of who deserves what that is built on who is following the correct steps to get the achievement that they are seeking. And I think that's just a broken model of the way that the world works. And the things that will actually get you what you want in life are different from the ones that we sort of learn in school or learn through socialization. And so I'm kind of like sidestepping the whole concept of what we deserve or don't deserve and just saying like, here is what you want in life. Go out and get it and you can just do that and not be obsessed with, have I got the right credentials for that? Have I checked the right boxes?
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A
Right. Okay. So I can feel the brains breaking right now, myself included, because. Right. We're taught you do things in a certain order and that's how you get whatever it is that you want. So what are some of the myths, lies, beliefs, I don't care what we call them, but the things that are holding us back and getting in the way of us getting what we don't deserve.
- [08:24]
C
Yeah, I think so much of it falls into a couple of categories. So one is just fear of rejection, of failure, of embarrassment. We get so little exposure to these as we are growing up and we come to see them as so inherently bad that we instinctively avoid them as adults when they are things that we can sort of inure ourselves to through repetition. And they become really non events and then the constraints that are imposed by identity. So as we get older, we sort of develop a sense of. This is the type of person I am. I have these characteristics. I have these, you know, core concerns about the world. And it can be really. It can sort of like induce a sense of vertigo to step away from that and say, well, I could learn entirely new personality traits if I want to, or I could move into an entirely different domain in life. And so it's a combination of, like, aversion to a bunch of negative emotions that are sort of concrete and this sort of disorientation that comes from adjusting your identity that I think keeps people locked in where they are.
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A
Yes, both and. Right. I think we can all relate. So let's talk a little bit first about rejection. You talk in the book about actively courting rejection. How do we do that and what changes when we stop avoiding it and start seeking it out on purpose?
- [09:54]
C
Yeah, a huge unlock for me personally was when I. When I made this switch mentally from. Rejection is a thing that is painful and bad and should be avoided at all costs, which was my operating system through most of my 20s, at least. To. Rejection is a way of getting feedback from the world, of testing the boundaries of reality, and of making sure that I'm actually getting what I don't want to use the word deserve after the intro we just had. But, like, making sure that I'm actually interacting with life in a way that honors myself. So what I mean by that is, like, it is very common, I think, for people to only want to apply for opportunities or only strive for things that they feel pretty confident they will not be rejected from because they fear that sting of rejection so much and just realizing, oh, that puts a really tight cap on my total lifetime achievement if I do that because I'm. I'm, you know, artificially cutting off any of the stuff that is lower probability, higher payoff off. That was a big switch flip for me.
- [11:02]
A
Yeah. I would add to. I'm curious your thought. I've kind of done work to try to reframe rejection as a necessary part of success. I think sometimes we look at the most successful people or the people we want to emulate and we assume that they're not getting rejected or that things come easy. And in my experience in interacting and getting to talk with people is they're facing just as much, if not more and bigger rejection when they're out there doing big things. Thoughts and reactions on that?
- [11:36]
C
Oh, I a hundred percent agree. I think one sort of distortion that we have when we think about our own relationships with failure and rejection I think you alluded to, which is we tend to see the successes of others and sort of edit out their failures because we're less exposed to them. So we have this impression that people who are successful have this, this unbroken string of success in life, but really it is generally a matter of just like trying over and over again. And from the inside that feels like failing a whole lot and succeeding occasionally, but it's just not what people see from the outside. So one of my favorite examples of this is David Bowie, who tried becoming a musician so many times before he was successful. So many different bands, so many different LPs that he put out. And I remember reading the feedback from his auditions for the BBC, which was just absolutely brutal. Like this singer is devoid of personality. This person will never be anything. And I think that's like. Even for the people who become sort of stratospheric successes, rejection is the norm, especially early in life, early in a career, 100%.
- [12:49]
A
I'm curious though. What I often say is I haven't figured out how to make it suck any less when it's happening. But I've figured out how to pick myself up, dust myself off, get back into action much faster than I would if I hadn't keep practicing it or putting myself out there or whatever. My question for you is, have you figured out how to make it suck any less? Is there anything you say or do when you're experiencing rejection or failure or anything that helps?
- [13:18]
C
I've never found a good answer to this. I think like exposure is the remedy. And it's like exposure to. To any other aversive stimulus where at first it's just the emotion is overwhelming and so you feel yourself sort of stuck in it. But with time and repetition, you grow used to the fact that it's very temporary. Like it'll sting for a bit and then you'll get over it. And I think that makes the process shorter each time. And unfortunately it's just a thing that you have to do. And one of the things I recommend is sort of putting yourself in engineered positions to get rejected in a way that is controlled in order to sort of get yourself exposure to that feeling of rejection in lower stakes ways so that you can do that acclimation to the feeling of rejection.
- [14:13]
A
Okay, I would love to get some examples of these lower stakes ways. Before I do, I would add one of the things I do often say to myself when I'm feeling like I failed or experiencing rejection or whatever is the only thing that's missing right now is the benefit of hindsight. It's just that reminder to me that I don't yet know what's gonna come from this or how this might work in my favor or where it may lead me. But in my experience, it always has done something good or for the benefit. And so I just remind myself, this sucks, but the only thing that's missing from me and from the situation right now is the benefit of hindsight.
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C
I love that.
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A
Okay, so how do we, I don't know if numb ourselves? That's not the right word, but how do we do some exposure therapy on rejection and failure?
- [14:57]
C
Yeah, so I think one, one thing that you can do is just get exposure in contexts where it really doesn't matter. So leave the. The work rejection aside for a moment. There's an author who's actually written about this, specifically Jai Jiang, who wrote Rejection Proof. It's a. It's a. Another book that I recommend. His thing was a series of 100 daily experiments trying to get rejected every day. And so he would do fun stuff like ask to make an announcement over an airplane's loudspeakers or ask the guys at Krispy Kreme to make the donuts into a particular shape. Silly things where it's like if the person says no, you don't feel bad about yourself for that. It's not an issue. So I think that really low stakes way of doing it is one component of it. The interesting thing is you can sort of like slingshot around and do the do things the other way, where you are actually applying for things or seeking things that are materially high reward. But where you just don't expect to be successful. So like, applying for jobs that you are totally unqualified for is in this category where it's like, maybe your, your own perception of what you're qualified for is wrong. And so one time in 20, you will get that job or get that opportunity. And that's like useful information. That's a, that's a way to like change your perception of your relationship with the world. But also it's kind of. We have this concept in poker called a free roll, which is like, your expectations are so low they can only be exceeded. And so if you are applying to things truly expecting that you're unqualified for them, it scares to hear that.
- [16:40]
A
It's almost scarier when they say yes. Like in the 1 in 100, you're like, O, now I gotta get ready.
- [16:47]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [16:48]
A
Oh my God, I love that. I love both sides of that. Okay, I have so many questions, but I want to talk about the identity part because I have to imagine that is easier said than done. We hold very firmly to how we see ourselves or the beliefs of who we are and how we operate in the world. How do we let go of them and, or change them and. Or just set them aside in order to go do something?
- [17:14]
C
Yeah, great question. So I think there's a couple. There's a couple aspects to this. One is, okay, you know what your identity is. You might like to have a different identity. Say you have an identity as like a person who is very conscientious and giving and sacrificial, self sacrificial. And you want to develop other personality traits. There are sort of like concrete tactics for how to attack that problem. Once you have identified what the problem is and the direction you want to move, I think the harder thing can be actually understanding what our identity is. Which sounds a little bit odd maybe, but I think that with, with this whole genre of like, self help, which I'm now a part of, there's this issue of the aspects of personal development that are most inherently threatening to the identity that we already have or are the aspects that we are likely to just ignore completely. And so not even, not even give any attention to this means that they can be like really fertile ground for personal development if we can force ourselves to look at them. Interestingly enough, I find that Enneagram has been an incredible tool for me for understanding this aspect because before I discovered it, and I'm sure there are all sorts of other ways to do this, I was not really aware of the extent to which not being a selfish person, being a good person was a core part of my identity that shaped all of the decisions that I was making and that I wasn't even willing to think about as like a, a part of identity as opposed to just the way that people are supposed to be. Um, and getting that like I used that system to get a little bit more self insight which allowed me to have more optionality around that. And I've just found it to be a, a really great tool for starting to understand the aspects of identity or personality that actually feel almost like natural law or just what it means to be human where there is more optionality.
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A
This message is sponsored by Greenlight and not only am I a fan, but our kids are too. Here's JJ's oldest friend, Ry, here to tell you all about it.
- [19:32]
B
I'm pretty good at remembering to do my chores. My mom not so good at remembering to pay me and when I tell her how much she owes me, she never believes me. That's why we use Greenlight. The Greenlight app has a chores feature that lets you set up jobs, track what's been done, and even sends reminders so neither of us have any excuses anymore. It's also a debit card and money app for kids, teens and really the whole family. I can earn, save, spend my own money and see where it's going to. It's not red light, not yellow light. It's green light. And green means go. So go start building your money skills now and maybe even teach your parents a thing or two later.
- [20:09]
A
And let me jump in to say that every day our kids are handling money without guidance is a missed opportunity. Start your risk free Greenlight trial today@greenlight.com tiww don't wait to teach your kids real world money skills. That's greenlight.com tiww to get started greenlight.com tiww I'm here to confirm that I am fully committed to my European summer. Emotionally, spiritually, esthetically, all of it. And the current star of the show, these 100% European linen pants from Quince that I plan on living in for the next three months. They somehow manage to feel comfortable enough for travel days, but still look like I have my life together, which, especially on sabbatical, is a complete illusion. Summer always makes me rethink my closet and what I'm looking for is lighter fabrics, better materials, pieces that feel effortless but still elevated. And that's exactly why I keep going back to quints. They have beautiful everyday pieces and their quality is incredible. But because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middleman, you're not paying insane luxury markups. And fair warning quints is a slippery slope. You start with one pair of linen pants and suddenly you're browsing bedding and kitchen stuff at midnight and your husband gets in on the action and men's linen short showing up in bulk. So go elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com tiww for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com tiww for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com ti w w I've become more convinced over the years that good health isn't about one dramatic decision or big change change. It's about the small choices you make over and over again. Getting enough sleep, moving your body, eating reasonably well, and yes, drinking water tops the list. If water is something you're consuming every single day, and it should be, it makes sense to think about the quality of it. That's why we use COVP Pure. Covp Pure is a reverse osmosis water purifier that's lab certified to remove up to 99.9% of contaminants, things like PFAS, heavy metals, fluoride and even pharmaceuticals. What I love is that it's incredibly easy to use. It sits right on the countertop, requires no installation, and gives us fresh, hot or cold water whenever we need it. It's one of those everyday products that makes life and your health a little better. Right now, Cove Pure is giving our listeners $250 off for a limited time. Go to covepure.com tiww that's C-O-V-E-P-U-R-E.com T I W W to get your Cove Pure now it makes me think too. I feel like we are often paradoxical or contradictory creatures and when we hold so firmly to an identity, we don't allow for that. My example is more often than not our greatest strengths, taken too far become our biggest obstacles or weaknesses or whatever you want to call it. There's the shadow side, right? Absolutely. Think that was what was jumping in my head as you were talking through. That is there is often a shadow side. There is often something that we value about ourselves that is the thing that's also limiting us and being willing to play with, explore, mold a little and and sit in this sort of paradoxical relationship with our identity, I think is so powerful and, you know, take some practice. Like everything worth doing.
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C
Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that so strongly. And I think that's been one of the biggest unlocks for me personally in the last five years is understanding how close that relationship is between strengths and weaknesses. Richard Rohr has a quote that I'll probably butcher. But it's something like, we are ruined by our strengths, ruined by our gifts, which is like whatever it is, you have some core animating principle in your life which produces most of the good attributes that you have. But when over expressed, it also becomes the downsides of your personality. And I found the Enneagram really helpful because it allows me to link the two and to say, oh, these things that I really like about myself are actually intimately connected to the problems that I have in my life. And therefore it becomes easier for me to address those problems. Honestly.
- [24:41]
A
Yeah, I love tools like that. The Enneagram, we've actually had somebody come on and talk about it. Human design. There are a handful of things out there and I always think there is no one best. Right. But they're all tools. And anytime we spend time exploring who we are and how we're wired and what we think and challenge it all, that's time well spent. Okay, so what's a simple way that anyone listening could assess whether they're operating with low or high agency right now?
- [25:13]
C
I think it is rarely the case that people are high or low agency in a global sense. For the most part, people are. They have these different domains in life. So you can think about it as like, work your interpersonal relationships, your relationship with yourself. And I think it is the norm to be high agency in one or more of these areas and low agency in others. That's the pattern that I've seen in my life and lives of many people around me. So it's more a question of like, not am I a high agency person or a low agency person, but what are the domains in which I am failing to fully express my agency. And I think a good diagnostic for that is actually a little bit counterintuitive. It is trying to identify the areas of your life where it feels like you are having to exert the most willpower to get through what you're doing. This can be counterintuitive because a lot of people hear agency and they think, oh, that's effort. That's like, you know, just putting in a lot of. Of grindy determination. And I think that they are Importantly, different. I think actually having to exert that kind of grindy willpower day after day to accomplish something in your life is a sign that you have not designed a system in that domain of your life to accomplish what you want. And agency is really about, like, not having to do that. It's about finding better ways to get the things that you want. So I would look across the theaters of your life and see, you know, where does it feel like I am constantly exerting effort and not getting very far. And that's probably the domain in which your lowest. Agency.
- [26:53]
A
Okay, interesting. I'm a big word person, and I do use the word agency often, but I like realizing that I didn't really ever spend any time defining it. I've always sort of felt like agency is. Is being the decider. Right. So it's, I think, really in alignment with what you said, because we're operating under these invisible, you know, rules and laws, and though we let those be the deciders for us. And so full agency is like, in the face of all the shoulds and the supposed tos and the rules and the expectations and all the whatever I am deciding and what a powerful position to be in. And I love the way you handled that question because you're right. None of us are ever high or low in all domains all the time.
- [27:43]
C
Yeah, I. I love that way of thinking about agency, too. I tend to, when I'm thinking about it, focus more on aspects of like, flexibility and freedom. But there is this sense in which is your internal sense of control and responsibility. Internal or external? Do you feel like the world is acting on you or you are acting on the world? And I feel like that is also a really key component of agency.
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A
Yeah. Okay. I can't let you go without asking you to explain the moat of low status. Talk to us about that.
- [28:18]
C
This one. So I have to credit my husband with the term for this, which I absolutely love. The. The core idea is, you know, in business you can have a moat, and it's basically a thing that makes you hard to compete with, that makes your company hard to compete with some advantage that you have. This also applies in our personal lives where the mode of low status is this fear of being temporarily low in status, of being embarrassed, of being shown to be bad at something to people that we care about, prevents us from trying in a way that would allow us to get better and eventually become good at things of thing. And I think that this is like people's lives, including my own for much of my life, are Totally ruled by this concept without us even thinking about it. We do not like to look inept, even if it's sort of understood by everybody around us that it's temporary, that we're learning. Like, we just have that. That fear of embarrassment is so emotionally salient. You can totally, like, conjure up examples from childhood where you're embarrassed by not knowing how to do. And they just, they. They sit with us and they are so, so salient that they really dominate our thinking. And we, without even realizing it, block off all sorts of opportunities because we don't want to have to confront the possibility of feeling that embarrassment.
- [29:46]
A
Yeah, literally, like almost flashbacks. I can remember trying tennis and being bad at it in the first lesson and then like, refusing to go back. Or, I mean, like, there's so bowling. I avoided going bowling with my friends because I'd never been before and I didn't want to look stupid. Like, I mean, the amount of things I didn't try because I was afraid I would look bad is horrifying to me. And it's so easy to default to that. So what would you say to the listener who's like, yeah, but women are often held to different standard of credibility or competency. And if we put ourselves in a situation where we don't know what we're doing or we are inept or, you know, look like a beginner, we're doing ourselves a huge disservice.
- [30:35]
C
Yeah, I mean, I think it's like, it's a real concern and I don't want to, you know, be casual about it. I think I understand where that, that fear comes from. I do think that, like, for women, for men, the emotional stakes in our own minds rarely correspond accurately to reality. And it is again, just sort of like an issue of getting exposure. So when I was learning to play poker, I came up pretty quickly through the professional ranks. I was often playing in high stakes scenarios where there were a lot of professional men watching me. Sometimes I was on television. And because I was a woman, there was a much higher level of scrutiny applied to me. So if I would play a hand badly, I knew it was going on the group chats, I knew it was going on Twitter. You know, I was going to hear about it. And what I've learned is just, yes, people will target you more. They will think less of you because you're a woman. But to some extent that is because of the. Because they know that they can. And by simply refusing to acknowledge that that was happening in any way and behaving with A sense of dignity and confidence. Despite being mocked a lot, I feel like I somehow got through that barrier and just became immune to it. I don't know if I recommend that for everybody, but there is a certain extent to which you can simply not give a fuck about the way that people are responding to you that I think causes them to respond to you in a different way.
- [32:11]
A
Yeah, well, I couldn't agree more. And like, listen, at the end of the day, we could all benefit from giving less fucks. I mean, it's just insane this how much we care about what a complete stranger thinks. And I would go back to something that you said earlier. Is doing this in a lower stakes opportunities first. Like don't go try something brand new where you may look inept. That is directly correlated to the job you have and want as your first step. Maybe go do bowling. Who cares? Right? Like go or whatever it is and. And sort of build up the tolerance.
- [32:52]
C
Yeah.
- [32:52]
A
And practice not giving as many fucks until you can get to the point where you're willing to do it with something that matters more.
- [33:01]
C
Yeah, I think that's right. And I think it also scales throughout life. Like at. At this point in my career and life, it rarely matters what people think of me, thank God. Which means that I have a lot more freedom to just ask stupid questions, admit that I don't know things, act in ways that might be dangerous earlier in my career, but that can set like a healthy example for people now. I love being a CEO and just like admitting that you are the least informed person in the room and asking questions that reflect that because it's like a superpower that you and I think that you can sort of create a healthier culture around you just by consistently being vulnerable and real about the limitations of your own knowledge and capacity.
- [33:52]
A
Couldn't agree more. And I would even add one of the things I did a lot in my 20s and 30s was on purpose, but I came across as a know it all. I thought if I had the answers and the information that I would be respected more. And what I realized, not early on, it took some time. I learned the hard way is what I was actually doing was creating distance in my relationships and an environment where people didn't feel comfortable to ask a question or to be curious. That's something I've really had to work on and reframe my identity. And now I would call myself a curious person. But yeah, anyway, I have to ask one last question. And that is if whoever is listening in is thinking I want to Activate more agency in a specific area in my life. What are the first one or two actions you would tell them to take?
- [34:50]
C
So my number one tip is one that nobody ever likes, but I just keep insisting on it anyway.
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A
Good for you. Don't tell us what we want to hear. Tell us what's actually going to fucking work.
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B
Yeah.
- [35:04]
C
My number one tip is actually creating an anonymous feedback box for yourself where anybody can give you feedback on any aspect of you. I started implementing this five years ago as a way to ensure that the way that I was seeing myself was actually like lined up with the way that the rest of the world saw me. I've learned so much about myself through this process and it has opened up a lot of degrees of freedom for me. So I think like the first aspect of building agency is always being able to understand and see yourself as clearly as possible. And I think this is a really powerful tool for being able to do that.
- [35:45]
A
I'll also add that as my first step in building confidence. When I talk about building confidence, the first step is knowing who you are. And you cannot do that without gathering information and feedback and all that's okay, Great. Anything else?
- [36:00]
C
Yeah, I think the other primary tip I would have for how to get started is to try to identify for yourself what the questions you are running from are. So I think we, we all have like core questions that on some level we know we are refusing to look at. Do I like the career path that I've picked for myself? Do I like my relationship? What are the things that I am doing as self care that are actually just addictive tendencies? I have a whole long list of these in the book that I have coming out that are designed to help you identify the questions in your life that you are not paying attention to so that you can start moving on those topics. And I think that as a sort of diagnostic test is the next thing I'd recommend.
- [36:52]
A
I don't know if this is at all what you're talking about, but the self care versus addictive tendencies is just right up my alley right now. The amount of things that are being done under the guise of wellness and I'm like, I guess it's better than being addicted to gambling and hookers, but it's still an addiction and it's like anything taken too far is problematic. So I just enjoy so thoroughly that you pointed that out. I don't know if that's what you meant, but that's what jumped out to me. Kate, thank you for an incredible conversation for writing this book. Listener, go order it right now. It's. You can just do things. It's available wherever you buy books. But let's keep our local bookstores in business. And if you want to learn more about Kate and her work, you can visit her website, Kate Hall. Com. We're going to put the links to those and every other way to find and follow Kate in show notes. Kate, thank you for being our guest today, for your brilliance, for doing shit and then telling us how to do it, too.
- [37:53]
C
Thank you. Well, thank you so much for having me on.
- [37:55]
A
My absolute pleasure. All right, friend. The life you want probably isn't waiting on more credentials, perfect timing, or some magical moment where fear disappears and you're overcome with so much confidence that you know that you're finally ready. Maybe the thing standing between you and that next step is simply the belief that you're allowed to take it. Like right now. So go apply for the thing. Make the call. Be a beginner. Risk looking a little ridiculous. Try the class, launch the idea. Book the ticket. Have the conversation. Ask the question. Because the people you admire most are not the ones who had all the answers before they did their things. I can promise you that. They're the ones who decided to move. They're the ones who go make their own rules. Because all of that is what woman's work.