Episode 169 - What I’m Working On Right Now: What Will They Think of Me?
We all assume other people have it more figured out than we do. But beneath so many of our struggles is the same familiar good girl question: How am I going to be perceived? In this episode, I'm sharing three places where that question is still showing up in my own life: aging, body image, and using my voice. It’s easy to look at someone else’s life and think they have it all figured out, especially in the self-help world. That's why I think it matters that you know I'm on the same path, working through many of the same struggles I teach about. Today, you’ll hear how I’m working through it just like you. Here’s what I cover:
How the beauty industry profits from teaching women that the way they look is a problem to solve
What coaching women through weight loss taught me about body image and good girl conditioning
The difference between what you logically know and the programming that still shapes your self-perception
Why women speaking up without worrying about how they're perceived has the power to change the world
How learning to love both your logical self and your conditioned "good girl" creates more peace
Reserve your seat for my next workshop: sarafisk.coach/sayitwithclarity
Find Sara here:
pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations
youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333
Transcript
00:59
I was on a coaching call with one of my clients and she's also a coach. And so we were talking about her business and some challenges that she has been trying to figure out and I'm trying to help.
01:10
And partway through, she said something that it just made me laugh because we were talking about like what her ideal situation would look like. And she said, well, when I look at what you have, everything seems, you know, so great.
01:24
Like you have exactly what I want. And in the moment, I just laughed. And it was maybe not the most professional thing to do, but it was just so automatic, not because I was flattered or I just couldn't believe it.
01:43
It just didn't seem true because at the exact same time that I was coaching her on some of the things that are coming up for her, I have been struggling, right? I think entrepreneurship and owning your own business is, in some ways, a lot of struggles and a lot of problems that you just have to work on and figure out.
02:07
But I hadn't talked about it with anybody. And it just, in that moment, it was just so interesting that what she was looking at seemed to her to be what she wanted. And yet on the inside of it, for me, it's been really hard.
02:23
And so I knew it was time again to do another episode about what I am struggling with and working on, because I think it matters that you know that inside of this kind of self-help world, it's very easy to look at other people and think that they either aren't struggling or aren't struggling with the same things or that they've somehow got everything figured out.
02:50
And I don't. I am not past all the hard parts. I am on the very same path, working on the same things that I teach, sometimes succeeding and in some ways, you know, not succeeding yet, still having a lot of things that I need to work through.
03:14
And so here are three things that I am genuinely working on right now. And when I look at all three of them, there's one kind of worry that are showing up underneath each of them. And it is this. It's such a classic good girl question.
03:29
How am I going to be perceived? How are people watching me going to be thinking about me? And that's just such, you know, classic good girl. It's seen in my clients. I still very much see it in myself.
03:46
And so one of the places is aging. And I'm turning 53 this year. That still feels like wild to say. I think you have several decades where it just doesn't seem like things are changing all that much in terms of aging.
04:02
I mean, I've had five kids, right? So there's plenty about my body that is not the same. In some ways, I expected that or I knew it was going to happen. And aging has kind of snuck up on me in a really interesting way.
04:16
I'm noticing sagging and wrinkles and things shifting in a way that are totally out of my control. And at the same time, I used to think that my phone was, you know, just listening to me, but now I'm convinced it's like reading my mind too, because I am getting a ton of ads for fillers and plastic surgery and fat freezing and the whole kind of landscape of products and procedures.
04:48
And in my mind, right, I know that those products and procedures were designed in boardrooms of men to sell me the cure for the problem that they also created, right? The message that my aging body is a problem, that something is going wrong, that I need to preserve my youth for as long as possible to still be attractive, to be pretty, to be wanted, to be desired.
05:23
And here's the crazy thing. I know who built that landscape that I'm living in. And I know why. Men decided what female bodies are supposed to look like and supposed to do, and then built an entire industry to profit around having the problems with their bodies pointed out and when women believe they're not doing it right.
05:47
And I still feel that pull. An example, I have been coloring my hair for years. I started going gray actually in college and it really ramped up, you know, maybe four or five years ago. And so I've just colored it because I don't want to go gray.
06:06
A couple of days ago, I just noticed how resistant I was. I had several, you know, an inch and a half of gray grown out that I had just been kind of covering up. And my husband said, why don't you just let it go?
06:19
Just let it go, Gray. And my boys, the two that still live at home, were like, yeah, mom, it would look so cool. You'd look so good. And I couldn't do it. I even went and had AI like generate an image.
06:33
I put a picture of myself in AI and asked it to make up a picture of me with gray hair just to see. And it was interesting because it was just like, no, I don't like that. And then I went and colored my hair.
06:48
And so I'm just sitting with what it means that I'm not ready for that, that I'm not ready. I don't want to go gray. I don't want to be perceived as someone older than I am. In fact, I'm doing something to hold on to looking younger.
07:08
And it's such a mind fuck, right? Because on the one hand, I can honestly, from a place I genuinely believe, tell you aging is normal, that so many women that I admire are older and radiant and free in their bodies in a way that looks completely beautiful to me.
07:28
I believe that and I want that. And I still have a part of me that is still trying to meet beauty standards. It's this loud, trained part of me. And the standard is that beauty is young. And so sitting with how both of those things are true, same time and same body, the logical part knows what it knows, and then the good girl conditioned part still wants what she was taught to want.
07:58
That is a tension I have not resolved. And I'm just kind of living into it. And so one of the things that I decided to do was turn off some of the filters that I have been, that I've used in the past.
08:12
I'm not filming reels with filters anymore. I'm not, you can turn Zoom filters on that make you look, you know, your skin smooth and all that. And I, I turned them off as a way of just really seeing myself and letting myself be seen.
08:29
And so I'm sitting with the questions and giving myself opportunities to really see and experience myself differently. And there's another way that it is also showing up around my body, and it is weight loss.
08:45
I started coaching as a weight loss coach. I have, ever since having kids, been about 20, 25 pounds over the bullshit BMI obesity weight loss standard. We'll get into that in a second. And I really thought that telling everyone that I was a weight loss coach would force me to lose weight.
09:05
And I didn't like it. And what I learned through being a weight loss coach was that I didn't want to lose weight. I wanted instead to really love and appreciate my body. And I felt like I got there. And once I got there, I changed my focus and didn't had no desire to talk about weight with anyone anymore.
09:28
It just felt settled. It felt really good. And then about three, four months ago, I started taking Adderall for my late diagnosis, ADHD, that I just, it was like trying to herd cats, getting things done.
09:45
And one of the side effects is that I forget to eat sometimes and I've been losing weight. And when I noticed the weight loss, I felt something I was not expecting. I was secretly delighted. And this is the honest version of me talking about this with you, because yeah, I had tried other things before kind of coming to that place of peace.
10:09
I had tried lots of things for years that hadn't worked. And coming to a place where I just felt kind of settled and good about it, like I had made peace with the shape and the size and the fact that I didn't, you know, match whatever number or pant size I was supposed to.
10:30
That honestly felt good. And then the weight started coming off and something in me just got really excited. And I started asking questions that I'm still sitting with. And I'm sitting with the fact that, first of all, that I care.
10:46
And second of all, these questions that I don't really know how to answer, which is like, am I skinny now? Do I quote unquote qualify? And for what? It's the good girl rules. It's those beauty standards, right?
11:00
On the one hand, again, that's good girl programming. Those are those parts of me that always felt like that standard was kind of out of reach. And it's the part of me that was trained to measure my body against a bullshit standard that someone else invented.
11:19
And that's, again, kind of that back and forth between the logical part of me that knows exactly where this came from, that knows it's bullshit. I mean, BMI is the scale that categorizes bodies as healthy or unhealthy, was invented in the 1830s by this Belgian mathematician using data from white European men.
11:44
It was racist and bullshit from the beginning. And it was designed to measure like averages. And so it's been part of our discussion about health and body size for decades without ever even looking at, is it measuring what it's supposed to measure?
12:07
And since then, there's a lot of data about health and health at many, many different sizes. And so, again, my brain knows that. There is logic and there is programming. Even knowing that, even having been taught about body image and the beauty standard and the whole like industry that is around that, even having real conversations with women for years about this, the conditioned part of me still feels the pull of the standard.
12:44
So again, I don't have a super clean answer. I'm realizing that the body kind of, I don't know that I want to call it body dysmorphia. Again, I don't know. Is that it? I might have to look into that.
12:57
But this inability of me to see my own body as separate from the standard completely has resurfaced again. And so I'm just sitting in what to do with that. Number three, third place where this is showing up a lot is in using my voice.
13:17
And this one actually might be the hardest one to talk about because I genuinely, genuinely believe in my whole body, without a doubt, that if women were empowered to speak up about what they want and what they need without apology, without worrying about how they would be perceived, we would live in a fundamentally different world.
13:43
The biggest problem we have right now is women who do not feel like they can. I feel that. I know it in my bones deeply. And I almost get a little embarrassed by how earnestly I want to talk about it when I'm working with a client or when I'm thinking about it throughout the day.
14:04
And so when I go to speak in public on a podcast or social media, or even when I'm talking about it with other people, I feel a part of me get careful. And I start to think, is this too much? Am I being weird?
14:22
Is this, am I awkward? Am I being too earnest? What if someone disagrees? You know what? People already know this. What if they think I'm naive or wrong or if I'm just too passionate about this? I mean, the good girl is still in the room, right?
14:42
And I see how I have gotten comfortable with like a certain level of speaking up, of putting my ideas into words, of putting them out into the world. And I still feel careful about it sometimes. I still feel like I want to be perceived as someone who is smart, like I want to be perceived as somebody who knows what they're talking about.
15:05
And even in my own work, even when I am just literally recording an episode about the cost of staying quiet, I have that thought. How is it going to be perceived? Am I going to be perceived as somebody who is intelligent and knows what she's talking about?
15:22
Because I don't want people to think I'm weird or strange or overly earnest. And sometimes I feel that way about me. And so I'm still learning to love that part of me and still learning how to work with the limitations that I am placing on my own voice and where I get to use it and what I get to speak up and say.
15:52
And so aging, weight and voice, those are kind of where I am right now and really asking the question, how am I going to be perceived? How am I going to be thought of? And since I always want to be honest and forthright that I am not the finished product by far, I offer this episode in the spirit of transparency.
16:23
And also, if you have these same questions, if you notice there's a really logical part of you that knows it's bullshit, that has the information. And then there's the other part of you that still wants what the good girl rules teach you to want.
16:42
It's totally normal. It's totally normal. And I think the value is in noticing the tension and in letting all of those parts of us be loved equally. I can love the logical part. I can love the good girl part.
17:01
And as I love both of them, they settle down. I feel more peace. And I feel like I'm able to just keep going. And in some ways, I don't actually need to fix anything because when I notice and when I love those parts, it's easier to keep going.
17:20
And so if you're in that too, and if you're someone who knows better and still feels the pull of what you were taught, that's, it just makes complete sense. So that's what I got for today. Thanks for listening.
17:33
I'll see you next week.
