Gals with Good News: Reframing Doubt, Reclaiming Joy
00:41
Mara Kamat
Hey everyone. We're excited to be back this week as a twosome, just Carrie andI. Every once in a while we wanted to set time aside some weeks where we couldcheck in with each other and pull out some themes that we are seeing from thegreat speakers we've interviewed so far. And really to just touch base, doubleclick, so to speak and decompress. Also, what would a well produced podcast bewithout a catchy subcategory? Well, we are introducing one today.
01:30
Carrie Aguilar
That's right, it's gals with good news. Okay, all is not lost. It has been adoozy of a 90 days, but Mara just got back from an incredible trip to New Yorkwith a group of 25 or so university undergraduate women and. Well, you've got asmile on your face. So why don't you tell us a little bit about the trip.
01:54
Mara Kamat
Being with the students this week, it was truly one of the most impactfulexperiences I've had in a long time. I spent Sunday through Tuesday with agroup of phenomenal undergraduate women who are graduating in just six weeks.They were incredibly focused and confident and just ready to take on the world.We spent the few days listening and engaging with women from across variousindustries, companies and generations. What really stood out to me was thepower of connection and mentorship among women. And it's something that I hadbeen missing a bit in that I get it from the podcast and other organizationsthat I'm part of, but being a consultant and not in a structured organizationall of the time, you miss some of those connections. And so being among it wasvery powerful for me.
02:51
Mara Kamat
And they brought some really interesting themes that resonate with me and Iknow, but just resetting in them and thinking about them was really important.
03:04
Carrie Aguilar
Can you dig into some of those themes?
03:06
Mara Kamat
First and foremost, one of the things that really hit home for me was the levelof imposter. Syndrome that young women have and women have in general. And thiswas a topic that came up throughout the course of the three days together. Thetheme of the three days was all around empowering, engaging and elevatingwomen. We explored topics, like I said, unlocking your confidence, overcomingimposter syndrome, leading across generations. I facilitated a session oncrafting the life that you want and talked about what it means to be amultidimensional woman. What was so surprising to me in that session was Iasked the question, how many of you have hobbies, things that you like to dooutside of school or work?
03:56
Carrie Aguilar
How many raise their hand?
03:57
Mara Kamat
None. I mean, maybe a couple, maybe two in the room.
04:01
Carrie Aguilar
Wow.
04:01
Mara Kamat
And I guess if I reflect back, at that point in my career, I was very focusedon graduating, starting my career, learning about the organization. I wasn'tthinking about what are my hobbies, what am I doing outside of this? I mean, Iwas hanging out with friends.
04:20
Carrie Aguilar
Right.
04:21
Mara Kamat
Maybe doing some trivia nights.
04:23
Carrie Aguilar
Yeah. I'm trying to think what I was doing. Ooh, I think I was probablypartying. I mean, let's be real, that's exactly what you do.
04:33
Mara Kamat
Right. So I think it was a great dialogue in that the women kind of steppedback and even the women that were in their careers in the room ask themselvesthat question, like, what hobbies do I have? And some of them were at the pointwhere they were parents and they had small children who were also, you know,they were co facilitators, facilitating other sessions for those women. Andthey were asking themselves the same questions around, like, what hobbies do Ihave besides work and taking care of my kids? And so to all of our listeners,what I would tell you or ask of you is be mindful of what is your hobby? Whatare some things that really inspire. Inspire you and that you want to dooutside of your day to day work or parenting?
05:21
Mara Kamat
Because I think as you think about being a whole human and the last year,something that's been really important for me is carving out time to have ahobby. So for me it's gardening, it's also reading. I'm an avid reader. I alsolike doing water sports.
05:38
Carrie Aguilar
What does that bring for you? What does reading bring for you or gardeningbring for you? Obviously, besides. Well, I mean, do you grow vegetables?
05:47
Mara Kamat
I do. So I have like a whole produce crop that comes out of my gardening. Andwe've gotten so into it over the years that we actually now have a pumpkinpatch.
06:01
Carrie Aguilar
Okay, we grow.
06:03
Mara Kamat
So we'll grow pumpkins. We have apples in the Backyard. And then we have.
06:08
Carrie Aguilar
Do you ever feel badly when you cannot eat all the apples? Cause that's where Iwould. Where the wheels would come off the tracks for us.
06:17
Mara Kamat
My apple orchard is still in its infancy, so I don't have more than enoughapples.
06:22
Carrie Aguilar
What about the zucchini? Do you.
06:24
Mara Kamat
Oh, I have an avid crop of zucchini, of which I give away to every friend andneighbor who will take it. And it was actually a joke at one point where myfriends are like, we do not want any more zucchinis.
06:35
Carrie Aguilar
Our Liv and Ari like, stop with the zoodles, mom.
06:39
Mara Kamat
Stop with the zoodles. But we have insane tomato crops and cucumbers andraspberries and squash and eggplant. Everybody was over the eggplant. Theeggplant became the zucchini joke because nobody wanted my eggplants heard. Soall to say, it's beautiful to have a hobby. And so I encourage these youngwomen and I encourage our listeners to step back and say, we know we have afinite amount of time in our days, but at the end of the day, it's up to us tomake the time for the things that we wanna do. And having a hobby for me, andgardening is a place where I can decompress. I'm moving my body so I'm gettingactivity. I feel super endorphins. Endorphins. I feel super proud andaccomplished to grow something and then feed my family and friends with thatfood.
07:31
Carrie Aguilar
Love that.
07:32
Mara Kamat
So the benefits can look different for all of you and whatever hobby that mightbe. But I encourage you to kind of step back and assess, do I have a hobby? Ifnot, try some things. You may not find one right away that you love, but findsomething that resonates with you and do that through trying different thingsand having different experiences. So I thought that was an interesting kind oftakeaway for the women and something for me to have thought about over thecourse of the last couple of years where I wasn't prioritizing having a hobbyor doing something outside of my day to day work. And I think that's importantto live a healthy life, to have other things that you can depend on outside ofjust working.
08:17
Mara Kamat
And I very much was that person that just worked and parented and didn't do awhole lot outside of that. We also had a great session facilitated by MarciaIton, Lessons from a Google Trailblazer. She's an executive at Google and Iappreciated her insights on the importance of servant leadership. Being inservice to others without being a Doormat. That was an important kind oftakeaway for me to reset in terms of, like, my own leadership. I certainly tryto be a servant leader to those that I work with, and at times it can be at theexpense of myself. And so I thought that was a beautiful message for women andleaders to think about.
09:03
Mara Kamat
She also shared that as a leader, if you're micromanaging someone, it's likelybecause you don't believe in them or they're not performing at the level thatthey need to be performing. And I thought that was a really good message.
09:16
Carrie Aguilar
Did she give an example of how to reframe or shift from that kind ofmicromanaging to more of the servant leadership side?
09:30
Mara Kamat
She did. And I think the thing you have to consider with that is this personperforming at the level that you need them to perform? Are they a good fit onyour team and for the job you're asking them to do?
09:44
Carrie Aguilar
Okay.
09:44
Mara Kamat
Because the whole purpose of you micromanaging is often that you don't trustthem or maybe they don't have the right capabilities. And so in that case, youneed to ask yourself, are they the right fit for the organization and the team,or do you need to do something different in terms of spending time with them tobuild that trust so you can stop micromanaging and let go? So it's a finebalance as we.
10:11
Carrie Aguilar
Setting accountability or setting kind of guardrails and milestones so you cancreate trust within them and then potentially or. And then set thoseguardrails, communicate to that them for them to achieve it. And if. Or ifthat's. Or if they're not able to achieve it right, then it's maybe a differenttype of conversation that they may not be the best for the team.
10:37
Mara Kamat
Absolutely. And I think you have to be open to giving trust so people canthrive. And then when they can't, it's a decision point of can you lift them upand coach and mentor and teach, or is it that they're maybe not a good fit?
10:53
Carrie Aguilar
Got it.
10:55
Mara Kamat
Another powerful reminder, and I love this one that came up in a differentsession, was how you. How you attack an issue that might feel impossible.
11:09
Carrie Aguilar
Okay.
11:10
Mara Kamat
And so this gets back to the idea of imposter syndrome as well. And I thoughtthis was a great kind of tactic to use and implement when you're feelingoverwhelmed and in a situation where something feels impossible to achieve. Soyou can kind of step back and ask yourself some questions. First, can youremember a time when you overcame something that felt just as hard as thismoment? That you're in second. How did you push through it then? Who was thereto support you through it? How did you feel before, during and after thesituation? What was helpful to you during that time? And how can you replicatethat to overcome the significant obstacle in your current circumstances?
12:05
Mara Kamat
And I really, I love these questions and this framework because too often do weencounter a challenging situation and you either don't know what to do causeyou're shocked, or you just start doing things without thinking in order torespond and your amygdala hijack kind of kicks in. But I thought this was areally clear, tactical way to kind of step back and assess the situation.
12:34
Carrie Aguilar
I like it. So it creates, it almost allows you to mimic a problem solvingscenario where you are able or where you are able to overcome an obstacle thatseems to be unable to overcome that. You've already been able to do it beforeand basically recreate it, but in this new. Almost like mimic it and overcomeit in this new. In this new, now unknown scenario.
13:06
Mara Kamat
Exactly. I think for me, one of my reflection points was I was a head of HR ofa company during the pandemic and our employees packaged food. And so we neededour employees in our facilities working 247 and we couldn't just tell them,hey, go work remote. And so that to me, as a head of hr, thinking about how dowe navigate this, how do we keep people safe, how do we make sure they don'tget sick? At one point you felt you were even, you know, they were riskingtheir lives when we didn't have the answers to a lot of these questions. And sofor me, that felt like a really intense obstacle, I'm sure. And I would haveloved to have this framework to think about, how do we overcome this? You know,I got through it.
13:53
Mara Kamat
And when I go back in terms of my life and I face the next obstacle, whether itbe work or home.
13:59
Carrie Aguilar
Right.
14:00
Mara Kamat
I know I overcame that and there were other obstacles in my life that I'vecertainly overcome. But this insight provides a really nice framework toreflect back on the obstacles that I have overcome and how I'm going to attackthe one in front of me.
14:14
Carrie Aguilar
Right. What are the steps that you can follow?
14:16
Mara Kamat
So I really love that. All to say, I think that this session with these women,I was asked to go be part of it because I am an executive woman and I'm verypassionate about lifting women up and helping the next generation of women growand develop. But really I got so much from being part of the experience, beingsurrounded by this energy.
14:39
Carrie Aguilar
I love that.
14:39
Mara Kamat
The amazing.
14:40
Carrie Aguilar
I promised myself I wasn't gonna say I love that again, but here we are. Okay,keep going. Sorry.
14:45
Mara Kamat
No, that's all I had to say. It was just a pleasure to get the experience, tobe in a room of women where people were really vulnerable and honest and openand supportive. And we don't always have the forums for that and where we canbuild the forums in our lives and our organizations and our communities. Ithink it's really important to support other women, but also to create safespaces to have honest conversations.
15:13
Carrie Aguilar
So I guess shifting a little bit from gals with good news. So some of thethrough lines that we've seen from our guests, and definitely with Rachel,Felicia, Carrie, and also with Shanna. It's so weird to say Carrie and HarryMurphy. Not me, Carrie, but also with Shanna. We've all spent time talkingabout our authentic selves. And one of the things that I want to deep diveinto, and it's something that Mari, you actually mentioned a little aboutprobably about five minutes ago, actually, with the girls that you identifiedwith in this group in New York, you mentioned negative self talk. And I know weboth have daughters, and I know Liv is heading into hurtling into puberty,Penelope's heading into tweenhood, and I know Ari is heading there as well.
16:08
Carrie Aguilar
And I know it keeps me up at night, and I know it keeps you up at night aswell. And it's something that you identified with the women as just thepresence of negative self talk. Can you kind of unpack what you heard and maybepotentially how. I mean, obviously we don't know how to solve it, but how wecan. Some ideas maybe we can put together. Yeah.
16:38
Mara Kamat
Yeah. It's an interesting topic and one that is so ever present in both mypersonal and professional lives and life as a mom, as you talked about.
16:49
Carrie Aguilar
Yeah.
16:50
Mara Kamat
One of the things I was surprised about having spent time with these amazing,confident young women, was the amount of self talk that each of them have. Andthen let's add to that too. All of the women speakers who were at differentpoints in their career being really honest and open about the negative selftalk that they have as well. And if I'm honest with myself, I have negativeself talk probably more now than I've ever had in my entire life. And I thinkthat's interesting because if I think back to my younger self at 21, 22, I wasway overly confident. There's no reason for it. Certainly I probably should nothave been, but I was so confident in myself, I was so smart. I was blah, blah.Right.
17:40
Carrie Aguilar
And there used to be a statement that was. It was about 18 year olds, but itwas all 18 year olds know everything until they grow up or something like that.
17:48
Mara Kamat
Exactly. That was, like me, incredibly humbling now as a new adult, as aparent. Right. And so with that being said, it really got me thinking as I wassitting there and I was. It makes me worried for our daughters. I think aboutthe next generation of women. Many of them have grown up in the age of socialmedia, which, if we think about it, we didn't.
18:12
Carrie Aguilar
Yeah, were.
18:12
Mara Kamat
I didn't have social media at all. I barely even had access to news unless itwas on the tv. And otherwise you didn't know what was happening in the world.At the same level that everybody else knows what's happening in the world. Andthe same level today, there's so much negativity on social media and hatethat's just, you know, out there in the world and part of people's everydaylives. And growing up, I didn't have social media, I didn't have as much accessto news. And so we didn't have that.
18:47
Carrie Aguilar
Right.
18:48
Mara Kamat
So it makes me think about, how do we help these, you know, this nextgeneration of women who are constantly exposed to comparisons, filteredrealities through social media.
19:02
Carrie Aguilar
Absolutely.
19:03
Mara Kamat
And this culture of like, instant validation that creates such an overwhelmingpressure. So as it relates to my kids. And getting back to your question of,like, what are some ideas of how we can overcome this? My daughter Ariana has agymnastics meet today. And this morning I asked her, ari, what are you gonna doas you prepare for your gymnastics meet? And her instant response was, mom, Iknow I have to have positive self talk.
19:35
Carrie Aguilar
I love that.
19:35
Mara Kamat
And I said, ari, why do you have to have positive self talk, babe? And shegoes, because I have a higher likelihood to perform better if I am morepositive in the story that I'm telling myself. Now, then how does a 9 year oldknow to say that? Because. Because it's been drilled into her mind over andover. Because I want my girls to be raised with this idea of even when there'sa negative story I'm telling myself in my head, even when I'm nervous, evenwhen I'm overwhelmed. How can I shift that narrative? How can I interrupt thatmindset to be positive? Because that will help me to potentially have a morepositive outcome. And so the other interesting conversation that came out ofit, Ari, added to the conversation, she goes, and, mom, I'm gonna have Achampionship mindset.
20:33
Carrie Aguilar
Oh, wow.
20:35
Mara Kamat
And I was like, wow. R. Where did that come from? We haven't talked about achampionship mindset. And she goes, well, we had somebody come into gymnasticsthis week and talk to us about what it means to have a championship mindset.
20:46
Carrie Aguilar
Wow.
20:46
Mara Kamat
So not only am I gonna try to be positive, I'm also gonna have a championshipmindset. And I was like, great, Ari. So when you get there and you're nervous,I hope these are the things that you will think about and bring forward,contrary to how overwhelmed you might be. So, you know, those are a couple ofthings. But when I was with the women, I think another thing that I reallyappreciated was the dialogue we had about overcoming imposter syndrome andunlocking confidence. And we talked about reframing a recent failure as alearning experience and the importance of being comfortable with failure.
21:33
Mara Kamat
There's a lot of research out there that supports this whole idea that womenhave a much more challenging time in processing failure and overcoming thatfailure, whereas men seem to move on from it much more quickly and learn fromit. So if we as women could try to reframe that for ourselves, that failure isa good thing.
21:56
Carrie Aguilar
Right.
21:56
Mara Kamat
You're learning, you're growing, you're stepping into it, and then being ableto pivot into what's next and learn from that experience and bringing itforward. So that was another thing that we talked about and another strategythat I think we can employ when we're going down this path of negative selftalk and being afraid of what might be in front of us.
22:22
Carrie Aguilar
When I was in sales at Yelp and when I was a sales director, one of the booksthat I read and one of the pieces of. Actually, frankly, one of my favorite TEDTalks is a woman by the name of Amy Cuddy. She wrote a book called. I thinkit's called Presence. But what I loved about it, and I'll explain to you whatit is, but what I loved about it is that it's actually less about the mind, andit's more about kind of fooling yourself into building confidence. But the bestway to think about it is. Have you ever watched TED Lasso?
23:08
Mara Kamat
Yes.
23:08
Carrie Aguilar
Okay, so in it, the owner, her name's Hannah Waddingham, but I don't actuallyremember her name on that.
23:16
Mara Kamat
I don't remember her name, but she's beautiful, she's tall.
23:18
Carrie Aguilar
So anytime she has this huge meeting, she does this thing in front of a mirrorwhere she makes herself really big, and she goes like, okay. So that isdirectly correlated to this study that was done. That basically said that ifyou go and make yourself physically big for three minutes, that you are 60%more likely to get a job or land a big account or fill in the blank. And Ialways think about that. And so when and though this isn't directly to negativeself talk, what I will say is that and the book Presence, and I've read itthree times, it speaks directly to this and actually speaks to my business,which I do. Sales strategy. And I also help female founders raise money.
24:16
Carrie Aguilar
One of the things that I tell them to do is I tell them to physically makethemselves big before pitching their ideas for venture capital like VCs. Andone of the pieces is because VCs don't invest in the best idea, they invest inthe most confident person in the room. And the most confident person in theroom is not necessarily the smartest. It's the person who, and I shouldn't sayunfortunately, but like the person who takes up the most space and who justcomes across as the smartest. Whether they are or not is the question. Right?And so that's really. So when you're talking about the overcoming impostersyndrome, it's almost like, how do you. I don't, I don't like using the termfake it till you make it, but how do you do that?
25:07
Carrie Aguilar
And this is just a physical way to do it. So, so Ted Lasso being HannahWaddingham and going like is a physical way to actually do that. And I always,I mean, it actually works. But I think about that. I also think about what itwould be like if we didn't have to tell people that failure was failure. It'sjust doing. It's just doing. It's trying, it's learning, right?
25:36
Mara Kamat
It's a growth mindset, right?
25:38
Carrie Aguilar
It's pivoting, it's doing the thing, you know, making a change and then doingit again and seeing how far you get this time and then, you know, makinganother observation and then making another change. And I think that's reallyimportant. That's something that I work with my daughter on. She doesn't haveto be perfect. There's no point in being perfect. Literally no one is. And themost successful people, in fact, have failed many more times than they've eversucceeded. And the reason why people know about them is because they havefailed more than they have succeeded. And you don't learn, hear about theirfailures, but they failed because they've practiced and practiced. They failed,they failed. And they've succeeded. Succeeded because they failed. They failed,they failed. And I think about that all the time.
26:27
Mara Kamat
So in the spirit of that, I think it's a reframing.
26:31
Carrie Aguilar
Yeah, absolutely.
26:33
Mara Kamat
One thing I think that women can do, kids can do, that's helpful is sometimeswe get ourselves on the negative spiral. Right. And so how do you break that?How do you look at it? Exactly the way that you said one, you try to adopt andpractice that mindset.
26:50
Carrie Aguilar
Right.
26:51
Mara Kamat
And then in addition to that, you get mentors and coaches around you that canhelp you reframe those failures when you have them and be there as a supportsystem.
27:02
Carrie Aguilar
Right.
27:03
Mara Kamat
And so I think where you can think about who are those people that I surroundmyself with and when I do have that failure, who's going to pick me back up andhelp me get back on track in the mindset that I want to adopt when I startgoing down that negative self talk rabbit hole? And I think being in that roomwith the women for me this week helped reaffirm that of how important those,like mentors are, those communities are of women, to just be able to connect inthis space of everything that's happening in the world. Building thosecommunities of women, whether it be within your organizations or in yourcommunity or just your group of girlfriends, is more important than ever.
27:47
Mara Kamat
We heard Rachel talk about how important the gratitude practice was in our lastpodcast, and that's actually something that continued to come up over thecourse of this week when I was with these wonderful ladies around. The impactof having a gratitude practice. As we think about tangible recommendations forpeople. A gratitude practice is one of them. What are the others?
28:08
Carrie Aguilar
Stretching. My husband stretches every night before bed and it really helpshim. He has to really decompress at the end of every day. So he meditates andhe stretches.
28:20
Mara Kamat
I appreciate that in him, though.
28:22
Carrie Aguilar
Yeah, he does it every day and it's a movement thing for him.
28:26
Mara Kamat
When the weather is nice, I usually walk outside every single day. And thereare even times where I will make sure that I put bare feet on the cement or theground. I shouldn't say the cement. I actually should go for grass because ofthe feeling of energy, of being connected to the earth. I also walk and work inthe wintertime, so I will walk on my treadmill and I try to do four miles whenI can while I'm working. And four miles is kind of excessive. You definitelydon't have to do that. But for me, some of my best work in my entire day isdone when I'm walking on that treadmill.
29:04
Carrie Aguilar
I have a standing desk, and I like working at my standing desk. I have neverbeen successful walking and working. I will say I enjoy working at the placewhere I play tennis. And I do like having a communal place where I can see acommunity of people that I know that brings me joy. But I do think that havinga stretching or meditation at the end of a day, it feels like it helps him. Ican't even say it helps me. Cause I don't do it.
29:41
Mara Kamat
I used to do this with my kids all the time. And I think this was a beautifulpractice. And we got out of it, and I have to find a way to probably get backin it. But we made gratitude jars and we painted them so each kid had their owngratitude jar. And it felt like their own and expensive expression ofthemselves. And then at the end of every day, we asked them to write somethingthat they were grateful for and put it in their jar. So when they were eitherhaving a really bad day or at the end of the month, depending on, you know,whatever, we would pull out their jars, we'd dump them on the table, and we'dall go around the table and read what was in our gratitude jars. So it wasn'tjust the kids.
30:20
Mara Kamat
Like, my husband and I had to engage in the practice too. And we totally havegotten out of it. But I think that would be a beautiful thing to bring back.And as a family, it was a very beautiful moment for us to engage meaningfullywith each other.
30:35
Carrie Aguilar
I will also say from a workforce environment, I'm sure right now it's reallytough in the workforce. And one of the things that I did recently find as I wasgoing through all my stuff was at one of my. One of my teams made me a jarwhere they put all the things that they were grateful for me. And they cut themout and they wrote them down and they put them in this jar. And I kept it. Imean, it's been years and I kept it. And I, like, recently opened it back upand read it, and now it's actually on my desk again. But I was just thinkingnow, because I know that it's been. It's like so heavy right now in workplaceseverywhere, that would also be a really nice thing to include, maybe as, like,work anniversaries.
31:21
Carrie Aguilar
If you have a team, maybe that would be something where everyone on your teamcould put nice things as like anniversary gratitude practice that you couldincorporate.
31:30
Mara Kamat
I really appreciate that idea. And something I've done over the course of myentire career is when people write me thank you notes that are reallymeaningful to me, I keep them.
31:41
Carrie Aguilar
I love that.
31:41
Mara Kamat
So I have, like, probably over 150 of these thank you notes. And when I feellike I need to be picked up again or like I need a little bit of inspiration orenergy, I will open them and read them. And I have some that were from 20 yearsago now, and those make me smile. And I hold them close to my heart because Imiss some of those people that I worked with early on in my career who helpedshape me into the leader and human that I am today. But I've. I've. I've reallyappreciated that throughout the course of my career, and it's something that Ihold near and dear to my heart, and it's brought me joy even 20 years later.
32:20
Mara Kamat
And I have thank you notes that were given to me a week ago, and I have thankyou notes that were given to me 20 years ago. So that's another idea for ourlisteners out there on something that they might consider for themselves.
32:32
Carrie Aguilar
Oh, that's great.
32:35
Mara Kamat
So as we close out our podcast today, Carrie, we always ask this question toour guests. So why not ask this question to you? What's bringing you joy?
32:48
Carrie Aguilar
Well, this week, and I asked. Wait, wait. I did text my husband, and he didn't.He didn't respond. So I can't tell you what it's called. I don't remember thesyndrome, but there's something that basically they use it to describe. Forexample, if you're in the market for a car and you test drive a car, and thenyou end up seeing the car everywhere. It's a type of syndrome, and I can'tthink of the name, but it's basically when you see something and you take noteof it, and then all of a sudden you see that thing everywhere. Okay, so I tooknote of something a couple of weeks ago. So my husband and my daughter bothpractice Jiu Jitsu, and they are avid. It's a wonderful community in Beechwood.
33:37
Carrie Aguilar
It's called Burning River Jiu Jitsu, and there is a plaque on the wall, and theplaque says it's a quote by Teddy Roosevelt, and it's called the man in theArena. And I have now seen this plaque, like, six different places. Mostrecent. Well, not most recently, but so much so that on my Instagram feed, TimMisney recited it. And I know. So peculiar. Cleveland Live did this tour ofhis. He did a tour of his house, and he has it, like, in his urinal. And he,like, recite. Yeah, he like, memorized it and recited it. But I thought it wasvery fitting for this conversation today. And it's called the man in the arena,so let's just pretend that it's the woman in the arena, okay?
34:30
Carrie Aguilar
It says it is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how thestrong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. Thecredit belongs to the man who's actually in the arena, whose face is marred bydust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who airs and comes short againand again, who, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming, butwho does actually strive to do the deeds. Who knows great enthusiasm, the greatdevotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in theend the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, atleast fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with thosecold and timid souls who. Who neither know victory nor defeat.
35:21
Mara Kamat
I love that. Why is that bringing you joy, Carrie?
35:24
Carrie Aguilar
Oh, I just think that right now in this world, there is so much going on. And Ijust want to encourage people like us having this podcast. We're like making astatement. We're doing something. And I don't want to be someone who doesn't dosomething. And I'm gonna fuck up.
35:53
Mara Kamat
We all are.
35:54
Carrie Aguilar
I'm gonna do the wrong thing, I'm gonna say the wrong thing. I'm going to betaken the wrong way. And instead of not doing anything, instead of keeping mymouth shut, I'm just going to keep going because I just. I have a daughter, Ihave a family, I have a life. And I just want to live it in the best waypossible.
36:17
Mara Kamat
I mean, and we're going to keep lifting women up.
36:19
Carrie Aguilar
Yeah.
36:19
Mara Kamat
And we're going to keep talking about how we create meaningful communities forconversation, for women.
36:24
Carrie Aguilar
Yeah.
36:25
Mara Kamat
And communities where we can support each other.
36:28
Carrie Aguilar
Exactly.
36:29
Mara Kamat
And for me, I invite the men into the conversation, too. My husband has twodaughters. He sits on the board of an all girls school. And it's because I wanthim and he wants, like we want him and every man to advocate for equity. Right.And for all of us to have an equal voice and for all of us to feel like we'reachieving promotions. And we get the promotions because we've achieved that.And that's being recognized. Whether you're. Doesn't matter what your ethnicityis, it doesn't matter what gender you are. You know, I hope that this worldcontinues to be equitable for my girls.
37:14
Carrie Aguilar
We are the men and women in the arena that, you know, we'll be okay.
37:19
Mara Kamat
We will be okay. And we all have a role to make the world a better place. Yep.And to continue on that journey, no matter what obstacles or challenges mightbe in front of us.
37:29
Carrie Aguilar
Yep.
37:30
Mara Kamat
We'll step back and ask ourselves those questions that we explored early on inthe podcast.
37:35
Carrie Aguilar
Yep.
37:35
Mara Kamat
To figure out how we overcome the challenges in front of us. And there isbeauty in doing that together.
37:41
Carrie Aguilar
Yep. And there is beauty in pivoting and trying and pivoting and trying again,especially.
37:51
Mara Kamat
As we navigate our own learnings in this podcast.
37:54
Carrie Aguilar
Exactly.
37:57
Mara Kamat
Thank you for tuning in to In Her Land. If you love this conversation, pleaseshare it with a friend, leave us a review and keep following along at inherland.com where we highlight more incredible women making an impact. Until next time.
