Should Women Quit Working?

(00:01) [Music] I’m Dr Kelly Brogan you may know me as the New York Times bestselling author of a book with an exploding pill on the cover Renegade psychiatrist pul dancer or honorary member of the disinformation Dozen what can I say I’m a born provocator I’ve spent most of my recent life exposing deceptions connecting dots and discovering the secret places my inner victim is still waiting to be liberated and now I feel called to help you reclaim all of your parts your health your sexuality your power and your expression so that you can finally

(00:42) truly own yourself I want to ignite in you that inner knowing and the pulsing Vitality that lives beneath your disempowerment disconnection and resentment so that you can audaciously courageously and playfully alchemize your struggle into the specific pleasure of Who You Are this is Reclamation radio hi and welcome back to Reclamation radio I am Dr Kelly Brogan and today I want to talk about the subject of female entrepreneurship and what it is like to be a career woman today and arguably I could have let this

(01:21) cook a bit more however I have been having this conversation with so many friends and colleagues that it feels like something is Rippling forth and I just want to put a couple things in your pipe and see if you want to smoke it so I have observed and experienced that there is an epidemic of women in varying states of vigilance about money about productivity and about success often these are women who are married with partners and they are still holding all of this energy and of course it can be women like myself who are single with

(02:04) children playing both roles but I don’t know a single female entrepreneur who is living an easeful set it and forget it life with her business I am probably the greatest expression of that that I know because I have typically less than four scheduled hours a week and I can do whatever I want with the rest of my life and my business has been very successful by any metric for since its inception for many years and I transitioned from a brick-and mortar Private Practice to a a fully virtual business and so I’ve you know played in

(02:52) different Arenas as a you know published author Etc so I’ve tried on many different flavors of Entrepreneurship and I I have come closer than most women that I know to balancing the work life equation and I look around and here’s the thing even though I only work a few hours a week and it is definitely doing things that I love to do I wake up thinking about my business I go to sleep thinking about my business I live my life and I’m always looking through the lens of teachable moments and inspirational content and of course the

(03:35) light side of this is that any struggle that I encounter I you know I can mine for meaning almost immediately and it actually ends up being something that I can be paid to share so what is the problem the problem is that there is a Gaslight that I am waking up to and I wonder what you think about it The Gaslight is that I can have it all as a wife as a mother and as a businesswoman that there’s no need to choose between them because now you can have all of the identities you want and my tale From The Trenches is

(04:21) that this is not true that this is actually a myth and when I pull the women around me do you actually feel like you are a present mother while you’re also running your business and this could be you literally are doing nothing that day related to work you’re with your kids but is your energy actually with your kids or is a good percentage like maybe even 53% in your business realm and what about Dynamics with your partner with your husband is there actually a balance there where you are oriented towards your role as wife and also your role as

(05:07) founder or CEO I know some women some female entrepreneurs in the women’s empowerment space who are you know a couple of decades ahead of me actually like you could call them Elders let’s say and when I speak to them I consider their lived experience a Harbinger I do not want what they have going on where I get to the end of my life even if I have not that they’re at the end of their lives but you know what I mean even if I have a increasingly and robustly successful business and I can enjoy inspiring and catalyzing transformation in so many

(05:47) women which I do but I am in this Dynamic with my business where I never actually get to Exhale and I like somehow die in a castle alone kind of a thing is that worth it so there is a pain point that I have identified we come to as career women and specifically entrepreneurs so I am really devoting this solo cast to all of my girl boss entrepreneurs all of my small business owners my Founders my CEOs especially but not only if you are a mother and a wife there is a pain point that I predict you will come to where things

(06:32) are going well and maybe even better than before better than ever but you start to taste the reality that it’s never going to be enough that there is like a Hungry Ghost energy in your business and you might start to recognize if you have been and played the codependent in toxic dysfunctional romantic relationships you might recognize some of the signature energy where you’re like you know either towards the public that you’re facing or towards your business herself always trying to get love right like you’re you’re just settling for

(07:15) crumbs of fulfillment and you’re trying dancing as fast as you can trying to figure out all the ways that you can possibly feel fulfilled and securely attached and what I have come to see is that most most of the women I know myself included are in Dysfunctional codependent relationships with their business and again mine is probably the least egregious example because I have the trappings of an incredible entrepreneurial experience and I have done a lot of inner exploration about my relationship to wealth and the capacity

(07:55) that my work has to help me alchemize a of my shadow material like I say my haters are my gurus and it has been so fulfilling so deeply fulfilling to have this creative Outlet so what I am speaking to is energetic Dynamics and what I’m beginning to see which is that your relationship with your business is a reflection of your capacity for polarized intimacy and the complimentary energetics of the masculine and The Feminine let me explain so as a creative as you know the one holding the vision I am whether I’m a man or a woman

(08:38) but obviously you I’m speaking as a woman to women about this I am in the feminine pole I’m running energy and inspiration and intuition and enthusiasm and all of these beautiful feminine energies through my system and I want every creative founders desire I think I can generalize about this is that I want my business to just just get me just get me okay like literally figuratively just get me take care of it turn my art into a commodified offering that helps me helps my team helps the people and just handle it and for many

(09:23) years I avoided everything related to marketing like I thought it was like beneath me to bother learning about marketing until I started to recognize that marketing is the relationship that you have with your audience it’s like actually relational this is all relational but I didn’t recognize until very recently that the Dynamics in my business were a direct an r a direct reflection of the availability that I have in my feminine to be held and contained to truly trust and truly resp receive from my business and the

(10:06) associated team so I want to explain a little bit of what I have learned in Consulting experts about this just you know serendipitous conversations that came into my path including conversation with Sterling Griffin who was a a friend of Aubrey Marcus’s and I was able to learn a bit about entrepreneurship that I am able to share with with with you so that you can start to see where it is that you might be in this journey because it’s kind of the same Journey as you might be taking toward healthy polarized romantic love so he talked to

(10:45) me about this pretty Universal Pain point when it comes to Growing especially a digital business and at this pain Point Founders feel like they are wearing golden handcuffs right they feel like they are Shackled to this thing and it’s a great thing but there is an energetic like consumption that is happening that actually makes you a slave and I would say especially if you are a public facing content creator that there are no boundaries that there is this sense that you’re actually working all the time even when you’re not

(11:27) working all the time that you kind of need to like be available to your team no matter what so I want to take a quick poll if you are a business owner an entrepreneur how often do you wake up thinking about work how often do you fall asleep thinking about work how often do you think about work when you’re with your kids or your partner or even when you’re making love does your business feel like a Hungry Ghost that will never be fed do you feel like you’re chasing something that never seems to arrive like it’s always

(12:04) receding on the horizon and what are you working for are you working for money are you working for validation for influence for fame for impact are you working for Creative expression have you ever even stopped to ask yourself that question because we are unwinding a lot of programming I’ve been speaking about this programming for many episodes than many months this is the foundational premise of reclaimed woman and our program reclaimed which is that we can resolve the gas light as women that says we should be happy thanks to

(12:45) all of the gifts of empowerment that feminism has delivered to us yet we are struggling yet we feel like we’re living behind a glass wall yet we are toggling between overwhelm and numbness there is a way out there are some bitter ass pills to swallow in the process and I know it’s worth it I’m signed up and if you’re listening odds are you may be at least curious so we have been programmed to pursue as women higher education training and employment we have taken the bait that says that we will be free when we are working for and with

(13:30) strangers and that we are somehow enslaved missing out disadvantaged dependent or Reckless when we are simply choosing to align with the choices that we made to marry and have children when we are you know serving those children and our husbands so as I’ve mentioned when we imagine that we can be both career women and also wives and mothers that we can show up to all of these roles no problem we Gaslight ourselves and we never get to truly enjoy what it is to be a woman to align with our feminine Essence to take

(14:13) full responsibility for our societal role as Steward of this species and Channeler of Eros and we never truly get to enjoy what it is to Exhale to be contained provided for and protected so I interview my friend Alyssa on this podcast and she is a perfect example of the kinds of choices the kinds of leaps that we can make as women to align fully to get all our parts on board with the decisions that we have already made and I’ll explain what I mean by that in a little bit but let me tell you about a little story that Alyssa told me so so

(14:57) Alyssa quit her job as a venture capitalist she is a PhD scientific researcher she is arguably the most competent woman I have ever met and that is saying something she is the girl boss to beat all girl bosses and she decided to quit her job after she had two home births and to raise her children and ignited in her man a capacity to solve the problem of providership that seemed to be Pres ented by the loss of her income okay so she’s telling me the story about how she was with her daughter and her daughter was riding her

(15:35) bike and she’s outside with her and she’s like Kelly I had nothing scheduled I had nobody waiting for me I had nothing else to do except to be with her while she was riding her bike and she depicted it in this way that I mean it was like a psychedelic portal for me just to visit with what that moment must have been like because I know at this stage how to play I know how to prioritize my pleasure I know how to enjoy my life and create experiences that are Superfluous and frivolous and indulgent I’m really good

(16:14) at that however in my literal life my whole damn life I have never okay I don’t know about my childhood I’m talking about my adult life I have never had that experience that she described I have had a job since I was 10 okay I worked at a bagel store and I have not enjoyed and I could not possibly enjoy because I was either in the churn of trainings and education with Associated to-dos and tests and deadlines or I was building my own business so anyone again who’s listening who who is a Founder who is a CEO yall

(16:55) know what I’m talking about that you’re not as a mom out watching your kid write a fully present and enjoying that experience she also talks about what money that comes through her husband’s providership feels like and how different it is than the money that she used to earn so I am in a special position to be able to look back as you know a pedigree clinician a New York Times bestseller I have you know this very successful virtual business and I have achieved all that feminism promised and fantastic it has shaped me my life would not be this

(17:39) way if it wasn’t supposed to be this way in in all of the ways I say yes to everything and I am here to tell you that the pot of gold that we were promised at the end of the rainbow it ain’t here it’s literally not here and so what do we do well I think that some orientation around the spiritual opportunity that your business represents in terms of creating the conditions for your business to be a good husband to you to provide for you to look out for your interests to manage things while you just eat grapes and

(18:19) wait for impulse and inspiration you know to to move through your vessel that opportunity exists I want to tell you about what I’ve learned about how to achieve that and simultaneously I want to offer an invitation to consider the possibility that if you are a mother and even if you are just a wife that you prioritize those choices because being an entrepreneur in my opinion is not compatible with being in a polarized romantic Dynamic especially if you are a contributor to the finances of the household and being an entrepreneur is

(18:59) not compatible with being a truly present mother now I am not saying that you shouldn’t pursue your hobbies and that if your hobbies happen to earn you money great I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t anything I am just offering the possibility that we have been sold a very poor bargain and when we wonder about the resentment and bitterness and Hollow oness of our experience the martyrdom that says look at what it’s taken me to get here look at how much I manage that it makes a lot of sense that we would feel that way because we’re

(19:39) we’re not actually designed to play this role and if you want to be like me you know a single girly who is doing the entrepreneurial thing you know on her own without a partner and that’s your pleasure fantastic I’m not this P the whole podcast is not for you okay well maybe part of it that’s coming up is for you just the structuring your business wisely kind of a thing so every woman knows that one of the fastest ways to amplify the pleasure that already exists in your body is to get into a luxurious bath but what if you could program the

(20:16) water with the wisdom and intelligence of flowers while also infusing the space with the sensuality of the most unique Aromas available Lotus way bath salts are a feminine ritual that drops me into to my body in minutes it’s the power of some of your favorite flower essences delivered in a new way so head to lotus.

(20:40) com and use the code kelly5 for 15% off the link is in show notes for you but if you are a mother also which I happen to be there are 18 years okay so let’s round it up there’s there’s two decades of your entire damn life where you get to build intimate connection with these humans that you chose to Bear you did not have to thank you feminism okay you did not have to have these kids you chose to have these kids so what is it to align with that well here’s what I’ve learned you have two choices okay if you have an existing business or you’re thinking about

(21:22) starting one one is that you set your business up so that it’s a good husband to you and and I say that you know tongue and cheek I say that meaning that it provides very solid masculine energy so all you’re literally doing is like playing okay all you’re literally doing is allowing your inspiration to be commodified and your energy packaged up and sold you know for yours and the greater good so your your business either becomes a good husband and I’ll tell you what I think that requires or you quit or you literally quit and to

(21:55) play this thought experiment and to feel into how provocative this suggestion is I like to rewind to some 15 years ago when I decided to birth my first child okay and I like to consider what would it have been like if their dad if my husband had said to me with his strong spine and his Clarity and Leadership if he had said to me me Kelly I want you to stay home and take care of these kids because that’s what our family needs and I also know it’s what you need okay I probably would have divorced him on the spot like literally actually but when I

(22:43) look back which is just an experiment it’s just fun because obviously it needed to be exactly this way but when I look back there is a part of me and it is arguably the part that is holding the grief of the experience of an intact family the grief of that being over for me forever in this lifetime I could cry about that in one second so this grief is not very buried uh it’s very real and you probably could not have at the time convinced me to stay you know you couldn’t have convinced me to believe that my fulfillment lived there and if

(23:24) he had said that I can’t imagine that I would have ever been receptive who knows right energetically maybe if it came from the right sacred dominant energy perhaps something would have awakened in me all right here I am with my MD my $200,000 of debt my career just starting because I was in my fellowship I was finishing my training when I became pregnant and my pregnancies were both planned you know this is very intentional and if I had been asked that and if I had decided to do that all of the vulnerability that I am just now in

(23:57) in these days in my life Escape making contact with would have been offered up to my awareness and the choice that I would have had to actually align with that man the father of my children R to actually align with him and to trust him to provide entirely because now I see it as a woman who contributes and there’s all sorts of good reasons and we don’t need to talk about those reasons doesn’t matter this is energetic a woman who contributes is implying subtly if not directly you don’t got me and you don’t got this let me help you honey okay you

(24:37) need my help you know what that is that’s mommy energy and that is a poison in the dynamic again if you want to be single you want to do your own damn thing you want to play husband and wife within one person I’m talking about if you choose to be in Partnership how do you get in your lane so that you can have the experience that you actually want and I’m suggesting that one possibility is that you cease to contribute and I know what that feels like because even to this day when I consider that which is something that I

(25:07) am considering in my lifescape is like what would it be to wind down my career are you all going to survive without me right what would it be and that’s where I can find all of the disempowerment that my career is driving that’s where I can find all of my vital force locked outside of me in this identity that feels like me right it feels like an essential part of who I am but of course that’s not true and you know anytime I meet somebody there’s a little part of me that’s like oh they need to know it’s a performer right they need to know you

(25:48) know what I’m about but that part doesn’t understand that I am valuable just waking up in the morning the same way that as a little girl I wasn’t enculturated to connect to that I was inculturated to be celebrated for my productivity my success and my achievements so the Reclamation of our identities from attachment to our productivity success achievement and our careers is something I feel we got to talk about you know so let me tell you a little bit more about this pain point that I discussed with with Sterling so

(26:26) apparently there are these stages of entrepreneurial development and I am going to track them to like David data stages of masculine and feminine development and I want to see if you agree that they track really well so he says in the first stage of a business you hire vendors and those vendors are less competent than you so they require direction from you so you hire a vendor and you say I want you to do this get back to me when it’s done so this is you know the Zero Sum game stage of relationships the first stage of

(27:06) relationships where you know the the woman is in her safety defenses and she is controlling and micromanaging the man and arguably that extends through the next stage but she’s in her masculine shell telling the business which is holding the masculine energy what to do so many of us in our earlier relationships perhaps in the relationship you’re in now you feel more competent than your man and you feel like you can do it better so you’re just going to tell him what to do when to do it how to do it and then you’re often

(27:41) going to be kind of disappointed frustrated he misses deadlines you know he doesn’t produce the product you most appreciate Etc so that’s the first stage then you get to a point of growth in your business where you hire what are called managers so a manager is somebody who has an equal level of competence to you and again not in specific skills generally and this person can execute more complex strategies can get things done and expand your business extraordinarily so over I would say the first you know 10 or so years of my business I was blessed

(28:26) with some extraordinary managers and they took the business to where it went you know it was their competence their skills their dedication and yet I still always felt like I was the one who knew better where the business needed to go and maybe even how right so this is a second stage David data relationship this is the egalitarian moment you know where you find yourself in a relationship with somebody who’s really a match for your competence like a man who is pretty much as competent as you but often you feel

(29:12) like God I wish he would just take the damn lead like why doesn’t you just tell me what to do like you start to feel that yearning for sacred leadership you start to want to simply be told what to do except you don’t trust enough that the resources are there for that to happen and so you you continue to find yourself in the position of having to direct the operations and everything that’s going on so what Sterling said is that there Comes A Time this pain Point arises around then where you either quit or you begin to hire what are called

(29:48) leaders and you can hire a lead in marketing in sales in operations and in customer fulfillment and these these leads are actually Superior in their competency than you which means that when you bring these folks onto your team and it could be even an investment to hire one when you bring these folks onto your team they take you where they know that you need to go and where you couldn’t even have figured out how to get to based on their experience their native competency and at that point you start to taste what it is to be in the feminine pole

(30:34) because now your business is taking on it’s masculine energetic and beginning to take the wheel so when I hired one of these folks who just dropped like an angel you know from the sky it catalyzed this entire Spiritual Awakening for me which is to recognize that my experience as a female entrepreneur is not actually compatible with my fulfillment as a mother and when I am in my next relationship I probably will be retired so those are those are big and it also as soon as I started to feel that masculine containment as soon as I

(31:18) started to feel like wow she’s got me you know I started to see all of my shadow material and all of my suppressed overwhelm and all of the the grief even around the ways that I have put my career before my role as a woman and specifically as a wife and a mother as somebody who was the the bread winner historically and the shadow material that was Unearthed for me I wonder if you can relate to any of this is around my micromanagement and my controlling defenses so I really fancied myself like an extremely chill

(32:03) CEO I never thought of myself as a mic manager like I didn’t know the logins or the passwords or who the hell was doing what I was like on a need to know basis and what I was reflected is that it’s not micromanagement in the overt way it’s micromanagement in the energetic strangle hold that we have often as women that says I need to be involved in everything okay that’s called not trusting right so if I need to be involved in everything versus just allowing things to happen then every single decision ultimately gets

(32:41) bottlenecked with me and no one on my team feels empowered to make decisions without me and this is where the parallels are extraordinary because if you don’t trust your man and you don’t treat him as if he is fully trustworthy you will never see his full potential in the same way that if I hire somebody and then I’m micromanaging their decision making which would make sense right they don’t know what’s going on they’re new but what if I just let them fly right like what if I just saw what happened if I trusted them entirely then I would see

(33:17) what they look like in their full agency that leap requires a maturation of my nervous system okay as does the Capac capacity to fully receive this level of support like there are many days you know with this with this new employee where I was like why is she doing all of this for me and of course I’ve had that feeling with all of my beloved team members however the energetics are igniting in me the mistrust that I’ve had of the masculine to truly want to serve me without and of course I’m like paying this woman so

(34:00) it’s not it doesn’t track entirely but to truly want to serve me simply because that’s what he’s designed to do right so I don’t have to bring any worthiness any usefulness any solutions any nothing to the table that level of receiving simply for who I am we can practice this in our businesses and it can start with the first assistant that you hire and then when you start to if you travel this path when you start to hire amazing managers and leads you know these marketing leads these sales leads you will likely feel the vulnerability of

(34:39) what it is to be handled and contained in this way so practicing trust relaxing The micromanagement Reflex and truly receiving which requires that there isn’t focus on What’s Done not quite exactly how you would do it right so if you get a gift and you are focused on the aspects that you don’t like about it versus the fact that this gift is coming into your field you will constrict the flow of your own feminine energy that that appreciation that enthusiasm it is the energy that wants to move through your system so if you

(35:25) can progress and apparently this is just kind of how it goes right in businesses as they scale and you you may want to come on my podcast and teach us all about this you may know all of this this was news to me and it’s news to every one of my friends who are female entrepreneurs so as you travel this path and you move towards the polarity of your business where you actually are resting in the feminine and you’ve created the conditions for your team to be that masculine container you might decide now I want to sell it you might decide now I

(36:02) want to just do this aspect of it or you know I just want to play in here it’s going to become really clear what is enjoyable and what was wound up in this surrogate empowerment this sense of attachment to an identity that will not deliver you the fillment that could possibly come through your own children and honestly that could possibly come through your role as wife so you will begin to experience more choices as you expose all of the Shadow material that is driving your attachment to your career as a woman and

(36:48) I do think that we have an opportunity to align with our choices right so thanks to all the waves of feminism thanks to all the related scops I don’t need a man I don’t need to get married I don’t need to have children and I can experience Valor and celebration and all sorts of righteous entitlement just living that life living that career woman life and if I choose to get married what is the greatest expression of a wife what does that actually look like does it look like a woman who is in her flailing financially preoccupied success

(37:35) achievement and productivity obsessed energy who then somehow wants this you know healthy leader of a man to make her life easier I don’t know are those at odds perhaps data talks actually a lot about like shifting out of the work energy for a woman and I’m suggesting you either set yourself up in a business where your business is the good husband and your whole nervous system can exhale and you can just be in your feminine energy whether you’re you know working or not so either that or you consider the possibility like he

(38:11) recommends like you know that you and your partner you transition you you both transition you into your body you know after a day of work and I you know I would take it a bit farther based on my lived experience to suggest that I actually don’t think the two are compatible and I’m sure there are Exceptions there are versions of work I’m just saying generally so if you choose to be a wife and definitely if you choose to be a mother I don’t know a single and please let me know if you think you’re the example because I want

(38:42) to learn from you I don’t know a single mother who is also an entrepreneur or who is a career woman who’s going to a job and allowing her kids to be raised by strangers in daycare I don’t know a single one who lives guilt regret and remorse free so what the does that mean that means that we’ve been duped it means that we’ve been sold a poor bargain and it means that we have experienced the gas light that says you can do it all and you should be grateful and happy that you can when I think about what matters in my life I love

(39:17) having this conversation with you I actually love this podcast it is so enjoyable for me to talk to Fascinating People to be you know to have the opportunity to ferment these ideas and what really matters to me is my relationships and my real life specifically my children so how do I align with the choice that I made a decade and a half ago to have kids I believe that the way that I align with that is to not work period okay and have a provider in my life okay so that’s I’ve I recorded another podcast about choosing motherhood where I talk about

(39:59) if you are going to bring a stepfather into your children’s lives make sure that he allows you to be a better mother and the only way that he would do that is because he’s an epic provider and he makes your life easier and you don’t have to think about any of that and you just get to be a mom which would not be the case if you were single so you either quit and Orient yourself towards your kids if you have a husband you have a father you know in the mix you trust him to solve the problem of providership and you take that leap where you say I

(40:31) know you got this baby that’s why I chose you and you hold all the vulnerability and all that caretaking and all that like are we going to be homeless you hold it in your system because you’re ready to do that or you recognize the opportunity to move through these stages of business that I’m talking about where you begin to populate your business with leaders who can allow you to essentially exit the business in a meaningful way I know that was a lot there will definitely be a part two three and four to this

(41:01) conversation and it’s just just extremely alive in me right now to consider the possibility that every single aspect of my identity as a liberated woman that I thought was nothing but light has a shadow in every single aspect that I thought was nothing but Shadow has a light side I find this level of inquiry and exploration and consideration ultim Ely empowering I hope you do as well and I would love to know what you think till next time [Music] [Music]