A Recipe Isn’t Bread

7/20- s5e27- A Recipe Isn't Bread

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Aicila: 13 years ago, when I was moving into my own business, a friend told me I should run a workshop, put myself out there, charge for my expertise. I was aghast. What did I have to offer besides my own experience? And it was really interesting to me 'cause his, his point was, "Well, if you want to be seen as an expert, you should position yourself as an expert."

And my reaction was, "Whoa, brakes." I almost felt my body sort of tense up, like I was in a car, and I had to stop suddenly, uh, because positioning myself as someone with expertise without having earned it, and I didn't really acknowledge that my experience was a form of expertise. Also, though, this is something that women face a lot.

Women in general will seek more credentials or validations, female entrepreneurs, CEOs, et cetera, before they'll [00:01:00] actually step into it. And we position this kind of, you know, it's called over preparation, risk aversion, low confidence, imposter syndrome. And I think that there might be more going on here, uh, because th- I think one of the things that gets left out of the conversation is, what is the cost of failure?

So if I'm... And now today there's obviously a lot more women in business, but in general, women in business and in certain spheres of life have a lower tolerance for risk, and I don't think that it's a personal failing. I think it's a conditioned response to the circumstances that we deal with, which is that our risks have a higher, or they can have a higher cost or impact if they fail.[00:02:00]

And so that means that the, the cost of getting things wrong in certain rooms is not evenly distributed. And I'm not here to get into anything else about it, simply to acknowledge that as a, a situation many of us deal with. And kind of examining it a little, investigating a little, and talking about some of the places that it might stall us out that we could potentially disrupt without necessarily pretending that that isn't a real situation for us.

Because I, I think that there's a lot of advice about executive presence or like my friend, "Just do a workshop." Now, it might have worked. I did have a lot of valuable experience. I've done plenty of workshops that people have felt very benefited by. And there was a step between his suggestion and my ability to embrace it,

And I think that has to do with confronting that, that underlying risk assessment that might, for many of us, be so automatic we don't even know we're really [00:03:00] doing it. So I wanna surface that a little bit and, and help people to see it just the way that I feel like me seeing it helped me to be better able to make some of those decisions.

If you think about it, right, like, the, if that cost isn't evenly distributed What does that mean? That means that if you're risking something, you start a business, you're excited about it, you took a job that you're stretching for, then you're invested in success. And you've probably had a lot of messages telling you that you have to be better.

I mean, we even say like women have to work twice as hard and be twice as good. And sometimes we wear that as a badge of honor. And I would say it's not always so because it means that we feel, I think the other part, there's another part of it is that it can mean that we feel the need to work twice as hard and to be twice as good.

When sometimes what we really need to do is just, is do the job. There's a job, we just do [00:04:00] it. And, and I think that in internalizing a sense of accomplishment around completing tasks or getting projects launched without needing to reach for accolades, for reassurance maybe, is a, is a good, good thing to examine.

Now, so there's that piece. The other thing is that it does cost us an experience, right? A metaphor that I like to use is a recipe isn't bread. No amount of reading a recipe teaches you what making the bread teaches you.

And a lot of times we learn by messing up. The first time we make bread, maybe it goes perfectly. Maybe it's okay. Maybe it's a complete disaster. Whatever way it goes, we learn something, and honestly, when it's a disaster, we often learn more. And so l-- really embracing opportunities to experience things, to move without hesitation.

I think learning what the balance is between [00:05:00] knowing where enough information is or too much information and trusting yourself, and also getting comfortable with the fact that part of this experience is risk and loss and failure.

And getting comfortable with outcomes that we don't anticipate or we aren't excited about. And understanding that those are still s- places that we can learn. And making sure that we've created and fostered environments and relationships that support us in that holistic way.

And the other thing is, one thing that women, do, have to learn is once they have established themselves and credibility, they have that environment, they can still suffer from hesitation.

They can still really just wanna spend more time with the recipe and researching things than getting in there and do things. And I give a couple examples. When I was, um, in my early twenties, I took a distance learning class. And I was a great student. I loved learning. And I was like, "All right." And I took months to do my first lesson.

And I mailed it back in. And they mailed it back, and they said, "Yeah, you really don't [00:06:00] need to do, like, this much. Just, just answer the questions." And I was like, "Oh. I..." I didn't... I... You know, it was more important to get it done regularly, weekly, than it was to get it done as thoroughly as I did it. And he was like, "That's great.

Eh, but it's not actually what you were supposed to be doing here." And I think that's important to understand. That, and there are times, of course, that that's a good thing to do, to really dig in. But a lot of times, moving before you feel prepared, especially if you are someone that really often has to get all the details. It's a really good practice.

And you can practice doing it in different places. One of the first places that I practiced it was actually an event that I don't know if it's still going on. It's called The Greatest International Scavenger Hunt The World Has Ever Known, or GISHWHES. It was like ten days, and there was like six of us on a team, and you had to pick tasks you would do. And I picked one that was a painting task.

And I was like, "Oh, I don't know if I wanna do this." And I [00:07:00] started having all my, "Oh, I'm not prepared. I'm not gonna do a good job." But it was two days, three days that went by before I did it, and I was like, "I have to do it." Like, no one else could pick it 'cause I'd already taken it off the list and said I would do it.

Like, I owed my team that. And I did it, and it turned out great. And it, that moment made me realize that my fear of not getting it done the best or well enough can be a barrier to me getting it done at all. And either learning or actually achieving something that's much better than I really thought.

That, and it's, and it, and it's good. It might even be great. However, what stands between me and that experience is me. So, uh, that's this, this week is just, just a little bit of an examination of that. And, uh, think about the places in your life or your business that you might be staying with the recipe instead of making the bread.

What would you put to the [00:08:00] test today if you actually felt safe letting it go poorly?

Let me know what you come up with, and thank you for listening

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