If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt, insecurity, or impostor syndrome, this episode is for you. Join me as I sit down with one of my new favorite people, Mary Marantz, whose story will inspire you to rise above and pursue your dreams.
Having grown up in a single-wide trailer in West Virginia and being the first in her family to graduate college before attending Yale Law School, Mary Marantz knows what it’s like to be underestimated. She understands the drive to prove others wrong and show everyone just how far you’ve come, while also doubting yourself at every turn.
This conversation will help you realize that you can do that new hard thing you’ve been wanting to do—because guess what? You can. I’m so thankful for Mary and her work. Without further ado, let’s get into it.
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*Unedited Transcript*
Jacqueline: [00:00:00] Mary, first of all, I’m so excited to connect with you. I first heard your name from Stephanie May Wilson’s podcast. Um, and I just started to look to your work and I picked up your book Underestimated, which is my summer book. Um, you can see I have like so many pages marked, but it’s truly one of my favorite books.
I love everything you stand for. Um, it’s been so encouraging for me just, you know, on a professional journey as well. So I’ve just been really looking forward to this conversation and I’m so excited to sit down and chat with you.
Mary: Oh, I love that. Thanks for reading it
Jacqueline: Yeah, absolutely. So for listeners, Mary, who are not familiar with your story, you really do have an incredible story.
Can you just share a snippet with folks so they understand a bit about your background and why you wrote this book?
Mary: Yeah, I always like to say if there were like an elevator pitch version of my life or my story, movie montage, whatever, um, the, one of the most important things to know is that I grew up in a single wide trailer in rural West Virginia, emphasis on single-wide. I think sometimes people can picture like a really nice double wide with a permanent foundation.[00:01:00]
Um, but really like whatever dilapidated rundown stock photo you have in your head of trailer in West Virginia, that’s pretty much it. Um, or you can go to the book dirt.com and, and that’s my first book, dirt and the cover of that book is the actual trailer I grew up in.
Um, and then, you know, fast forward to my life and I end up at Yale for law school, which is.
You know, Jacqueline, quite the whiplash moment. You know, um, that’s, in some ways that’s not the outcome we usually expect for a start like that. And then in other ways it’s an underdog trope. We’re super familiar with, you know, we’ve read this book, we’ve watched this movie, you know, and so there has been kind of that cloud of both, I would say, over my life, um, where in the book, and underestimated, actually in the last chapter, I say, you know, the underdog is a role of a lifetime.
And what I mean by that is if we’re not careful, we could spend our whole lives playing that part.
And so, uh, you know, I think like having that start and then getting to a place like Yale, a lot of people would assume that that’s sort of this moment of arrival, [00:02:00] that moment when you do stop underestimating yourself.
But the truth is, for me, it actually kicked off 20 more years of being addicted to achieving for my worth and, and never still feeling like I belonged. No matter how much I accomplish that, there is no amount of more that can ever stop, make you feel, you know, make you stop feeling less than. That has always been an inside job.
And so that’s kind of the, that’s a little, that’s a really, you know, skyscraper elevator pitch of my story. Uh, we went all the way to the top there, but that’s the idea is I’ve really viewed a lot of my life through that lens of the underdog and then what it looks like to finally let go of playing that part and step into a true significance.
Jacqueline: Yeah, I mean I think every single listener will relate to this at some point or another in their lives because I feel like, you know, whether folks had a similar background or upbringing to your own, or folks who had everything given to them. , There always is that sense of. Is there more? Right?
And finding fulfillment, um, whether it’s in a career, an accomplishment, a relationship, um, there’s always that sense of, you know, this, does this define me? But it is about flipping that mental script. [00:03:00] Um, one thing though, Mary, that you really talk about that I kind of want it to be the foundation of this conversation, and we’re gonna go down some rabbit holes because as I was thinking last night, I’m like, Hmm.
Like there’s just so much. I wanna pick her brain on so many good topics in this book. But one thing, um, that really stuck with me is this whole concept of fear, right? And I mean, fear is something everyone struggles with. And, you know, I guess my first question for you is, how does fear use like our perceived missteps as evidence against us?
Right? And I found that in my life too. You know, that’s typically what I tend to do. I ruminate on past decisions, I ruminate on mistakes. And then
I find that that Kind of like leads to decision paralysis, right. Going forward in the, in the future when you’re contemplating things you did wrong in the past.
Mary: Yeah, a hundred percent. So Jacqueline, the whole book is really based around this idea of fear’s. A really boring liar. When you really boil it down to it, fear does not have a lot of new material. It’s working with, um, the same lies it’s using on us today. It’s been using on humans for thousands of years.
The same lies that [00:04:00] uses on me. It’s using on you, the same ones it uses on you. It’s using on the person listening to this episode right now, and I can prove it right. Uh, it’s all been done. It’s all been done better. It’s all been done by somebody the world actually wants to pay attention to. I can’t start until it’s perfect.
I can’t start until I am perfect. What if I start and the critics come? What if they say, who does she think she is? What if I fail and it proves all the people who said, I don’t have what it takes, that they were right about me all along. What if I start and I can’t stay consistent with it? What if I don’t have the bandwidth?
What if my voice doesn’t really matter? What if I don’t really matter? What if it’s already too late? Right. Chances are for if we were playing bingo or somebody listening was playing fears a punk bingo, we would’ve just gotten it up, down, sideways and diagonally. Right. There’s, it’s pretty, it’s pretty clear.
Um, and so, you know, when we think about this idea of fear sort of being this force, um, one of the dots that connected for me in writing this book is like, what if fear attacks creatives in particular because it is jealous that it itself is not creative at all.
Jacqueline: Mm-hmm.
Mary: And that was actually kind of a mind [00:05:00] exploding emoji moment for me because when you think about it, um, you know, from a, if, if we were to come at it from a faith perspective, for example, um, you know, uh, for me in my faith, I was made in the image of a creator.
Therefore, I’m an inherently creative being, being. So it makes sense that the opposite of that, the enemy of that would lack creativity. It would be the antithesis of that. And so, you know, fear really comes after us, um, and wants us to stay stuck. It wants us to play small because it is the opposite. The opposing force to the good work we are put here to put into the world.
Um, and so that kind of builds into then all of the different chapters or all these different faces of fear. Fear’s not a very creative enemy, but it is a slippery one. So it will put on different masks. You catch perfectionism coming in the front door, it’s gonna try to slip in the side doors, imposter syndrome.
And so chapter by chapter, I’m going through all those faces. Um, bring me back to your original question. I felt like we needed to lay all that groundwork, but I wanna make sure we actually answered that
Jacqueline: that was super, that was a super helpful foundational, uh, overview. [00:06:00] But, you know, I guess my question for you is what is the first step someone should take.
With that fear mindset. And you talk about this whole concept of reframing, and this has been very helpful for myself as well because I’ve found Mary, and I’m sure you have as well, that thoughts are not truth, right?
Our emotions are not truth. And you know, coming from a Christian background as well, like it’s all about taking our thoughts captive,
right? And I always align, like, or is, is when I’m thinking, does that align with what the Bible says? And if the answer is no, you really have to actually like take the thought captive, right?
Like it is an action. You have to be disciplined with it. Um, but yeah, what’s the first step, I guess, in how to like reframe the way we think of fear?
Mary: Yeah, so a couple things are gonna come to mind right off the bat. The first is, like I just mentioned, fear’s not a very creative force. Short of being given two gifts, it has the ability to throw its voice to sound like us, because if it sounded like, you know, Morgan Freeman, we could catch it every time
and.
Yeah. He’s like, you know, ah, I hope I can make it across the border. We’re like, fear [00:07:00] showed up. Amazing. Um, but it doesn’t, it sounds like us. Um, the other thing I mentioned earlier is it’s slippery and it has the ability to shapeshift into different masks. But going back to that first one, because it sounds like us, there’s a really good saying that is the fish don’t know the water’s toxic because they are so immersed in it.
So because it just feels like you’re running monologue. We do this very tricky slide of hand with fear where, because fear knows us inside and out because it knows those times when we have fallen, you know, failed or fallen or come up short, uh, because it knows any of the shame that we’re carrying around because fear knows us well, we then slip to giving it and attributing to it a veracity and inte and integrity that it does not have.
We assume because it knows us, that it also wants what’s best for us, or that it’s gonna tell us the truth. So when fear says, oh, you shouldn’t do that, you’re probably not very good at that, or it’s all been done, or, oh, what if you fail? We go, oh gosh. Fear knows so much about me. Fear’s probably right about that.
If fears showed up, then maybe I’m not cut out for this. What if in fact the reframe is that it’s exactly the opposite because fear [00:08:00] is not a very creative guy, but he is a busy guy and like any good, productive overachiever, he’s going to prioritize. So if you’re already hiding in plain sight, playing small, doing work that does not matter, fear’s mostly gonna leave you alone, but show up and start to do work that’s going to change things, that’s gonna change lives, that’s going to help people, that’s gonna move the world forward.
And you better expect fear to show up teeth, beared and snarling. We’re gonna see that mask fall off and land with a thud as we get a glimpse of just how venomous it can be. And for me in my life, when I started stepping into the work I was most called to do, that’s when the volume on fear turned way up, not way down.
So it’s the opposite. It’s actually when we’re doing the work we’re most created to do, the fear is gonna get the loudest. So the flip of the script is fear just showed up good. We’re about to do work that matters. Otherwise it wouldn’t be bothered with us.
Jacqueline: I love that the greater you’re calling the greater the attack.
Right.
And I am curious. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And also too, Marie, I’m curious, have you noticed, like, have you found that the older you get, like the more fear around decisions you have?[00:09:00]
Mary: You know, I think it’s like, um, so, so kind of like going back to like the initial heart of your question of like, what do we do first? What do we do here? We learn to name fear faster. That’s the really, truly the work of this book. And we can get into all of this, but one of the most important tactical tools that I have in the book is we know that humans are wired to learn best by story and by very unexpected visual visceral metaphors,
mountains and mustard seeds.
What, like, where did that come from? But we don’t forget it, right? Ooh. If you have the faith of a mustard seed, you can move a mountain. Birds and wild flowers, rocky soil, right? There’s just metaphor after metaphor after metaphor because the greatest teacher who ever walked the planet knows that when people are gonna, if they need to learn it and actually remember it, to be able to pass it on.
Story and unexpected metaphor are it? So when you’re immersed like that fish in the toxic water, what this book does is it does the heavy lifting to give you really unexpected visual metaphors to be able to pull that to mind in [00:10:00] the minute, right? So in chapter four, for example, second guessing is a missing handbook.
I compare that. You know, when we’re walking around the world feeling like we don’t have all the pertinent parts, we’re missing information. It’s like Edward Scissor Hands dropped down right in the middle of some pastel color coded suburban hell, where the name of the game was blending in, keeping up with your neighbors.
And when we break the rules, because we did not know the rules, inevitably we are the ones who end up with the scars to prove it. Well the next time you will find yourself second guessing yourself. ’cause you feel like you’re one of those kids who never got this handbook for life growing up like all the other kids in America did Chad Pass the mashed potatoes And oh by the way, make sure you understand compound interest.
The second that starts happening, you can go missing Handbook or Edward Scissor hands and the faster you can cut it off and catch it in the act,
then the faster all of its power whooshes out of the room. I was on a podcast with, uh, Sarah Rice called this Changes Everything. And she said, it’s like in the Wizard of Oz, when we pull back the curtain,
suddenly the great, terrifying, powerful oz, it’s just this little snake oil salesman behind the curtain.[00:11:00]
And so, you know, you ask the question, as I get older, do I feel more fear? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that I have more responsibilities. You know, and we’ve, my husband and I first leaped and started our photography business. We did not yet have a mortgage. We didn’t have employees depending on us. We didn’t have inflation, you know, all the, all the hashtag realities of 2025.
Um, and so there can be more at stake. But I have also put in the reps of learning to catch fear in the act. And so like any good daily discipline, I’ve gotten better at it over time. So you wanna write a book on taking fear down, you know, cutting it off at the ankles. Taking it down at the knees. Woo. You wanna talk about being attacked by fear for the last 12 months, and especially the last two months, three months as I’ve launched this book, but I had all the tools in my belt to go, uh, really, you’re really gonna say it’s all been done to me when I literally called that out on page 22?
Like, I know what you’re doing. And the fact that fear could not be bothered to come up with new material on me, even though I’ve literally [00:12:00] already written it down, just proves what a boring enemy we actually
Jacqueline: Yeah. That’s so good. Mary. The first thing that comes to mind too is I think of just, again, like the voice of truth, right? And even for me, we talk about leap of faith. So I don’t know if you know too much about my background, but I worked in finance Mary for the past eight years. So I told you I graduated from Babson College, small entrepreneurship school, right outside Boston.
Um, worked in finance for the past eight years, started well and strong in 2020, uh, which basically came out of my mom’s journey with stage four breast cancer. I was always super passionate about integrative medicine. Um, but that was kind of the foundation from which I built it again in 2020. God touched it.
It just grew over the past, you know, four or five years. And it got to a point where it was not sustainable in terms of work life balance, having, you know, these two jobs. So. I prayed about it last year and then in December I decided to quit my job, which, you know, your golden handcuffs, the corporate life, it was, it was difficult, but that certainly was a leap of faith.
And as much as I had to, you know, focus on the voice of truth, I also had to focus [00:13:00] on shutting out external voices. Right. Like even the ones outside your head. Because the one inside, obviously we can, you know, listen to 24 7, but it’s also important to discern and, you know, cut off those voices that aren’t speaking truth, you know,
Mary: Right.
Jacqueline: minds.
Right?
Mary: Yes. A hundred percent. Like there I go into a lot of that in the book, actually, especially in chapter 12, which is criticism as an inside job, but it’s talking about. The criticisms that are coming from within the house. You know, the calls coming from inside the house, um, but it’s also talking about other people.
And so there’s gonna be like, just those like nameless, faceless, cheap seats, hurling, you know, projectiles down onto the field, kind of critics. And then there’s also gonna be what I call limiting belief leaks, which come from your family of origin or your friends, um, where the limitations and the limiting beliefs they have put on themselves.
Now become this filter for how they see the world and see what you’re doing. Um, and so these things might just fly outta their mouths about what they would say about themselves doing the thing you’re trying to do. Like, you’re gonna quit this safe job and start a business like that, don’t ever work. You [00:14:00] know?
And they, they don’t even realize they’re doing it a lot of the time. You know, it’s like a knee jerk reaction for them. And something I talk about a lot in the book is like, 99.9% of statistics are made up on the spot. And 99.9% of people are not blessed with the gift of being a visionary. They do not understand a thing.
They do not see a thing until it is already done. That other point. Oh 1% of us, we are the coaches, the visionaries, the leaders, the fishers of men. The rest of people will not understand a thing, will not believe in a thing until you go and you already build it and you do it. And then they will be the first in line to ask how you did it.
And so other people’s lack of vision has nothing to do with where you’re being called. It has nothing to do with, you know, if you wait on the world’s approval or co-signature before you do a thing, you’ll be waiting a very long time. And it’s the script that I give myself in moments like that when they want to speak all this doubt and all this fear about something you know, you have been asked to do.
[00:15:00] Um, when we have to trust the sentence, that’s okay. You’ll meet them later.
They’ll, they’ll come back around when it’s done and then they can understand it. And so you do have to protect it from people who just do not have that visionary ability.
Jacqueline: Yeah. Do you have a certain group of people, Mary, that you just go to when you’re contemplating starting something new? So I guess my question is, you know, how do you also balance seeking wise counsel, right? From people who are visionaries and then also taking risks and chances for something you do feel called to pursue?
Mary: Yeah. I love that. So this kind of, what that question reminds me of something I talk about in the book. I talk about it in chapter seven. Overthinking is an orange safety cone called the research Riptide.
And so. When I was in, I have a Master’s in moral philosophy, and then I, you know, as we mentioned, I went to law school.
Um, I had to write big papers for both of those programs. You know, my thesis for my master’s, and then something called a, a substantial and an SAW in law school, 50,000 word, you know, length documents. Basically book length [00:16:00] and two rules we had to follow were number one, we had to do enough research to understand the landscape, to understand what had already been written, the literature that was already out there, the paradigms that were already out there.
The common thinking in the, you know. Thought industry on this topic. But then number two, we had to do something to move the conversation forward. We had to to contribute some sort of original, substantial thought to, it didn’t have to reinvent the wheel necessarily, but it could not just be a book report on what other people have said.
And so I go on from that to talk about how now in my life when I’m starting something new, I have to be really careful that I don’t spend too much time in number one. And that I’m always making it to number two. Because otherwise, what we can do is we can go, oh, I’m just gonna research how other people do it.
And we start to look at how they’re running their businesses, what their best practices are, how their writing voices, how they’re formatting their podcasts. And it’s all good information. But if we stay stuck in that [00:17:00] riptide, pretty soon we get washed out to see, and we’re in way over our heads with other people’s opinions.
And so we have to be able to kind of glance. At the world, and this is not my line glance at the world Gaze at God is a Carlos Whitaker line, but glance at the, what the world is doing, gaze at where God is calling us, right? And so we get out of the research riptide, like we get out of a real life rip tide, which is you wanna swim back towards the shore.
This illusion of safety. But in reality, what you have to do is make a hard 90 degree turn from where all the trending currents are headed. And so if everybody’s saying to you, oh, you know, gosh, what about the economy? What about this, what about that? We take it in, we understand the information, we understand the co, the, the good wise information that’s out there, but then we have to be the leaders, um, partnering with God, of course.
But we have to be the leaders of where it is that we’re headed. Otherwise, it will sweep you out to sea and you will drown before you even
get started. So that’s what that reminds me of. And I think it’s like, it’s like looking at people who are doing the things you wanna do, not the people who are [00:18:00] fearing the things you wanna do.
Jacqueline: Yeah. That’s so good. And even too, in your book you say that overthinking at its core is fear of the unknown. Right? And you also talk about the science behind overthinking and why it’s so exhausting. You know, the more I find myself overthinking a situation, I physically feel exhausted even if I didn’t do anything that day.
Mary: that’s right.
Jacqueline: what is the science behind overthinking?
Mary: Yeah. Okay. So if anybody’s in listening has ever had writer’s block where it feels like the more you’re staring at this blinking cursor, the more existential angst is getting pint up in your body. And, um, you know, if it, if it’s ever felt like all the existential angst in the world gets kind of built up in your forehead where it feels like you’re trying to sneeze through your forehead to get the next sentence out, that’s actually kind of a descriptor of what’s going on in your brain.
So when we’re trying to think our way through a thinking problem, we over activate the prefrontal cortex. And the prefrontal cortex is our color coding, problem solving organized checklist. Here are the automatic rules for [00:19:00] what’s always worked before and scenarios we’ve been in, let us reuse them for similar new scenarios.
Right? That’s great for not having to re-remember how to brush your hair every morning or open a door, but it doesn’t work when you’re trying to do something you’ve never done before. When you’re trying to innovate and originate out of, let’s use rules of what’s always worked before, um, then it doesn’t work.
There’s a great Einstein quote of like, we can’t use the same thinking that got us into the problem to get us outta the problem essentially. And so there’s this other part of our brain called the limbic brain, which is where novelty seeking and something called conceptual blending occurs. Conceptual blending is the like backbone.
Not to confuse the metaphor with another body part, but it is the, it is the iron lightning rod of creativity and of writers, and of podcasters, and of anybody who thought leaders, anybody who wants to put new messages into the world. Because what it’s allowing you to do is it’s allowing your body to take in all this sensory data around you.
Pop culture references, movie quotes, the science article you read, a philosophy book [00:20:00] you studied in school, that psychology article someone sent you, and then your brain goes, okay, here’s A, B, C, D, and E. Whoa. I’ve actually just invented this whole other thing called blip, you know, doesn’t even have a name yet.
And so we conceptually blend things that we know and things that the world knows and we connect dots in ways that the world has never seen before. Like what if fear attacks creatives in particular because it itself is not creative at
all.
Jacqueline: Yep.
Mary: And so when we’re stuck in that prefrontal cortex, what is actually happening on a physiological level is that the more you’re firing those neurons, you start to have a very natural byproduct called glutamate.
But when you overstrain that part of the brain, those buildups reach toxic levels. And for years, Jacqueline scientists thought that what we would switch out of that into like a more low cost, low efforts, high, you know, instant reward kind of activity, we were doing it just ’cause we wanted to feel good.
Like the brain was just craving like a feel good hit. And that’s part of it. But we now know as of 2022, the study outta Oxford shows us that [00:21:00] it actually happens because the brain is preserving brain functioning. That if it didn’t pivot out of that overuse of the. Prefrontal cortex, the glutamate would actually reach toxic levels.
So that’s a big important mouthful to set up some of the science here, but the more interesting thing that I wanna talk to your people about. So can you indulge me for just a few more
minutes here? Okay, good.
Jacqueline: Mary.
Mary: Um, it’s something called Bayesian brain theory. So Bayesian brain theory is the idea that your brain is an incredible prediction machine.
It’s why it’s often called predictive brain theory. Um, like take this baby to Vegas. Like it’s got those kind of odds, like it’s better than the odds makers in Vegas on whether or not this thing you’re about to do, you will actually be successful at it before you even start. And it’s basing that again on all of this previous data, all of the inputs, all of the sensory observations.
What has always been true before, what has always worked before. And so if you go to start something new, like writing a book and you’re sitting at that. Desk with the blinking cursor judging you. Um, your brain’s gonna make an assessment on whether or not you’re gonna be able to do this based on what [00:22:00] has always been true.
And it’s gonna go, Nope. Mm-hmm. Uhuh, you know, if you’ve ever had a nope Uhuh moment, this record scratch or just kidding 90 degree turn to go clean out the junk drawer instead. Or write something on your to-do list you’ve already done just so you can mark it off again. Um, then your brain is basically deciding you don’t have a chance based on what’s always been true before of doing that thing.
So why even bother? It’s literally, it’s an amygdala hijack. It’s literally hijacking you from your best work. And so when we show up every day and do these small but important commitments that we actually keep to ourselves where we’re like, like promises we keep to ourselves where we’re doing small but hard and then increasingly larger hard things, um, and we’re building up that kind of repertoire, that kind of, we’re putting in the reps, we’re putting in the, um, building up those muscles of doing hard things.
We are saying to our brains, look. We can do hard
things. We can sit through the edginess of the blinking cursor and not run away instantly, and your brain will go cool, and it will update the model. And so every day you [00:23:00] show up and you do a small but meaningful, hard thing. It’s like a quarter in the piggy bank or a drop in the bucket, more input into the machine and your brain will update, update the odds and the statistics, and it will stop hijacking you from your most important work.
So the more we do hard things,
the more we can do hard things.
Jacqueline: I love that. Yeah. Keeping promises to yourself. Who talks a lot about that? Ed Myla, I used to listen to him pretty often. I haven’t recently, but I remember that’s one thing he always said is the importance of keeping promises to yourself. And I mean, again, if you can’t keep a promise to yourself, like where’s your, where’s your confidence in anything that you say that you either tell yourself you can do or even other people.
Um, another thing too, Mary and I actually spoke briefly about this with your friend Allison Cook, who I had on the show not too long ago. She’s incredible.
Also I’m a huge fan of, of her.
work as well. But we spoke about rumination briefly and I’m really curious too, what your take is on, you know. This again, is something everyone deals with.
I struggle with it a lot. Um, and that is, you know, ruminating [00:24:00] over past decisions thinking, what if I had done something different or wanting to go back in time and changing, you know, the decision thinking that we have control over the outcome, which again, I’ve realized we actually really don’t in the grand scheme of life.
But for folks who do struggle with that, like constant sense of, of rumination, it could be over the same decision, it could be over, you know, multiple things. How would you go about, recommending they address that?
Mary: Yeah. What that word brings up for me is this idea of regret. Right? Um, and one of the things, Jacqueline, that I set out to do from a very young age, like, like teenager age, I would say, is to live a life without regret. Because I watched my parents both live with tons of regret. Um, you know, my dad always had very secretly and not so secretly dreamed of going to college to study history and never believed he could.
One kindergarten teacher crushed that dream for him. He got called on, didn’t know the answer to the class laughed, and from then on he just thought he wasn’t cut out for school, even though he secretly dreamed of going, um, they got married super young. I don’t know that they like [00:25:00] specifically regretted that part, but it certainly set up things to be harder.
They bought a trailer and instead of waiting for a house and then immediately started falling apart, there was just this snowball of bad and hard decisions. And so, and, and also I just don’t really think they were very happy in their marriage from the first minute. You know, I’m, I’m about the only thing that came out of it that they agree on, you know?
Um, and so it became like I just sort of set this goal for myself. I’m gonna live a life where I never, ever, ever have regrets. Now, as a 45-year-old, I can tell you that that’s a both and right? Like, so like I have made lots of choices, like not going to work at a law firm in London or New York, a
six figure offer when I was graduating law school with
bonuses and moving benefits.
Go ahead.
Jacqueline: Mary, I forgot to tell you, my sister does tax law. She went to Georgetown, so I understand that lifestyle
Mary: Nice.
Jacqueline: you spoke about on your book too, I was like, I’ve heard this before.
Mary: Yeah. Yeah. So like one of the law firms was like, oh, when you have to cancel your vacation because of the law firm, we’ll reimburse you. And I said, if you think that’s a selling point, we have a problem. [00:26:00] I don’t know what to tell you. Um, you know, they’re competing to see who they can like sleep under their desk the most.
Um, and so I have made lots of my decisions about living a life of never having to wonder, what if I now know at 45 years old, it’s also virtually impossible to not have any regrets. You know, there’s my not being with my grandma when she passed away because I was somewhere working on my bed. You know, we were shooting a wedding somewhere and couldn’t be there.
Um, so, but, but maybe minimizing the risk. And there’s a part in underestimate where I talk about there’s gonna, one of the first steps you’re gonna have to do is grieve the story you thought you would be living by now. You know, grieve how much further along you could have been if you didn’t have to stop to do all this healing from your story first.
Um, and so that kind of gets into chapter 11, which is failure is a bankrupt identity. And sort of all the ways we fail at failing where we go, I messed that up, therefore I’m just a mess up. You know, or I failed at that, therefore I’m a failure. Um, there are a few ways we fail at failing. [00:27:00] We either make it all about our identity, I failed, so I’m a failure.
Or we go the opposite extreme where we go, oh, you know, it’s everybody else’s fault. Uh, like a victim mentality where we kind of hang out in the middle of apathy of like, oh, I used to want to do that, but now I don’t really think I do
Jacqueline: Yeah.
Mary: And so all of those things I think, combine and come together of like, this is gonna be an inevitable part of life.
There are gonna be things that you wish went differently. There are gonna be things you wish you had handled better, that you had more wisdom, that you’ve gotten more counsel from, wise people who’ve been there before. Um, but none of it. Absolutely none of it will be wasted. You know, I use my law degree in our business all the time, both the photography business, and now as an author,
I don’t need to get my contract looked at ’cause I know what I’m
looking for. You know? Um, we use all of the things we learned about digital marketing as photographers now in my author business, et cetera. You get the idea. So you carry it all with you and every bit of it can make you a better leader, a better author, a better, better in your craft if [00:28:00] you choose to let it be about the work and not about, oh, my identity.
I’m just a, I’m just a mess up so I better not do it anyway.
Jacqueline: Yeah.
Mary: That’s a really long answer to, it cannot be avoided, so you better find ways to make friends with it.
Jacqueline: Yeah. No, that’s so good. One thing you mentioned too, is this all or nothing mentality. Right. And I feel like I’m very much like that. I feel like, again, if I’m committed to something, I’m either a hundred percent in or not in at all.
Is there a relationship between like personality type and that type of mentality or upbringing or
envi? Like is there any research around that?
Mary: You know, I don’t know that specific research to upbringing and that,
um, but what my gut instinct is, is that it’s a cousin of survival mode.
You know, survival mode is not about, oh, let me develop a discipline, or, oh, let me become a master of my craft. Or, oh, let me put in my 10,000 hours, you know, studying photography survival mode is how do I get through this day?
And survival mode is wildly addictive. You [00:29:00] know, the in chapter three, self-sabotage is a shot glass. We go into all of that about this return to chaos. Even
when we consciously would say, of course, I don’t wanna have a chaotic home life now, like my childhood was, of course, I don’t wanna live financially strapped like my parents always were.
But subconsciously, because our brain craves familiarity, we return to patterns. Regardless of whether they’re healthy or not, simply because they’re familiar and they’re comfortable. Women stay comfortable for safe. And so I do think there’s probably a correlation between like chaotic childhoods, which turn, which flips the switch for survival mode and them being very all or nothing, right?
We’re sprinting forward or we’re freezing, we’re we’re fleeing or we’re freezing kind of an idea. And man, do I go into that a lot in the book of like, I’m just not a naturally consistent person. I am. But here’s the good part. There’s a part, another part in the book that says, change that script for I am becoming a blank.
So I am becoming a consistent person. My husband and I both were not naturally, we were not raised or born to be very consistent people. But in the [00:30:00] last five to 10 years, we have become very, very different. We’ve become people who send something right out the second it’s ordered, you know, or who get right back to those people or who put in the reps on the podcast, or I put in the reps writing the book.
And that’s really the backbone of the book. You are showing yourself through small but important habits, small but important commitments you keep to yourself that you’re becoming that grownup in the room who can be trusted,
Jacqueline: Yeah.
Mary: Allison Cook talked about.
Jacqueline: I love that. And this concept of neuroplasticity, right? We know that the brain does in fact, rewire itself even as we age, and no one is ever actually quote unquote stuck, right? In those existing belief systems just tactically marry, how does one go about, you know, kind of restructuring their, their brain and, and their old habits?
And there’s certainly a lot of things out there on, you know, meditation. We spoke briefly about reframing, but what, like, simple strategies out there. If someone’s listening right now and is like, I have, you know, this belief system that I’ve held for the past 30 [00:31:00] years, how do I change it? What do, what would you tell them?
Mary: Yeah. I love that. I love that so much. My dad was always sort of famous for saying to me, is still famous for saying to me like, this is the way it is, this is the way it was, this is the way it
always will be
when it comes to him. Yeah. Um, and, and I think this idea of like, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks is because the old dog is decided not to learn.
Right. Like the, the Henry Ford quote, which is whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right. You think you can or you think you can’t, that’s that’s what’s gonna happen. Um, and so I think on a practical level, um, we begin by kind of like, again, sort of thinking about those like small but important commitments and, um, paying and the act of noticing.
So in the, in the chapter on procrastination, I quote Dr. Judson Brewer, author of The Craving Mind about the Habit Loop, and he’s talking about how the basic habit loop is trigger behavior reward. He said it’s wired for our survival and also our procrastination, right? And so [00:32:00] trigger is can either be saber tooth tiger is attacking us, or I need to go write the next chapter.
And our brain has a very difficult time determining the difference between those two threats. And so the trigger that makes us flee and run to the couch and you know, watch. This whole season of Mrs. Maisel and eat m and ms and popcorn. Um, and our brain goes, oh, you got away from the threat. Here’s a reward.
Here’s some dopamine. You instantly made us feel good. Here’s some reward. Well, Dr. Brewer says, the antidote to that is actually noticing. ’cause you have convinced yourself that it feels good to procrastinate. You’ve convinced yourself that it feels good to have plans canceled at the last minute. And man, do I agree with that?
As an introvert, it really does feel good to be like, I
thought I had stuff all afternoon and now I don’t.
Jacqueline: Also too, Mary, I love the story that you mentioned, how you would always wait until like last minute to get something done
because you got like such a high from it with your
papers, and then you would always end up crushing it. I just
Mary: Yeah, I, that that whole chapter kicks off with, I turned him a very, very important paper in college with literally 23 [00:33:00] seconds remaining in the class. ’cause it had to be turned in in
class. So listen, your girl likes to procrastinate. Um, but I think, but he talks about noticing and he talks about actually paying attention to how horrible it feels.
When you are procrastinating, how horrible it feels to have that reputation with people, how horrible it feels to be. Like, have people waiting on you and like, yeah, you did it and you pulled it off and you got the a plus, but you were kind of a pain to work with. You know? And like, that’s not what the impeccable integrity of our word we wanna stand for.
So we just start, we’re, we’re just, regardless of all that stuff, it just feels really terrible when you have this thing hanging over your head. And when you’re doing that, what you’re doing is rewiring your brain. HEBs law. You know, the, the neurons that fire together wire together, they move closer together.
They have stronger bonds that will fire quicker than the ones that don’t. And so you’re showing your brain, you think that we’re doing this to feel good, but in fact it really doesn’t. And just noticing that
Jacqueline: Hmm.
Mary: rewire.
Jacqueline: Yeah, so true. And yeah, I mean, it makes me think too of just like those, those jerk impulses, like whenever I [00:34:00] do have a trigger, right, it’s always typically like revert to Google, which is probably the worst thing that anyone should ever be doing. But in the moment, like we feel good when we’re researching a question, thinking that, you know, we’re getting information.
And I mean, even Mary, it’s like if I apply this to a medical context, like, you know, with my mom, and I’ve shared this many a time on my podcast, but it’s been very overwhelming to navigate all the different options out there for cancer, right? Like there is so much, and you know, that’s why I’m a proponent of an integrative approach to cancer.
But there’s just so much out there, Mary, and everyone’s always like throwing this at you, like, oh, like I did this and I did this and this worked. And it’s just, you know. You mentioned the word noise before, but it’s really just cutting through the noise of everything that is out there. Um, and that’s kind of why even the mission of Well and Strong has evolved a lot over the past year or so because I’ve just recognized that coming from a faith background as well, like we are to be stewards of our bodies.
We are to like do what we can, but [00:35:00] at the end of the day, God is in control of the outcome of
whatever treatment someone pursues. And that has just kind of taken like this burden off of my shoulders to think that I am in control when I really am not in control. Um, so I think, you know, rumination, overthinking, like stems from this false belief that we have control
Mary: Yeah.
Jacqueline: really don’t.
Mary: You know what came up for me though when you were talking that I think is like the important flip side of that coin is that recognizing that things like rumination, overthinking, procrastination, you know, like all of these things that are, are kind of a natural part of our brain. Like our brain is wired this way,
right? That that is a beautiful function of free will. That is a beautiful function that allows for something called free will. And then we get the choice whether we’re gonna continue the loop and continue to procrastinate or continue to lean into fear, continue to, you know, think we failed, so we’re a failure, or whether we’re gonna do that work to take our thoughts [00:36:00] captive, taking our thoughts.
Captive is in and of itself an act of free will. We can either do it or we can’t, or we don’t, you know? And I think that’s really beautiful, you know, because it’s like we’re, we are given the ability to, we have the choice to rewire our brain, whether we’re the old dog who learns new tricks is up to us.
Jacqueline: Yeah. Have you heard of Joe Hargreaves? Mary?
You would, you would really like her. I had her on the podcast, I wanna say two or so months ago. She is based in the UK and she calls herself, I think it’s a faith-filled therapist, is her Instagram handle. I’ll, I’ll send it to you, but we had a whole episode again dedicated to, you know, taking your thoughts captive.
And it’s a wrestling match. You know, people think like, when you actually really get into it, like it’s, you know, it’s not easy. It’s, it’s a mental, it’s
Mary: Yeah. Right. Yeah. I don’t know why this is how my brain works, but I had the funniest visual of like, home alone slash through my brain. Like that’s the kind of like captive you’re trying to take. You
know, they’re like, they’re there to try to like, you know, always just a little kid, what are you gonna do?
But there’s like paint buckets
being thrown at you and
Jacqueline: [00:37:00] Yeah. And
it’s just, you
know, but to, yeah. And to your point about new neurons that wire together, fire together, like. Again, like you, it’s, it’s a training ground. It really is. Yeah. Um, one other thing too, Mary, I wanted to ask your thoughts on,, I think you mentioned imposter syndrome and this, I actually learned, I wanna say freshman year of college, uh, at Babson we had this course called FME Foundations in Management and Entrepreneurship, or basically 50 freshmen were just put together and they told us to create a product and that was, that was our, our essentially class.
Right. And we were graded not on the success or the profit, but rather
our ability
to,
you
Mary: you know.
Jacqueline: Get along with each other
and
delegate and you know, so it was, it was an interesting experience. But part of that course was this whole behavioral component and they spoke a lot about imposter syndrome.
And at the time I was like, oh, like it’s a weird, weird name. But the more I got into it, and as I grew older too, everyone suffers from imposter syndrome. [00:38:00] So for folks who have not heard of this term
Mary: before,
Jacqueline: I’d love if you could explain A,
Mary: what is
it, Mm-hmm.
B,
how overcome
it?
Yeah. So at, at its most core, the fear that we call imposter syndrome is really a fear of being found out. Being found out is not as qualified or equipped or together or, you know, in control or smart or talented or whatever the fill in the blank is.
Um, as you should be in order to. Be up for this opportunity or to be in this position. You know, this is Moses saying, I have a stuttering problem. What are you talking about? I should go be the one to talk to Pharaoh. Like I’m clearly not the guy. Um, and and what we find is that it does attack everyone, but it actually attacks people who are high achievers or who are wired or called to big things higher, higher, you know, goals.
It attacks us in a higher proportion. Um, the psychologists who originally coined the phrase are Dr. Klans and Dr. IMEs, and they originally called it imposter phenomenon among high achieving women. And I joke in the book that I [00:39:00] actually like that better. ’cause, you know, syndrome makes me feel like I’m
like. The lone soul patient, zero suffering from this self-doubt virus or whatever. And phenomenon makes me feel like we’re in it together. And I use, I share a bunch of quotes from like Maya Angelou and, you know, sixth time Oscar nominated, two time winner, Tom Hanks and Hermione Granger herself, the ultimate overachiever, um, where they’re talking about, like, it almost feels like the better I do or the more that I achieve the, the worse my imposter syndrome gets.
’cause I feel like any minute I’m gonna be found out, any minute they’re gonna be like, just kidding, you didn’t deserve any of this. And it’s all gonna be taken away. There’s a line in the book that feels like a particular punch to my own gut, which is overachievers simply can’t believe that they have anything to offer the world, which means they believe it can also be taken away at any minute.
And, uh, where we are the ones who are relentlessly tough on ourselves. And so what’s interesting about imposter syndrome really quickly is it’s based on this another one of those habit loops called Magical Ritual Thinking. [00:40:00] Which is the belief among people like myself, probably people like you, these very high achievers, like the world would look at them and go, that is the most put together woman in the room.
Like, whoa.
But
to us,
Jacqueline: what is going?
Mary: right? To us, we’re like, who, where? Behind me? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Um, we feel like the hot mess, right? And so the magical ritual thinking is the belief that we have to be relentlessly hard on ourselves. We have to rip ourselves to shreds. We have to assume we will fail in order to succeed.
That that’s like the superstitious behavior. It’s like a baseball player wearing the same dirty socks, right? We think we have to assume we’re gonna fail. That is the only way we succeed. And that if we were to ever show up and have any kind of self-confidence or speak kindly to ourselves or believe it was gonna go okay, that hubris
of thinking, we might actually relax a little.
That would be the moment we would fail.
Jacqueline: it’s so funny you say that too. ’cause as you’re talking, I’m just thinking even with me, like I always, I always struggle with, you know, I mean, the Bible too says expect good things, right? Expect good things from God. And I, you know, that’s, that’s obviously an [00:41:00] important factor, you know, vision, what you want to happen, right?
So I always struggle with that, right? Envisioning the outcome of success. But then to your point too, like assuming I’m gonna fail and I feel like I’d rather be pleasantly surprised than like vision, the success and then have it not be successful.
Mary: Right.
Jacqueline: yeah, that
Mary: Yeah. I, I think that, I think that’s what you just hit on is so important there, Jacqueline. It is this belief that we will somehow insulate ourselves from disappointment.
If we didn’t, if we told ourselves we didn’t think it was gonna go very well, when in fact if it didn’t go very well, we would still be
just as disappointed.
If I got an F on that exam, I’m gonna be really mad no matter what.
You know? Um, and, uh, that whole idea of like, you know. Believing that there’s a hope and a future there. There is a scripture somebody sent me in February when I was at a conference, um, that is, is basically that idea of like, ask for what you want.
And like I, that kind of blew my mind ’cause it’s
like, oh, you know, like the second into prosperity gospel and like
manifesting or
whatever. Um, so I’d like to spend like just, [00:42:00] you know, like four weeks just thinking on that basically. Um, but like that whole idea of uh, exceedingly, abundantly more than anything we could ask or think.
Right? And um, Nicole, my friend Nicole Zaki has a book called What If It’s Wonderful, you know, and it’s like we’re not wired that way. We are wired as a survival mechanism. It’s called negativity bias, because when we’re looking for danger everywhere, we’re the ones who don’t get eaten by the saber tooth tiger.
And then that gets passed down because we’re the ones who survive. So then like, you know, like cavemen or whatever, or having kids more wired to see danger everywhere because it, that’s what kept them alive,
um, in order to have kids. And so it is an actual, like ev you know, like, like, uh, it, I call it in the book the first inherited limiting belief leak.
And so, yeah. Yeah, I think that we think, we’ll, we’ll actually, like, oh, don’t get your hopes up.
It’s
just a really good way to live your life with not a lot of hope.
Jacqueline: Yeah. Often too. I, I’m having a flashback now. I feel like I’m having [00:43:00] more flashbacks to college in this episode than I’ve had in the past, like decade of life. But I remember freshman year of college, Mary, I. I was doing case interviews for consulting. That’s what I initially did after graduating, I did strategy consulting and I remember just spending like hours and hours reading, you know, mark Constantino’s case in point and going through
these, you know, difficult case interviews.
And I remember I had my first case, um, my first round, it was like a three hour case and I literally, Mary walked out of the door and I called my dad. This is junior year of college. And I was crying and I was like, dad, like I completely bombed that interview. Like, I’m not gonna get, you know, the job. I
worked so hard training and I was like, I was a mess.
Long story short, I ended up getting the job and that’s where I started my career at Fidelity Consulting. I remember the initial like team meeting we had, the man who interviewed me told me, he’s like, yeah, he is like, you crushed that case. Like you had the best interview. And I looked at him, I was like, Andy, I was like, are we talking about the same interview?
Like I, I don’t recall my doing well at all, [00:44:00] but that also kind of opened, opened my eyes to your point earlier, like even just about perception, right? Like we think, I mean, I found most of the times, even in life, whether it’s a grade in school, right? I always come out of it thinking I did horribly, but in reality, like, you actually did really great.
So it’s like that, you know, the distortion of of, of how we
Mary: also
see
Jacqueline: you know, what we do,
Mary: what we
do. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jacqueline: or failures. It’s really interesting.
Mary: And then the danger Jacqueline, like for you in that scenario is your brain. ’cause your brain is constantly trying to make sense of things. This meaning making part of your brain, your brain can very quickly go, oh, so when I think I messed it up really bad, that’s when I actually crushed it.
So I
need to go into everything thinking I’m gonna mess it up
really bad.
Jacqueline: Mary. Exactly. That’s what I’m saying. And it’s like rather be pleasantly surprised than, you
Mary: Right, right. Well, I mean, but I think women in, we just have to call this part out. Women in particular are wired not to show this kind of overconfidence. You know, this, I, I used that word earlier, hubris. [00:45:00] And so even in launching this book, I’ve had these three quiet forms of resistance I’m gonna tell you about right now.
Lemme connect the dots before I tell you the three. So that, so. Going back to what I was just saying, we’re trained to not believe in ourselves. We’re trained definitely not to voice belief in ourselves. We’re trained to expect to like, oh, I don’t know, like gimme your scraps. I guess that’ll be okay. And then when we get the a plus, we’re shocked, right?
And so, three quiet forms of resistance. I’ve had two. All of that while launching this book is number one. If somebody goes, oh my gosh, you’re such a beautiful writer. I go, thank you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. The end not, oh my gosh, that one chapter I just really
struggle with. And oh, I just, I don’t know, like I think I overuse metaphor.
I’m not
really sure. Thank you. Period. Quiet number one. Number two, when I was, you know, teasing the book was coming out. This is the proudest I’ve been in this book. Let me tell you something. This, this work I’m about to put into the world, this work is good. good. Call it. Calling our own work Good as women is something we struggle with.
The con, the the, you [00:46:00] know, oh the nerve,
ugh, the arrogance. This book is good. You know, I have a friend, Antonio Nevs, who says, we should be able to talk about our own work with the same enthusiasm we would recommend somebody else go see Hamilton. You know, or that movie that we love or that concert that we love, that band that we love.
’cause we know what they’re about to experience. And then number three is casting a vision on where I go from here. I believe I will speak to stadiums at some point about this book or or
about this message in
general, you know?
Yes. But you know what’s cool about that, Jacqueline, is 10 years ago in my photography workshops, I would say, I’m gonna write a book one day.
And now I’m getting messages from people who are like, I remember 10 years ago and you said you were gonna do this. Now you’re on your third book.
So we cast a vision and it gives other people permission to cast visions for their lives too.
Jacqueline: yeah. Mary, one thing I love, and I don’t know if you’ve ever done this before, and I was actually talking to my dad about this the other day. I love vision boarding.
Um, so just, and it, this is a practice that I honestly started back in high school, and it’s been so special to me because I have pictures of these boards I made, you know.
[00:47:00] Back when I was 14, 15 of things that I wanted in life. And you know, even in, in Boston, right? A like right after college, I remember writing down on a notepad. This was after a breakup I had, and I was just kind of revisiting, you know, what I wanted to do with my life. Like what were my goals coming out of this, you know, shakeup.
And I wrote on that notepad, I was like, I want to be an influential person in the wellness space.
And then I wrote, you know, I wanna be able to do well and strong full-time. And this was four or five years ago. And when I was writing this down, I was like, like, yeah, like whatever, like wild dreams. And I came across that sticky note, um, a couple months ago when I was home, going through some old things.
And I just stared at that. And I was just like, would the girl who wrote this note, you know, four or five years ago ever believe that that would come
to pass? And that’s why one thing that I am, you know, a huge advocate for is writing down your goals, whether it’s in a journal, whether it’s making a vision board, because there’s so [00:48:00] much power, and I think there’s a stats, like you’re 44% more likely to accomplish a goal if it’s written
down. And like, less than what 2% of people actually write down their
goals. So, you know, whether it’s yearly goals or, or weekly goals. I think always having those in front of you is so important. Um,
and with that too, Mary, that lends to my next question
for
you. Are there any daily habits or rituals that you, you know, do on a, on a daily basis that you believe have helped in, in your success?
Because I certainly am a huge fan of affirmations. I love Norman Vincent
Mary: Mm-hmm.
Jacqueline: like one of my all time favorites. He’s, he’s one of the greats for me. But yeah, just power of positive thinking. I’m curious what your habits are.
Mary: Yeah, I’m gonna answer that question, but you have to know that I am a podcast host as well, and so I’m over here like dancing in my seat, wanting to ask you questions, and So
So here up.
Jacqueline: be the first many conversations we’re gonna have.
Mary: Amazing. I love it. Okay, so I’m gonna set up the question this way and here’s why I’m asking it. Um, so there’s a [00:49:00] part in chapter five of Underestimated where I’m talking about a conversation I had with, um, Jason Van ruler, author of Get Past Your Past when he was on my podcast.
Uh, you know, and we’ve done Instagram Lives and things like that together. And in, in Get Past Your Past, he talks about those of us who had hard stories. We can fall in love with self-improvement and self-help and success books and things like that. When we’re little. He talked about like, I would always wanna be reading books about how to dress and how to achieve and how to be, and he said that.
That’s, you know, so great and so good, but it also leaves us with this impression that we always have to be different. Um, and he and I really connected on that. ’cause I have a deep love of self-help and, and self-improvement. And just con I’m just constantly trying to like, how can I refine this? Let’s just, let’s get a little bit better every day.
Um, it’s literally something I think about on a daily basis. And so you’ve mentioned so many success books and so many like, you know, thought leaders in that space and you’re clearly doing that work. And so the question for me is like, I, like, I wanna know like what your childhood was like. Like did you, is there like a hard story?
Are you resonating with that? [00:50:00] Is there a hard story there? Or was it just like something that was instilled in you from parents, but like where does this love of improvement come from?
Jacqueline: No, I mean that’s, that’s spot on I
think. I think what I didn’t have growing up. Plays a fa like a factor in what, what I want now and what I want to give my parents. And I think too, like my parents worked so hard, um, as I, you know, as many listeners parents have for, for the sake of their children. And I think they sacrificed a lot.
Um, just in terms of putting my sister and I, you know, through good school systems and growing up I always watched them work so hard, always thinking I want to give back to them. Right. And that has been my driving force. Um, I mean, well and strong is certainly meant to help people improve their lives, but, you know, even in college when I was pursuing consulting or investment banking, like my, my incentive or my, my driving factor behind driving, making a lot of money was to care for
my parents and, you know, help them because they have done so much for me.
Um, but [00:51:00] yeah, I mean, certainly that I, I’m gonna listen to that episode that you had with him
Mary: Yeah.
Jacqueline: like I would, that would resonate with me as
Mary: Yeah. It’s so good. So, so money was tight. Growing up. Yeah. Yeah. So a, a lot of us, for a lot of us in that position, whether it’s money was tight or things were just chaotic at home, or things were just really hard in our stores, we have parents, you know, that just weren’t available, um, for, ’cause they were working so hard or they had their own demons or whatever.
Um, we can become what I call in my second book, slow Growth equals Strong Roots. The illusionist in the distance. We’re perpetually chasing these future versions of us we’re trying to become. Um, you know, there’s a part where I talk about there’s a thousand supposed to be illuminated illusion versions of us standing on a thousand mountaintop moments in the distance that we have not yet achieved.
She turns to look for us just a second here, billowing, but never seeming to land. These white robes all around her looks into a dimly lit mirror, reflection, you know, of her own eyes, smiles, a superior smile, and then goes on without us. We know what it’s like to have been left by somebody we love, [00:52:00] but we cannot contain the heartbreak of when we leave ourselves, right?
Like this kind of idea. And so we’re constantly changed chasing this when I’m her, when I’m this version of myself, when I eat the bag of kale, Jacqueline, that’s in the back of the refrigerator before it goes bad, when my handwriting doesn’t look like a serial killer, but has the perfect swoop when everything is color coded, you know, when I
Jacqueline: yeah,
Mary: my hair and makeup done at the same
time, whatever,
then, then I can get started.
And that’s the, that’s the moving target, this vanishing point at the horizon. We chase our whole lives. When I am her, who’s always up ahead, then I can begin. Um, so all of that to say with through that filter, I do have things like that. But I always try to keep in mind of, for me, you know, the same way that that thought process can lead to that magical ritual, imposter syndrome of I must always feel like I crush, I, you know, flopped in order to crush it.
For me, I always want to be getting better because that is how I’m wired, but I don’t wanna let it keep me from starting now. So some things that I do on a daily basis, [00:53:00] um, I walk, walk is a huge part. You know, that gets into, like my friend Ali Fallon talks about if you wanna, when you think limbic, limbic brain, that that conceptual blending part of your brain think limbs.
So that’s stretching, that’s dancing, that’s going on a walk. I think it was Thoreau who took like a three hour walk
every
afternoon
Jacqueline: That’s me. That’s me. Mary. I average, you’re gonna think I’m crazy. I average like 18 or 20 miles a day
from walking. I also, I also, don’t have a car. People look at me like I’m crazy here in Greenville. But I mean, most of the time, that’s how I do my thinking, right? So even if I have calls, like I’ll take them when I’m, you know, walking.
I
certainly can’t do podcast walking, but if I could, I would.
Mary: Wow.
Jacqueline: it just, it helps me. It helps me think,
Mary: We do about five or six here. And I thought we, I mean, I thought we were overachievers. Like, wow,
Jacqueline: Come visit me, we’ll go walking
Mary: I would love that. I would love that. But you, but you, as you know, when you’re walking like that, that left right of your, of your steps helps engage left right of your brain. It’s moving you into the limbic part of your brain.
You know, if you ever have your [00:54:00] best thoughts in the shower, right? Uh, I mean, listen, I can get up on a soapbox right now, and I’m about to
it, it.
literally breaks my heart. I’m not being. Maybe just a tiny bit hyperbolic, but, but, but as close to not hyperbolic as possible. Um, it literally breaks my heart, the works of writing the works, you know, of literature, of art, of poetry, of song, of painting that we are gonna miss out on because we live in a world that doesn’t allow us to be
bored anymore.
Jacqueline: Mm-hmm.
Mary: There’s always a phone in our back pocket to whip out if we’re in that waiting room, or if we have to walk somewhere, you know, we can put the music in our ears, whatever.
It’s, I mean, we’re, I think we’re gonna be a generation lacking in art. Not, not entirely lacking, but we’re gonna miss a lot of it that we could have otherwise had, because there’s always a distraction in our back pocket.
So anyway, the walking is a big part of my routine
and activates that limbic brain. It activates the imagination. It allows me to be bored.
Jacqueline: Yeah.
Mary: best business and creative thoughts out there.
Jacqueline: Silent walks. I used to, I used to walk Mary all the time, and again, I’ve changed a lot, but I would always have to have a [00:55:00] podcast on the, the old me. Like I would always have to be learning
something and, you know, seven o’clock in the morning going find morning walks with my earphones in and it’s just so, it was so much noise.
And I find that now, like there’s a few select podcasts I listen to. Yours is going to be one of them because I just, I
love you. I’m a big fan of yours and I’m so
Mary: Same right back at
Jacqueline: um, I can’t wait to listen to yours, but I, I limit the amount of information I take in and
Mary: Yeah.
Jacqueline: such a game changer for me.
Mary: Yeah. Except for anybody who’s listening to this. If you’re walking and listening to this episode right now, you
get a pass.
Jacqueline: Yeah, exactly. Just, just this episode.
Mary: No, but truly, but truly, I think the, I think the silent walks are a big part of it. Um, I will circle my kitchen island also walking. I’ll circle it a bunch, a bunch, like hundreds of times in prayer. Um, I find, you know, sort of like a Jericho walk,
kinda. Um, what are some other things that are really important?
I sleep has become really, really important. Good sleep hygiene and good sleep routines. Um. Yeah, I, I would say that those are probably the big three. [00:56:00] I’m sure there are a bunch of, I really start to think about ’em, but then I, I just know my tendencies and I can be, I can, I can very easily skew the other, you
know, the extreme of like, well I didn’t do
40 sit-ups
before I drank a green thing, before I did 45
minutes of meditation or whatever.
So I can’t even begin this day.
Um, so I would say like, find your non-negotiables,
you
know?
Yeah.
Jacqueline: you like to do for fun?
Mary: I am, as you have probably already seen from this random home alone reference I gave you. I’m a huge movie person. I’m a,
I’m like, I call ’em the talkies, you know? ’cause that’s what they first were called when they weren’t silent anymore.
I like going to the theater to see a movie is the ultimate experience for me. I absolutely love it. I, I, I will say I’ve followed a little bit outta going, this is another soapbox I could get up on people on their phones. And if you can’t go 90 minutes without getting on your phone in a movie, just don’t go to the
movie. Um, or, you know. I mean, we’ve seen, we’ve had people smoke pot behind us and like do all sorts of other stuff, whatever. So that gets, it gets getting harder to love the theater. So we always have to go like on a Monday at 9:00 AM when nobody is there or whatever. [00:57:00] But I love the movies. We watch them at home.
We, we have like our favorites. We’re usually a movie of some sort for Halloween.
So I am, I’m just, you know, like the Jaws 50th anniversary is today, I think, or tomorrow. Um, we were Jaws one year for Halloween, so I’m just a
Jacqueline: That’s so
funny.
Mary: That’s a big one for me.
Jacqueline: I love that.
Mary: that’ll be my, I’ll just, I’ll, I could give you four more answers, but, you know, I, they’re
Jacqueline: No, that’s good. I think, yeah, I, I found too anything, I mean, kind of similar to that, that forces you to be
present. Focusing on something is like, I mean, that that in itself is a game changer and there’s so
much research around that, right?
Like just. So what, one thing I’ve been doing is I like to host game nights at my apartment and I like haven’t played Monopoly since I was like five or six.
And it’s so fun and just having friends over and being present in the moment or painting. So just activities that really force you to be in the present, not ruminating on the
past or, you know, obsessing over the future
Mary: Right.
Jacqueline: are the healthiest activities that I just
[00:58:00] get so
much
joy
and energy from, you
Mary: I love that. Yeah. You’re, you’re a hundred percent right. I won’t go too far down this rabbit trail, but did you ever see that, um, Pixar movie? I think it’s Pixar Soul.
Jacqueline: no, I’m adding it to my list
Mary: Yeah. There you go. Uh, so the short, short synopsis of the plot is that there’s a jazz musician who’s about to get his big break.
He’s about to play at like this venue or something, or in front of somebody. It’s gonna be his big break, and he falls through a manhole and he dies. Super, you know, uplifting movie already. But he goes, I mean, this is not like, you know, obviously not a specifically Christian movie, but he goes to the, some form of the afterlife and he is like on the escalator to go up and he decides to hop off and like explore the rest of the afterlife.
And there’s this one sort of desolate wasteland that he walks through where all the, you know, picture like, um, the, the, not exactly this, but this is the energy when Ursula takes a, you know, the, you know, and they shrivel up
in the jar or whatever, that kind of energy, right? And they’re certainly like in a wasteland and they’re all miserable.
And he asked like, well, who are these people? And it was basically like the people who are not being [00:59:00] present to their own lives, they’re either stuck in that regret or that, you know, why did I do that? Or grieving that, or they’re ruminating over the future. Interestingly, this is a bit of a like wrench in the story that they come back to that place later in the movie.
And the people who are in a state of flow doing work they love
also can be in that wasteland because they’re also checked out of their
lives. So that was really fascinating, is somebody who goes into deep flow when I’m writing, I had to
think about that a little bit more.
Jacqueline: That’s so interesting. One, one last thing, Mary, I wanna be conscious of your time, but I could, I could talk to you for another few hours, but I recently celebrated my 30th birthday.
and Thank you. And it’s a time, I mean, it’s certainly a, a time of reflection right In you, a decade of life.
And I just, you know, it hit me again how quickly life goes by.
And I mean, obviously that’s because I’m, you know, 30 and not five. So certainly
like, I understand, you know, I have more years under my belt, but I’ve realized that, you know, in order to like, make memories also too of, of
life, um, stages, I [01:00:00] have to be intentional about creating time
to, to do things right.
Whether it’s a game night or a paint night or a trip somewhere. So I like to, I have a new kind of, you know. Trying to, to abide by this, but a, a new habit where I like to do at least like one memorable thing each
month that I can actually remember the month by. Um, and similarly too, there’s a practice, um, like one word for your year
that I started back in, I think 23, where I chose a word for the year, and that would be like what I lived by, right?
And I was, I had a conversation on my podcast too, not too long ago. How that also kind of helps make your, your life like a book where each
word is a chapter. And I can clearly remember each year now based on that word.
So just like, so, just like little things like that that, you know, assist with the sense of presence in life and remembering and like, you know, being in flow at points, but also taking a step back and [01:01:00] reflecting on, okay, like,
Mary: Yeah.
Jacqueline: done?
You know, where do I want to go?
Mary: Mm-hmm.
Jacqueline: and just showing yourself grace,
Mary: You know, I read an article that’s so interesting. I read an article and I was talking about if you want to make the weekend seem longer, not while you’re actually living it, but on Monday when you’re reflecting back on, Ooh, did I
have a good weekend or not, is that you have to do new things.
So not just like things you enjoy, but some of them have to be new.
So one of the reasons that we rem like the first five years of our lives seemed like it was forever,
Jacqueline: Everything’s novel.
Mary: because everything’s novel. We’re experiencing it for the first time. And so we have to find ways to do that. Even if, and Justin and I feel this all the time, when we will do something even slightly different, like
a different farmer’s market
or we’ll eat this in the park instead of over there.
Or we’ll go
explore a new town that we’ve never been to,
whatever. Um, it will go fast in the moment ’cause you’re having so much fun. Time flies when you’re having fun.
But on Monday slash the rest of your life, it will feel longer. So if you extrapolate that out, your life [01:02:00] will feel longer and
fuller. The more you’re doing things that scare
Jacqueline: I love that.
That’s so true. Yeah.
Getting out of the routine,
Mary: Right.
Jacqueline: book. I’ll co-write with you
Mary: okay. Deal.
Jacqueline: how to make your weekends feel longer. Everyone will pick it up.
Mary: It’ll be a bestseller.
Jacqueline: Mary, this has been so much fun. You are truly such a joy. I really do hope to meet you one day in person.
Mary: Same.
Jacqueline: in Greenville.
Mary: Yeah.
Jacqueline: but with that, where can listeners find you? Where can they pick up a copy of your
Mary: Yeah. Yeah.
Jacqueline: of the details.
Mary: Yeah. So a really great place to start is if you go to name the fear.com. So the book is underestimated the surprisingly simple shift to quit playing small name the fear and move forward anyway. And so name the fear.com. Um, we actually have the whole first chapter up there for free for you.
You can download and read it today, get a feel for my writing, which is that very storytelling, you know, unexpected visual metaphor style, you know, uh, I always say it’s like pop culture meets psychology [01:03:00] and you know,
Jacqueline: I love it.
Mary: meets in intellect, whatever.
Jacqueline: It’s relatable. Mary, that’s
Mary: Yeah,
Jacqueline: I felt like I was talking to you and like I feel like I know you just from reading your book,
and I think like if a reader can, can step away from a book feeling that,
Mary: yeah.
Jacqueline: it’s it’s a success.
Mary: Thank you. I love that. Um, yeah, I love that. You know, a lot of people have said like, why are you reading my diary? Why are you in my email? Um, so it it, for sure we’ll call you out, but in the best way possible. Um, so name the fear.com, you can get the chapter, and then if you go to achiever quiz.com, we’ve actually put together, um, a.
I say it’s a two minute quiz, 10 minutes if you overthink it, um, based around what I identify as the five achiever types and based on your achieving type, you will play small in different ways, Jacqueline, and then you will need different things to get unstuck. And so we have our performer who’s always on their toes needs to show themselves, but for sure the world, how far they’ve come.
I am the classic performer. Uh, we have our tightrope walker who could care less, who’s clapping, but they need higher and higher death defying feats to feel the same amount of good. Our masquerader just [01:04:00] hides in plain sight ’cause they don’t wanna let anybody down including themselves. The contortionist is the classic people pleaser.
They can tort because it is easier than being criticized. And then our illusionist in the distance, like I talked about, is they don’t wanna start until all the conditions to begin and they themselves are perfect. So achiever quiz.com. 10 minutes if you overthink it to take the quiz. The questions are light and funny.
The in True Mary form, the results go really deep. Um, I’ve had people say, why am I crying at reading? You know, my results
And uh, yeah. Yeah. If you could go take it there. Achiever quiz.com and then I’m at Mary Morantz, M-A-R-A-N-T-Z on Instagram. Come tell me what your achiever type is.
Jacqueline: Awesome.
Mary: Yeah,
Jacqueline: that. Mary, this has been so much fun.
Mary: yeah.
Jacqueline: I really, am looking forward to my next conversation with you, but
Mary: Same.
Jacqueline: for you, this is always my favorite one to
Mary: Yeah.
Jacqueline: that is, what does being well and strong mean to you?
Mary: Mm. You know, Jacqueline, I was thinking about this just based on like what you were sharing about your heart of why you started all this. My mom’s mom, my grandma on that side, um, died before I was ever born. She died suddenly at 39 of a sudden hardening of the artery sudden heart attack. She’d [01:05:00] worked in like, um, a tire plant factory.
I think probably in like the 1970s. The conditions were not really great and she was a smoker and, you know, obviously wasn’t eaten very great. And so, um, I just turned 45. And so I think being well and strong is about not only living a long life, it’s living that like the, the usable years,
right? Like having as many years where you are still able to do the things you were put here to do.
Like, I
really hope that on my deathbed I’m like, hold on, I have one more sentence. Write
this down. You know? Um, so I’ve just been thinking a lot about that in terms of like, longevity of like actual, um, being able to enjoy your life, I guess.
Jacqueline: yeah.
Mary: so I think well and strong is. Taking care of myself, not out of anything of what the world tells me to be, but because I have so much work, good work.
I was put here to do that. I wanna be able to get to,
Jacqueline: I love that, Mary. And one, one last thought that came to mind when you were sharing that. I’ve started to think a lot more on. How is the work I’m doing now impacting the kingdom, [01:06:00]
right? Like, how is that kingdom work? And that also has really changed the way I approach strategizing what I want to do in the next even decade with well and strong.
Um, and certainly, I mean, I, what you are doing is, is certainly kingdom work. You’re helping so
many
people. I’m curious what your role is gonna be in eternity, but
it
just, it,
it makes
you think differently, not only in your day to
day,
but just in our callings and, and how we spend our time and
Mary: Yeah.
Jacqueline: food for thought.
Mary: Yeah. So good.
Jacqueline: Awesome.
Well, Mary, again, this has been such a joy. I’m
really excited
to share this and I can’t wait to have you on again soon.
Mary: Yeah. Love it. Anytime.
