Ep517 - Erin Weed | Authenticity: Leading and Speaking with Your Head, Heart and Core
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Welcome to the Talks at Google podcast, where great minds meet. I'm Shay, bringing you this week's episode with women's safety educator Erin Weed. Talks at Google brings the world's most influential thinkers, creators, makers, and doers all to one place. Every episode is taken from a video that can be seen at youtube.com slash talks at google.

Erin Weed is the founder of Girls Fight Back, a women's safety education company. After teaching live self-defense seminars to over 1 million people worldwide, she sold Girls Fight Back in 2013. Since then, she's been working as a speaker, author, and communication strategist who helps people seek their purpose and speak their truth.

Today, we'll hear her talk at TEDxBoulder about how to connect with one another by communicating authentically. On International Women's Day in 2018, she joined women at Boulder to share a technique on how to lead and communicate authentically from the head, heart, and core. Originally published in May of 2018, here is Erin Weed leading and speaking with your head, heart, and core. Applause

Hello everyone, I'm so happy to be here. Are we projecting? Is this good? Okay. All right, you can magically make it happen. We're Google, right? Isn't that what you do here? You magically make things happen? But my name is Erin Weed. I'm really excited to be here on International Women's Day. This is a big day, a big deal for all of us. I've spent a good amount of my career working in the women's industry realm, if you want to call it.

It's a place that I feel very at home at, but I also feel really inspired that I saw a few men in the room. I think that's really important. We got to be super inclusive and this is so much bigger than women. We're only half the world, there's another half and we got to bring the whole thing in. One of the things we're going to talk about today is how to seek our purpose and speak our truth.

And one of the reasons that I feel so passionately about this topic is because of women's issues. If we don't know what's real inside of us, and if we don't know how to show up and communicate in a strong, powerful, and clear way that doesn't alienate and terrify people, then how can we ever expect to make progress?

So that's one of the reasons that I am here today is to share with you a tool because I don't want to stand up here and talk and keynote the whole time. I want to just give you a little bit of background and explain some concepts, but then we're going to do an exercise where you all are going to learn how to show up more authentically in your conversations. This is beneficial when it comes to your personal life, obviously, but even in business as well.

So I'm going to show that to you today. But first, I wanted to give you a little background on things. I actually wanted to kick off by sharing with you this really weird dream I had recently.

We all have weird dreams. I don't know if mine are weirder, but I had this weird dream. It was just a few weeks ago. And I feel the need to share it with you because it felt like one of those dreams. It's so simple and so clear. Yet you wake up in the morning. You're like, what was that? And then later on, you're like, duh, it was like almost so spelled out that I couldn't get my head around it. So here's the dream.

So I'm in this room and it's like a full white room and I am a glowing egg, like a little ball. Like that's all I am. Right. And I look around in this, in the rest of this white room and there's a bunch of glowing eggs and that's all we are. And, but I can tell even by looking at all these little glowing marble looking things, we're all different.

Now the only exit point from this weird white room is this amazing slide that you would find at like a McDonald land sort of deal. It's like crazy colors, woo! You know, like there's like a real party feel to it. And so one by one, each of these glowing little orbs would go up to the entry of the slide and a word would be thrown at them like freedom or abundance or love. And they'd be like, okay, got it. And they'd go woo!

And they'd go down, down, down, down. And this went on forever. And finally it was my turn and I got the word authentic. And I was like, and on the way down, I remember thinking, wow, this is going to be intense because to show up authentically can be a challenge. And what I later learned about this dream was that all of us, these little glowing orbs, like maybe this is some weird explanation of what life is, is that we come into these bodies and we get this one shot.

to show up in a particular way, to learn something, to teach something, to be a certain way. And maybe it's as simple as just one word. So mine being authentic, I'm here today to talk to you just about that. And I wanted to kick it off with a quote, and forgive me in advance if I trip, it's probably 100% likelihood. I'm no ballerina. But I wanted to kick off with a quote from Carl Jung, famous psychologist. He said, the privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.

The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are. It really is a privilege. And on this International Women's Day, I just want to take a quick moment

to honor the fact that we have the privilege to do the kind of introspection to show up authentically. Because when you're in a war zone, when you're wondering how you're going to feed your kids, when you're living in extreme poverty or terror, or even if you're in our world, our paradigm, and you're afraid to go to work or you're afraid to come home from work, if there's something in your life that's not giving you the privilege to show up authentically, then how can you possibly expect to?

So we do have great privilege living in this time and in this place. One of the things that I've noticed about Western women is that sometimes that comes a little shame with that or guilt of like, ugh, how could I even be upset about that meeting that just went horribly when I know that someone's getting bombed halfway across the world, right? I think it's our responsibility though. It's our responsibility to own that privilege and to rock it.

Because what I've learned about authenticity and when we show up, it's like a ripple that creates this energetic force field around the world to help other people show up for real as well. So today let's do the work for the women who can't do the work themselves. And let's really affect the world by creating that ripple so that other people can show up that way too. So the privilege of a lifetime is to become who we truly are. And we'll come back to that. But I wanted to...

give you a little background about me and how I got to this point. I believe in connection. I believe in connection of ourselves and ideas to other people. And when we can make those connections, that's when we truly change the world. A woman named Susan Pinker gave a TEDx talk, and her talk, she's a psychologist, her talk was all about how connection is one of the number one things that can lengthen our life.

Like if you want to know how to live to over 100, it comes down to the connections. Now you might think, "Oh, it's about diet. It's about exercise." It's actually not. Those are pretty low on the list. The top two are social integration and close relationships. And she did a whole TED talk on this and it was amazing. But I believe that it's even more than that. It's not just having a close relationship. It's having an authentic close relationship. So how do we show up in that way?

So I learned how to do this back in 2001. I had just graduated from college. I grew up in Chicago, went to Eastern Illinois University, and all I could think about being in that little farm town was getting the heck out of there and moving to the Big Apple. So I moved to New York City, no money in my pocket, no job, the whole deal. They make sitcoms about this all the time, right? The girl from the farm town who goes to the big city. That was me.

So I moved to New York and all I wanted to do was get a job in television production. I've always been a storyteller. I was a speech communications major. No one actually gives speeches for a living that do that major. So funny irony. But I really wanted to tell stories and I wanted to tell real stories. So I wanted to work in documentary production. So I moved out there and

And for a year, I was working on all sorts of documentaries for History Channel, MSNBC, really riveting stuff. Now also, the other side, if anybody's ever worked in production, it's not a very well-paid field. And so a lot of people have side hustles. So one of my side hustles was working as an extra in reality television.

Just let that sink in for a minute. Working as an extra for reality television. Being paid to make reality TV seem more real. And that was an interesting petri dish of what is real and what is not real. What I learned is that there was a lot of inauthenticity in our world. I was kind of shocked at the time at just how much there was.

But I remember through that experience thinking to myself, we've got to show up more real. And it's a choice. How real do you want to be? And we have that choice every single day. So I bought back and forth between making documentaries during the daytime and working as like this. OK, let me just tell you exactly what I do. So I worked for the show called Eliminate.

It is as classy as it sounds, if you haven't seen the late night reruns on Bravo. So, Elimidate, it's one person, they go on a date with four people of the opposite sex, and throughout the night, you get, all these four people get eliminated until there's one person left, and then you, like, ride off into the sunset together. And usually in the midst of it, there's fighting, there's drunkenness, there's belligerence, it's insane. Anyway...

It taught me a lot about that question of like, how real do you want to be by simply observing people who are showing up as so inauthentic. But the thing is about New York, I had such a great time, whether it was making movies or making crappy TV, I was just having a blast in this experience. So I was doing that for about a year when I got a phone call that one of my best friends from back where I went to college at Eastern Illinois University named Shannon McNamara,

had been murdered while fighting off an attacker in her apartment. This was one of those game-changing moments where it kind of reminds me almost of The Matrix, you know, when Neo's given the choice between the two pills and he has the choice to like go to the real world, which is kind of darker and gritty and intense and scary and uncertain, or live in the program, which is light and orderly and very sensical and predictable and safe.

And in that moment of getting the news that Shannon had been killed, I was like, "Wow, there's this whole underbelly of the world." And I mean, I'm almost embarrassed to say, to that point in my life, I really hadn't gone through anything bad. I really was one of those people that had had kind of a sheltered existence.

And so I remember getting that news and just the whole world shifting and seeing it in a different perspective. And I went home for the wake and the funeral. Well, that first night I decided to have a campfire in my parents' backyard and pull together all of our friends. Because when something really bad happens, I feel one of the most healing things we can do is share our perspective on what did happen to speak up, to speak our truth.

And so I have this bonfire and most of the people in attendance that night were me and Shannon's sorority sisters. And so we're sitting around, we're all you know in the ages of let's say like 19 to 22 for the most part. And for the first few hours we're talking about Shannon, we're talking about who could have done this because at that point the guy who murdered her had not been caught. So it was just a super intense time around that.

But I noticed as the evening progressed, we stopped talking specifically about Shannon and we started talking about our own experiences as women in regards to safety and fear. And I started hearing some of my best friends in the world, educated, strong, smart, bold, beautiful women say things like, you know what, after what happened to Shannon,

I don't want to take that internship at the hospital downtown Chicago because it just probably isn't safe to be walking in my car at night. Or after what has happened to Shannon, I've learned that, you know, this guy I'm dating, we've been talking about moving in together, and I was thinking about breaking up with him. I don't think he's my guy, but I might as well just move in with him because it's probably safer to not sleep alone at night. Then another friend saying, I had this whole trip planned to backpack Europe solo, and all of a sudden, after this has occurred,

It just feels like a really radically unsafe thing to do. This went on for hours. Hours of us strong, empowered, bold, educated women talking about all the things we weren't going to do because fundamentally we were afraid. And I remember just listening that whole night and really taking it all in and realizing the injustice, not just of violence, but of the fact that we weren't able to be who we truly are because fundamentally we were afraid to be.

And that seemed like the bigger injustice in the two things in that moment. Because I thought to myself, what would Shannon be upset about? She'd be pissed about that. She'd be upset that we weren't taking the trips and we weren't being with the right people and we weren't taking the jobs that were going to fill us up. That's what she'd be upset about. And so that was the first time that I started to realize the power of speaking truth, especially in a healing situation like that. Well, the next day,

was the wake. And it's one of these wakes when someone young dies. I mean, they're just huge, right? Just hundreds of people. She was a very loved person, an all-American athlete, very popular woman. And so we're waiting for hours to get to the front of the wake and to pay respects and to meet her family. And so in these hours, I had a lot of time to think about what had occurred. And by the time we got to the front,

I'd been thinking about, well, what are you going to say in those situations? Like, how do you speak your truth when it's almost like the unspeakable has happened? How does that work? And so I had to kind of surrender at that moment when we got up to the front to just be like, all right, well, whatever's going to come out is going to come out. I'm just going to have to be a piece of that, but I'm just going to have to be real in the awfulness of this. Well, before I met her family, I kneel in front of her casket. And I just remember thinking, this feels so unsolvable. This feels so permanent and unfixable.

But then I also had a moment where I was like, I don't think people who have passed in the way that she did would want us to stay paralyzed in that. I think that we don't have to put a period at the end of those kinds of stories when those injustices happen, but we need to put a comma and we need to keep speaking for them because they can't speak for themselves. And so I get up and I meet her family.

Now, you know when you go to college and you have these super tight friends that are like your family, but you never know where they came from because you're not hanging out with their family, they're far away? So I'd never met her, her mom, Cindy, but I had always heard so much about her, and she apparently had heard so much about me.

Because I introduced her, I'm like, hi, I'm Erin Weed. I'm so sorry about what's happened. And she just cuts me off. She's like, oh, you're Weed? I was like, hey, man, when you got a last name like Weed, you got to just own that. So in college, I was Weed. By the way, I'm totally running for governor someday. Governor of Colorado.

Get all the trustafarians on Pearl Street to be my campaign managers. It'll be awesome. So Cindy's like, "Oh my god, I need..." And I was like, "Oh yeah, this is kind of weird. Okay, we're just having this moment." And we're laughing and she goes, she's grabbed my hand. We have this instant connection. She said to me, "You know what? It's so crazy, but even after the worst thing that has happened,

the losing a child. I don't know that there's too many more worse things that can happen in a human existence. She said, "You know, there's something worse." And I was like, "What could possibly be worse than what has occurred?" Like this moment, what could possibly be worse? She's like, "What's worse is that I'm so afraid that the world is going to forget about her. I'm so afraid that everyone's going to forget her name."

And I remember in that moment just being like, "Wow." Just the moment of that sinking in, of that, how we can have levels of fear and how her bigger fear in that moment was just the forgetting of people not hearing about her anymore. And I think a lot of us have had that fear maybe for ourselves if you've ever been faced with your own mortality or the mortality of a loved one. What if people forget?

And I remember that moment as a 22-year-old woman just being like, you know what, that is one thing I know how to do because I have a big mouth and I can make sure. I can't solve violence. I can't end murder. But I know how to talk and I can get other people to talk and speak their truth. And so I kind of walked away from that realizing the power of speaking truth transcends death. It transcends tragedy and all of those different things. What I ended up doing with the help of many, many people, a great community, is starting a company called Girls Fight Back.

What we did was women's safety and self-defense seminars. We mostly went into high schools and colleges all across the world. In addition to the United States, we also expanded into India and Pakistan, and we localized the content so that it was specific to their culture and to the safety risks that they faced.

And in addition to all that, we were doing the radio shows and the TV shows, and I wrote a book and a magazine column for Cosmo Girl, and it was amazing. It was just such an incredible program. But at some point, there came this point about 12 years in, in that period of time, I'd had two children, a lot of things had shifted. And there came this point where I realized it was no longer my story to tell.

it felt like it was almost this old story. Not like it wasn't significant, but almost like I had crossed the bridge from pain to peace. And I noticed that a lot of times in the victim world, doesn't matter what one is a victim of, sometimes people can get stuck in the story and that prevents us from being in our truth. And I started to give myself permission to let that story not need to be the center of my being anymore and to just let it go and to let it dissipate.

And so as I started doing that, it was very kind of painful because sometimes we can be identified by our stories. It's almost like this egoic attachment that we have. Well, I'm the woman that NBC calls when something bad happens and I'm there to be able to show up and offer safety strategies and that's who I am. Or is it? And so it started to kind of slip away and the identity started to slip away.

And so I ended up selling the company because I knew that it was time for someone else to tell that story and their version of it. And I had a bit of a identity crisis because at that moment I'm like, well, who am I now if I'm not the ass-kicking girl? Because by the way, I'm one of the most highly trained women in the world in ass-kicking. I'm really fun at parties. So it's a really handy skill that you can do nothing with, right?

So I found myself in a little bit of a crisis of sorts. I wasn't midlife, but definitely a crisis. I started thinking about what I'd learned about seeking purpose and speaking truth, and how can I show up in a new way and do both of those things?

I started working for TED and TEDx and TEDx Boulder started coaching for them, developed their speaker coaching program, also TEDx Mile High. And I was just so excited about this idea of really distilling down our truth into like the 10 to 18 minutes, turning it into a story that can really captivate and then affecting audiences by it. I started like doing the speaker coaching thing, but I realized that there's so much more to it.

When you get somebody that's like a TED speaker and they're brilliant and they've got these amazing ideas and they've done these epic things and they come in, I was thinking to myself, I don't want to just make them shiny. I want them to seek their truth and share that with the masses because that's going to be so much more powerful. So I came up with this thing called the dig, which I'm going to share with you today, at least a little snippet of it.

Because these people needed to understand their purpose and their why and their drive behind it if they were going to really be able to show up and communicate authentically. But I feel like speaking truth not only affects us in the personal but also in the business world. Shortly after I sold Girls Fight Back and started working for TED, there was also kind of a personal churning that was happening. I was starting to realize that the marriage I was in

was not a good marriage. It was, he's not a bad person, but it was really built on some pretty inauthentic foundations. And this was rough because not only had I lost my girls fight back identity at that point, my other identity was being a married mom of two kids. And I started getting really shaken at the idea of like, I don't think I'm supposed to be here anymore. I don't come from a family of divorce. I actually used to hold a lot of judgment around it.

And I remember being in that moment of being like, oh man, this is going to be so bad. But this is what I have to do to be real is to leave this marriage that was not healthy, probably for either one of us. So it was very painful, but I started to go through the process of moving. Now, when I put my house on the market at the time we had been living in Broomfield,

and put my house in the market. And like, how do you find a realtor? Well, apparently I find it by like the grocery carts, you know those realtors? Like what a bizarre place to like put an ad, like where your baby's butt sits. Like all day, whatever, it worked for me apparently. So this guy looked friendly. So I was like, hey, I'll call him. So I called him. I think his name was John, I forget.

But he comes over and it's like him and his wife and they're like this dynamic duo and they got their whole system down and they're like, okay, what do you want to sell the house for? And how many bedrooms does it have? And does it have a basement? Is it finished? And what's the garage like? And so they were like, had locked down. It was tight. Like from a business perspective, how they showed up was like completely solid. But never once did they ask why I was selling my house. They had no idea what was going on personally. They were so in their heads about the facts

of what was occurring and how they could help me in that sense, that they weren't really looking at the bigger experience of what does it mean to let go of your home? And that was okay because their job is to sell my house, right? Well, they did a good job. Within one day, my house was sold and it was sold to someone with a cash offer.

Now, a few weeks after that happened, everything was like done. I'm moving to Boulder. I'm moving forward. Somebody asked me, hey, what's the name of your realtor? Because I want to sell my house and you sold quick and everything. For the life of me, you guys, I could not remember. I could not remember these people's names. And I still don't know. I mean, I called the dude John because that's like statistically a good likelihood. But I mean, I didn't know. And I think the reason

It's because there was no connection beyond just the facts and what was going on in the head. Now on the flip side, as I was starting to move, I was looking for movers. There were no ads on grocery carts for that. So I had to do a little more digging, a little more yelping. I found this random company and I hired them. And this duo of dudes were amazing. And one specifically, his name was Frederick.

And he was this super charismatic guy who loved his job, used to work in tech. And I remember asking him, like, hey, Frederick, you know, kind of doing the whole business professional meeting someone thing. And, you know, how do you do what you do and how'd you get here? He's like, I used to work in tech, but I wanted to be a mover. I wanted to haul stuff. And he's like, no, I don't want to haul stuff. I want to move people. And I'm like, oh.

This is exciting, you know? And he probably read the look on my face of being like, what? And he's like, yeah, we're going to move you, but I'm going to move you. And I'm like, okay. Like I sort of like feel the need to move while he talks. So I was like, do you feel in me? You know what I'm about? I'm going to move you. And I was like, not really. He's like, he's like, why are you selling your house? And I was like, I'm selling my house because I'm getting divorced. Why are you getting divorced?

Whoa, go in there, bam, you know? And in that moment though, I was like, wow, that's so appropriate. That is so appropriate because he was being real and curious. There was no judgment in that question. He was just legitimately curious. Like, oh, you're moving because you're getting divorced. Why? What happened?

So, you know, I actually told him a few, you know, things, whatever. And he's like, all right, all right. It's time to move you forward. This is not a house. This is your life. And we're moving you. You know, like he was giving me like this sermon in my kitchen. And I started realizing, oh my gosh, this is a mover. His only job is to move my stuff forward.

And yet his why, his authentic meaning for what he does is that he wants to move people. He wants to like take them from this phase and get them into the next phase of their life. He was able to see that this wasn't about a moving truck and strong muscles. This was about helping people make hard transitions.

And because he did that, two weeks later, when somebody asked me for a recommendation on a mover, I'm like, oh my God, you gotta call Frederick. Here's his cell phone number. We just texted the other day. So I feel like we can learn a lot in business in addition to our personal lives.

If we're willing to show up more than just in our head and our thoughts and just the transactions, we're actually able to get with each other and connect on the heart level and the core level of like, what do you want? How can we get you where you want to go? We can feel that. And so that's what I want to share with you guys today and actually give you the experience of how to do that. And the way we're going to do that is this exercise is a part of the dig. I call it head heart core.

And the difference between mysterious John the realtor and awesome Frederick the mover was that Frederick showed up from all three places. He was willing to connect with me on the facts, he was willing to connect with me on the feelings, and he was willing to connect with me on the desires. And he was willing to hold all of it. And I think we can all show up in this way.

This is how we be authentic. Is communicating the facts? Yes. And the feelings? Yes. And the desires? Yes. But we do it not just from a place of transparency, but from authenticity. Now, I gave a TEDxBoulder talk just this past fall and it was on that topic. What's the difference between being transparent and being authentic? My opinion is that it's showing up in all three of these.

From the head, the heart, and the core. Have you ever met somebody who is just one of these people that just spouts off anything in a moment and they're like super proud of how authentic they are? Even when they're hurting people and like making people cry. I actually don't think that's authentic. That's wounded transparency. And those are totally different things. Just because you have no filter doesn't make you a real person.

It makes you a wounded person who's not doing the work to find out what's really true. Because the reality about authenticity is that if we go and communicate about what we feel about something from the head, the heart, and the core, it usually ends in a very soft place. It doesn't usually end in like poisonous vitriol, okay? Our truth, I believe for most people, is a kind truth. It is a peaceful truth. It is one who wants best for self but best for others.

So today what I want to do is take you through the head hardcore exercise. This is something that I developed as I started working with these TED people from all over the world who were trying to show up like the realtor, but really they had to show up like the mover. They were trying to show up and just talk about their new scientific innovation and they just wanted to stay here.

But they needed to drop down here about what they felt about it and what they believed for it, what they desired for it. And that is what really started my new company because that was the thing that was working. So people fly all over the world to work with me on their TED Talks, but what they're really getting is a better self-understanding about what their truth is and permission to actually share that with people. And guess what? On the other side of that, people are so excited because now you have given them permission to show up in that way too. And that's the ripple I'm talking about.

So let's talk about the head, the heart, and the core. The head is feeling, or I'm sorry, the head is thoughts. It is things that we think. It is things that are undisputably true. Things like your age, if you have a dog, where you're from, where you went to college. These are head facts. They are things that are indisputable. The next part is the heart.

These are feelings. This is what's true for you emotionally in that moment. The thing about being in the heart is that it's changing constantly. What's true for you emotionally 10 minutes ago could be totally different than what's true for you 10 minutes from now. So part of the trick about being in the heart and why so much of our culture doesn't stay here or go here even is because it requires presence. It requires us to actually stop and breathe and feel for a second

to even know what's happening there. So we have a lot of unconsciousness happening in our culture because we're just not dialed into that. And then finally, the core is I desire. It's what we want. Now, especially women, we're kind of trained to keep that under wraps a bit. Like no one wants to hear a woman walking around talking about what she desires, what she wants in the world. She sounds demanding.

Well, guess what? When we do this part of the exercise, what you're probably going to notice in the room is when you get a room full of people who are showing up and talking about what they want, there's this energy of like, "Yeah! Yeah!" You know, like, because what you want is probably very similar to what other people want. And like, can we all please just give each other permission to say what we want? It's so freeing for everyone. And even if in relationships, even,

Have you ever been in a relationship with somebody where they're like mad at you and you can't figure out why? And they won't tell you what they want, but you're trying to figure it out. I mean, like that is a losing battle for everyone. But if they just say it, even if it means the relationship is over, it's such a relief because you're finally in the truth of it. So what I'd love to do is just not just explain this, but actually give you guys an experience of what does it mean to be in the head, heart and core?

And like I said, I developed this for TED speakers because this is the ingredient for any of you who do public speaking. This is how you speak. You find the balance of I think, I feel, and I want. If you can find the balance of those three things, and for every speech is different depending on the intention of the outcome, but if you can find that balance, that's how people are going to get the most full authentic expression of you. And on the other side of that is where the connection occurs.

So it happens in one-to-one situations, one-to-some settings if you're leading a team, or one-to-many, like giving a talk or even giving a webinar. So head, heart, core. It's like a recipe. So I was wondering if I could get maybe three brave volunteers to come up here and help me out with an exercise. It's going to require speaking from the head, heart, and core. Yeah, you're ready. You got another one? All right. You want one more?

All right, okay. Round of applause. All right. All right, why don't we shift you guys over here a bit? Okay, so first of all, thank you guys so much for showing up for this. It can be kind of a brave and scary thing to intentionally speak your truth. And what I want to do before we begin is almost put a little bubble around this room.

You know, for all of you up there, for all of you down here, for all of us on stage, just kind of imagine we have a bubble of safety for a moment. I know even before I came on stage, your first session was some people were sharing some really amazing, powerful stories. And so let's kind of like reclaim that energy of safety because we got to have safety to show up and speak our truth. So this exercise, what we're going to do is we're going to simply introduce ourselves. So I'm going to model it.

Then our three friends up here are each going to do their custom piece of what I've modeled and introduce themselves. And then we're going to have you guys pair up and you guys are going to do this with a partner. So I want you to experience it as well as learn it. So what we're going to do basically is introduce ourselves three times. First from the head, then from the heart, then from the core. Now you might be thinking, well, that's a bit repetitive. And it's actually not.

Because introducing ourselves from these three places is a totally different experience. And what I'd like for you to notice as we're doing this exercise is how it is in your body and what comes out of your mouth. There's only one rule in all this. Outside of just confidentiality and safety, can we all agree to that? Okay.

So outside of that, the only rule is that you can't rehearse while other people are talking. And people always laugh at that because it's true. Because that's what we're all doing. Even the most present, amazing person, we're all rehearsing. Some of us are better at it than others, so it's just less obvious. But we're all doing it all the time. Now let's think about it for a moment. What are the repercussions?

of a whole world where everyone is rehearsing while other people are talking. We're not listening. But even worse, on the other side of that, we're not connecting. That thing that's like a survival deal that can actually increase our lifespan, we're not getting that. And we have a very lonely, separate world right now despite being how connected we are. So we need to start with being present.

And in order to do that, we need to trust that if we show up presently from the head, heart, or core, whatever's going to come out is perfect. And it's probably going to be 10 times better than what you rehearsed. And I've seen this firsthand. Okay? So, while we're all not rehearsing, I'm going to kick this off. Now, can I have a timer? Is someone good with a phone? Okay, cool, Jess.

Sometimes I try to do it, I screw up the whole thing. All right, I get like so into it. Okay, can you do like 60 seconds? So there is a time component. The reason is I'm a hyper distiller. I don't think we need a ton of time and space to do some of the things we think that we need. Things like getting to your truth. People are like, whoa, that sounds heavy and long. Not really. You want to know how I know this? Because I have a five-year-old. She gets to her truth really fast. Right now she's in a phase where she's not wearing shoes.

Everybody knows about it. It's very clear. I'm not going to wear shoes today, mom. Okay? All right? She's very clear. That's speaking from the core. I will not wear shoes. But it doesn't take a long time to get to your truth. What does take a long time is to filter out all the stuff that we have that stopped us from having permission for ourselves to speak our truth. That's a totally different thing that we all have as adults. But this process will help us take us through. So with one minute on the clock, I'm going to introduce myself from my head, facts only, completely unrehearsed,

What you're probably going to notice within yourself and maybe watching other people is that some of us are really good in the head. Some of us are really good in the heart. Some of us are really good in the core. Most of us are not good at all three or I shouldn't say not good. It's just not comfortable. It's not like your go-to and that's okay. I'm not here to teach you how to be better at it. I'm just here to teach you how to bring consciousness to when you're in which space for better for. So one minute.

All right, Jess, let's do this thing. Ah, okay, facts only. If I say a feeling, you can all go, eh. Totally not abrasive. All right, so facts only. My name is Erin Weed. My middle name is Underwood. I was made fun of a lot for my weird name.

through growing up, graduation ceremonies were kind of the biggest part. Erin Underwood Weed, and everyone would laugh. I don't think it's that funny, but whatever. I am from Chicago, lived in New York after that, have started a few companies. I have two children, ages eight and five. We live in Boulder. Just moved last week. Thought I would make it more interesting and adopt a puppy this weekend.

So far that's proven to be intellectually, factually true. It's more interesting. I am learning to play the ukulele. Okay, thank you. So there are my facts. So now, oh you'll also notice I kept my hand on my head the whole time. You're probably wondering why I was doing that.

Here's why. This exercise is about teaching conscious awareness about when you're in your head, your heart, and your core. The reason I'm doing that is so that you can have the power to shift out of your head, heart, or core and into a different place in your communications. So for this exercise, we're all going to put our hands where we're speaking from so that we can start learning where we are. Make sense? Like kinesthetic training. Okay, cool. So hand on your head, one minute, facts only about who you are. Hi, I'm Lisa Kleeber.

I moved to Denver recently from New York and from moved to New York from Seattle so that's where I originally come from and I got engaged in October and we have a small dog his name is Connor the small dog's name is Dobby we call him our son he's going to be a junior senator someday laughter

My fiance Connor just got a job and I am switching teams to payments and I'm going to take 30 days off in between to regroup. How much time do I have left? I deal with the waiting. Great job.

Hi, my name is Leslie Pace. I am a Colorado native. However, I was born in Oklahoma. I moved here when I was six. Grew up in Aurora, Colorado. And went to a high school out that way. If anybody is familiar, probably not. Then I graduated from there and went to the illustrious Howard University in Washington, DC, where I studied computer information systems with a minor in information assurance.

and I also learned how to juggle my men very well. I then from there left DC and came back home. I was managing restaurants in DC and my dad said, "We pay for you to go manage restaurants." And so I said no. And I came home and I started working at a startup called Zen Planner in Middleton.

and they do information systems for fitness businesses and I got my yoga cert. Alright! My name is Paige Jessica, my name is Leland Burke. Nice. And my name never fit on Scantrons growing up. And I'm an admin in G-Tech. I've been at Google for eight years. I started out as a TBC and became an FTE in 2011. I just recently, in August, moved

from California to Colorado. And aside from a one year stint in Germany, it's the only time I've lived outside of California. But I'm really excited that I left. I got my degree in German and International Relations. I live with my boyfriend Noah and our two dogs, Budget and Bogart.

I love to... You can't love it, but you can. Yep. Yeah. I am outside a lot. And I'm going on a cruise next week. All right. Okay, so now it's your turn. I'd love for you to find a partner and one minute for each of you. I'll tell you when the minute's up. So remember, hand on the head, facts only. Ready? And break.

30 seconds to find a partner, if you need a partner. Okay, so what did you all notice about speaking from the head? Just holler it out. It's hard to not say things you like. Yeah? What else did you learn? You ran out of facts. Okay. Ran out of time. She's like, I could

going we got a head person right here okay great I'm a totally lame person what a tough discovery in a workshop you know well the great thing about head like this this is by no means the the punchline is not like don't stay in your head don't like go to your head like that's not the punchline the punchline is don't live in your head

Okay. And that's what a lot of our culture does is we live in our head like networking events. Great example. You go to a networking event. What are the two questions people ask you? Where are you from? And what do you do? Right. Over and over and over again.

And it's what it leads to is just this culture of disconnection. Because that's like where we're starting. Now, I don't have a problem with starting there if you use it as a jumping off point to go somewhere else. Because it can be socially awkward just to walk up to someone and be like, what are you passionate about? Like, what are you passionate about?

You know, like sometimes we gotta like ease into it a little bit, but if we just let it go there, one of the things I noticed about like the where are you from, what do you do thing, especially the where are you from, like it'd be like, oh, I'm from Chicago. And then the person I just met, they're like, I have a cousin who is from Wilmette, which is outside of Chicago. Oh, really? Where'd she go to school? And oh, oh, really? She went to Loyola? I have a friend who went to Loyola. And I'm like, what?

We're now talking about two people that neither one of us really know at this point. Anyway, not authentic. Very, very transparent. Okay? So we want to go for the authenticity, the head, the heart, and the core as a blend. But now one of the reasons head is important is because it gives context. Oh, where's that person from? Now we can place them. There's something about having context that allows you to trust someone.

Like if I would have just stepped up here and started talking about stuff and Allison hadn't introduced me and you had no context of like what my deal was or what my background was, you'd be thinking, why the heck is this woman here right now? And like, why am I listening to her? Like, I don't, I don't understand. So head is powerful and important as long as we don't stay there forever. Okay. So now let's move on to the second part, the heart. Now for this part of the exercise, I'm going to give you two minutes.

The reason is... I know, it's getting crazy. Two minutes of feelings, everybody! That's what you get today! So, the reason I make this a little bit longer is because I like to create some time and space for you to even figure this stuff out before you start talking. So many times in our culture we just talk way too soon.

We just start saying all this crazy stuff that is not true, not authentic, maybe not even transparent, just because we are conditioned to fill the space. So in your personal relationships, in business, doesn't matter. I encourage you all to take a minute, take a day, take a week, take what you need to figure out what is the authentic emotion. So within this exercise, I'd love for you all to start out. We'll all have our hand on our heart and start off and just taking a breath.

Close your eyes if you need to. Just drop in with yourself. What if we did this like eight times a day? Wouldn't that be an interesting life? We wouldn't be so lame anymore because you'd actually kind of see, whoa, I'm like a complex individual. I've got range, you know? And it's true. So we need to like drop down and sink in to even figure out what that is. Okay. So I'll model it for you. Give me two minutes. All right.

Okay, what am I feeling? So I'm in this space right now where I'm feeling total joy and connection because of this puppy that I adopted. I have not had a dog for like years because my pug died a few years ago. And I've always wanted this French Bulldog. Like I want a French Bulldog, but I didn't want to do a breeder because I have this like ethical thing around it.

So I was like, I want to adopt a French bulldog. Like, and they just, it doesn't happen very often. And then she came through Pet Finder, which I would get obsessively. She showed up and she was given up and discarded by a breeder because she has this epic underbite, like out of control, like teeth hanging out of mouth. Like she's 11 pounds.

And I just remember feeling in that moment like, "Oh my God, that's my dog." And I just moved a week ago. And this is terrible timing and awful, but something in my heart just was exploding for this little creature. And so we rescued her on Sunday. And ever since then, I'm in total puppy craziness, but it's just like something about her has reawakened what it means to connect, what it means to care for people, what it means to be straightforward about what you need.

like don't eat my couch. Do not crap there, you know, but just in a loving sort of way, just to show up in that way. And so I've really been basking in that and yesterday my kids met her for the first time and it was just like, I'm still kind of like riding it. And it's for me kind of a welcome respite just with so much that's going on in the world right now. I actually kind of came out of like a month of just

just not dumps per se, but just feeling like just the world was disconnected from each other, you know? And it just kind of felt dark and a little hopeless after the school shooting, recent school shooting, like really kind of rocked me to my core because I used to get the calls when that sort of thing would happen. And now I have two kids that are in elementary school and it's just real in a whole different way. And so

Back time. So when the time ends, like you finish your thought because otherwise it's just abrupt and feels weird for everybody. So really in closing, what I've been feeling into is just like the paradox of what it is to be alive, of like holding the light and the dark in the very same moment and the joy and the pain in the very same moment and just trying to become more skillful with just allowing it all to be true. Thank you. applause

Good breath. The whole room can take a breath too because when you're hearing other people share, it can be heavy on you as well. I had a therapist once tell me that this is a self-soothing hand motion too, so it actually feels really nice. So I moved to Boulder, well I moved to Denver, worked in Boulder, May of last year is when I technically started.

And pretty much from day one, I was in a situation that wasn't good for me. I think it's a complex thing and there's many reasons, but ultimately it wasn't a good team fit. But I'm not the same amount of quitter because there's plenty of things I'm giving up on, but I want to succeed. And so I spent so much of my energy and my time talking about people who

were breaking me down. And so much of that, of my life, was spent doing that at home, in the band pool, just anyone that would listen. And to the point that I just got tired of having that be my story every day. And so, put in a good amount of work, and I finally got the courage to say, "This isn't my place anymore." And I want to succeed, and I think I can succeed, but I can't be on this team. And I'm switching teams.

since that, since it all got approved and everything settled down and I have a few weeks left on my team and it is amazing how when I know that the consequences of the day-to-day interactions aren't going to affect me anymore, how much freer I am, how empowered I am to actually do my job. I've done more job in the past month effectively and well than I think I did in the three months prior just because I finally

And so just then the excitement of like, wow, what about when I'm in a space where I feel really safe and really awesome? The end. Oh, and I'm going to finish. How much more could I do there? I just moved out of my parents' house, so I feel really free. I'm really excited about it. Even, you know, it's my 661 square feet. It's me. It's mine. I'm really happy about it.

And I definitely just backed into my neighbor's car also. I felt nervous. I also felt very responsible because I wrote him a note in the middle of a snowstorm while I was in my PJs. I feel...

very optimistic. My brother is graduating from high school soon. He's about to go to college. He wants to study architecture. I'm scared. He has epilepsy that is triggered by sleep deprivation. And, you know, you're in college. How are you doing to stay up all night? And I was like, Miles, you know, you can't drink any alcohol. You can't be out here staying up late all nighters. It's not a thing that you can do like everybody else.

He's gonna be thousands of miles away. I'm nervous, but I'm excited. He is my little brother. He is 6'5". And he wears a Vince 15 shirt.

And he has started growing dreadlocks and I don't like them.

And that is what matters. I took him to see Kendrick Lamar for his 18th birthday and he was so excited and he said, "Leslie, this is the most fun I've had all summer." And he is an old man in a young man's body. Even when we were younger, I would say, "Hey, let's go eat ice cream." He'd be like, "I already have my pajamas on."

So, I mean, nervous, basically. Thank you. I feel lots of feelings. All the time, actually. I'm a very feeling person. I have sex to wear glasses when you're feeling. The tears, like, go out.

Sometimes I cry watching commercials. And just when you say something nice, I get teary. And it's a really annoying trait that I have. But I'm kind of learning to embrace it. I'm 31 years old and I feel like

your 30s are about kind of embracing who you are and acknowledging and loving yourself for who you are. I spent, see, look, this is who I am. I'm so surprised that I was actually able to watch Game of Thrones. I just like, didn't like it. But,

But I feel like I spent a lot of the last couple of years kind of working through this part of who I am and that being okay. And it also coexisting with other parts of who I am and like the smart parts and the professional parts and the hard-hearted parts.

And also just growing up. I feel like I'm in a growing up kind of phase. I recently kind of separated from my dad. And that was a really, don't know why I'm sharing, but really hard year. But also really about me and it being okay to be me. And that you don't need everyone else's approval around you to be you and to love you for you.

So yeah, that's good.

Before we hop to you guys, I just want to just make a note because I can feel your self-consciousness in it. How easy is it to hear her? It's so easy to just be with you in the authenticity of it. As women, we could let go of any judgment if we show up in that emotional way. It's just so easy to hear you. So thank you. At this point, we can go back to our partners. Two minutes for each. Thank you.

What did you notice about the difference between the head and the heart outside of the visual difference of the room? I cried. Okay, it was interesting. Okay, what else? You wanted to respond. Yeah, yeah. It was uncomfortable. Yeah.

They just aren't typically things that would come out in a first meeting with somebody, right? If you're being censored and like feeling sort of that polite, those polite social boundaries, you wouldn't offload those things on somebody. Totally. It would feel like offloading. Yeah. Actually, kind of just the opposite. I think it's easier to share the strength sometimes. Like you don't know anything about me and I don't know anything about you, so I can just say it.

She's like, mine says Uber. Just go take a 20-minute ride. You need to dump something. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Some of the things I said were things I felt but never said out loud. Very cool. I felt like saying.

Interesting. Did anyone who tends to be more of a head person, because just because we're mostly women here doesn't mean we're all heart people, you know? There's women who are just more head people too. So is there anybody who is more of a head person? You've almost noticed yourself like analyzing the feeling? Like, I think that I feel this. And you can almost like, and you can usually tell when you're doing the exercise when someone's like a head person thinking about their feelings, when it's just like there's no body matchup.

So it can come off as being a little incongruent. So head people have to be careful of that so that people don't distrust them.

because it's not matching up, if you know what I mean. So, heart is really important. Like there's a lot of connection because at the end of the day we're all human beings and that's the thing we have in common and this is where we can really connect. But on the flip side, just as if we show up at our head all the time and there's a lack of connection, if we just showed up and we're just like bleeding all over the floor,

with our feelings 98% of the time, after a while people are gonna start avoiding you. 'Cause that's exhausting. I work with a lot of activists that are trying to make big change in the world and a lot of these activists are trying to make this change 'cause something bad happened and it woke us up to something, a better way.

And it's just kind of this natural thing to just go into the "and this happened and this happened to me and this was awful and this person died" and you know, like, it's all bad. Like, as someone who talked about rape and murder for 12 years, it's bad. And we need to be able to talk about it from the head and we need to be able to talk about it from the core too. And balance it out. Otherwise people get emotionally exhausted and you don't connect then either. So everything is about balance. So that's the heart. The final piece of this, and then we're going to tie up, is the core.

We're going to shift back to one minute for this. You might not even need all that time and you don't have to use it all. Speaking from the core tends to be very short, very to the point. My daughter, I don't want to wear shoes. Very clear. Doesn't necessarily need to make sense. So let's just, you know, release ourselves from having to, for that to happen. It can just be what you want in that moment.

I want this, I want that. And so I find that a good prompt when we do the core, and you might want to do this with your partners, just start off with, what do you want? In some ways it can sound abrasive, but in other ways it can sound totally freeing. Really? I can answer that question any way I want to? Okay, here's what I want. So have some fun with this. Notice what comes up. I also notice when we speak from the core, sometimes it can seem really random. Like,

world peace and I want to sleep later, you know, like it's seemingly unrelated but maybe if everyone slept later, I don't know. So just whatever, remember we're not rehearsing still, so just whatever wants to come out comes out. So this time we're just gonna hold our belly, this is kind of the place where we manifest things, so again take a good deep breath. And especially by the way as leaders, we need to tell people what we want if we want to lead people somewhere.

Martin Luther King Jr. Like if he gave speeches and he didn't tell people that he had a dream, like, do you think it would have been as effective? We wanted to get on board with that dream. He took us somewhere. So we need to do that as leaders in our relationships and our teams and in the world. Okay. I want, uh, I want,

to potty train my dog. 'Cause I think it'll make my life better. I want, in this sense, in more the work sense, I want people to show up more authentically. I have the luxury of doing this for a living

of getting people to their most authentic selves and helping them communicate. And I see what's on the other side of that. And it's that thing that like, you know, that maybe not everybody knows. And it's so frustrating because you want everyone to know it because life is so much better when they do that. And so that's kind of how I feel. And so opportunities like this are so exciting for me so that hopefully you can take this tool and run with it.

I want to figure out the violence problem in our world, and maybe even more than the violence, like the anger and the disconnection that's behind all of that. I want to get to the root of things. And I think, back up here, but I think one of the reasons we feel so disconnected is because we're all conditioned to be inauthentic. So I want us to show up in a different way than we maybe have been, because there's really a spectrum, time.

There's really a spectrum and I think we can choose in every moment to show up more authentically and the world will be better for it. All right, that's my minute. What do you want? I want to utilize my body to its greatest capacity, mostly even physically, because I just...

I think that each of us are given the gift of the mobility that we have and I want to be as fit and as strong as possible. And I want to share that gift of bodily mobility with other people because I think that a lot of time it's, "I should work out. I have to work out and not like fucking get to go move my body until it sweats and wants to like collapse on the floor." Like that's how I feel about it and I want to share that.

And I think it stems a lot from, I've had four knee surgeries, so I know what it's like to not have ability, not be able to use your body. And it's not a vanity thing, it's a feeling, I think that I feel better about every other part of my life when I feel strong. And I think everybody should feel strong because everybody can feel strong. Okay. Awesome. Thank you.

I want to travel the world and speak to the masses and teach yoga everywhere and have a big home to feed a bunch of people. And I want to get more degrees and read more books and I want to speak more languages and be a designer. I want to build better products. I want to...

eat more mac and cheese. I want to be Miss Colorado USA. I want to buy a house. I want to build generational wealth for future generations. I want to own a tea company. I want to become a restaurateur. I want to get more tattoos. I want to

I want to feel fulfilled in my career. I want to be strong. I want to be able to control the emotional part of me while still feeling it. I want to have more time to read. I want to write a book someday. I want to go on vacation. I want to...

hike more. I want to have time. I want to spend more time with my mom. I want to spend more time with lots of people. I want to have a sense of purpose. I want coffee. I want to stop now.

So this is the final thing we're doing in this session. So throw your gusto into this. Partner up. You got one minute. What do you want? So what did you notice about speaking from the core? Felt powerful. Yeah. It's what? Energizing. Yeah. You can feel it in the room right now, right? It's like, okay.

Yeah. Speaking from the core really allows people to follow us, allows people to connect with us. So as you can see from this exercise, when we show up and speak from those three different places, they're so distinctly different, yet they're all distinctly you. And when you show up and you'll bring all of those things, people can get the most authentic experience of you and you can feel the most authentically expressed. So the final thing I want to leave you with is just a quick little story, something that I do with these big TED speakers, right? After we go through this process and we write their talk,

They're always like, okay, well, I'm going to go give this talk. Like any other final pieces of advice. I'm like, yes, my piece of advice is for you to break a coconut.

They're like, that is like, like, what am I paying you for? Like, what's happening? And I'm like, yeah, okay, so here's the deal. So in the Hindu religion, they have this ceremony called breaking a coconut. And it's something that you do when there is something in your space that's preventing you from like being the human that the gods intended you to be. So it's like your ego interfering, like either you're playing yourself down or you're playing yourself up, doesn't matter. But like something's blocking it in the way. And the question becomes, what do you need to let go of?

And so in the Hindu religion, they approach the community, whoever in the community is being blocked by this thing that's preventing them from being the awesome person that they are. And they say, you need to break a coconut. And imagine what is that thing that you can infuse spiritually into that coconut that you need to let go of.

to get out of the way and become the person that you were supposed to be for the sake of the gods. And so they smash a coconut, this person does, and releases the thing that they need to get out of the way. Maybe it's fear of money, fear of success, fear of being seen, fear of failing. It's usually a fear of some kind. But smashing that coconut and in that process, smashing that thing that's preventing us from showing up as our authentic self,

And then the milk splatters everywhere. It is the most freeing thing. I actually do this with clients. Like, we actually go to Boulder Creek and smash coconuts. It's in front of the police station, so I'm just waiting for the day that they're like, "I just don't even really know how to start this, but are you breaking coconuts in nature?" But when the milk splatters, it's amazing. And then you pick up the pieces, though, of the coconut, and you gently throw them into water.

In our case, we use the Boulder Creek. And the reason that you throw them into water is it's supposed to be a grateful letting go. Because that thing that came into your space to prevent you from being who you truly were, it was a gift. It protected you. At some point in your life, it kept you safe. And now, it's not needed. And so you smash the coconut to let it go, but you thank it on its way out. And so my final thing I wanted to leave you today with is just a question.

What do you need to let go of to be that woman or to be that man that you were meant to be? Let it go. Break a coconut if you need to. Whole Foods carries them. Get the brown ones. Shatter it. Throw the pieces away and thank it for protecting you, but be ready for a new layer of self to emerge. I want to thank you all so much for having me here on International Women's Day. It's been an absolute honor.

I hope you have an amazing day. And if anybody wanted to stay in touch, I am local here. My office is right downtown Boulder. My handle is at Erin Weed, pretty much across the board. If you're on social media, I would love to stay in touch. So thank you all so much. Thanks for listening. You can watch this episode and tons of other great content at youtube.com slash talks at Google. Talk soon.