Quit Playing Small
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It's Live in the Bream with the host of Fox News Sunday, Shannon Bream. Right this week on Live in the Bream, if you need a little practical advice in your life, you are going to love our next guest. Her book is called Underestimated, The Surprisingly Simple Shift to Quit Playing Small, Name the Fear and Move Forward Anyway. Mary Marantz, welcome to Live in the Bream. Oh,

Oh my gosh, Shannon, thank you so much for having me. I said this before we hopped on and I feel like all the best stuff sometimes gets said in the beginning. I'm going to say it again. I'm such a huge fan of yours. I think you bring such intelligence and grace and class to everything you do. And so I've been looking forward to this since I saw the email come in.

Well, thank you so much. It is an honor to have you. That's very kind of you. I just love your story. It is amazing in so many different ways. You're already a bestselling author with other books. This is your latest. But tell us a little bit so folks know about your background. You came from humble beginnings and achieved really big things that I think maybe a lot of people in the early part of your life would not have predicted for you.

Yeah, it's not the usual outcome. So just for everybody who's meeting me for the first time, I grew up in a single-wide trailer in rural West Virginia. I always like to emphasize that single-wide part because sometimes people can think it was like a really nice double-wide with a permanent foundation. Not fancy.

Not the double, the single. No, no, we were for sure like the tin can version, like whatever dilapidated stock photo you have in your head of trailer in Appalachia, that would be it. If you go to thebookdirt.com, actually, that is the cover of my first book is the actual trailer I grew up in. And

You know, my dad's a logger, his dad's a logger, all the way eight generations deep in the West Virginia woods. That's sort of our legacy. And both of my parents barely graduated high school. My dad went to work in the woods when he was 12. My mom came home one day at 15 and her mom said, "You're old enough to take care of yourself." Had left a note that said that. Good luck.

And so I am their one, you know, only daughter, only child. And they just both decided that I was going to have a different life. And so you fast forward in my life and I end up at Yale for law school. And on the one hand, like you said, that's not the usual outcome we expect. But on the other, it's also kind of an underdog trope, Shannon, that we've become familiar with. You know, humble beginnings to the Ivy League, humble beginnings to sports stardom, which I do not have that one.

For sure. For sure. But what it is kind of built in me is a little bit of an underdog complex. And so underestimated is really kind of unraveling. What does it look like for us to go towards big things with purpose instead of proving people wrong?

You're right. That is a really important clarification. I do love that you talk about your parents and you talk about how your dad wanted to really help you get educated. And that was my story too. My mom felt like if I can teach you to read, you can figure things out. And it sounds like your dad was really invested in making sure that you'd be ahead of the game when you were in school, that you would have this foundation. And that's such a loving, beautiful thing for a parent to do. I love those stories about your dad.

But you talk about with Underestimated that it's so easy sometimes for other people to quote, "Look right through us and miss the pure magic we hold inside."

So talk about the shift instead of like having a chip on your shoulder and being like, I'm going to prove all these people wrong versus I'm going to shoot big for maybe something that it looks out of my comfort zone. But believing that I have the tools and the persistence to get there. Yeah. You know, I've been saying as I've been going around Shannon that this book is for the person who feels like they're being called up to more things.

being called up to greatness, they can't explain it. Maybe they've sort of always felt that way in their story. But at the very same time, they simultaneously doubt someone like you could ever get there, right? It is this like, tension of being so doubtful and so driven at the very same time. And you're right, like,

I feel like I'm somebody who spent a good solid 20 years using other people's doubts as jet fuel. Like, "Oh, go ahead, underestimate me. That'll be fun." That kind of energy. And it works. It's not that it doesn't work. It's great for these explosions of forward progress. The problem is,

when we only rely on proving other people wrong or making it about how other people see us, we become this burned out hollow shell of ourselves. There's this part near the end of the book in chapter 14, "Success is a Slippery Slope,"

Very quickly, I talk about a factory in Georgia that exploded, a sugar factory, and it was a terrible accident. A lot of people were hurt. A lot of people died. When they released the cause, they said it was because sugar dust had accumulated in the silos and they weren't doing the housekeeping to clean that mess up.

And throughout all three books, I kind of compare chasing these gold stars, like these sugary sweet highs we're going after. And if we don't get our achievement, you know, soon enough, we feel like we're going to disappear, disintegrate altogether, these million atomized molecules floating on the void. So we become the sugar dust that we're chasing. And if we don't do the housekeeping to say that's not it, it cannot be, you know, this unsustainable fuel source, like proving other people wrong. We need true purpose if we're going to make it up the mountain.

Yeah. I often share the story of getting fired from my first TV job after I was a lawyer and the guy telling me I was the worst person he'd ever seen on TV and that I would never make it in this business. And so whenever I tell that story, and I usually do, especially to young people to be like, it's okay if you get fired, like it's all right. You know, you can just one person's opinion of you doesn't, you know, dictate the rest of your life. But then I'll get people saying like, Oh, have you caught him since then? You've showed him and whatever. And I'm like,

No, I feel like that's that that can be a very like you said, that can be like a little bit of a sugary high to say like, yeah, I'm going to revenge success kind of thing. But what I took from him was, you know what? You're you might be terrible. You've got plenty to learn. So let that fuel be that. OK, how can I make better of myself where people doubt me or where things there's always room for improvement, as my mom likes to say.

But you talk about through so many practical things in this book. You also talk about the idea of perfectionism and kind of this idea like I can't get started because I don't have the perfect conditions. I don't have the perfect schedule. I don't have the perfect setup here. So we can be the ones holding ourselves back.

Oh boy. Yeah. Oh, 100%. That's the part that hurts Shannon. The cover of the book, so that, you know, it says underestimated and it's got the whole subtitle, the surprisingly simple shift, all that. But right above underestimated in little tiny letters is because the person counting you out the most just might be you. And when I sat down to write this book, I 100% thought it was going to be a book 100% about when other people underestimate us, when they're the ones doing it to us.

And you, I bet you know this from writing your own books, like books have ideas and opinions about what they want to be.

And it was like, oh, it's going to be 20% that, but it's going to be 80% about when you do it to yourself. And the truth of the matter is, that's the only person I can actually control. So that's really where the transformative work of this book comes. And I just, before I even finish that, I just want to bounce back to what you said before about what that person said to you. And besides, you know, using that to like always get better or improve or take what you can and leave the rest, what I think is the most beautiful, this is in the dedication of the book, it says,

a lifetime of being overlooked has turned you into someone who sees. And so what I think about is how you now speak, I bet, to the people who are coming up and how you would never make someone feel that way.

Because you have you know what it feels like to have someone talk to you that way. Yeah, you're so right We hope everything that we go through makes us more empathetic and more kind to people around us it did feel like he could have said that in a less harsh way, but But I take it for what it's worth because I you know as a person of faith I believe well that was part of my journey that was part of what I was gonna hear and it was not a surprise to the Lord that that was part of what I needed to hear and what I had to walk through and

But you're right. We can't let our own fears about what other people have said, where we have failed because we're all going to fail. We can't let those things fester into the point where we're paralyzed in inaction and not rising to some of these dreams that you have. And something else, I feel like every chapter of this book, you were speaking to me when you wrote it. But one of the things you talk about is overthinking, which I'm so guilty of. But you say it's

It's exhausting. That's actually science. And sometimes that's the paralyzing, the procrastination. All of those things is because we are overthinking every possible outcome, how other people are going to feel, how we're going to feel. Talk about the overthinking problem. Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to really quickly compare and contrast the overthinking problem, which is chapter seven. Overthinking is an orange safety cone with chapter four, which is second guessing is a missing handbook.

And so in that first, in the missing handbook chapter, I talk about how every hard story person I know in real life feels like at some point when they were growing up, they must have missed out on getting this handbook for life. Every other person, every other kid in America got, you know, Chad passed the mashed potatoes. And oh, by the way, make sure you understand compound interest, right? Like we didn't get this handbook. And so we walk into every situation feeling like someone else would always show up better.

Overthinking, I say, I say if second guessing is overthinking ourselves, that we don't have all the information, we have missing parts, then overthinking is when we are doing that to the goal itself. So I don't feel like I know the step by step blueprint. I don't feel like somebody has laid it all out for me in 57 point Roman numeral outline form like we did in law school, you know, with like the double I's there at the bottom.

And so we can then try to solve new problems of this thing we've never done before. Like, you know, I coach people who want to write books. They've never written a book before. They don't know all the steps. And so what our brain tries to do is it moves into the problem solving center, the prefrontal cortex, and it tries to solve new problems with old ways of thinking. You know, there's a I think it's an Einstein quote that says you can't solve new problems with the same thinking that got you here.

And anybody who's had writer's block, you know, the harder you try to think through writer's block, the more it feels like you could just sneeze right through your forehead, right? Like all the existential angst in the world gets pent up there. And so that's what's happening on a science level is

As you are over, you know, flexing that prefrontal cortex, something called glutamate starts to build up and your brain actually switches to these like low cost, low effort rewards, not because it wants, it's called an amygdala hijack, not because it wants to derail all your dreams, but because it is actually trying to preserve brain function that if the glutamate builds up too much, it's going to become toxic.

And the last thing I'll say on that is there's something called Bayesian brain theory, which essentially means your brain is an incredible prediction machine. It knows before you even start what your chances are of succeeding. And if it doesn't think you will, it will make a little hijack you away from it. But the cool part is it actually updates constantly with new data and inputs and sensory readings. And so the more we do small in the beginning, but increasingly larger, harder and harder things, it's like we're putting

new drops of data in the bucket and your brain will update. And what you're saying to it is, listen, brain, we are people who can do hard things. We can sit through the edginess of this being uncomfortable of not knowing all the steps and your brain will go, okay, cool.

So 50/50 chance of succeeding. I won't hijack you. 60/40. Let's keep going. And so the more you do hard things, the more your brain will actually allow you to do hard things. Oh, that's encouraging. Yeah. Fascinating. But I wonder when you talk about times when I'm really wrestling with a tricky problem, I'm researching or I'm writing or I'm trying to do something. Is this why my brain sometimes are like, let's go get a snack?

Let's do something that's more manageable for you, which right now I'm getting a snack because this all seems a little bit overwhelming what your brain is trying to process. 100%. And that's going to be kind of, it's called immediate mood repair. It's going to immediately try to make itself feel better. This is like, you know, getting the Trader Joe's cookie butter out of the cabinet, purely hypothetically.

But here's the cool part. Here's the cool part. Shannon, if you will instead do something my friend Ali Fallon said to me, when you think limbic brain, which is the creative novelty seeking conceptual blending part of your brain that can innovate new solutions to new problems. When you think limbic brain, think limbs, stretch, dance, go on a walk.

You know, I think it was Thoreau or, you know, maybe a few famous authors, like an afternoon walk of a couple hours was a necessary required part of their writing process. And that's like when they were doing the writing, the other part was just transcription. So move, you know, there's a reason your best ideas come to you when you're in the shower. It's because this part can turn off, you know, the prefrontal cortex can turn off and your limbic brain can take over.

So we have to relax and get bored and daydream. And then our best ideas come to us. You're so right, because we don't give ourselves time for that in 2025. I feel like we're so distracted. I do feel like my best stuff comes when I'm about to fall asleep or I'm waking up.

Because I think my brain is not yet going crazy with all the other stuff. That's a real thing. That makes so much sense. Why couldn't I think of that when I was awake? I was, you know, desperately trying to figure this thing out. All I need to do is you're right. Like relax and let your brain come figure things out. We'll have more live in the bream in a moment. Get into your body's vitals with the vitals app on Apple Watch.

The Vitals app tracks key overnight metrics so you can spot changes in your health before you feel them. The Vitals app on Apple Watch. iPhone XS or later required. The Vitals app is for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. I want to get in. Five, five, five.

We are talking to Mary Morantz. Her newest book, Underestimated, The Surprisingly Simple Shift to Quit Playing Small, Name the Fear and Move Forward Anyway. I got to talk to you about, I saw this in the author notes, I got to ask you about Dear John. Because I think we all have these inner critics.

And my fantastic therapist, who I love and, you know, spend time with as needed. She has said this, like, you need to name your inner critic because it needs to feel like someone different than you. This is not the truth. So let's give this person a name and recognize when they show up. Let's call them who they are and try to fight them with some truth.

Yeah. Oh boy, Dear John. Dear John is the name I've lovingly, not so lovingly in the beginning, but it's become lovingly over time, given to my inner critic. I will say very quickly as the setup to that, that I saw like an Instagram video interview between Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds when they were promoting Deadpool and Wolverine. And Hugh Jackman said to Ryan, listen, you've been really open about having anxiety. That's helped a bunch of people. I'm curious how that shows up in your work.

And Ryan essentially said, "When I am making a movie, I'm not just there as the actor reading the lines. I am also sitting in the audience as its harshest critic. I'm saying, 'Don't buy that. That wasn't any good. Let's take that again.'

And he said, "That ecosystem of awareness allows me to push myself to my best work, essentially." And I was like, "Oh, do I get that." Because Dear John sits like right here on my shoulder every time I'm writing. And I kind of make a joke, like it's a very long, just fun, funny description of him. But basically I'm like, "Dear John wears like khaki pants or jeans creased from the iron. He wears an LL Bean wrinkle-free shirt, but only in colors like taupe and tan and ecru."

so that these you know it's something to remind me that like i should never color outside of his boring beige lines like these crisscross lines on a shirt and i say you know every word i write he thinks is so derivative he's so furious that i wrote about care bears in a very serious thought leader book

And mostly true to his name, he wants to get me to break up with all of my biggest dreams before they become a bother to anybody. And, you know, in the chapter, I actually kind of go through some of the research that I cite with like internal family systems as the inner critic is actually a protective part that was born at some point when we were little, most likely, because it saw us get hurt by something and it said, okay, let's never do that again. And let's try to keep us safe, even though it's sort of the worst version of

of ourselves and Dr Martha Sweezy works us through walks us through a script of how to approach our inner critic and she said you should ask it how old it thinks you are because you might be surprised to find that it still thinks you're the five-year-old version of you you were when it was first born and my friend Britt Frank who I also had on my podcast recently I quote her in the book and under procrastination said and then we should ask our inner critic how old it is

Because it might just be a toddler saying, I hate you, as it like, you know, just really needs a hug and a cookie. So we can become much more compassionate with that critic when we see that it's trying to keep us safe.

But part of the process, I think Shannon is grieving and being a little angry at the bully that it has been. And I like that you've given John outfits like a wardrobe. I need to get appreciated that that is gotten that you can really you can really materialize him like he's personalized. And so I got to think about what my person is wearing. She's a woman.

So I don't know. I need to think through her wardrobe choices and see what we've got there. Now, listen, if there's anything in the book about this next topic, I got to make sure that we talk about it. This idea of people pleasing and you talk about how it can be a really lonely place. And man, it is a vicious cycle if you feed it. So what do we need to know about that and not feeding it?

Yeah, there's a whole chapter on it actually. So for everybody listening, like the whole book is premised on the idea that fear is actually when you boil it down a really boring liar, only has a few tricks in his back pocket. And so what this book does is it goes through like, you know, if you think of a prism of fear, we're used to seeing one face of fear facing us. If we think of like a bad friend as two-faced, he's like 14-faced. So every chapter is different. Chapter nine is people pleasing as a lonely intersection. Yeah.

And there's one part in there that I think you're going to really appreciate, and that is the Oliver Twist problem. So Oliver Twist, classic Charles Dickens book or play or short story, whatever it was, then turned into a movie from like the 50s or 60s. And there's a very classic scene where Oliver kind of goes up with this little bowl to the front of the room. His friends are saying, go, go, ask.

because he's asking for seconds on the gruel that they're being served. And he comes up to the guy and he's like, you know, please, sir, can I have some more? You know, like whatever. And the guy's like just furious that he would ask for more. And we all remember the line is, please, sir, can I have some more? But what he actually says in the movie is, please, sir, I want some more. And I think that's such a perfect place to begin because it shows those times when we think we're walking into the world saying, this is what I want, right?

But we're saying it, Shannon, like it's a question, a question that's dependent on someone else's approval. And we're waiting for this permission that never comes. And you're right. It becomes such a self-perpetuating cycle of

Because the more that we are whittling ourselves down so we don't offend anyone, you know, running to the middle with buckets of water to water ourselves down so we're more palatable. As Niles Crane on Frasier said, the hallmark of popularity is mediocrity. So cut off anything interesting at the edges. And the more we do that, the more we constantly are looking outward for approval and permission from others, the more the science shows us it whittles away our sense of self.

And so we lose the ability to trust our own voice, to trust our own instincts, our own vision, where we're being headed, you know, where we're headed. Even at the, we start to lose God's voice in our life at the sake of other people being okay with it, you know. And so the only way that we break that are these small shifts that are all throughout the book where we say, I'm going to do one small thing without getting somebody else to co-sign it.

Because like I say in the book, if you wait for the world's approval or co-signature before you do a thing, I promise you, you'll be waiting a very long time. Yeah. And it's exhausting in the process. I do love that each chapter does end with this shift idea that where we can think about

Okay, let's take some action and let's actually make these changes. Again, the book is underestimated the surprisingly simple shift to quit playing small, name the fear and move forward anyway. So whatever dream you have in your life, big or small, any hope, anything you would love to do with your life and these things are holding you back. This is such a great resource. So well written. I've got to finish it myself because man, I feel like every page has got something that needs to be digested and sat with for a little bit.

Mary Morantz, please tell us where we can find your podcast, your books, all the things that you're doing. Yeah. If you go to Mary Morantz dot com, that's a great hub. You can find the show. It's the Mary Morantz show dot com. Shannon, you should come on the show. I would be honored. I got to get my life together first and then I can be on your show when I finish your book. Deal. Right, right, right. So you can check that out. And then if you go to name the fear dot com, that's the Web site we put together just for this book.

We have the whole first chapter up there for free. You can download that and get a feel for my writing. That's the whole starting over is a rolling boulder. The metaphor that runs throughout the book. If we feel like we just keep blinking at the last minute, we lose our grip, lose our way. The boulder rolls all the way back down the mountain.

And yeah, like depending on when this comes out, if you go ahead and order the book, we also for a while, we'll have the audio book up there as a bonus. You can check that out to see if it's still up, but for sure you can always grab that first chapter. We have my achiever quiz there. It's going to tell you which of your, which of the five achiever types you are, how they play small and how you can move forward from there. So come tell me on Instagram at Mary Morantz, which is

type you got and if you got the book which chapter you are in the book. So much good practical information wonderful storytelling love your story and love what you are putting out there to encourage and challenge and really help other people in very practical ways. Mary thank

you for joining us on Live in the Dream. It's been a pleasure to have you. Oh my gosh, such a huge honor, such a huge fan. Thank you for everything and thank you for being who you are. Listen ad-free with the Fox News Podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcasts and Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon Music app.

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