Ep. 153: Harnessing Creative Confidence with Majo Molfino
A writer, speaker, and women’s creative leadership coach, Majo Molfino is a champion for smashing the patriarchy (both within and outside each of us!) and supporting women in harnessing their creative confidence and power. A precocious child, she was born in Argentina and moved with her family across the US and Canada, eventually landing in San Francisco.
As an immigrant, she grew up trying to uphold the “Good Girl Myth” sacrificing her identity, her creativity, and her confidence to counteract the feeling of not belonging. After a windy path through a few stuffy 9 to 5s, she went on a few mind-blowing voyages and began to reconnect with herself. Now, Majo is the host of the HEROINE podcast, author of “Break the Good Girl Myth,” and is a role model and a leader in designing a life and career that is a perfect fit.
Read the episode transcript here.
Majo Molfino: I’m Majo Molfino, I work in Corte Madera, California and I am an author and designer. I support women in building their creative confidence because I believe we need more women’s perspectives in the world.
Amy Devers: Hallelujah, Hear! Hear! Amen! High-five! Thumbs-up -
MM: Exactly, all the things. (Laughter)
AD: Yes. Before we get into all of that work, I love to start from zero because I like to know how you got to be the Majo that you are today. Can we go all the back to your youth and adolescence and can you tell me, some of the stories from your formative years that would help us to understand your background and your lived experience?
MM: It’s funny on my podcast, HEROINE; I ask every guest, what were you like as a little girl? And it kind of throws them back into that. And so I feel like this question is getting at that. I was a girl with a lot of leadership (laughs). I was going to say ‘bossy’ and then I caught myself (laughter), there you go! And so I was someone who when we were playing, as kids, I was always directing play and I knew what I wanted and I was very vocal about what I wanted. And growing up in the 90s, I’ll give you a sense for my age, I think that it was a different time then than it is now.
But one of the things was that I don’t know that that was so well received necessarily, from people around me. I think that I received messages that I was too much or too strong in some ways from particularly outside of my family. I think in my family it was good, but in school and with teachers and other kids, and so I navigated that. And I was always the new kid I’m an immigrant and I moved around quite a bit.
AD: Can you tell me what some of that messaging was like? Was it calling you precocious and laughing off -
MM: Yes!
AD: A lot of that and just like, argh, Majo, she’s trying to run the show, that kind of thing, sort of dismissive?
MM: Yes, I was definitely called precocious, though not that word because we’re kids. I was just seen as sort of trying to run the show, is a good way of putting it. And I think I had a relationship to adults because I was that sort of typical ‘good girl,’ in some way some adults loved me, parents and teachers because I would almost get… I would get along with them better than kids. And so it really was my peers, I think, that didn’t really feel at ease with the way that I was.
AD: You sensed a little bit of a division as though you were maybe a nark or a teacher’s pet -
MM: Definitely.
AD: A tattletale maybe, not that you were a tattletale, but because you were in with the adults, there was a sort of lack of camaraderie.
MM: Yes, a lack of belonging, definitely, also being the new kid every two to three years, new school.
AD: Yeah, that can do a number on somebody. How did you navigate that and how did it seep into your psyche and how are you working with it today?
MM: I think being introverted as well; I think it had a bit of an impact on me, for sure. I think, I wouldn’t even say a bit, it definitely, if I were being completely honest with you, it definitely shaped who I am, moving around so much. And I think one of the ways that I coped with feeling like the new kid and the anxiety of that was I have to really excel at school, get straight As and win the spelling bee, be good at classical piano, be a great dancer, just impress as much as possible. In some ways I felt like that would give me more belonging.
But the irony was that in some ways that just annoyed my peers even more, I’m sure. (Laughs) Yeah, I think one of the ways that I dealt with the trauma of immigration and the feelings of non-belonging was developing this ‘good girl’ shell that I spent a lot of time unlearning and deconditioning and is the work that I support women in today.
AD: Yeah, I’m really interested in that. Then just back in the mind frame of you as a little girl, I know we’re going to talk about perfectionism, but it’s almost like an airtight case. If they can’t find fault with you, then you’re automatically accepted and approved of, right?
MM: Yes, definitely.
AD: It’s so interesting. So you mentioned being an immigrant a couple of times, can you tell our listeners where you’re from or where your family is from and what your experience was like in the US, in Canada.
MM: Sure, so I was born in Buenos Aires, in Argentina, and when I was two years old my family immigrated to Toronto, Canada. And those are vastly different cultures and so in my home I was Argentinian, but in the world I was Canadian and in school I was Canadian. And that was confusing in a lot of ways, particularly with language. So at a very early age… Because I was only two, I started to have language loss. I started losing my Spanish and that created a sort of anxiety when I was a child because when we would go back to Argentina, it was like I couldn’t communicate with my extended family anymore.
Yet I could understand Spanish 100%, I couldn’t speak it and now I realize there’s a term for it, I just learned it the other day, listening to the Code Switch podcast. It’s a type of bilingualism where you can comprehend 100% but you can’t speak it. And I think a lot of first generation kids are probably nodding their heads, if they’re listening to this and know what I’m talking about. And it created a bit of an anxiety and a rift around, okay, if I’m not quite Argentinian because I don’t speak the language and I’m not quite Canadian because my name is Majo.
I have just come from a different place, I think that also was definitely something that I have been having to heal throughout my life and reconcile.
AD: Did you feel other?
MM: Definitely. I think I do have these vivid moments as a child of (laughs) being on the playground and my girlfriends names were Alison and Rebecca and they were blonde and blue-eyed and there was just this sense of, because they had that ‘Barbie’ look, they had dominance and superiority over who could do what and even going down the slides first. And then the girls with the brown hair would go down and I can’t even imagine thinking about… Because I’m white passing and I do consider myself white because my ancestry is 95% European. But I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a little girl with brown skin or a black girl, just the amount of othering that happens at such a young age is devastating.
AD: How was home life? You moved around a lot. Was your interior family life stable?
MM: Yes, I got the lottery with parents -
AD: That’s nice.
MM: Yay! What a relief, because it was destabilizing on the outside. Both my folks are amazing. Of course they have their flaws, but they’re both solid humans. That helped. If anything, my mom was so loving, she had so much compassion for us. She almost felt so much for us, so it was tough. She had a protective bent (laughs). My brother wanted to play hockey, he wanted to be goalie and after a while my mom was just like, I cannot withstand seeing people score on you and how emotionally devastating that must be for you. So he stopped playing goalie, that was the level of you know -
AD: To protect your mom (laughs).
MM: Yes, to protect my mom’s emotional -
AD: So sweet.
MM: My mom is a big feeler and I had really loving parents and they always told me I could do and be anything. The only thing (laughs), my parents really didn’t want me to be a creative and an artist or a writer. They were fearful for me. When I was 10 and I was like, I think I want to be a writer, I think I want to be an artist, they were like, please, no. They would say things like, you’re so intelligent, you could be… (Laughs) As if artists aren’t. My father said, “Well if you want to be a writer, be a lawyer because it’s so”… So there was a lot of messaging, which I think is normal for - and I may be generalising for immigrant parents - around just choose the safe, conventional path that you know is going to get you that economic stability. That was important to them.
AD: Yeah, I have heard that from a lot of first generation people and immigrants. But I’ve also heard it from just a lot of everyone. There still is this really pervasive fear amongst parents that a creative life is one that’s unstable and insecure and not going to be financially rewarding. And I think, hopefully, that’s something that we can start to unpack and unravel and undo in society because as we move forward into a world where creative thinking is really the only way to adapt, we need people to actually seek out and master their creative chops.
MM: Definitely.
AD: That’s the future of society. So, you got the typical dissuasion from the creative path, did you feel a bit rebellious or is that one of the reasons why you started off in psychology and cultural studies? Why don’t you talk to me about your college years?
MM: I felt like that messaging had me double down on trying to find a safe path. I felt like that kind of messaging had me double down on choosing a safe path and psychology was a nice compromise in my mind because it was still like a social science and at least in the field of psychology there was still a lot of conversation around rigor and having empirical research and proving things. And given my father was a scientist, there was some relief and comfort I found in that.
I was like, oh, psych is going to be this great in between and I think if I had really just owned my creative half in my college years, I would have gotten deeper, even deeper into more of the humanities and fine arts and cultural studies even. I would have majored in something like cultural studies or anthropology, but I felt like psych allowed me to have one foot in science that felt comforting and that would, frankly, please my father.
AD: Sure, and there’s a lot of stake at that moment in your life and so having your parents at ease also greases the skids for you to have a little more latitude and freedom if they're not really fearful for the direction you’re headed in, in that moment.
MM: Exactly. As a ‘good girl,’ so to speak, I was so sensitive to my parent’s reactions to me. And I wanted them to feel relief. I wanted them to have less anxiety. And so I would mold myself and change myself in order to give them that relief and it took me a few years to start to really unravel that.
AD: Did that start to happen while in college or are you still at this point kind of finding your path and deciding how you could put this education to work in the real world? You went to McGill and studied psychology and cultural studies and then you got a master’s at Stanford in learning design and technology and was there time in between those or did you do those back-to-back?
MM: There were many years in between those.
AD: Ah, tell me about those in between years? I think that’s always a fascinating time!
MM: Those were the best years! (Laughter) It’s funny, because my father was like, careful, if you don’t go straight into a PhD or an MD, you might never go back and that was his fear, like you’re not gonna go back and get a higher education, which would have been the worst thing. And so that was sort of me beginning to destabilize a good girl archetype because I was putting my foot down and saying, actually, I’m not going to go back to school. I’m going to take some time outside of the system.
And the first years were rough I make it sound like I was a complete radical and was like, I’m leaving. I wasn’t like that. I actually was, now looking back and thinking through it with you, I actually was like, okay, I’m not gonna go back to school, but I’ll get a job (laughs). I’ll get a really stable, 9-5 job. And so I went into a like what you think of when you think of a corporate job.
It was in Washington DC, it was health policy research we dressed formally, we went in, I had fluorescent lights hovering over me. It was the whole Styrofoam cup, coffee in a Styrofoam cup kind of thing.
AD: Oh man, you painted such a vivid picture, I’m right there with you (laughter).
MM: You were there with me.
AD: And I wanna scream! (Laughter)
MM: Yes! And so that lasted like a year or two before I fell into a depression, an existential crisis of like, is this it? Is this what I’m -
AD: You made it two years! (Laughs)
MM: Yeah, barely. I think it was like a year and eight months and I remember when I quit, I told my boss, literally these were the words that came out of my mouth and I still can’t believe I said it because I was so young and I was just so, I was just like, I’m done. I was like; I’m a yogini (laughs), that’s what I told them, which is the weirdest thing to say to someone. He’s like this 50 year old, research director. And here’s this young, 20 year old saying to him, “I cannot be in a cubicle, I’m a yogini.”
I think around that time I started discovering yoga (laughter), it was like a really strange thing to tell him. And he was like, okay. And he kind of, I think, understood what I was saying. I was basically telling him, I do not belong here; I’m a fish out of water. But I even remember having that difficult conversation, dreading that difficult conversation. I was going to disappoint this older man, you know?
And oh my god, and I had just worked so hard in gaining his approval for projects and now here he was and I’d have to tell him I was leaving and I cried in the conversation, I just fell apart because I was terrified of his reaction. 10 years later I would support a client in that exact same scenario.
AD: Well, you know what’s nice about your ‘I’m a yogini’ argument is nobody really has a comeback for that (laughter). What are they going to say?
MM: Like maybe what is a yogini? (Laughter)
AD: Right, yeah, they’re gonna try and convince you otherwise. In a way I get the absurdity of it, but I also think in a way it was kind of brilliant because you did give an excuse that really nobody could present a valid counter argument to you, with a statement like that. I mean they just had to be like, oh, okay then, good luck.
MM: Exactly! I had been decided and I would have that conversation again a few years later at the Stanford Medical School with another research director. I like to tell people, we know that change doesn’t happen overnight. It’s like when you are going through any kind of transformation, you cycle and you have relapses and thinking about getting out of a relationship. You make up, you break up, it was the same thing with my work life. I was like, I’m never doing this again, I’m never putting myself in a cubicle again. I’m a yogini right?
And then two years later I’m at the Stanford Medical School falling into a depression, having the exact same conversation and telling that principal investigator, I can’t do this. I think at that point I told him, “I’m a writer!” (Laughter) I just kept making these exclamations around my identity.
AD: Two of those times you kind of found yourself in ill-fitting situations. Do you think at the core of that it was because you weren’t expressing your creativity I mean early in our career we all have to kind of pay our dues and learn how the world works in certain ways. But we also learn as much about what we’re good at and what we like to do as what we don’t want to do. So it can be really valuable. But I see the similarity in both of those experiences is potentially the fact that you weren’t able to express your creativity and that’s what felt so stifling.
MM: One hundred percent Amy! You nailed it! That was it! There was no connection or relationship to my creativity. At that point I had gone, I had studied psychology, I had studied cultural studies. I thought I wanted to do neuroscience research at this point. I had gotten into health policy research I hadn’t done anything, I hadn’t created or made anything with my hands. I hadn’t painted, drawn, not even just fine arts, I hadn’t even thought in a creative way. It was just dead inside.
AD: Iit sounds like prison.
MM: Yeah, it was a cage, it was prison of, that was made over multiple years of just conditioning, going down this track, doing what others wanted for me. And I had two other experiences outside of work and school that were very pivotal to me. One was, I went to India and that opened me up in a lot of ways. And it was a huge growth spurt. I learned from so many people and also a culture that is, at least in the way that I experienced it, was so communal and so relationship based and not about outcomes and results necessarily, and efficiency.
And coming back to the States and feeling that contrast was, ooh, that was hard, I remember. Because in India I was always around people, always in community and relationship. I was staying in an Ashram in a community center that did non-profit work in the slum areas of Ahmedabad in Gujarat. And you would just walk into somebody’s home and you would talk to them and then you would go for a walk and you’d bump into someone else and then someone would invite you for lunch.
And so it was interconnected and relational and then to be sort of launched back into my apartment in Palo Alto outside of Stanford campus and feeling extremely isolated. It was quite… It was a jarring moment for me. That made me realize, oh, culture, culture really shapes us doesn’t it? And yes, India was big. And then also going to Burning Man for the first time and taking psychedelics was big. It’s funny because people go to Burning Man, it’s like yeah, lose your mind and party and people have such an association about it and it has a certain reputation. I didn’t really know that when I went and I went to Burning Man with a very open mind. And I had the opportunity to take LSD in a very safe container.
It was not like, let’s do this and then go out into the playa, into the desert and just lose our shit. It was very, hey, intentional, like I had a mentor who actually was an older man, again, something of the characters of older men in my life. But in this way he played a different archetype in this experience. And that was when my mind got out of its little prison and was able to see. And now there’s so much research around it, obviously Michael Pollan has really done work to help bring it into the mainstream conversation.
But at the time that I did it, it was sort of still very taboo, and it still is. It’s still illegal, let’s be clear, but at the time doing it in that safe container and with intention and reverence; it really allowed me to see how much I’d been suppressing my creativity. And the degree to which I had been suppressing my creativity, that was a huge wake-up call for me where I was like, I came out of that experience pretty clear that I am meant to guide other people. Not only reclaim my own creativity competence, but support other people in doing so.
AD: Fascinating! Okay, I have follow-up questions. The relationship between India and the Burning Man/LSD experience, were they chronologically fairly close together?
MM: Yes.
AD: Okay, so you did have the sort of one-two punch of those experiences and do you feel like that was one of the reasons why you were able to harness the momentum from those two really profound experiences and make what seems like a pretty life change? I don’t mean serious, I just mean put a lot of action and energy into a dedicated path.
MM: That’s a great observation. Yeah, it was 2012 and it was a certain amount of energy but what was sort of ironic was before I went to India and Burning Man, I applied to grad school to go in design and it was, that was going to be new for me. But it was in the School of Education. So it was learning design and tech.
And so it felt like a hybrid, something that was extremely interdisciplinary that would allow me to express different parts of myself. And so I applied to grad school. I had all these really opening experiences, gained a lot of this momentum and then I got the acceptance letter. And -
AD: Oh, and then it’s almost like you had your foot on the gas but you had to save it for a second (laughs).
MM: Yeah, exactly. Well, I felt like grad school, to be honest, accelerated it even more. I don’t know if it was because it’s… I don’t know if it was because it was Stanford or the program that I was in, I think it depends, because everyone’s experience of university is so different. But also I had matured as a student. It wasn’t about getting straight As for me anymore. I was like, I’m not going to get straight As. I’m going to literally design my own curriculum, carve my own path through this degree and figure out what I want to study, what interests me, what lights me up.
I’m going to bring in these threads of creative confidence and mindfulness and spirituality and Stanford is going to make room for it. And (laughs) Stanford did, it was amazing.
AD: That’s incredible. I think that is the best way to go through graduate school. I did the same thing. I had several years of life experience in between undergrad and graduate school and by the time I got to graduate school I had this ferocious hunger and I knew what I wanted and I just went in there and like squeezed the program for everything that I needed it to be and got the most out of it. And finished up, just bedraggled and exhausted and ecstatic! (Laughs)
MM: That’s the best way! I remember taking six classes one semester, which is like, someone would be like, wow, that’s quite a bit. But I felt so interested in every class, I couldn’t give up any one, you know? And I was like, I’m just going to get a C in some of these classes and that was fine for me because it was no longer about a GPA. It was about learning.
AD: And about consuming that knowledge.
MM: Yeah, I went in hungry and I had a class that completely accelerated me. It was called Design Fundamentals for Design Thinkers. And it was taught by Jon Edelman who is a professor at Stanford, at the School of Engineering, and John Barton and Charlotte, I forget her last name. But she was like creative director at the d.school at the time. That class changed my consciousness forever. I’m like this class was like as important to me as taking LSD or learning breath work and learning meditation. It expanded me as an artist, as a designer, as a thinker. It was incredible and it was like education at its finest. It was creative education at its finest.
AD: How did it change your consciousness forever?
MM: Well, I think it unlocked… I don’t even have words around it, because I haven’t really talked about this with anyone, or even in any podcast or episode. This is me trying to find language for a dream for the first time.
AD: Okay.
MM: Bear with me. It unlocked a lot of, creative energy inside of me through the processes. We did processes around sensuality. There was one process where all we did was have to touch like 50 different textures and make really well-designed note cards, little profiles on each texture. That process, it was like my hands woke up for the first time. Like oh my god, my hands are alive, they’re these beings you know? And just touching the world.
It was really, really, really revolutionary for me, at that point in my life. And then there was the final project in which they introduced the concept of the artist’s alter ego and the professor showed the beetles and how they had created all these alter egos in order to regenerate themselves and come out with their next bodies of work. We went brought in theater, who is your alter ago?
And that really unlocked a lot for me. I ended up really pushing the edges of that and I just want to say, kudos to these professors in this class who totally was like, we’re here for it Majo, however weird you want to get! I ended up making this paper mache cocoon which is like where this little fairy character lived and she would write poems on it and she would paper mache leaves on it. I was just like very in tune with this little character that I was embodying and literally what she would create, you know, with what was around her.
And her magical world and it just brought up all this play and magic and even just me talking about it now, I can feel how lit up I feel just talking to you about it because it just… It was amazing. And such a beautiful, beautiful project and it was the time I felt the closest to my inner artist.
AD: Yeah, that’s wonderful, I’m so excited to have you share that experience. I do think you’re right. That’s when education is at its best and it’s not just somebody sharing a body of knowledge with you, it’s when the program is actually built around you unlocking all of this within yourself and giving you the space and the permission and the safety to really go for it.
MM: Definitely. And I ended up doing my master’s project on [tea ritual 0.32.57], which was like, I think about it now and I think it’s a little like wow, they really let me get away with that, you know? Because I was like, this has to do with adults learning intimacy and I pitched them around how adults can learn intimacy through [tea rituals?] and they were like, okay, this is not a typical LTD project, but we are going to put you in touch with the social psych department, with the anthropology department, with the Asian studies department. They encouraged me to look outside and be interdisciplinary.
AD: I love all of these stories and I’m seeing the puzzle pieces and how they fit together with what you’re doing now. Did you graduate and just hit the ground running with all of this energy and enthusiasm that was building the whole time?
MM: Yes, though it was hard because when I graduated, I actually wrote a whole draft novel, which is still sitting in a drawer, but I was like, where I put that energy, I was like, I’m just going to write a novel and wrote a whole thing. But I actually almost fell back into the trap and started interviewing. I like to say ‘the trap,’ but this could have been right for someone else. I started interviewing at large tech companies and kind of seeing myself as oh, I now position myself as a design researcher, user experience designer, curriculum designer.
And was interviewing at really top companies and just getting this pit in my stomach, this feeling of, I’m going back there, where this ends up Majo, don’t do it to yourself.
AD: The body has so much knowledge like that, so much wisdom in the body.
MM: Exactly. My body was a big no. And so I backed up and I said, okay, what are my other options here? And I had taken a program that was, also really transformational. I had taken a class at Stanford called Design Your Life, which we know now is a New York Times bestselling book by Dave Evans and Bill Burnett. But that class, we did our odyssey years in that class and one of my odyssey years was basically working for myself and starting my own coaching business and consulting business.
That was definitely a path that was there, that had been outlined. And so I revisited that and I decided, I’m going to do it. I’m going to start coaching and consulting and I’m going to use all the tools that I’ve learned around, everything that I’ve learned in the last 10 years and support women in whatever they want to create in the world.
AD: I mean I have to ask an obvious question, but so far in your life you’ve mentioned a few pivotal moments with older men, of authority, who are also potentially mentors and sages in your life. At what point were you 100% sure your purpose was in supporting women?
MM: I know, it’s so interesting right? I think it happened for me, I would say at Burning Man one of the ‘ahas’ I got was oh my god, I feel like I’ve been in this cage, where did this come from? I’m looking at the prism for the first time and sort of thinking that I had received so much messaging throughout my life and so much messaging that related to my identities. Because you’re an immigrant, this is how it must be, or because you’re like this, this is how… And one of those big identities that was just sort of glaring me in the face was women, gender identity, girl.
And how the expectations of being the good daughter and the expectations of being beautiful and perfect and not too loud and not too directional and the expectations of putting, sacrificing, putting others before myself and not being selfish. Art was a selfish path. So all the sort of gender expectations that I sort of woke up to those in those moments and it would be… I would want to add that I grew up with a very strong mother and she’s definitely been a feminist her whole entire life.
So I definitely grew up with feminist messaging as well. And so I felt I wanted, particularly, to support women and that was my path. I think that the patriarchy hurts everybody, it doesn’t just hurt women. It hurts men and it hurts people who don’t identify as either women or men we need people supporting those people as well. I felt my path, because of my embodied experience in this lifetime, as a woman, was to support other women.
AD: I know in your work as a women’s leadership coach, author and podcast host, a lot of what you break down is how the patriarchy does harm everyone. Can you tell me about that?
MM: Patriarchy, just to define it real quick, is a social and cultural system that’s been around for thousands of years, as long as we’ve had written language it has been around. And so it’s about 5,000 years old, it’s also a global phenomenon and basically it’s when we privilege men over women and other genders. And we privilege men basically in very visible ways, but sometimes in very invisible ways.
Given it’s such a widespread cultural system that we’re born into, but also that has been around for thousands of years, therefore we’ve inherited it, multi-generationally, down the line, it’s actually very present for us in everything. It’s literally on our shampoo bottles, it’s in our commercials, it’s in our music, it’s in our interactions, it’s in our language, it’s everywhere.
AD: It’s in the subtext, it’s in the unspoken, it’s in the ether, it’s unavoidable, yeah.
MM: Unavoidable, yeah. And in some places it’s very visible, right? Like in some places, like girls cannot go to school (laughs) and so where we are, if we’re in the West, in more privileged or affluent communities we might think, well, haven’t we already gotten over a lot of this stuff? Well, it turns out it’s just been driven underground. It’s just been a little bit more sneaky. And so we have the task of catching it and noticing it in ourselves because one of the things I argue in my book, Break the Good Girl Myth is that patriarchy is inside of us and we have the responsibility.
It’s not our fault that it’s inside of us, but we have the responsibility to unlearn it. It’s the work that we’re here to do. So that we can come into our most authentic selves and who we truly are. And so that’s what I support women to do in breaking down what I call ‘The Five Good Girl Myths.’
AD: Ooh, I’m dying to hear those! (Laughs) Maybe I can break some down right now (laughs).
MM: Yeah, I’d be curious to hear which ones most resonate with you because I argue that we have five, but one or two tend to be more dominant in our lives. I’ll just list all of them. The Myth of Rules, the Myth of Perfection, Myth of Logic, Myth of Harmony and Myth of Sacrifice. And Rules is when we follow external rules and authority instead of trusting our own needs and desires. So this is the one that, for example, in my story, I broke when I decided not to go back to school right away or when I decided to quit my job and go to Burning Man or go to India to do what I wanted to do.
It’s like I no longer was listening to what I should be doing, but what I wanted to. Myth of Perfection, this is what it sounds like, and we can go deep into this one, a whole episode could be just dedicated to this myth, but it’s basically when we demand perfection in ourselves and other people, when we have unrealistically high standards and some kind of ideal in our mind, which prevents us from being vulnerable, from embracing mistakes and actually from growth. So that’s the Myth of Perfection. Logic is when we choose logic over intuition and decision making. Harmony is seeking harmony instead of embracing the conflict and confrontation needed for change. This is a biggie; it has a lot to do with using and reclaiming our voice. And Sacrifice I like to say is the oldest Good Girl Myth, putting other people’s needs above our own at the expense of our self-care and wellbeing.
AD: Oh yeah, so for me, I mean all of them speak to me. Rules was probably the easiest one for me to rebel against, but in rebelling against the rules, I think I also felt like I had to double down on things like perfection and logic in order to have a case for rebelling. But mostly Harmony is the weird one for me because I think from a very early age; I’m just like an empathic kind of person. And from a very early age I picked up on how if I excelled at something that made somebody else feel bad, that it ended up hurting me just as much.
So I’d almost make myself small, particularly around boys and men, because they would be a lot more expressive in their disdain or their upset if I beat them at their own game. (Laughs) So that didn’t end up fuelling competition or anything for me. It was just really unpleasant, so I steered around it rather than going straight into it.
MM: It’s such a good example because this is very common where we see a trade-off between our voice and the relationships. There were these researchers at Harvard that studied middle school girls and studied them for multiple years, I think all throughout their middle school years and then into high school. Well, actually studied them before middle school to see if there was a change. And they noticed that something happened aged 12 or 13 where they would become more quiet.
And when they interviewed these girls and did in-depth interviews, they found that the girls would say, “If I speak or if I share how I really feel, this person is going to be mad at me, I’m going to lose this relationship, I’m going to be excluded from the group.” And so because there was such a desire for the belonging and salvaging the relationship, they went inward and got really small and got really quiet. And wouldn’t say how they really felt about things.
AD: Dammit! Just imagine if all of those middle school girls didn’t do that. If we could somehow go back in time and, I don’t know, change that direction.
MM: Yeah.
AD: How would the world be different today? I think it would be a lot more harmonious, honestly.
MM: I think so, yeah, I’m with you, I think it would be. I think… It’s interesting. I think that it may be changing.
AD: I feel you, I feel you on that.
MM: You feel me?
AD: There’s a wave, there’s a current.
MM: There’s a current – (laughs) You know, even just looking on TikTok, I’m like wait, these middle school girls are whatever, high school girls at least may be different than what we were in high school. Even looking at movies from the 70s, 80s and 90s, the stuff we would just watch was garbage -
AD: Totally.
MM: Around gender and race. I’m like looking at the movies, even just from the 90s, I’m like, oh my god (laughs), this is really bad. And I just think that there’s a different world, even having lived through BLM in 2020 and that whole conversation, as a young person, is giving you a whole different education, so I hope it’s changing. So I’m more worried about us adult women who had this in middle school and now it’s dragging into our adulthood. And we’re having to do the work of unlearning it.
AD: Yeah. I feel a current there too, a sort of awakening that’s happening layer by layer, I think, my contemporaries and even women that are older are they’re unlearning slowly and they’re recognizing just subtle course corrections. It’s not even a militant, angry, bra-burning kind of feminism as much as it’s like, no; I’m not going to put up with that anymore. so much of it is in language too because we can now leverage what’s unacceptable.
MM: Absolutely. The owning of our no is huge -
AD: Yes, yes, or being able to say, you know, this is an opportunity I want to take (laughs) and it is my prerogative to do so and I believe that I can bring to the table something that is of value and maybe more value than this candidate, who is also vying for the same thing. And it’s like somehow it’s more okay to speak like that now.
MM: I would agree with you. I think that owning our yes and our desire, which is what you just described, is the flipside of the no, is becoming more acceptable and that’s the learning we’re all making in retrieving that voice that maybe we haven’t exercised for a while or retraining that muscle of owning, this is not okay with me, you know? This is what I need to feel safe. This is what I need to feel good.
AD: Owning our pleasure too.
MM: Owning our pleasure, yeah, that’s, hey, making requests, making requests (laughs) in our relationships, in certain contexts. It’s funny because The Good Girl Myths are very flexible in the sense that you can have various conversations around them. And I was just on sexology podcast. We talked about all The Good Girl Myths related to the bedroom, every single one. These relate to work, these relate to sexuality, these relate to our bodies and wellbeing.
AD: They just permeate our identities.
MM: Yeah, they’re just core fundamental tendencies that are sneaky, they’re subconscious and we get to catch them when they’re in action and choose a different path because honestly, there’s nothing inherently wrong with harmony or sacrifice. These are beautiful qualities that we need in certain context. The issue is when we’re defaulting into them without realizing again and again, versus choosing them from an empowered place because we’re like, okay, I choose to be harmonious in this situation, even though I can see there’s this other option, I’m not going to take it because what’s best in this option is to be harmonious. There’s coming from a place of choice is so much more empowering than just falling back into it again and again without noticing.
AD: Yeah, without noticing or because you assume that’s what’s expected of you and that’s the only option. So your book, Break the Good Girl Myth is about this, it’s about deconstructing all of these Good Girl Myths, helping people to understand and recognize them and then also to choose more intentionally when they do recognize it? Do you have specific tips and tactics?
MM: Yeah, so in the book for each Good Girl Myth I have different tools, techniques, tactics, depending on the myth. So for example, in the Myth of Perfection, which we can definitely dive into, I talk a lot about prototyping and how prototyping was huge for me. And I know there’s a lot of designers most likely listening.
I actually work and have coached a lot of designers and what’s so fascinating, it’s fascinating and interesting about working with women who are designers is often we really know how to prototype for our clients and we really know how to prototype for others. When it comes to applying it to our own projects, our own passions, we can get into all or nothing thinking and we can get into perfectionism and procrastination and analysis paralysis.
AD: And self-judgment!
MM: Hmm-mm, yeah, that’s big. Self-judgment is huge. And what I love about prototyping, one of the big mantras from the Design School was, don’t be precious, you know?
AD: Hmm-mm.
MM: And something I repeat again and again, don’t be precious, and it helps start to unstick the ‘grippiness’ that we get when we want something to be right and perfect. And we’re putting all this pressure on it. It’s like, well, no, it’s a prototype, it’s small, quick, easy to make, easy to break version of your idea, you can throw it out if you need to and coming from it from a place of abundance too, not scarcity, that you can literally… You can keep going with these. Not feel like you have to… This is the one shot you have on goal.
AD: That is something I think we can all benefit from. I mean I’m a designer myself, but I still get hung up, even just in writing. It’s like this draft doesn’t have to be perfect. If I could just push through and make it not precious, then I can go back and iterate, and refine, figure out what works, what doesn’t work. And that movement is so much more productive. But instead, I still get hung up on perfecting word choice and it just belabors the process.
MM: Exactly and what you just mentioned about momentum, because what we’re talking about too, at least in my case, through my program at night I support women in starting projects. They have these brilliant ideas they’ve been sitting on for weeks, months, if not years and just been playing in the back of their mind. And it’s like let’s start, and we have to start somewhere. We start with prototypes because it gives us momentum. What’s really interesting about the mind and our resistance is it likes to build things up, right?
It likes to raise the bar, so to speak, that’s how Myth of Perfection works. We raise the bar on ourselves so it’s almost impossible to even begin. To make these unrealistic expectations, like I want to start a podcast, oh, I need a studio and I need all this equipment and I need top-notch equipment, I need the perfect podcasting thumbnail. It’s like, okay, yeah, no wonder it’s taken you two years or it’s taken so long. What’s the scrappiest version of an episode you could make.
Again, embracing constraints, so embracing the power of constraints which we learn in creativity and design, for our own projects to get that, to help us overcome imposter syndrome and help us overcome that self-judgment.
AD: Nice, okay so this is the work that you’re doing in your coaching program, which is called Ignite. We’ve already heard a bit about your book, Break the Good Girl Myth and you’re also a podcast host. You’ve been doing this for quite a while. The podcast is called HEROINE and you interview and have really candid conversations with female visionaries and leaders and creatives of all types. I’m kind of interested in you personally doing all of this work. What is it teaching you about yourself?
MM: I am still grappling with my Good Girl Myths, like real talk. (Laughs) On the outside people are like, wow, you’ve created all these cool things, you seem like someone who can just do what you want. You created this podcast and you wrote this book and published it and you make this program and so you’re living your life like the way you want to design it right?
And to some degree that is true, but if I were to be completely honest with your listeners, and with everyone who is listening right now, I still feel that I have a lot of artistry inside of me that has not been tapped into because I want to get it perfect or I want to obey whatever rules of whatever, you know, entrepreneurship, or there’s just a new system. (Laughs) Just a new system, right? Like in some ways entrepreneurship really breaks the conventional mold of corporate life, but entrepreneurship has a set of rules and ways of doing things and you enter a whole new culture with its norms. And so I’m almost questioning and starting to look at everything that I’ve created and saying how much of this has to do with me wanting to achieve and gain some kind of external approval versus how much of this is like a true expression of my inner artist and who I really am.
AD: I think that’s the inquiry that we need to continue doing with ourselves our whole lives though, don’t you?
MM: Yeah, I think the edge keeps getting pushed back because if you would have talked to me before I started the HEROINE podcast, I would have told you, Amy, this is the thing, this is where my highest expression can go right now. It’s the HEROINE podcast and so I think you’re right. I think that we’re evolving and the edge gets pushed back. It changes. And sometimes the edge is not even doing more, it’s doing less. Sometimes it’s like -
AD: Exactly, productivity is a sort of construct of capitalism that’s got us all just like scrambling the whole time and not living our lives to their fullest.
MM: Totally! I’m taking a creative sabbatical this fall, so I’m going to be writing, I’m going to be writing fiction and poetry, which is my heart’s desire and I’m really excited about it. And so I’m taking a little break from program and from client work and that just feels right for me.
AD: Congratulations, that’s a really brave step.
MM: Thank you, yeah, it feels good and it feels all the things that, I have some nerves around it, but mostly it feels like the step for me at this point in my life and my trajectory.
AD: I would have nerves around it too, so I totally understand. I’m wondering what’s the opposite of the nerves, what’s the excitement around it? Can you maybe make that more vivid for us?
MM: Sure.
AD: So we can feel your feelings. (Laughter)
MM: I love your questions! I am really excited about going inward and exploring this incredible universe that I have inside myself, full of imagination and possibility and connections that just sparkle. I’m really excited about exploring that inner world and then bringing it onto the page and being delighted by that process in all its ups and downs and beauty.
AD: Thank you! I sort of picked up earlier that maybe the Good Girl Myths that you’re still grappling with are along the lines of rules and perfection and I mean it would make sense to me that the first step is understanding… Like seeing these clear enough to actually label them, name them and understand how they permeate our lives. But then we’ll be unravelling them for a long time. It’s not like there’s a switch we can just flip and turn it off, even though we see it. The grappling with it, I think, gets… I’m guessing, I’m not trying to project onto you, it gets more fluid and it gets deeper and you spiral around and every time you come back to the same place you’re actually at a different place because you’ve done the work and you’re now working on a deeper and more profound level.
I’m really excited for this sabbatical for you. I think… I’ve heard other people talk about how important and productive it is. I think it’s something that as a society we should embrace. I think it can be such a fruitful time, but it’s still such a scary decision to make and so I just really commend you for doing it and I hope that you get all of those juicy sparkly moments. And you work through some frustration with yourself, to a place where you get to a new creative peak, that gives you a deep confidence. That’s my hope for you. (Laughs)
MM: I love it! Thank you so much. I appreciate that. I feel like you just gave me a blessing on the podcast.
AD: It felt like a blessing, I don’t know who I am to do that (laughter) but -
MM: You just blessed my creative sabbatical (laughter).
AD: Before I let you go, I want to know, after the sabbatical, or including the sabbatical, what is the biggest dream you have for yourself?
MM: I think the biggest dream is being able to enter and navigate that mysterious unknown portal that is creativity without doubt.
AD: Hot damn! That is a big dream! (Laughter)
MM: Wish me luck!
AD: Cheers to that sister, Amen! (Laughter) This has been just really delightful and informative and nutrient dense and wonderful and more power to you. Thank you so much Majo.
MM: Thank you Amy, I loved this conversation. It’s definitely up there in the interviews that I’ve had, so kudos to you for asking such deep questions and listening, really truly listening, I appreciate it.
Clever is produced by 2VDE Media. Thanks to Rich Stroffolino for editing this episode.
Production assistance from Ilana Nevins and music by El Ten Eleven—hear more on Bandcamp.
Shoutout to Jenny Rask for designing the Clever logo.
Clever is a proud member of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit airwavemedia.com to discover more great shows.
Keep Listening
