CHAPTER 3

GHOST YOUR INNER GOOD GIRL

Just reading that chapter title, you might be thinking, good girl? Erin, please; I’m a feisty, fearless, hear-me-roar-world kinda gal. And, yes, you are. As am I, as are my dearest girlfriends, and likely yours as well. You, me, our friends: we’re all cut from the same kickass cloth. And I’ll never forget the day when one of my dynamo gal pals enlightened me to the reality that even the most audacious among us harbor a sneaky inner good girl, and one that goes way beyond just seeking grown-up gold star stickers.

It was a sunny Sunday morning, and the air smelled like that odd signature combo of refreshing salt and stinky seaweed that permeates Laguna Beach every spring. My girlfriend Sienna and I were meeting for brunch where, as we were catching up, she revealed that she had recently scored a massive win at work. Naturally, two glasses of the fanciest champagne on the menu were ordered to toast her success. As we took our first sip, a true travesty transpired. Instead of a decadent symphony of firework bubbles, the champagne had fallen flat. So Sienna motioned for the waiter and politely requested that a new bottle be opened and sent back the glasses without a second thought. I must have accidentally winced as she did this, because she narrowed her perfectly microbladed brows at me. “What?” she queried. As I hemmed and hawed and tried to change the subject, she wouldn’t let me off so easily. Eventually, she dragged out the pathetic truth. Yours truly, the same gal who had founded multiple companies, who spoke in front of tens of thousands of people in stadiums, was nervous sending back subpar bubbly?! “Why” she asked incredulously. And here’s the anticlimactic, extremely embarrassing pathetic truth: I didn’t really have a specific answer. It just felt . . . not allowed. Not OK. Bad in some way that I couldn’t even articulate rationally. And that was the moment when I realized that even you and I and our marvelous friends, those of us who step into the world and take up space and move mountains on the regular, are still inherently imprinted with the standards of a society that has taught us the sanctity of being a “good girl.”

It was shocking to realize that if I, a grown ass woman who has every right to politely request a fresh bottle of bubbly, felt a knee-jerk hesitation, who else in the world might be unintentionally retaining this “good-girl” programming as well?

So maybe you read that and thought, Nah, I have no problem sending something back at a restaurant, but what if there are other shadowy corners where your inner good girl is secretly still alive and well? No matter how much of a Big Deal babe you are, if you answer “Uh, yes,” “Slightly sort of,” or “Well, just that one time” to any of the following 10 questions, the answer is probably (unfortunately) yes:

1.   Have you ever been praised for an accomplishment and downplayed it? When someone says to you “Congrats, you totally killed it,” have you ever responded with something like, “Well, it was a team effort,” “Thanks to so-and-so for helping me,” or “It was hard work but also a lot of luck!”? Or have you ever tried to flip it and reverse-compliment the other person to take the spotlight off you: “Well, look who’s talking; you’re the one who did xyz!”?

2.   Have you ever been in a meeting or important discussion and changed or “softened up” your position when you felt people disagreeing with you? Or pretended to kind of agree with something major that you didn’t really?

3.   Have you ever pretended to know what someone was talking about when you didn’t?

4.   Do you find yourself saying “sorry” often? (And not in the British way of “Can you repeat yourself”?)

5.   Have you ever found yourself doing things often that you really want to say no to?

6.   Have you ever excessively or accidentally fished for compliments from those you love?

7.   Have you ever described yourself as an “aspiring” or “wannabe” something? Like an aspiring author, aspiring performer, wannabe entrepreneur, wannabe chef, and so on? Or called something a “little hobby” when it’s something you actually want or plan to make your full-time focus?

8.   Have you ever wanted something but been afraid, embarrassed, or ashamed to tell your friends or family about it? Have you ever stopped talking about something you dream about because you don’t want to seem braggadocious or crazy?

9.   Have you ever had someone praise you or award you in some way, and you felt embarrassed? Maybe you dropped your gaze, shook your head a little, waved the praise away, or felt your cheeks go warm?

10.   Have you ever given up on chasing something down or igniting an initiative because you couldn’t persuade one person out of several who said yes to get onboard with your idea?

So as they say on the socials: Are you feeling personally attacked RN?*

So, yes, even you, my audacious one, have an inner good girl—and if she’s anything like mine, it’s likely she can be harder to ghost than a regretful spring break social media post.

Like reprogramming ourselves away from so many unhealthy habits, we begin with tackling ghosts of a different kind: the ghosts of our childhood. Maybe you were fortunate enough to grow up in an enlightened and progressive environment where you were just loved for being you. And if so, yay! Let’s be and raise women that feel accepted and amplified for their authentic selves. But maybe (like more of us) you grew up in more of a regular old environment where mom and dad did their best and meant well but WTF. Maybe one of the elements of your childhood that made its mark on your heart was the association between achievement and affection. Meaning the primary way you experienced big love from your mom or received positive attention from your dad was when you put points on the board. When you got the A. Or cleaned your room. Or did the backyard chores. Or free-babysat your younger siblings (again). Or “went with the flow” and didn’t “rock the boat” even when things didn’t go the way you had hoped or had been promised. So being the smart cookie that you are, you learned there was a value exchange, and the equation was simple: achievement and approval equal love and affection. And while there are certainly elements of that parenting strategy that have served you well in terms of your work ethic, there are also components that may have accidentally stuck around a little longer, like feelings of having to prove your worth, earn your emotional validation, or tend to other strange deep-seated layers that come with this evolved awareness of the understated ways your childhood continues to show up in your adulthood.

Perhaps, your inner good girl stems from the memories of negative reinforcement. Maybe you spilled something by accident or broke something on the wrong day; and maybe whoever was in charge of you not only exploded with anger but then ignored you outright. That person’s extreme displeasure might have been enough to trigger you to clam up at any hint of discord. Being on the receiving end of a grudging silent treatment for making an innocent kid mistake in the wrong place at the wrong time might trigger a good-girl response that you still haven’t managed to shake off.

Maybe you witnessed the most precarious of all: a double standard of what the women in your family were expected to do versus the men when it came to certain roles and responsibilities. Maybe the implied (but not always articulated) vibe was that the boys in the family “will be boys.” (What does that mean? Well, apparently it meant that the dudes in your family were allowed to get away with stuff you weren’t.) Maybe it was little things like curfews and cleanups or major things like having a strong opposing viewpoint actually taken seriously without being interrupted. Maybe you never even noticed it, but now that you’re considering it, you might be wondering, where did this masculinity madness even come from?

Let’s take a quick dip back into history to understand how this strange concept of the “good girl” came to be at a universal level, shall we? While there are a million reasons things “are the way they are,” the OG reason for the myth of the good girl can be traced all the way back to the existence of historical inheritance systems in biblical times.

Most of us can agree objectively that in not all but many cases, money is power, yes? And while it’s certainly far down the list of what should be most important in life after family, health, and an excellent dry shampoo, it is the currency that powers most of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs elements of survival. Which kind of explains how we got here. If you’re from a rural area, you may be familiar with the saying “The son gets the farm.” Meaning the sons in the family are the focus, the priority, and automatically the recipients of wealth. They don’t have to be “good boys” to earn it; they just have to possess a Y chromosome.

So because only male heirs were allowed to control property and because it wasn’t until 1850 in the United States (in Oregon only!) that an unmarried woman was allowed to own property, centuries later men still enjoy (both visible and invisible) levels of patriarchal power built upon this ancient foundation. In other words, if you are a dude, you enjoy incredible life advantages and automatic privileges just for being a man. And as a feminist who loves men, I can tell you that some of my biggest male mentors and most successful champions totally agree that this patriarchal power thing is way real. And way old school. And way not cool.

And so this confusing, invisible, sexist virus has been allowed to infect our professional culture with alarming contagion. Maybe you’re familiar with one of the social “name-swapping” experiments? Several have been done in the last decade, and the gist is this: You ask individuals to read about an employee named Jack who has a powerful working style and rate his leadership potential. Jack is rated favorably as “ambitious” and “efficient.” Then you ask another person to read the exact same scenario, except you swap out the name “Jack” for “Jane.” How does the feedback change? Suddenly, you’ll see the adjectives change, going, for example, from the positive “ambitious” to the negative “aggressive.” Whereas Jack is a “go-getter,” Jane is “pushy.” Jack is “efficient,” but Jane is “manipulative.”

If you are one of my fellow corporate gals who have logged your fair share of boardroom hours at the highest echelons of the world’s biggest companies, it’s likely that you have your own first-person anecdotes supporting this bogus fiasco that’s sadly still true. Even with diversity and inclusivity programs, even with sexual harassment training, even with affirmative action, even with all the Sheryls “leaning in” in the world, when it comes to corporate America (and to a lesser degree, small business and the gig economy), many of us still find ourselves existing at a professional intersection that looks like the elephant enclosure at the zoo—and smells the same. And that awful, dung-pocked intersection is at the corner of Respected but Not Liked Lane and Liked but Not Respected Road. When people think of a CEO, they still typically think of an old, white male with an immaculate suit and a steely gaze. (Even with Lauren Conrad’s audaciously awesome moment on a radio show when she was asked an inappropriate question about her favorite position. To which she replied, “CEO.”) LC #FTW.

Look, it’s no secret that oftentimes guys get paid more for the same work. A newly promoted guy is rarely queried on how he’s going to manage his career and his family, but women promoted to the same position often are. As women in the public eye, we have our appearance judged before we even open our mouths to speak, and yet no one cares if a male leader looks hungover and wrinkled while wearing the same suit a month in a row.

The point of this whole tirade? A lot of this is super–messed up from way back when, and although we can’t control the past, the promising news is that there are absolutely aspects of it that we can control when it comes to how we respond to this slowly improving reality in the present. Only you, not Instagram, your parents, your friends, or even a book like this, can intentionally and bravely decide how you want to operate within this reality to create the life you want to live. Only you can decide how to respond to these realities in an impactful way to shape or reshape your future.

In this chapter we’re going to dissect how you can ghost your good-girl tendencies in your own life. And what you’ll start to see is that every time you complete another successful ghosting, your audacity muscles will build. You’ll watch as you’ll begin equipping yourself with the strength needed to maximize the everyday opportunities to project your Big Deal Energy. Over time your BDE will compound into Massive Deal Energy that morphs into the extraordinary life that you and your journal have always fantasized about together.

And as a bonus? Remember that every time you have the BDE to show up audaciously, another woman is watching. Every time you have the guts to do the thing, say the thing, or decide the thing, you inspire others to have the audacity to green-light their own bold, big scary choice. And that is the type of courageous contagion we must ignite. That is the Big Deal movement women all over the world have been waiting for and working toward. Because together, we are ready for it. All of it.

But before we take on global feminine activation, let’s start just a tad smaller, by ghosting our inner good girls once and for all.

GREETING YOUR GOOD GIRL

I’m 99.9 percent sure you know what ghosting is, but in case you don’t, it’s a term used to describe what happens when someone you are dating ends the relationship by cutting off all communication without explanation. Harsh? Yes. Necessary to shut down decades of patriarchal and familial programming? Also yes.

Before we get to how we can ghost that inner good girl, it’s important to unpack precisely where these incoming messages will attempt to be delivered. Politely, of course. Your inner good girl typically shows up in three ways: permission asking, approval seeking, and perpetual people pleasing. Becoming hyperaware of those three typical triggers is the fastest way to silence your typical knee-jerk responses. So you’ve likely heard at least one of these terms casually tossed around on social media, but if you’ve been placing them all in the same bucket, it’s a valuable undertaking to delineate the difference between each of these three good-girl grenades. We can’t decisively defeat what we don’t deliberately define.

Speaking of defining, let’s just pause for a hot sec and ensure that we’re crystal clear on the specific differences between the three. Permission asking paralyzes you from moving forward without a green light from some else. It renders you unable to authorize your own forward momentum.

We can’t decisively defeat what we don’t deliberately define.

#BIGDEALBOOK

Next, approval seeking is something that we all crave and do to a certain extent, but what happens when the approval of your choices from others unhealthily eclipses your approval of yourself?

And finally, perpetual people pleasing. The key here is “perpetual.” Of course, we all want to make the ones we love happy—and that’s obviously healthy, kind, loving, and so vital to nurturing our priceless relationships. But what we’re talking about here is constant, pervasive people pleasing to the point where you’ve replaced your own happiness with that of others—where you’ve rebranded others’ happiness as your own.

AX ASKING FOR PERMISSION

Let’s start with the deadliest of the three good-girl grenades: asking for permission when permission really isn’t needed. (To be clear, unless you are a dependent living at home with your parents or are looking to use someone’s copyrighted material, phrases, or images, you do not need to ask permission to make a single decision in your life. Full stop.)

When did you first realize you didn’t need to ask permission for everything you did? Maybe it was the first time someone told you that you didn’t have to raise your hand to speak after years of being taught as a child that you’re required to signal for permission to express yourself, that you were authorized to communicate independently as you saw fit?

For me, that moment was back when I was studying English at the University of Maryland. I was in a class of about 20 people studying the “screwed-up personal but brilliant professional life” of Ernest Hemingway. The professor was a proponent of a less formal, more casual, conversational-style learning experience, so she didn’t require that we raise our hands. I remember having that mortified fast-heartbeat feeling when she reminded me, as I raised my hand yet again, that if I had something to contribute, I should green-light myself to do so. Was I embarrassed that I was having trouble reprogramming my childhood software? Mortified that she had to grant me permission to not request permission? Flustered that my formality was shamefully nonfeminist? Correct answer: D: all of the above!

Fast-forward to grown-up life. Obviously, you’re no longer physically raising your hand to speak, but have you ever considered how it might be showing up for you in other, less obvious ways? Whether the “teacher” asking for your good-girl permission slip is an individual or an institution in your life, school has been out for a lonnnng time now, my friend.

Maybe for you, your permission seeking is still chasing you around in your current corporate environment or with certain “legacy industry” client interactions. One day, my friend Sam shared with me that she found herself shrinking away from speaking up in meetings. She never had a problem sharing her ideas and expressing her two cents until one particularly distressing meeting. At that particular meeting, Sam had articulately (maybe too articulately?) expressed a dissenting opinion in response to an assertive male colleague. In front of the full conference room of peers, she was shut down by the most senior manager—who was a male friend of that colleague. Sam was so astonished and dismayed by the way the manager dismissed her fair counterargument that she kept a low profile in meetings going forward. She was anxious and distressed that she would be slapped with the modern-day office version of the scarlet letter A: “aggressive.”

The experience was one of those “can’t stop replaying it for weeks afterward” moments. One that she played like a mental boomerang to the point that Sam inadvertently went to the equally detrimental extreme of being too passive. She didn’t realize she began waiting to give her opinion only if someone directly asked her for it. Which, as you can probably already guess because maybe you’ve experienced this conundrum, is the classic catch-22. You know that enticing people to want to hear more of what we think only begins when they’ve heard a few other brilliant insights they’re impressed with first, right? So as you might imagine, passively waiting around for someone to “call on her” school style was not exactly what you might call a winning strategy.

Over time, Sam’s contributing value naturally came into question, which made her feel even more frustrated, steamrollered, and misunderstood. She felt alienated and unliked. Lonely, sad, and desperate, she assumed she was probably just going to get fired. She felt like an emotional Goldilocks: always too hot or too cold. And in that moment, she realized three things: (1) A mythical “just right” temperature did not exist for her. (2) It shouldn’t be up to her to figure out how to find and maintain the perfect temperature in the room to keep everyone else comfortable. And (3) if she kept waiting around for someone at this stupid office to green-light her to show up and speak up, she would implode. Or Jerry-Maguire out dramatically. Or both.

So she adjusted her own thermostat. She set it to “Screw it. I’m over this place; they can fire me if they want” degrees Celsius. Walking into a meeting later, she started to weigh in for the first time in months. Her listeners were nodding their heads in response when suddenly that same male colleague tried to interrupt her. She thought about one of the other women in the office who always fought to be heard, borrowed her bravery (more on this in Chapter 7), and just kept right on talking. She pretended she didn’t even hear or see this guy. It was super-awkward as they both simultaneously kept talking for what seemed like ages (but was in reality about four seconds) until he backed down. He was miffed, astounded, and shocked.

What happened next? The entire conference room looked at him like he was the rude one, which of course he was. After the meeting and thoroughly fed up, she took a deep breath, walked up to him, looked him square in the eye, and calmly said, “Do . . . not . . . interrupt me . . . during a meeting . . . ever again. Got it?” Wide-eyed and aghast, he nodded. And he kept his word.

Four audacious seconds were the difference between Sam giving up or leveling up. Four seconds of holding her ground triggered the momentum to reignite her reputation and position both on her team and within the broader organization. At first, her coworkers and bosses didn’t know what to do with this new “sassy” Sam. But slowly, one day, one decision, one encounter at a time, she started to find her internal champions and allies. She found her success stride. Most importantly, she found her “just right” temperature.

Like Sam, only you can authorize your own permission slip. Only you can crank up the volume on that microphone. Only you can call on yourself to step into your Big Deal Energy and say enough is enough.

Only you can call on yourself to step into your Big Deal Energy and say enough is enough.

#BIGDEALBOOK

So which will you choose? Will you give up, or will you level up? Are you encouraging yourself to level up your impact, your presence, your asks, your brand, your footprint, your network, your goals, your dreams?

Are you granting yourself permission to overcome and strategically deter interruptions? Especially the ones from dudes? Especially the ones from dudes who currently make more money than you do? Especially the ones from dudes who make more money than you partially because the manager is their golf buddy?

Are you trashing permission-seeking phrases like “Sorry,” “Just an idea,” or “I could be totally wrong, but . . .”?

Are you green-lighting your own powerful voice, no matter which table—boardroom or dining room or both—that you’re seated around?

Are you adjusting your own audacity thermostat and setting it to a temperature that is more effective for what you’re chasing down? Is there something in front of you right now that could use a little turn of the audacity dial? A little dose of your BDE? Will you turn it? It’s my hope that your answer is yes, because your life is too precious to spend it shivering in the cold.

QUIT YOUR APPROVAL HABIT

Is there anything that feels better than someone agreeing with your idea like you are Einstein reincarnated? Of course not. It feels so fantastic to be retweeted whether online or offline, personally or professionally. And yet—the second good-girl grenade that needs to be dismantled, like, yesterday, is addiction to his or her approval. Whose approval do you know that you shouldn’t crave but you just “can’t help yourself”? Does your approval Achilles’ heel reveal itself in fishing for compliments from your partner? Craving recognition from your boss? Being thirsty for likes on the internet?

No matter your case, dropping this habit of approval seeking so you can feel good about yourself—or what you believe in—without that external thumbs-up is crucial. Why? Because if you depend on others for approval, you’re choosing a scary fast track to accelerating anxiety, developing depression, or sabotaging your self-esteem. Now if that sounds a little dramatic, and you’re thinking, WHOA, Erin, I’m not that bad, let me ask you this: are you sure? Have you ever opened one of your social apps and been swallowed up by a tsunami of digital approval?

“You’re so gorgeous!”

“You look amazing!”

Fire emoji fire emoji fire emoji

“Yesss, Queen”

“Dang, girl!”

Cue the dopamine dance party! With each comment, your ego sinks deeper into that bubble bath of digital bliss. Light that candle, pour the champagne, and let the narcissism nightingale sing sweet songs of selfie success. So what’s so dangerous about that? Well technically nothing . . . if it stops there.

But what about when it doesn’t? Oh, you liked that photo, random girl from high school? Wait until you see this one! Or even better, this one! Wait, there’s more! Ding, ding, ding, dopamine hit! The hits keep coming, and the addict stays addicted. . . .

Until one photo doesn’t get as many likes, and you find yourself deleting it. On the next caption you spend an embarrassing amount of time carefully crafting, obsessing over the cleverest wording you can think of. That one didn’t do as well? Maybe you reshoot, refilter, recaption, repost, and finally get your fix as you experience endorphin hit after endorphin hit when the approvals stack up.

The next time, maybe you’re on the fence about a post. Cue the origin of “felt cute, might delete later.” What does that mean? I like myself right now, but if you don’t, I’ll just delete it (along with a little piece of my #selfrespect). You’re essentially approving your decision to let everyone else’s approval potentially override your own later. No. Nope. Would you give any physical person in your offline life that much control over your self-esteem? Then why are you doing it now in your personal or professional life?

OK, I know, I know. The reality of living in today’s hybrid offline-online reality means that every time you share anything, you are essentially seeking approval. None of us posts something that we want people to disapprove of, and none of us speaks up at work to get shot down. Obviously.

Now, is it your fault that social media and iPhones were designed intentionally to mimic casino slot machines and scientifically hook our brains to be obsessed with tapping the “pull down and refresh” technology for another hit? No, of course not. If you’ve watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix, you know we are all caught in a terrifyingly complex web of being watched, hooked, and manipulated like a SoCal Succession-style billionaire whose kids are burning though their trust funds. And loving to receive love online can be relatively harmless until this same “please love me” mentality crosses over into approval seeking in other aspects of our “real,” or offline, life—relationships, business ventures, or even failures! If your fear of failure often stems from your fear of what others will think of you, is it any wonder you’ll continue to crave the approval that accompanies success?

If you choose to stay stuck in a constant approval-seeking endless loop with the world weighing in on everything from your choices and opinions to your business ideas and weekend outfits, guess whose fault that is? It’s not Mark Zuckerberg’s algorithm’s fault. It’s not your mom’s either. It. Is. Yours.

I know that feels harsh, because it isn’t your fault that 24/7 social media has dumped digital fuel onto our flames of desire for approval. It isn’t your fault that social reprogramming is infecting every facet of our lives. But it is your fault if you choose to throw water on that mogwai. You are the only one who can seize the opportunity to take back control and make stronger, more empowering choices. You are the only one who can optimize your mentality so you can avoid getting burned.

You cannot live a life that is fully real and fully yours and have it be what the internet says it should be. Or what your older sister, best friend from high school, well-meaning boss, or over-the-line client thinks. It’s challenging but not impossible to break this “Is this OK?” habit. You just have to be audacious AF. Let’s consider a few strategies to move away from too much time sad-scrolling. Let’s stop looking at everyone else’s paper so we can start freeing more time and space and energy for you to grace the world with your particular brand of BDE. Let’s slay this limiting habit by you asking yourself some complex queries.

Can you determine why you feel that you need this person’s (or this network’s) approval? And when your first answer comes to mind, I want you to ask why again. And again. And again. Like a Simon Sinek–crazed toddler, I want you to keep poking holes until you peel your onion layers back to surface your real, ultimate reason. Go beyond the bland response of “It just feels good,” because duh. Dig deeper. Why else are you wanting this so badly? This is undoubtedly a complex question with some truly messy answers. Why do you need others to love what you’re doing for you to love it? Whether it’s a lifestyle, a relationship, or another big choice, can you ask yourself why you need this so much that you can’t move forward comfortably without the person’s “Yay, you!”?

It’s natural for us to want the people we love to love our decisions. You can want that, and wish for that, but you don’t need it. Now, I need you to really hear me on this one. There are two categories of relationships in your life right now: your people and everyone else. Your people—the ones who really know you and still love you—will only ever truly approve of one practice: you being authentically, honestly, radically you. And everyone else? Bless and block.

Your people—the ones who really know you and still love you—will only ever truly approve of one practice: you being authentically, honestly, radically you.

#BIGDEALBOOK

If you truly want to cross over from where you are to the dimension you’re destined to exist within, you must find the faith to unfriend unsolicited outside approval. Can you find a way in your heart to finally know that you really, really do not need it? And if you still feel like you do need it? Or that the “approver” needs you to need it? Tragically but truthfully, it’s time to migrate that person from the category of “your people.” Maybe that person was part of your people, but because of life, circumstances, change, and time, that person has slipped from that special seat. And that totally sucks as much a Brazilian wax given by a timid little old lady. It’s painful and arduous, and it’s hell while it’s happening; but when it’s finished, you will strut away feeling lighter, more confident, and ready for anything life throws your way.

Can you practice rejoicing in rejection? I know, rejoice sounds over-the-top extra when we’re talking about leaving people behind who once meant so much to you, but we both know it needs to happen so you can achieve those Big Deal dreams.

So how can you begin to rejoice in your relationship with rejection? Let’s start by identifying the most self-assured person you know. Someone who seems blatantly bulletproof. Someone who doesn’t take things too seriously when they don’t work out or if they make a spectacle of themselves. What does this marvelous marauder do for work? I’m willing to bet that during at least one chapter of their lives, they worked in some type of sales role. Whether they were a formal professional corporate salesperson, a bartender, or the person that gets everyone to donate to charity, the person you’ve identified oozes sexy unstoppable BDE because they’ve put in the rejection reps. Their internal bounce-back biceps are Rambo level from use and abuse. Like their morning spin class or nighttime pushups, they showed up and sweated out the snubs on a daily no-matter-what basis. And that has made them unstoppable when it comes to chasing down the opportunities they know they were born to unlock.

Let me ask you this: have you ever been hung up on? I mean straight up someone decided that he or she could not stand being electrically linked to you for another second, so the person just killed the connection with a punched button to the face? If not, I highly recommend you manage to be “hung up on.” Why? Well, let’s just say that the first year of my “real-world job” as a 100 percent commission-only sales rep, I was yelled at or hung up on at least 20 times a day. If there are about 250 working days in a year, that’s 5,000 rejections at the tender, insecure age of 22. And I would not trade that experience for the world! Because building up that resilience and grit—however you can—is the only way to not let the fact that some guy didn’t call you back send you into a tailspin. Or the fact that that one client rejected your proposal, so now you’re scared to play it big when it comes to closing the next one.

Getting straight up rejected is, IMHO, the most efficient way for you to know how to quickly get back up when you didn’t get the gig, the sale, the job, or the invite. It’s the only way to cultivate the courage to raise capital from alpha dudes for a tampon business—and then ultimately “fail” at that. It’s the only way to reinvent again by deciding who you and your talents are truly for. It’s the only way to ride out a global pandemic where you had to blow up and start over even though you had just been acquiring the traction you’d been scraping by for. The definition of insanity might be doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, but the definition of audacity is doing the same thing over and over again and not caring if anyone thinks you’re insane. That’s how you can inoculate yourself against your inner good girl regaining any kind of footing within your feelings.

So here’s my action ask: Is there some way you might be able to intentionally put yourself in a situation or two to raise your rejection risk tolerance? If you aren’t in sales, how might you get some kind of sales experience? Even if it’s trying to sell someone you work with on a new idea? If you are in sales, how can you ask for more money? Go for a bigger client? Color outside the corporate lines? Show up in a way that is maybe so authentic, so aggressive, so “not how we do things,” that maybe it’s a tad shocking? And if all this sounds wayyy absurd to you, fair enough; let’s dial it back to show up in a basic way. I dare you to post something on social media, and if it doesn’t rain likes and crush with fire-emoji-laced comments, just leave it up. Don’t delete it. Even though you don’t “feel cute.” The audacity activator here is for you to not think of it again. Who cares? Remember, people are looking at their own profiles more than yours anyway! What if you went for a gig, a job, or a promotion that you’re pretty sure is out of your league? Or for a new hobby that you’re pretty sure you would initially really suck at? Or ask out the person you think is “too good,” “too hot,” “too [insert BS narrative here]” for you?

When you start rolling the dice in more “rejection likely” scenarios, you’ll start to reframe rejection as a fabulous friend. A friend who is sharing invaluable intel for how you might modify, improve, or show up bigger, stronger, and more courageously the next time. And when you do, I swear on my sales success scars you will see a change. You’ll feel it. You’ll know it in your beautifully bodacious bones. You’ll see that the next time your boss or team leader has tons of changes, annoying suggestions, or “constructive feedback” to offer, instead of feeling that familiar wet blanket of despair or frustration, you’ll take it with positivity and maybe even a scandalous sprinkle of motivation. Over time, you’ll notice yourself processing all feedback differently. You’ll organically take it with a grain (or a gallon) of salt, as opposed to the gospel it used to be. If you actually start to intentionally put yourself smack-dab in the middle of Rejection Road, the next time you don’t get the invite to something or make the cut for a team or project, you will shrug it off faster, and you’ll find that you’ve wasted zero time moving on to the next opportunity, the one that’s a much better fit for you anyway.

Can you challenge yourself to be aware of those sneaky everyday opportunities to raise your rejection risk tolerance? You might have noticed there are some subtle, more passive-aggressive phrases disguised as “joking,” that not only can cause major damage, but potentially might put you in the danger zone of death by a thousand cuts. How do you know if you’re teetering on the edge of such devastating social ditches? Look for statements like, “You’re just a lot sometimes.” Or maybe “Could you tone it down?” Besides these being screaming indicators that the people saying them are not your people, these are also chances for you to ask them to explain why they feel like that. “Could you tell me why you think that?” and “Can you give me a specific example?” are ways to invite rejection in voluntarily, so you can take back control of your emotions, and possibly glean some invaluable insights to improve. Or, on the other hand, you’ll create clarity around who these people really are, let their comments roll off like rain, and then vote them off your island! And replace them with people who do think you rock. Because you do. Because you and I both know that you’re what? Because you are . . . say it . . . kind of a Big Deal.

The coolest part about getting better at real, legit rejection is that your life will improve on all the levels. Becoming a rejection rock star truly is a fast track to the freedom you know you’re capable of feeling. Of course, there are endless ways to learn, grow, improve, and succeed. Of course, there are endless rejection responses from endless types of people, not because of what you have said, done, or decided, but because different strokes are simply for different folks. Rejection is literally just part of the process. It’s an essential part of evolving from kind of a Big Deal to a fully Big Damn Deal. You have what it takes to become better at staying level-headed whether you get a “Yay, you!” or an “Oh no, not you.” or any reaction in between. Rejection rock stars are just better at rewriting life lyrics from a “no” to a “not yet” or “not a fit.”

PAUSE YOUR PEOPLE PLEASING

At this point, you might be wondering whether you’re just a super-nice gal in a healthy, kind human way or in a perpetual people pleaser way who is draining her emotional (and home wine supply) reservoir. Your self-diagnosis begins with asking yourself this: When you’re trying to help others get what they want and what they need, does it ever get to a point where your own health starts to suffer? And I don’t mean just being tired after staying up with a friend hyperanalyzing breakup texts into the wee hours. That’s called being a bestie. I’m talking about long-term, chronic health issues triggered by being too nice, for too long, to too many people, without replenishment of your own reserves. Let’s identify some of our own audacity-assaulting suspects so we can effectively eliminate them, like, yesterday.

YOU DESPISE SAYING NO

Sure, we’ve all abhorred declining someone or something, feeling the guilties (mini guilty vibes) that pop up when you refuse a small ask on a packed day. No, I’m talking about being someone who despises saying no.

I fall into this category as a recovering people pleaser, particularly when it comes to declining most invitations, avoiding overcommitting, and just generally managing boundaries between myself and those around me. If you’ve ever found you agreed to multiple events the same day or night, I hate to tell you this, but you, like me, might struggle with being a PPP (perpetual people pleaser).

If you’ve overcommitted to the point where you’re saying “sorry” for letting someone down one too many times, you are a PPP. If you find yourself wincing or gritting your teeth as someone makes an ask that you know you cannot or do not want to do, but you can feel this alternate version of you smiling and nodding your head as your inner GPS lady is saying nooooo . . . signal lost!, you are a PPP. If the drug campaign from the eighties of “Just Say No” feels unrealistic for you, you’re not alone! It’s because no is the word of rejection. And just like being rejected doesn’t feel good, neither does being the rejecter! And obviously as the kind human that you are, you don’t want to spread sad darkness; you want to be an amplifier of the light! You want to be the glitter, the rainbows, and the sparkle of every room you float into, not the “buzzkill bearing bad news.”

Have you ever watched someone decline something so gracefully and just thought, “Wow. I wish I could do that!” Well, that’s my friend Kara. She is the master of saying no with elegance and the queen of setting (and defending) highly healthy boundaries. I’ll never forget watching her in action when we worked together at an early “connection platform” (which was basically an early LinkedIn competitor; obviously, LinkedIn won). Kara is someone who is extremely charitable (strategically so) with her time. She volunteers at a home for the elderly and helps raise funds for inner-city schools. She shows up at your life milestone soiree with cards, gifts, and a big “Yay, you!” smile. She is the consummate benevolent bestie to so many women who are each beyond honored to call her a compadre.

But because of this, she is personally and professionally constantly in higher demand than Grubhub orders during a pandemic. And we all know how it feels to be hungry and see that “order canceled” notification. So, over the years, she has developed the most magical methods for turning people down without turning them off. She delivers yes’s antonym so masterfully that the people she is keeping at bay not only aren’t insulted or upset; they’re almost apologetic that they’ve overstepped their bounds. They act regretful to have imposed on her. It’s seriously an art form.

The first thing Kara taught me is when you find yourself in a situation where you need to say no but you feel like you can’t (i.e., a boss is asking something of you that is above and beyond your job description, or a friend is asking for a romantic introduction to one of your high-profile LinkedIn contacts), the key to a successful decline is to never actually use, utter, or type the word no. Remember, being audacious is not about going through life torching villages and hearts and happiness like a narcissistic asshole. In Kara’s case, in one of her opening tactics, not only does she not utter the word no; she miraculously doesn’t say anything at all. I have watched her in a million situations where someone—a work colleague, a PTA mom, or a friend—will request something she simply physically does not have the bandwidth to deliver on. Let’s say there just isn’t room in her calendar, whether it’s drawing up someone else’s contract or baking cupcakes for someone else’s fund-raiser. Here’s what she does. (And I’m not suggesting you mimic this, as it’s very odd. I’m just giving you a peek behind the scenes of a master decliner. Do with this transparency what you will.) She will look at the person, bite her lip or frown, and then just stare off at some point in the distance. And she says nothing. Nothing! Awkward? Yes. This silence has its own sweat! And then she just waits.

And guess what happens? Every time, the requester breaks the silence first, but now this person has moved from a position of being in authority to being a little off-balance, because he or she is totally bewildered and rattled. So the person asks again as if Kara didn’t hear, or he or she repeats the question, and Kara responds with some version of one of the following:

   “I would love to help you however I realistically can. I’m just going to need some more information/details to make sure.” And she then proceeds to ask for so much information about time, place, people, goals, deliverables, logistics, budgets, dress code, allergy-gluten-dairy-free catering, and side perks for herself, her friends, and her dog that oftentimes the person just backs off and says, “Ah! I’m so sorry. I guess I need to find out more details for you. Can I circle back with you?”

   “I would love to help you however I realistically can. It’s just that right now I have a full plate with [xyz], but might a future date work, like [vague date]? Would that work for you?” Typically, this date is way too late, and when the person tells her that, she doesn’t say sorry; she just says “Ahhh, darn! Maybe next time!”

   “Possibly! I have this project, and this deadline, and this commitment, and [xyz], but I could try and find some time. I don’t know when, of course, but . . .” She literally just rattles off the most insanely detailed schedule to the point that the person apologizes to her for having imposed. It’s incredible.

   “Ugh, I wish I could. [Give no excuse.] Can I think about a better fit to help you with this and circle back with you?” Again, the person is grateful for the offer to be connected with someone better suited. (Which, of course, you then have to do.)

Kara has taught me sooooo many ways to say no to ghost her inner people-pleasing good girl without passing on the bad vibes of making someone you care about suffer the sting of rejection. That’s one end of the audacity spectrum. On the other end of the spectrum is a different brand of BDE keeping her inner PPP at bay. This tactic can be used when people ask you to do something that you know you can’t or don’t want to do: You pause (the long pause is key), sigh, and just say, “There is absolutely no possible way that is realistically possible for me at all.” And then you look at them with a bit of diva sass, resisting the urge to break the silence (we don’t always have to fill the silence!), and 9 times out of 10, they will be so shocked by how dramatically direct you were, they will burst out laughing in disbelief. And then you just shrug your shoulders with a “sorry not sorry sister” look on your face. Case clearly closed. BDE FTW.

See, deep down, it’s likely that you aren’t actually afraid of saying no. You’re certainly not quaking in your UGGs from uttering that little itty-bitty word itself. What makes all of us sweat a skosh is the potentially negative response that could be attached to you when you do. Using one of Kara’s brilliant strategic language choices, you can nip that no in the bud and start creating the space, time, and energy that you know you need to prioritize your needs. You can’t focus on tackling what’s most meaningful to you and what’s essential for today when you simply don’t have the actual room in your mind, your heart, or your calendar to do so properly.

When it comes to boundary setting, again, Kara is the no-grudge guru. I’ve seen her tell her bosses, point-blank, that their requests are not going to work for her. In a very upbeat, positive way, she sets boundaries by staying focused on what’s in it for them, should they agree to respect her desire to work from home, keep certain hours, not be able to respond immediately, work with certain people, or do things with a certain methodology. Persuasion is personal, right? Her power phrase for disarming even the most curmudgeonly of commanders: “Putting myself in your shoes, it seems like you’re looking to . . . [state the goal people are trying to accomplish].” Rock the presentation, crush the numbers, produce the event successfully, surpass the competitor, implement the new initiative—whatever it is they want or need. (Pro tip: it’s usually to ensure their boss knows how fabulous they are doing and up and up the chain. Remembering that your boss has a boss is the fastest way to gain clarity on what people truly care about.)

Kara waits until she gets the tentative head nod. (The simple yet sacred step to getting people to agree to anything you’re requesting after that.) She continues, “So knowing how I work best, to ensure we are set up for maximum success when it comes to [repeat the goal], I’m going to need to [set boundary].”

When you do this, you are positioning your needs being met or respected as a critical factor to ensure their needs are ultimately met, too. Boom, boundary set. Relationship intact. You win! Forget your inner good girl; that’s just called being good. Full stop.

Release the Resentment

Carrie Fisher, aka Princess Leia,§ once said that being resentful is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. If you’re finding yourself being angry without a reason when it comes to the other people in your life, it’s likely because maybe you have been secretly sipping from the chalice of suppressed issues for far too long. And what your inner GPS lady is repeating to you like a madwoman is this: “rerouting, rerouting, rerouting.” Whose destination are you plugging in? Yours? Or someone else’s? When you’re neglecting where you’re trying to go in favor of riding shotgun on too many other people’s road trips, eventually you run out of gas. You’re running on fumes and you stutter to a stop, and now you’re in the middle of the desert and your phone is dead and you don’t have any water. Why did you use up all your gas, your cell phone battery, and your water on someone else again?

One of my very oldest friends is so dear to me and breaks my heart because she finds herself in this exact situation time and time again. And while she is so fun, and so generous and extremely successful, deep down (which comes out now and then like a volcano of rage) she is also really damn angry. Why? Well, this is the situation: Both of her parents are super-achieving lawyers, and so naturally her whole life, she was groomed to be a lawyer. We’re talking childhood Christmas photo where she is wearing a onesie from her parents’ law school alma mater. So her path was set. It was decided. Prechosen, like she was Harry Potter.

And like a good daughter, who loves her parents and doesn’t want to disappoint them, she followed the path they set out for her. One time, she remembers timidly sharing with her parents that she was thinking about applying to culinary school, since she loves to cook. Her parents about had a heart attack and chastised her into shelving that dream for a never day. And so she did. Fast-forward to today, and she’s a damn good lawyer, partly because she’s so pissed off all the time. But, at the end of the day, she is ultimately choosing good-girl status over a good-life one. Her parents may be thrilled and proud, but when we have those “How are you really feeling?” wine night debriefs, she admits that her life is not what she thought it would be. That she’s “fine” but not necessarily thrilled with how her life has turned out so far. Is that gold star perfect-daughter status really worth the price of admission for her when she’d rather be whipping up crème brûlée?

Or maybe you’re like another friend of mine who drives herself insane obsessing over everyone else’s wins. Someone else’s promotion, closed deal, or award feels like a direct rejection of her. Every time someone else gets the “What a brilliant idea!” that she doesn’t, she gets down on herself. Why? Because she craves the good-girl accolade like a marathon runner craves water. She was one of these people who consistently outperformed her peers in school and was used to being at the top of her class. But like many academics, a prowess for memorization and organization doesn’t always translate to guaranteed professional success. If you know someone like this, or maybe this is hitting a little too close to home for you, you know this is a total lose-lose situation. With every moment she spends internalizing that resentment toward her coworkers’ success, she is keeping herself even more stuck and even further from capturing it for herself. Because holding on to those scarcity mentality emotions are pure and total emotional toxicity. And there is no negotiating with toxicity terrorists. There is only cutting them off, turning your back, and digging deep to find a way to slap yourself with your own sparkly sticker. Or even better, get the heck over it, because stickers are for small children, not Big Deal baddies like yourself who know there is an infinite abundance of success to go around for all of us. Right? Right? Release your resentment. Run away from it. Far and fast. Because you have too much to do, be, and see to waste your precious special moments on this earth trapped inside your parents’ or society’s or whoever else’s agenda you may or may not consciously realize you’re following. Don’t be good at being a good girl. Be great at being a gritty one.

YOU’RE NOT THE FAV. SO WHAT?

Do you have a friend who is legit obsessed with being the favorite in her family? Or in her friend group? She’s tricky to spot because, remember, being the good girl makes everyone else super-stoked. She delivers the copious compliments. She sends the lovely handwritten cards, including a thank you note for your thank you note. She shows up to everything no matter how tired, busy, stressed, or sad she actually is. If her relationship deposits were real currency, she’d have a loaded bank balance account. That’s totally one of my dear neighbor-friends here in California. Now you’re probably thinking, “Um, can I be friends with this person? She sounds like the perfect bestie!” And therein lies the problem. It’s fine if your friend is doing all those things because she authentically loves to and genuinely wants to. But where it becomes an audacity smotherer is when that same friend finds that others have gone beyond appreciation to inadvertently taking advantage of her emotional generosity.

Have you ever been friends with someone you let make more withdrawals from than deposits into your friendship bank in the name of “being a good person”? This same gal is usually the one who lets the guys she dates set the agenda without making it clear what’s actually truly important to her. (Through gritted teeth and a plastered tight smile: I don’t care if we don’t get engaged, really! I just love us as we are. If this is true, yay for you. But Disney princess programming is hard to shake, so if you don’t mean it, don’t say it!) If you’ve ever found yourself overcommitting to “helping out” your coworkers to the point that you are loaded down with projects that are far beyond your job description, you are likely venturing dangerously close to deadly levels of people pleasing.

Important disclaimer here: yes, in the early days of your career, showing up, saying yes, going the extra mile to differentiate yourself and carve out your place is smart and highly recommended. What I’m talking about here is different though. It’s that slippery slope, that accidental place where those behaviors persist for a decade or more after you’ve earned your stripes and proved yourself.

Back to my neighborhood bud. This quest for winning the golden child award even extends into her romantic life, where she is clearly perfectly happy with being single. She’s very independent and very particular and actually thrives on living alone. She’s a social butterfly who loves being the life of the party with the freedom to buzz around from one convo to the next. If she truly wanted to settle down with someone by now, she would have! She’s smart, sexy, successful . . . and she’s actually quite fulfilled and happy as a free and independent party of one.

The problem? Her being single deeply disappoints her family members, and they aren’t afraid to communicate it. “Where are the cousins? The grandkids?” And being that she is super-close to said family members, in an effort to please them and cling to her fast-fading good-girl status, she keeps at that dating game and the apps even though it’s been clear for decades that she is much happier and healthier and more content being solo. I know, right? How dare she? A woman who is fulfilled without committing to the one forever lifelong romantic partner? The scandal of it!

As you can imagine, ignoring her inner GPS on her relationship routine does nothing but block her BDE. One time, I was sharing with her about how I planned on setting boundaries with someone else, and her response was passive-aggressive: “Oh why am I surprised? Of course, you’ll just tell them what you want to have happen!” Her resentment and jealousy toward me were palpable. Why would my talking about how I’m going to handle something in my life have anything to do with her or make her angry? Because once again, big actions trigger big reactions. When people come at you like that, it’s a textbook reflection of how your Big Deal decision is making them feel about their own challenges. And every time she witnessed my invisible middle finger at the “should life” in favor of the “good one,” it reminded her that she wasn’t having the gusto to do the same in her own sticky scenarios. That she was staying stuck within these invisible, self-imposed good-girl boundaries no matter how miserable they were making her. That the scenarios in her life that drained her the most stemmed from ultimately prioritizing the preferences of her family above her own to a physically unhealthy degree. It forced her to reexamine her trusty old familiar narrative of blame in a way that made her seriously squirm. It reminded her that the only person she had to blame for her emotional restlessness was not her family, but herself. It reminded her that she did have a choice, and the choice she was making was to preserve her inner good girl at the expense of her inner GPS lady. Good girl, 1; inner GPS lady, 0. And that is a score in the game of life that if you’ve played, and most of us have, you know it typically ends stuck in one sad locker room.

Have you ever had that sort of a reaction to people who were just sharing what they were doing and wondered why you were acting like such a psycho? I know I have! Unexplainable anger toward others for no practical reason is like being emotionally hangry. It’s your body’s way of letting you know your soul’s blood sugar is low and you’re in desperate need of emotional glucose.

If you find yourself being like my friend, can you have the emotional maturity to ask yourself why? Can you really dig deep to identify exactly who you are so desperate to make happy and if it’s truly worth it?

How can you be more intentional about recognizing when you’re not being totally honest with yourself or when you’re buying your own excuses for good-girl goof-ups? How can you focus less on being the “good daughter,” the “good sister,” or the “good friend” and more on being good to yourself? By being audacious. And this doesn’t mean you have to stop caring about what anyone thinks of you, but you do have to care more about what you think of you.

JOIN THE GLOBAL GOOD-GIRL GHOSTING SOCIETY

If you just read that heading and pictured a Carmen Sandiego–like squad of kick-butt superlady spies, you aren’t far off from the theme of this section. If you’ve ever gotten goose bumps reading about the brave women throughout history who risked their lives for equality, you know that we are so beyond fortunate to stand on the sister shoulders of giants. We are so lucky to have followed the suffragettes and the women’s movement and so energized as we experience the modern-day #MeToo tidal wave. Their courage, strength, and sheer audacity have made huge leaps in the last hundred years for women’s equality. We have opportunities today that our own mothers couldn’t even have imagined, thanks to them.

Yes, in 2020, about half of women were the primary bread-winners in their household and/or were outearning their husbands. Yes, we have it much, much better than many women in all kinds of places around the world who survive and fight against incomprehensible rights violations on a daily basis. All over the world, there are chill-inducing stories of feminist heroes of all ages, backgrounds, and challenges, and all these women have one thing in common—they refuse to go quietly.

And no matter where you are in the world as you are reading this, no matter what type of family, culture, or space you find yourself in at the moment, you have a responsibility to yourself, your current or future children, and your current or future grandchildren to fight for a world where good girls are brave girls. Authentic ones. Ones who speak out, disrupt, and invent. It’s up to us to create a future where boldness is applauded and respected, not muzzled and judged. And it starts with you, and it starts with me, and it starts with all of us tackling the smallest everyday scenarios everywhere from boardrooms to bedrooms where our inner good girls are no longer welcome. And every time you have the audacity to do just that in your own life, you are contributing to hell-yes herd immunity. You are being the light that the next generations of women watching you—and they are watching—need to be able to disrupt the status quo, pick up that torch, and shine brightness into even the darkest moments.

Image BIG DEAL DIARY Image

Time to do a little good-girl ghostbusting. As you read through the following questions, listen to yourself for the first answers that come to mind. Write your answers freely, without judging:

Image  Why do I want their approval? Why are you really looking for validation in the first place? This is the first step to gaining control of how addicted you might be to it.

Image  Does your answer have to do with childhood?

Image  Or maybe more recent events?

Image  Does this behavior manifest more in your personal or your professional life?

Image  If this happens in one arena, but not the other, examine what triggers it where it does occur.

Image  How will you commit to stop permission seeking?

Image  How will you commit to stop approval seeking?

Image  How will you commit to stop PPP: perpetual people pleasing?

Image  What do you need to ghost?

Image  What is one behavior you recognized in yourself from this chapter?

Image  Will you commit to eliminating it from your life?

Image  Will you agree to not work with it, or work around it, but completely leave it behind?

Image  If so, fill in the blank here: One good-girl behavior I commit to ghosting is
_______________________________________.

Image  And the next time I find myself in this scenario, instead, I’m going to
_______________________________________.

Image  Just say no:

Image  When you find yourself obsessing about a social media caption for too long or shying away from making a decision that is in alignment with your core values but that will displease someone you care about, can you just say no to making what someone else thinks of your decisions something for you to worry about or obsess over?

Image  What kinds of healthier social media behaviors can you let go of? Or optimize? Or start? As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “What other people think of me is none of my business.”

Image  If your issue is in the professional realm, how can you elevate your focus above caring about what others think of your business or work choices?

Image  Ground rules:

Image  What are your boundaries for how others may interact with you?

Image  How do you enforce those?

Image  If people stand you up once, they don’t get a second chance. If people interrupt you, just keep talking. If people show you their true colors, believe them. This is your world: only you can decide how you permit people to be in your orbit.

Image  Are you surrounding yourself with “your people”? If not, why not?

Image  And what action might you take to spend more time with people who love you and get you without you having to work excessively over-the-top hard for it?

#BIGDEALBOOK

Image

* Where RN means “right now.” For gray-haired old millennials like myself, this doesn’t mean someone is assaulting you, but it’s a lighthearted way of saying you relate hard core (right now) to what someone just said. Thank you to that 22-year-old who came up to me after my keynote at a Vegas convention and said she felt attacked. I was devastated because I thought I somehow truly offended her until she explained—whew!—politely with just the right humbling amount of condescension for me.

If you haven’t seen this, give it a Google.

I hope not. If you are, leave that cult immediately.

§ It’s impossible that you’ve never seen Star Wars. But if you haven’t, this footnote is officially assigning it to you as homework.

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