Episode 2
#S3E02: The Myth of the Soft, Demure and Mindful Girl & Why It's Ruining Business
The latest episode of the Own Your Message podcast tackles the cultural trend of being "mindful and demure," which is often humorously critiqued yet reflects deeper societal expectations placed on women. The discussion highlights the dichotomy between the need for women to embrace assertiveness and their perceived obligation to be soft and non-threatening. Through personal anecdotes and insights, the host emphasizes that this narrative can hinder female entrepreneurs and lead to feelings of inadequacy. The episode encourages listeners to reject these limiting beliefs and embrace their strength, asserting that powerful women can be both fierce and feminine. Join the conversation on Instagram to share whether you identify as soft and demure or a strong, Amazonian warrior.
In this episode of the Own Your Message podcast, I examine the viral "mindful and demure" trend, which originated from Kourtney Kardashian and has been spoofed on TikTok.
I discuss how this trend highlights a broader societal issue where women are expected to be soft and non-threatening, particularly in business settings. It's time to reject these limiting stereotypes, embrace your strength and assertiveness, and build robust systems in their businesses that allow you to thrive without compromising your true self.
Well-behaved women seldom make history. So, let's stop outsourcing our confidence to outdated societal norms. It's not 1930 anymore; it's time to take up space and go after what we want. Manifestation requires action, and building a strong business demands strategy, not just wishful thinking.
I'm done with the soft and demure narrative. It's time to be loud, unapologetic, and take things into our own hands. Let's create the reality we want, ignite that fire under our arses, and show up for the people who need us.
If this pep talk resonated with you, please DM me on Instagram at www.instagram.com/growwithalisa. Are you soft and demure, or are you a strong, Amazonian warrior? Let's chat about it.
Takeaways:
- The trend of being 'mindful and demure' is a societal expectation that can hinder women's empowerment.
- Women are often pressured to present a softer, more submissive persona in various spaces, including business.
- Balancing strength and femininity is essential; one can be both powerful and soft at the same time.
- Manifestation requires action; simply wishing for things won't bring them into your life.
- It's important to challenge societal norms that dictate how women should behave and present themselves.
- Being unapologetically loud and taking up space can lead to greater success and fulfillment.
Links referenced in this episode:
Transcript
Hello and welcome back to the Own, your message podcast.
Speaker A:This week I'm talking to you about this trend that is sweeping the Internet, which is this essential sound that goes mindful and demure.
Speaker A:And the trend originally, if you do not know, originates from, I think Courtney Kardashian who used the words mindful and demure or overused them.
Speaker A:And then there was another lady on Tick Tock who who essentially think she's in a car and she's talking about how her makeup is mindful and demure.
Speaker A:She's sort of spoofing the Kardashians.
Speaker A:And whether you have heard of this trend or whether you haven't, I do think it's an interesting thing that is sweeping the interwebs and I think it's worth us examining how and why trends like these sweep the interwebs and why it is actually detrimental to our messaging.
Speaker B:So today I'm going to use this.
Speaker A:Trend, the mindful and demure example, to talk about a bigger and more emblematic problem that I think is sweeping the industry.
Speaker A:And I think that this trend is.
Speaker B:Only a part of it.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker A:There are so many other examples that have come up from, you know, a girl bossed too hard or the I cry a lot, a lot, but I'm productive.
Speaker A:It's an art like the Taylor Swift lyric that was sweeping the interwebs for, you know, a few weeks.
Speaker A:There are so many instances of these viral clips that are all sort of implying the same thing.
Speaker A:And I think that the mindful and demure trend specifically is a really good example of how and why it shows up within our industry.
Speaker A:So let's get into it.
Speaker B:Here is the thing.
Speaker B:Women are expected to be mindful and demure.
Speaker B:We're expected to perform this role of femininity.
Speaker B:We're expected to be assertive way.
Speaker B:I have been single for a little while now and the most interesting thing about diving into polarity literature about, you know, being in like the dating communities and like the self love a single girl space is that the way that the messaging positions, how you're supposed to act and be is so, so, so, so different to the way that let's say business coaches, male dominated spaces and the, the business space is right.
Speaker B:The amount of times that I have been told to soften my voice and to be more feminine and to soften my energy and the amount of like dates that I've been on where the guy is like, wow, you're like so strong.
Speaker B:I'm just looking for like a soft girl, right?
Speaker B:And the, the fascinating Thing about this trend that has been blowing up is that not only does it talk to a wider issue with a way that we own our message and the way that we show up online, but it talks to almost a cultural epidemic for how we as women are expected to show up and how we're expected to be.
Speaker B:And obviously it's like a little spoof, right?
Speaker B:And people are making fun of the mindful and demure and, and it sort of spiraled into different, you know, different niches and different people posting different memes.
Speaker B:But I, I think that the wider cultural issue that people are not talking about, particularly in the business space, is that there is a dichotomy between the way that we as women are supposed to show up within our business.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:We want to be strategic, we want strong, we want to be powerful, we want to feel confident, we want to own the room that we're in.
Speaker B:And this societal and cultural idea that we do have to be mindful and demure and soft and you know, and not non threatening and like easy, right?
Speaker B:Breezy, beautiful.
Speaker B:I think that there is a pivotal issue between those two energies.
Speaker B:And I think that this like idea of being mindful and demure, even though a lot of people are making fun of it, is in a lot of ways the thing that keeps lots and lots of business owners stuck.
Speaker B:And it is in a lot of ways the biggest problem that we have across the board for specifically, you know, female led businesses not taking up the space that they deserve.
Speaker B:I had an epic coaching call earlier today where we dove into power dynamics and taking power back.
Speaker B:And the reframe within that coaching call was okay, well, how can we flip the script where your strength and your ability to pull through hard times and your ability to do epic stuff and your ability to still show up in your beautiful, glorious, magnetic, feminine energy.
Speaker B:How can we flip the script for that to be the powerful thing?
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker B:You're not giving your power away by being strong or being feminine.
Speaker B:And I think that the, the problem with, with the thought process of I'm giving my power away when I'm fully in my feminine energy or the thought process of I'm giving too much power into the masculine.
Speaker B:Like this energetic conversation between these two energies is one of those things that is underpinned by the subconscious need and desire to be this feminine, floaty, easy breezy, beautiful unicorn of just like I will be buttercloud.
Speaker B:And I want to offer this advice and this feedback and this thought to you today that we do not need to be soft as clouds.
Speaker B:We can have both the strength of an Amazonian warrior and we can have the soft girl aesthetic of the most pampered princess on the planet.
Speaker B:The thing that I have always said to myself and to my clients is that you are the queen of your kingdom.
Speaker B:You are the, the monarch at the center of it all, and you are the person who is cultivating the kingdom around you.
Speaker B:That position of strength is obviously going to come with some responsibilities.
Speaker B:It's obviously going to be at a cost to something.
Speaker B:Being strong and being that foundation and grounding it into your business, I think confuses people a lot of the time because they feel like they will have to be strong forever.
Speaker B:They will have to not be soft, not be demure, not be mindful, not be any of these like soft feminine things.
Speaker B:But the reframe that I want to give you today is that what if your strength, your power, the structure was outside of you?
Speaker B:What if the, the magic of you, the, the strength, the power was built into processes, was built into strategic bits and bobs that you can, you can rely on so that you can be more in flow, so that you can be soft, so that you can be demure if you want to, or you can be loud as fuck if you wanted to.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:What if the strength of your business comes from foolproof processes in the back end and the flowy, magical, feminine, soft era?
Speaker B:You is the person who shows up and channels the content, is the person who shows up and has divine inspired ideas is, you know, the person who is able to infuse more of that magic into the stuff that you're doing.
Speaker B:Because here is the thing.
Speaker B:When we, you know, show up within our business, your business requires strategy.
Speaker B:It requires a plan of action.
Speaker B:It requires something outside of the I'm just gonna fly by the seat of my pants sometimes flying by the seat of your pants works, by the way.
Speaker B:But when you want to build a strong and stable business that will test.
Speaker B:Stand the test of time, you need systems, you need strategy.
Speaker B:You also need some of that magic, some of that flow, some of that creative infusion.
Speaker B:I don't think it's one or the other.
Speaker B:I think it's both.
Speaker B:You need the two.
Speaker B:You know, owning your message in a lot of different ways is you owning those two sides of the coin and finding the.
Speaker B:The a way of living in harmony with the two sides of you.
Speaker B:Sometimes I, you know, have the most creative weeks and I'm in this flowy state.
Speaker B:Sometimes I'm on my couch hugging my stomach because it's, you know, period week, And I've got cramps, and I feel like.
Speaker B:And I don't want to do anything on those days.
Speaker B:I rely on the systems and the structures that I have inbuilt into my business to show up so that my business can function outside of me.
Speaker B:And I think that a lot of the conversations I've been having around this idea of being soft and demure and, like, being able to almost become this sort of butterfly of paragonian, like, strength of soft, feminine energy, for a lot of people, it feels sort of manipulative because you're putting on softness that isn't there.
Speaker B:You're putting on this almost like, false sense of demurity, I guess, or femininity or the soft girl aesthetic, where actually you are not that way.
Speaker B:And I spent months and months, you know, trying to become more soft, more flowy, more energetic.
Speaker B:And then I actually had a.
Speaker B:I went for a drink with Casey a few months ago, and she was like, you're like the most feminine person I know.
Speaker B:Oh, my God, are you joking?
Speaker B:You're like femininity in.
Speaker B:In compassed in, like, good vibes and energy and like, with a dash of strategy, if anything.
Speaker B:Casey pointed this out to me.
Speaker B:And Casey, for those that don't know, is like my.
Speaker B:My old CEO, and we've worked together very closely for.
Speaker B:For several years.
Speaker B:She was like, you know, if anything, the systems that you've built in are to give you that flow and that structure.
Speaker B:And it was sort of like an aha moment for me.
Speaker B:Like, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:I can tap into flow better than most people.
Speaker B:I can get into that energetic state, particularly when it comes to, like, content creation, when it comes to writing, when it comes to expressing and messaging.
Speaker B:Getting into that flow state for a lot of people is super, super difficult.
Speaker B:It's not very difficult for me.
Speaker B:I'm like, oh, I have an inspired idea.
Speaker B:I'm going to sit down, I'm going to just fully outline the thoughts and the processes that I have in my head when, bam.
Speaker B:For a lot of people, it's not that way at all.
Speaker B:And it's.
Speaker B:It's a muscle that.
Speaker B:That is worth building if that's not you.
Speaker B:By the way, like, having the capacity to turn pretty much any thought into content is a skill.
Speaker B:It's not a divine, you know, gift that was bestowed upon me.
Speaker B:It was something that I practiced over and over and over again to the point where I was, like, looking at my feet and everything was like, soft, demure, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker B:And I was like, okay, I have to talk about This, I have to create some content around this because it's literally driving me up the wall.
Speaker B:The one meme that I shared was this like lizard dragon thing that looked like a princess and it was like very soft, very demure because I thought it was funny.
Speaker B:But apart from that, I'm like, you know, the issue with the soft and demure narrative is that that is the identity that people want a lot of people to have.
Speaker B:Like, people want women particularly to have the soft and demure aesthetic.
Speaker B:And it's like, you can't be a high value woman if you're like strong.
Speaker B:And you know, the, the feed that I'm seeing is like, if you are too rigid in your masculine, then you will never be able to attract a high value man.
Speaker B:And I'm like, no, strong women do attract strong men.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker B:Within that era.
Speaker B:Within that sphere, right?
Speaker B:No, not era.
Speaker B:I'm like thinking about Taylor Swift's era right now, which is why that Freudian slipped.
Speaker B:Freudian slip went in there.
Speaker B:But like strong women attract strong men.
Speaker B:And also on the business dynamic perspective where I'm seeing a lot of memes that are around like, ah, sent to the client, the invoice, like soft and demure.
Speaker B:Hahahaha.
Speaker B:I'm like, no.
Speaker B:Sometimes we have to assert our boundaries.
Speaker B:And this narrative of what feels like the whole Internet talking about this is only perpetuating the idea that we have to be soft and we can't like hold up our boundaries and we can't fully own the space that we're in.
Speaker B:I'm like, that I am in my powerful girl era.
Speaker B:Being soft, being demure.
Speaker B:How about we go for things that we want?
Speaker B:How about we take up a rejection challenge?
Speaker B:How about we blow our own minds in the next few months of left of this year?
Speaker B:How about we go out there and take what we want instead of sitting back and waiting for stuff to happen?
Speaker B:I'm convinced that the secret to manifestation is setting the desire of what you manifest and then finding the easiest next step.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker B:We don't just sit back and wait for the things to happen to us.
Speaker B:We set the intention and then we pull the next step towards us.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker B:Whereas what I think most people do is they are sat at home being like, I want to be a millionaire, I want to be a millionaire.
Speaker B:And then they're pushing away all of the opportunities that are coming through for them versus pulling in the next step that they need to take.
Speaker B:Manifestation takes action.
Speaker B:You building your business takes action.
Speaker B:And that action for a lot of people does not look, soft does not look demure.
Speaker B:It looks like loud, unapologetic.
Speaker B:Let's take things into our own hands and create the reality that we want.
Speaker B:It comes from you igniting the fire under your ass and going for things that you want.
Speaker B:And I am so, so, so done with listening to this, like, soft girl take, like, beige feeds of just, I don't know, faceless accounts, marketing pyramid schemes, like weird affiliate programs.
Speaker B:I'm like, how about we start to take up space and instead of hiding behind faceless accounts that are probably not going to actually get you anywhere, because most of the people who successfully run those accounts have a lot of marketing experience and jumped on that trend very, very early on.
Speaker B:And also, the programs that they're selling are absolute and utter scams.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker B:It's an absolute pyramid scheme.
Speaker B:But anyway, this episode is not about that.
Speaker B:But the point being is that I feel like being soft and demure is translating into these terrible business practices that are only keeping people stuck, that are only keeping real experts who need to be showing up online, owning their voice and their face and their message.
Speaker B:All of this narrative that is being constantly thrown at us for being too loud, too brash, for being too much to this, to that is only keeping people stuck until we're like, oh, maybe something is wrong with us.
Speaker B:Maybe I am too loud.
Speaker B:Maybe I am to this, maybe I am too to that.
Speaker B:And I'm here to tell you, you were not too much of anything.
Speaker B:In fact, maybe it's time for you to turn that too muchness up and blow your own mind.
Speaker B:You know, my favorite quote right now is, well behaved women seldom make history.
Speaker B:And I think that that is very, very, very true.
Speaker B:Because at the end of the day, if you are someone with a message, with a voice, with an offer, with something here to offer people, how about we 10x the effort of you showing up versus going back into the ha.
Speaker B:The cave of being soft and demure.
Speaker B:Fuck being soft and demure.
Speaker B:I want women.
Speaker B:And I want.
Speaker B:Actually, I want everyone, not just women, but women specifically, to stop outsourcing their confidence to these societal ideas that have hung around from the literal 19 freaking 30s, right?
Speaker B: This is not: Speaker B:We're in the, you know, in the 21st century here.
Speaker B:Women can make big moves.
Speaker B:They can have anything, any type of dynamic that they want.
Speaker B:And being too strong is never a bad thing.
Speaker B:And anyone who tells you or makes you feel like being too strong or being too systematized or being too much of an expert is a problem.
Speaker B:They are doing it because they are afraid of something themselves.
Speaker B:They feel an inherent lack of their own self worth where they feel threatened by your strength.
Speaker B:And you know what we do with those people?
Speaker B:We block and delete them.
Speaker B:Anyone who makes you feel less than in any capacity does not deserve to be in your energy, does not deserve to be in your kingdom.
Speaker B:And frankly, the too soft to demure.
Speaker B:As much of, as of a joke as that trend is, it is a problem that we need to take a pause and think about.
Speaker B:Where am I being too soft?
Speaker B:Where am I being too demure?
Speaker B:Where am I not taking space?
Speaker B:Where is it time for me to ignite that fire under my ass right for me?
Speaker B:I might wear bows.
Speaker B:Wearing one today.
Speaker B:Voila.
Speaker B:I love a bow.
Speaker B:It's a signature thing for me.
Speaker B:But I am a strong, independent woman who does not need to be soft and who does not need to be demure.
Speaker B:And when I choose to be soft and when I choose to be demure, it's when there is an appropriate dynamic in place.
Speaker B:That dynamic is not me running my business.
Speaker B:I do not need to be soft.
Speaker B:I do not need to be demure.
Speaker B:I need to be the CEO who's a powerful freaking badass.
Speaker B:And the times of me feeling like I have to, I don't know, dim my light or dim my shine are over.
Speaker B:And I would love to invite you to sign up to that club with me.
Speaker B:The not demure, not soft, not quiet club.
Speaker B:The Too Much Club.
Speaker B:Welcome.
Speaker B:It is way more fun being too much, being loud, taking up space.
Speaker B:You do fun things like work with epic people.
Speaker B:You win book deals, you create an engaged community.
Speaker B:You show the fuck up for the people that need you.
Speaker B:You manage to help your family.
Speaker B:You go on epic adventures.
Speaker B:That's what's on the other side of you not dimming your light and you not dimming your message.
Speaker B:And if this is the pep talk that you needed today, then please, I invite you to DM me on Instagram and let me know.
Speaker B:This is what you need to hear today.
Speaker B:Because I think sometimes when we are feeling a certain way, when we feel like it's too much, or to this, to that, you just need a reminder that you're not too much of anything.
Speaker B:In fact, I want you to be louder.
Speaker B:I want you to be more epic.
Speaker B:I want you to be more audacious.
Speaker B:I want you to think about how you can blow your own mind.
Speaker B:What is the thing that you can do today to blow your own mind?
Speaker B:Because you being able to blow your own mind is ultimately was going to Lead you to more fun, exciting and epic content.
Speaker B:What could you do before the end of this month that is going to blow you out of the water?
Speaker B:How can you surprise yourself?
Speaker B:Setting that intention and then going for it is the only way that you'll know whether you can actually achieve that goal.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker B:And maybe this time around you won't, but next time you will, because you're building that muscle.
Speaker B:What most people are doing is they're sat in fear, not doing much of anything, and they, you know, know what to do, but don't want to do it.
Speaker B:And it's time for you to ignite that fire under your ass and do the things that you know you need to get done and own the space that you know you can take up.
Speaker B:You are an expert in whatever it is that you do.
Speaker B:You are an epic human who has a message to give to the world.
Speaker B:You are here listening to this on purpose.
Speaker B:It has come to you at the most divine timing ever, right?
Speaker B:And if you're hearing these words, I want you to feel it deep in your gut.
Speaker B:That fire, rekindling that fire, burning that fire of whatever it is that has just spread, popped into your mind of what you need to do.
Speaker B:I want you to go out there and take it.
Speaker B:Because being soft, being demure, is not for the people here.
Speaker B:It is not for queens of kingdoms, it is not for epic CEOs.
Speaker B:Being soft and demure can stay a trend that we find funny, but it is not a way of life.
Speaker B:So hope you love this message today and I want to know your take on the soft and demure trend.
Speaker B:What do you think about it?
Speaker B:Again, I invite you to come into my Instagram DMs at growwithalisa on all social media platforms, but on Instagram specifically.
Speaker B:And I want to know, are you soft?
Speaker B:Are you demure?
Speaker B:Are you strong?
Speaker B:Are you an Amazonian warrior?
Speaker B:Instead, are you Wonder Woman?
Speaker B:Tell me, because I know which camp I'm in.
Speaker B:So I hope you loved this episode.
Speaker B:I'll speak to you next week.
Speaker B:For now, have an epic weekend.
Speaker B:Bye.
