Alicia Menendez, THE LIKEABILITY TRAP
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens and you're listening
[0:10]to the award-winning podcast.
[0:12]Moms don't have time to read books.
[0:13]Today's episode has been sponsored by pediatrician
[0:16]in your pocket at dr-gen.com.
[0:19]Dr. Jennifer Tractenberg is a mother of three
[0:22]and a 20 plus year pediatrician board certified
[0:25]who has called all of her amazing advice
[0:28]and made a series of five minute videos
[0:30]on everything from feeding and sleeping
[0:33]to safety and all types of parenting issues,
[0:35]which basically every parent out there
[0:37]can use, especially in the middle of the night
[0:39]when you can't reach your pediatrician.
[0:41]So this is like a must-do and she's offering a discount
[0:46]to everyone with code PIP20.
[0:49]PIP20 is the code to get 20% off of all of her modules.
[0:54]So definitely go to dr-gen.com and check it out.
[0:57]It's also on a link in my website to Zibi Owens.com.
[1:01]I'm really excited to be here today with Alicia Menendez
[1:04]who is an MSNBC anchor and leads the Latina
[1:07]to Latina podcast.
[1:08]Previously a co-host of PBS TV's Ammon Poronco,
[1:11]her reporting has appeared on bustle, ABC News,
[1:14]Fusion TV, PBS and Vice News.
[1:16]Her book, The Likeability Trap, How to Break Free
[1:19]and Succeed as you are is published by Harper Business.
[1:22]A native of Union City, New Jersey, Alicia is a graduate
[1:25]of Harvard College.
[1:26]She lives in New Jersey with her husband and two daughters.
[1:29]So welcome, Alicia.
[1:30]Thanks for coming in, Mom.
[1:31]So no time to read books.
[1:32]Thanks for having me.
[1:33]We've already been chatting, so I feel like now we'll
[1:35]let the rest of you into this little conversation.
[1:39]So Alicia's book, The Likeability Trap, How to Break Free
[1:42]and Succeed as you are.
[1:44]Can you tell everybody what it's about
[1:45]and what inspired you to write it?
[1:46]Yeah, I'm a person who cares a lot about being well-liked.
[1:49]And so originally I wanted to write sort of like an eat-pray
[1:52]love for like ability where I would do fun things
[1:56]like meditate and go to yoga and somehow release this care
[2:00]I have about what other people think of me.
[2:03]And what I learned talking with other women
[2:05]is that even women who don't give a damn feel
[2:09]that they often pay a price for being so brazenly themselves.
[2:13]And it shifted my focus to ask why that is
[2:17]and what these challenges are that women contend with.
[2:21]And there's a lot of social science research on this.
[2:24]And it's all really interesting because if you've lived it,
[2:27]you're like, I don't need the social science research.
[2:29]I know this from experience, which is women are put
[2:32]in one of two categories where either assertive,
[2:35]we ask for what we want and what we need.
[2:38]And then we're punished and told that we're too aggressive.
[2:42]Or we are warm and kind and communal
[2:46]and all of the things that we expect women to be.
[2:49]And then we are punished because we're not seen
[2:51]as leaders in our workplace.
[2:54]So women are this impossible bind
[2:56]where they can either be the things we expect of a woman
[2:59]or be the things we expect of a leader.
[3:02]But we're told that those two things are mutually exclusive.
[3:04]Interesting.
[3:05]So how have you navigated around this?
[3:07]I don't know that I have.
[3:10]One of the things that I think is so funny
[3:12]is that there are a lot of women who like myself
[3:14]have been given both sets of feedback
[3:16]that were too much or not enough,
[3:18]which tells you how subjective and context specific
[3:22]that feedback is.
[3:23]So there are two different pieces.
[3:24]There's the you want to be a leader at work
[3:28]in a PTA capacity and you keep running up against a wall.
[3:32]And there's how to navigate that.
[3:33]And then there's this other piece,
[3:35]which is women like myself who care a lot
[3:37]and examining the cost we pay for internalizing those demands.
[3:43]And I think both pieces are really important
[3:45]because in the first piece we pay a price in wages
[3:49]in promotions in who we see as worthy of power and agency.
[3:54]But in the latter piece, I've lost so much time and energy
[3:58]to thinking about, did I make my in-laws happy?
[4:01]Did I make my co-worker happy?
[4:03]Is everybody okay?
[4:04]And if I could get that time back
[4:06]and harness it into other things,
[4:09]I could do a lot with that.
[4:10]But then maybe you would have had to do
[4:11]if you were not being happy in the good precautions
[4:14]of that.
[4:14]Absolutely.
[4:15]And that's why I don't have a good time with you.
[4:17]I'm like constantly trying to do that.
[4:19]But right, and that's also part of the complication
[4:22]of this conversation, which is I like being
[4:25]a person who's sensitive to other people's feelings.
[4:27]I wish more people were sensitive to other people's feelings.
[4:30]Where I think it becomes a trap or problem
[4:32]is when that thinking becomes overthinking.
[4:35]There was a late Yale professor, Nolan Hoximo,
[4:38]said that women were suffering from an epidemic
[4:40]of overthinking.
[4:41]And she has a great book called Women Who Think Too Much,
[4:44]which I highly recommend.
[4:46]You walk around reading because it is a conversation starter
[4:49]because everyone can identify with that.
[4:51]Have it somewhere.
[4:52]I know, I'm looking around because I have a book.
[4:54]No, the journal that I always have in my purse,
[4:56]which now I can't find, it's like a little light blue thing
[4:59]that's like pen inside, and it says,
[5:00]let me overthink this, that's my journal.
[5:03]That's like me too.
[5:04]Life mantra.
[5:05]So you do care.
[5:06]You're a person who cares.
[5:07]I am, yeah.
[5:08]I mean, I probably wouldn't be sitting here
[5:09]finding out about other people all day.
[5:11]Right, you too.
[5:11]I mean, you were just talking about your podcast.
[5:14]But where does it cross the line for you?
[5:16]I don't know.
[5:16]Where does it cross the line for you?
[5:18]I've been thinking about a lot in the context of work
[5:21]and how very often I will sort of know exactly what I want,
[5:26]but instead of saying,
[5:27]I would like this press release written,
[5:29]here's the title, here's the subtitle,
[5:30]here's what I need in the body of it.
[5:32]I'll be like, you just go for it.
[5:33]You just do it and then come back to me.
[5:36]The funny boomerang effect of that
[5:38]is that then when I get the product back,
[5:39]I'm like, well, this is all wrong.
[5:41]And then I have to deliver the hard news again,
[5:45]saying, you put all this time and effort in
[5:47]and now I have to walk it back
[5:48]and we have to do it again.
[5:49]So it's not as though I'm constantly succeeding
[5:52]in this effort to be well-like.
[5:54]I'm simply grappling with the tension myself.
[5:58]I was chatting with a friend at a Halloween party,
[6:00]actually, and she was talking about how she was so desperate
[6:03]to meet everyone's needs and be liked
[6:06]and whatever, and that was why she was afraid
[6:07]of writing something,
[6:08]because what if it didn't appeal to everybody?
[6:10]Anyway, I dropped off a coffee.
[6:12]I dropped off the coffee.
[6:12]Yeah, so thank you.
[6:14]So I was like, you need to read this book.
[6:17]I just, as I get older,
[6:19]I'm really trying to work on a very simple phrase,
[6:23]which is, that doesn't work for me.
[6:26]And I mean that in a social capacity,
[6:28]where it's so often people extend invitations
[6:31]and it just, I'm very introverted.
[6:33]I would love to spend most of my time on a couch
[6:35]by myself and my sweatpants.
[6:37]And so it very often has nothing to do with the other person
[6:41]just has to do with how I derive energy,
[6:43]the amount of energy it takes me to interact socially.
[6:47]And I have a tendency to over-explain
[6:49]why I can't do things,
[6:50]as opposed to just allowing it
[6:53]to be, it just doesn't work for me.
[6:54]I like it.
[6:55]Has it helped?
[6:56]No.
[6:57]That's the thing, these things,
[6:59]we socialize women and girls to care about other people
[7:03]and to think of ourselves in relation to other people.
[7:05]So I'm 36.
[7:06]I'm doing 36 years of undoing.
[7:10]That's not the type of thing you can do overnight.
[7:12]And I think one of the things we've gotten wrong
[7:15]in the conversation about likability
[7:17]is that we act as though you can undo
[7:20]by reading an Instagram mantra
[7:22]that if I just, there's a Tina Fey quote
[7:25]that seems like it's always being memed,
[7:27]which is like, you do you
[7:28]and you don't care what they think about it.
[7:30]And I keep saving it to my Instagram files,
[7:33]but I'm not learning the lesson, right?
[7:35]And so it's like, how do you actually undo that?
[7:39]And part of what I learned talking to other women
[7:42]is you have to find somewhere else
[7:44]to shift your focus and your attention
[7:46]so that it work, something like self-awareness,
[7:50]is a thing you have much more control over
[7:53]than whether or not other people like you.
[7:55]Clarity, are you being very clear with yourself
[7:58]and with others about why certain things
[8:00]or priorities and certain things are not?
[8:03]Those are things you can control.
[8:04]You can't control whether or not other people like you.
[8:06]That's true.
[8:07]But I see the disappointment on your face, as I say.
[8:09]No, oh my gosh, not at all.
[8:12]I like you.
[8:13]Thank you.
[8:14]And obviously, desperately seeking that validation is a thank you.
[8:18]I loved how in your book you called yourself an old soul
[8:21]because I feel like that's been coming up more
[8:23]and more in people's books or into your like,
[8:25]and I have always sort of thought of myself as an old soul.
[8:27]I feel like one of my kids is an old soul.
[8:29]And I was like, we need to start the old soul's club.
[8:31]Like, this should be a thing.
[8:32]Hashtag old souls.
[8:33]Is there there probably is?
[8:34]And I'm just like, not aware of it.
[8:36]Like, what is your old soul?
[8:37]Because I haven't like taken the time to research it
[8:40]before I tell you the stereotype, just out of it.
[8:42]But what do you think makes people old souls?
[8:45]Like, you think we're born that way?
[8:46]You think it has to do?
[8:47]As you think it goes hand in hand with trying to be like, well,
[8:51]you are the one who's the mother for my two
[8:53]or still under the age of three.
[8:56]But I don't get the impression that my three year olds
[8:58]and old soul.
[8:59]Like, she just sort of runs that life and embraces life
[9:02]and there is very little caution.
[9:05]And that may be something entirely different,
[9:07]but there is a part of me that feels like she's a new soul.
[9:11]Like, everything in the world seems fresh and new to her
[9:15]and so again, check in with me again.
[9:17]When she's a teen, I'll see if that's still that way.
[9:20]I feel like I'm fully aligned for the first time in my life
[9:23]in my mid 30s, that in some ways being a kid was really hard for me
[9:26]because I wanted to be a part of adult conversations.
[9:30]And I probably was a lot more mature
[9:34]than other kids in terms of what I was emotionally attuned to
[9:38]and interested in.
[9:40]And I think, at least for me, when I was a kid that meant,
[9:42]I've often felt awkward and out of place
[9:45]because I wasn't interested in what other kids were interested in
[9:48]or I was just so happy sitting in a corner reading book.
[9:52]And I think the older I've gotten,
[9:54]sort of the more I've caught up with my own age
[9:56]where my 30s have been such a fun time.
[9:59]So much more.
[10:00]fun than my 20s.
[10:01]Because this is really what I'm primed for.
[10:03]Wait till you get here.
[10:04]40s.
[10:05]Yes.
[10:06]It's even better.
[10:06]Seriously?
[10:07]Yeah.
[10:07]I was like you, I would go to summer parties,
[10:10]and they'd all be watching Halloween or something scary.
[10:12]And I would like take my book, and I would
[10:13]go hang out in the bathroom with the mom.
[10:16]It was like became my best friend.
[10:17]Always good to be friends with the mom.
[10:19]And that's an egg now.
[10:19]I'm the mom.
[10:20]And I get to be friends with mom, and it's not weird anymore.
[10:23]Now actually, I find sometimes I spot, you know,
[10:25]I have a friend who, her older daughter, who's not even
[10:28]the same age as any of my kids.
[10:29]I feel like this connection with this daughter.
[10:31]Do you know what I mean?
[10:31]I feel like I'm like, oh, I'm going to be friends with this girl,
[10:33]even though she's like 14 years old.
[10:35]Do you know what I mean?
[10:36]It's not in a weird way.
[10:36]That sounds weird.
[10:37]But no, it doesn't tell.
[10:38]He's like ready to be talking to the moms and versus the kids.
[10:42]Absolutely.
[10:43]I also thought it was so interesting when you said for women
[10:46]who are naturally warm, those are the women who, when they
[10:49]try to appear the strongest, have the strangest side effect,
[10:52]which makes her less likable.
[10:54]So it's like, you don't get credit for the 95% of the time
[10:59]that you're like, very warm and nice,
[11:01]because the times that you then lose it, it's a work.
[11:04]That's how I'm interpreting this thing.
[11:06]No, yeah, and that is what the research says,
[11:09]which is if you are always warm and communal,
[11:12]and then one time you are short with people,
[11:16]it is hard to come back from that.
[11:18]I mean, I think we've all been there, right?
[11:20]You, and you can be totally reasonable and rational
[11:24]and there are perfectly legitimate reasons
[11:29]that you have either been short with someone
[11:32]or delivered bad news, and yet we still sort of have that feeling like,
[11:36]okay, well, Tuesday, I have to come in with donuts
[11:37]and make this up to everybody.
[11:38]It's hard to come back from that.
[11:40]Where the opposite, to come back from a place of lost competence
[11:44]is actually much easier, right?
[11:46]If you screw up a project on Monday,
[11:48]but then you bring in a new client on Friday,
[11:51]you've reclaimed your competence.
[11:54]It's harder to do that with warmth.
[11:57]Interesting.
[11:58]Well, so should we just try to be rude all the time?
[12:01]No, that would be terrible.
[12:04]I think one of the things that is complicated about this
[12:07]is that we don't have an agreed-upon standard
[12:10]of what is reasonable and appropriate in a workplace period.
[12:16]And so it would be very easy to say,
[12:18]well, women should just be allowed to act
[12:20]the way that men are allowed to act,
[12:22]but that's not exactly right either.
[12:26]Most of the advice around navigating these traps
[12:29]has landed in one of two categories.
[12:32]Either there's the, for a lack of a better phrase,
[12:36]lean in school of thought,
[12:38]which is that if you do some gender correcting performance,
[12:42]gender, jiu-jitsu smile, ask for a raise
[12:46]with your eyes twinkling that you can navigate around this.
[12:50]And then the other option is to just let go and not care.
[12:53]I think there's a third way,
[12:55]which is to really reconsider
[12:58]like ability to examine it in a critical way
[13:01]and to push back on it.
[13:03]There are ways in which you can do that for yourself.
[13:06]So for example, if you were getting feedback,
[13:09]whether it's in a personal capacity
[13:11]or more likely in a professional capacity
[13:14]that you were too assertive,
[13:16]you would ask the person who's giving you that feedback
[13:18]will compare to whom.
[13:20]And that that gives the person an opportunity
[13:23]to really consider whether or not
[13:25]they would give that piece of feedback
[13:27]to someone else in the office,
[13:28]specifically whether or not they would give that to a man
[13:30]in the office.
[13:31]And then the other piece of pushback
[13:34]is to ask that person to draw a line for you
[13:37]between how your style impacts your results.
[13:41]In doing that, you have to be open to the possibility
[13:43]that there is a connection between your style
[13:46]and your work product.
[13:48]But it again challenges the person
[13:50]who's giving you that feedback
[13:52]to be really specific about why the style matters.
[13:57]So if I said to you, you know,
[13:59]as if I know you pride yourself on being deliberate
[14:02]but sometimes that manifests as indecision.
[14:04]And last week, I needed you to make this big decision.
[14:08]You kept putting it off and that means we were late
[14:11]in getting this thing to the client.
[14:13]Okay, well, that's the thing
[14:14]that you can actually change work around.
[14:16]If I just say you're really indecisive,
[14:19]what do you do with that?
[14:21]So it's about giving better feedback
[14:23]so that people can also receive
[14:25]and implement that feedback in a more direct way.
[14:29]I think though, as women that we,
[14:31]it is even more powerful when we do that for other people.
[14:35]So that if I'm in an environment where I hear someone say,
[14:38]like, yeah, I just don't think Zibi has what it takes
[14:40]that I push back and say, what do you mean by that?
[14:42]Why would you say that?
[14:44]That when we hear even a woman called helpful,
[14:47]which I've always thought of as a compliment
[14:49]at a minimum and innocuous thing that you would say,
[14:53]calling a woman helpful reduces her to a helper capacity.
[14:56]When you say she's helpful,
[14:58]I don't know what she's helpful
[14:59]because she got everybody coffee
[15:00]or was she helpful because she crunched all the numbers.
[15:03]So you wanna be really specific
[15:05]about what a woman contributes to a project
[15:08]because that helps people understand her value.
[15:12]Good advice, yeah, totally.
[15:14]I would never thought of helpful as a problematic.
[15:17]Now, every word can have.
[15:19]Yes, good meaning.
[15:20]Nothing is safe.
[15:21]Do you mind sharing a little about your sort of career journey
[15:25]and how you got to this place?
[15:26]I know you had political aspirations
[15:29]and then you pivoted and now you do love TV
[15:32]and podcasting.
[15:34]So give me a little short background if you don't mind.
[15:37]I grew up in New Jersey.
[15:38]My father's an elected official
[15:40]and when I was growing up,
[15:41]he was the mayor of our small town union city.
[15:43]By the time I was in about third grade,
[15:45]he'd been elected to Congress.
[15:46]He's now a US senator from New Jersey
[15:49]and my mother is a public school teacher.
[15:51]So I grew up in this house that was defined by service
[15:54]and were all professional endeavors were service based.
[15:57]And so I naturally imagined that that was the path I would take.
[16:01]I did not imagine a secondary path.
[16:04]I was very judgy about people who were eight years old
[16:07]and didn't know what they wanted to do
[16:08]back to the point of being an old soul.
[16:10]And then I got my butt kicked because I graduated from college.
[16:14]I had taken the LSATs.
[16:15]I thought that I was going to go to law school
[16:18]and I worked on a campaign and realized
[16:20]how much power there was in the media,
[16:22]how often they got the opportunity
[16:24]to really set the agenda and decide
[16:26]what we were going to be talking about for the day.
[16:28]And it had never occurred to me
[16:31]that there was more than one way to be of service.
[16:35]So I got myself a job at RNN TV,
[16:38]which was this must carry station in Westchester.
[16:41]And I did a reverse commute from the city.
[16:42]I was a booker.
[16:43]I would find people to be a guest on their nightly talk show.
[16:47]And I learned everything I wanted to learn about television
[16:51]by sitting in that newsroom and just absorbing it.
[16:55]In that job, I was given the opportunity
[16:57]to do a bit of on-air reporting.
[16:59]I loved it.
[17:00]It answered for me a lingering question,
[17:02]which is whether or not I had what it took to do that.
[17:06]I went back in and out of working in nonprofits
[17:10]who worked at Rock of the Vote.
[17:11]I worked at Democracy USA,
[17:13]which was this organization that did Hispanic voter registration
[17:16]and engagement.
[17:17]And in doing all of that,
[17:19]I was doing on-air analysis as a young person,
[17:23]or as a person who was doing work in the Latino community.
[17:27]And I caught the attention of some people
[17:31]in talent departments.
[17:33]Eventually, one of those women
[17:34]went to the Huffington Post,
[17:36]launched HuffPost Live,
[17:37]which was the streaming network there,
[17:39]hired me there,
[17:41]and then went to Fusion,
[17:42]which was the ABC Univision Cable Station,
[17:45]aimed at Latino Millennials.
[17:47]I moved to Miami to do that.
[17:49]And then I worked for a year at PBS on Christiana M. Porto,
[17:54]where we did long form interviews,
[17:55]which is my favorite format to do.
[17:58]And now I'm gonna start a job at MSNBC
[18:02]as an anchor on the weekends.
[18:03]Well, yes, it's just to validate
[18:06]why my mother has MSNBC on 24 seven,
[18:09]and now she'll get to see me as a part of that.
[18:12]And yet earlier you said you'd prefer to be coiled up
[18:14]on your couch and you're an introvert,
[18:15]but yet the career you've chosen is,
[18:17]I would argue, right, it's very extrovert,
[18:19]very people facing.
[18:20]And I'm right on the cusp.
[18:22]Like when you do an analysis,
[18:24]I don't know if you've ever taken it.
[18:25]I know the cusp.
[18:26]I'm a cusp, I'm lean introvert.
[18:28]I like people,
[18:29]and I like talking to people.
[18:31]It's the socializing piece
[18:33]that I sometimes find to be more,
[18:37]to demand more of me than I have to give.
[18:40]That doesn't work for you.
[18:41]Sometimes, I mean, I don't think.
[18:42]No, but it's a funky thing,
[18:44]which I think sometimes we think of introversion as being shy.
[18:48]And I am shy and I like if I were at your apartment
[18:51]and you were having a cocktail party,
[18:52]I would sort of cling to the wall,
[18:54]waiting for someone to introduce themselves to me
[18:56]or for you to like that act of going up to someone
[18:59]and saying, hi, I'm Alicia and let me tell you about myself.
[19:03]Oh, that's hard.
[19:04]That's really hard.
[19:05]It's really hard to get in.
[19:06]There are people who are so gifted at it
[19:07]and you watch them do it and it's so effortless
[19:10]and incredible.
[19:11]And in my next life, I would like to come back
[19:13]as that person, but that is not me.
[19:17]And media has been a great way to meet people,
[19:20]to tell stories, to be interactive.
[19:23]And I think of it as a form of service.
[19:26]And then when did you start writing the book,
[19:28]come up with the idea for the book
[19:30]and when along the journey did you also start the podcast
[19:34]and tell everybody the name and the podcast and all that.
[19:35]Sure.
[19:36]The book I contemplated for years
[19:40]and my agent gave me a great piece of advice,
[19:44]which is like you have to love what you're writing about.
[19:48]You have to be obsessed with it
[19:49]because you're going to spend so much time with this topic
[19:53]that if you're a lukewarm on it,
[19:55]you're never gonna finish it.
[19:57]And it took me a long time to really refine what that was.
[20:00]us. And then it took me about two years to really write it. And part of that is that, as
[20:06]I mentioned, the book that I imagined I was going to write ended up being very different.
[20:11]So when you write a book, a nonfiction book, you write these 40 page proposals and they
[20:16]have proposed table of contents. It can be your blueprint for the book. Well, my blueprint
[20:23]for the book that I had proposed sort of went in the trash and I had to start all over
[20:28]again and it was a lot of me feeling my way through it. And a lot of dealing with imposter
[20:34]syndrome because I'm not an HR professional. I'm not a management consultant. I'm not
[20:40]a social scientist. So there was a bit of like, what business do I have writing this book?
[20:46]But I think it then became a better book because it came from the experience of actually
[20:52]being a woman who strives to lead and finding that so incredibly challenging and connecting
[20:58]with other women about why that was so incredibly challenging. So some of my favorite parts
[21:03]of the book are where I talked to women who you would see from a farm that she's nailing
[21:08]it. Like she's totally, she is ascendant in her career, ascendant in her life. But then
[21:15]when you really sit down and talk with her, she's like, I'm so lost because she's doing
[21:19]a very convincing performance of leadership. But she's not being given permission to show
[21:25]up exactly as she is. And that performance can be really exhausting. Anybody who is showing
[21:32]up in the world as anything other than their complete authentic self knows that. That's
[21:36]like part of your chapter and bringing your whole self to work. And how important it is
[21:41]to not just have a persona, but really do it. Like the more you can bring your whole
[21:47]self, the better it is. Do you feel like there are capacities? Would you get to be your
[21:50]whole self? I feel like doing this podcast, honestly, this new phase of my life. And I'm,
[21:55]you know, I started this what last year when I was 40, well, I'm 43 now. I started when
[22:00]I was 41. It was before my birthday. And now I feel like this is great. I get to do
[22:05]everything I love to do. I get to read. I get to chat with people. I get to learn about
[22:09]people. I love learning about people and hearing stories and sharing stories and connecting
[22:13]me. Anyway, I feel like this is the first time, but I went through the same thing. And
[22:18]I don't want to make this about me. No, I want to make it about you. No, no, no, no, no. But,
[22:23]you know, I lost my best friend and I in which I mentioned frequently, but I was at
[22:28]business school at that time. And that summer I worked at an ad agency helping market
[22:32]peppered from cookies, something that should have been really fun. But I was like,
[22:36]my friend just died sitting at her desk. Like if I'm going to die sitting at my desk,
[22:40]I have to be at my desk, bringing my whole self to what I'm doing. I can't just market
[22:44]cookies. And I love, I mean, I finished the summer and whatever else. But it's hard. I mean,
[22:49]it's hard to find exactly the right thing and cross all the boxes and whatever. I mean,
[22:53]do you feel like you're bringing your whole self now in what you're doing? In some ways,
[22:57]yes, because I think part of what you're talking about is purpose and feeling aligned
[23:02]in the purpose of what you're doing and the work that you get paid to do. But there are
[23:07]elements that I still find really complicated, like being a mom and work in the sense
[23:13]that it's always, I think before I had kids, I imagined that it was just hard in this
[23:22]speaks to how much of I like work that you'd be like, you really want it to be at work.
[23:26]But those kids were like pulling you back from work. As opposed to me, I know I really
[23:29]want to be with my children. I love my time with my children. And I love my work. And
[23:35]I don't know how those two things can be true at the same time and how I wish I could
[23:41]split myself into and always be fully with my children and fully at work. Because I love both.
[23:48]And so for example, on Monday, I was doing some television to launch the book, which
[23:56]should be this very exciting, super, like thing I've been looking forward to. And the
[24:02]three year old, the night before, had been a little sick. And so she's supposed to start
[24:07]a new school on Monday. And we're like, okay, well, this is good. We won't take her to
[24:12]school on Monday. I'll go do my television thing the way I don't have to miss the first day
[24:15]of school. And I can do this thing. And she wakes up in the morning. She's like, I'm ready
[24:20]to go to my new school. And so we scrambled to get lunch together. We scrambled to get
[24:26]her bag together. I'm trying to put myself together. The two-month-old wants to nurse. And
[24:32]it's messy and sloppy in ways that I never could have anticipated until I was in, like,
[24:38]I jumped in the car with wet hair and hoped that someone would be able to blow dry it
[24:41]before I went on a national television. Because that's the way these things work. But then
[24:46]you show up in the professional capacity and you don't want everyone to know that you're
[24:49]a mess, right? Because that you you're aware that there's a price for being a person who
[24:55]is anything other than fully present and invested in your work. And that can be true for
[25:00]men and for women. But there is a unique penalty that women pay, which is that people perceive
[25:09]us not just as having less time, but being less competent, that somehow becoming a mother
[25:13]has made us so warm and so focused on the home that we can no longer be this strong,
[25:20]assertive person. And as you know, as the mother of four is that as much as motherhood
[25:25]dials up your warmth, it dials up your strength. You're never stronger than when you are advocating
[25:30]on behalf of your children, right? I mean, I have to, you're you a better advocate for your
[25:33]children than you are for yourself. Oh, 100%. Right. Yes. You have to be. You have to be. And it shows
[25:39]you that you have what it takes to be that advocate. You've just not done it in the surface of
[25:44]yourself. I feel like we're having a little therapy thinking. I mean, it's going to be in my second
[25:49]book. And I ever put myself through the process of doing this again. All right. Do you think you're
[25:54]going to do another book? Oh, my goodness. Somewhere my husband's feeling like, no, please don't.
[25:59]Like, this was this was hard. It was hard. I think I thought that because I've written a thousand
[26:04]word pieces before that I would crank out 60 to 80 of those. And that would be a book.
[26:09]But the actual act of having something to say that can sustain a reader over the course of 200 50 300
[26:16]pages is an entirely different act. So you're done. I mean, I've been at, but then I'm going to be here in
[26:21]like three years sitting down with you. I thought you were done at least. There's no way. You're
[26:26]and also, I mean, not to say you're so young. I'm not like that much old in you. But life is long.
[26:31]I mean, I look at like, I mean, there's a lot that could come. But the challenge obviously is
[26:38]formidable. So instead of putting another book on your to-do list for the near future,
[26:43]can you talk about the new show or other things like shorter time that you're coming up?
[26:47]I don't know much about it sort of as an adventure that is waiting to happen. I can tell you
[26:52]you about the podcast. I started this podcast two years ago. It's called Latina to Latina.
[26:57]I interview professional Latinos about their journeys. And what's interesting to me,
[27:03]I'm short to you as well is I've been on television for 10 years. Podcasting is where I've built
[27:09]the most intimate connection with my audience. It's where I'll get DMs from listeners or emails
[27:16]and people will share parts of their lives. And that's why I always love doing this,
[27:20]is because I did love that sense of connection in community. And it's been so fun to carve out
[27:27]that space. And you know, as a community, Latinos very often, you know, there's an expression
[27:34]that someone at Goya uses, which is where people connected by language and divided by beans.
[27:40]There are all of these, you know, big cultural differences depending on your country of origin.
[27:46]But what's edifying about the podcast is they're also all these through lines. Like family is
[27:50]very important to us as a community ethos of hard work. And at a moment when the community can
[27:56]really feel under siege, it is nice to have this place where we get to celebrate Latina excellence.
[28:03]Excellent. Do you have any parting advice to aspiring authors? I know you've sounded a little
[28:10]discouraging there, but you should everyone else should write a book. It's me who should not.
[28:15]I think the piece of advice that I was given, which is you have to absolutely love it and want
[28:20]it and feel as though it is a subject that you want to sit with for a very long time. And that I
[28:27]think takes some soul searching and some, you know, coming back to revision because I'm interested
[28:34]in lots of things for about a week and a half. And then that moment passes. But since you're asking
[28:41]do you have any advice on child rearing? Oh, my gosh. The fact that you have survived for
[28:46]I mean, it makes me much harder job. I think having people you can call on say, I mean,
[28:53]I'm sure you have a million people, but the people that I can text or call or whatever and
[28:58]late at night and be like, what should I do about this or some of the things that got me through?
[29:02]So anyway, if I can help you at all. I'll take you up on this. It's just in the moment.
[29:07]Last question to the mom woman professional out there who feels
[29:13]him stringed by how much they want to be liked and feel that it's getting in their way. What would you
[29:19]say to her? A few things. You cannot control whether or not other people like you. I've said that to
[29:25]myself, maybe a thousand times in the course of writing this book. I'm not sure that I've internalized
[29:30]it quite yet, but it is the fundamental truth, which is you can be your best, most wonderful self
[29:37]or you can do a complete performance of yourself. How someone else will interpret and receive that
[29:41]is entirely outside of your control. So in many ways, focusing on likeability becomes an act of
[29:48]seating control. And as someone who cares about it, I always thought of it as a me issue. If I could
[29:55]just be a little bit more of this or a little more of that, and it was really helpful to start
[30:00]of it as a systems issue to be like, this is set up so that there's almost no way for me to be
[30:06]a warm and strong and perfect and authentic leader. And then by focusing on work and by focusing
[30:13]on how difficult it is for women to face these challenges at work, it freed me up to think about
[30:20]the rest of my life and who I wanted it and how to surround myself with people who really allowed
[30:28]me to be in my most authentic self. What I think is funny is that we can talk around that,
[30:33]but you know it. You know it in your core, like who you spend time with and then you walk away and
[30:38]you feel so nourished and so much like you got a chance to just downshift and relax and be yourself
[30:45]and you walked away with a million ideas or thoughts or feelings and shifting my energy towards
[30:51]really investing in those relationships and friendships has made a fundamental difference in my life
[30:57]and I would recommend the same to anybody else. Excellent. Well, thank you so much. Thank you,
[31:03]love to see you. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Moms Don't Have Time to Read books,
[31:08]the award-winning podcast. Today's episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read books was sponsored by
[31:14]pediatrician in your pocket by Dr. Jennifer Tractenberg, Dr. DashGen.com, and your code PIP20,
[31:22]for 20% off of these can't miss modules that will make your parenting life so much easier.
[31:29]You can follow me on Instagram at Moms Don't Have Time to Read books. Thanks so much to Steve and
[31:34]Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for
[31:39]providing this fantastic intro and out trim music. Thanks for listening. You can always email me at
[31:43]zibbyoins.com.