Ok, I have a secret. When the Matrix movies first came out with Keanu Reeves, I went to the movies to see them. And you know what happened? I fell asleep. They were so exciting and full of new technology and film effects, but I could not stay awake. I guess I did “get” them.
Well, my guest, Susanne Goldstein, not only gets them, but she also helps women wake up and break free from the prisons the world and their prior choices have put them in.
Susanne says that she watches the Matrix movies on New Year’s Eve. Who knows, now that I better understand the point behind the movies, I may watch them too. And this time, I won’t fall asleep. Fingers crossed!
During my conversation with Susanne, we chatted about:
- The tools she uses with her clients, including metaphysics and energetics.
- Why she loves the Matrix movies and watches them every year.
- What an upgrade is and why we can have multiple upgrades throughout our lives and careers.
- If upgrades are conscious and planned, subconscious or both.
- What steps we can take to break free from our own version of the Matrix.
A quick note for you concerning today’s show: Susanne and I let the language rip, so listen to the show with your earbuds or other microphones and away from little ears.
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Listen to the podcast here
Upgrade Your Life And Career By Breaking Free From The Matrix With Susanne Goldstein
Upgrades And Themes
I’m so glad you’re here. Everyone, how are you doing out there? I’m outing myself, I have a secret. Remember those from a million years ago? When the Matrix movies first came out with Keanu Reeves, I went to the movies with my boyfriend and now husband to see them. Do you know what happened? I fell asleep and I tried so many times to watch them. I know they were so exciting and at the time, they were full of this cutting edge technology and film effects but I could not stay awake. I just did not “get them.”
They were snores-borse to me. I don’t know. My guest Susanne Goldstein is setting me straight. She is getting me and she gets these movies. She’s using the movies in so many other beautiful metaphors and resources, but we did focus on the Matrix movies. She uses these metaphors to help women wake up. She says, “Wake the F up,” and break free from the prisons, the world and maybe their prior or current choices have put them in.
Susanne says that she watched the Matrix movies on, I think it’s New Year’s Eve every year, going into the new year. Who knows? Now that I’m seeing it in a new light, I better understand the major takeaway and the through line from the movies. I’m going to watch them, too. This time, I’m not going to fall asleep. Fingers crossed. You can follow up with me. You can DM me. Send me an email at Hello@bravewomenatwork.com,if I forget to tell everybody if I’ve made it through, but I am going to make it through. During my conversation with Susanne, we chatted about the tools she uses with her clients, including metaphysics and energetic which were new terms to me.
I’m a curious person and a learner, so I wanted to share that new stuff with you. Why she loves those Matrix movies and watches them every year, what an upgrade is and why we can have multiple upgrades through our lives in careers. She also shares her motivation behind her upgrade. She also shares upgrades or conscious and planned subconscious or both and what steps we can take to break free from our own versions of the Matrix.
I will say, we let it rip in our conversation. If you are going to be reading this episode, don’t be around little ears because this episode is explicit, but I think that it makes sense because that’s the conversation. We were no holds bar. We were going back and forth. It was an awesome conversation. Be on the lookout for this episode. Here is more about Susanne.
Susanne Goldstein is a changemaker and on a mission to elevate humanity. She’s here to show people everything that they can be a force for good in the world, but they have to become a force for good in their own lives first. Susanne is a highly sought after executive coach, strategic consultant, keynote speaker, program creator, and an industry disrupting thought leader on society and social change.
She believes in a world where everyone not only feels like they belong at the table, they also feel empowered to grab the mic, speak and be heard. For several years, she has coached and consulted to startups and Fortune 500 companies, often as the only woman in the room. During that time, she took herself through her own “waking up” journey, realizing in the process how deeply the often-lauded, masculine-energy hustle culture in the US was causing deep unhappiness and burnout in society, especially for women.
Turning her attention to women executives and entrepreneurs in the early 2010s, her life lessons and research led to the development of her highly transformation program Lead Like a Woman™, a tour-de-force journey of awakening women and helping them re-remember their fierce feminine power so they can create harmony in masculine and feminine energetics and find success on their own terms.
As the Founder and CEO of DAREHuman™, Susanne tapped into her experience in business, psychology, Hollywood filmmaking and lecturing on social entrepreneurship at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard, to create an online academy to help humans tap into the four DAREHuman™ archetypes, know yourself, live on purpose, get sh*t done and make money, be the change your want to see in the world. Her ground-breaking manifestation methods described in her best-selling book, Carry a Paintbrush: How to Be the Artistic Director of Your Own Career have been presented on stages all over the US.
A master storyteller, Susanne, loves to enthrall people everywhere to become the best version of themselves. She holds a trifecta of Ivy League degrees from Cornell and Harvard that are collecting dust in her parents’ attic. If this show has made an impact on you, please be sure to share it with a friend, family member, or colleague. Your ratings and reviews help the show continue to gain traction and grow. If you can do me that favor and leave a rating and review, I would appreciate it.
Also, a couple of last announcements. I do have a space or two for individual coaching. If you are looking in the new year, maybe one of your resolutions is to say, “I want to check out coaching. I want this to be the year that I make big changes in my career. I’m going to speak up this year. I’m going to get that raise this year. I’m going to achieve my professional goals.” Check out the website BraveWomanAtWork.com.
You can click on Schedule a Discovery call and that process will be a 30-minute completely complimentary session where we chat confidentially about your particular career situation. I will go through how coaching works, if you’ve never done it before. I will see you and we will talk to see if it’s a fit for you. The promise is this, if coaching is a fit then wonderful. Let’s move forward. If coaching is not a fit then that’s okay. You can get other resources from or other people to best serve you and your needs at the time. You can learn more about coaching at BraveWomanAtWork.com.
Last announcement. If you haven’t heard, I am hosting a conference coming up in 2025. It’s called Thrive in 2025. It’s specifically a women’s leadership conference. The key difference with this conference versus others I’ve been to, is that it has accountability baked in at the end. If you would like to join, I have something called The Brave Circle. It’s a coaching accountability group. You can do that right after the conference is over. You don’t go to conferences. You get all jazz. You’re all excited, motivated, fresh and new and then nothing happens.
You can do something with those learnings and all of the teaching you’re going to gain at the conference right after. The conference will be held from June 25th to 28th in the Chicago land area in 2025. You can learn more about the conference and register at Thrive25. Let’s welcome Susanne to the show.
Susanne, welcome to the show. How are you?
I’m fantastic. How are you? It’s so good to hang with you again.
It’s so awesome. We had such a fun chat the first time that I was excited for our conversation. As you know, I have lots of lots of questions and curiosities about the work you do so we’ll just jump in. Yell us a little bit about you and your background story and how you’ve gotten to where you are.
I don’t know how you summarize 60 years quickly but I’m born outside of Boston. For some reason, I knew at age five what I was meant to do in the world. The fascinating thing about knowing why you’re here and why you were sent to this lifetime is a fascinating concept. What the universe does is as you’re young, it throws every test in possible in your way to see as a proven moment if you can deliver the goods. I was very tested through my life.
In your youth, the universe throws every possible test your way to see if you can deliver. Share on XIn the meanwhile, while I was being tested, I managed to become very successful and I produced my first movie for Disney when I was 27 years old. At that time, I also decided that I didn’t want to be the person I was becoming. I had a temper. I am embarrassed to say that at one point I threw a chair at an ex who showed up in my doorstep and I don’t ever want to be that person. I was living in Hollywood and everybody around me was full of drama all the time. I decided I was going to change my life.
At age 27, I gave myself my first ever theme and I uplevel myself now using themes the same way we upgrade our phones. If your phone says to you, “It’s time for the upgrade.” It’s the same thing with our brains. It’s just wiring. It’s just electricy. It’s computer hardware up there. We’ve got to upgrade it. My very first theme was to only be dramatic when drama is necessary because I thought everyone around me was full of drama. Everybody said nasty things about people. This is the early ‘90s and it was not pleasant.
I decided I was going to change my life. I spent the whole first 4 or 5 months forgetting that I’ve given myself a theme because it’s my first one ever. Once I started to remember that I had a theme, I could do something about it. It was in that moment that I taught myself my first tool and what I call is the millisecond. I’m putting my hands in a V. It’s anytime you have a stimulus coming at you. There’s this place you can choose to go right or left.
You can react or you can respond. At age 27, I realized that point in time where I made that fork in the road and made that choice was the most important point I would ever discover because it was about choice and I could start choosing differently for my life. What I did is I slowed down time, I call this the millisecond. That moment where you have and I slowed down time enough so I could learn to be choiceful and be intentional. That’s how my journey started.
I am getting goosebumps and I am going to learn so much from you. I’m so excited. Upgrades. We talked about this last time but the idea of the upgrade. You also said a theme. I have done Word of the Year. Many people have heard of Word of the Year. Is it the same or is it different?
Different. What I usually give myself a theme about is related to who I desire to be next. I’m always imagining her. Myself as her and say to myself every year, “Who is the next version of her? What is it I want to be inside? What does it want I want to be achieving outside?” It’s always an emotional thing. I don’t ever do it like a New Year’s resolution where people say, “I’ll go to the gym three times a week,” and they fail. One day, they don’t go and then they quit the whole resolution thing.
Instead, I gave myself a year to integrate a new concept. I’ll say it this way, because it might help visually. Imagine your plant. You have beautiful leaves and sometimes flowers. In teaching or sharing, I’m giving you information. In the plant analogy, that is like me pouring water over you. The water is then going to make its way through the soil. When its way through the soil, that’s the opportunity we have to transform.
The information itself doesn’t transform us. It’s the integration of the information. That’s the water going into the soil. When the water reaches the roots of the plant and it takes that water. It turns it into energy, which turns it into matter. It starts to grow those leaves and eventually blooms. That’s the integration part. There’s three steps to becoming the next version of you. One is you got to figure out the information or learn it from someone. The second part is, you’ve got to do the internal work to make the transformation happen. The third and final part is the integration of it.
I don’t know if you can share or you keep it to yourself. What is your theme in 2025? Do you have a theme?
I do and your audience is not going to be able to see this, but it’s a picture of Taylor Swift on my phone because I always put my theme on my phone. It says, “What would Taylor?” I’m so wildly impressed with her as an artist, a business person, and a humanitarian. She’s gave $5 million to aid from all storms that have been happening. $5 million to feeding America. She’s just an extraordinary human who is redone the music business. She has redone how movies are distributed just by being the pure power that she is and utilizing that for good.
When I get myself in a situation now where I’m like, “I’m growing my business. I’m doing a lot of public speaking.” It’s like, “If I’m in a mood or I’m not feeling the energy or I’m just feeling little off or I want to be inspired. What would Taylor do?” What would Taylor do at this moment? She probably right about it. She probably make it into a song or she might decide to donate $5 million, so how do I live up to that in my mind.
I know because you come from entertainment. You do lean and we’re going to talk a lot about movies and how you lean on that with the work that you do. When do you start cooking up the theme for the following year? Are you already starting to think ahead of the upgrade for 2025?
I start on Thanksgiving and I decide between Thanksgiving and New Year.
Please stay in touch. I want to know what the theme is. I’ll do the same. How’s that? We’ll trade themes.
I love it.
We’ll try things.
I did it with a class every year. This one will be themed 2025. I take people through my process. I’ve usually already decided my theme because I teach it in the beginning of December usually but I take people through it so they can choose the theme for the next year.
The Matrix
When you’re ready. We’ll put that so that if people want to join you for that, the theme versus the word of the year, if they wanted have their own theme. That would be cool. Thank you for sharing. I didn’t know that. I want to come back since we were talking about Taylor Swift. I know that you come from the entertainment, from Hollywood and changed your life but you still have a love of movies. We talked about that last time.
One that, I have to tell you, Susanne. I’m going to take this course. By the way, I haven’t taken it yet. It’s the one on the Matrix. You have a course on the Matrix. The reason I’m like laughing about it is because I try to watch that movie in the movie theater when it came out. I fell asleep so many times and I’m wondering if it’s because there’s a potency to that movie and there’s so much going on that I don’t know if my body just couldn’t take it in or what. I did want you to tell us about your love of the Matrix movies and the whole series. Why don’t you share where that was born?
It was born in 1999 when first movie came out. I was one of those people who watched the Matrix and got it instantaneously. For me, the Wachowski brothers who are now the Wachowski sisters were stunning. They’ve taken a lot of the spiritual practices that I’ve been developing for quite some time and turned them into us understanding, essentially what the Matrix movies are about. There’s a great document somewhere.
If you google search like Matrix for Dummies, there’s someone who’s explained the whole thing, which is amazing. What the movies about is a representation of the Western society that we live in, which is a society that was built by a group of people for that group of people excluding other people. That’s the system we live in. It’s no one’s fault who’s alive now. It just was the system. Here’s the thing, I go into my kitchen. I know where the pots and pans are. I know where the forks and knives are. I put them there to work for me.
In the same exact way that when these White Christian men started these countries. They did it for them. It works for them and that makes total sense. In this world, that doesn’t make that much sense because everybody’s considered equal now as opposed to before. The Matrix movies represent that system. The way that they represent that system is called the Matrix. In the movie humans and the machine world, AI that had grown got into a war. The humans thought, “If we blight out the sky, the machines won’t have any solar power and they’ll have to die.”
What the machines figured out is that we humans are a battery. We have so much electrical charge running through us. That they decided to start farming humans. They would put them in these pods to grow them up and they would just use their energy to power the Matrix. What they realize is that humans without being distracted in their brains would fight. We rebel. We get out of the pods and start fighting.
They decided to create this world and they would plug people into the world. They believed that they had a job. They believed that this is their life and this was whatever because it was their reality. It was the new system that they were in. Some people inside the Matrix have freed themselves. The story is about them freeing meal who they believe is the one who’s going to be able to finally break the hold on the Matrix and free humanity.
Those are what the movies are about. In the world of consciousness and the world that I work in a lot where we’re exploring and experimenting in these other ways of seeing the world and potentially other dimensions and quantum physics. When we start seeing the world from that perspective, we realize we are in a system. What we wear, how we do our hair, who we work with and what school we went to. All of that stuff. 0053tuff that comes to us from imprints, our family, our culture, our neighborhood, and our teachers. We become this person that’s based on, I should be like this. I’m supposed to do these things.
I went to engineering school. Why? It’s because that’s what I decided I was going to do. When you break mold is when I got out of college and I wanted to go into the arts. My parents are like, “You’re this female engineer. There’s not very many female engineers out there. You should interview for engineering jobs.” I was like, “There is NFW. I am working in an engineering company.” I’ve done that during my summers between college. How do you break it?
I said to my parents, “No, this is what I’m doing. I’m going to go work in the arts.” That’s when I said earlier, I was successful because my first job, I went and sat on the lobby couch of the National Theater of Great Britain for eight straight days until someone would talk to me. I was caught. I always tell people now, “Don’t do this. This was the ‘80s. You could get away with a lot in the ‘80s.” I went to the backstage door and I said, “I’d like a job here.” They’re like, “Do you have an appointment?” I’m like, “No.”
I waited every day and went back for eight straight days. I call it my Hanukkah Miracle. They allowed me to meet someone and turns out he needed someone who understood theater. I had gotten a second degree in Theater and Film and New Mechanical Drafting because I went to work in the backstage part of the theater. Lo and behold, I got the job. That’s when I started manifesting things and started understanding that I could co-create. I can make things happen.
I ended up writing a book about that experience in Hollywood called Carry a Paintbrush: How to Be the Artistic Director of Your Own Career. The idea of that is, everywhere I go, everything I try, I imagine that I’m carrying a bucket of paint and a paintbrush. I take out that paintbrush and I paint the door. I remembered I paint the handle and then I turned the handle if I want to meet someone and do something. I create an opportunity for something lucky to happen. When you’re in the vibration of something lucky is going to happen. Lucky stuff happens all the time.
It’s weird that you said that, and I want to go back to the Matrix here in a minute. People will tell me, “What your why?” As Simon Sinek or, “Why do you do what you do,” or, “What get you up at bed?” I always say, “I see each day is like a White canvas and I can paint it any way I want.” That’s like what you’re saying. I love that you’re like, “You better make sure you have a door and a door knob.” If you want to go places or meet people or have them come into you or whatever. I’ve just been painting the wall. Now, I got to put a door in there.
There you go. Your whole life is going to change. I can’t wait to see.
I know. I’m going to say touch it and be like, “Oh, boy.” We’ll see how that all goes. Back to the Matrix. Everyone, geek out with us because I never understood this movie like you understand this movie.
I’ve also seen it like 7 billion times.
That’s okay. You got like a Master’s degree like unproclaim master’s degree in the Matrix. Is there a master’s in the Matrix? I wonder if there is like education. I’m sure there is.
There are classes. I don’t know if there’s masters, but I should probably create one because I watched all four movies back-to-back every New Year’s Eve day. I start it 9:00 in the morning and I watch Matrix movies all day.
I have to ask you because your whole thing on your website is that you free women. I said, “You’ve got my attention.” The idea of the Matrix I believe that you believe that it is a real thing. That we are in systems. People will laugh. I’m not here to bash the men. We’re generous. You were generous like, “When White Christian men came forward and started this country and many other countries. They were doing what was best.”
They put the knives or the forks in the drawer that they thought in the kitchen of their country that belong there. Not getting political. I’m wondering if you think that the whole world is in a shake-up like all of the kitchens are being reorganized a little bit. I just wanted to ask you that and then I wanted to ask you about how we know if we’re in the Matrix. Let’s start with the whole planet because I have been reading and seeing we are entering a new period and many countries, many spaces and places that we are doing some new stuff in our kitchens.
There’s a lot of resistance to it, too. The analogy I use is that a lot of people have awoken or they’re in the process of awakening to the fact that this system might not work for them. They’re striving for things within the system. How many people do that work in investment banking? They have all the money in the world and they’re miserable. They don’t even know themselves. Part of understanding is getting to know you and getting to know what’s important to you. When I think about what’s going on in the world, there are some people who don’t want the world to leave the Matrix.
They like it. It works for them. Sorry, I don’t mean to be political of the moment but there’s just some great examples out. There are some people believe that women should step back from working and go home and make babies. According to certain people, I’m a single cat lady. My vote shouldn’t count as much. I do more for humanity every single day that many people but I shouldn’t count because I’m single woman. I don’t a cat.
I don’t know if you ever took any life guarding classes. I was a lifeguard for many years. When you’re a lifeguard and someone is drowning, you are trained not to swim up in front of the person because they’re doing all the things with their arms to try to stay above water and they see you. They get hopeful and panic and try to stabilize the water. You approach them from the back. You grab them. It’s called a crossbody hold and you start swimming away. That’s what it is in lifeguarding.
What I’m seeing around the planet is, as more people elevate their consciousness, as more people say diversity and inclusion matters, and women still are only getting paid $0.82 for equal work. As all this is happening, a more people are saying, “This isn’t okay.” Especially Gen Z. They’re amazing this way. What’s happening is there are people who are acting like those drowning people. They’re like, “No, I don’t want the system to go away.” “I want to stay up the surface.” That’s how I see it.
Being In The Matrix
This is all interconnected in my mind. Some women will be like, “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” Hang with us because this is important education. That’s one of the reasons I’m here is to provide the education and the tools that women need or wish I would have had many years before. As working women, moms, non-moms, sisters, aunts, and friends, how do we know if we’re in the Matrix? Are there any tell signs? You’re going to say all of us are in but how do we know so that we can wake up?
First of all, you’re right, all of us are in the Matrix. Yeah. I have removed myself in the Matrix but I’m still affected by the Matrix. What I mean by that is I’m fully aware of the systems that we live in and of the fact that I am a human being but I’m a spiritual being having a human experience. I relate to my body as the meat suit, that my soul occupied to come into this life. What I say a lot is my human is struggling. I am not. The way I separate myself from the Matrix is to understand that my human is suffering inside the Matrix. I, my soul, my higher self, my super soul, I am not.
Once you start to make that differentiation, what you can see and do with your self is become conscious and intentional about everything. As an Engineer, after I was in the film business, I went to the very early dot-com world like ’94 or ’95, beginning of the web. I was in a room, me and twenty men. It was an engineering meeting and I was the lead architect, design architect on this brand-new piece of software on the web. Huge, and I never done a website before ever but I had done other kinds of software design that people thought would be relevant.
I get in this room. At one point, they’re talking about something. I asked a question because I feel very empowered as a human to be able to raise my hand and say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I was in a room full of men who were so deeply inside the Matrix that the head engineer looked at me and he said, “You’re the stupidest fucking person I’ve ever met in my entire life.”
He said that across the table in a business meeting?
Correct, and all the men started agreeing with him. I must have been 31 and I was a consultant to this company. I walked out and went to the guy who hired me and I said I quit. He said, “What do you mean you’re quitting? This is an enormous project we’re doing. You’re the lead architect. You can’t quit.” I said, “I’m not going to be talked to like that.” I have faced and I’m sure you have faced every gender discrimination and micro-aggressions. Those are the worst one. This was a full-on aggression. Micro-aggressions are even worse.
I have chosen over the years to move upside of the Matrix, my consciousness and understand exactly what the system is. I teach people how to do that and it doesn’t happen overnight it. It’s why I have a program called Lead Like a Woman because it is about this consciousness and leading from a place of collaboration instead of competition from a place of cooperation instead of individualism.
The Matrix, the patriarchy that we live in, based on men, it’s called a patriarchy because they designed it. It doesn’t work for many of us and it certainly doesn’t work for me. My job is to help women wake the fuck up and there’s a bunch of men who want to wake up, too. I have men going through the Lead Like a Woman program because they’re so sick of this hustle culture, too.
Patriarchy was designed by men, and it does not work for most people. Share on XWho isn’t? I don’t know. In the movie the Matrix, that’s why I use it and you use it as the frame for some of the things you do and you love it. Neo has the blue pill and the red pill. You’re going to tell me which one that leads out of the Matrix. I forgot.
You take the blue one to not go down the rabbit hole. Morpheus gives Neo a choice. By the way, we all have parts of the five different main characters inside of us and that’s cool. Morpheus is the believer. He believes Neo is the one that doesn’t matter what happens around him. He’s like, “That’s okay. This is supposed to happen because he’s still the one.” He’s the believer and he’s the one who gets Neo woken up while he’s inside the Matrix. Neo’s like, “What the hell’s going on?” It’s red pill or blue pill.
If you take the red pill, you’re going to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. If you take the blue pill, you’re going to end up waking up in your bed and you’ll remember nothing. None of this. That’s how Neo gets woken up. What does that pill do? Its metaphorical, but in the movie, they disrupt the electrical pattern and make it look like his body has died. What they do is after the Matrix spits out this body thinking it’s a dead body, the people in the real world go pick it up and take it with them. It’s literally a rebirth. It looks like a vaginal canal.
It does now that you’re saying that. I got to go watch this movie again now. I have a whole new perspective of this movie.
It’s pretty amazing. You asked me a question earlier that I think it’s worth saying. In the 4th Matrix movies, it was very interesting because they focused more on the divine feminine than divine masculine. Neo is very much the divine masculine and Trinity is the divine feminine. When I say divine, I don’t mean according to any religion. I mean spiritually divine. That feminine energy is so beautiful. In the 4th movie, Neo and Trinity are speaking to the bad guy, the antagonist of the movie played by Neil Patrick Harris.
He says to them, “Do why we make you dream?” They’re like, “No.” He said, “Ever since we introduced dreaming, it jacked up our productivity numbers so high.” Think about it this way, if you’re awake for 16 hours of the day and you sleep for eight. It used to be, they got productivity from the electricity of you thinking while you’re in the Matrix. It produces energy. They’re like, “There’s eight whole hours that we’re not getting any energy production out of these people. Let’s introduce dreaming.”
You know what dreaming does. You wake up with a dream in the morning of the bad dream and it’s with you all day. You’re producing a lot of energy because it’s with you all day. It was so genius. This is what I call force productivity. If you take lessons from the Matrix, you’ll learn that the idea is that we don’t feel like we’re valuable unless we’re working. We don’t feel like we’re valuable unless we’re doing.
When we succeed, we always go, “What’s the next success?” We’re never satisfied. This is part of the Matrix. The Matrix says you shouldn’t be satisfied. You should always want more bigger car, better car, better place to live, better job, higher title, and better office. The whole thing constantly striving. People are exhausted from the striving but they don’t know how to get out of it because they’re inside the Matrix.
We don't feel like we're valuable unless we're working. When we succeed, we always look for the next success to chase. Share on XI’m going to quote Kate Northrup. She’s a very large presence in social and in the personal development space. I’ve been listening to her stuff on seasonal planning because the patriarchy talks about that we all think that we’re on a 24-hour clock but women or people that claim as women or even women that are no longer having a menstrual cycle like we have a monthly lunar base planning. My mind has been blown because it’s a whole new way of planning, working, and living.
One of the things that I’ve been thinking about as we’re doing this, it’s the Fall time. I’m in the Chicago land area. The leaves are starting to change in Fall. It’s beautiful. It’s one of my favorite seasons but I went to like a couple of people. I’m seeing it differently this Autumn, which is a beautiful thing to behold. I’m like, the trees know. They know to start. We are at the culmination of a fruits of our labor and it is now time to rest. We are preparing for rest.
I’m going to tell you, I am terrible at this but I am learning that maybe I do need to schedule on my calendar periods of rest. Maybe I do need to slow down at periods of like my life and it’s okay because I have and I suspect many women that are reading all have been in a place of force productivity. We don’t know. We just know that we’re looking for the next dopamine hit of the next achievement versus being like it’s okay to sit down and to rest. It’s okay because that’s how the seasons do it. How can trees be wrong?
I love that you brought that up because we do live in a world where we’ve become human doing. Not human beings. After every big time I have a presentation like this one, the next thing in my calendar is rest. I program my life like that so that I am full-on, fully engaged, fully here and there’s no phone call after this.
I’m going to go either on my couch or lie on my bed and I’m just going to rest. I’m going to give myself some downtime because I’m going to give a lot of my energy. One of the things I teach women how to do is energy management. When I say energy, I mean energetic. Emotions are energy. Energy in motion. That’s what an emotion is. We understand that joy feels like a high vibrating moment. It’s like, “Yummy. It feels so good. I just want to scream and dance.”
When you’re depressed or sad or scared, it’s like you’re frozen and paralyzed because it’s a very low and slow energy. If you start to learn to play with your energy and your energetics, you can change your life. I have a free program called Stratagenetics. Teaches men and women this method called Stratagenetics, which is how do we embody the masculine and the feminine within us without ever having them turn into what it’s called the wounded version.
Healthy masculine energy is that strategy energy, logic energy, and getting things done in a beautiful way energy. That’s masculine energy, but toxic masculine energy is competitive, arrogant, aggressive, and judgmental. Healthy feminine energy is super leaned back. When Sheryl Sandberg wrote the book Lean In, I want to write a book called Lean Back. It’s leaned back. It’s the moon as opposed to the masculine energy which is the sun. It’s mysterious. It’s receiving. Even our body is built for this as the receiver.
The unhealthy feminine energy is needy, has Victor glasses on, and thinks the world is against her. If she doesn’t get the promotion, she is devastated because she goes to her unhealthy feminine energy. Often, the promotions are hard to get, especially for the women I work with because they don’t even hit the glass ceiling. They hit a rubber ceiling and keep bouncing off of it.
There’s something in this work called a double bind. In the double bind, it’s like a woman supposed to be talented, ambitious, directive, and strategic, which are very masculine energies. She brings those to the workplace and men aren’t used to experiencing that from an empowered woman. They will do many things to take her down like me being called the stupidest fucking person this guy had ever met.
I’ve talked about this, so if the woman is to aggressive. She’s a bitch or an opportunist or there’s a double bind. There are examples.
I was called the bitch for being told I was the stupid person.
Correct.
That happened.
I’ve interviewed African-American executives and leaders of different nationalities, races, and places. Especially for African-Americans women. Even to speak up or advocate for themselves, they’re seen as aggressive. It might even be even a higher level of double bind for them. One of the things that I’m sure you and I teach, is speaking up, advocating for yourself, negotiation and getting to those places so you can get through the rubber and try to get to a career that you love and you deserve, but they can’t even speak up for themselves. It’s sad.
We so much of that, Jen. It’s called intersectionality when you have more than one minority or one down. Black women are Black and White, so they’re called intersectional. You can imagine if someone is mixed race and gay. The amount of bias that happens against them by the system is enormous. There’s this incredible piece of work that I’ve seen done and done as part of work that I’ve done as well, where you have people stand in a line in a room all facing one direction right next to each other.
You say, “Everybody who came from a home where the parents are still together, take a step forward.” Those people take a step forward. “If you are a person who never worried about food on the table, take a step forward.” “If you are a person whose parents divorced, take a step back.” “If you are gay, take a step back.” “If you are black or another race, take a step back.” “If you had ay your college paid for, take a step forward.” What happens is, you start visually seeing that the starting line is never equal through all those people who come forward and believe in meritocracy. There is no such thing as a meritocracy because there’s not an even playing field.
That is a beautiful example. Something I’m going to keep in mind if it’s applicable because that would be a very powerful visual like when you’re in the actual exercise to say we’re not all starting from the same place.
It’s like, everybody run to the end zone now but some people are already at the 50-yard line. Some people are back in the touchdown zone and they’re supposed to win the race. All the White guys up at the front are like, “I ran as hard as I could.” It’s not against you to say that you worked hard. You did but these guys had to work harder. You got to run farther. It’s not that any current man is doing anything wrong. The system was designed for him, so he has a tailwind and everybody else has a headwind.
Getting Out Of The Matrix
I don’t want to take away from your programs but can you give us like maybe a little bit of a taste? Let’s say someone reading this is saying, “I am in the Matrix. We’re all in the Matrix. I would like to start learning how to get out. I would like to.” Where would you tell them to start?
Two places in my world, if we’re talking about coming into my world. I have a program called Lessons from The Matrix. Three sessions recorded. It was recorded live, so you get a lot of audience interaction, which is fun. It explains the concept of enslavement. You’re not as free as you think you are. Did you ever see the Devil Wears Prada?
You are not as free as you think you are. Share on XYes, I love that movie.
Me, too. Andy played by Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep plays her boss, whose name is Miranda Priestly. Andy gets this job for Miranda Priestly and she doesn’t care about fashion. Basically, she’s working at Vogue with a different name. She comes in one day with this big and chunky green sweater turtle neck thing.
She’s telling Miranda, “I don’t care about fashion.” She goes, “Oh, you don’t? That green sweater you’re wearing, you think you picked that sweater but that color of that’s sweater was from so-and-so’s show two years ago. Your local department store decided to go clone it and use that color for a bunch of different things to make them feel like they’re in fashion making you feel like you’re in fashion. You didn’t pick that color. So-and-so picked that color.” That’s how deeply in the Matrix we are.
The getting out is looking at everything we do and saying, “Am I doing this because it’s my choice, or am I doing this because I’m supposed to or you shouldn’t yourself to death?” Making choices that are not your choices. Are automatic instead of being choiceful. When we open ourselves up to being intentional, and I was talking earlier about that choice point between the stimulus and whether you react or respond. The difference is when you are in responding, you’re being intentional. Here’s how I desire to respond to this situation as opposed to reacting, which people react based on fight, flight, freeze or fawn.
They react and some of them run, fight, hide, and stand there waiting for it to be over. That’s what we do when we’re in reaction and most of us lickety-split react. We’re not even intentional about that millisecond, where we can look at it and go, “Should I choose to react or respond?” When I first started doing this with that theme that I described earlier, it was, “Do I need drama at this moment?” Someone’s saying something to me that doesn’t feel good but instead of reacting to them, what if I’m just choiceful? What if I decide to intentionally go, I don’t agree with it that way but I’m okay to disagree. When you’re intentional, you’re starting to be the painter of your life.
Bringing a full circle. When you said that millisecond, some women that I coach and work with, even myself to an extent. I want to ask and stress, that millisecond if you need more time because maybe you’re not a fast processor or you need just practice. You can tell someone, “I need to get back to you on that,” and there’s no shame in that. I just wanted you to comment on that because some women, I feel like, “I can’t process that quickly.” “I need like an hour or a day. Not a military second.”
That’s why I said, when I learned to do this, I started expanding time. I started slowing time down so I had more time to process. If that is a day, if that’s 5 seconds or 2 seconds or a week, when you need to process, you need to process. What I would say in a situation like that, depending on how I was feeling, is, I need to get back to you about that or I have a lot on my plate. I don’t have the capacity to think about that but when I do, I’m sure I’ll follow up with you.
Now, we’re coming into the space I’ve talked to saying no or setting some boundaries around like you don’t have to respond right away. Those are very practical things but they also as you said, can get us out of those patterns that may keep us stuck in the Matrix.
Keep us stuck and scared of our bosses. I can’t tell you how many times when I was young that whomever I was working for, a client or boss or whatever it was. They’d say, “When you have a second, can we talk?” I would be terrified inside that I had done something wrong or I was going to get fired or whatever. Why? It’s because the system dangles firing as an option if you’re not performing. We get into that force productivity.
You we’re asking about where to start with me, Lessons from The Matrix is a good one. Another one that people have found powerful is called True North. That one is based on a chapter in my book and it’s all about finding what lights you up, what I call your heart light. Your deepest passion. The thing that if you never needed to make money again and your passionate about something, what would it be? For me, it’s always making the world a better place. For some people, it’s feeding their brain, competition, or helping others. Mine is always been waking up humanity.
The thing is, that doesn’t mean I can’t shine my heart light in different directions. I did it in theater for a while and I did purpose-driven theater. I did in the film industry and I left the film business because I was making Family Fare for Disney. Instead of doing the Spielberg movies I wanted to make to change the world, I went to the dot-com world because I thought, “We’re going to flatten the world and we’re going to make information available to everybody. Everybody’s going to rise up.” I was not smart enough to think about all the bad actors but that’s for another day.
What I’ve done over my life times, I’ve shined my heart light at different, what I call interests. Interests of the things that tickle your brain. If you combine your passion, what I call the heartl ight, your interests which is where you’re shining your heart light and skills that you have. You make three circles with those Venn diagram. That point in the middle, that’s the thing that’s going to make you happy every day. I call it a sweet spot. This whole thing is called Sweet Spot Game and that’s what True North is based on.
Lead Like A Woman
I want to make sure we touch on Lead Like a Woman because you mention that. You can give a snippet about that. In case someone wants to do that program. What’s that about?
Of all the stuff I’ve taught in all the years I’ve been doing this, Lead Like a Woman takes my breath away. I channeled most of it, so I can’t even take that much credit for it. It is a hybrid program that takes women on a transformational journey. What I’ve heard most from people is that they didn’t realize that they were seeing the world in Black and white. When they went through the program, they now see the world as technicolor.
Imagine coming in, you don’t even know you’re in the Matrix. Let me say, for every module, there’s a movie to watch There’s a training to watch. There’s deepening work, and then there’s prompts, writing prompts. W eek one, which is called awakening to the masculine energy hustle culture. It has a movie called equity, which is about an investment banker woman, what happens in her environment and how poorly she’s treated it, including from the woman who works for her ends up taking her job.
They watch the training with me and I break down the history of the patriarchy, capitalism and all the different women’s movements that have tried to undo it. I explain where this comes from and why we’re so addicted to it. They get a chance to write about it. There’s nine modules. That one’s about waking up to the hustle culture. The next one is about stepping out of the Matrix then I go into metaphysics, because if you want to understand energetics at this point, that is so foundational to you being in charge of your own energetic being, which means you’re in charge of your own emotional being.
After I teach metaphysics, there’s two modules on emotional intelligence. I teach people how to set energetic boundaries, healthy ones because if you set an energetic boundary from a high level, a high vibrational level, it is a healthy boundary. If you set a boundary because you’re pissed about something, that is an unhealthy boundary and it will not end up serving you. I teach that stuff. I teach frameworks but the most important thing is that on the back side of the program, these women are thriving. They’re loving life because they see it in technical color.
They’re looking around. It’s not simple, by the way. This is not easy work because you’ve got to do the transformation inside. There’s a part of all of us that wants to resist that. “I don’t want to change.” “Change is hard.” I love change. To me, it’s the greatest thing ever. The first five modules of the program are that foundational work. In module six, I teach women how to lead like a woman. The last piece of the program are all about how do you lead with grace? How do you lead from collaboration? How do you create Harmony in your life? Work-life balance was a trade-off. We’re like a scale and integration is the one that adds four hours for work day because you got home to take your kids to soccer.
As soon as your kids in bed, you go work another four hours. We got completely screwed. All people got completely screwed by that one. I teach something called harmony. The thing is, most women believe that every time they walk in a room, they have to be the one in charge. Even if they’re not in charge, they’re watching from perspective I would have done this differently, would have happened differently, or would have been less confusing about it. Whatever the situation is. Whether we’re in the position or not, we’re constantly fixing things. It’s who we are as women, as mothers, and as people in the society that we live in. What if some days you went into a meeting and you didn’t? You played second fiddle instead of first violent.
I’m still learning still learning like not taking it on just because you know you have the answer or that you could fix it or you could help because we’re all helpers. Women are driven to help.
The thing is, that’s what pisses people off. Many of my clients have been in situations where exactly we talked about the double bind. They’ve worked hard. They’ve been massively successful. They get the promotion dangled in front of them all the time and then the goalposts keep moving because they’re like, “People don’t get along with you.” “Nobody wants to work with you, but you’re great at your individual contributor job.”
Empowering Women In The Workplace
I’ve had that happen to me too, the double by there as well. It’s unfortunate, but yes, it does happen for those that are reading. This hour has just flown by. What do you think? I think it’s just flown right by. I’ve learned so much from you just as I said. In summary, let’s put a bow on what we talked about but you’ve given us so much great information, but I asked every guest so I’m going to ask you, too. What do you believe are one to two ways that out of everything you’ve shared women can be braver at work?
I assume this is for women and not for men because I have one for men that I want to say.
Let’s start with women first, or if you want to start with men first for our men that are reading just to get that right out. Let’s do it. Let’s do the men first and then let’s do the women next.
For the men, the mantra needs to be listened to be changed. Women do this, too, by the way. What we’re doing often when we’re in conversation with anyone is that we are listening to yeah-but them, to correct them, or make our counter argument, which means we’re not listening because I’m busy crafting what I’m going to respond to you with. Listening to be changed says, I’m going to focus on nothing else, including distractions of my own brain.
I’m going to listen to what you have to say and I’m going to see if that water. That’s just water going into the plant, if it can transform me somehow. Not some of the work we do in diversity and inclusion because we see so many people who are yeah-butting all the time. That’s what I would say to the men. Women are not lying about how they feel.
For the women, it’s so hard because women have so many different kinds of jobs across the spectrum. I would rather say, the way to change your life and that will affect your workplace is to become incredibly emotional intelligent. That means learning emotional intelligence, practicing emotional intelligence, becoming choiceful, being intentional, and understanding when your vibrational energy dips, how to lift it back up.
One of the things I do with all of my clients is, 95% of our behavior is subconscious. We do stuff we don’t even know we’re doing it. five percent of our behavior is run by our consciousness, which they’re now starting to discover. It’s in the prefrontal cortex where consciousness is generated. That’s great as long as we understand that most of what we’re doing a subconscious. There’s also a layer of the brain called the preconscious mind.
If I said to you, Jen, what’s your phone number? You’d be like, “Dah, dah, dah.” If I said, Jen, what’s your passport number or what’s your credit card number? You’d have to go find it because it’s not stored in your preconscious mind. What I do is I create tools called the Habit framework, which teaches you how to change your emotional state instantaneously. I help women install that in their preconscious mind.
When they’re in a moment where they feel like reacting, I can help them notch it down and elevate their emotional intelligence at the same time. It’s about practice, installing those tools and deciding that you want to be different. What I started this whole conversation was I decided all the time who I want to be next because it’s not what you do. It’s not even how you do it. It’s who you are as you do it.
It is not what you do or how you do it. It is who you are as you do it. Share on XThat is so good. Let’s share all the things in how women can find you and your work online. Any of the links you want to share, free to share them now.
My website is SusanneGoldstein.com. That’s probably the easiest place but you can also email me at Hello@SusanneGoldstein.com or you can find me on socials everywhere. I am @FollowSusanne.
Susanne, this is been such a pleasure. I knew as soon as we met, I was like, “Oh, yes. There’s connection here.” Please keep in touch. I want to hear your theme of the year. I will do likewise and then maybe you’ll even see me one of your upcoming courses where I can do the theme with you. Share all the share intel, but thanks so much for the work you do and for being here.
Thank you for having me, Jen.
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That does it for my conversation with Susanne. I hope you found our discussion, both valuable and inspiring. As a reminder, please rate, review, and subscribe to the show in Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The show is also available on any other platform you enjoy. Until next time. Show up, bust right out of that Matrix and be brave.
Important Links
- Susanne Goldstein Website
- Hello@BraveWomenAtWork.com
- Lead Like a Woman™
- DAREHuman™
- Carry a Paintbrush: How to Be the Artistic Director of Your Own Career
- Brave Woman At Work
- The Brave Circle
- Thrive25
- Kate Northrup Website
- Lean In
- Hello@SusanneGoldstein.com
- @FollowSusanne – Instagram
- Apple Podcasts – Brave Women at Work
- Spotify – Brave Women at Work
- Lessons from The Matrix
- Movies and Science
About Susanne Goldstein
Susanne Goldstein is a changemaker on a mission to elevate humanity.
She’s here to show people everywhere that they can be a Force for Good in the world, but they have to become a Force for Good in their own lives first.
Susanne is a highly sought-after executive coach, strategic consultant, keynote speaker, program creator, and an industry-disrupting thought leader on society and social change.
She believes in a world where everyone not only feels like they belong at the table, they also feel empowered to grab the mic, speak and be heard.
For more than 30 years, she has coached and consulted to startups and Fortune 500 companies, often as the only woman in the room.
During that time, she took herself through her own “waking up” journey, realizing in the process how deeply the often-lauded, masculine-energy hustle culture in the US was causing deep unhappiness and burnout in society – especially for women.
Turning her attention to women executives and entrepreneurs in the early 2010s, her life lessons and research led to the development of her highly transformation program Lead Like a Woman™, a tour-de-force journey of awakening women and helping them re-remember their fierce feminine power so they can create harmony in masculine and feminine energetics and find success on their own terms. A similar program for men is in the works.
As Founder and CEO of DAREHuman™, Susanne tapped into her experience in business, psychology, Hollywood filmmaking and lecturing on social entrepreneurship at The Center for Public Leadership at Harvard, to create an online academy to help humans tap into the four DAREHuman archetypes: Know Yourself, Live on Purpose, Get Sh*t Done & Make Money, Be the Change Your Want to See in the World.
Her ground-breaking manifestation methods described in her best-selling book, “Carry a Paintbrush; How to Be the Artistic Director of Your Own Career” have been presented on stages all over the US.
A master storyteller, Susanne loves to enthrall people everywhere to become the best version of themselves.
She holds a trifecta of Ivy League degrees from Cornell and Harvard that are currently collecting dust in her parents’ attic.
