[00:00:00] Katy Ripp: Hey guys. Welcome back to hashtag. Actually, I can, we are talking about the Women’s Playbook. This is the podcast where we are taking out all the old patriarchal rules of business. The ones we never really knew worked for us anyway, and we’re gonna tear them up. We are then gonna write something better and put it in its place.

[00:00:24] Katy Ripp: If you’ve been following along, you know that last week we tackled the grind or die rule, and why working yourself into the ground is not a strategy. It’s actually. Self-destruction and self-sabotage, and this week we’re talking about another sneaky little rule that has shaped so many of us, often without us even realizing it.

[00:00:43] Katy Ripp: It’s the play small rule. And you’ve heard it a hundred different ways. Stay humble. Don’t brag, don’t outshine anyone. Don’t be too much for anyone. Don’t say that. Don’t do this. And for years I was no stranger to that. I totally lived by it too. I thought playing small made me safe, and it made me likable.

[00:01:05] Katy Ripp: It made me easy to have around. But here’s the thing, it also kept me stuck in a box that was way too small for me. And so today I really wanna share what playing small looked like in my own life, and then the moment I really realized that I’m just not for everyone, and that’s totally okay. It’s actually the best news ever and how I’ve started breaking Outta that box a little bit.

[00:01:27] Katy Ripp: My hope is that by the end of this episode, you’ll feel the permission to start. You’ll feel the permission to stop shrinking too and get a little bit bigger.

[00:01:35] Katy Ripp: So, for most of my life, my instinct was to actually shrink back, to soften my voice, to apologize before I’d even done anything wrong. And of course, this comes from childhood and all the things that we dealt with as young females in the eighties and nineties. And if you’ve ever caught yourself saying, sorry, before you’ve even finished a sentence, you know exactly what I mean.

[00:01:57] Katy Ripp: We’ve been apologizing forever, and this was me too. Apologies rolled off my tongue like punctuation. I thought that that was what made me approachable and easy and safe and likable, and. Pretty much a yes girl, which I was forever. And to be fair, sometimes it did work. People did like me. I was praised for being agreeable and reliable and supportive.

[00:02:21] Katy Ripp: I was a yes girl. I was the person who wouldn’t rock the boat, the one who made everybody feel less uncomfortable and feel a little bit more comfortable around.

[00:02:31] Katy Ripp: I was the one who made everyone else feel comfortable even at. I was the one that made everyone feel I was the one that made everyone else feel comfortable, even when I was uncomfortable. But what I didn’t see at the time was that none of that was actually moving me closer to the life or the business I actually wanted.

[00:02:52] Katy Ripp: It was just keeping me stuck and contained and boxed. And that box was way too small for me. And when boxes are too small for people, we end up doing things to cope with that. And for me it was drinking and overeating and not sleeping and doing all the things that I thought were self-care, like eating Doritos and.

[00:03:13] Katy Ripp: Drinking wine in the bathtub, but we’re really self-destructive in the end, and that box is built from all those little comments we hear growing up. Don’t be so loud. Don’t be so opinionated. Don’t outshine your brother or your sister, or your coworker or your husband. Every eye roll. When you’re proud of something, every moment someone tells you to tone it down or not to make other feel.

[00:03:37] Katy Ripp: Or not to make others feel bad, even though you’re doing it at the expense of you feeling bad. So the message has been made very clear to us. Dim your light, or you’ll be labeled. You’ll be labeled. Too much. Arrogant selfish, bitchy, attention seeking, ambitious in the worst way possible. All of those horrible things that we look at.

[00:04:06] Katy Ripp: Women or all of the horrible qualities that,

[00:04:12] Katy Ripp: all of the horrible, all of the horrible qualities that aren’t quite true, but we’ve been shown them in every movie like The Devil Wears Prada. So we shrink, we make ourselves smaller, we decide to just aim for good enough. We convince ourselves that we really don’t want more because wanting more feels dangerous.

[00:04:31] Katy Ripp: And tell me if you’ve ever heard this. Well, I don’t need to make that much money or. I wanna make six figures, but never really put a six figure dollar amount on that. And I can tell you there’s a whole shit load of money in between a hundred thousand dollars and $999,000. But we say six figures because it means that.

[00:04:52] Katy Ripp: We could get there possibly, but we don’t wanna tell people, well, we wanna make $750,000. No, just six figures, or, we don’t need to make that much money. Or This is just my little business or my side hustle. These are all the things that we do to make ourselves feel just a little bit smaller, to make other people feel comfortable.

[00:05:15] Katy Ripp: And this also was my stool. This also was my story. For years, a playing small became a total reflex for me. The turning point for me was when I finally realized something so simple, but yet sobering. I am not for everyone, and that is Akay. There are over 8 billion people on this planet, and for so long I was contorting myself into diversions just to try to be palatable to more of them.

[00:05:46] Katy Ripp: But the truth is, even. Even after I twisted myself into a total pretzel, I was never really gonna please them all, and at least of all myself, I really didn’t even like myself. And the day that really sank in, it was like my whole body exhaled. Because when you’re chasing universal approval, you’re living someone else’s life that it is definitely not your own life.

[00:06:05] Katy Ripp: It’s little pieces of everybody else’s life that you’re living. You’re outsourcing your worth to people who don’t even understand what you’re building. Or have no business having a fucking opinion about it. I always think to myself, I heard this somewhere along the way and it was one of the greatest things that has stuck in my head and resonated with me, is don’t take advice from people that you don’t want their life.

[00:06:29] Katy Ripp: If you don’t want the life of the person that is giving you advice look around for a second. Look at that person’s life, and if you want their life, if you want something like their life, then maybe. Their opinion matters, but if you don’t want that life, their opinion does not matter. This goes for parents, sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles, best friends from kindergarten.

[00:06:56] Katy Ripp: If you don’t want their life, you don’t have to take their opinion. Well, you don’t have to take anybody’s opinion, but think about the source. Here’s the really honest to God truth, that not everybody is gonna like you. Not everyone is going to agree with you. Not everyone is gonna celebrate your choices or your success, and that’s not a sign that you’re doing something wrong.

[00:07:18] Katy Ripp: It’s actually proof that you’re standing in your own. It’s actually proof that you’re staying in your own lane, and that’s where you actually belong. So I made a decision. So I make a pretty much a daily decision that my opinions, my theories, my stories, born out of decades of work and life and falling down and getting back up and falling down again and getting back up.

[00:07:44] Katy Ripp: Those things matter to me and I wasn’t gonna delve them anymore. Now, does that mean I broadcast every single thought I have into the world? Oh my God, thank God. I do not, and my family would never forgive me if I did that, but it does mean I’m intentional about whose voices I listen to. I don’t take advice or criticism from people I don’t admire, period.

[00:08:06] Katy Ripp: Let me say that again For the people in the back, I don’t take advice or criticism from people I don’t admire. Okay. That single shift for me changed everything. I stopped twisting myself into whatever shape I thought would make other people comfortable. I stopped apologizing for being ambitious or for having too many ideas or doing too many things at once, or for being opinionated or being visible or deciding that I was gonna do something or I wasn’t gonna do something anymore.

[00:08:36] Katy Ripp: Nobody needed an explanation for me that I didn’t admire. Now, the people that I do admire. Yes, I gave them an explanation and I asked for their advice. Sometimes I took it and sometimes I didn’t, but mostly I started trusting myself. Also, the right people just leaned in closer. They wanted to hear more.

[00:08:58] Katy Ripp: They wanted to join me and the wrong people. They just actually like quietly drifted away just because somebody doesn’t like you or resonate with you or, doesn’t feel about you the way you hoped they were feeling about you. Does not mean that they’re a hater. Does not mean that they hate you.

[00:09:14] Katy Ripp: They just quietly drift away. They just don’t end up in your circle anymore. So let me ask you.

[00:09:22] Katy Ripp: At first, it totally felt scary. I’m not gonna lie, when you’re used to living on approval from other people, losing people feels like failure, right? Like losing people that were close to you, people that you depended on for certain things about yourself. Though that’s scary to leave, but I realized that part wasn’t failure.

[00:09:43] Katy Ripp: It was just like pruning. It was like cutting the fat, it was clearing space for the right things to enter. And in that space, my circle got super strong. My business got clearer. Life got. Got much lighter and I finally started building something big enough for the full version of me. And in my case, it’s lots of things.

[00:10:04] Katy Ripp: It’s not just one thing that I went super deep on. I went wide and deep, so I’m just not the edited down version. People found easy to digest anymore. Does that mean I fuck up? Yes, it means I fuck up all the time, but I also weed out the people that don’t necessarily want to be around me or want to know what I have to say or don’t feel about certain things.

[00:10:33] Katy Ripp: I have opinions about, they don’t feel the same way, and that’s totally fine. I do have people in my life that do feel the same way. Now, do I disagree with people and still love them and still respect them? Absolutely. We, I can be that person too. It’s just my circle got super tight, much stronger, much more spacious in a way where I can be myself and still trust that people are gonna be there for me.

[00:11:03] Katy Ripp: So let me ask you this. Where are you still playing small here? Where are you contorting yourself to fit into somebody else’s expectations? And this can be in lots of places at lots of times in different seasons of your life. This doesn’t have to be something that is. Well, today this doesn’t fit, but yesterday it did.

[00:11:25] Katy Ripp: Well, tomorrow it might fit again. Sometimes these things just ebb and flow in and out of our lives, and there’s a constant in people. But sometimes, and you have to be really honest with yourself. Do these people, are you still trying to please these people for validation even though they’re not your people?

[00:11:47] Katy Ripp: There are some real questions to ask yourself and listen to your body and how it reacts. Does it make sense to keep these people in your life? Because here’s the liberating truth, you are just not gonna be for everybody. I promise you that. But you are for someone and quite a few people. Again, there are 8 billion people in the world.

[00:12:08] Katy Ripp: If you’re for one person, you are for a hundred people. Those people, those clients, those friends, the community you see and those who celebrate you, those are the ones that matter. And to be honest. You don’t need that many. We get so skewed by numbers that are out there, 10,000 followers, a hundred thousand this, a million that.

[00:12:29] Katy Ripp: We don’t even know what those numbers mean anymore. We hear numbers all day, every day. And when somebody says a million dollars, do you even know what a million dollars could buy you? It’s so much money. You know what 10,000 people in a room looks like? It’s crazy. Crazy amounts of people. Can you serve 10,000 people at the same time?

[00:12:49] Katy Ripp: Absolutely not. Like Instagram likes to tell you that you can. No, you can’t. I have, I don’t even know right now, 2500, 2200 followers on Instagram. I think to myself all the time, if all of those people were standing in a room with me, could I really? Give them all of myself and really give back, really service them, really coach them, really give myself to them.

[00:13:20] Katy Ripp: And the answer is no. I cannot do that, but I can service a hundred people at a time. That’s a lot of people to be servicing. And not everybody in that a hundred or 10 or 2000 or 10,000 or a hundred thousand are gonna be for you. They’re just not. And it’s totally cool. So let’s talk a little bit about why the play small rule is so damaging for us.

[00:13:47] Katy Ripp: Playing small actually does not protect us. It cages us the, these are two totally different things, although they do sort of serve the same monster. Yes. Does a cage protect us? Yes, it does, but it not in the protection way that we need it to. This rule comes from centuries of conditioning, so it’s not like this is a new problem.

[00:14:11] Katy Ripp: Women were told to be agreeable, not difficult to be modest, not to ambitious. To support not lead, because standing out came with consequences. If you were too bold, you’re difficult. If you’re too confident, you’re arrogant. If you’re too successful, you’re selfish. And those messages worked their way into our bones.

[00:14:32] Katy Ripp: They worked in our way into every fashion magazine, every alcohol or cigarette commercial, every TV show. So, of course we shrink thinking it will keep us safe, but it doesn’t. It keeps us invisible, and that’s safe for somebody else. It keeps us broke. It keeps us exhausted from living someone else’s version of success.

[00:14:58] Katy Ripp: The truth is, the world does not benefit from

[00:15:02] Katy Ripp: the truth is. The world doesn’t benefit when women play small. Your family doesn’t benefit. Your clients don’t benefit. Your staff doesn’t benefit, your community doesn’t benefit. The only thing that benefits from women shrinking. The only thing that benefits from women shrinking is the system that was built to keep us that way.

[00:15:25] Katy Ripp: And I don’t know about you, but I’m not here to keep that system comfortable anymore.

[00:15:29] Katy Ripp: So we’re gonna rewrite the rule. This is where the rewriting part comes in. Here’s the new rule. Stop shrinking and we’re gonna step fully into the space you were meant to occupy. Again, this does not mean that you turn into a walking billboard or you steamroll every room you enter. It means giving yourself permission to be visible, and you can do that quietly.

[00:15:54] Katy Ripp: To tell the truth about what you actually want out of life and just own it. You don’t have to even tell anybody. You can journal on it. You can put it out to the universe. You can meditate on it, but you have to be honest. And take up the space that your gifts require. If that means that you are singing opera, then you get your ass out there and you sing opera.

[00:16:18] Katy Ripp: If that means that you’re playing the guitar, if that means that you are starting a podcast or starting a new business, you do that and you do it, you do that, and you do it in a way that. Aligns with who you are. It doesn’t have to be loud, it doesn’t have to be quiet. It doesn’t have to be any way except for the way that aligns with you.

[00:16:40] Katy Ripp: So here’s what the rule could look like in an hour. It could be speak up in a meeting instead of staying quiet just once. In a day, it could look like share your wins with your community instead of brushing them off in a week. It might be pitch yourself for something instead of waiting to be invited in a year.

[00:17:02] Katy Ripp: It might be build a business that reflects the actual size of your vision, not a shrunken down version that fits neatly into someone else’s comfort zone. When women stop apologizing for being visible, everything changes. We show our kids what’s possible. We inspire our clients and our friends and our community.

[00:17:23] Katy Ripp: We raise the bar for what’s considered normal in business and leadership. We can do this differently. So here’s my challenge to you this week. Find one area where you’ve been playing small. It might be the way you talk about money. It might be the way you describe what you do or the way you hold yourself back from sharing a win or a story.

[00:17:47] Katy Ripp: Wherever you notice yourself shrinking. Do the opposite. Say the thing, claim the win. Send the pitch, raise the price. Whatever it is, do the opposite because every time you expand into your full self, you give your, you give permission for another woman to do the same thing. The play small rule was actually never about humility.

[00:18:11] Katy Ripp: We were told that it was about humility and to be humble, but it’s actually about fear and keeping us caged in to a place that serves someone else. It does not serve us, and it really never did the new rule stop shrinking step fully into the space you were meant to occupy. That’s the new rule. If this episode resonated at all with you, there’s a full blog post on this.

[00:18:38] Katy Ripp: It’s linked in the show notes. And if you know a friend who’s been diming her light, please share this episode with her. Don’t forget, you can always join my email list to get every new rule delivered straight to your inbox. I will also put that in the show notes along with behind the scenes updates as I turn the series into a book maybe.

[00:18:57] Katy Ripp: I really always appreciate you guys being here. I’ll see you next week as we take on the next rule. The don’t talk about money rule, which is one of my favorite rules that I love to flip on its head, and this is

[00:19:09] Katy Ripp: the don’t talk about money rule and why it’s time to claim your worth out loud. This is one of my favorite rules and I cannot wait to talk about it next week. See you then.