Transcript

Mary Marantz: [00:00:00] We can actually pull fear in like a rope of dope. You know, bring him in, just close enough to wear himself out, and then use that weakness against him. Rocky IV soundtrack swells in the background. As our underdog square plays, we can say fear just showed up. Good. We must be about to do work that really matters.

Jess Ekstrom: Welcome back to Amplify with Jess Ekstrom, where we amplify your ideas, your influence, and your income. Today's guest is a dear friend and author of one of my favorite books of the year Underestimated. Now I'm gonna start with a confession. That might sound strange, but I secretly love being underestimated.

I feel like most of my fearless moments, the times like that I truly wish just going for it was when I felt like no one was watching. But as I've gained somewhat of an audience, I felt the weight of a different kind of pressure. A fear of letting people down and not living up to these expectations. [00:01:00] This is a feeling that our guest, Mary Marantz knows all too well.

She's been on a remarkable journey of her own, and in her new book, she explores how we can move past these fears that hold us back. We're gonna talk about how to stop being an underdog, the destructive cycle of perfectionism and self-sabotage, and why Mary believes fear itself is just a boring liar. So let's start at the beginning with the queen of being underestimated.

My good friend Mary Marantz. We published our first books together at the same time. Mm-hmm. That's right. Third, chasing the bright side, and it was kind of like this blank slate. Mm. And now you're, I mean, this is what your third book now, 

Mary Marantz: third. Yeah. Yeah. 

Jess Ekstrom: And so do you feel because you've been so successful, like, oh, now this has to be better, 

Mary Marantz: Right?

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think I've always been wired a little bit that way where I'm just sort of relentlessly, um. Unsatisfied, I guess. Mm-hmm. You know, where I always wanted to up the level. So [00:02:00] when you first started describing the feeling of secretly loving being underestimated, I thought you were going a slightly different way.

Oh, yeah. Which was, you know. I talk about this a lot in the book of like how I have used other people underestimating me, like jet fuel. And when someone is actively saying, you know, um, I, I always preface this by saying I had so many amazing teachers in high school, so many, you know, like who poured into me and, and, and saw something great, but there was one in particular who I distinctly remember saying.

If anyone is gonna make it out of Richwood, West Virginia, it will not be you. And it was like And back pocket jet fuel. Let's go. And I've really enjoyed. Yeah, it was, it was very strange. She had a daughter in our class and I think there was some weird competition or what have you. Um, but yeah, it was, I had like a, one of those free periods where you're like a teacher's assistant and I was delivering papers to her classroom and we got into a random conversation and she made that real clear.

[00:03:00] Um, and I, I've loved that 'cause I've used that. Right. And I've, you know, to the point, there's actually a two word indictment of myself in Underestimated that talks about how we now use every. Perceived slight. So that word perceived does a lot of work there because when I don't have an actual slight like that to draw from, then I have to kind of look for it.

Yeah. I have to kind of create these stories in my head of who's leaving me out and who doesn't see the magic in me so that I can use that to kind of just like explode forward and man, does it work for a while? Yeah, man. Does it work for a while? It works really well. Um, but then you started talking about, you know, this other side of just like actually getting to practice in the hidden seasons, and I've for sure felt that as well.

Johnny Cuff calls that Don't rush your Nebraska years in quitter, I think it is. And um. It's this idea of like, make your mistakes in front of 30 people in a boardroom in Nebraska versus 3000 in a stadium, or, you know, more than that. And, um, I think about that a lot. And you know, there does come this point, I talk a lot about this in chapter 14, which is the ultimate [00:04:00] chapter in the book.

Success is a slippery slope. And it says that whole chapter kicks off with the underdog is a role of a lifetime. And what I mean by that is if we are not careful, we can spend our whole lives playing that part. Right? Because what we know is that the underdog, the unlikely hero is the unmitigated darling of all the chanting masses.

Mm-hmm. They love you so long as you struggle for it. Every single solitary. Step of the way. Do you know who doesn't get that kind of unqualified support? Someone who finds some success and actually keeps it? We know that leaders wear a target on their backs, which now makes us a moving target as we approach the top of this mountain.

We've been trying so hard to climb. We know it and it terrifies us. And so at the last minute. We blink, we lose our grip, we lose our way, and the boulder rolls all the way back down the mountain. 

Jess Ekstrom: Okay. So I feel that, I feel that, and here's one of my questions for you, that I feel like, um, and this is actually what my next book is gonna be around, so I feel like we could really noodle on this is okay, but do you [00:05:00] feel like if I.

I truly feel whole and I believe in myself, and I don't feel like I need to pit anyone against me. I don't feel like I need revenge. I feel I feel enough. Yeah. Will that kill my ambition? 

Mary Marantz: Oh, I've worried about that most of my life. Jess. Um, and slow growth. What's 

Jess Ekstrom: on 

Mary Marantz: That? Which is my second book, slow Growth Equals Strong Roots.

Yeah. I write about, well, so In Dirt. First of all, I talk about, you know, feeling like the girl in the red cape escaping out of the deep dark woods, the big bad wolf ripping at her heels. She runs because if she stops running, she knows it just might kill her until finally breathless and it lasts exhausted.

I look back over my shoulder and I see it. I'm the girl in the red cape, but I'm also the wolf. Mm-hmm. And that voice is telling me to run and not stop running. That voice is my own. Well then in slow growth, I revisit that scene this time from the perspective of the wolf. You know, my heart breaks that this version of me, I was born to protect his yet again, you know, scared her off yet again.

And what I say in that section is. At a certain point, the big bad wolf is now afraid of [00:06:00] us. Like we learned how to twist the thorn in its paw because the girl in the red cape, if she doesn't wanna stop running from something and stumbling her way into success, then the big bad wolf can't stop chasing her.

So we learned how to twist those thorns in the wounds to keep it roaring back into fight or flight. Any chance that, you know, we get. The fear is what if we do all this work to get healed and in the process we lose all of our drive? Yes. What if we lose our ambition? What if we just become ordinary? What do we have to settle for being average, right?

Like, we're terrified of losing that jet fuel in the form of our wide open wounds. You know, like we'll use those traumas all we need so long as we get a little more success. And I've worried about that my whole life. Um, the science does not support that at all. The science actually says that self-compassion, which is compassion turned inward kindness to self, this ability to look upon your own actions and your own life and your own narrative with warmth and humanity and grace, um, actually is the very [00:07:00] fuel for the resilience to go the distance that those of us who think the most interesting thing about us is how hard we are on ourselves.

We go. Fast and bursts. If you think about like an internal combustion engine, um, that jet fuel makes a really good explosion in some forward motion, but it is not sustainable. And the, you know, re renewable fuel source we need to actually make it all the way to the top of the mountain is some self-compassion.

Jess Ekstrom: It's so interesting because it is like, you know, you have the. L Woods. Like, oh, people doubted her. They underestimated her. So she turned into this person. But then, like you said, after a certain point, the jet fuel of other people not believing in you wears off. Mm-hmm. Um, that, like using that to get back at people.

Um, I think, you know, I started my first business because I wanted people to be proud of me. 

Mary Marantz: Right. And 

Jess Ekstrom: I wanted to like, uh. You know, like my family had been going through a [00:08:00] tough time and I wanted to distract them. And so sometimes our reason for starting isn't our same reason for, for scaling and like that Yeah.

Kind of shifts. You've also talked about like there's a really interesting connection between. Perfectionism and motivation. I think I even flagged it in here, like the motivation defeat cycle. Can we talk 

Mary Marantz: about that? Yeah. Oh yeah. 

Jess Ekstrom: That really spoke to me. 

Mary Marantz: Yeah. So, um, this is kind of under, in chapter one. So the premise of the book for everybody who's watching the replay later is it's based on the idea that fear's actually a really boring liar, which I know we're gonna talk more about and that it uses the same broken scripts on all of us, which we can talk more about, but also it kind of shape shifts through these same different masks.

And so each chapter by chapter, the different masks that fear puts on to try to convince us to stay playing small and hidden on the work we are put here to do. And um, chapter one is the first time I introduce a name of fear other than fear, which is all or nothing thinking, and it is, it can sort of attack people in one of two [00:09:00] ways.

Um, there's the, the, we sort of divide into two camps. There's the, those of us who heard some all or nothing thinking in our head, and we said, I just shouldn't get started at all. That looks like, oh, you can't do this thing from start to finish today, so you better better wait for a day when you can't.

Mm-hmm. Oh, you can't, this won't be the best one of these that's ever existed yet, so you better wait until you can like, you know, brainstorm it a little more until it is, um, you know. This has already been done, so we don't need your voice. So it's anything that kind of says like there is this far off future.

Someday that will somehow magically have more time, more money, more energy, more focus, and today is not that day. And so those people never get started. They're standing at the base of the mountain for the first time, staring up, still stuck there all these years. Later, another year goes by, the clock goes on ticking, and the world is worse for our absence.

The second camp of us, and this is the one that I fall into, is we kind of get all of this. Courage up. All of this belief in what it can be. This fire in us and our bellies of the world needs more of this. I was put here to do this and we pushed this boulder all the way to the top of the mountain. We are almost within, you know, [00:10:00] arm's length reach of our breakthrough moment.

We can taste the rarefied air and then like Wiley Coyote about to get his come up. And so we blink when we make eye contact with everyone watching at home. That's that fishbowl feeling you were talking about. Mm-hmm. And we self-consciously glance back down and we lose our grip and we lose our way. And the boulder rolls all the way back down the mountain and that.

So for the first group, it's a stop sign that all or nothing thinking is a stop sign. Don't even start for the second camp. It's a cycle. It's start off feeling super motivated, inspired. You catch the vision for everything it can be. You have to go do this thing. And step two is now do every single step perfectly.

Don't make a single misstep because even the slightest. Stumble will just prove to you that you never had what it took all along. Inevitably mess up anyway because that's what scaling and innovating and doing things that are new and hard in the world requires that makes you think all of that doubt, you know, sinks in of who this is never gonna help anybody who's ever gonna care about this.

See, you don't have what it takes. They were right about you all along. Go radio, silent, [00:11:00] isolate, withdraw. Ignore the dream for another year or two, inevitably catch the vision again, remember what it could be, and the whole thing starts all over again. Um, and for anybody listening who you, that instantly felt like a punch to the gut, like that's been your life for most of these years.

Um, this book is free. It's for both camps for sure. But this, this whole book really came about by me asking myself, how do we stop repeating the lesson until it is learned? And we never seem to learn it. 

Jess Ekstrom: So how did you personally. Break that cycle of like, oh. 'cause we've all had that feeling of like, oh, I'm so excited about this idea, or I, this book idea is gonna change the world.

And then we have ourselves in a room and we write 10,000 words and then it sits there in a Google Doc graveyard. Yeah. Um, and you know, to be fair like that, not all ideas like. If we, if I went through all my ideas. 

Mary Marantz: Yeah. 

Jess Ekstrom: Like just a game of whack-a-mole every day. Right. So [00:12:00] yeah, there is some filtering that needs to happen.

Mary Marantz: Mm-hmm. Um, 

Jess Ekstrom: How do you, like, how did you break that cycle for yourself? Mm-hmm. 

Mary Marantz: Yeah, so I think a lot of it comes down to this idea of capacity. Um, the subtitle of the book is the Surprisingly Simple Shift to Quit Playing Small Name the Fear and Move Forward Anyway. And that surprisingly simple shift, there's an actual breakout.

You know, double page spread in the book called The Shift, and it's based on some work that happens in chapter three. So chapter one, we were talking about a starting over as a rolling boulder. Then in chapter two we get into that idea of fear being a really boring liar with fear is a broken script.

Chapter three is self-sabotage is a shot glass and it has absolutely nothing to do with drinking alcohol. Um, it is this idea of. Post that I saw on one of those really cheesy success accounts that I follow on Instagram. 'cause I like to hate follow them. Some guy coming out of a, you know, private jet Exactly.

Going nowhere, whatever. 

Jess Ekstrom: Yeah. That's probably not his. Yeah, 

Mary Marantz: right. It was rented for 15 minute increment, uh, lions and Lamborghinis roar until you get everything you came for. Like that kind of a [00:13:00] vibe. Um, but this post was actually very different in that it, it was some of the. Most powerful wisdom I'd ever seen on self-sabotage.

And it said, if you think that you have the capacity of a shot glass, then anytime you get a little bit more than that, you will subconsciously shrink yourself back down. Self-sabotage. And then I added until you fit back into the tiny containers you believe you belong in. And this chapter starts to go really deep, Jess, on things like how we grew up in our childhoods, where was there some chaos and some instability, some financial.

Scarcity that we constantly find ourselves returning to, even though we don't want to. Mm-hmm. Because it's familiar and like a bad geometry proof gone. Her eye familiar, feels comfortable, comfortable feels safe. Therefore we think chaos equals safe. Um, and so a lot of this, what you're describing of that now, there's a lot of eyes on it.

What are people gonna think about this? Oh, people are gonna watch me if this doesn't work out. That can, in one very powerful sense, boil down to do you trust yourself enough to. Stand in the position of being that leader. Do you trust yourself to stand in the position of holding that [00:14:00] audience, of holding that, that number of employees, of holding that revenue, making payroll, whatever the case may be.

And so a lot of it really is just boiling down to what do we believe that we can? Hold. Well, so I define capacity as our ability to steward something and hold space for it as we respond to it. With wisdom, how much do we believe we can hold? And so even though I have the degrees that I have, I've been a full-time entrepreneur for 20 plus years.

The way that I grew up tells me that more will inevitably be my downfall. It tells me this lie, that more will mean that I will make it all about me, or I won't be able to handle the criticism, or I'll become prideful about it, or I'll mismanage it to the point of failure. More money, more problems, Stanley, right?

Like that kind of an idea. And so what we begin to do is we begin to become the grownup in the room who can be trusted. That's something that Dr. Allison Cook said to me right after I saw that shot glass. Post I had her on my podcast. We were talking about it and she said, for those of us who didn't grow up with a sense of safety or security in [00:15:00] childhood, we actually have to reteach as the grownup in the room, um, reteach our sense ourself, a sense of safety.

And we do that by setting small. Manageable, but important commitments to ourself and then actually keep them. Mm-hmm. And so I, I kind of think of it, the one, the last thing I'll say on this is the difference between setting goals and setting intentions. You know, when you set a goal, you get to celebrate on one day, the day the goal actually happens.

When you set an intention, every single day you're waking up and saying, who do I have to be today? To one day? Be the person who can stand in the space, in the shoes of that goal and hold it well. Then every day you do that, you get to celebrate because every day you're becoming. Um, and so the surprisingly simple shift is most of us think we have to, to quit playing small, you have to go big all the time.

And I'm a big fan of the go Big moment. Nothing against those. The problem is no go big moment in my life ever changed me on the inside. Mm-hmm. It was something that happened to me, not somebody I was becoming. So we quit playing small, paradoxically, by starting small, it, 

Jess Ekstrom: It reminds me, my husband and I, we just bought this device called [00:16:00] Brick.

Have you heard of it? 

Mary Marantz: No. 

Jess Ekstrom: So we both realized that we are. Like everyone else addicted to our phones, especially at night when we're just too tired to talk or do anything else. But we knew that's just not who we wanna be. Like we don't wanna just be like mindlessly scrolling. So we got this device that basically turns your phone into a, uh, dumb phone.

Right? Like a razor flip phone. Yeah. Okay. And so every night, you know, we broke our phones, you know, when we're done with work. So that way we're with the kids and. I feel like the next morning when I wake up and my phone is still locked, this confidence because I stayed true to the tiny goal, the daily goal that I set for myself.

Yeah. But I have tried Mary to say. For three months, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna just delete social media and then kind of that all or nothing go big or go home mentality. But it was like this small habit that happened every day, like got support for it and oh my gosh, I just [00:17:00] feel like, oh, I'm staying true to this thing that I set up 

Mary Marantz: for myself.

Yeah. My friend Hannah Bridger calls that small things on repeat, right? Mm-hmm. And that, I mean, that's just what we see in the science over and over again. You know about, it's like 21 days to start a habit, but really you need to do three cycles of the 21 days for it to really take root and become part of your behavior, become kind of automatic.

Um, we see that in things like the 21 Day Fix for, um, this Naked Mind who does like a, you know, sober curious kind of challenge. Um, we see that in Atomic Habits. Talking about this idea of it just really be being able to become a part of your identity. And I have just, I'm like, one of the big chapters that was really hard for me to write is chapter 13, distraction is a click, uh, tick ticking clock.

Um, and it's really a chapter about consistency. I'm not a very consistent person by nature. I'm very. Super all in, you know, swing for the fences, launch the book, and then go hide for six months to recover. Especially as an introvert, you know? Um, and so the idea that's really frustrating to me, and [00:18:00] it's really hard, has been like a very hard realization to come to, is that excellence alone versus consistency alone.

Unfortunately, in this world, consistency will win every time. Oh, I'm somebody who spent my whole life being really frustrated that excellence alone does not win the way I think it should. Yeah. You know, the best book, the best speaker, whatever it is. And so I'm on a mission to get the people of excellence, including myself, to now show up with consistency because I think you can move people of excellence into consistency.

It's a lot harder to move those people who sort of only focus on like marketing themselves. They could care less about the excellence part of it. 

Jess Ekstrom: Yeah. To 

Mary Marantz: move to excellence. 

Jess Ekstrom: But that's optimistic for me because. Consistency is attainable. Yeah. For everyone. Excellence feels like it isn't, you know? Right, right.

Um, you know, we have a lot of. People who listen to this podcast who are, um, speakers, uh, authors or aspiring to. 

Mary Marantz: Mm-hmm. 

Jess Ekstrom: And a lot of us can probably relate to that feeling of like having to be the, the, the [00:19:00] motivation to defeat cycle, the need to be perfect, but also the fear. Um, and you have described fear in underestimated in a way that I have, like never heard it before.

And so, mm-hmm. You say that fear can be a prediction for when we're on the right track, 

Mary Marantz: Right? So can 

Jess Ekstrom: You explain what you mean by that? 

Mary Marantz: Yeah, well, uh, just to kinda like go back for a little bit, um, I mentioned this earlier, this idea of fear being a really boring liar. In addition to writing books and having a podcast and being a speaker, I also coach people who wanna do those things.

And I noticed a couple years ago I had like a bunch of back to back coaching calls and every single one of them just, it was. Eerie how copy and paste the sentences coming out of their mouths work. Like it was like mad lib scripts. Like they were basically saying the same thing, different projects, different goals, different places in life, but the scripts were basically the same, and fear was winning and it was happening in my life too, and it was making me really mad.

And so I just got on my phone one day with like no introduction and filmed this video that was like, it's all been done. It's all been done better. It's all been done by somebody in the world actually wants to pay [00:20:00] attention to. I can't start until it's perfect. I can't start until I'm perfect. What if I start and the critics come?

What if they say, who does she think she is? What if I start and I fail and I prove everyone who said I couldn't do it, that they were right all along? What if I can't stay consistent with it? What if I don't have the bandwidth right now? What if my voice doesn't really matter? What if I don't really matter?

What if it's already too late and it's like check, check, check, check, check. If we were playing bingo, just in, you know, it was like up, down, sideways, diagonal, whatever, 

Jess Ekstrom: like drop as well. Yeah. 

Mary Marantz: Yeah. Um, and that. Background led me to this moment, this kind of dots connecting in a way I'd never seen them connected before.

A moment that I think every writer, it's like the high we're chasing, which is what if fear attacks creatives in particular because it is jealous that it itself is not creative at all. It's not a creative force, it is a destructive force. It is a desperate force. It is not a creative force, um, short of having these two gifts, the ability to throw its voice.

So it sounds like you, because if it sounded like Morgan Freeman in your head, you could catch it every time. And the ability to shapeshift faces just when you [00:21:00] catch it coming in the front door as perfectionism, it sneaks in the side door is imposter syndrome. It's not a creative enemy, but it is a slippery enemy.

Um, short of those two gifts. It does not, it's not imbued with any inherent gifts at all. It's not creating beauty in the world, it's not moving the world forward. It's not helping people and so it particularly attacks those of us who are, I have a theory that it actually attacks creatives at the cross hair intersection where our gifts meet our story because it knows that we need both of those things to make the impact we are put here to have.

If I just use a gift of words and say a bunch of pretty words strung together, then I am like that clanging gong or symbol. It requires my story. What breaks my heart? For other people's hearts when they're breaking, that adds that empathy element. That actually is where I make a difference in the world.

And so fear will try to take us out at both axis. You know, if you have a gift of words, it'll say your voice doesn't matter. If you have the gift of helping people, it'll say, you're so selfish to begin this work. If you have the gift of being a visionary, seeing people for who they're becoming, it will make sure you spend your whole life feeling invisible and unseen.

And if you have a powerful story, it will tell you, it [00:22:00] disqualifies you before you even begin. And so the good part about that I say is fear is not a very creative guy. But he is a busy guy. 

Jess Ekstrom: He loved that line. Yeah, he is 

Mary Marantz: a busy guy and like any productive overachiever, he's learned how to prioritize. So if you are already playing small and hiding in plain sight, he's gonna leave you alone a little fear, maintenance mode, perfectionism sprinkled in, and you are all set.

But show up and actually start to do the work. You were put here to do the work. You are called to do the work that will change the world and you better expect fear to show up. Teeth buried and snarling like that mask will fall off real fast and you will see just how vicious and venomous fear really can be.

And so for me, it is never when I'm doing work that I shouldn't be doing. That fear shows up. It is quite the opposite in direct proportion to how much the work I'm about to do matters is how much fear attacks me. So let me tell you about how the last 12 months went writing a book that actually takes down fear, you know?

And so we can actually pull fear in like a rope of dope. You know, bring him in, just close enough to wear himself out, and then use that weakness against him. [00:23:00] Rocky four, soundtrack swells in the background. As our underdog square plays, we can say fear just showed up. Good. We must be about to do work that really matters.

Jess Ekstrom: Oh my gosh. That is such a reframe. Like especially I think about it when I'm standing backstage. 

Mary Marantz: Yeah. 

Jess Ekstrom: And it's like they're reading my introduction. That is always a time. I don't care how long I've been doing this. 

Mary Marantz: Yeah. 

Jess Ekstrom: Like it is always a time where I'm like. Who do you think you are? 

Mary Marantz: Mm-hmm. 

Jess Ekstrom: Like who do you think you are that you're gonna go out and talk to these people and tell them something they don't already know?

Mm. And if I can, and, and I always have my mantras and kind of my techniques that I go through, but if I can say, oh, welcome. That's because I truly give a shit about, 

Mary Marantz: that's right. 

Jess Ekstrom: Than That's right. Such a reframe. 

Mary Marantz: Yeah. Um, yeah. The script we flip it for is good. I must really care about this work I'm about to do.

Yes. Because going back to what I said earlier about excellence and consistency, [00:24:00] or those people who are just really good at marketing, some of the least real deal people I've ever met in my life are not afraid at all. And like, why would they be right? They didn't do anything to actually come up with that content.

They didn't bleed on the page or originate ideas. They're just sort of copying and pasting what's already been said. 

Jess Ekstrom: Yes. So 

Mary Marantz: why would they be afraid? 

Jess Ekstrom: And it's like I connect to people so much when I can see their fear, hear their fear, hear their hero story instead of like, no one's like I. It's really hard to connect with someone who is like, I have never, I.

I struck out. That's right. Never like, you know, you wanna hear I was scared and I did it anyway. And here's how you can do it too. Right? Um, okay, so I took your quiz. Okay. quiz.com everyone take it Also. Hell of a domain. Way to go. 

Mary Marantz: Yeah. A achieve quiz.com. That's right. Yes. 

Jess Ekstrom: Uh, I am the performer. 

Mary Marantz: Same. Me too.

Jess Ekstrom: No shock. I think. Anyone listening? No. Um, before we close, what is [00:25:00] it? Why is it important 

Mary Marantz: mm-hmm. 

Jess Ekstrom: To know like your achievement type. 

Mary Marantz: Yeah. 

Jess Ekstrom: Um, and also maybe tell me something about myself. Okay. Being a performer. Yeah. 

Mary Marantz: Yeah. So, um, yeah, so@achieverquiz.com we have five different achiever types and depending on your type, you are gonna play small in different ways and get stuck in different ways.

And you're gonna need different things to move you forward based on your type to kinda get outta that cycle of fear. Um, I came up with those five types first in slow growth. Equals stronger reason. I was talking about how do you stop achieving for your worth for each different type. But then I realized and underestimated it also carries over for how we're playing small.

And so we have the performer who's always on their toes needs to show themselves for sure, but also other people, how far they've come. I am also for sure a performer. We have the tightrope walker who could care less, who else is clapping, but they need higher and higher death defying feats to feel the same amount of good, to have the same amount of dopamine.

Hmm. The masquerader. Doesn't really wanna go after goals for [00:26:00] themselves. They don't wanna do it for other people. They stay hidden in plain sight because they don't wanna let either group down themselves or anybody else. The contortionist is our classic people pleaser. They twist themselves up into tiny, tethered knots because to contort is easier than to be criticized.

They wouldn't go after those goals. Just on their own, but they will go after them to make somebody else happy. Do people please someone else? And then the illusionist in the distance also doesn't go after them for either group, but they're slightly different from the masquerader because they believe that all the conditions to begin and they themselves must be perfect before they can even start.

So that's our classic like. Perfectionism is a forever delaying tactic. 

Jess Ekstrom: Yeah. 

Mary Marantz: Group. And so if you go to the quiz, achiever quiz.com, we have 10 questions. They're super light and easy fun questions, really silly kind of on the questions. And then in true Mary form, we go really deep on the results and I would say is the performer, one of the most important things for you to know is that there's this feeling that you, you know, it's sort of.

Themed after a ballerina. It's this idea that you must always be on your toes. You must be like spinning all the [00:27:00] plates and all the fates, never once letting anything drop, including the act. It's this belief that you are only as worthy of love, as strong as you can be, and as much as you can deliver on the results.

Hmm, and for me and for you both it is. Sort of a lifelong journey of not feeling like you always have to be the one who always comes through. You know, the one who feels like you can't count on anyone else and everyone else is counting on you. And there's a whole section of underestimated where I talk about how hard it is for me to ask for help or to even show any kind of vulnerability.

Like, I don't want you feeling sorry for me. I don't want you good advice or best intentions. They feel like condescension. Um, you know, I don't wanna have to worry about you worrying about me. And so we kinda start to get into some of the deeper roots of like, what in our childhood told us we can't be a bother to anyone in order to be loved.

Jess Ekstrom: Oh my gosh, I need to dive in because that is so me. And I'm also like, why is no one helping me? And that's what helps me. Like, not like that. Right. Well, duh. No one's gonna wanna help you. Um, Mary, this has been an [00:28:00] incredible conversation, everyone. Grab underestimated, uh, Mary Marantz and listen to the Mary Marantz Show.

It's one of my favorite podcasts that I've ever guessed on and listened to. Um, where else can people find you? Where, what you think? 

Mary Marantz: Yeah, yeah. If you actually head over to name the fear.com. So that's from the subtitle name, the fear.com. Um, really quickly, because one of the most powerful. Things that I think this book does, like the real backbone of the work that this book does is it allows you to cut fear off mid-sentence.

There's a saying that says the fish don't know the water's toxic because they're so immersed in it. And so when fear is in your head as your own voice, you said that you were saying to yourself, who do you think you are? But I don't think it was you. I think it was fear. It was this outside destructive force.

And so anyway. The quicker we know humans grow, like, learn, and recall best from story and unexpected visual, visceral metaphor. And so I am giving you all these really unexpected metaphors like the Edward Scissor hands problem, the research riptide, the princess, and the pea, the colossus of clout. So every [00:29:00] chapter, every face of fear has these really unexpected, memorable ways of thinking about it.

So it's much easier to go. 

Jess Ekstrom: And you really cover that throughout the book. Yeah. If any of you are visual learners Yeah. Your estimated has incredible graphics that like you can really take a little snapshot 

Mary Marantz: and remember. Yeah, that's right. Um, and so anyway, I was on a podcast called, this Changes Everything with Sarah Rice and she said, it's like in the Wizard of Oz.

A great and powerful, terrifying Oz. When you pull the curtain back, it's just this little band. And I said, yeah, a snake oil salesman who's trying to sell us on this grift that somehow creating nothing is better than creating any kind of failure at all. And so when we name that fear mid sentences. We whoosh all the power outta the room.

It doesn't necessarily leave, but we take all of its power away the same way as when we pull back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz. So if you go to name the fear.com, we have the whole first chapter up there for free. Starting over is a rolling boulder. You can get a whole feel for my writing style. Those visual visceral metaphors, the all or nothing cycles in there, motivation and defeat, and the Wiley Coyote reference, which is one of my favorite in the whole book, [00:30:00] plus a very fun Jurassic Park one.

Um, so you can find that. And the quiz is also on that same site. Uh, name the fear.com. 

Jess Ekstrom: Name the fear.com. I have domain envy there. I don't get that often because I own about like 600 domains, but, uh, I might have to go head to head for you on this one. 

Mary Marantz: Yeah, well, you know, that came out of a disappointment because underestimated.com was not available.

Oh. But we pivot. We pivot. There you go. And you found something else. Yeah, that's right. 

Jess Ekstrom: Mary, you're the best. Thank you so much for taking your time. Everyone go by underestimated. Give Mary a follow and we'll see you allall soon.

Thanks for listening to Amplify. If you're a fan of the show, show us some podcast love by giving us a rating and review. This episode is brought to you by Mic Drop Workshop, where you can learn how to become a better speaker, how to land paid speaking gigs, and become a keynote speaker. This episode was edited and produced by Walk West.

I'm Jess Ra reminding you that you deserve the biggest stage, so let's find out how [00:31:00] to get you there. I'll see you agai