Transcript
00:00:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’m Joanna Lindenbaum, a coach, ritualist, and all-around transformation nerd who is obsessed with helping clients go deep to create more change and results with their clients.
00:00:19 Joanna Lindenbaum
I created the Coaching Revolution Podcast to share with you coaching skills, tips, and advice, as well as a deeper understanding of human behavior and of yourself.
00:00:30 Joanna Lindenbaum
so that you can do even better client work and group work, grow your business organically, and know that you’re making a real difference in the world.
00:00:41 Joanna Lindenbaum
This is about creating a revolution in the transformational industry so that more practitioners feel amazing about what they do, and so that more of our clients experience life-changing shifts.
00:00:55 Joanna Lindenbaum
Let’s get started.
00:01:01 Joanna Lindenbaum
Welcome back to the podcast.
00:01:03 Joanna Lindenbaum
Today we’re exploring a topic that runs so deep in the lives of so many women, and it includes those of us who are coaches, healers, and transformational leaders.
00:01:15 Joanna Lindenbaum
It’s something that I see in my clients, in my colleagues, and honestly, sometimes I see it in myself as well.
00:01:24 Joanna Lindenbaum
It is the good girl syndrome.
00:01:28 Joanna Lindenbaum
that subtle, often unconscious conditioning to be agreeable, kind, over-responsible, and self-sacrificing, even when it costs us our truth, our power, and our leadership.
00:01:45 Joanna Lindenbaum
The good girl syndrome is the inner voice that says, don’t rock the boat.
00:01:52 Joanna Lindenbaum
Don’t upset anyone.
00:01:55 Joanna Lindenbaum
Don’t be too much.
00:01:58 Joanna Lindenbaum
don’t shine too brightly.
00:01:59 Joanna Lindenbaum
It might make others uncomfortable.
00:02:03 Joanna Lindenbaum
And the good girl syndrome is often at the heart of a lot of people pleasing or poor boundaries or overgiving so much that you exhaust yourself or get resentful of others.
00:02:20 Joanna Lindenbaum
The good girl syndrome is often related to
00:02:25 Joanna Lindenbaum
when you abandon yourself or your values in the name of making somebody else comfortable.
00:02:32 Joanna Lindenbaum
When the good girl syndrome is active, it might cause you to stifle your self-expression or to avoid standing up for what you believe in.
00:02:44 Joanna Lindenbaum
That inner good girl might have you hold back from being visible.
00:02:50 Joanna Lindenbaum
And she also loves to stick to the rules.
00:02:54 Joanna Lindenbaum
But the thing is, sometimes rules are meant to be broken.
00:02:59 Joanna Lindenbaum
Sometimes rules aren’t for us.
00:03:02 Joanna Lindenbaum
They’re not the right things for us.
00:03:04 Joanna Lindenbaum
But the good girl is too scared to stray from that.
00:03:10 Joanna Lindenbaum
The inner good girl is the part of us that believes that if we do everything right, if we are accommodating, agreeable,
00:03:20 Joanna Lindenbaum
overly generous, and endlessly responsible, then we’ll be safe.
00:03:28 Joanna Lindenbaum
We’ll be respected.
00:03:30 Joanna Lindenbaum
We’ll be loved.
00:03:32 Joanna Lindenbaum
And for some of us– and I fall into this camp– the good girl is also the part of us that believes that if we’re all those things that I just mentioned– accommodating, agreeable, overly generous, endlessly responsible–
00:03:49 Joanna Lindenbaum
The good girl believes that it’s with that we can protect our loved ones from harm and to keep them safe.
00:04:01 Joanna Lindenbaum
And on the surface, all of it sounds really admirable.
00:04:08 Joanna Lindenbaum
Who doesn’t want to be kind and responsible?
00:04:12 Joanna Lindenbaum
Who doesn’t want to protect their loved ones?
00:04:16 Joanna Lindenbaum
And who doesn’t want to be liked?
00:04:20 Joanna Lindenbaum
That’s one that still gets me very often.
00:04:24 Joanna Lindenbaum
And it’s kind of embarrassing to admit all of this publicly, but I know that someone listening to this episode needs to hear it.
00:04:33 Joanna Lindenbaum
So I’m going to just go ahead and say it.
00:04:36 Joanna Lindenbaum
I still, even after all of these years of doing inner work,
00:04:42 Joanna Lindenbaum
there’s a part of me that still really, really, really wants to be liked.
00:04:50 Joanna Lindenbaum
And even though, like I said, I’ve come pretty far with it, can still show up sometimes and really kind of bite me in the ****.
00:05:02 Joanna Lindenbaum
And later on in this episode,
00:05:06 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’m going to be talking about how in the coaching industry, there are times that I have been really not liked, especially by some of my colleagues.
00:05:22 Joanna Lindenbaum
And I’ll talk about how hard that’s been, but also how rewarding that’s been.
00:05:28 Joanna Lindenbaum
So again, on the surface, the good girl might sound great.
00:05:36 Joanna Lindenbaum
But underneath, the good girl is often driven by fear.
00:05:43 Joanna Lindenbaum
The fear of rejection, the fear of disapproval, the fear of being seen as too much or not enough.
00:05:53 Joanna Lindenbaum
And
00:05:55 Joanna Lindenbaum
I have so many personal stories from throughout my life, starting when I was a little girl, that the good girl syndrome was active.
00:06:09 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’ll share just two examples right now to kind of give everything that we’re talking about a little bit of life, and also so that you know you’re not alone, even if you don’t have my exact stories.
00:06:24 Joanna Lindenbaum
I have a feeling you’ll be able to resonate in one way or another.
00:06:29 Joanna Lindenbaum
So one of those good girl stories goes all the way back to, let’s see, the year 1994.
00:06:40 Joanna Lindenbaum
I was a freshman in college and I decided that I was going to get a nose ring.
00:06:49 Joanna Lindenbaum
Now,
00:06:50 Joanna Lindenbaum
Now, in 2025, nose rings, not a big deal.
00:06:55 Joanna Lindenbaum
Lots of people have them.
00:06:58 Joanna Lindenbaum
But if you’ve been alive as long as I’ve been, if you think back to the late ’90s, you know that nose rings weren’t all that popular.
00:07:09 Joanna Lindenbaum
They were kind of out of bounds a little bit.
00:07:13 Joanna Lindenbaum
You know, it was a little break the rule kind of thing.
00:07:18 Joanna Lindenbaum
Anyway, I decided that I wanted a nose ring.
00:07:22 Joanna Lindenbaum
It felt like self-expression for me.
00:07:26 Joanna Lindenbaum
It felt like there was something about it that made me feel even more who I was and show up appearing how I wanted to appear.
00:07:38 Joanna Lindenbaum
And I didn’t know what my parents would think about it.
00:07:41 Joanna Lindenbaum
I didn’t know what my friends from high school might think about it if they saw it.
00:07:48 Joanna Lindenbaum
But, I was playing with new identities in college and more authentic identities when I got to college.
00:07:55 Joanna Lindenbaum
And even though it was scary, I decided, all right, I’m going for it.
00:07:59 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’m going to get my nose pierced.
00:08:01 Joanna Lindenbaum
I went to the piercing place.
00:08:03 Joanna Lindenbaum
I went with one of my best friends, Amy, from college.
00:08:07 Joanna Lindenbaum
She was getting another piercing on her ear.
00:08:11 Joanna Lindenbaum
And I got my nose pierced.
00:08:14 Joanna Lindenbaum
It hurt.
00:08:15 Joanna Lindenbaum
a little bit, but I was so happy and I was so proud once I did.
00:08:20 Joanna Lindenbaum
And later that day, I told my mom, I was talking to my mother on the phone, and I mentioned to my mother that I got a nose ring.
00:08:32 Joanna Lindenbaum
And she, I can’t remember exactly what she said, but she highly disapproved.
00:08:39 Joanna Lindenbaum
And she kind of a little bit made fun of me and she, she just didn’t have great things to say.
00:08:49 Joanna Lindenbaum
And I got off that phone call and I, all of a sudden, this thing that I had felt so proud about, this thing that
00:08:59 Joanna Lindenbaum
I did.
00:09:00 Joanna Lindenbaum
That was stretchy for me.
00:09:02 Joanna Lindenbaum
That was kind of out-of-the-box.
00:09:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
That made me feel really good.
00:09:07 Joanna Lindenbaum
All of a sudden, I just did not feel good about it.
00:09:10 Joanna Lindenbaum
And I remember that night, I kind of had a nightmare about it.
00:09:14 Joanna Lindenbaum
I dreamt that I had a pig’s nose.
00:09:18 Joanna Lindenbaum
The dream was all about my nose.
00:09:20 Joanna Lindenbaum
Anyway, I woke up the next morning and was so upset about all of it that I took
00:09:28 Joanna Lindenbaum
the piercing out of my nose and I just let the piercing, close up over a few days.
00:09:37 Joanna Lindenbaum
And that was it.
00:09:38 Joanna Lindenbaum
That was the end of my nose ring.
00:09:40 Joanna Lindenbaum
And it’s such a silly, small thing, like not a big deal thing.
00:09:47 Joanna Lindenbaum
But on the other hand, it was a big deal because it was a moment
00:09:51 Joanna Lindenbaum
where I squelched myself, where I made myself small, where I didn’t allow myself to be who I fully wanted to be because of disapproval, because of rejection.
00:10:09 Joanna Lindenbaum
So we hide our edges and we hide who we are when
00:10:20 Joanna Lindenbaum
The good girl is active.
00:10:22 Joanna Lindenbaum
We hide our self-expression.
00:10:25 Joanna Lindenbaum
Maybe we try to manage everyone else’s feelings.
00:10:30 Joanna Lindenbaum
Maybe we try to be for other people, not who we are, but who we think they want us to be.
00:10:42 Joanna Lindenbaum
And then little by little, our aliveness, our truth, our leadership,
00:10:49 Joanna Lindenbaum
or creative fire, it begins to dim.
00:10:55 Joanna Lindenbaum
And, you know, no myth of perfection here, even though I’ve come such a long way with all of this, it still shows up in my life.
00:11:07 Joanna Lindenbaum
So even now, you know, at age 50, there are certain social situations where I
00:11:16 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’m with people, I maybe don’t know them very well.
00:11:19 Joanna Lindenbaum
It seems like maybe a little bit of a buttoned-up crowd.
00:11:23 Joanna Lindenbaum
And people ask me what I do for work.
00:11:26 Joanna Lindenbaum
And I mention all of the kind of intellectual-sounding things that I do and the very highly professional-sounding things that I do and how it impacts business and this and that.
00:11:37 Joanna Lindenbaum
But I don’t always talk about how I’m a ritualist.
00:11:43 Joanna Lindenbaum
Now, of course, I do with many of my friends, but it’s like a part of me that I don’t always allow out, right?
00:11:51 Joanna Lindenbaum
Don’t want to rock the boat.
00:11:52 Joanna Lindenbaum
Don’t want to maybe it’s not that I’m so scared of disapproval, but there’s there’s a fear of something in there.
00:12:01 Joanna Lindenbaum
So every time we silence our truth or we shrink our power, there is something vital
00:12:13 Joanna Lindenbaum
within us that withers.
00:12:15 Joanna Lindenbaum
And I’m glad that I’m calling myself out here on the, locally here in Charlotte in the South, how I don’t always talk about ritual or the more woo things that I do, because I actually never thought about it before right now, making this episode, but I’m glad that I’m calling myself out.
00:12:36 Joanna Lindenbaum
and that I have you as witness, because the truth is, even though it’s a small thing, and even though obviously I talk a lot about ritual professionally and to my newsletter community, to all of you here on the podcast, on social media, et cetera, et cetera, there is something vital inside of me.
00:12:54 Joanna Lindenbaum
I can feel it now viscerally.
00:12:56 Joanna Lindenbaum
It’s like I’m shrinking, the little withering that goes on when I’m at
00:13:02 Joanna Lindenbaum
certain social events here locally, and I don’t reveal fully who I am.
00:13:08 Joanna Lindenbaum
And this entire conversation that we’re having today about the good girl syndrome, I believe that it matters so, so deeply, first and foremost, for us personally, right, so that we don’t shrink.
00:13:28 Joanna Lindenbaum
But also it matters so deeply because I don’t think the world needs any more good girls.
00:13:39 Joanna Lindenbaum
There have been enough good girls throughout the ages.
00:13:46 Joanna Lindenbaum
I believe that what the world needs is a revolutionary leaders.
00:13:53 Joanna Lindenbaum
And
00:13:55 Joanna Lindenbaum
We can’t be revolutionary leaders, whether it’s in our businesses or it’s in our communities or it’s inside the community of our family or our friendships.
00:14:07 Joanna Lindenbaum
We can’t be revolutionary leaders if we are working on the inner good girl.
00:14:16 Joanna Lindenbaum
Notice I didn’t say that we’ve overcome it completely, right?
00:14:20 Joanna Lindenbaum
Like I just mentioned,
00:14:22 Joanna Lindenbaum
I haven’t overcome mine completely, but I do still consider myself a revolutionary leader because I’ve been working on the good girl.
00:14:31 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’m aware of it.
00:14:32 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’m moving forward with it.
00:14:36 Joanna Lindenbaum
So the world needs women who are revolutionary leaders, women who tell the truth even when their voices shake.
00:14:51 Joanna Lindenbaum
Women who embody fierce compassion.
00:14:57 Joanna Lindenbaum
Women who can hold both love and disruption in the same breath.
00:15:06 Joanna Lindenbaum
Because we need more disruptors.
00:15:09 Joanna Lindenbaum
The world needs this.
00:15:12 Joanna Lindenbaum
Our clients and our communities need this.
00:15:15 Joanna Lindenbaum
The coaching industry needs this.
00:15:18 Joanna Lindenbaum
Our families need this.
00:15:20 Joanna Lindenbaum
If you’re hearing everything that I’ve been sharing on the episode so far today, and you’re recognizing yourself in all of this, and you’re also thinking, oh yeah, but you know, the good girl syndrome, that doesn’t happen if you’re truly powerful and you’re truly successful.
00:15:41 Joanna Lindenbaum
It only happens if you’re not yet powerful and you’re not yet successful, then I want to normalize that.
00:15:49 Joanna Lindenbaum
The good girl syndrome is so pervasive that it doesn’t only impact those that are hiding more or maybe haven’t achieved a certain kind of success yet.
00:16:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
And the best example of this that I can give is one that moves me very, very deeply every time I think about it, and it’s Michelle Obama.
00:16:19 Joanna Lindenbaum
So Michelle Obama has shared openly about how much pressure she felt, even as first lady, to be perfect, to check every box, to balance every expectation, and to never, ever, ever disappoint anyone.
00:16:40 Joanna Lindenbaum
And she’s described how exhausting the performance of goodness became
00:16:48 Joanna Lindenbaum
because it is a performance.
00:16:51 Joanna Lindenbaum
And she’s talked about how much liberation she found when she stopped chasing approval and she started choosing authenticity.
00:17:04 Joanna Lindenbaum
And so this is not only so moving to me, but I think it’s such a powerful reminder that the good girl syndrome, it’s not just a beginner’s pattern.
00:17:18 Joanna Lindenbaum
It’s a human one, and it lives even inside of the most accomplished among us.
00:17:25 Joanna Lindenbaum
So today’s episode is going to be all about the journey from the good girl to the revolutionary leader.
00:17:35 Joanna Lindenbaum
And we’re going to explore four key themes today.
00:17:40 Joanna Lindenbaum
The first is how the good girl archetype is formed inside of us, where it comes from and why it runs so deep.
00:17:51 Joanna Lindenbaum
We’re also going to be taking a look at how the good girl syndrome can quietly sabotage your leadership and specifically your coaching with clients and groups as well as your business.
00:18:06 Joanna Lindenbaum
We’re going to look at
00:18:08 Joanna Lindenbaum
what it looks like to begin reclaiming your voice and your truth and your boundaries, move out of the good girl, and what it looks like to do all of this for yourself.
00:18:22 Joanna Lindenbaum
And then also how to help your clients do this for themselves.
00:18:28 Joanna Lindenbaum
And then from there, we’re going to talk about how stepping in and out of the good girl and into the revolutionary leader can change everything, can change things in your work, in your visibility, and your impact.
00:18:45 Joanna Lindenbaum
And before we go any further, this feels like a good moment to remind you
00:18:54 Joanna Lindenbaum
that in just a couple of days, I’m going to be hosting a very special three-hour workshop.
00:19:02 Joanna Lindenbaum
It’s called Reclaiming Eve, Initiating the Revolutionary Leader Within.
00:19:10 Joanna Lindenbaum
And we’re going to go deep into unpacking the Garden of Eden story and the archetypes of Eve and the snake and even God and the tree.
00:19:24 Joanna Lindenbaum
And the way that it’s related to the good girl syndrome is, of course, because Eve is one of the original bad girls.
00:19:39 Joanna Lindenbaum
She broke the rules, and because of it, she was cast out into the wilderness.
00:19:46 Joanna Lindenbaum
And there’s something about that story that has kind of gone into our being, has impacted us in cellular ways.
00:20:01 Joanna Lindenbaum
That story is one of the archetypal stories that
00:20:08 Joanna Lindenbaum
that kind of pulls us into that good girl syndrome.
00:20:14 Joanna Lindenbaum
But what we’re going to be doing in the workshop is through a Jungian lens and using archetypes and somatics and working with fear and working with all of it, we’re going to turn Eve on its head, that entire story, and we’re actually going to see Eve as a revolutionary leader.
00:20:37 Joanna Lindenbaum
And we’re going to
00:20:39 Joanna Lindenbaum
gain strength from that in some really deep and surprising ways.
00:20:43 Joanna Lindenbaum
The workshop is only $37.
00:20:47 Joanna Lindenbaum
You can join us live.
00:20:49 Joanna Lindenbaum
You’ll also get a recording once we’re done so that you can watch and re-watch on your own time.
00:20:56 Joanna Lindenbaum
It is very deep.
00:20:58 Joanna Lindenbaum
It is very potent.
00:20:59 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’d just be honored if you joined us.
00:21:04 Joanna Lindenbaum
All right, so
00:21:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
Let’s talk a little bit more about the formation of the good girl.
00:21:13 Joanna Lindenbaum
So not always, but often, the good girl gets initiated in childhood.
00:21:24 Joanna Lindenbaum
It’s those early experiences where we were rewarded for being helpful or for being quiet, flexible,
00:21:34 Joanna Lindenbaum
agreeable, or for having our feelings under control.
00:21:41 Joanna Lindenbaum
All of that was rewarded.
00:21:46 Joanna Lindenbaum
And also, maybe we were met with subtle withdrawal or disappointment if we were loud, or angry, or defiant, or too intense.
00:22:03 Joanna Lindenbaum
Maybe because of all of this, we learned over time that love was conditional or that approval and belonging came when we performed goodness.
00:22:23 Joanna Lindenbaum
And maybe we learned that disapproval, anger or sadness were not safe.
00:22:32 Joanna Lindenbaum
either for us or for those that we loved.
00:22:38 Joanna Lindenbaum
And again, I could give so many personal examples on the, how all of this came about for me.
00:22:47 Joanna Lindenbaum
And I’ll share just one right now.
00:22:50 Joanna Lindenbaum
I think many of you know that when I was younger, very young, nine years old,
00:22:56 Joanna Lindenbaum
My mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and it was very, very scary for me as a little girl to know that my mother had this illness, to know that she could have an attack, a multiple sclerosis attack at any point.
00:23:14 Joanna Lindenbaum
She could end up in the hospital at any point, as she often did.
00:23:18 Joanna Lindenbaum
She could end up dropping
00:23:21 Joanna Lindenbaum
plates and breaking them or falling.
00:23:24 Joanna Lindenbaum
It was very, it was terrifying for me as a youngster.
00:23:29 Joanna Lindenbaum
And I remember there were a number of times where if I was a little bit too loud or I was a little bit too chaotic, or if I was creating a ruckus, it kind of stressed my mother out a little bit.
00:23:46 Joanna Lindenbaum
She would say to me that I needed to stop because if I didn’t, she was going to have another multiple sclerosis attack.
00:23:56 Joanna Lindenbaum
And I know that she did not in any way mean to hurt me or wound me by doing that.
00:24:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
I think, you know, she just didn’t know any better when she was sharing that with me.
00:24:11 Joanna Lindenbaum
But of course,
00:24:12 Joanna Lindenbaum
messages like that, they seep in, right?
00:24:17 Joanna Lindenbaum
And there was this unspoken understanding because of it that I was responsible in many ways for my mother’s health and well-being, and that if I colored outside of the lines metaphorically or got too loud or became too much, I might cause my mother to be really sick, right?
00:24:41 Joanna Lindenbaum
So because of that,
00:24:42 Joanna Lindenbaum
it was really important for me to be a good girl.
00:24:47 Joanna Lindenbaum
It felt like my mother’s safety depended on it.
00:24:50 Joanna Lindenbaum
And of course, if my mother’s safety depended on it and I was dependent on my mother as a young person, then my safety was dependent upon it as well.
00:25:02 Joanna Lindenbaum
So for many women,
00:25:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
That formation of the good girl comes from personal experiences, like the one that I just shared.
00:25:14 Joanna Lindenbaum
Sometimes they’re overt and sometimes they’re just really, really subtle.
00:25:22 Joanna Lindenbaum
And then on top of that, all of this good girl conditioning is also related to
00:25:31 Joanna Lindenbaum
and layered with societal and cultural messages about what feminine goodness looks like.
00:25:44 Joanna Lindenbaum
We’re told in society how to be good as women, to be accommodating, to be empathic, to be all-nurturing, to be selfless.
00:26:00 Joanna Lindenbaum
And there are so many stories and examples in the culture of this, right?
00:26:11 Joanna Lindenbaum
So the Garden of Eden story with Eve, it’s kind of like a cautionary tale, a warning to women.
00:26:19 Joanna Lindenbaum
This is what’s going to happen to you if you’re not good.
00:26:23 Joanna Lindenbaum
Or we have the story of Joan of Arc,
00:26:28 Joanna Lindenbaum
who was a rule breaker.
00:26:30 Joanna Lindenbaum
And then because of that, she was burnt at the stakes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
00:26:38 Joanna Lindenbaum
And so with all of this, even as we grow into adulthood, even as we become coaches, therapists, teachers, leaders, those early imprints, they don’t just vanish.
00:26:58 Joanna Lindenbaum
And they show up.
00:27:00 Joanna Lindenbaum
They show up in our lives.
00:27:02 Joanna Lindenbaum
They show up in our nervous systems, in the ways that we relate, in the choices that we make every single day, and to our bodies, inside of our nervous systems, inside of our fight, flight, fear, and fawn
00:27:26 Joanna Lindenbaum
mechanisms, it can feel like a threat to our survival if we were to be anything but good.
00:27:40 Joanna Lindenbaum
It’s like we internalize an invisible rule book about how women should behave.
00:27:48 Joanna Lindenbaum
Again, not too loud, not too ambitious, not too emotional, not too opinionated, only within the rules.
00:27:55 Joanna Lindenbaum
And then we begin to associate that goodness with safety.
00:28:03 Joanna Lindenbaum
The problem, of course, is that those same rules that long ago maybe kept us safe are the exact ones that, as adults, keep us stuck.
00:28:21 Joanna Lindenbaum
They keep us from setting strong boundaries.
00:28:25 Joanna Lindenbaum
with loved ones or with clients.
00:28:29 Joanna Lindenbaum
They keep us from raising our prices or saying no to things.
00:28:35 Joanna Lindenbaum
They keep us from speaking
00:28:37 Joanna Lindenbaum
powerfully in our marketing or from taking up space and visibility online.
00:28:47 Joanna Lindenbaum
And that’s because somewhere deep inside of us, the old programming, that good girl programming is still running.
00:28:57 Joanna Lindenbaum
And it whispers, if I upset someone, I’ll lose love or I’ll get hurt or I’ll be alone.
00:29:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
or I’ll hurt someone I love.
00:29:09 Joanna Lindenbaum
And so while the good girl voice might look harmless on the outside or even admirable, the cost is very real.
00:29:23 Joanna Lindenbaum
It keeps us from being fully ourselves.
00:29:26 Joanna Lindenbaum
It keeps us from
00:29:28 Joanna Lindenbaum
being messy, and we need messiness, right?
00:29:31 Joanna Lindenbaum
We can’t always be perfect.
00:29:34 Joanna Lindenbaum
It keeps us from our complexity.
00:29:36 Joanna Lindenbaum
It keeps us from being bold, keeps us from being honest, and it keeps us from our humanity.
00:29:47 Joanna Lindenbaum
That good girl voice can also keep us from showing the edges and the truth that actually make our work powerful.
00:29:57 Joanna Lindenbaum
And so that’s where I want us to look next, how this shows up, this good girl syndrome might be showing up in your coaching, in your group facilitation, and in your business and marketing.
00:30:17 Joanna Lindenbaum
So if you’ve been in the room with clients or groups, you know that there are moments
00:30:27 Joanna Lindenbaum
where truth really wants to emerge.
00:30:33 Joanna Lindenbaum
Moments when something uncomfortable or edgy starts to surface for a client.
00:30:42 Joanna Lindenbaum
And the good girl inside of us as practitioners, the good girl wants to smooth it over.
00:30:53 Joanna Lindenbaum
She wants to protect everyone, our clients, from the discomfort.
00:31:01 Joanna Lindenbaum
She wants to keep the energy harmonious.
00:31:03 Joanna Lindenbaum
She wants to keep the client happy.
00:31:06 Joanna Lindenbaum
She wants to keep the group feeling overly safe without any discomfort whatsoever.
00:31:17 Joanna Lindenbaum
And so the good girl doesn’t speak the truth.
00:31:23 Joanna Lindenbaum
The good girl doesn’t support the client to lean in to the discomfort.
00:31:31 Joanna Lindenbaum
The good girl doesn’t point out the edgy pieces that are starting to surface.
00:31:41 Joanna Lindenbaum
But here’s the paradox.
00:31:44 Joanna Lindenbaum
True safety, the kind that allows for transformation,
00:31:52 Joanna Lindenbaum
It doesn’t come from avoiding discomfort.
00:31:56 Joanna Lindenbaum
It comes from being able to be with the discomfort.
00:32:04 Joanna Lindenbaum
And when we as practitioners, as coaches, as leaders, when we try to manage everyone’s feelings, we rob the room of its aliveness.
00:32:20 Joanna Lindenbaum
We rob the room of its beautiful complexity.
00:32:27 Joanna Lindenbaum
And we rob our clients and everybody in the room of the opportunity to really have the tough breakthrough that’s going to make a difference.
00:32:42 Joanna Lindenbaum
So when the good girl shows up in our client work,
00:32:50 Joanna Lindenbaum
It might look like not speaking a truth.
00:32:53 Joanna Lindenbaum
It might look like jumping in too quickly to soothe a client.
00:32:59 Joanna Lindenbaum
It might look like over-explaining or teaching instead of sitting in uncomfortable silence.
00:33:09 Joanna Lindenbaum
It might look like
00:33:11 Joanna Lindenbaum
not saying anything to your client about how they consistently show up late or how their last payment didn’t go through.
00:33:22 Joanna Lindenbaum
It might look like overgiving in between sessions because you think that’s what is going to make your client happy and not rock the boat.
00:33:33 Joanna Lindenbaum
But of course, none of this actually supports your clients.
00:33:39 Joanna Lindenbaum
It certainly doesn’t support you.
00:33:41 Joanna Lindenbaum
And it doesn’t support your clients.
00:33:43 Joanna Lindenbaum
It limits their growth.
00:33:46 Joanna Lindenbaum
Because when you do any of these good girl behaviors, most of the time, you’re unconsciously colluding with your client’s own avoidance.
00:33:59 Joanna Lindenbaum
Okay, so that’s how the good girl might show up in your client work, in your group work.
00:34:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
Let’s talk about how she shows up in
00:34:08 Joanna Lindenbaum
your business.
00:34:09 Joanna Lindenbaum
Because if you’ve got the good girl syndrome, she is often driving how we run our business.
00:34:20 Joanna Lindenbaum
She’s driving the car.
00:34:21 Joanna Lindenbaum
So she’s the one who over delivers to try to prove her value.
00:34:28 Joanna Lindenbaum
She’s the one who undercharges because maybe she doesn’t want to seem greedy or make others angry.
00:34:38 Joanna Lindenbaum
She’s the one who can hesitate to promote herself, maybe because it feels self-centered or because it’s going to hurt someone else.
00:34:49 Joanna Lindenbaum
She’s the one who second guesses her marketing voice or what she’s writing about.
00:34:54 Joanna Lindenbaum
She’s the one who softens every bold statement so that it won’t offend anyone.
00:35:00 Joanna Lindenbaum
And of course, when you’re working so, hard to not offend anyone, guess what?
00:35:08 Joanna Lindenbaum
You also don’t resonate deeply with anyone.
00:35:12 Joanna Lindenbaum
You also don’t spark important emotion and thought for anyone if you’re just working hard to not offend.
00:35:24 Joanna Lindenbaum
I know over the years in my boldness and in my myth busting and all of that, I’ve offended people.
00:35:33 Joanna Lindenbaum
I know that.
00:35:34 Joanna Lindenbaum
And that’s okay because
00:35:36 Joanna Lindenbaum
The things that have offended others are also the exact things that have drawn other people to me, are the exact things that have people writing to me after a podcast episode or after a newsletter article to be like, oh my God, that thing that you said, that, thank you for sharing that.
00:35:58 Joanna Lindenbaum
That was everything.
00:36:03 Joanna Lindenbaum
So
00:36:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
When the good girl runs your business, what happens is that you’re working so hard to make everybody else comfortable, that first of all, it’s exhausting.
00:36:21 Joanna Lindenbaum
But second of all, then you don’t express yourself.
00:36:25 Joanna Lindenbaum
You don’t end up showing up in the ways that you really want.
00:36:35 Joanna Lindenbaum
I need to share a little bit personally about this because I think it will really resonate.
00:36:44 Joanna Lindenbaum
When I started off in my business many, many years ago, I really started off with the good girl pretty much leading the whole entire show.
00:36:56 Joanna Lindenbaum
Maybe there’s a couple parts where my good girl wasn’t in the driver’s seat, but a lot, a lot of my business, the good girl, was in the driver’s seat.
00:37:06 Joanna Lindenbaum
I didn’t want to offend anyone.
00:37:09 Joanna Lindenbaum
I didn’t want to break any rules.
00:37:13 Joanna Lindenbaum
I didn’t want to disrupt.
00:37:16 Joanna Lindenbaum
And so I kind of like,
00:37:19 Joanna Lindenbaum
clamped myself down.
00:37:20 Joanna Lindenbaum
I kept myself small.
00:37:22 Joanna Lindenbaum
I tried to do the things that were just palatable for everyone, to share the things that were palatable for everyone.
00:37:30 Joanna Lindenbaum
I calculated, you know, everything that I said and everything that I wrote and really kind of held back on a lot of my expression.
00:37:44 Joanna Lindenbaum
And
00:37:47 Joanna Lindenbaum
I did this for a while and I was also doing this in terms of like just doing what other people said about my marketing also, like market in this way, in that way, or do that strategy or whatever it was.
00:38:03 Joanna Lindenbaum
And I’ll tell you, like none of it felt right for me.
00:38:10 Joanna Lindenbaum
Didn’t feel right to share the messaging that I was being
00:38:17 Joanna Lindenbaum
told to share.
00:38:19 Joanna Lindenbaum
It didn’t feel right to do business in the way that I was being told to do it.
00:38:23 Joanna Lindenbaum
It didn’t feel ethical for me.
00:38:27 Joanna Lindenbaum
And I slowly started doing things my own way, first in like in really subtle ways.
00:38:37 Joanna Lindenbaum
But then at a certain point, I got bolder and bolder and
00:38:44 Joanna Lindenbaum
I was like, I am not going to just do all of this subtly.
00:38:47 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’m going to write about this and I’m going to speak about this.
00:38:51 Joanna Lindenbaum
And for as much as I love, love, love, love, love the coaching industry, I’m going to speak out against the things that I don’t think are right.
00:39:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’m going to speak out against the marketing practices that I think
00:39:09 Joanna Lindenbaum
are unethical.
00:39:10 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’m going to speak out against the practitioner practices that don’t seem so kosher to me.
00:39:19 Joanna Lindenbaum
And I’m also going to speak out about this kind of industry-wide problem, what I saw as a problem that
00:39:30 Joanna Lindenbaum
So many people were focused on how do I get bigger?
00:39:35 Joanna Lindenbaum
How do I make my business bigger?
00:39:37 Joanna Lindenbaum
How do I market more?
00:39:39 Joanna Lindenbaum
Which there’s nothing wrong with that.
00:39:41 Joanna Lindenbaum
But what I saw was not enough focus on skills and being an ethical practitioner and being a really extraordinary practitioner.
00:39:57 Joanna Lindenbaum
And so I became really vocal about all the things, about the price gouging, about the manipulation, about the not focusing enough on skills, about the broken marketing promises, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
00:40:13 Joanna Lindenbaum
And this was a long time ago.
00:40:17 Joanna Lindenbaum
Thankfully, a lot more people are speaking about it now, but this is when nobody was really speaking about it.
00:40:24 Joanna Lindenbaum
And
00:40:26 Joanna Lindenbaum
here’s what happened.
00:40:29 Joanna Lindenbaum
Some people, they loved it.
00:40:32 Joanna Lindenbaum
They loved it.
00:40:33 Joanna Lindenbaum
They loved it.
00:40:33 Joanna Lindenbaum
They loved it.
00:40:35 Joanna Lindenbaum
made the people who were meant to work with me and who were meant to be part of my community, it made them magnetize towards me.
00:40:47 Joanna Lindenbaum
It made them want to invest in working with me.
00:40:52 Joanna Lindenbaum
It made them share about me.
00:40:54 Joanna Lindenbaum
It’s really
00:40:56 Joanna Lindenbaum
one of the big things that catapulted my business to where it is now and catapulted my visibility.
00:41:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
But here’s the other thing.
00:41:08 Joanna Lindenbaum
All of that disruption that I was creating, all of the rules that I was breaking, all of the ways that I was not being a good girl and all of the ways that I was being revolutionary,
00:41:24 Joanna Lindenbaum
there were a good amount of people that were ****** *** about it.
00:41:33 Joanna Lindenbaum
People that I knew personally and well, and people that I didn’t know well at all.
00:41:40 Joanna Lindenbaum
Because what I was saying was kind of, oh, what’s the right word?
00:41:44 Joanna Lindenbaum
Not threatening, but it was,
00:41:49 Joanna Lindenbaum
made them think twice about some of the things they were doing.
00:41:52 Joanna Lindenbaum
Right.
00:41:53 Joanna Lindenbaum
They got really uncomfortable and I got a lot of hate mail.
00:41:59 Joanna Lindenbaum
I shouldn’t say a lot.
00:42:00 Joanna Lindenbaum
It wasn’t a lot.
00:42:01 Joanna Lindenbaum
A lot.
00:42:01 Joanna Lindenbaum
I got a good amount of hate mail.
00:42:06 Joanna Lindenbaum
People really ****** *** people telling me off and calling me names and
00:42:17 Joanna Lindenbaum
those emails were not fun to get.
00:42:19 Joanna Lindenbaum
Are you just going to be totally honest?
00:42:21 Joanna Lindenbaum
I mean, I cried more than once.
00:42:25 Joanna Lindenbaum
I absolutely cried more than once from those emails.
00:42:30 Joanna Lindenbaum
But it’s okay.
00:42:34 Joanna Lindenbaum
Like, I’m still here.
00:42:36 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’m safe.
00:42:37 Joanna Lindenbaum
I survived.
00:42:39 Joanna Lindenbaum
I think I’m stronger for it.
00:42:41 Joanna Lindenbaum
I think I’m more resilient for it.
00:42:43 Joanna Lindenbaum
And
00:42:46 Joanna Lindenbaum
It was one of the lessons, the many lessons on the journey that showed me that I don’t have to always be the good girl.
00:42:57 Joanna Lindenbaum
Like, yes, it’s true.
00:42:58 Joanna Lindenbaum
When you’re not the good girl, when you break the rules, you can’t be guaranteed that everybody is going to be comfortable.
00:43:07 Joanna Lindenbaum
You can’t be guaranteed
00:43:09 Joanna Lindenbaum
that everybody’s going to want to be your best friend, that you’re going to be liked right back to my wanting to– really wanting to be liked.
00:43:17 Joanna Lindenbaum
None of that is guaranteed.
00:43:19 Joanna Lindenbaum
But what I did learn is that even if I’m not liked, I’m still OK.
00:43:29 Joanna Lindenbaum
And that is one of the most valuable lessons to learn in life.
00:43:36 Joanna Lindenbaum
I learned that even if I made people uncomfortable, like really uncomfortable, they’re still okay.
00:43:46 Joanna Lindenbaum
And that was such an important lesson also for me to learn.
00:43:51 Joanna Lindenbaum
So we’re not only working to outgrow the good girl,
00:44:01 Joanna Lindenbaum
Yes, we’re working to do that.
00:44:03 Joanna Lindenbaum
That’s not the only thing.
00:44:04 Joanna Lindenbaum
So if you’ve gotten this far in this podcast, I know that you’re here not only to outgrow the good girl, but also to evolve into the revolutionary leader.
00:44:22 Joanna Lindenbaum
The revolutionary leader is the part of you that leads not from the fear, but from truth.
00:44:32 Joanna Lindenbaum
She’s no longer seeking permission, permission to exist or to lead or to shine or to be herself.
00:44:45 Joanna Lindenbaum
She knows that her voice, her boundaries, her vision, they’re medicine.
00:44:57 Joanna Lindenbaum
And
00:44:58 Joanna Lindenbaum
The revolutionary leader is also the coach who’s not afraid of her client’s discomfort because she understands that their discomfort is part of their liberation.
00:45:12 Joanna Lindenbaum
I often say to clients, I may have mentioned this on the podcast before, but I often say to clients, sorry, not sorry.
00:45:24 Joanna Lindenbaum
And
00:45:26 Joanna Lindenbaum
It’s in those moments where they’re really uncomfortable.
00:45:29 Joanna Lindenbaum
And of course, there’s a part of me that doesn’t want them to be uncomfortable.
00:45:33 Joanna Lindenbaum
But the sorry, not sorry is like, yeah, I’m sorry you’re uncomfortable.
00:45:38 Joanna Lindenbaum
And oh my gosh, this discomfort, we both know it is going to lead to so much for you because you’re willing right now to sit in the discomfort.
00:45:51 Joanna Lindenbaum
And I am here with you, dear client.
00:45:55 Joanna Lindenbaum
in the discomfort.
00:45:56 Joanna Lindenbaum
I am here to hold the space with you so that you can stretch into the new place.
00:46:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
The revolutionary leader is also the facilitator who creates spaces where truth can be spoken, right?
00:46:13 Joanna Lindenbaum
We’re not interested in creating spaces where it’s just that comfort is being maintained.
00:46:20 Joanna Lindenbaum
We want to create spaces where truth can be spoken.
00:46:25 Joanna Lindenbaum
And that revolutionary leader is also the entrepreneur who’s willing to stand visibly in her message, even if the message is polarizing.
00:46:38 Joanna Lindenbaum
Because she’s more committed to serving transformation than to being universally liked.
00:46:48 Joanna Lindenbaum
Of course, it’s not about swinging into polarization or into defiance or rebellion for its own sake.
00:46:57 Joanna Lindenbaum
And of course, it’s not about not being kind in all of the truth, right?
00:47:02 Joanna Lindenbaum
We always want to be kind.
00:47:06 Joanna Lindenbaum
But that revolutionary leader, she knows her truth.
00:47:15 Joanna Lindenbaum
She knows her integrity, and those things are more important to her than approval.
00:47:25 Joanna Lindenbaum
She doesn’t filter her power through the need to please.
00:47:34 Joanna Lindenbaum
She’s not waiting for gobs and gobs and gobs of external validation.
00:47:42 Joanna Lindenbaum
so that she can lead from her inner authority.
00:47:45 Joanna Lindenbaum
And I’m a big fan of getting external validation, by the way.
00:47:50 Joanna Lindenbaum
I think all of us as humans need some external validation.
00:47:56 Joanna Lindenbaum
And even when I train coaches, you know, we look at the skill of celebrating our clients.
00:48:01 Joanna Lindenbaum
That is some external validation, right?
00:48:03 Joanna Lindenbaum
Like, we all need that, but it’s like, how much?
00:48:08 Joanna Lindenbaum
I often talk about,
00:48:11 Joanna Lindenbaum
the well that can never be filled, that well of external validation, if it doesn’t matter how much you get, you need more and more and more, it’s the well that can never be filled, then you’re never going to be able to really be in your inner authority.
00:48:32 Joanna Lindenbaum
Okay, so if this conversation is stirring something inside of you,
00:48:41 Joanna Lindenbaum
Please know that working on the good girl syndrome, it’s sacred work.
00:48:48 Joanna Lindenbaum
It’s the work of remembering yourself.
00:48:54 Joanna Lindenbaum
And so I want to ask you some questions so that you can just tiptoe a little bit more into this, get a little more clear.
00:49:06 Joanna Lindenbaum
First of all,
00:49:08 Joanna Lindenbaum
Where in your life or work do you still seek approval more than truth?
00:49:20 Joanna Lindenbaum
Where in your life or work do you still seek approval more than truth?
00:49:29 Joanna Lindenbaum
And of course, feel free to pause.
00:49:32 Joanna Lindenbaum
the podcast in between these questions, if you want to journal on them or just to have a little more space to meditate on them, to think on them.
00:49:41 Joanna Lindenbaum
But I’m going to I’m going to kind of go ahead and keep on asking the questions.
00:49:47 Joanna Lindenbaum
What are you afraid might happen if you stopped being good?
00:49:55 Joanna Lindenbaum
So again, you know, I gave the example before.
00:49:58 Joanna Lindenbaum
For the longest time, I was scared my mother would die if I stopped being good.
00:50:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
I, at different times in my life, have been scared that I would be all alone if I stopped being good.
00:50:15 Joanna Lindenbaum
So what are you afraid might happen if you stop being good?
00:50:21 Joanna Lindenbaum
Here’s another question.
00:50:25 Joanna Lindenbaum
What would your leadership look like if you allowed yourself to be fully seen in the mess?
00:50:35 Joanna Lindenbaum
So messy, powerful, and real.
00:50:41 Joanna Lindenbaum
What would your leadership look like?
00:50:45 Joanna Lindenbaum
And how might your clients and the world benefit from that version of you?
00:50:56 Joanna Lindenbaum
So these are great questions to journal on, to start to really kind of stir the cauldron with, to go a little bit.
00:51:10 Joanna Lindenbaum
And I want to share a few ways to go a little bit further with it, to just begin to work with all of this on your own.
00:51:22 Joanna Lindenbaum
And you can also apply these next pieces to your client work as well, if you’ve got clients whose inner good girl is standing in the way of creating what they want.
00:51:35 Joanna Lindenbaum
So number one, really start to track yourself throughout your day, throughout your week, and notice where the good girl still runs the show.
00:51:52 Joanna Lindenbaum
Does she come up in your tone of voice?
00:51:55 Joanna Lindenbaum
Does she come up in your boundaries or non-boundaries?
00:51:59 Joanna Lindenbaum
Does she come up in your pricing?
00:52:00 Joanna Lindenbaum
Does she come up in your willingness or not willingness to be seen?
00:52:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
So you can keep a log of this, but note for yourself, like really take a look throughout your day, throughout your week, where she’s still running the show.
00:52:17 Joanna Lindenbaum
Another thing you can do
00:52:20 Joanna Lindenbaum
is experiment with micro rebellions, right?
00:52:24 Joanna Lindenbaum
So pick a micro rebellion, a tiny moment where you choose truth over politeness or overpower, over people pleasing.
00:52:40 Joanna Lindenbaum
where you choose a boundary over people pleasing, where you can maybe speak a little bit more of your truth, right?
00:52:47 Joanna Lindenbaum
So start to play or invite your clients to play with those micro rebellions.
00:52:54 Joanna Lindenbaum
And then the third thing is ask yourself in different scenarios, in different situations in your life as they come up, instead of what would the good girl do here, because you know that one real well,
00:53:09 Joanna Lindenbaum
You don’t even have to ask yourself on that one.
00:53:11 Joanna Lindenbaum
She just kind of takes over without realizing, right?
00:53:14 Joanna Lindenbaum
So make the conscious awareness to ask yourself, what would the revolutionary leader do in this scenario?
00:53:25 Joanna Lindenbaum
What would she say?
00:53:26 Joanna Lindenbaum
What would she do?
00:53:26 Joanna Lindenbaum
What would she create, even if it ruffles some feathers?
00:53:33 Joanna Lindenbaum
And my hope is that
00:53:37 Joanna Lindenbaum
more of your truth is going to come out through doing that.
00:53:41 Joanna Lindenbaum
So again, you’ve got journaling questions and then you’ve got three ways forward.
00:53:47 Joanna Lindenbaum
Number one, notice where the good girl still runs the show as you move through your day.
00:53:53 Joanna Lindenbaum
Number 2, experiment with micro rebellions.
00:53:57 Joanna Lindenbaum
Number 3, in any given scenario, instead of just defaulting to the good girl, ask yourself,
00:54:06 Joanna Lindenbaum
what would the revolutionary leader say, do, or create in this moment, even if it ruffles feathers?
00:54:14 Joanna Lindenbaum
And of course, those are just starting points.
00:54:18 Joanna Lindenbaum
Together, we can do much, much deeper work and very powerful work
00:54:25 Joanna Lindenbaum
on the good girl syndrome.
00:54:26 Joanna Lindenbaum
And so again, if all of this speaks to your heart, I want to invite you to the upcoming workshop called Reclaiming Eve, Initiating the Revolutionary Leader Within.
00:54:42 Joanna Lindenbaum
And inside of that workshop, we are going to use the biblical story of Eve, who is one of the most misunderstood women in history.
00:54:52 Joanna Lindenbaum
as a map for reclaiming your voice, reclaiming your intuition, and activating your sacred defiance.
00:55:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
Because Eve, she wasn’t a sinner.
00:55:09 Joanna Lindenbaum
She was the first woman to say no to blind obedience.
00:55:17 Joanna Lindenbaum
And that act of courage, that first taste of knowledge, that’s where true leadership begins.
00:55:28 Joanna Lindenbaum
So the three hours of this just deep, deep workshop, it’s a master class in coaching.
00:55:39 Joanna Lindenbaum
So I’m going to be modeling a lot of coaching for you.
00:55:43 Joanna Lindenbaum
It’s a deep dive
00:55:46 Joanna Lindenbaum
into a Jungian archetypal journey, which you’re going to love.
00:55:51 Joanna Lindenbaum
And it’s a really potent container for a lot of your own somatic inner work.
00:55:58 Joanna Lindenbaum
So again, it’s only $37.
00:56:01 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’ll drop the link in the show notes.
00:56:04 Joanna Lindenbaum
I would love for you to join.
00:56:07 Joanna Lindenbaum
And if this conversation spoke to you, I’d also love for you to share this episode
00:56:14 Joanna Lindenbaum
Send it to a friend or a colleague who is ready to stop being good and to start being empowered and powerful.
00:56:27 Joanna Lindenbaum
And if you love this episode, please also give it five stars.
00:56:32 Joanna Lindenbaum
Give us a good review.
00:56:34 Joanna Lindenbaum
And please drop me a note.
00:56:36 Joanna Lindenbaum
Let me know what resonated for you.
00:56:38 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’d love, love, love to hear.
00:56:41 Joanna Lindenbaum
