Feeling like the supporting character in your own story? This episode is your plot twist. We unpack Main Character Energy (MCE) as a buildable skill set—not a personality type—and show how tending to your needs heals burnout and expands your capacity to show up for the people and causes you care about.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The 3-part MCE framework: Permission → Self-Trust → Massive, Messy Action
• Why MCE isn’t selfish—it’s the power source that fuels your impact (both/and)
• The tiny tool that changes everything: 10 Seconds of Courage
• Five rapid-fire ideas to practice 10 seconds of courage today (self-care, belonging, shoot-your-shot)
• How to stop “best-friend energy” (people-pleasing, perfectionism, over-functioning) and step center stage

Work with Lily

• Free Live Training (Dec 3): Stop People-Pleasing & Build a Stupidly Joyful Life —RSVP HERE
  
• Main Character Life Mastermind — Get details + apply (when open) or join the waitlist HERE
  
• Main Character Dating — My signature program to build a joyful, self-trust-filled dating life and attract an aligned partnership. Learn more: https://datebrazen.com/dating
  
• Get my Book — Thank You, More Please Buy the book + grab your bonus: https://datebrazen.com/book

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Show transcript:

Lily @ Date Brazen (00:00)

Today I’m talking about something that I’m really passionate about, which is you getting off the freaking sidelines and into your main character energy. Even if you’re shy, even if you’re an introvert, even if you never have before, even if you’re a late bloomer, even if you have a really big fear of being selfish and you’re afraid that main character energy means that you’ll be selfish. 

Whatever it is, this episode is going to serve you and help you step into your main character energy. And I want to talk about this concept of main character energy not just because I’m very passionate about you getting what you want from this one wild and precious life, in the words of Mary Oliver.

I want to talk about main character energy because in this moment in our history as humankind, with so much of the world on fire, you might be wondering, is it selfish or even useful to focus on my own joy or my own main character energy right now? How can we focus on working toward your dreams when so much is uncertain? 

We cannot main character energy our way out of systemic oppression. So why would main character energy matter? My answer is that main character energy is not just for more stable moments in our history. It’s even more imperative for the unstable ones too.

Main character energy, which you’re gonna hear about in this episode, is a buildable skill set. And without it, you are going to burn out or continue to be burnt out. And when you’re burnt out, you are less likely to make powerful shit happen in the world because all you can do is lay down. Laying down is totally fine. Both and, I don’t want burnout to be your consistent status quo. 

I want you to engage with your own needs so fully that you start to heal your burnout so you can not only care for yourself, but you can make the impact that you are meant to make in the world as well, both and. And your default mode that you were taught, that you were socialized to perform—of people pleasing, of perfectionism, and of like bone-level exhaustion to care-give for everyone else before you take care of yourself—that will persist without a powerful redirect.

This moment right here that we’re in together right now is an invitation for you to heal your burnout, to stop people pleasing, and to enter your like basically villain-who-is-the-main-character era. Because when you release people pleasing as your default, when you heal your burnout, when you stop fucking shrinking yourself, you unlock your power—the power to take up more space, to advocate, and to make change where you can. Imagine just for a second with me, what is possible when you are no longer stuck in overthinking every choice, people pleasing every single day, or shrinking your needs to accommodate others? Not only what changes would that make in your life—what relationships, opportunities, and healing could you invite in, could you attract—but also what causes could you support? What moves could you make, whether that’s organizing in your hometown, funding movements and organizations that matter to you, or building a business that changes lives.

This is what my clients inside of Main Character Life are doing now that they’ve built the rock-solid skill of main character energy. Your community needs your main character energy and so do you. So, let main character energy—let this invitation of this episode—be a call to action for you. Let this episode be a call to action for you that you deserve your main character energy. 

It is possible to build it. It is possible for you to build that skill set even if you’re shy or introverted or a late bloomer or whatever. Both and. Imagine with me in this episode what you stepping into your main character energy could mean for the lives of not only your loved ones around you, your community around you, because this shit matters.

So I am fired up about this topic as you can tell. And I also am really excited to share that this episode is brought to you by our gorgeous sponsor—my mastermind, Main Character Life. This is a six-month high-level small group mastermind where you and a small coven of cheerleaders who are joining you are going to release people pleasing, build rock-solid self-trust, and become the main character of your whole freaking life in six months or less. We do this inside of the mastermind with weekly group coaching, daily coaching in Slack, and a brand new main character energy curriculum. 

Inside that curriculum, I am so excited to announce that I’ve created the People Pleasing Detox for one month, where you are going to eliminate people-pleasing decisions and rewire your brain to actually make self-trusting decisions that are in your best interest so that you have more fun in your life, so you take up more space, so you’re more powerful, so you attract that which is highest and best for you without people pleasing—because it’s keeping you stuck and shrunk.

There’s creating your life essence-based preferences. So I’ve talked about this in dating, but this is like creating a rubric to make self-trusting decisions and main character energy decisions in every domain of your life. And we’re going to create your life essence-based preferences to be that rubric. So there’s no more overthinking or mind drama about making decisions in your life. No more having to outsource your decision-making to ten friends. You’re going to know how to make self-trusting, powerful decisions in every domain of your life that not only eliminates burnout, but eliminates people pleasing, eliminates perfectionism from your way of going about things. So you’re just freer in your life and you get more shit done and you attract more amazing shit.

And then the third exciting piece of this framework in the curriculum is the 100 Dares Project. In the 100 Dares Project, you are going to start claiming and doing the epic shit that’s been on your to-do list and in the back of your brain for years. Whether you’re a quiet dreamer and you have been dreaming of leaving your job and traveling during a sabbatical so that you can make a career pivot or whatever—you’ve been quietly dreaming of that, but it feels impossible or so far away—or whether you’re a single mom and you haven’t taken a week to yourself in eight years and you don’t know how you would be able to, we’re gonna figure that shit out with the 100 Dares Project.

If you feel like a late bloomer and you feel behind in your career or in your friendships or in your love life, the 100 Dares Project is meant for you to start taking that epic aligned action, to start shooting your shot, to start asking for more, to start advocating for yourself every single day. And then if you’re an overthinker, you’ve been stuck in perfectionism, the 100 Dares Project is going to help you get messy, help you get playful, help you bring more joy into your daily existence. The 100 Dares Project is truly life-changing and it is going to be so fucking fun.

And I cannot wait to share more about this curriculum with you, share more about the mastermind with you, in my live free training. The live training is called Stop People Pleasing and Build a Stupidly Joyful Life, and it is free, and I’m going to teach you all about main character energy. I’m going to teach you about the mastermind and see if it’s the right next step for you. So if you want to join us, then go to the link in the description of this episode or just go to datebrazen.com to sign up for the live training to learn more about the mastermind. You can also join the waitlist for Main Character Life in the link in the description of this episode. In the waitlist, you get early access to applications because this room is limited. 

We are limiting this room to 30 people max. And if you want one of those spots, or if you want to explore taking one of those spots with an application and a sales call with me, then go get on the waitlist and get early access.

I am really pumped about this, as you can probably tell. And this mastermind is always such a highlight of my year. I’ve been running it for the last three years and the results are incredible, which you’re going to hear a little bit about in this episode. And this framework of main character energy, this three-step framework that you’ll learn in this episode, is also really incredible, if I do say so myself. Let’s get into this freaking episode.

Today’s episode is all about building main character identity in your life—what it means not to be a main character energy—and then how to build main character energy, how to build main character identity. So main character energy—really, I think about the movie The Holiday, you know? I think about the movie The Holiday and I think about that conversation that Kate Winslet has at that dinner table with that older gentleman who was a scriptwriter. I do not remember his name, but he basically says, like, you’re amazing, you’re stunning, like, you’re the main character, but you’re acting like the best friend. And that’s one of my favorite movies, and I draw so much inspiration from film and television specifically—like a handful of references you can hear me quoting all the time. That’s not mysterious: The Holiday, Parks and Recreation, Gilmore Girls, The Office sometimes in my personal life—but I digress.

This Holiday moment really hit home for me and was just this defining moment in media for something that I see every single day—and I saw in my own life, right? This tendency that I used to have and that I see my clients struggling with every single day, maybe in their dating life, maybe in other parts of their life as well—to shrink. Being the best friend, if we take media and film as an example, literally means less air time, less screen time. And the only time you see the best friend, generally—unless that best friend has been a character arc later on in the season—let’s take Lane in Gilmore Girls, for example. You don’t see Lane in Gilmore Girls without Rory, her best friend, the main character, until much later on in the series. Now, there are exceptions, but the general rule is the best friend character exists to service the main character.

You might’ve seen this in your life as the single one. Your friends are coupled, maybe have kids, maybe you’re the only single one left in your circle, and you feel like you’re showing up in their lives as this guest character, this best friend character that exists to love on their kids and love on them and talk them through their issues. And there’s nothing wrong with playing that role in somebody else’s life. The problem comes in when you struggle coming back into your life being the main character and instead you default to caregiving, people pleasing, exerting all of your energy taking care of other people instead of asking for what you want.

Before main character energy, you might be shrinking your wants because you think they’re too much for other people—they don’t have time, they’re going through so much, I don’t know—shrinking your needs, playing the best friend. You’re afraid to upset someone by asking for what you want because of the paralyzing fear of being left, being rejected, or being judged.

The best friend character—if she were to… I think about the show Kevin Can Fuck Himself. I haven’t seen it, but I have seen the trailer. Famous last words. No, it’s very much like, I read an article, I read the title of an article. No, but this show Kevin Can Fuck Himself is these two worlds, you know, and it’s Annie from Schitt’s Creek, so I know her—brilliant. So in the show Kevin Can Fuck Himself, she lives two lives. She’s got this sitcom life where she’s like the wife of this man who is terrible, and it’s like, LOL, funny, ha ha, she’s doing laundry, typical like woman stuff, whatever. And then she goes into the kitchen and it goes to this dark shattered reality where it’s like this gritty drama.

And if in Gilmore Girls, Lane was to stage a coup—the best friend character was to stage a coup in order to become the main character of the series—the series would break. It wouldn’t allow her to be the main character. And some of y’all are out here living in best friend identity instead of main character identity, thinking that asserting yourself, asking for what you want, setting the boundary, acknowledging what you want, even at a base level, will break the show. Because your life before now might have been crafted around the assumption that you need to be small in order to belong.

Maybe you have friends that are not the friends that you ultimately want, who make you feel like you need to stay small in order to belong. Don’t ask for so much. Don’t set that boundary. Don’t ask us to stop complaining. Don’t ask us what’s bringing us joy. What a weird question. If that’s your friend group, we need to talk. Okay. Maybe that’s not your friend group. Maybe your friend group is amazing, but you feel like, my God, I can’t ask them that because then I’ll disrupt the status quo. So what?

Maybe in your love life, you’ve been in a situationship that you know you have to shrink in in order to belong, like I did. I was in this situationship where I knew that had I asserted my needs and set a boundary and been willing—had I been willing—to let it go if the boundary wasn’t met or the expectation wasn’t met of regular communication, like base-level shit, I knew that I would lose that relationship. So I defaulted to being the best friend character in my life in that relationship by sidelining my own needs in order to keep that relationship.

You know, being the best friend also means settling for good enough—good enough job, good enough friendships, good enough vacations, good enough dates, good enough situationship, good enough relationship. And you probably know deep down, because you’re listening to this episode, that you’re in a rut and that you don’t want a good enough life anymore. You want a great life. But how do you get there? That’s why you’re listening to this episode.

Okay. So that’s before building main character energy. That’s before building main character identity. Okay. So let’s just level set. You’re the main character of your story. This doesn’t mean that your needs are more important than everyone else’s in the world. It does mean that they’re just as important though. And it also means, as you are, the human listening to this, watching this, whatever, you’re the only one who can really meet your needs because you’re the only one who can acknowledge them and ask for them. Nobody’s a mind reader. You’re the only one who can get your needs met by building the right relationships, building the skill of self-advocacy, building the skill of self-permission, building the skill of self-trust.

Your needs—main characters know that their needs are just as important as other people’s and that they are in charge of getting their needs met. Main characters know that it’s okay to make mistakes—that’s gonna happen. It actually moves the plot forward. We think about Rory’s mistakes in Gilmore Girls. Now, there are some mistakes that we could do a different podcast about to talk about Rory’s mistakes—sleeping with Dean when he was married. Mistake. No thank you. No, no, no. Dean making the decision to sleep with Rory when he was married? No. No mistake. And making a mistake—even though, God, wouldn’t have chosen that, wouldn’t recommend it—I have not cheated, I have not slept with my high school boyfriend who was cheating on his wife, I’ve not done that, nor will I. And I’ve done things that I wouldn’t do again. I’ve made mistakes.

Main characters know that it’s a part of life that they’re going to make mistakes, and they move through it. Big feelings come up, they have a conversation, they get support. Hopefully they know that they’re human and that by making a mistake, they haven’t fucked up the show, you know what I’m saying? Now with Rory and Dean—arguable, arguable. There are schools of thought that, again, we’re not— that’s not this podcast. Lily, calm down. That’s not this podcast.

Main characters know that mistakes happen and that they have somebody in their life—and the show is like, mistakes happen and you don’t have to let this define you. Like, we move forward, right? Main characters know that when something goes wrong, they’re going to freak out—it’s a part of it. And they have a toolbox—or in the show or in the movie, they build a toolbox—to have their own back.

The movie is an arc. The show is an arc. They may not come in knowing how to have their own back, how to care for themselves, how to make different decisions next time, but main characters build that shit. Main characters are not afraid to celebrate themselves or brag on themselves. Again, that’s a skill that is built. Main characters can stand in what they’re proud of, what they are worthy of, and who they are.

They stand in what they’ve been able to create and who they are and like what— you know— like main characters own that shit. Main characters shoot their shot often. This is all play anyway. Main characters build up the courage to shoot their shot. It’s all play. This is all made up, right? There’s a writer’s room in Gilmore Girls writing the main character arcs, writing in everything. This is your life. You get to be in that writer’s room.

Main characters shoot their shot, period. Main characters do 10 seconds of courage. That’s literally all it takes to be the main character of your life and to do epic shit—10 seconds of courage. So I want to point out two examples of 10 seconds of courage that changed my life and then changed somebody else’s life.

In thinking about this episode and writing about main character energy in my book and my mastermind Main Character Life, I really sat down and journaled on—in my life and my clients’ lives—those who’ve done the most epic shit: asked for big raises, gotten incredible grants, tens of thousands of dollars in funding in one month because they were audacious enough to ask for it. Starting a new business, quitting a soul-sucking job and getting one on their own schedule, building a reciprocal core group of friends, setting boundaries with their mom or boss for the first time, shooting their shot with a cutie and starting an amazing romantic relationship because of that 10 seconds of courage.

These epic things—me starting my business, getting a book deal, meeting Chris, building our relationship—it’s all so reciprocal and joyful. How did that happen? I thought about the through line in all of this and identified that this is main character energy: permission, self-trust, and massive messy action.

To take massive messy action, break it down even further. What does that require? If we’re breaking it down to its simplest form, it only takes 10 seconds of courage. You might want to vomit on the front and back end of that 10 seconds. You might want to pass out. You might want to run away. But all it takes to do epic shit with main character energy is 10 seconds of courage.

Now, on the front end—permission, self-trust, of course—but for the messy action: 10 seconds of courage. So here’s an example of 10 seconds of courage from me and from someone who later learned the skill herself.

I was a matchmaker, burnt out, totally burnt out, at the end of my rope. I had seen online that Gilmore Girls Fan Fest was in its second year. I hadn’t gone yet and was desperate to go, but I didn’t think I had the money or time. I thought it was silly, like why would I do something just for my joy? I was like, I have to work, make more money, match more dates. That was the language we used: “get the dates out the door.”

My boss at the time—credit to her, such an encouraging person—saw how burnt out I was and stopped me. Sometimes main character energy requires intervention from people who care about you. She stopped me and said, “Lily, you’re not gonna make it like this. What’s going on?”

I told her I was exhausted, having dark thoughts, feeling hopeless. She said, “You need to do something that brings you joy this weekend. This is not a question. It’s a demand.” She was direct. “Do something that brings you joy now.”

I said, “Well, Gilmore Girls Fan Fest is this weekend, but it’s silly and weird.” She said, “Stop. Do it.” It took 10 seconds for her to interrupt my burnout pattern. It took 10 seconds for me to give myself permission—Gilmore Girls Fan Fest it is. Ten seconds to look up info, 10 seconds to check my bank account, 10 seconds to call the accommodation site. There was one bed left in a cabin of strangers. I took it.

I didn’t know how to get there, so I looked up the train schedule and got on the train full of joy. I went to Michael’s the night before and bought materials to make my costume. I made a T-shirt that said “I Love Jess.” I wasn’t familiar with iron-ons, so I did the E backwards. I made it into a heart. It was ridiculous, joyful, silly. My main character energy started blooming.

Joy is connective. I was living in my joy, doing my dream. My costume was from Lorelai’s “All Special, All Me Alone Place.” I dressed as the room she decorates—very meta, deep cut. Only true fans knew what I was.

On the train, I didn’t know how I’d get from the station to the campsite—no Uber in that small town. But I made friends with other attendees. We met a local antique dealer who gave us a ride. We texted our loved ones the license plate, but it was good vibes. We drove through autumnal paradise—joy, joy, joy. Main character energy is life changing.

I had the best weekend of my life because of 10 seconds of courage. The next year, I went again, felt confident, met up with friends. I sang karaoke—“I Will Always Love You” (Dolly Parton version). So fun.

Then, a woman came up to me shaking. She said, “I don’t know you, but I’ve always wanted to do karaoke and I’ve been too afraid. Will you go up there and do it with me?” I said, “It would be my honor.”

We went up together. She chose “Waving Through a Window.” I stood beside her as she stepped into center stage. I sang harmony. The crowd erupted. I saw 10 seconds of courage at work—doing it scared, saying “why not me?”

Take these examples and galvanize yourself. Have 10 examples of what you can do with 10 seconds of courage today to start stepping into main character identity. The main character believes, “Why not me? I’m worthy of being here.”

Give yourself permission to want what you want, trust that it’ll be okay, and take 10 seconds of courage.

Here are 10 examples of 10 seconds of courage you can do today. Pick one—or more—and do it. From the thought “Why not me?” comes joy, possibility, hope.

Self-care: stop working and go for a walk; notice 10 things that bring you awe; lay on the floor; do a self-compassion meditation.

Belonging: text a friend for support; text your therapist; or if you don’t have one, look one up on Psychology Today and book a consult.

Shooting your shot:

– Text that cutie and ask them out.

– Ask for clarity with the person you’re seeing.

– Take your friend up on that setup.

– Bless and release a situationship that isn’t right.

– DM someone to ask them to be friends or go on a date.

All it takes is 10 seconds of courage. Do it scared. You’ll be okay, especially if you practice self-compassion afterward.

You’re giving yourself permission to be the main character, imperfectly. You’re building self-trust by saying, “No matter what happens, I have my own back.”

Main character energy is about co-creating the right relationships, support, and epic action.

You’ve got this. Let me know what 10 seconds of courage you’re taking—DM me on Instagram @datebrazen.

And if you liked this episode, you’ll be obsessed with my mastermind Main Character Life, a six-month program where you’ll complete a life-changing main character project by releasing people-pleasing, building rock-solid self-trust, and becoming the main character of your whole life.

Members have built core friend groups, landed dream jobs, taken sabbaticals, quit soul-sucking work, and attracted the loves of their lives—all through main character energy.

Applications open during my live training Stop People-Pleasing and Build a Stupidly Joyful Life. You’ll learn how to apply main character energy to your life, stop being the best friend in everyone else’s story, and start taking up space.

Join the live training through the link in this episode description.

Go take a deep breath. Do something for your main character energy today. Write yourself a big permission slip. Ask yourself, “How supported can I stand to let myself be?” and “What might my main character energy be calling me into in this season?”

Talk to y’all next week.