You’ve been waiting to feel ready. Ready enough to launch the thing, shoot your shot, ask for the promotion you’ve been researching and figuring out the pitch for for months. Here’s the hot take: you’re stalling what you want because of the fear that you’re not enough for it.

The fear of failure, of judgement, of “not enoughness” has driven your car for long enough.

So in this episode, I get a little messy and share my HOTTEST takes on exactly how to build the belief- and actions- of enoughness. Through a winding road of Matrix analogies and The Holiday references, you’re going to realize in this episode that you are THE ONE.

The One who is the main character. Who can create the love, friendship, and work life that you desire.

In the words of Mary Oliver, “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?”

That’s what this episode is here to help you answer.

Get into it!

Work with Lily:

→ Join my free live training, Quit Being the Best Friend: https://datebrazen.com/best-friend 💎

→ Get the book, Thank You, More Please: https://datebrazen.com/book

→ Join the Main Character Dating waitlist: https://datebrazen.com/dating

→ Download my free Essence-Based Preferences Creation Guide: https://datebrazen.com/workbook

→ Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/datebrazen/

→ Follow me on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@datebrazen

→ Follow me on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DateBrazen

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Show transcript:

lily (00:00)
Hey, gorgeous friends. Welcome to another episode of the Feminist Dating Show. I am so excited because today I have some hot takes for you. Okay. I just got off a beautiful coaching session with a client where I heard something that I hear a lot, which is the conversation, the question, the wrestling with: Am I enough? Am I interesting enough for a conversation with someone I like on a dating app? Am I

Smart enough to or capable enough to start the business that I have been dreaming about for years and that has been a dream in a drawer for years. Am I interesting enough, witty enough, fun enough for the friend group of my dreams? Am I am I not too much for the kind of people that I want to be in relationship with? Like I see so many people.

Holding back from friendships, not sharing as much as they want to, not asking for as much support as they want to, like really leaning on their hyperindependence because ultimately the underlying fear is am I enough? Am I too much? and is what I want even possible? Okay, that’s what I hear underlying every coaching question, every coaching session.

And it’s why I am so fired up to talk to you today about main character energy, your main character energy, and deciding the process of deciding that you are enough. Okay. So let’s get into it.

lily (02:16)
Okay, so I am about to reopen my mastermind. It’s called now called main character era. And inside, burnt out, people pleasing feminists build rock solid self trust, learn how to give way fewer fucks and start getting what they want in friendship, love, and work. Inside this program, you’re gonna complete 100 audacious self serving dares in just 100 days so that you can become the main character and get what you want in friendship, love, and work.

Work. Okay. The results from this mastermind have been incredible. You’ll hear about them over the next few weeks. The doors open on September 15th at my live free training called Quit Being the Best Friend, How to Shoot Your Shot Unapologetically in Friendship, Love and Work Without Overthinking or Anxiety. You’re gonna want to be there if you found yourself minimizing yourself in friendships, minimizing yourself in your love life, minimizing yourself at work that looks like you know, caretaking.

In order to belong. So, like picking up the slack at work for everybody so that you feel like you belong and that you’re enough. It looks like in friendship, always being the listener, always being the supporter, but never feeling comfortable enough to ask for support, to share what’s going on in your life. maybe your relationships feel one sided in that way because of the fear of like, if I’m not caretaking or if I’m not giving, then what is my value?

And then in love, it looks like going on dates that you know aren’t right for you because you are afraid to hurt their feelings. It looks like not dating at all because of fear, not flirting at all because of fear, because you have the fear, I’m not enough, I can’t do it, I don’t know how to do it. And so you just don’t try. you are, in essence, demoting yourself to the best friend role when I am here to help you step into your main character era, your main character season, where you

Express yourself, heal your hyperindependence, and get more from your friendships than you thought possible. Where you start to flirt unapologetically, IRL, even if you never have before, even if you felt like a late bloomer, where you start to emerge from your comfort zone cocoon and start to date with joy and flirtiness and confidence. Where in your work life you launch the thing with confidence, a dream that’s been in a drawer where you

Ask for the thing. Ask for the promotion that you’ve been researching and figuring out the pitch for for months that you haven’t moved on, right? This is about really releasing the reliance on delaying what you want to be safe. You are stalling what you want because of the fear that you’re not enough for it. You’re stalling what you want because of the fear that it’s not possible. And that’s what the skill set of main character energy for you is going to interrupt. And that’s what I’m going to teach you how to do in this live-free training.

Get your ass to the link in the description of this episode. It’s datebraisin.com slash best dash friend. and I’m gonna teach you how to quit being the best friend and step into your main character era on September 15th. Okay, so I want you to be there live. Last night, here’s what we’re gonna talk about today. Last night, Chris and I are watching Below Deck Mediterranean, okay? One of my favorite series. If you are a below deck fan.

DMA. Let’s discuss. Unless up on the regular Belowdeck franchise, though I have loved Fraser, I digress, but I love below deck med. Captain Sandy is my queen. I love her. I love Acia. I’m obsessed with Belowdeck Med. Okay, we’re having a good time. I think we’re gonna put on Reacher. Okay, I think we’re gonna put on Reacher as the second act. But instead

Chris puts on the matrix again. Okay. You stay with me. Chris puts on the matrix again. I am doodling on my phone. I’m playing my game called Township. I am a a a very devoted township player. It’s ridiculous. And so fun. and I’m also like posting on Instagram. I’m doing an ask me anything. I’m on my phone. I don’t care. Whatever. You put on the matrix again.

Chris doesn’t usually like to rewatch things. So, and I’m usually the rewatch queen. Like I’m putting on The Office all the time. rewatching it for the 50th time, putting on the Gilmore girls, not the Gilmore Girls. That was the old title, Lily, Gilmore Girls, for the 50th time. But Chris doesn’t re-watch things. So I’m kinda like, what what’s going on? You put on the Matrix. And I only start paying attention about halfway through. If you don’t know the Matrix, that’s fine. Don’t watch it. It’s fine if you don’t watch it. I

It’s it’s not my favorite, but I do love a sci-fi and some and halfway through I got involved. This is why I want to talk to you. I’m trying to if if you can’t tell, I’m trying to practice being messier on the podcast because to peek behind the curtain, I was stalling, I had gotten in the habit of like stalling recording because I thought I had to be perfect and the episodes had to be perfect. And you know what? It was leading to me not getting what I want.

Because I was stuck in perfectionism. And what I needed was to lean on my own skill set that I created, that I came up with the process forming character energy, permission, permission for the episode to be what it is, and permission to talk, self-trust, trusting myself that I’m okay and safe no matter what. And I can trust the words that come out of my mouth because I can trust that I know my shit. And then, third, massive, messy action, here we are. And then I’m c going to create the result of.

Hopefully

connecting with one person who resonates with this episode being silly and messy and also hopefully full of takeaways that you can implement into your life right now. So just peek behind the curtain. I hope you’re enjoying this new messy approach. Back to the Matrix. So I’m I’m glued in when Neo is in outside of the Matrix. He’s unplugged. And he’s the main character, Keanu Reeves, and he goes to the Oracle. Okay.

The Oracle is an all-knowing being, person, woman, who, you know, Keanu is going to to see if he is indeed the one. Okay. the person who’s gonna rescue, you know, humankind from the robots. And Neo is like, I’m not the one, I’m not the one, I’m not the one, I’m not the one. And the Oracle is.

Standing in front of him, takes his hands, looks at his hands, and is like, hey, you’re, you know, the one knows that they’re the one. And so I guess you’re not the one. You’re not it. And Neo leaves and he’s like, Wow, I guess I’m not the one. And then later on in the movie, he realizes through rescuing Morpheus? Look at me remembering the names.

That he is the one, that he is the person. And that the phrase that you need to go back to in the Oracle conversation is this: the one has to know that they’re the one, aka the one has to decide that they are the one to be the one. Okay? There has to be an agency-filled choice in knowing that you are the one. Okay?

I am not saying that any one of us are the savior of humanity. Please do not hear me saying that. Okay. But what I am saying that really has struck me today,

is that at a certain level, you need to decide that you are enough.

And I know easier said than done, but go with me here. What if there is always going to be doubt for yourself in whether or not you’re enough? What if that’s just something that you’re gonna live with? And what if that’s something that you just don’t have to believe as tightly, as hard? What if you got to decide, aka Neo from the Matrix, that you were the one and that’s the only thing separating you from the experience of?

Enoughness and the experience then of utilizing your enoughness to start getting what you want. Using this podcast as an example, just really peeling back the curtain, being vulnerable as hell. Y’all know if you’ve listened to this podcast, that I have struggled with anxiety, I’ve struggled with people pleasing, I’ve struggled with so many goddamn things in my brain,

Okay. I have hard ass moments of anxiety. And I work with my therapist on it. I work with a coach on it. I work with people on like feeling less anxious. And in the past, I have thought that my anxiety disqualifies me, makes me not enough, because it is, it can be so terrifying.

To have some of these thoughts in my brain that are anxiously ruminating and overthinking, and like it believing those thoughts and believing that my human brain disqualifies me from enoughness was keeping me so stuck. For example, I was anxious about this podcast. I was like, I don’t know what to say. I’ve had 270-something episodes over six years. What else do I have to say? my God, do I have any other ideas or thoughts out of my brain?

And that anxious story was just rumbling around. Okay. Leading me to not to to really not believing that I was enough, my brain was enough, my thoughts were enough, leading me to not connect with you as I wanted to. Just being really vulnerable. What if, and this is where I’m I am now, because this is the human experience of like, shit, I just was having a lot of anxious human thoughts and feelings and.

rumination and and how human of me. I have permission to be human and to run a business and have a podcast. I have permission to approach this from a place of humanity instead of perfection. Huh, interesting. Self-trust. Lily, I’m speaking to myself. You know how to do this. You you’ve done hard things before. You can do hard things again. And by the way, if it flops, you’ll be safe.

You will literally be say self-trust ultimately when you don’t have self-trust, it’s the fear that it is unsafe to choose yourself and to listen to yourself, that it is unsafe that it leads you has led you down the wrong path before, or that you’ve been with the wrong people before in your love life, or you’ve trusted yourself in the wrong friendships or the wrong job situation, or like you trusted yourself in that meeting and then it didn’t go well. And then how could I fucking trust myself if it hasn’t gone well? Things not going well is also a part of the human experience.

It does not mean that you are disqualified from the experience and the choice of self-trust moving forward. Just because I’ve had a flop episode or a flop season in whatever way.

Does

not mean that I cannot practice self-trust today. Does not mean like I’m not gonna use and I do not want you to use your past as a weapon against your present and future self-trust. Self-trust is a choice. It is saying, I will be safe and when I trust myself, I’m doing the right thing. And god damn it, I’m gonna get on this mic and yap with my friends who listen to this podcast about the experience of becoming the one for yourself. Okay.

Then massive, messy action. I’m talking about my own anxiety and how in the past that rumination has really stopped me from doing big things. With permission and self-trust, I then have the ability, even if I want to vomit, to take massive, messy action. Messy is the key phrase there because all of this shit is made up. If we like the matrix continues to work in this episode, literally.

It’s all made up. Every rule, every like like every moment of self-doubt, every person that rejected you and because you were too much and then you thought you were too much, too much is made up. What is too much? You have a pitcher of water and they had a cup. They couldn’t handle you.

My high school boyfriend breaking up with me because I was, quote, too much. I had a pitcher of water, he had a little cup. Fine, your capacity is your capacity. Too much is made up. It’s all made up. And so in the spirit of it’s all made up, release your butthole around, I can’t do that. That’s too much. That’s too scary. Massive, messy action. It only works though if you’re backing it up.

With permission and self-trust. Otherwise, massive, messy action is gonna be way too scary and feel unsafe. Right? And you also can’t do epic shit with just permission and self-trust. You have to have the action, the massive, messy action. It’s sort of like you can’t just run a marathon with your head cut off from the rest of your body. You need your body, either your arms or your legs or both, and your head working together as a unit.

To run that marathon. Yeah? So permission, self-trust, massive, messy action, deciding that you’re the one in the matrix. It is, here’s a thought that I want you to rumble with. It is harder to deny the path and the outcome that you want if you are in motion toward it.

It is harder to deny your power if you are already in motion. It is easy to say that what you want isn’t possible if you’re not trying, if you’re not in motion toward it with massive, messy action. Let me give you an example from another movie, The Holiday. Okay. This is, I would be lying if I said this didn’t inspire the name of main character era. You know, that moment in the holiday where Kate Winslett is at lunch with.

Don’t remember his name, and he’s saying, You are fabulous, Kate Woodslot. You are the main character, but you’re acting like the best friend.

So backing up in the movie, Kate Winslit is depressed, feeling very sad and lonely, I would imagine, in her Cotswold’s cottage. She is it living in her humdrum life, rinse, repeat, going to work, pining after this man that she loves who does not love her back, coming back home, rinse, repeat, hum drum. Okay. It was very hard.

If I would have gone back, gone to that moment and said, Hey, you’re the main character, it would have been very hard for her to like absorb that. It would be easy for her to deny that she was on a path toward what she wanted. It would be easy for her to deny that because she wasn’t yet in motion. Okay. What created the motion toward her main character energy, toward her getting what she wanted, was the permission to look up a vacation online. The self-trust.

That she was gonna reach out to this stranger online and like shoot her shot to trade houses and that she was gonna be okay no matter what. Like she’d take care of herself. Trust, self-trust. Massive, messy action, booking a flight, doing the thing. She then, when she got on that flight, set in motion what she wanted. Motion creates inevitability. I’m gonna repeat that. I think it’s important. Motion creates inevitability.

Motion is how you give yourself permission, how you practice self-trust, and then how you take massive, messy action, rinse, repeat. Motion creates an inevitability. So if you’re listening to this and you have struggled with I’m not enough, I’m not enough for the dreams that I have, for the friendships that I want, for the love life that I want, for the job that I want, for the fill in the blank that I want, I’m not enough. Or maybe you’re having the thought like I’m too much, which is a a similar flavor, a di similar flavor.

same ice cream or whatever. Like not enough and too much, one and the same. You’re judging what you want because you’re not yet in motion toward it. Or maybe you’ve been trying motion through a perfectionistic lens. You’ve been trying to get everything right and it’s not working because you’re not having the process of permission, self-trust, and massive messy action, rinse, repeat. You don’t have the maybe you don’t have the resilience yet.

With the skills of permission and self-trust to continue messy action. That is what creates motion toward what you want. And what I’ve seen is that this rinse-repeat process has not only freed me from the bowels of perfectionism, people pleasing, self-doubt, anxious rumination, it allows me to be human and to get epic shit done in my business.

That

this skill set is the only reason that I have this gorgeous business and that I get to serve these amazing humans today. it’s the only this skill set is the reason that I not only was able to attract the love of my life, but receive this immense amount of love that I had never received before and exist within this relationship without sabotaging it, right? Because I I do think that the, you know, I think about the upper limit.

Here I go on another tangent. Okay, so there’s this book called The Big Leap. And in the Big Leap, you know, Gay Hendricks, the author, talks about the zone of genius and and that most of us are living within our zone of competence, which is like you’re competent at something and you keep doing it, but it’s not in your zone of genius. there’s also the zone of excellence, which is like I’m very good at this, but it’s not what I feel.

That I’m called to do, or I feel that I’m called to be, or in the world’s zone of genius is like you are living in your truth. You’re living in your main character energy. You are permission, self-trusting, massive, messy action, rinse, repeat. And the idea of that Gay Hendricks puts forward in this book is the the idea of the upper limit problem, which I think is very common. It is the idea that we all have a ceiling to the amount of love, success.

And abundance that we allow ourselves to access. Why? Because feeling good, if we are taught socialized to worry about other people, to caretake in order to belong, if we’re socialized to hyper-vigilantly scan every single room that we go in to make sure that people like us or that we’re okay or whatever, then we do have a cap on how we’re allowing ourselves to feel good. Because feeling good.

Is vulnerable and human beings without awareness want to ward against vulnerability because we don’t want to expose our soft underbelly. We want to be safe, right? So, of course, we all have this upper limit problem, which is like, you know, for me in my relationship with Chris, there are moments where I catch myself like picking a fight over nothing because I have this old programming that says like.

yep, there must be something wrong. Scan for it. there’s this tiny little thing that you could pick a fight over that’s not perfect right now. It’s like, no, no, no, no, no. Everything is fine. I was just used to connecting with conflict, or I was just used to sort of dragging myself down into a worry zone because feeling good and receiving love is incredibly vulnerable. In your work life, you might have this, right? Like for you know, our bodies, Gay Hendrix talks about our bodies, you know, subconsciously want to drag us down.

From feeling good into back into the worry state, back into the suffering state. And look, sometimes suffering, suffering is normal. I’m not saying that you’re choosing to suffer if you’re in a hard moment. I’m just saying, like, ooh, we can choose to continue to be worried, stuck, miserable if we are not aware of it. In your work life, this might look like you have a huge presentation tomorrow.

And you suddenly feel like totally sick. I know that I’ve had this. Like, for example, I got to be on Tamarin Hall twice. Every time before I go on Tamarin Hall, I have the thought, I don’t wanna do this. I feel sick. And my body, I have a very strong mind-body connection because my body follows suit. It’s like, well, yeah, you’re sick. Maybe you have a tickle in your throat. Maybe it’s, my God, it’s so dry, something must be wrong. I am hypervigilantly scanning for what’s going wrong.

Because of the immense fear of being seen, of receiving what I want, which is sharing this work with more people, visibility, connection. I love being on TV. I love being on live TV. The fear is strong of getting what I want. And so my body is subconsciously trying to drag me from my zone of genius back into back into a safe zone. And so what do I do in that moment before Tamarin Hall?

I’m gonna say permission, Lily. You have permission to be nervous. You have permission to want to vomit. You have permission to be unsure of how this is gonna go. You have permission to be human right now. Self-trust. When I trust myself, I’m doing the right thing. I trust that if I was really sick, which if I had a fever, that I would handle it and tell people and th and I would handle it, but that I trust that if I tune in with my body, I actually am okay. I’m just really, really nervous. And I trust that.

I’m gonna be okay no matter what. Massive, messy action. I’m gonna go to bed. I’m going to wake up and I’m going to go on Tamarin Hall and do my best. Massive messy action. It leads me to ascending my upper limit problem and doing the thing that I feel enlivened to do that brings me toward my main character energy. For you, that might look like self-sabotage before a big presentation at work. That might look like,

Self-sabotage before a date. For some people, that might look like getting a match that they’re really excited about and throwing their phone across the room and not responding. Right? It’s this idea of the upper limit has got you if you’re not paying attention to it and using the main character energy framework that I’ve outlined to overcome it so that you can access more love, connection, joy than you thought possible. In business, building a business, we every mastermind that I run of main character era.

What’s called main character energy, then main character life, now main character era. Okay. So every mastermind, there’s about, I’d say 25 to 35% of the folks that join us have a dream on their heart to launch something, whether it’s a creative project or you know, a business. And we use the main character energy framework in the hundred dayers to help them launch the thing, get their first paying clients.

finally present their creative work at an open mic or at a poetry conference like and and I would say maybe maybe twenty-five to thirty percent more people in the program want to ask for a promotion, get a better job, build a new core group of friends, build start shooting their shot in their love life more and then the remaining percentage

May not know what they want to work on before they come in the mastermind, but they know that they’re not living in their zone of genius. They know that they’re not living in their main character energy and that their life is fine, but they want more than just fine. So they come in the main character era and we help them to identify what they want with the audacious vision map that I have in module one and that we talk about in our first month. And we start dares on day one that we help craft based on your audacious vision map. So it’s a it’s a

Really holistic process where you will start going after what you want every single day, every single dare with our rinse repeat main character energy framework and with the Hundred Dares project. and and so starting a business like using main character energy is the only reason that I’ve been able to grow this business the way I have. It is scary as fuck to to get online and share shit. I’ve been doing it for almost 10 years. It’s still scary sometimes. Main character energy.

Is what, coming back to the Matrix, allows you to be the one for yourself. Even if you never have before, even if you’ve never shot your shot before, even if you’ve never been in a friendship that felt reciprocal before, even if you’ve always played a background character at work and you now you wanna be more front of house. Main character energy is how you will do that. And for Kate Winslett, that motion for her in the holiday.

Created inevitability for her to create this dreamy fucking life, to meet a dreamy person, to start building dreamy friendships with people that she met. More pleasure is on the other side of your main character energy, more connection, more bravery. It’s the it’s the ultimate unsticking force. And the first step, coming back to the Matrix, to end to cap off this wild riot of an episode about your main character energy.

Is that the idea of deciding that you’re the one. Who cares? It’s all made up. Deciding that you are enough and that you are going to give yourself permission to be enough, that you’re gonna start practicing self-trust that you are enough moment by moment, step by step, that you are going to take massive, messy action, small step by small step, with the permission and self-trust that enoughness is inside of you already. That you are the one for yourself.

And that more is possible than you currently realize. As Mary Oliver said, this is our one wild, what will you do with your one wild and precious life? This is your invitation to start stepping into your main character energy. And I hope you’ll join me at my next live free training called Quip Being the Best Friend: How to Unapologetically Shoot Your Shot in Love, Friendship, and Work Without Overthinking and Anxiety. On that live training, Doors to Main Character Era open for the first and only time this year.

You will be invited to fill out a 10-minute application. The questions on that application alone will increase your main character energy. And then if it’s the right fit, you’ll be sent a link to claim one of our limited spots. It’s a small group. We go deep together and we start at the end of September 2026. or you will be able to schedule an hour-long sales call with me where I’m gonna ask you a bajillion questions to identify where you’re stuck, where you wanna go, and whether or not main character era is right for you.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. I’m so grateful to be your coach in this moment, your audacity coach. And I am pumped to see you on September 15th. Talk to y’all soon. Bye.