211. Why you need to brag more to find love (and how to do it)
Hot-take: Bragging is key to attracting more in your dating life. That’s right! We’re diving into Lily's favorite chapter from her book, Thank You More Please: A Feminist Guide to Breaking Dumb Dating Rules and Finding Love. It's all about the Brazen Bragging Revolution! 🚀
Lily breaks down why bragging isn’t just a power move but the key to attracting more fulfilling relationships. She gets real about her journey, tackles the societal BS that holds us back and gives you the ultimate guide to celebrating your awesomeness. Plus, there’s exclusive bonus content waiting for you if you snag her book from her website.
You’ll learn:
Why hiding your full awesomeness leads to uninspiring dates
Why it feels weird to brag and how to get over it
How to choose your bragging support and community wisely
Mastering the art of brazen bragging
Real-life examples of what you can start bragging about today
Links:
Lily’s book: Thank You, More Please
Show transcript:
[00:00:00] Lily: Hey, gorgeous friends. Welcome to another episode of the Date Brazen podcast. I am so excited to hop on the mic and bring you this episode because I'm going to read chapter three of my new book, Thank You More Please, A Feminist Guide to Breaking Dumb Dating Rules and Finding Love. And if you haven't picked up your copy yet, this is going to be a sneak peek.
[00:00:22] There's going to be stories in this short chapter that you haven't heard me say anywhere else, like definitely Like, lifting up the, the curtain and showing you the behind the scenes of my whole love story from being a late bloomer to, uh, landing in situationships to meeting the love of my life. And I'm just really excited to share this episode with you.
[00:00:45] I know that I, you know, you shouldn't have favorite children. I shouldn't have a favorite chapter, but this is my favorite chapter. It is my favorite because people. Look at me like I am not okay when I tell them that [00:01:00] bragging is key to attracting more in your dating life. And I love this chapter because it sort of gives you the permission to take up more space.
[00:01:11] Not just sort of, it does. And it also kind of,
[00:01:24] I'm going to read this chapter to you. I'm also going to share the messy homework that I included at the end. And if you like this chapter, then you're going to fucking love Thank You, More Please, my book. I read the whole audio book, and it is also iconic and wonderful, so you can get that on Audible or Amazon, wherever you get audio books.
[00:01:43] And you can pick up a hardcover copy anywhere you get books, um, you can get an ebook. And I did want to let you know that I have an extra extra special bonus for anyone that buys More Please at datebrazen. com slash book. It is my exclusive [00:02:00] podcast listening guide. So in it, I've outlined the top 10 dating issues that you are facing and exactly which date brazen podcast episodes to listen to, to fix your problem within like five to 10 minutes.
[00:02:12] I've outlined like three episodes per problem, giving you an explanation on each, why it's going to help you. And, uh, and it is. It's totally free when you buy the book and enter your receipt details in datebrazen. com slash book. I know I have like over 200 episodes of the podcast now and sometimes you just want, if you're struggling with something like late bloomer anxiety or you were just ghosted or you just had a breakup or things are going well in your new relationship and you're kind of freaking out.
[00:02:43] I have the podcast episodes that you need to listen to to really create more peace and calm in your nervous system to then. Take epic action. And I give epic action and strategy in those episodes as well. So you're going to love that podcast listening guide [00:03:00] and you're definitely going to love. Thank you more, please.
[00:03:02] Let's get into chapter three, the brazen bragging revolution.
[00:03:13] Hey, I'm Lily Womble, former top matchmaker and founder of Date Brazen. After setting up hundreds, I realized that with coaching women could match themselves better than anyone else ever could. With my unconventional feminist approach, I've helped women around the world build courageous and self trust filled love lives.
[00:03:28] And now I'm here to support you get ready because I'm about to show the exact steps you need to attract a soul quenching partnership and feel amazing about yourself along the way. This is the Date Brazen podcast. Okay, let's get into it. You may have been taught that bragging was bad. It meant that you were cocky and full of yourself.
[00:03:46] It meant that you were no different from those sleazy finance bros sucking up all the air out of the room with their talk of returns on their stock portfolio last year. Nobody cares, Dan! Bro bragging is air sucking [00:04:00] nonsense designed to make the bragger feel big and others feel small. It's a symptom of the hierarchical capitalistic patriarchy in which we know our worth by how much is in our bank accounts.
[00:04:11] It's bullshit and it's absolutely not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is brazen bragging, which combats a very real problem. We, as women, were not taught how to center ourselves, our needs, our desires, and our pleasure, especially in our love lives. This is because of the myriad oppressive forces socializing you to play small, ask for less, shrink your needs, and be less intimidating to be more appealing.
[00:04:38] And it's also bullshit. It's like that moment in my favorite rom com, The Holiday. The glowing cashmere drenched Cameron Diaz has just hooked up with the stunning stubble sporting Jude Law in the sexiest one night stand. And then they start dating, even though she is only in England for one more week gasp.
[00:04:57] On one of these dates, Cameron basically says, I know [00:05:00] I told you I work for a company, but I'm really the founder and CEO. I didn't share because that intimidates some guys. Cameron's character had learned, probably through a lot of shitty dating situations, to hide her achievements, her job, and her brags because doing so was the price of romantic connection with men.
[00:05:17] This kind of learned safety mechanism is not serving her, nor is it serving you. Hiding your full awesomeness is a one way ticket to unfulfilling dates and uninspiring relationships. I don't want you to hide your accomplishments, your badassery, your growth, your progress, your, your ambition for any one, any longer.
[00:05:36] Bragging is the key to not only enjoying a joyful dating life, but also to attracting the person who is uniquely qualified for you. Brazen bragging is super uncomfortable for most and life changing for all who try it. Why? When you shift the focus of your dating life from do they like me to here's exactly why I love myself and here's exactly why I'm awesome.
[00:05:59] Dating becomes [00:06:00] an act of self love and self care. Brazen bragging is revolutionary. It's learning to take up your space. It's knowing what you bring to the table and being able to proudly talk about it. This kind of bragging magnetizes the right people to you and repels the rest. Before we get into how, um, Let's talk about why you might've wanted to throw this book across the room when I said you should start bragging.
[00:06:24] Growing up in the South, I dared not brag about myself. I heard messages such as, don't brag, it's unladylike, it's arrogant, or talking about your accomplishments is intimidating and pushes people away. Talking about my accomplishments felt like a secret for only inside my home. My parents were super celebratory of me and my brother as kids.
[00:06:43] They made me a participation medal for my first grade ballet recital. I'm a classic millennial. But around me at school, at my friends homes, and at church, it was a different story. I never saw women celebrating their accomplishments. In these spaces, feminism was also a dirty word, [00:07:00] definitely not a coincidence.
[00:07:01] The only acknowledgement I saw women receive was at their wedding. The only moment a woman could brag about was when she decided to chain herself, I mean get engaged to a cisgender heterosexual man. In the words of Bianca Del Rio, not today, Satan. My hesitance to brag completely broke during my sophomore year of college.
[00:07:19] I went to school in Mississippi and chose to be in a sorority. This was a very out of character move for me, but I was desperate for friendship in a sea of strangers. I got chosen by one, joined and fell in line with its rules and structures. There were some good times, like laughing with the seniors who took me under their wing and making formals.
[00:07:40] Did I mention I didn't yet know I was bisexual? The writing was on the wall with that one. There was a super secret hundred year old ceremony. No, we did not drink any blood or perform a ritual sacrifice, which was called candlelight. Well the sorority standards council get mad at me for writing this in my book.
[00:07:56] Come at me. Here's how it went down. You would be called [00:08:00] into the sorority house for an urgent meeting. The lights would go off. The room would fall into a knowing, excited hush. Everyone would stand in a circle and the president would light a candle. The number of times that candle went around the circle without being blown out would signify what we were celebrating.
[00:08:15] You ready for a blast from the past? One circle around would mean a man in a fraternity had pinned you. He would give you his frat pin as a promise ring type thing. God bless. Two times around the circle would signify that someone had gotten engaged. Then that person would blow out the candle, the room would erupt into piercing screams of joy, and her sisters would run to her feet and ask, how did it happen?
[00:08:38] She would then gleefully take out her engagement ring and tell the whole story. The first time this happened was my freshman year, and I was right in the middle of the pack, cheering and begging for the story alongside my sisters. The third time it happened, I was more tentative, watching it unfold from the back of the seated pack.
[00:08:55] The fifth time I did not sit, I put on my most appropriately supportive [00:09:00] face and stood back, taking the role of anthropologist. It was an odd experience. I watched the screaming with joy, the rushing to her feet, the tell us the story, and found myself growing angry, not because the engagement happened, Not because I was jealous of these relationships.
[00:09:17] To be honest, I did not find any of the men at my college appealing. I was noticing that this moment was the most excited our group ever was. It was the most celebration a woman in our sorority ever received. That struck me as odd. Wrong even. It also was gross to me that the moment we most celebrated in this body of badass women was the moment they got engaged.
[00:09:41] Sure, there were some snaps for other kinds of celebrations, but not in this same full body gleeful giant way. Here's my very much not an expert anthropological breakdown of the piercing screams of joy in response to candlelight. Number one, romantic love is fun. Celebrating romantic love can be [00:10:00] fun.
[00:10:00] Number two, as a room of just out of high school babies, it was fun being more adult. And what is more adult than deciding to marry someone? Number three, and the big one, as a woman in the South, especially getting married to a cisgender straight man makes you more valuable to society. And in some cases more valuable to your family, whether consciously or unconsciously, this group of women.
[00:10:24] Me included knew that this intense focus on the heteronormative performance of romantic love as a marker for your worth as a woman is also why it took me years to realize I was officially not straight and to come out as bisexual. Growing up, I had crushes on other girls, but I felt paralyzed from acting on them.
[00:10:42] Looking around, there weren't many, if any examples who were fluid in their sexuality. I was also raised in Alabama in the 1990s and early 2000s, where if anyone at my school caught a whiff of another student having interest in the same sex, ostracization would occur. I saw it happen again and again, and [00:11:00] after so much rejection from my male crushes, I doubted my own attraction to other people, especially women.
[00:11:06] It took me decades to realize that most women around me were also queer. The heteronormative socialization and internalized homophobia I experienced were real. It took a really intense crush on a woman in my acting class when I first moved to New York to allow my brain to catch up to what my heart had known for a long time.
[00:11:24] I came out as bisexual to my parents and friends shortly before I met Chris, my now husband. Now back to the Mississippi sorority. There were so many women in the room I looked up to. Beyond getting engaged, they were doing badass things in their careers, their majors, and our community. They were landing amazing internships and jobs and getting clarity on what they wanted to do with their lives.
[00:11:46] I wanted to cheer and run to their feet and ask them to tell me the story of how they landed that internship at the Met. I was also aware that 100 years prior, when this candlelight tradition was born, a woman didn't have many options outside of marriage. [00:12:00] I was hungry for a single man. Symbolic and tangible shift in how we celebrated ourselves and one another, one that reflected my view of what 21st century womanhood meant.
[00:12:09] So after the fifth candlelight in four months, I decided to take my frustration and spearhead a solution. I started an informal campaign to start a new tradition, to supplement candlelight with other types of celebration for career and life wins. I started with my closest friends in the sorority, telling them my idea.
[00:12:27] They seemed tentatively supportive. So I took that as a sign to keep going. I became Norma Ray in the cafeteria, sharing this idea with older members of the sorority and gaining traction and support, or so I thought. My pitch was something like, there are so many women doing incredible things inside this group.
[00:12:46] Why don't we start a new tradition to celebrate them like we do at Candlelight? I know that women, especially in the South, have trouble celebrating themselves. So I can go first. Then I know five other women who are doing amazing things. And I want to celebrate looking [00:13:00] back, I realized that offering to celebrate myself at all was a big mistake in my bid to get a new tradition started at this hundred year old organization in Mississippi for context, my life had just changed drastically.
[00:13:14] I landed a huge opportunity to go and blog for an international women's rights conference in Istanbul, Turkey, and God damn it. I wanted to celebrate. This would later be used against me by the powers inside of that sorority. How dare a woman want to celebrate herself? Everything must be for others. I was in my car on the way to the airport to go to Istanbul when I got the call from the president of my sorority.
[00:13:38] Can you talk? She said in a syrupy sweet voice. Sure. What's up? I responded naively. Some people from the chapter have been telling me that you want to start a new candlelight tradition to celebrate career wins. Lily, that will never happen. This is a 100 year old organization and this tradition will never change.
[00:13:59] Did you know that [00:14:00] marriage is a sacrament in my religion? Obviously career wins are nowhere near as important as choosing to marry someone. Also did you ever think about how your idea would hurt the women who were engaged and who had had a candlelight ceremony? By the way, you know, some people thought you were self aggrandizing by wanting to celebrate yourself.
[00:14:22] You should really stop talking about this new idea because it's never going to happen. I was in complete shock. I wish I could tell you that I said, okay, well fuck you and that sorority, I quit, but I didn't. Instead, my people pleasing survival skills kicked in. The friends I thought I'd made inside my sorority, whom I'd shared my idea with, flashed before my eyes.
[00:14:46] I cried and apologized for hurting anyone's feelings. I felt utterly alone and filled with shame. Falling into the people pleasing trap. On the plane to Istanbul, I punished myself for being [00:15:00] so bold, thinking about every person and every friend who might have been talking behind my back about what a self aggrandizing, read bad, woman I was.
[00:15:09] This people pleasing trap had kept me stuck for decades. It was a survival skill I was good at putting on, like a really starchy, stiff Easter dress that would impress the old women at my church. I had seen every single woman in my family. Play the people pleasing game so well. And when one stepped a toe out of that people pleasing line, she got a slap on the wrist from older male and sometimes female family members.
[00:15:34] This legacy of being accommodating and pleasing had seeped into every pore of my skin. But I could feel a big change brewing after the shock of that conversation were off on the plane. On my way to this conference, I asked myself, why had I bowed to the whims of the sorority president who I didn't even respect or like the answer came quickly because I deeply desired belonging.
[00:15:58] Even though that group [00:16:00] was not in alignment with my personal values, I was willing to trade my comfort for a seat at the lunch table. When I arrived in Istanbul, I immediately met Egyptian women who were protesting for their basic human rights, survivors of sexual assault, and children who took to stages and demanded change for their home countries.
[00:16:19] I interviewed as many women as I could and put their stories into my imperfect and earnest blog posts. I got to witness intersectional feminism in action, and it was life changing. One evening, I was journaling about these two wildly different realities I was living. I felt like a Southern version of Hannah Montana.
[00:16:37] The brunette everyday wig was for this weird universe in Mississippi where I'd just been slapped on the wrist for trying to start a new tradition to celebrate women outside of marriage. The blonde superstar wig was me watching the most powerful women I'd met in my whole life demand action and change from male dominated oppressive forces, literally risking their lives to do so.[00:17:00]
[00:17:00] I saw how much bigger the world was than the people who wanted women to play small. I was seeing in real time how taking up space as a woman was life changing and in so many cases, life saving. Now, I'm not saying that bragging about yourself is equivalent to fighting for human rights. What I am saying is that the way we do one thing is the way we do everything.
[00:17:21] I was learning that our ability to understand Own what makes us awesome and courageous and then encouraging other women to do the same is a reciprocal force that generates the deepest belonging, the most joyful relationships and the most profound change with ourselves and others. I quit the sorority two months after this incident.
[00:17:40] What I learned in just two years inside is how much our society abhors publicly celebrating women succeeding outside of established norms, i. e. the ladder of life achievement, engagement, marriage, babies, rinse, repeat. We need a bragging revolution. How to brazenly brag. This Mississippi [00:18:00] sorority moment was the birthplace of my brazen bragging manifesto.
[00:18:03] It's time for you to create your own massive celebration. Your ability to know and claim how amazing you are will have a direct impact on how you live your best freaking life possible and how you attract the best relationship of your life. Knowing exactly what you bring to the table in relationships with yourself and others is what makes you uniquely qualified and more likely to attract the best friendships, jobs, and romantic relationships.
[00:18:28] Giving yourself permission to brag about yourself will change everything about your love life. It will also mean quitting any sororities, relationships, and soul sucking structures that don't champion the people inside of them. It will also call you to invite the people you love to brag about themselves.
[00:18:46] Brazen bragging doesn't suck the air out of the room. It adds breath and life to the right conversations and connections. Okay, now I'm going to skip ahead a little bit to get to the messy homework to get you going. Some friends and [00:19:00] family might not be ready to brag about themselves and they might not be ready to receive your brag or celebration.
[00:19:06] We've all been programmed in this matrix ass reality to take up less space, celebrate marriage and babies above all else, and stop bragging because it's unladylike. So there will be weird moments as you navigate unlearning this bullshit for yourself and invite others around you to do the same. Choose your community with care and only share with folks you feel safe with.
[00:19:26] You deserve support and belonging with the right people. As you celebrate yourself growing bigger and bigger, bragging can be the ultimate disqualifier of the wrong people for you and the ultimate qualifier for the right ones to a little earlier in the chapter that I, in a part that I kind of skipped over because I wanted to get to the homework.
[00:19:44] I talk about improv rules and how improv rules changed my love life and changed my cunts. Conception of bragging. Those two improv rules are like, yes. And so like, yes. And in your own brags in conversations on dates, you can like, yes, you're proud of this and what else? And yes, I'm proud of [00:20:00] this. And what else?
[00:20:00] And then play to your top of your intelligence, play to the top of your intelligence means like, assume the people around you are like game and like be game to play as if you were exactly. The badass you are, right? Like instead of couching it, like Cameron Diaz did in the holiday, you need to play to the top of your intelligence, own, own what makes you awesome successes or your essence or what you're creating, you know, whatever it is and assume that people will like want to join you there and the wrong people will make themselves apparent and they will be disqualified.
[00:20:33] Okay. Back to it. Playing to the top of your intelligence says you deserve to get what you want. If someone thinks you're too much, they're not enough for you. Side note, Oh my God, y'all, when you tell me, I don't want to share my brags cause it intimidates people specifically women who date men. I just.
[00:20:51] want to say, like, let them be intimidated. Let them fucking be intimidated. Okay, back to the book. When the pain of staying small, of trying not to intimidate, [00:21:00] is greater than the fear of rejection, that's when you know it's time to start stepping onto a bigger stage. In the next chapters, we'll integrate your brags into every moment of your dating strategy from your in person dating life to online bragging is going to help you magnetize the right people to you and repel the rest.
[00:21:18] But more importantly, bragging will help you reorganize your love life around yourself, your unique sparkle, and what you are bringing to the table. You are amazing. And this bragging skill will help you bring that amazingness into your love life with ease. Okay. Now here's the homework assignment. At the end of each chapter in Thank You More Please, I have a messy homework assignment to help you like take it from practice into like IRL doing it.
[00:21:46] In the real world. So messy homework means you don't have to do it perfectly. Um, so this is messy homework, the 20 and two challenge for the next week. Do this exercise every day, set a two minute [00:22:00] timer and write 20 things you love about yourself. No pressure. If you don't get to 20, remember, don't get stuck in perfectionism.
[00:22:07] Do it messy. Bragging doesn't have to just be about your achievements. This practice is not about the size of the brag. It's about cultivating the art of self celebration. There are so many things you could brag about, and if you're stuck, here's some braggagories, like categories, get it? Brag about your wins.
[00:22:26] This could include how you're growing, where you're thriving, celebrating a courageous moment you moved through, or anywhere you're just really proud of yourself. Brag about your essence. This could include your personality traits, your deeply rooted values, or what makes you a good friend. If I created an essence based preferences list, which we learned about in chapter four, and side note, you learn about on this podcast all the time, If you created a list that was all about you, what would it include?
[00:22:55] Brag about what you like about yourself. This could include your gorgeous [00:23:00] eyes, your luscious hips, your voracious reading habit, your compassion, your ability to name the exact episode in Season of Gilmore Girls by hearing just one line, or your you ness. There is literally no limit to what you can brag about.
[00:23:13] Afterward, ask yourself these questions. What thoughts came up about yourself and your brags? What feeling arose when you were making your list? How do you think recognizing and celebrating your brags would impact your dating life and your life in general? You can use this 20 in two challenge to supercharge your dating life by doing it before swiping or before a date to really get clear on how awesome you are.
[00:23:38] And then side note on that date, you can ask like, What are you proud of stuff lately? And then hopefully when they ask you back, because if they don't, they're just qualified. Uh, if they ask you back, what are you proudest of? You can bring up one of your brags. This is connective. This really is connective.
[00:23:53] Last sentence of this chapter. I dare you to brag on yourself with 20 and two right now. Ready? [00:24:00] Set. Ugh. I love that chapter. And that was only like half of the chapter. There's so much more good, goodness and directions on how to brag and when to brag and stories from my lone life and, and my client's lives about bragging.
[00:24:14] So chapter three is the best. I love it. And I love every chapter. Who am I kidding? Maybe I'll read more chapters soon for y'all on the podcast. If you want to pick up your copy of Thank You, More Please, you can get it everywhere books are sold. Shout out to your local bookseller who is amazing. I read the audio book.
[00:24:31] It is also amazing. And if you go to date brazen. com slash book and enter your receipt, whether you got the audio book, ebook, or hardcover, you can get my podcast listening guide with the 10 top issues that you might be facing in your dating life and exactly what podcast episodes to listen to, to fix those problems.
[00:24:48] So quick, it's going to be your go to resource guide in addition to this book. So. Go get the book. And if you, uh, want to get it from the library, get it from the library. That's [00:25:00] also amazing. And, uh, I can't wait to support you with this book. I'm so grateful for this podcast. I'm grateful that you're here listening.
[00:25:08] And if you liked this episode, then could you do me a huge favor? Could you leave me a five star review on Apple or Spotify? Podcast. It would mean so much. It helps the podcast reach new ears. I love reading those reviews and it would mean the world to me if you could leave a review and in the body of the review, maybe say a takeaway that you have had from this podcast or an aha moment.
[00:25:31] You can also, in the body of your review, Share a brag. Share a fucking brag about yourself from listening to this podcast. What is a brag you've realized? I can't wait to read them. And I'm so excited to be here. I'm so excited to help you move forward toward the right relationship, toward a joyful as fuck dating life.
[00:25:49] And, uh, all I gotta say is thank you more, please. Let's fucking go talk to y'all next [00:26:00] week.