Rewriting Modern Love Stories
“But I'm just lonely. It's a beautiful thing to share life. And I've been single for many years” and she said, “Honey, what's worse than being lonely single, is being lonely in a relationship. And I guarantee you have friends who are lonely in that relationship and they are jealous of your freedom.”
Traditional love stories make us believe that two people fall in love and live happily ever after. The reality of modern dating is the exact opposite - failed communication, suboptimal timing, bad texting, cheating, and misunderstandings - every once in awhile a love story succeeds, but now, even the definition of a successful relationship is up for interpretation. A ring on her finger and a nice house are no longer the ultimate goals, and as more women prioritize their careers and become financially independent, what does a real partner look like?
In this episode, Lisa chats with award-winning storyteller Vika Viktoria about how they are reclaiming their voices and re-writing their own life stories - romantically, professionally, and personally. They discuss:
How to bring love into your life without without a partner
Why healthy masculinity is so important
How to set boundaries and prioritize self-worth and respect in dating
The concept of antifragility and how to use it in re-writing your narrative
Feeling enough even when you have big ambitions and goals
Lisa Carmen Wang:
Today, I'm here with Vika Victoria. She is an award-winning storyteller, speaker, and educator, and she's bringing millions of men into healthy masculinity. I met Vika a few years ago at a social impact conference, focused on creating a better, healthier, more connected world. One thing that we realized as coaches and leaders is that even if your work is focused on helping other people in their personal growth and having them recognize their limiting stories and beliefs, we're not immune to those limiting beliefs as well. So Vika, I'd love to welcome you to the podcast and hear your story of how you broke through the limiting stories and voices in your life, to finally discover your own.
Vika Viktoria:
Oh, Lisa, thank you for having me on this show. I'm so thrilled to be here and yeah, just to jump right into that question, because it's so valuable. We're not ever just teachers, we're constantly students. And to be reminded of our humanity is so humbling. Just a couple of weeks ago, I had this breakthrough, which really started with a breakdown.
I'm 33. I come from a Ukrainian culture where all of my girlfriends are married with babies on the way. I was also raised in the South, and so almost all of my friends are also married with babies on the way. And I had just had A real tough conversation with my mother. And she said, “Victoria, why do you need men in my generation? We needed them in your generation. You don't, you make your own money. You build your own business. Why would you welcome this risk?”
And I just thought. ‘Wow, Mom dropping some real pragmatic wisdom.’ And I said, “but I'm just lonely. It's a beautiful thing to share life. And I've been single for many years” and she said, “Honey, what's worse than being lonely single, is being lonely in a relationship. And I guarantee you have friends who are lonely in that relationship and they are jealous of your freedom.”
And I thought, Holy shit, I've never imagined that because I've got a relationship on a pedestal like this Disney movie that's been fed to us. And so I went to the beach and I treated myself like I would treat one of my students and I started unpacking all of the layers of conditioning from media to family, to culture, to society about what it meant to be single and why it hurts so much to feel like I was the last woman on the red Rover line. What I realized was I was waiting for my life to begin with love that I was only half complete because a man hadn't chosen me and I hadn't chosen him.
And that was just profoundly sad because as someone, who broke away from a very successful corporate career and went backpacking for 28 months around the world, and has summited mountains solo, and did all of these badass things. I did not think that I was drinking that Kool-Aid at all. And so the awareness that I secretly was brought me back to, the Buddhist principle that all of our suffering lies in our attachment. If I really wanted to liberate myself from these conditionings, I needed to release any attachment of what my life was supposed to look like and who was supposed to come into it and at what timeline it was supposed to happen.
And I went back to my core fear, which is I'm not a good mother. If I don't have a husband to raise those babies, which went back to my core wound of my father walking away. And so I froze my eggs when I was 28 when I was an ad exec because I knew my life was going to be unconventional.
I just realized that the last straw that I needed to make peace with was: ‘Can you feel confident and joyful about raising babies on your own if life doesn't go the way that you planned?’ And I sat with it and I thought I'm so blessed to have a mother who's a celebrity baby nurse. So very lucky there I'm so blessed to have a community of my sisters and my friends. I know that I can raise these babies on my own if need be. And with that, I was released of all of the fear and all of the misery. And I woke up the next day, Lisa, and I felt so much better. So it's a brave new world now.
Lisa
Amazing. That narrative, especially around you needing to find someone to love you to be complete, is one that so many of us have. When you were able to release this, How do you feel now about what you're prioritizing, and what is your relationship to love and partnership?
Vika
Yeah, that's a great question. I also think it was amplified by the fact that we're living through a pandemic and nothing makes you viscerally lonely like recognizing that at a time when the world is falling apart, everyone's got their person, except you. I will say the hack to this was adopting a kitten. And just getting a daily dose of oxytocin. My relationship with love has changed because now what I see is that the Big Love is me. So for the last two years, I've had this Post-It note, I write a post-it note like my mantra of the year, every year on my birthday.
And one year it was Big Love. And one year it was a Brave Voice. And looking at that post-it note every day, it's like bittersweet, because I feel like I'm so brave with my voice, and yet when I see Big Love, it just feels like I failed or I haven't yet been picked and that not-enoughness is so pervasive. And so I changed the way I think about Big Love.
Big Love is loving bigly. ‘Am I creating opportunities for love in my life in non-romance ways?’ And so I think I've stepped up as an aunt, as a daughter, as a sister. I've taken all of the love that I wish was coming into me and I've just alchemized it and poured it back out.
I think what has happened with men is that I am very clear about what I want from the very first conversation. And it really takes them back, but I say, “If you believe that you are time, then why would you waste yourself?” So I am not going to go on four dates and placate you, there are two things that are curious questions for me, and the way that you answer these two questions will let me know if we want to move forward or if we're wasting time. And the two questions are,
Tell me what your ideal relationship looks like?
How do you feel about fatherhood?
And the way that they answer those questions tells me everything I need to know.
Lisa
I have a “Fuck YES or No” list for for partners, for friends, and opportunities. For partners, I started asking not ‘How does he treat me?’ I went through this experience where I went on a few dates with this guy and started noticing how long it would take to respond to me, especially in this age of texting. I told my friend, “He's perfect, he has XYZ, but it takes him so long to respond.”
And she said, “Here's the thing. It's about how he treats you. So he could be the perfect dream guy, but if he doesn't prioritize communicating with you, it’s not going to work.”
That's when it started to change where I was like,” I don't care what color hair he has, or what he does for work. It's just, it's those qualities of prioritizing me and the relationship, that are most important.”
Vika
Absolutely. And I'm so glad that you picked up on that because that's, again, how we're wired for the checklist. An exercise that I do when men come to me and they say, “I'm ready to find a woman.” I'm like, “Okay, I'm going to drop you into a guided story.”
Because so often we're thinking in our frontal cortex and we've gotta be in our limbic brain to access our intuition. And so, I drop them into this guided story and I have them imagine the perfect Sunday morning and it just so happens to be their wife's birthday. And they're walking down the stairs and the kids are up and they're making her favorite blueberry pancakes.
And then I hand the mic off to them after that moment and men who say, “I don't know what I'm looking for in a woman” can go into a 10-minute monologue describing their perfect day with this woman. And at the end, I say, “Okay, the kids are in bed and the arts and crafts are still out. So you decide to write her a letter about what she means to you and how she makes you feel.”
And I get them an art set. I believe in art therapy and they draw a painting for her. And on the back they write this letter and then when they come out of the meditation, I go, “How do you feel?” And he says, “I feel like she's right there. And I feel like she made me a better man.”
And that process then helps them understand that it's not how hot they are or what they have on paper, but it's about how does your partner make you feel? And then they put that painting on the back of their bedroom wall. And I say, think about not bringing someone into your space unless you feel like you could one day give them that painting. And so that also becomes this litmus test of, “Am I welcoming people into my sphere sexually energetically that are in line with the mission that I'm on or is this just short term gratification pleasure?”
And I'd say what's more important is the list of how he makes you feel. Psychological safety is so important to me. So when men are volatile with their communication style, I'm like, “Nope, not happening.”
Lisa
And the unfortunate thing, and I am guilty of this too. I see memes about girls accepting mediocre behavior. There's one joke of falling in love with the guy who texts her back once in 24 hours because there's finally a person decent enough to text you back on time within 24 hours. We've become so accustomed to that sort of behavior, so then the moment someone shows like any sort of decency, you're like, “Oh my God, that one.“
Vika
Yeah. But what does that say about where we've set the bar? I just had an experience. My first COVID kiss. I was really careful. And he disappeared. He went MIA for two months and then he texted me out of the blue. He was like, ‘Hey, how was your weekend?’ And I thought, I'm sorry, have you rewritten history?
At that moment I had a choice. I could ignore him or I could use it as a teaching moment. And so I wrote, ‘I'm going to explain this to you so that you can spare a future woman from the same frustration.’ And I broke down everything that he did. My last line was only cowards sleep beside a queen and flee.
It felt really good to articulate. He thanked me. He's integrating these lessons. He said ‘I was unaware. I'm so sorry. I was caught up in my own stuff.’
I imagine that the reason why he treated me like this is because other women have let him off the hook for this very distant communication style. And he met a woman that's not, and I'm glad that he can see the goodwill here because I fundamentally believe we're all just vessels for each other's healing. So, how can we help each other grow forward? And it's the difference between call-out culture and call-forward culture.
Lisa
Yeah, I really liked that differentiation and I think that there's, there's. And I've probably, I felt this as well. Sometimes there's shame or guilt, right, when you don't want to confront someone, especially in these intimate, romantic conversations. And, most often it's one party that doesn't feel the same way as another party and then they don't know how to communicate that. And so I even challenged myself. I had gone on a few dates with dating app people that I met, and there was just one person that I had gone on a few dates with and I was just like, this is not going anywhere. And it would have been really easy to just stop responding and wait for it to trickle.
So I actually did this twice where I committed where I was like, you know what, I'm going to be honest. And I'm just going to say, “Hey, really enjoyed the time that we spent together. I don't feel the same connection romantically and I want you to find someone who will reciprocate the same sort of energy, and love that you have to give. And I hope you find someone that does that for you.”
And so those, each of those times I did get that. Thank you. And it was really hard. Like I pressed it and I was like, Oh, we got it. But, it is worth it. It's just uncomfortable.
Vika
Yeah. Yeah, but it feels so good to be on the receiving end of that too. That someone cared enough to be tender with you, your heart.
Lisa
So with all of this work, you've done a bunch of work in storytelling in just owning your voice. And that's where we really started with taking back your narrative. I want to combine that with the work that you are doing in terms of bringing men into healthy masculinity. How do those two mesh together and where is your narrative taking you now?
Vika
Yeah, thanks for asking that. I think our purpose is in large part driven by our pain. There is a lifelong riddle that I have to understand men because of the wounding that I faced when my father walked out on us. And a big part of me writing this book is also to reclaim the narrative of daddy abandonment issues, which is so unfairly plaguing millions of women in the world.
And it's something we never asked for. And it's something that is like a Scarlet letter that, the world sees us differently through, especially romantic partners. And a big reason why I do the work I do is to be a living, breathing case study that it's possible to overcome the thing that destroys you and have it create you instead of destroy you.
What I think about is how can we take our narratives and make them generative? And for me, working with men began as this quest for my catharsis to rewrite the narrative of what men were to me. Because as somebody who has endured a spectrum of violence and sexual assault from men, as almost every woman I know that has survived through her twenties, and as someone who has been at the hands of men of very high integrity all the way to very low integrity.
I wanted to create more positive data points in my mind to understand that my father was the exception, not the rule. And so when I started these dinners, I had just won the moth, which is a storytelling competition. It was really that inflection point where I realized that storytelling publicly, not just scribbled in your journals or set over a campfire with friends, but if you are brave enough to stand on stage and have strangers in my case, it was 300 strangers hold space for you to bear your guts and share your story, and then come up to you with tears in their eyes and have resonance with your pain. It's a spiritual experience. Like nothing else I've felt before. That was really the moment when I recognized that we are vessels for each other's healing.
The stories carry the wisdom that no lecture and no academia can pierce through. And so I started teaching, hacking human connection, on stages all over the world. And then the second inflection point was that my grandfather suddenly died. And when he died, I lost that North star. And in the absence of not having a father, a boyfriend, a husband, I had this massive hole in my heart for the masculine.
And so I moved to LA to care for my grams, and I got very lucky that my roommates were two very philosophical, grounded men, and we would have multi-hour conversations often around a campfire, and then I'd cook dinner and they'd invite their friends over. And it brought me right back to those fishing trips with my dad.
Because he was my first best friend. That's why I feel so comfortable with men because I see all of them through the lens of you could be my new best friend. And when I went back on the road, I thought, this has been so grounding for my healing and my grief and my depression.
As I'm traveling the world, what if I just gathered men in every city that I respect and revere, and we have this round table discussion about what it means to be a man. And this is before Me Too. It's so it was really strange for friends to be like, why are you doing this? And I was like, I'm just insatiably curious about what it is to live in the skin of a man.
So every dinner from Berlin to Tel Aviv to LA, SF, Sydney, Berlin has been recorded. And that's now the makings of the book. And the intersection you ask between storytelling, narrative development, and healing, and this men's work is, we can only do better when we know better as Maya Angelou said.
And so this is a bird's eye view into some men's minds. This is a book for men to understand that they are not alone and they don't have to suffer in the cave of their own mind. And this is also a book for women to understand the unknown, right? We rarely get to sit in a room with four to eight men in cities all over the world and just hear their stories. It's fundamentally changed the way that I show up in my friendships with men, in my dating life, because now I know what I didn't know. And the book is really about building bridges of compassion through storytelling.
Lisa
Amazing. So the one point that I did want to highlight was using your pain to turn you into something stronger and better, rather than letting it consume you and empty you out.
And I talk about this concept of antifragility, which is one of the pillars of enoughness and whenever there's chaos, whenever there is some negative stimulus that most fragile objects, when you apply pressure to them, they break. And they shatter and they never get back to that normal state. They're always a little bit worse. Antifragile is, not only getting back to the normal state but to be even stronger. Nassim Taleb is the one who coined the term antifragile, but it was, You know that it's almost in some ways against that law of nature, because things don't really, when you think of a vase, it just shatters.
But with our minds, when we reshape our narratives and who we can become, that is, that seems like also what you've done. You've become antifragile in the way that you are taking your pain and shaping it into a new narrative.
Vika
It's taken years. Like I want to make it very clear. This has been a 13-year journey with a lot of experiments on the mind, body, and spirit. Some were successful, and some were painful. But the growth mindset has been the thing that's kept me antifragile. So, I teach my students two mindsets.
Whenever we think about life and the constants: death, pain, taxes, and change. Those are like four things that all of us are going to go through no matter what. I can't do anything about death or taxes that's on you, but I'll be damned if I don't change your relationship to change and pain.
And exactly to what you said about being antifragile, what if we could get really curious and instead of reactive in that moment of deep change, ask yourself how is this change contributing to my higher evolution. And in that moment of deep pain, ask yourself, how is this pain actually a professor? And if you can do those two things consistently, that's a different level of living in my experience.
Lisa
Absolutely. I think for me, that awareness came from this feeling of never being good enough, achieving external validation, doing more, and overworking. And, I can say that I haven't been fully cured of the overwork.
I think the biggest change is that when I started digging into the topic of enoughness, I felt fundamentally like something was lacking, right? There's that there's a hole that I just, I wasn't good enough. And so what had happened was I got to a point this past year where I was like, you know what? I do love myself. I am enough. Oh my God. I figured it out. And I think it's this evolutionary process where I changed this podcast, call it Leadership with Lisa, because I was like, I'm going to focus on leading now. And then I came back again where I think it has developed into a different, almost like a different modality of, I feel that fundamentally I am enough.
But, there's so much more I want to do. And I know that you have this drive as well. You're like, we're both talking about, we want to write a book, can then we want to launch a series, and then there's the Oprah stage, and then there's all this. And so there's this interesting balance of, I came back to Enoughness cause I was like, wait, this is a never-ending, always evolving topic.
And, how do you, and I'm curious how you are reconciling in your mind, loving your narrative, feeling full, but at the same time being like, it's not enough if I don't get my book out there and get to that stage.
Vika
You are brave and beautiful in sharing about your Enoughnes. I just want to honor that because you're speaking for millions of women who have.one everything by the T by the book and still felt that emptiness inside. And it's one of the things that drew me to you when I met you. And it, as I've watched your voice grow, you have been just a beacon of possibility.
So thank you. I think it's cultural. We both come from a third-generation immigrant mentality where if I got an A-minus, I was in trouble. Extra credit was never optional, it was mandatory. So I think it starts very young and there's a significant amount of data to prove that in early childhood development, from the age of zero seven years old, a child doesn't have the logical functionality fully built out.
So if your parents or teacher say, you're a bad girl. You start to think that's just the truth and that becomes the foundation from what you operate. We've got to pack the child wound if we want to ameliorate the not-Enoughness wound.
So that's the first thing I'll say. The second thing is, my fear of other people's opinions was equally as loud in my ear as the not-Enoughness. And they were like two bullies on my shoulder that fed into each other. And I think when you're surrounded by very successful people and somehow miraculously made it. And you don't know if they had family money or trust fund money, or if they had connections or anything.
So what I recognize as a comparison is the thief of joy, stop. Every time I catch myself, comparing myself to someone I think, is this generative, is this helping you? Or is this just another piece of data that's slowly eroding at your self-confidence? So the comparison game is no longer a game that I allow myself to play.
And then what I recognize is nobody's me. Nope. Even if I feel like there are people that are talking about the things I'm talking about, the way that I'm using my voice, the way that I'm asking the questions, my authentic curiosity is my highest authority. And that means that now I get to be the writer of the rules. And the rules are, there's no competition, there's no timeline. Trust the process and you are enough and that's it. And if I can think, I want to win at this game because this is not the game that was built by the patriarchy and corporate America, this was not the game built by archaic cultures from yesteryear. This is the game that I am actively co-creating. And the only person's opinion that matters is the eight-year-old little kids sitting on my left shoulder and the 88-year-old wise woman sitting on my left. That's it. And that has been a game-changer because doing work with men as a woman immediately is threatening and triggering to a lot of people.
So I stopped talking about it for a year. And then when I realized that this is generation shifting work. That the highest feminist I can be is to ensure that there are more great men out there who are fantastic leaders, loving fathers, and devoted partners. I'm helping men feel, which is helping them heal, which is preventing them from harming themselves or society. I feel lit up about this mission and I don't care if there's going to be people that don't get it.
Lisa
I love that. And it's so interesting because in some ways the work that we're doing is like two sides of the coin because men and women have been victimized by the dominant narrative.
But it's different work. And I almost think of it as, the way that Enoughness has affected women or this narrative, which tells us that we're small, that we have to fit in a certain box and we're not enough. But then for men, they're not enough, but then they have to accumulate more things and they get bigger. And the most egotistical loud man is probably the one who feels like he's most insecure and not good enough and has some search of a shoulder, but in this work, it's almost like we have to build women up to believe that their voice matters and to be big and take up space and we have to break men down so that they can become vulnerable and emotional and be softer.
Vika
You said it so perfectly. That's exactly what the work is. I have a program called, Know Your Voice, Know Your Power and it's all women. Men don't have an issue there. The work that I do with men is really about relational wealth and integrity alignment and like life visioning. Which women don't often have trouble in those arenas.
So it's just fascinating. And of course, there are exceptions to every rule. One thing that I wanted to contribute and ask you and this is a question that a teacher asked me. Given that all of our actions are driven by desire, there is a pit that we get for holding onto identities, right? There was a payoff I had for holding onto the 'father wound' identity.
So when I think about not-Enoughness, one of the things that has helped me when I feel unworthy is Vika, what is the payoff you get for sitting in this not-Enoughness enabling more of it. What do you think it is for you?
Lisa
One way that I see people use not-Enoughness is they become victims and they let go of their agency. They blame the world for their problems. And so I don't think it's that, because if there's one thing that I am, it's that I take full responsibility for what it is that I do.
I go back to a spiritual teacher, and she said something about how some people blame others for their problems, so they don't take responsibility. Some people don't know what they want. And then some people don't count their blessings.
And so I know that the biggest challenge I've had was to like, be present and feel that now is enough. The present moment not that future, like living for the next goal. And I'm wondering how that served my narrative, how that was serving my narrative. Because certainly working myself to the ground and like deteriorating my health and not sleeping well was not helping me.
Maybe it's the not-Enoughness was what drove me to work harder. What drove me to achieve it is the reason, it's not the reason, but it's the reason why I will push everything aside for the sake of achieving the goal. And so when I achieve that goal, I get the checkmark, I get the accolade, I get the respect and appreciation and admiration and then I keep running after it. So I think that is how it's served me. It got me that shiny resume and the nice LinkedIn and all the titles.
Vika
And that's a really powerful thing because what you're acknowledging right now is the neurological wiring of your brain has created grooves over and over again, like not-Enoughness dangling the carrot to success, to achievement, dopamine, flooding the city feeling good. How do we do this again, body? Oh, we start with not-Enoughness. And so it becomes this cycle that your body has been conditioned to respond to because they know that on the other side of not-Enoughness is going to be a dopamine hit. More serotonin, you're going to get the accolades and be revered by your peers.
And so what I have found to be powerful is studying the science of our neurotransmitters, so that we can acknowledge that where DJs and we get to up different levels in different ways. so really unpacking, not just on a narrative front, but also on a neurological front has helped me.
Like it works with addictions too. Like I've realized like, in reading this book called Irresistible, all of us are pretty much addicted to the internet. Or like a sugar detox, which I'm on day eight of because my brain has been wired to think that sugar is an emotional reward mechanism. And so self-awareness like, you're, when I think about you, what you stand for is an awakening. And once we know what we were blind to, when we're just swimming in the waters of, we get to be better versions of ourselves.
Absolutely. And this addiction, I think, to the internet that you mentioned around, it's an addiction to other people validating us very quickly. With a like, with a comment. And I have this constant conversation still in my mind, as someone who is building, for both of us, it's a platform that requires an audience. A book needs readers, a speaker needs people listening to your speech. It's an inevitable part of it today that you have to build a social presence. You have to care about those things. But I'm at this split where I recognize that it is not that having a thousand followers, 10,000, 50,000 million, like that's not going to bring me more true happiness and fulfillment, and yet I have to do it. And when I start then I'm addicted to it. So it's I don't know. I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with that.
Yeah, no, I feel you because we're all storytellers and artists and so you want your work to make an impact and it's that tension between Am I just perpetuating the same unhealthy behaviors that I'm taking a stand against. What I read most recently shocked me that if users are scrolling their phone for three hours a day on social media, that's 12 years of your life.
Is that worth 12 years of my life? And I go well over three hours a day, because to your point, we're sharing our stories. And I see the internet as just like a disbursal system. So it's not something that I have solved either. And I think it's great that you and I can sit with it intention because that's human.
Lisa
Yeah. And, yeah, that's crazy. I think of, actually during quarantine over these last few months, I've diminished my posting amount. I think some people are trying to grow, get more audience. And I was at this point where I'm like, I'm tired. What if I just didn't post for two months? But then I was like, does that mean I'm slacking?
Vika
I started working with the sleep company and it's turned me on to the importance of sleep and how disruptive technology is to sleep. And so I am the voice of this app called Sleep Space and it helps people create a sleep journey.
So we live consciously, but we don't sleep consciously. And so the more that I've been working on creating these sleep stories and understanding that not all sleep is created equal. You can't Go to bed at one o'clock in the morning and get your eight hours and expect to feel rested because you've blocked out the most important part of sleep, which is 9:00 PM to midnight, That's where you're getting your deep sleep and REM sleep. I created, on an index card, a night routine. I've always had a morning practice, but I haven't had a night practice. And part of that night practice is no screens after 8:00 PM. And so, I think we can live in harmony with technology if we don't let technology become an extension of our brain.
That means no screens in the first hour when you wake up, the way you start your day in that first hour is how you own your day, right? No screenings, two hours before you go to bed. So that you give your brain a chance to breathe.
It’s really new and only in the last 17 years. I think you and I are the last generation that knows what it was like to have AOL dial-up. And so I've started like no screens, Sundays. and I started and that when I was an ad executive in New York, I don't do Instagram or social media on weekends.
And I started that a few weeks ago and it has been so refreshing to not live for the story or see a sunset. And then instead of being in awe of it, I think 'I've got to get the perfect angle.' So those are just a few hacks that have helped me be more present.
Lisa
It's funny that you bring up sleep, that's one of my biggest struggles right now is trying to figure out how to sleep. Interestingly, two days ago I slept a total of zero minutes at night. I was tossing and turning and anxious, and then the next day I gave up at around 5:30, I was like, screw it, let me just turn on my screen, start working. And then I did, and I had such a crazy day. So many interviews, so many conversations, and phone calls and meetings. And I got to the point where it was 9:00 PM. I'm like, I'm not even, I'm kinda tired, but I'm running on adrenaline. And, it was the first time where I took a bath in I don't know how long. I just needed to figure out how to shut my body off for a little bit where it's not just sitting at the screen. The first thing I do when I wake up is, I will admit this, is I grab my phone.
What's interesting I found is that when I don't post on social media, I don't go on it very often. So that's been good for me. But I'm immediately checking text messages and emails in the morning. At night, I have one eye looking at the screen watching like support to try to relax my mind.
Vika
So something that helps us to put your phone on the other side of the room. Because it's really hard to break these habits, but think about your eyesight. That's one thing, especially at night. And what you're doing is you're creating blue light in your brain. It's halting melatonin production, which is the thing that helps you sleep.
So there's, for me, it helps to geek out on science because as a storyteller, I have found that I could justify just about anything. So I'm like, Oh, it's just another hour. But when I know the science of something, it's ooh okay you can't have that because it's going to harm you.
And that's what, when I start to realize that every one of my behaviors is coming from a place of, 'If I really loved myself, what I put the phone down? If I really treasured my time, would I waste it?' And so that kind of self-compassionate living has helped me break through all of my destructive patterns and still not all days are perfect, but I found that I like having a visual representation. Jerry Seinfeld said he would never break the streak when he was writing jokes. So I like to see no sugar, no screens. It just motivates me to know that I'm flexing this muscle of self-discipline and I can do it.
I've never gotten it in eight days without sugar unless I was on a parasite cleanse. The way you train your body is how you train your mind.
Lisa
I like the framing of, 'if I loved myself, would I?'
It's like mental - I hate the word hack - but I'm trying to think of another word for it. Methods, toolkit…
Vika
Yeah, exactly. And I think as teachers, as coaches, we have to become our own Guinea pigs because it's through the lived experience, that we then have the empathy to work with our students. And half the time, Lisa, I feel like a high-level kindergarten teacher in my mind.
And I'm trying, I have a dry erase marker, and every night after I get out of the shower, I write myself a love note. Then the next morning when I'm brushing my teeth, I get to read that love note to myself.
And some people might think that's silly, but I think it's about learning how to communicate with the inner self so that you never feel out of your body, out of your mind, out of your skin. I feel so much more grounded when I create a vision of the day, like you were saying future tense, because then at night when I read it, I'm like, I did all the things I set out to do this morning.
And even if I missed a few, I feel really good that was top of mind. The greatest love, the greatest relationship, we'll ever have is with ourselves.
We can thank Jessica Parker for that one, but it's true. And, I love what you're doing in the world and how you're creating spaces for women to step into their power and know their voice and shine.
And like I said, I've had a couple of really rough years. You met me right after my grandpa died and I was like a shadow of myself. And when I saw you standing in your power, it showed me it was possible. It scared me because I was like, I don't think I could ever be like Lisa again. But, you're consistently creating meaningful content.
And I thought if she can do it, I can do it. And I think that's the power of women owning their voices. We get to lift each other, whether we know it or not you might have impacted thousands and millions of women who will never get the chance to say this to your face. So on behalf of all of them, I just want to say thank you for overcoming the not-Enoughness because you're pioneering the path for all of us.
Lisa
Thank you. That means a lot. And I always say too, when we talk about power and like powerful women, who is the most powerful woman in the room? Is she the coldest? Is she the richest? Is she the loudest? It's none of those. The most powerful woman in the room is always the one who has the most love to give. No one is her competition. She's so aware and in tune with her unique strengths, her unique value to the world.
You talked about when you recognize this and talking about comparison. When you are so in touch with that, you just don't see competition. There's no room for scarcity. And you realize that in sharing your power with other people, it's not only empowering them. It also empowers you because you're growing as a person.
Vika
Absolutely. And then you get to a place where like, all I want to do is see all of my friends succeed. So I carve out time every week to just help my women friends do the thing that I have learned comes naturally to me. So when I was in high school we had 150 community service hours we had to complete every year to graduate. And I'm so grateful for that because that put us at a very young age, in the mindset of being in service to something bigger than yourself.
And so every woman listening has a unique gift. What if you took two hours a week to offer your gift to your community and say, ‘Hey, I'm going to do office hours, come to me and ask questions about anything that I uniquely feel like I have authority to talk about.’ How would that change the way that we related to each other as women?
Lisa
That’s beautiful. That's a great way of reframing it. I think it's also really easy to, again, myself included, feel burnt out and tired and not wanting to give because there's just so much to do.
Vika
Yeah. yeah. And you are giving like you, you are giving just in your being. And I think that's what I also want to share with women is like, if you can truly own your power and share that genuinely and generously, that is enough.
Because something that you posted, something that you said it planted a seed of possibility in the reader. Ao even if you don't have the space to carve out, to give to your community, just the way that you're caring for life through your lens is enough.
Lisa
Amazing. On that note, I'm curious, how you would define Enoughness and when will you know that you're there and you're good enough?
Vika
When I have six New York Times bestsellers and a TV show? That was the old narrative. And I'm so grateful to be rid of it. Let me sit with this.
I will know that I am enough when I have true peace of mind when I have a grounding in my feet that no matter where I stand, I am equally whole.
I will know I am enough when I wake up every day brimming with gratitude to be alive, to be healthy, to create. And no number on a scale, no amount of likes or comments has any sway.
I will know that I am enough when loving myself feels as sweet as a lover's kiss.
Lisa
I just got chills.
Vika
One of my hidden talents is writing spoken word poetry. And I've only shared it in like scribbles of my journal, but you're encouraging me to share it now more publicly.
Lisa
My last question for you. What does it mean to you to be a woman?
Vika
What it means for me to be a woman is to be more alive than alive. To recognize that my life is about creation. Creation of love, cultivation of creativity, nurturing of my spirit, and others. The capacity to help people see the love inside themselves.
What it means to be a woman is to believe in yourself more than anyone has ever believed in you, so that you can overcome any of the obstacles that are in your way because you are a woman.
What it means to be a woman is to be in service of something greater than yourself, that benefits society forward.
What it means to be a woman is to be a source of strength for your community.
What it means to be a woman is to be a walking, breathing case study.
Lisa
Amazing. Thank you so much for your work and your words and wisdom. This has been an incredible and even cathartic conversation.
Vika
I look forward to hugging you in person. And I just want to leave telling you are so much more than enough. You are radiant and just so powerful in your humility. And you inspire me.
Lisa
Right back at ya. We'll have to do this again.
Vika
All right. Big hugs.
Lisa
Thank you, hugs.
EPISODE 32:
rewriting modern love stories
WITH vika viktoria
Thanks for listening, I appreciate you, and am here for you.
~ Lisa Carmen Wang, Founder, The GLOW, Leadership Coaching for Powerful Women