Melinda Gates: Why Your Perfectionism Has Been Draining You & 7 Reasons You Should Spend Time Alone in Silence Today

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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Speaker 2 (01:01):
I had somehow gotten to that point in life, you know,
in my forties, where I had thought, oh, there are
these amazing joy moments or these really sad low moments. No,
you can hold joy in sadness side by side.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
One of the most influential voices in the philanthropy community,
Melenda French Gates.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
I thought I'd be married fifty plus years. For me,
I couldn't go forward. There wasn't enough trust any longer.
I had days where I thought I don't know if
I'll ever be happy again. That was the hardest thing
I had ever been through in my life.

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(01:52):
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Speaker 2 (02:08):
Jay set Jay Sheety zet.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one
mental health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and
every one of you that come back every week to
become happier, healthier, and more healed. You know that my
greatest fascination is sitting down with individuals who've trodden parts
that may seem really different from ours, but we can

(02:34):
still relate to them. We can still connect to them,
We can still see ourselves in their experiences and find advice,
lessons and insights that we can apply to our own.
Today's conversation is going to do just that. I have
the honor today of speaking to Melinda Frenchgates, a philanthropist, businesswoman,
and global advocate for women and girls. As the co

(02:57):
chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Melinda sets
the direction and priorities of one of the world's largest
philanthropies across the world. In twenty fifteen, Melinda founded Pivotal Ventures,
a company working to accelerate the pace of social progress
in the United States. Melinda is also the author of
the best selling book The Moment of Lift, Go and

(03:20):
Grab It. If you haven't already, please welcome to On Purpose.
Melinda French Kates. Melinda, it's such a joy to be
with you. Thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
I'm so glad we could do this.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
I know me too, me too, And I want to
dive straight in and I have so many questions I
wanted to ask you, but I wanted to start off
by saying, you've gone through a lot of changes recently.
So you just turned sixty, congratulations. You're a grandma now,
I believe, so congratulations. And I believe your last job
just left home, and so now you're an empty nest
to two, which not as much congratulations. You've been through

(03:53):
so many changes in your life, and I wanted to
start by asking you, what are your greatest takeaways on
dealing with change? The thing that seems to be the
greatest constant in all of our lives, but something none
of us seemed to be prepared for or comfortable with.
How have you learned to deal with change?

Speaker 2 (04:13):
You know, I think I learned to deal change pretty
early in my life because I went away for college.
A lot of people in my school stayed in Texas.
I grew up in Dallas, and I embraced change like
I was excited to go away for college, excited to
meet new people, and same thing. After I left college,
I then switched. I went to college in North Carolina

(04:35):
at Duke, and then I switched and went to Seattle
to a brand new company hardly heard of back then
Microsoft and again I just jumped in with both feet
and I found it fun and I was curious to
meet people. So to me, change isn't something to be
afraid of. It's more something to embrace and say, oh, okay,

(04:56):
here I am. I didn't expect to be in this
place in life, but I am now, so okay. How
am I going to make the best of it? And
I try to stay open and curious because so often
people will come into your life if you have changed
in a new way or a new place that I
try to stay open and curious, like, oh, what might
this person be here to teach me? Or what can

(05:18):
I learn from them? Or can I connect to them
in a different way? So I don't know. For me,
change is in a certain way kind of fun and
I embrace it.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
Where did that mindset come from? Because I feel so
many people have the opposite experience, where change is scary,
changes daunting, change is worrying. I identify with how you
feel about change. I chose to do pretty drastic things
early on in my life which made me very positive
towards change because I had to go against the grain.

(05:46):
I had to disagree with people that were close to me.
I had to not worry about what people thought about
my choices, and so I feel the same way as
you do that I've seen change as a positive thing
in my life, but when I speak to people, changes
one of the most scariest worrying things. Where did your
positive mindset towards change come from? Was it a family member?
Was there something that happened early on in your life

(06:08):
where you had a change and you adapted? Well, where
did that come from?

Speaker 2 (06:11):
I think it probably was my parents. I mean, my
parents had both grown up in New Orleans, but then
had gone away when my dad went to graduate school,
they got married and moved across the country to California.
Then they moved back to Dallas. My dad worked on
the early Apollo space missions. Talk about change. Nobody had
ever gone into space or gone to the moon, and

(06:31):
I saw how excited he was, and he was excited
about being part of it. And then my parents gave
my siblings and me. I'm one of four very middle
class family growing up, but they constantly gave us the message,
you will be college going. There wasn't a choice. You
will go to college, and it's a matter of where
you go. You can go anywhere you want to go

(06:52):
in the country. We'll take on the debt, but we
highly encourage you to go out of state. We just
think you will learn more about yourself in the world
if you go out of state. And so I think
because they had that mindset, I did choose a college
out of state. I went to Duke of North Carolina,
and to me, it just became kind of exciting and fun.
And I think if that at that formative time in life,
if you're willing to go somewhere different and try something out,

(07:17):
then maybe you're more likely to do it later. And
then I never expected ever to have the role that
I'm in in philanthropy. But once we started the Gates Foundation,
I had the opportunity to travel the world. And not
that I wasn't already traveling, but I never would have
gone to India, I don't think as many times as
I did. Are so many different places in Africa, and

(07:38):
I started to realize that the more you travel, it's
like a book. The more books you read, the more
you learn. The more you travel, the more you learn
about people and particularly how similar we are. And so
I think my parents ingrained that in me.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
That's beautiful. What were your dreams back then? Obviously your
mission is so clear now and we'll get to that.
But I wonder because when I see the work you've
been doing, which is absolutely phenomenal, and the fact that
service is your entire life is so inspiring to me,
and you know, something I aspire for in my own life.
But I wonder where did your dreams start? Going to

(08:14):
Duke obviously an incredible institution in and of itself, parents
who wanted you to study and perform. Well, we'll talk
about going to Microsoft, But what were your dreams back
then when you're going to Duke? Like, what was the
sky's the limit? So to speak? What was the sky
at the time.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Well, I was lucky that in eighth grade my parents
sent me to a course that my dad had been
through through his work, had just recently sent him called
the Successful Life Course, which I kind of think is
a little bit of a funny name now when I
look back on it. But they taught us a couple
of things. One was to take quiet time in the morning,
and the other was to set goals, like really have

(08:51):
goals for your life and don't necessarily share those with
the world. Share them with a couple of people you trust,
and so I set a goal of going to college.
I set up goal during high school of Hey, I
realized I actually want to go to college in computer science.
So I picked a university that was good at that
at the time. And I knew I wanted to be
a professional working woman eventually with children. And so I

(09:13):
think that sort of goal mindset really helped set me
on my path to then go on to Duke and
then go on eventually to a career at Microsoft.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
Who ran this course, it was.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
A man and a woman. Ed foreman was the man,
and they were down in a southern part of Texas
and you would go off with a cohort of people
you didn't know. My sister and I went together. Yeah,
you just soaked it in. And they gave us a
whole bunch of books to read. We had, you know,
we read a Dale Carnegie's book on Influencing people, right,
And I think at the same time, I mean, again,

(09:46):
very formative time in my life. I'm in eighth grade.
I'm switching to a new high school. But in high
school I had these very liberal nuns. It was an
ursuline academy. It was an all girls Catholic school. We
got the messages from all of our female teachers we
could be anything we wanted to be in the world.
They were incredibly supportive. But the nuns also taught us

(10:06):
two things. One was to take time in silence. There
was a chapel in the middle of the school, which
wasn't a fancy chapel. It was two classrooms, but they
were put together. You could go and have this silent time.
They would send us off on silent retreats. But they
also sent us out to serve. The motto of the
school was servey on, that is, to serve, and they
taught us that you know, one person, just one person,

(10:29):
can make the difference in the life of another person.
And if you are lucky enough to come to a
school like Ursuline and somebody's paying your private tuition, which
was my parents, you should serve. And so I served
in the local public school two miles down the road,
and I saw the difference in that public school for
those kids versus where I was, or the Dallas County

(10:50):
courthouse or the local hospital. And so I think those
values got embedded very early on.

Speaker 1 (10:58):
I love hearing that because there's sound so close to
the kind of programming we offer today. And I always
think about just how even in formal education, you may
not be exposed to some of these ideas which seem
like everyone should have access to them. And it's incredible
that you know you had a course like that that
you went to early on. I was going to ask
you two questions about that. What have you found is

(11:20):
the value of spending that time alone, both from the
course and obviously from the nuns that you got in
your school, Like, what have you found you still do that?
What value? What has been the greatest value that you've
gained from that over the last few decades.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
I spend time in silence almost every single day, and
I just find for me, it's often in the morning,
before I exercise or get on my phone or whatever,
and I just find that that's the time that you,
at least for me, that I can hear myself. I
can hear in silence those moments of hmm I made

(11:59):
a mistake yesterday.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
Hmm.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
I didn't quite show up the way I wanted to.
I wasn't my whole integrated self, or oh wow, I
would really like to show somebody today how grateful I
am for them. I haven't. I haven't gotten to do
that in the last week. And so that time and
quiet for me is just it's a time to really
connect to my soul and to I hope, integrate all

(12:25):
the things that have come over time in my life
or in the day before. I also made sure when
our kids were growing up that we went around the
dinner table and we all said what we were thankful
for before we ate our meal. And the only rule
was you couldn't criticize what somebody else was thankful for,
and ideally you'd come up with your own. And even

(12:46):
when we'd have tables of teenagers for dinner, everybody did it,
and I was always just amazed what came out of
their mouths, out of their mouths, and it was just
that little moment of gratitude, right, And I think so
often if we can stop and be silent and quiet
and hear ourselves, then the gratitude comes. And boy, just

(13:06):
gratitude help you get through a lot of things in life,
even hard things.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
For sure, for sure. And the second thing you mentioned
there was setting your goals, but you shared something really interesting.
You talked about how only would the people you trust
and I wanted to ask what was the perception or
the reason for that, because that's really powerful, I think
for people to hear. Mm.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
So this course that I went to, this successful life course,
they said, you know, only share your goals with you know,
a few trusted people, because you're going to have a
lot of critics. You're gonna have a lot of people
to say, no way you want to go to that university,
You can't make that, or you want to be that
in life? No, not a chance. But if you trusted
people who have your back and have your interest in mind,

(13:49):
they will help you meet your goal or find your dream,
or advance you towards your dream. And I've found that
to be very true all through life actually, and it
becomes incredibly important to cultivate those relationships with those trusted
people and vice versa, that you become there in their

(14:10):
small circle of trust.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, we make one of two mistakes. We either tell
everyone everything or we tell one person everything. So we
either want everyone to have all the answers to all
of our questions. And you're so right that if we
tell everyone our plans, everyone's going to have an opinion
about your plan, and that opinion may actually discourage you

(14:31):
and disempower you because we're so opened up and exposed
to people's opinions about us. And the opposite is also
true that if you only tell one person, that can
be really hard as well, because that person may not
have the tools or the resources or the experience to
guide you. And so having this counsel of wise advisors
or guides or mentors or well wishes and friends can

(14:54):
be such a powerful thing. I think when people are
setting goals, it's probably one of the biggest mistakes we
make today where we announce it on social media to
the whole world, or we tell everyone in our WhatsApp
chat or group chat or whatever it may be, and
it can be really, really tough. You're fortunate that you
gain some of these exposures early on, and they've helped
you in your mindset. What's the lesson that you wish

(15:15):
you would have learned earlier? What's the lesson that you
learned later on in life that you wish you'd learned earlier.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
I've learned so many things later in life. And you know,
I think you also have three children. They're now in
their twenties, they're not children anymore, but you learn a
lot when you're parenting your children. Like you may think, oh,
I'm a patient person. You have no idea what patients
is until you have children, and until you really are

(15:41):
trying to pass your values on. You have to really
kind of sit with, Okay, what are my values? I
thought I knew them? But am I living them so
that I can pass them on? I would say one
lesson I learned later in life was that the world
really isn't built for everybody.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
Know.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
I kind of assumed when I left I was in
such a supportive environment in high school with this all
girls school that when I went out to university, you know,
I just met so many different people of different walks
of life, which was fantastic and widening and it helped
me grow. But then when you go out in your
professional career, I just saw began to see so many

(16:26):
blocks for women and people of color, where I just
assumed when we left university we would have the same
opportunities as men or even as I traveled for the Foundation,
I just assumed if we were getting a new technology
out in a community, it went to the men and
women equally. That was just a completely false assumption, and

(16:48):
I think I didn't realize how the world had been,
maybe inadvertently but set up for men. And you know,
I had to go back and learn some history to
understand how to we get where we are, to say, okay, well,
how could we start to maybe accelerate some of that change.

Speaker 1 (17:07):
What was the first experience you had in your life,
Like you said, you had none saying to you you
can you know, you can be anything you want and
opportunities are available. You had that training. When was the
first time you had personal experience of oh, I don't
actually have the same types of opportunities as men.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
Well, when I went into computer science at DO, there
were some women freshman year, but by sophomore year there
was me and maybe a couple of others. And I
realized that a lot of the young men freshman year
were better trained than I was in computer science, so
they were already coming in a step up, which is
why we lost so many women. I was trained well enough,

(17:45):
thank God, that I could persist and keep my self
esteem up to move through and to continue on. But
I just started to realize part of the reason we
don't have more women in computer science, and look how
important technology has become in our society, we still don't
have nearly enough women in the tech sector creating products.

(18:06):
It's because we haven't offered the right There are many reasons,
but we haven't for instance, offered the right classes to
young women so that when they go to college their
confidence is up they've programmed as much as young men,
or that opening freshman class is a creative class, not
just a coding tech class. So we just we have

(18:28):
whole industries, for instance in the United States that just
are not as welcoming to women. Politics in our own
country is not at all welcoming to women. I mean,
women get harassed on the campaign trails so much more
than men. And they will tell you if they want
to run their campaign, say they want to become a
state senator, they have to have had a certain amount

(18:52):
of money to do that, which is why men usually
will have more money by a certain point in their
life saved up to be able to run, or a
buddy will come in and will fund their buddy to
be in politics. So there are just many places where
there are roadblocks and barriers for women and people of
color that don't necessarily exist for a white man. And
I think we need to look at those and take

(19:13):
some of them down so everybody can rise up into
positions of power, use their full creativity.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
Yeah, you said you had to go back and study
history a little bit to look at how that had transpired.
What were some of the key moments or key points
of history that you think were worthy of studying for
people to look back at and educate themselves on that
you think would be valuable.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
Well, for sure, the US Constitution. I mean there were
no women in the room writing the constitution. There are
no black people in the room writing the constitution. If
you try to imagine what we might have devised with
other people at the table, you know, and not counted
women as you can't vote or you're not smart enough
to vote, or black people as slaves and so not worthy,

(19:57):
you would have created a society. If the right people
are at the table, you'd have created a society. It
was probably more equal for everybody. And so, you know,
going back and looking at that piece of history or
looking at I just I couldn't understand as I would
go out for the foundation and meet so many women
in so many communities in Africa Southeast Asia who knew

(20:20):
about contraceptives and had had them and no longer did,
and they kept saying, why why don't we have them?
You have them in your country, why don't we have them?
We used to? And as I had to literally learn
the history of contraceptives around the world, what had happened
with those and even where my own religion I grew
up Catholic, where the Catholic Church had not wanted women

(20:43):
to have contraceptives and blocked even funding for that. And
yet we know that if a woman has access to contraceptives,
she's healthier, her family or kids are healthier, and the
family's wealthier, and it lifts them out of poverty. And
so I had to learn that whole history before I
was willing to say, okay, am I going to step
into this very controversial issue. I'm Catholic, I have a

(21:06):
deep faith, but what's the right way to step in
also that maintains my integrity and what I've seen, but
could potentially move this issue forward because it literally is
a life and death situation often for women if they
have their children too close together and their bodies aren't ready.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
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(21:50):
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head to our store locator at Drinkjuni dot com and
find Juni at a Target near you. How did you
navigate that? It sounds like such a you know, kind

(22:12):
of challenging situation with your personal values and beliefs historically
mixed in with the research you're doing that how do
you walk those difficult parts? Because to me, that's often
where we all find ourselves. Like, I don't think there's
that much clarity. It's not always black and white, it's
not always easy. It's not always like this is the
obvious path, although we may try and make it that way.

(22:32):
Sometimes often there's so much more complexity in even trying
to change the world or having a positive impact in
the world. How do you tread that carefully? Also recognizing
that there'll still be backlash.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
So this was all around twenty eleven. In twenty twelve
when I knew we needed to have more contraceptives in
the world, We needed to further this issue, and I
knew the Foundation could play a role in that. And
I started to realize that probably my voice and that
would make a difference as a female, and I will

(23:07):
be honest, I was terrified, terrified to speak out on
this issue. Yes I was using contraceptives, Yes I was
educating my children about their bodies and what they should
do long term. But to step out on the world
stage and say this is what I believe and know
I would be attacked by my own church, you know
as a little girl, where I sat in the pews

(23:28):
you know, and saw who was at the top of
the church like I wasn't something I wanted. And so
I had to do several things. One is I took
a lot of time in quiet to think about what
do I believe? Why would I do this? What are
the ramifications for me, my children, my parents, my family,
What are the rammications for the foundation? Who can I

(23:48):
have support me that will help me learn and be
and maybe do this in the right way. I also
went back and questioned my faith a lot. I started
listening to a very liberal Catholic priest, Richard Rohr in
his writings. That was incredibly helpful to me to realize
you could push against some of that some of those
man made rules. And I listened to a lot and

(24:09):
read a lot of Brene Brown's work, you know, Darren
greatly was hugely helpful to me because I literally felt like,
I'm going to step off of precipice and talk about
this issue. And I did eventually get attacked by the
Catholic Church and attacked from both the left and the right.
But it was okay. And the reason it was okay
was one I had already talked to my kids about it,

(24:32):
talked to my parents, the people I cared about the most.
But also I knew what I had seen in the
developing world. I knew what women were asking me, and
I knew this tool made a difference in their life.
And so how could I have this platform and be
in this position and them be willing to share their
lives and their stories with me and me not use

(24:54):
my voice that that didn't make any sense. So I
really wrestled with all of that for problem ten twelve
months before I then was willing to come out. And
again I had a group of small group of female
friends around that I said, Oh, I'm going to do this,
and it's going to be scary, but I could sort
of talk it through and work it through. Right. Yeah,

(25:15):
and then when you take that one courageous step and
then it does start to snowball and it goes better
than you think in some ways, worse in some ways
than you thought, but Okay, then you're not as at
least for me, I wasn't afraid then for other courageous
steps I needed to take in my life later on.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
Yeah, I think there's so much wisdom the idea that
first of all, knowing who you are and what matters
to you at a very core level. I think a
lot of us sometimes do things because we think they
look good, or they might work out, or someone will
but knowing that I feel this is important and it
matters to me. I love the idea of what you're saying,

(25:52):
of speaking to your friends the people around you and
recognizing that it's not all oh, it's going to be
great and going to love it. No, actually, there are
going to be consequences, ramifications, challenges, and then the idea
that it took you ten to twelve months. I love
hearing that because I think we often think that our
best decisions or big decisions are instant and we know

(26:12):
it and you kind of flow in the moment. But
often we have to sit with these things and see
how they sit with us in silence across a period
of time.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
Definitely, And so I love.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
Hearing all of that. I think that's really valuable. You've
talked about, you know, tell me about your experiences with
imposter syndrome, because I can imagine even when you're trying
to make these changes, and maybe even earlier and in life,
maybe what was your earliest experience of imposter syndrome?

Speaker 2 (26:37):
Oh gosh, probably at the Foundation, Probably the first ten
years of the Foundation's life. I felt like an impostor.
Here I am. I'm a computer scientist. I knew that background.
I had gone to business schools, so I knew economics.
But here we are in a whole different field. I mean,

(26:57):
I'm literally it's a whole second career for me. I'm
learning about biology, I'm trying to understand from people in
global health what can be done. I'm learning from doctors,
I'm learning from community health workers on the ground. But
I just I didn't feel like I could ever know
enough to speak credibly on this topic because I didn't

(27:19):
go to school in global health, you know, or I
wasn't a doctor. But it took some time, and again
someone actually inside the foundation who was working for me
at the time, came to me and wanted me to
speak out on something. And I said, no, no, I
don't feel like I know enough. And this woman said
to me, she said, are you kidding? Just look at
all the traveling you have done, Like go back and

(27:41):
let's look at all the trips you've done and all
the knowledge you've amassed. She said, how many people have
ever done that kind of travel in that way to
be in these communities and to be at the tables
where the scientists. I could come back and scientists would
explain things to me and I could ask. And I thought, oh,
my gosh, I guess I do know enough. And I'll

(28:04):
never know everything. No one will ever know anything everything
on the history of the Earth. But I know enough
to know what I know deeply, at a core, core level,
and to speak those truths. And I started to realize
there would be value in a woman doing that because
I could speak on behalf of so many of these
women that I had met and who'd invited me into
their homes or shown me the tough circumstances of their lives.

(28:28):
And I thought, Okay, I've just got to go to
get over this. If they've spoken to me, I need
to speak their truths in the world. And so again,
I think the first Brene Brown book I ever picked
up was The Gifts of Imperfection, and I learned to
embrace all these places in me that I do see

(28:49):
as imperfect. I still see as imperfect. I am an
imperfect person. You're an imperfect person. We all are. But
to embrace those parts of myself instead of push them
away and say, but I'm probably enough, still enough to
be this messenger.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
Yeah, what advice would you give to people who are
listening or watching and have that imposter syndrome? It's so
easy to there's goodness in that belief, Like I've always
found that when I do doubt myself, there's actually beauty
in that because it's a humility and accepting that I
don't know. There's a there's a goodness in accepting that

(29:23):
I don't have everything figured out. I actually think we
often play down that so much today. We make it
sound like it's terrible to have imposter syndrome. But to me,
anyone who has a conscience or a reflection mechanism will
will feel that pretty much whenever they grow into a
new phase. So I find it very useful to display
to me what's missing, what I've not learned yet, what

(29:45):
I need to study, what I need to become educated about.
A focus on how would you guide and advise people
who are sitting here listening to us, and they're thinking, Manda,
I don't feel like i'm enough, I feel like I'm
not well placed, I don't know enough, I'm not good enough,
I'm not whatever else it may be. How would you
guide them through that?

Speaker 2 (30:02):
Well, I think it's what you said. You have to
actually see the beauty in the imperfections. Somebody one time
gave me a heart that had all of these sort
of holes in it in a funny way, and I
was going through something really tough, and she's part of
my spiritual group. I'm also in a spiritual group, non
a nominational spiritual group. And she gave it to me,
and she said, Melinda, this is probably like your heart

(30:23):
right now, like you thought it was kind of perfect,
but no, it's imperfect. But it's those holes and those
difficult places that have formed you into who you are
now as a person. And so I would say to people,
start by looking at what messages you grew up with
in your home, what messages are you getting in your workplace,

(30:45):
what messages are society giving you? And are those possibly
not true? And start to say to yourself, yes, there
are places in me that are imperfect. And I agree
with you. I think looking at those helps us remain
humble and not narcissistic or in our egoic self in
embracing those and saying, but there's beauty in those and

(31:07):
what can I learn from them? But I do think
once you embrace those parts of yourself, at least for me,
I just know I feel more integrated and more like
a whole person. Right. And then sometimes you also need
to go back and make amends. There are times where
you've really made some mistakes or said something hurtful to someone,
And once you embrace those pieces going back and making

(31:31):
amends also, I think again helps you feel better about
your core self because then you are living even more
in the truth and the beauty of who you hopefully
want to be.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
What else do you do in your spiritual group? And
how did you what does that look like? As people,
I'm sure listening and watching you also want to have
a spiritual group, a community, a tribe. What does that
look like? What do you do and how does it function?

Speaker 2 (31:54):
Yeah, so there are eight of us women that are
in this group. We formed it in two thousand and one.
At the time, we all had small children, you know,
going through school, and we were of different religions. Actually
one or two were just no religion at all, and
we just agreed that we would meet monthly second Wednesday
of the month and we would pick a reading or

(32:15):
a book and we would all be with it, sit
with it, read it, whatever it was. We all committed
to taking some time in silence every day, even if
it was only ten minutes, and then coming to the
group and having it be a trusted circle where we
could share our innermost thoughts about that spiritual reading, about

(32:36):
something going on in our life. And it just became
a group that became central to my life. And I
would say vice versa, I know these women incredibly well
and their trials and tribulations and losing a parent or
not sure they're going to how the marriage is going
to go, or gosh, I didn't parent very well in

(32:57):
that moment, or here's where some thing has touched me
deeply in my life nature. And then we go on
a silent retreat at least once a year, and we're
in silence, usually for two or three days. Sometimes we'll
have a leader come and guide us through that. Other
times we've done it enough now that we kind of
go on our own. But it's just a place of deep,

(33:22):
close community where I would say we can touch one
another's souls and touch our own souls.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
Wow, and you've been doing that since two thousand and one.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
Uh huh, Wow, that's over twenty years.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
Yeah, that's unbelievable. Yeah, what is with the community like that?
How do you select who gets to be a part
of it? Because I guess life was very different twenty
three years ago. Everyone goes through so many different evolutions
of life and phases. How do you pick who stays,
who leaves, who goes? And build that together. How does

(33:53):
that work well.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
At the time that we formed the group, we didn't
all know each other, so there was connective tissue between
I would say, three of us who then brought in
others into the group, and we formed enough trust over
time that we knew, you know that the information wouldn't
go outside the group. You didn't go tell your spouse

(34:15):
or you're certainly your children or your mother. And we
had one hiccup with one person in the group who
it just over time that person was clear wanted to
spin out, and so she did. That was okay, But
it just became this place of trust and life lessons
and sort of milestones. We've been through so much together.
And I wouldn't say that we all are best friends,

(34:37):
like some of us are closer than others, or the
group's reform based on somebody losing a parent, or but
we're just there for each other, like we have each
other's backs. And it was when I was thinking about
coming out on these on talking about contraceptives and being
a bit more public for the foundation, which I hadn't
been before, I talked it through with this group first.

(34:58):
They were one of the first places I said I'm
going to do this, and I am terrified. I'm absolutely terrified,
and I knew they could almost be a trust counsel
for me to tell me the truth of well, look here,
be careful there, know you're going to be okay. And
it's almost like we kind of grew up together.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
That's beautiful, And these were all peers. They're just at
the time, they're just people who're meeting because I think
often we feel like we have to be soiunded by
like everyone who's ten years ahead of us and fifteen
years ahead of us, and everyone has to be a mentor.
But we underestimate just how much our peers and the
people that are going through life at the same time
at the same pace are so powerful in our lives,

(35:38):
and we underestimate the people that are almost around us.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
We do sometimes, and you know, many of the women
in this group are maybe five or six years older
than I am, but you also don't know like one
of them that's very close to me in age, her
husband was one of my best friends and we lost
him at a age thirty seven. I mean, who expects
that you know, and you're in your thirties and you
lose shoes or husband. I lose one of my best friends.

(36:02):
So these moments also, I think, form you and you know,
help shape who you become. So yeah, it doesn't always
have to be somebody older. And in fact, because my
youngest daughter I had the youngest of all the children
in the group, my last one was the youngest. I
ended up also, though not in my spiritual group, but
with other friends than who were younger than me. And

(36:24):
that was lovely too. There's a lot of wisdom there.
And you know, I have three other siblings. I am
extraordinarily close to my brother who's ten years younger than me.
There's so much wisdom there. So I think it has
much more to do with is the person on a
growth path? Right? And then can we mutually learn from
one another?

Speaker 1 (36:42):
Absolutely, you've talked about having an addiction to perfection, Yeah,
and I think that's something that a lot of us
deal with. What's your relationship with perfectionism? Now?

Speaker 2 (36:52):
Well, it was awful? It's like a how bad was it?
It was terrible?

Speaker 1 (36:58):
Well, go true?

Speaker 2 (36:58):
What would it look like, you know, dressing right, saying
the right thing in you know, at even like a
dinner party or a cocktail party or or something like this.
What if I messed up and said the wrong thing
on a podcast, oh my gosh, you know. And so
it was horrible. It was absolutely horrible. It was zapping
my energy, and it was driving the people around me.

(37:23):
I finally realized crazy too, like somebody you know, who
would help prepare me for something at the foundation, if
I was going on a trip, you know, I was
grabbing all these facts and figures, and it just was
so unnecessary. And so when I finally really looked at
it and again read this book on Gifts of Imperfection
and started to write down all the places that was
coming up in my life or start to notice it, like,

(37:46):
oh my gosh, before I leave my closet, I'm you know,
it's taking me ten extra minutes. How silly is that?
Like I could have ten minutes to go be in
silence or be with my kids or and so as
soon as I started to identify all the places, I
could break them down. And it doesn't mean it doesn't
still come up. I was going to a very small

(38:06):
dinner party last week with a couple that I really
respected but didn't know well, and I was going with
two other girlfriends, and literally the hour before that, I
went to get a bit of time in quiet, and
I realized that feeling of not knowing enough was coming
up that perfection, so I need to know this. What
if they asked me this about the foundation? Oh my gosh.
And then I just was like, no, stop, just stop,

(38:28):
I'm going to be enough, and I'd be some things
I can't answer tonight that I for you know, I
forgot that particular statistic, you know, because I haven't been
in that country in a while. But so what once
you can start to let it go and again I
could just say, okay, well I'll just be myself, then
then it's fine.

Speaker 1 (38:46):
And how do you stop that recurring voice that judges you,
criticizes you, maybe even afterward says to you, oh, you
shouldn't have forgotten that statistic. Oh if you would have
said this, then imagine how it would have gone. I
think it's hard enough to quiet the voice before you
go let alone the voice that comes afterwards that kind

(39:07):
of puts you down even further and says you could
have done so much better, you should have done better,
And especially as someone who's come from a high performing
college and job and everything else, like, how is that?
How is your relationship with that voice evolved.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
I used to get that so much after an event
or something i'd done. It almost never comes up anymore.
It maybe comes up maybe how I stop judging myself
and when I stop, and I also stop judging other people.
When I learned to not judge other people, I realized
you have to look at when you judge somebody else
in your fingers putting this way, you know, like Byron

(39:43):
Katie says, there's three fingers pointing this way. And so
I realized if I had a judgment about even say
a friend, right, well, gosh, I needed to look at that.
Is that judgment really about them? Or is it about me?
And so often the thing I might be picking on
in my mind about them was actually about me. So
I had to learn to say to myself, Okay, what
is it in myself that I don't like? And can

(40:05):
I just be okay with that? And so, boy, I
believe me. I've made so many mistakes. My kids tease
me all the time. I'm terrible with people's names, and
yet it's a sign of respect. I think if you
use somebody's name, they have endless stories about how I've
made up you know, how I messed up their high
school friends' names, but it's okay. I was trying to

(40:26):
be respectful. I'm human and it's huge. And I also
think the more I can humanize myself in front of
other people, the more I take down the barrier between
me and them and we can see we are just humans.

Speaker 1 (40:37):
Right, absolutely absolutely.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
What do you judge yourself? Do you later say to yourself, Oh,
I should have said this, I should have said that.

Speaker 1 (40:46):
I think it took me a long time to get
to a point of giving myself grace and not making
myself feel that I had to be anyone else apart
from myself, and that the perfect performance wasn't actually satisfying
to me. It just gave me more to have to

(41:09):
live up to. And so when I first started doing
what I do, it felt like in every room, in
every conversation, I had to say something magical and miraculous
and profound, and often I'd say something very basic, yet
it would feel that way. And sometimes I'd say the
most profound thing and it would be seen as basic.

(41:29):
And I started to realize very quickly that if you
were spending most of the time in your head just
trying to figure out how to be a certain way
or come across a certain way, which is what all
of us do. Sure, you actually lose the opportunity to
be present and have the experience and probably say something
and hear things that actually have an impact on other

(41:53):
people because you're actually there. And so it was learning
to trust myself and trust that whether I knew the
right thing to say or I didn't know that that
was perfect just as it was. But I think that
that grace is something we have to develop and cultivate
and build because it's so natural. I was just I

(42:13):
was just a gold and Sex. On Monday, We're doing
a talks of Goldman Sex and it was all around
the benefits of mindfulness mixed with a high performance culture.
And so it's like, how does that work if you're
a high performing trader? What does it mean to practice
mindfulness and grace? There's not a lot of space for
grace if you're losing twenty million dollars or whatever else.

(42:34):
Maybe in two hundred million it could be so much more.
So what does that look like to give yourself grace?
And I think we equate grace to weakness. We think
if I'm kind to myself, then that's weakness. And actually
I found that guilt blocks growth for sure.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
That guilt doesn't make you grow.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
Guilt can maybe make you feel bad for a second
and push you in the right direction, but over a
sustained period of.

Speaker 2 (42:59):
Time, guilt will drain you totally.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
And so I think grace does what guilt kant. It
says I'm going to give some space to where I'm
at so that I can get back on the horse,
Whereas if I just guilt myself, I'm going to keep
pushing myself down into the ground. I'll never get back up.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
My thinking on guilt is that sometimes it can point
to where you're off of your integrated self, and it's
very important to pay attention to read. So for me,
when it comes up in silence, I try to really
look at Okay, was I off of who I want
to be? Grace is one of my absolute favorite words,
and it's something that in difficult situations I actually pray for,

(43:38):
like I will pray for just bring some grace to
this moment, whatever that means. And I think so often again,
I think sometimes if we're trying to say the right thing,
or do the right thing, or not say the wrong thing,
we're kind of actually in that egoic part of ourselves
as a point as opposed to saying, just let grace

(43:59):
come through through whatever is meant to be, let it
happen in this moment. And I will say, for me,
because I have traveled a lot to these rural settings,
low income countries and communities, I will often pray for
grace before I go in and for the conversation, to
try and drop any judgments I have so I can

(44:20):
just meet the person where they are at, and they
can meet me and I can see is there something
that can come out of this of beauty a learning
that maybe we can work on or they can work
on or But yeah, grace is actually one of my
absolute favorite words.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
Well, I love that. How hard was it to give
yourself grace through the divorce? Because I feel like that
feels like for a lot of people can feel like
one of the biggest failures, challenges, stresses. It's one of
the hardest transitions and changes that you go through in life.
How hard was it at that time to give yourself grace?
What did that look like?

Speaker 2 (44:55):
Yeah, that was the hardest thing I had ever been
through my life. Let me be really clear, about that, Well,
you have an image. I thought I was going to
be married for life. I thought, you know, i'd be
married fifty plus years. And so all of a sudden,
you see that even despite very very much work and counseling,

(45:20):
that what you had doesn't actually exist, and that for me,
I couldn't go forward. That I just there wasn't enough
trust any longer, and so it wasn't something I wished for.
I certainly didn't think I would be in my late
fifties and be divorced, you know, like I didn't. It
was okay that people were divorced. I didn't have some
problem with that, but I didn't know that was going

(45:42):
to be me. And it was incredibly challenging. I've never
cried so much my whole life. And I prayed a
lot for grace, for grace for myself, for grace for
my children, for grace for the situation that we would

(46:02):
somehow get through this as a family behind the scenes,
and hope to God it wouldn't be public before we
were finished, because I knew that would be a whole
nother thing. And I think sometimes the only way I
got through was because I do have a faith, and
thank God. I had close, close friends who I could
talk to on the hardest days, and a good therapist.
But it is not something I would wish on any family.

(46:26):
It is a very, very difficult thing to go through
because you're pulling apart something that has been tightly woven
together and that you believed in. And I will say though,
on the other side, there can be a lot of beauty,
you know, once you get through the rough patches and
things finally kind of calm down for the whole family
and everybody. On the other side, there can be a

(46:49):
lot of beauty. So I never thought i'd be in
my late fifties, I'm about to turn sixty and be
single again, right Who expects that? But I didn't. But hey,
it's pretty great too, you know. And so I look
for I just I look in the hardest of hard times,
I say to myself, just pray for grace and know

(47:10):
there'll be something that comes out of this struggle. I'd
read a book years ago, many years ago called Awakening
Joy by James Bross Bras and Shoshana Alexander, and one
of the things I had learned from that book I
carried it around in my briefcase for years, or my
dotebag is that you can hold joy in sadness side
by side. I had somehow gotten to that point in life,

(47:33):
you know, in my forties, where I had thought, oh,
there's these amazing joy moments or these really sad low moments. No,
you can hold both side by side and realize that
even when you're really sad, there's going to be joy again.
It might take ten minutes, it might take ten months,
it might take ten years, but there's joy and both exist.
And I started to learn to be able to hold

(47:53):
that duality.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
Yeah, it's so interesting to me. I was sweeing to
someone yesterday who'd just broken up with a five year relationship,
not not married, just to partner, and they were saying
to me, they were like, I know there'll be better days,
but I can't see how right now. Like I know it,
but I can't see how right now. And I think

(48:16):
that that discomfort is probably one of the most piercing
emotions that you can have, because sometimes people even go
as far as they'll never be another good day. But
sometimes we can see there's a good day, but we
don't know when. Walk me through the emotion of when
you know something is ending, and your vision of what

(48:36):
something was is crumbling, and you don't know what that
next phase looks like. Like, walk us through the emotional
navigation of that, because I feel like that's what so
many people struggle with people. It's one thing being like, okay,
this is ending now, but there's so much when that
penny drops al much like when that emotion drops from

(48:58):
your head to your heart, like Okay, this is not
working out anymore. But then it kind of goes here
and you go, oh, that that's really uncomfortable, and then
you actually have to follow through with it. Walk us
through navigating that. What does that take?

Speaker 2 (49:12):
I have had to learn that last ten years, I
would say, to really feel deeply feel my emotions in
my body, like that emotion you just described from here
to it's not working to drops, as you said, into
your heart and I got to make a change. It
literally felt like a stab in the heart, like I
could feel it here like and so I am. I

(49:39):
just knew it was something. It was such a such
an enormous consequential decision that I needed to take time
with it, and I needed to be kind of myself.
I didn't want to. I wanted to minimize if I could,
the pain to those around me. But it's just it's
gut wrenching. That's probably the best. It feels like a
stab in the heart, least to me, a stab in

(49:59):
the heart and wrenching because it's not what you want
to do. But that's when I think your friends come
in and they are the lights and the moments of grace,
and they can hold out for you and remind you
the hope on the other side. You're going to be okay.
I know it's going to be okay, But I'm sure
there's going to be something beautiful on the other side,
even though none of us know what that is.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
What's something you know now that you wish you knew.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
Then you will find happiness again. You know, you can
feel like I had days where I thought, I don't
know if I'll ever be happy again. I just I
don't know. You will absolutely find happiness, and you'll find
happiness in sometimes really unexpected ways or unexpected places, right,
And I don't know. At least you learn. At least

(50:42):
for me, I learned to appreciate the world more, appreciate
my friends more, and my family more being in nature. Yeah,
so you'll be happy again, you just can't feel it
in the moment.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
Thank you, Yeah, I know, I'm I really hope that
everyone's listening and watching that resonates with them and being
able to find that grace, being able to navigate those
challenging emotions feeling in their body, because yeah, it's just
when you hear someone say it when they're actually going
through it. It's Yeah, it's one of those things where even

(51:15):
your closest friends don't even know the right things to
say because.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
And sometimes there isn't the right thing to say. I mean,
it's also like when someone passes away, right, sometimes you
just need somebody to walk with you, or somebody to
just cry with you, you.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
Know, and.

Speaker 2 (51:32):
There are no words. But I always know too when
my friends step in in those moments, I will step
in for them or for somebody else right later on.
And so again I learned through the process that you
actually have to accept help.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
Right.

Speaker 2 (51:49):
I wasn't so great at that. I was good at
helping other people, but not so good at accepting it myself.
And I had to learn to accept that help because
I it isn't something I could go through alone.

Speaker 3 (51:58):
You know.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
I think sometimes we make the mistake world of thinking,
you know, while soldier on, I can do this alone. No,
I mean we can only really do things in community.
And it takes community to feel held and secure and
safe enough to move forward in whatever it is we're doing,
our professional pursuit, our love life, our parenting of our children.

(52:19):
If we're going to do it well, it takes community.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
Yeah, what was the most recent thing you asked? Helpful?

Speaker 2 (52:25):
I was struggling with something about a week ago, and
so it's personal though, and so I asked a friend
to go for a walk. I just said, could we
walk and talk? Like I have something I really need
to work through here. And yeah, so I'll pick up
a phone call a friend say can we go for
a walk, or I'll text somebody right, And you know,
we have ways of telling each other can drop everything

(52:48):
versus okay, this can wait till tomorrow, you know. But
for sure, I do it all the time, and I hope,
I hope I'm there and have the backs of my
friends as well.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
So wonderful to dive into some of the issues that
you're focusing right now through the work that you think
of the biggest issues facing the world from your perspective,
if you had to, if you could narrow down to
three things that you're like, these are the three things
you're trying to solve right now, which would have scaled impact.

(53:17):
What would they be? What are they?

Speaker 2 (53:20):
I'd say it's really one thing, and it's making sure
that women and people of color can walk into their
full power everywhere in the world. And we need to
get women and people of color to all places in society,
whether that's in politics, because they make different policies, state houses, congress, parliaments,

(53:46):
we need to make sure they're empowered. Financially, we do
not invest in women led businesses or people of colored
businesses the way we do in male businesses, white men's businesses.
That's just the truth and the VC community. And then culturally,
we need to have more of those stories come forward.
I feel like if we don't advance the world on

(54:10):
behalf of everybody else, we're going to just keep falling backwards.
We're going to keep falling backwards into these potholes that
we have, and so I would like to see, you know,
more women be able to step in their full power
everywhere in the world. And it does it's hard. It
means breaking down social norms in certain places. It means
investing in women led businesses, it means thinking about things

(54:31):
differently in the workplace. But I think the world would
be so much better off if the people making our
policies looked like the rest of society, all of society.
So in the US that means, you know, having more
Latinas who are there, more people of color who are
making policy, more women making policy. We would just reflect

(54:55):
more all of society instead of a certain echelon of society.
And you know, it's still for instance, just to give
you one example, I go places in the world and
people just kind of scratch their head and say, the
US has no paid family medical leave policy, no family
leave policy, Like don't you care about your children? You know?

(55:16):
And then you go to place like Sweden or Norway.
I've had it for thirty years. And it's not just
the women. The men take time off at the birth
of their child. Well guess what, Then they participate more,
They're more involved with the child, things are more balanced
in the home and so but it's because we don't
have enough women in our US Congress and Senate and

(55:39):
other places to be able to create those policies, right
we have them in thirteen states now, but we don't
have a federal policy yet. That just shouldn't be not
in this day of working parents where most couples both
parents are working if they have kids.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
And systemically, what does that actually take like to actually
achieve that, Like, what is that? What is the actual
work has to go and behind the scenes to make
that happen, because I think we only ever hear about
it if it becomes news, like you're saying if someone
gets voted in or someone gets a position of power.
But what's happening years and years and days and days
behind the scenes to make that happen, Like, what does
that actually take?

Speaker 2 (56:15):
It means there are lots of groups that organize and
work on this, but it means funding women's political campaigns,
supporting them when they get harassed on the campaign trail,
giving them the tools so that when they get into
these halls of power, they know how to make good policy.
Right in the past, we just have not done that.

(56:38):
We haven't done it at scale. So that's one example.
In the venture capital space, it means really looking at
women's businesses and seeing just because they don't look like
the other businesses we've seen these are valuable businesses or
people of color. But we have to break down the
bias that has been there that says, oh, well, you
don't take enough risk, or I've never seen a business

(57:01):
like this before, or maybe you're not trained up in
the right way. We have all these sort of biased
excuses instead of saying, no, let's fund these businesses. And
then what happens is you'll have women and people of
color if you have them in all places in society
at the top. It means a young woman can look
up and say, oh, there's three dozen archetypes of women

(57:23):
who are politicians. There are three dozen archetypes of women's CEOs.
I don't want to be like those six, but I
want to be like one of those. Two. Young men
can look up and see three dozen archetypes and politics,
three dozen archetypes as CEO, three dozen archetypes on Wall Street, right,
and go I don't want to be like those guys,
but I want to be like those We're just not

(57:44):
there yet, and so we've got to invest more in
this if we're going to create true lasting change in
the country.

Speaker 1 (57:50):
Yeah, no, I can. I mean definitely, speaking from the
person of color point of view like I never was.
I was never raised with that system that there were
any things that were outside of my possibility. My parents
were very My parents never made us feel that a
color of skin would hold us back, and so we

(58:11):
worked hard, we pushed forward. And it was only until
much much later, probably more recently, where I started to
realize certain differences. And it was almost as if I
not that I'd hidden my not that they were hidden
from me or that I wasn't aware of them. It
was just I started to recognize how differently. Even sometimes

(58:33):
I was criticized or looked at versus counterparts who may
not have that like I. I'd often hear things like,
you know, well, Jay's using his culture of meditation to
make it spread across the world, and that's watered down
and it's not the truth of his tradition or whatever
it may be. And I was like, wait, wait a minute,

(58:54):
but this is my tradition, like this, I grew up
with this. I'm only sharing what's actually from my home
country and where my parents came from. How fascinating that
there have been other people who have taken that culture
and spread it all across the world and never had
to deal with that feedback, whereas that's feedback that I
have to deal with, and it sounds very random, a niche,

(59:15):
but that point being the same, that sometimes you're held
to a different standard you are.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
There's just even though it is your own totally, and
they're just it's bias or it's people projecting onto you
because they haven't seen somebody like you before, and so
they'll and it'll be I think a lot as a woman,
I'll say a lot of times it's these sort of
little indirect ways that things come in. No, you can't, No,

(59:41):
you shouldn't know. We've never seen one like you before,
and so I think if we, you know, somewhat. I
was lucky. I got protected being an all girls' school,
but it wasn't until I went out to the workforce
and I hear even men talk about these days. Look,
I've educated my daughters and sons equally, you know, in schools,
but then I send them out into the workforce and
my son sort of sores pretty easily, and my daughter

(01:00:03):
just keeps hitting these barriers, right, And so those are
some of the things we have to look at as
a society and take down.

Speaker 1 (01:00:11):
Have you ever had anything from your own kids that
felt like that where you're like.

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
Oh no, less so them specifically, but their friends for sure.
For sure, particularly they're friends of color. And my sense
of that was always just to support them until those kids.
You can be anything you want to be, just because
that white person tells you, no, uh uh, I see you.

(01:00:35):
You've been in my house, I see you. I know
what you're capable of. Keep going right, or or also
I think you know, some men are more networked in
the world. There are more natural networks they connect into.
So again sending girls out or kids of color and
connecting them into our networks so they get that first internship.

(01:00:57):
So the corporation sees them as like, oh my god,
they are talented, right, but they don't there aren't those
natural networks to connect them into today. Or we have
to push harder to get them in right. And I
think all of those kinds of things can help.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
What are the top three values that you want to
do your kids to embody that you felt were real
priorities for them to operate as humans in the world today.

Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
I wanted them to be kind, I wanted them to
develop their talents, whatever that was, because I said to them,
you have some inherent talent that is up to you
to figure out that you can give to the world,
whatever field that is in. And number three, you've been
lucky to grow up in the United States and to

(01:01:41):
grow up in a situation where you didn't have to
worry about paying for your education or your health career, housing. Like,
you are lucky, so you have to give back to
the world. So just as my parents said to me,
you will be college going, my kids got the messages
you will give back to the world. Now, I've always
said to them, have your own career for you know,
know what you're good at. But at some point you

(01:02:03):
are expected to give back. And I've actually been pleasantly
surprised that all of them, even in their twenties, have
figured out how to give back in different ways. And again,
it goes back to that thing that I learned in
high school, which is we can all one of us
can affect somebody else's life. Right, if you grow up

(01:02:23):
in the United States, you are lucky. Even in a
tough circumstance. In the United States, you're lucky compared to
the way people grew up in many other countries.

Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
How did you guide them through the process of growing
up with such famous parents and known parents, because I've
that's a really hard thing, like to grow up where
everyone knows who your parents are and recognizes your name
and everyone. How have you helped them navigate that, because
I can imagine that's not easy at all.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
It was difficult for them, and I knew it was
going to be difficult when they were young. Well two things.
One is we didn't have the TV on in the house,
so they literally didn't know. In fact, their father was
kind of who he was in the world. He was
his dad in the house, you know. And I was
not out speaking in the world that much then, And
so we enrolled them in their schools under my name,

(01:03:13):
my maiden name French, and it would give us two
to three weeks where I would be dropping them off
at school and they were just like everybody else. Nobody
knew their dad was who he was, and it wasn't
until he showed up that people went, oh, those are
his kids. But by then they were already in the
school and they were just we were seen as a
normal family. That was done intentionally, was super intentionally. And

(01:03:35):
I would sit down with the administration before the school
year and talk about the values we had, and I
expected them to be treated like everybody else's kids, and
if my kids were acting out, I wanted to know
about it, or if they were acting wealthy. I went
to school, I went to university with other wealthy kids,
and I wasn't. I saw some of those kids acted.

(01:03:55):
Those weren't going to be my kids. So that's how
they started elementary school, and then as they got to
middle school. In high school, we would have conversations with
them about would you like to keep your mom's ma
name name or would you like to adopt Gates and
different ones chose different things of the three of them
at different times. But we just didn't make a big

(01:04:15):
deal about what we were out doing in the world,
you know, their world. They were very protected by their
schools and by our home life. Yes, they grew up
in a very fancy house, but you know, they had chores,
they knew that they were they had an allowance. We
didn't just buy them something. And when they finally got
to the age where they had a phone. If they
broke their phone, there were rules about how that got replaced.

(01:04:37):
We just didn't give them a new phone, right So
they grew up with that and I think it taught
them the value of money. It taught them that, Okay,
they could see when when also when I was out
speaking more they knew why they could see what their
dad was doing, especially in philanthropy. Then, oh, my parents
are living out their values in the world. But they
were very protected by their schools and I think that

(01:04:59):
served them incredibly well.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
How old were they when they got their first phone?

Speaker 2 (01:05:03):
Ah, so my oldest daughter, the conversation was about a
flip phone, and that was in fifth grade and she
finally got it in sixth Oh.

Speaker 1 (01:05:11):
Good.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
And the difference between when she went through high school
then versus my youngest, which was six years later through
the same high school. Two girls, the son in the middle,
but the two girls, the difference between not having social
media and high school and my oldest went through and
then my youngest having social media by middle school just

(01:05:32):
profoundly different in terms of parenting. It was just it
was like a switch went on. And even the adults
in the school having a phone, it was just so different.
But we did have rules early on. Ever, you know,
they plugged their phones outside their room at night where
I could see them, and when I'd wake up at
night and go, look, that phone better be in the

(01:05:53):
place that it was supposed to be. Now, whether they
snuck it back to the room for a few minutes
and brought it back, I've now learned a couple of them.
But you know, we had rules about those things, and
I think that served them well.

Speaker 1 (01:06:07):
How do we create a culture of giving in service, Milinda,
Because I think some people would look and say, oh,
it's easy to do it when you have billions to
give away, or you know, millions to give away, or
whatever else it may be. And I remember in my
spiritual tradition, one statement that I always used to love
is God doesn't see how much you give, God sees

(01:06:27):
how much you hold back. And it was this idea
of you know, and I've always appreciated that sentiment because
and I found so I had parents who were very giving,
even though our household income for me growing up was
no more than like fifty zero pounds, and my parents
were still very charitable in the way they could be.
And it's said a really good turn for me. And

(01:06:47):
then when I lived as a monk, we did a
lot of service work and that has continued in my
life afterwards as well. And that continues to be an
important part of my wife and nice life of wanting
to give back, wanting to serve. But it's I think
it's it's hard because we're so many people are struggling financially.
So many people are struggling economically. There are far less

(01:07:08):
opportunities that people have to even take care of themselves.
The prices of rents, you know, soaring through the roof,
like healthcare in this country, of course, is you know,
the biggest concern. And so I think what you were
saying earlier is that people who have opportunities and have
the privilege to give, should give. But I think often
we can sit in the think of, well, when I
have a million or a billion or whatever, maybe then

(01:07:30):
i'll give. How do we shift that, like, what does
that look like?

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
I think you can there are different ways to give.
You can give your time, your energy, or your money,
or any combination of those. So I think there's value
in high school kids and even middle schools going out
and volunteering. You know, my two of my three children
worked on the Teen Crisis text line, and boy, I

(01:07:54):
mean they really had to learn how to counsel, what
to do. They had to show up but they learned
a lot about you know, other teens in crisis. They
benefited from it too. I had one of my kids
worked out in the community in a homeless shelter, right
and was helping with the food services. So there are
so many ways to help in our own backyard. And

(01:08:14):
I always tell people start there because you'll get attached
to something and you'll start to see that your time
absolutely can make a difference in somebody's life, right, And
even if you can't give much money, or at the
end of the year you can give fifty or one
hundred dollars to that organization, it does help. And so

(01:08:34):
I just encourage people to start somewhere, even if it
feels really small to them. When they start, you learn
something from all those experiences.

Speaker 1 (01:08:43):
Yeah, and I definitely found that. I think service is
one of those things that and I you know, there's
it can be seen as the most selfless or the
most selfish thing because it gives you. It's the best
learning experience of learning about the challenges that exist, learning
that when you're part of solving a problem, you feel
the solution is closer, right, I think like you feel

(01:09:06):
like there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
There is a method, for sure. And you know, service
has given me so many gifts in my life, and
therefore I will never say it's been selfless because I've
gained so much from it. But the biggest thing it's
helped me understand is just that. Yeah, when you feel
you're part of solving a problem, it feels manageable, it
feels possible, and seeing one person's life change is miraculous.

(01:09:30):
And I think if we see it as statistics or
dollars or numbers, then it will never feel like enough,
because numbers will never satisfy or make us feel like
we want because we know there's more. But witnessing change
through the eyes of one individual, I mean nothing can
compare to that. And you'd have no idea how many

(01:09:51):
lives you've changed just through that impact and the great
opportunity you gain to even have something to give. It's
a privilege to you. It's such a someone's giving you
the opportunity to serve They've served you by giving you
the opportunity. I think we often feel like we're helping others,
but I've found so often that I'm fortunate enough that
I'm even in that position that I can give that

(01:10:12):
to someone.

Speaker 2 (01:10:12):
Yeah, and you learn from those people too, You learn culturally,
you learn things that you wouldn't have known even about yourself. Right.
There's a quote I love that I used in actually
my high school graduation speech. It was by Ralph Waldo Emerson,
and it ends by saying, to know that even one

(01:10:34):
life has breathed easier because you have lived, that is
to have succeeded.

Speaker 1 (01:10:41):
And so well.

Speaker 2 (01:10:44):
Even for me, even though I was goal or in it,
I wanted to do this and I wanted to do that.
My definition of success was if somebody's breathed easier on
this planet because I've lived, then my life was worth it. Right.
And you know, if you talk to anybody who does
hospice at end of life, or if you've gotten to
walk the end of life journey, which I've been fortunate

(01:11:04):
enough to do with two people in very close, you
realize that, you know, people want to know at the
end of their life that they were loved by their
family and friends, and that they loved their family and
friends in return, and that their life had some meaning,
whatever that meaning is for them. And so you know,
I often think in the US we have our definition

(01:11:26):
of success wrong. You know, we look at these people
who've made it an industry or made x amount of money,
but no success is like think of that teacher who
if we all talk about like, who had the most
impact in our lives. Quite often people will talk about
their parents or a teacher or a coach, and so

(01:11:46):
think about it. A coach in a school doesn't make
much money, but he or she has an enormous impact
on the students that come through that high school absolutely
and play that sport. And so to me, there's enormous
value in that, and those are the kinds of things
we should be holding up in society.

Speaker 1 (01:12:07):
I've had this dream, and maybe we'll speak about it
another time, but I've had this dream for a long
time in regards to that, because I grew up in
a home where I remember, you know, where my extended
family or family members would always want to wait for
the Times Rich List like that was published every year,
and obviously then it was the Forbes Rich List became
the new thing, and then now we have the Time

(01:12:28):
one hundred list or whatever. Maybe, and I always dreamed
and I've still had this stream that I want to
do it one days. I want to create a service list.
And I'd love a service list to be published every
year of individuals and groups of people who are doing
the most service. And not only would I like it
to be a list of the people who give the
most money, I'd like them to nominate someone who works

(01:12:53):
on the ground to be nominated to be on that list.
Totally because of the unknown names that you're not famous people.
Basically you're doing amazing work around the world that I'm
sure you know many of. And I've always had this
dream that we could publish a service list every year,
because I feel like if I grew up in a
home where there's a service list on my table every year,
I feel what we reward in society is what we repeat.

(01:13:17):
And I don't see service being rewarded or seen as
an achievement yet, or it's seen as the achievement of
a few, And until it becomes something that is accessible
and open to many, we'll keep looking at the rich
list and being blown away by that and thinking that's
the goal of life. It's hard to change that. If

(01:13:38):
the only list that every major publication is publishing is
the wealth list, how will we ever shift what achievement
is in the society.

Speaker 2 (01:13:46):
So anyway, that is a really good idea because and again,
the people doing the real work are the people who
are giving of themselves and in service. And as you said,
you see change, even change at a grassroots level. We
all get so overwhelmed by these global problems, and they

(01:14:06):
are overwhelming, but again the only thing that's ever changed
the world are groups of individuals coming together. We seem
to forget that, you know. So, yeah, a service list
would be okay, I know about one hundred people I
could put on that one.

Speaker 1 (01:14:21):
Amazing. Let's find a way of figuring it out. Melinda,
it has been such a joy talking to you today.
You've been so kind and gracious with your time. We
end every On Purpose episode with a fast five, a
final five, which have to be answered in one word
to one sentence maximum. Okay, So, Melinda Frenchgates, these are
your final five. The first question is what is the
best advice you've ever heard or received?

Speaker 2 (01:14:44):
Be yourself?

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
Second question, what is the worst advice you've ever heard
or received?

Speaker 2 (01:14:51):
Act like this other person?

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):
Third question, what is a lesson you learned the hard way?

Speaker 2 (01:15:00):
I learned to be a better parent when I stopped
and would really listen to my kids instead of being dictatorial.
When I would stop and listen, I was so much
better parent.

Speaker 1 (01:15:11):
Question number four, what is a message you want to
leave behind?

Speaker 2 (01:15:17):
That there is so much potential in everybody and we
need to unlock that potential, break down the barriers and
the biases there so we just can unlock all that
amazing potential.

Speaker 1 (01:15:32):
And fifth and final question which we asked every guest
who's ever been on the show, if you could create
one law that everyone in the world had to follow,
what would it be?

Speaker 2 (01:15:42):
Did it for every place in life where you see
a man in a position of power, that he would
be accompanied by a woman or a person of color.

Speaker 1 (01:15:53):
Beautiful and Linda French Gates, thank you so much for
being with us here and on purpose today. I think
everyone's and listening and watching wherever you are in the world.
Please share with me and Melinda your greatest takeaways, the
insights that stuck with you, the messages that you'll be
passing on and sharing with your family and your friends.
There were so many great insights today. I hope you

(01:16:14):
find your spiritual community. I hope you find your counsel
of wise advisors. I hope that you recognize that imposter
syndrome can be beautiful and can be powerful, and that
perfectionism is something that we can learn to embrace in
order to recognize that our imperfections is what makes us human,
it's what makes us real, it's what makes us feel

(01:16:34):
like we can connect with others. Thank you so much
to all of you, and a big thank to Melinda
for being here today again, and thank you so much. Honestly,
this is a wonderful conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:16:43):
Thanks for having me. This is great. I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:46):
Thank you, Melinda. If you enjoyed this podcast, you're going
to love my conversation with Michelle Obama where she opens
up on how to stay with your partner when they're
changing and the four check ins you should be doing
in your relationship. We also talk about how to deal
with relationships when they're undistressed. If you're going through something

(01:17:07):
right now with your partner or someone you're seeing, this
is the episode for you.

Speaker 3 (01:17:12):
No wonder our kids are struggling. We have a new
technology and we've just taken it in hookline and Sinker,
and we have to be mindful.

Speaker 2 (01:17:21):
For our kids. They'll just be.

Speaker 3 (01:17:23):
Thumbing through this stuff. You know their mind's never sleeping.

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