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CHAPTER 3

BUNNIES DON’T BELONG HERE (BUT CHEETAHS DO)

I think it’s healthy for a person to be nervous. It means that you care — that you work hard and want to give a great performance. You just have to channel that nervous energy into the show.

—BEYONCÉ KNOWLES

I did not want to write this book. Although writing comes naturally to me — so naturally that as a junior in high school I wrote a full-length memoir and less than a year later a graphic novel about a high school girl who lost her virginity (and ultimately her life) on a Greek Orthodox youth trip to the homeland — I know that throwing myself into book writing not only arouses some wonky ideas but in the past has disrupted my productivity, my social life, and my business revenue. But I guess you could say this book chose me. During the Christmas holiday of 2016, I vowed I was going to take ten days off from my business, a period of time I had not taken off since the birth of my daughter three years earlier. And during my work break, the vision for this book arose, and the corresponding book proposal just poured out of me.

I figured if a book was going to wake me in the night, the least I could do was to listen and type the words that were flowing from me. By New Year’s I was three-fourths of the way through a book proposal I was crazy in love with, and by late winter, I was ready to show my Step into Your Moxie book proposal to agents. But after I was rejected by the agent of one of my business besties (or more specifically, told to triple my email subscriber list and then get back to her), I caught a nasty case of the “I’m not readys.” I was weighing my publishing options, thinking smaller and smaller with each possibility I brainstormed.

And at the height of this shrinking, one very early morning, while driving to the airport to catch a flight to a college speaking gig, I nearly drove over a bunny that was running across the road. Over the next few days, I saw a lot of bunnies. On chocolates. On trinkets in store windows. In my dreams. This mass emergence of bunnies felt like it could only be signaling one thing — and it wasn’t good.

I was performing like a bunny.

Let me back up momentarily.

I have fantasized about a certain literary agency for years. They represented one of my first mentors and many of my favorite authors. Despite the many notes I had scribbled in my journal about my literary potential next steps, whether to even look for an agent or self-publish (or in my low moments, put Step into Your Moxie on a bookshelf next to my ridiculous senior-year erotic tragedy A Prayer beside the Sea), at no point did I write down, Send a query letter to your dream literary agency, Lex. But when I got home from my speaking gig, I woke up the next morning, haunted by all the bunnies, sat my tush down, and sent out that query letter. In about an hour, I had a phone call from the agent I had queried, and by the end of the conversation, an offer for representation. “I want this book,” Agent Steve, as he is affectionately referred to in my home, said. “I want to represent you.”

There is zero chance I would have queried my agent, and as a result, it’s very likely you would not be reading this book, if it weren’t for the onslaught of bunnies. While bunnies are soft, cute, and cuddly — whether they are in Easter baskets or on the cover of a Playboy magazine — as an archetype they unfortunately represent one spectrum of feminine power in my world, and if you stick with me, soon in your world too.

Bunnyitis

When I teach about feminine power and influence, I use the bunny as the image of what we do when we don’t speak up for ourselves. When we police our ideas and censor them before they ever get expressed in the world. When we care more about people-pleasing than people-activating. When I saw all the bunnies, I realized they were mirroring back what I was saying to myself. Every day I neglected to send a query letter to my dream literary agency and instead started asking myself, Who do I think I am to write this book? (despite the fact that this book was poking at me during my waking and sleeping hours to be written), well, that was quintessential bunny behavior. For when a bunny presents her ideas, she:

Apologizes. Sometimes she does this literally. “I’m so sorry I’m late,” “I’m sorry I interrupted,” or “I’m sorry that I want you to make eye contact with me before you tell me we are going with your idea rather than mine.” Other times, she apologizes metaphorically — by speaking softly, by not taking up space with her body, by using diminishing language like “I just want a sandwich” or “I think I’m ready for a sandwich” — rather than owning, “It’s lunchtime. I’m taking a break to eat my green-goddess sandwich.”

Overexplains her ideas. She informs rather than persuades, she often repeats herself, and when presenting she hides behind other people’s opinions, facts, and statistics rather than arguing on behalf of her own ideas: “The Dalai Lama says the world will be saved by the Western Woman” rather than, “From over a decade of leading women’s leadership experiences, I have seen firsthand how women who practice their communication in safe, supportive environments are more likely to step into their moxie at work, at home, and in all spheres of life.”

Does not communicate a compelling point of view. Because she is terrified of disrupting the status quo, she does not share her unique perspective, her hopes, or her fears (or repulsions), and as a result is as forgettable as she is lacking in impact.

Fails to call people to action. Whether she is negotiating her salary or trying to make a persuasive case, she will not be direct about what she is asking for — or if she does ask (i.e., for an assistant, for a new client, for a house cleaner), she’ll keep talking after she says what she wants, unintentionally communicating that she does not believe she is worthy of what she has asked for.

Dragonosis

On the other side of the feminine power spectrum is the dragon. Dragons are, ahem, fiery. They are the antithesis of the bunny. They are the stereotypes of women who are so disconnected from their feminine power that they are hyper (and almost cartoonish) in their performance of masculinity. Dragons are characters like Meryl Streep’s in The Devil Wears Prada. Or Sigourney Weaver’s in Working Girl. (In Alien she’s pure moxie.) Joan Crawford, in probably every movie she was ever in, qualifies as a dragon. When a dragon presents her ideas, quite unlike the bunny, she:

Makes it her way or the highway. Her words are always about her rather than the people she is speaking to. Her body language is rigid and closed off. If she makes eye contact, it’s forced, designed to dominate rather than connect.

Shuts off her emotions, including the good ones. She comes across as cold, in the process not only robbing herself of insecurity and discomfort — or at least the appearance of those feelings — but also cutting off the oxygen supply to feel-good emotions like joy and gratitude.

Speaks and operates like a lone ranger. She has bought into the myth that a powerful woman gets to where she is on her own and doesn’t ask for help, doesn’t ask for feedback, and doesn’t obtain group support to champion her ideas. As a result, when she demands action, she may get initial buy-in — but rarely does that lead to long-term follow-through.

While bunny and dragon communication look incredibly different in action, they are by-products of the same interconnected issues. A habit of contorting oneself into who we think others want us to be — as leaders, employees, business owners, partners, mothers, sisters, and daughters. A fear that dropping the mask we are performing behind will be harder than sustaining the masquerade of excessive likability or toughness. And, ultimately, feeling like we don’t have a model for what a better way would look like, we execute clichéd gendered personas. Sometimes, these stereotypes are placed directly on us. In the media and popular culture, rarely do we see images of female influence beyond the bunny or the dragon. And for women of color, of course, the situation is even less rosy. Sure, Shonda Rhimes has given shape and voice to richly complex, multidimensional African American, Latina, and Asian female characters, yet these women are most definitely the exception rather than the norm on television.

When I started seeing all those bunnies as I agonized over what, if anything, to do with the proposal for this book, my inner Coach (almost on autopilot after close to a decade of hanging out with her) asked, Lex, how are these bunnies a mirror for something going on in your life right now? With a bit of embarrassment, I realized I was setting out to write a book about stepping into one’s moxie and yet, in my own self-talk, I’d completed stepped out of mine.

Harness Your Cheetah

When I was eight years old my parents divorced, and my mom remarried. My stepdad raised me as if I were his own kiddo. And even though he did some strange things that drove both my mom and me bonkers — like arguing that the Holy Spirit was a real person and asking friends and family to punch him in the stomach so they could experience the magic of his rock-solid forty-year-old abs — he also had a beautiful obsession with animals. He daily broke out into Louis Prima’s “I Wanna Be Like You” from The Jungle Book, and he watched boatloads of Animal Planet shows. I’ve always been drawn to cats, and through my stepdad, my love of cats extended to other less domesticated felines. I enjoyed leopards, a lot — so much, in fact, that I dressed in a leopard-print dress (and safari hat) for my “personality” speech during the Miss Junior America Pageant. “When you look into the eyes of a leopard, it’s like you can see into her soul. So I like to wear leopard print so people can see mine.” Yawn. Eye roll.

I also really enjoyed watching cheetahs — on television. Cheetahs and I have yet to meet without a screen between us. Nonetheless, I know cheetahs are pretty badass. They can accelerate faster than any other land animal — up to sixty-five miles per hour in a few seconds. They have flexible spines, which allow them to take big strides when desired. They like to hang out in a place where they have a clear view of their surroundings. And they also rest a lot. Plus, they’ve got those big, arresting, present eyes (and tear marks) — that run from the inner corners of their eyes down to the outside edges of their mouths.

Unlike the bunny, who demurs, and the dragon, who spews fire, the cheetah has got it going on. To recap, she is fast, flexible, and present; she rests as needed and has tear marks permanently imprinted on her face. From a communication standpoint, when she presents her ideas, a woman who embraces the essence of the cheetah will:

• Ask for what she wants (and deserves).

• Speak with (versus at) her audience.

• Focus on audience connection (eye contact, humor, and storytelling, as appropriate).

• Be flexible en route to getting what she wants.

• Be present with her emotions — and use them to enhance her persuasiveness.

When she speaks, a cheetah has tremendous presence. However, this presence feels born out of worthiness, not performance. When she stands to speak, her:

• Weight is balanced between both feet, hip-width apart.

• Shoulders are pulled back, and her chest is open.

• Eye contact is real — soft, and also absolute.

• Face is neutral and inviting. (She doesn’t worry about smiling because when she is in her moxie, her eyes and mouth naturally do it for her.)

• Hands connect from her heart to the heart(s) of her audience. (She makes gestures with her hands that move her message from her body to those who are listening to her. Whether she is using one hand or both, these gestures work together with her words to move people to take action.)

• Movement is used to convey a change of thought or draw attention to important ideas. (She walks, and gracefully takes up space, to share her ideas. When she is in the middle of an idea, she is so rock-solid in what she has to say that her feet are rooted in the earth, and she doesn’t pace or bounce from one foot to the other.)

When a woman shifts from communicating from bunny or dragon energy into cheetah energy, awesome things unfold — for her, and for the people she is seeking to move through her communication. For a number of years, I ran a nine-month, face-to-face women’s leadership program in Las Vegas, where I live. And while the cohorts of women who participated mostly entered the program more as bunnies than dragons, most years at least a couple of women showed up on day one in full-on dragon mode.