579: How to Go After What You Want (And Get It) with Jenny Wood
Mar 26, 2025
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Jenny Wood, a former Google executive and author of Wild Courage, dives into the unconventional traits that can fuel your success. She challenges the stigma around qualities like selfishness and ruthlessness, explaining how embracing these can boost your ambition. Jenny shares personal stories of leaving corporate life to pursue authenticity and discusses overcoming common fears that hinder progress. With practical strategies for breaking free from self-doubt, she inspires listeners to reclaim their wild courage and achieve their goals.
Embracing traits typically seen as negative, like selfishness and recklessness, can empower individuals to achieve their goals boldly.
Recognizing and reframing the harmful narratives we tell ourselves is crucial for overcoming fears and unlocking our potential.
Deep dives
The Nine Traits of Wild Courage
The podcast introduces the concept of nine counterintuitive traits essential for achieving success, as outlined by Jenny Wood in her book, "Wild Courage." These traits include being weird, selfish, shameless, obsessed, nosy, manipulative, brutal, reckless, and bossy. Wood emphasizes that embracing these traits requires courage and can help individuals reclaim their ambitions and pursue their goals effectively. By viewing these traits in a positive light, individuals can harness them to supercharge their professional and personal lives.
Transitioning from Google to Entrepreneurship
Jenny Wood shares her journey from being a top executive at Google to embarking on her own entrepreneurial path. After spending 18 years at Google and leading significant projects, she decided to leave her comfortable position to pursue her passion for writing and public speaking. This decision, though daunting and filled with uncertainty, exemplifies her belief in the importance of stepping out of one’s comfort zone for personal growth. Her story underscores the significance of decision-making based on authenticity and ambition rather than safety and stability.
Overcoming Fears to Unlock Your Potential
The podcast discusses three prevalent fears that hold people back: the fear of uncertainty, the fear of failure, and the fear of judgment from others. Jenny Wood explains that these fears can create significant obstacles in pursuing one's goals and ideas. She shares personal anecdotes about how she faced these fears, including a notable experience of chasing down her now-husband on the subway, which symbolizes overcoming fear of judgment. Understanding and managing these fears is essential for developing what Wood refers to as 'wild courage' and achieving one’s aspirations.
The Importance of Truth vs. Tales
Jenny Wood introduces the distinction between 'truths' and 'tales' to highlight how our internal narratives can influence our mindset and actions. Truths are verifiable facts, while tales are the often harmful stories we tell ourselves based on those facts. For instance, during a period of organizational changes at Google, Wood fell prey to negative tales that harmed her productivity. By recognizing the difference and reframing her tales into empowering narratives, Wood encourages listeners to challenge their negative beliefs and focus on maintaining a positive mindset.
Imagine if the key to achieving your biggest goals was learning to embrace common traits that aren’t typically associated with great leaders? As you’ll hear from today’s guest, it’s okay to be selfish, shameless, bossy, or even reckless because it can help you break free from limiting beliefs and supercharge your success.
I’m excited to be talking to Jenny Wood. Jenny is a former Google executive and author of Wild Courage: Go After What You Want and Get It. For almost 20 years, Jenny enjoyed tremendous success at Google, starting from an entry-level position to building one of the company’s largest career development programs. But in a courageous move, she walked away from corporate life to bet on herself by practicing the very principles she teaches in her book.
In our conversation, we discussed nine surprising traits that can be powerful tools when applied the right way to help you break free from fear and self-doubt by rethinking what you’ve been told about success. If fear of failure, uncertainty, or judgment has ever held you back, this episode will help you unlock your version of wild courage and take bold steps toward positive outcomes.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The three fears holding you back from success—and how to overcome them
How to reclaim "negative" traits and turn them into strengths
Why being selfish can actually help others and lead to greater impact
You can create positive outcomes by stepping out of your comfort zone
How to stop believing the tales and false stories we create in our mind
Get The Full Show Notes
To get full access to today's show notes, including audio, transcript, and links to all the resources mentioned, visit MiracleMorning.com/579
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