What Taylor Swift Teaches Us re: Showing Up
5 lessons! Read on for the OTHER Eras Tour Easter eggs you mighta missed 🤣💥🐣
In a workshop I ran last week for rising women biz leaders I asked folks to think about who they might call a new sound of power—someone who, when they show up they SHOW UP, and you can feel yourself lean in, listen well, come alive.
“Taylor Swift,” one woman raised her hand and said, a tiny bit sheepishly.
The sheepishness is the residue from the eons of another story; the one where she’s only silly, where only people performing a show of masculinity are those we call power.
But I was like YESSSSSSS.
I can’t claim Swiftie status—I know her deep cuts 0% and I have none of the bracelet thingies and as I write this I think what else even constitutes a Swiftie??? Catching the Easter eggs? ‘Cuz I’m sure I missed every single one. BUT I am a huge TSwift admirer.
For the way she shows up with kindness and self-possession and the way she writes her own life, in both song and in doing what TF she wants.
So I was super into watching the Eras Tour movie this weekend with my kiddo when he asked. But here’s the thing I’d missed from just watching Taylor’s award speeches: Like Beyoncé, who I’ve seen in concert twice, and who famously has an onstage alter ego she channels. Like Ricky Martin, who I’ve seen in concert in Vegas AND I actually coached privately—marveling at the difference between how he holds himself as a rockstar vs as a guy…
We get to show up when we perform as a different, heightened version of ourselves.
And not because we have to or because we’re not enough as is.
It’s something more spicy than that:
Early on in my book tour a journalist chatted with me over Zoom before hitting record and then, as I began to answer her first question, she stopped me and—gotcha style—said “oh! You’re speaking in a slightly different voice than before I hit record! Is this your “professional” voice??”
And I had this spark of fire in response.
“No,” I realized, calling BS on her assumption that I was being inauthentic. “What you’re hearing is my public voice. Public me and private me are both the real me, but public me has more responsibility.”
To a) be of use and b) have a fucking great time. To make the world more just and joyful exactly right where I am.
Which does mean that public me is more intentional and sounds like it.
That performance me is never not on a mission. And something in my posture shifts, something in my spirit emerges, at the calling.
And I felt that loud and clear with Tay Tay. What a masterclass in showing up, y’all.
So this week’s love note to you is what I noticed. What we can ALL play with.
5 lessons in showing up from Taylor Swift:
Make it about your audience and tell them so. She doesn’t leave us to wonder what we’re doing there. She says right near the start that her songs belong to us, that we’re making new memories together, that she sees the crowd—the effort they put in to get themselves there. She adds—in a real and true act of leadership of the variety not taught in business school—that she’s our host through the adventure of the evening. She invites us in and makes it clear she’s gonna take care of us. How can you build in something this directly welcoming the next time you’re going to speak on a stage or a pod or even in a meeting? It’s hand-holding and it can go unnoticed and it’s REAL DEAL LEADERSHIP. Final chapter of my book is the “make it about them” chapter. It’s called Heroism for a reason.
Care out loud. This comes up again and again but we gotta name it and normalize it and change the story of emotions in public. There’s this moment when she’s sitting at her mossy romance keys (haha, I’m sure this is what she calls her piano) about to sing Champagne Problems, and she speaks. She honors that she’s feeling big feelings, overwhelmed by the crowd’s response and the fact that it’s been so many years and albums since they could do this all together. She points out, without apology, that she is affected; she has no chill and isn’t interested in pretending otherwise. She’s touted the benefits of cringe before—AKA, being okay with being earnest. And here, her eyes watery, her words an homage to the pandemic, to her hopes, to the haters, to the lovers in the audience, she sits. She just sits. And breathes. And talks to us. And processes in real time. And it’s epic and intimate all at once. Can you dare yourself to be that present? It helps to conjure for yourself an adoring crowd who thinks everything you do is right, if yours doesn’t happen to be quite as loud or as big as hers. Let it feel silly, this imagination work, but let yourself do it anyway. We’re creating the conditions for caring out loud. Permission is a muscle that gets easier and easier to flex the more we use it.
Get your mischief flowing. The twinkle in the eye. The smile dancing across her face. The way she over and over centers her own delight. She’s there for us—but also for her. And that’s power incarnate. The mutual kind, the joy-fueled kind. She’s a total vibe pope, uniting us under “the divine light of a good time.” If you want intel on how to join the vibe papacy, read last week’s post.
Take care of yourself in preparation. Months before starting the tour, Taylor began an exercise regimen, famously running on a treadmill while singing every one of the 44 songs in the concert, and learning her dance moves since, as she told TIME, she “wanted to be so over-rehearsed that I could be silly with the fans, and not lose my train of thought.” We sometimes worry that practicing our content over and over means we’ll be stale by the time we do it for others; Taylor’s reminding us that the opposite is true. When you trust you have the structure in place and it lives in your body, you can be spontaneous. And spontaneity—surprising yourself onstage, surprising us, responding in real time, being together—is where the magic lies. It’s why we do anything live or attend anything live. It’s what we missed in our bones when we couldn’t gather for years during the pandemic: the shared breath hitch of the unexpected. The whoa. As my friend David Murray says, “A speech is an emotional, spiritual, communal activity. Otherwise: send a PDF.” Too often we prep to not fuck up. Let’s agree to prep for a greater cause: so we can show up free enough to connect.
Love yourself hard. This is “take care of yourself, part two: life edition.” Some juicy examples of what I mean: Taylor stopped drinking months before the tour because, as she put it, “doing that show with a hangover… I don't want to know that world.” Present her was taking care of future her, which is HARD. But it’s the kind of self-care that actually counts, the kind that Real Self-Care author Pooja Lakshmin, MD calls “an internal, self-reflective process that involves making difficult decisions in line with our values.” I was watching the whole concert movie thinking okay, I know people wanna know what she eats—but I’m over here wanting know how she sets boundaries. I don’t know what goes on behind closed doors but what I learned from poking about the internet a bit was that she shamelessly takes days off between shows, staying entirely in bed and not speaking at all. In her NYU commencement address back in 2022 she pointedly said, “You get to pick what your life has time and room for.” And you know what? There’s a sneaky way you can tell she’s actually doing it: it’s not just that she hasn’t had to cancel a single show on this tour (except for weather, to take care of fans). Which is in-fucking-credible. There’s something else. She’s able to receive the love from the audience. She’s so in herself. She loves herself and is proud of herself and open to being acknowledged for the work she’s done and the kindness she’s spread. This is a practice, my love. This is a PRACTICE.
What else do you get from watching her perform? What do you know that I don’t?? I want to hear from the massive Swifties as well as the folks who know her less than I!
Also, I’m giving more warning this time ‘cuz it’s gonna be goooooood: Next Zoom gathering for the community! Save the date! FRIDAY, APRIL 12TH, 9am PT/noon ET/4p GT. It’s gonna be a workshop on HOW TO TELL STORIES FOR IMPACT.
AKA a workshop on storytelling. I cannot WAIT to share what I’ve got.
Love and more of it,
Samara
PS. Below is your Zoom link to April’s workshop!!
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