Your femininity is not a liability
“I have to work harder because I’m a woman.”
For most of us, this thought was seeded in our subconscious as little girls.
Bolstered these days by the barrage of headlines, stats, studies + exposés. Filled with infuriating proof points on why it’s problematic to be a woman in the workplace. Reinforcing how fraught it is for females who aspire to leadership.
If you’re like me, you have been overloaded with inputs that trigger your nervous system to question your outputs with statements like this: “Kudos women for all you do!” (Yet the subtext is: “Keep trying, just work HARDER.”)
Because, after all, there’s still “so much more hard work to be done.”
Which is why we feel more anxious + exhausted than ever before. It’s completely understandable + entirely optional.
Here’s the headline you won’t read anywhere else: ”Women are programmed for hard.”
— OLD THOUGHT —
Keep trying, just work harder.
— NEW THOUGHT —
Choosing "hard" makes your leadership journey harder than it needs to be.
We have unwittingly internalized + personalized disempowering cues about how hard it has to be.
Confirmation bias – unconsciously seeking evidence to confirm what you already believe — is a core function of your very sophisticated brain.
Your mind is hard at work in the most counterproductive way and you work harder than you need to.
You put in more time, pour out more energy + allow your mindshare to be consumed by work because when you believe the future you desire is destined to be hard, anything less than hard looks like a threat to your success.
“Be sure your beliefs don’t cause you to work in ways that are beneath you because success isn’t successful if it’s unsustainable.”
It’s also why you’re so hard on yourself.
Listen, it’s not your fault, but it is your responsibility to lead yourself by thinking on purpose.
You must teach your mind to question why it's thinking what it's thinking. Decide for yourself what you want to believe based on how those thoughts make you feel — right here, right now.
Too often, from a need for validation + belonging, we adopt the collective viewpoint that sounds true but feels awful.
You'll know you're doing it if your thoughts about being a woman fuel a style of work that keeps you scared + stressed, struggling for survival.
Hard has never been a female-friendly formula.
