Our Sisters Hold Up Our Mirrors

Both within the family and without, our sisters hold up our mirrors: our images of who we are and of who we can dare to be. - Elizabeth Fishel

This comes as a shock to no one - I prefer women with guts. 

J, best friend of 12 years, and a real inspiration. This woman is living her dream right now, which is pretty much what most of Earth's population only talks about doing. She surfs and skis in the same weekend, plays outside for a living, and walks around with a perpetual tan. She and her boyfriend moved to San Diego two years ago with one car, no jobs, and a vision of living in an apartment near the beach. They rented the apartment, and are now even more successful than they were back East.

N - known her almost as many years as J, and I can probably tell you what she is wearing right now. By some ridiculous coincidence, we unwittingly dress like twins on a regular basis. My favorite memory of us is when I arrived at her wedding shower wearing the same exact outfit she had on. I offered to go home and change, but she proposed we just trade shoes instead because she liked mine better. Of course, I obliged. Well, N went on to divorce her now ex-husband just four months after the wedding. It takes some kind of courage to set aside pride, judgment, years of relationship history, not to mention all the money spent on the so-called "big day", and make that call.

C, MBA, spent a few years in corporate America doing sales and was feeling a change. I had only known her a couple months when she was presented with a new opportunity in wealth management. She told me that part of her thought process was "what would Karen do?" She thought I had guts, and that gave her the confidence make a move to a more rewarding career - which took more bravery than (I thought) I would ever have!

Our sisters hold up our mirrors. What we see in them, inspires us, and what they see in us, moves them. It's like a circle of empowerment! Seriously, women rock.

Crisis Birthday

Everyone has a crisis birthday, or so I'm told. It's when you can't easily get over how old you suddenly are. Mine was last week. 

I feel like I should be eternally 24. Just a staff accountant, just married, just new at this whole homeowner thing. Instead somehow I'm 27, one promotion shy of management, a marriage veteran compared to my peers, and the old-ball-and-chain and I are casually looking for a summer home. Please stop the world, I'd like to step off for a sec.

Obviously, this is hardly a crisis. And my "problems" are laughable in the grand scheme of things. That doesn't make growing up - and growing out of an old identity - any easier.

I've been traveling almost nonstop since my last post but busy season is ending and I'm planning on getting back in the saddle with this whole blog thing. Got nice and rested in the sun on Galveston Island last weekend. Water tends to level us Scorpios out, like hitting a reset button. Watching the sunrise over the Gulf of Mexico was just what I needed. New era starts now. I'm not 24 anymore, and that's ok.

Sources of Confidence Part III

Long delay, but here's the last of my Sources of Confidence posts:

Family, as discussed in Part II, means friends too. Who do you surround yourself with? I read a great quote once that I can't remember who wrote. The author said this:

In my leadership journey, the most important thing that’s mattered to me are people. I’m basically the cumulative investment of a lot of people who have taken the time to mentor me, to sponsor me, to coach me, to open doors for me. And when they’ve opened doors for me, I’ve run through them. I haven’t hopped. I haven’t skipped. I haven’t walked. I’ve run through every single one of those doors. And there’s no way I would be here without the people in my life who have really supported me along the way.

So true. Who are your "investors"? Have you taken the time to thank them lately?

Sources of Confidence: Part II

Upbringing and schooling - aka family. This is the confidence source topic I'm most afraid of talking about, but it's definitely the number one reason my confidence is considered above average.

I was raised in a conservative Catholic household. Despite the popularity or necessity of a dual-income-family, my mother stayed home. She was fortunate - rather, we were fortunate - that she could. My father worked hard outside the home, and she worked equally hard raising and educating us. In fact, we were homeschooled.

When it came to nurturing confidence in this area, I saw two factors at work: First, our traditional family structure reinforced the male provider/subservient female bias that comes from a patriarchal belief system. In any religion, you're either in, or you're a rebel. Part of my confidence is sheer rebellion, a fight to do the complete opposite of traditional. I remember a conversation with my father as I was nearing college graduation and registering for grad classes. He was speaking about his hopes for my future, which ideally included marrying a man successful enough to allow me to stay home and raise children. I got so angry that I was nearly in tears. Why was I paying for grad school, busting my butt in a rigorous major, working multiple jobs, and commuting to night classes, when my ultimate disposition (as tradition would have it) meant throwing it all away? It made zero sense to me. I was going to reject the system.

However, that very same system brought my parents to homeschool me. Homeschooling put me in front of adults more often than peers. I socialized with family, and kids on the street, but at the end of the day, any meaningful conversations happened between me and a parent or employer. The flexible schedule opened up opportunities for work and extracurriculars at uncommon hours, and I got comfortable managing multiple responsibilities. By the time I entered college, I felt (and acted) like an adult, at least more so than my peers. Professors picked up on that and invested time in me. Conversations turned into relationships, and relationships turned into a web of connections. With a strong network behind me, I have the courage to try anything. I'm not afraid to, because someone will always have my back. That's confidence.

I don't think I would be at this point without the upbringing/schooling I received. My parents know this, they accept me whether or not I take a traditional path, and I thank them all the time for the confidence they gave me.

Sources of Confidence: Part 1

DNA. Confidence, or lack thereof, at the most basic level is simply luck of the genetic draw. Hereditary, even. The book goes way in depth on the science behind confidence...which I can't begin to relate as efficiently as Kay and Shipman did... but suffice it to say, my mind was officially blown. Turns out, as a woman, I'm disadvantaged in the confidence arena. I may have suspected this based on personal experience, but I was surprised to see science back it up. It's like we are genetically engineered for lower confidence! Why?

1. We produce 52% less serotonin than our male colleagues. Serotonin is a "relax" hormone that let's us keep our cool. Or not.

2. Testosterone. Again, we have less, which makes us less likely to take risks. 

3. Neurons. More. At any given moment, women have 30% more neurons firing than the guys around us. Our minds are always active, causing us to overthink, overreact, over everything! Ugh how do we even get anything done sometimes?!

4. Funny thing called a cingulate gyrus. It tends to be larger in females. Kay and Shipman call this little brain part the "worrywart center". Bigger means more anxious. All that anxiety prevents us from stepping outside our comfort zone as often as we'd like. The less we do that, the more we hold ourselves back. 

I don't have the ability to test my levels and brain function, so I can't compare my results to other people. I had to start with the basics, though. And this isn't even half of it! (Read the book). Other sources of confidence in the book touch more personal topics. Prepare to dig deep next few blog posts!

Meet my Partner

The old saying goes, behind every great man there stands a great woman. My husband will tell you that I am his number one supporter, and likewise, he's mine. Sheryl Sandberg's book Lean In devotes a chapter to the important role that a "partner", or supportive spouse, plays in a woman's success. She admits she could not be the leader she is today without her husband. Regardless of where my confidence comes from (to be discussed later) there's no way I could keep it up without his advice, prodding, and love. 

My confidence code quiz result is...

...higher than average confidence. Like no one saw that coming. When I was a teenager, I decided that I wanted my motto to be "no regrets". I don't want to look back on my life and think about ten million things I could have done differently.  I ask myself the following question whenever I am faced with a difficult decision: "which choice am I going to regret?" (Or, which choice will I regret more?) My husband knows this thought process all too well, and loves to share this story:

When we were looking to buy our first home, we toured two townhouses with kitchen windows that faced each other. He wanted the cheaper one that needed work. Naturally, I wanted the more expensive one - it was turn-key. I stood in our (now) kitchen window and pointed across the way, "if we buy that one, I'm going to look out that kitchen window and wonder what it would be like living over here. If we buy this one, I'm never going stand here wondering about living over there." His response was "sold".

No regrets has been my approach to most everything. And the results have been pretty fantastic. Seriously, how liberating is never giving a decision a second thought? To get there, though, you're gonna need a whole lot of confidence. You'll agree with your decision, but not everyone else will, and you have to be confident enough to stick with it.

Where does confidence come from? A woman at work asked me where I got mine and I couldn't answer. I thought back to my teen years when I adopted "no regrets". What made me brave enough to even consider that, let alone follow through with it? Katty Kay and Claire Shipman do a great job explaining the source of confidence in The Confidence Code. I'm not going to rewrite the book here because you should read it yourself. I will identify a few key points:

1. Healthy levels of self-esteem, optimism, self-efficacy, and importantly, self-compassion: recognizing that you are human, and everyone else is just like you. You probably don't dwell on/take pleasure in others' mistakes. So assuming the other person is equally human, they're not dwelling on yours. So get talking, making mistakes, learning from them, and moving forward. I'll talk about these more in future posts.

2. DNA. Some people are genetically predisposed to have more or less confidence. Women are behind the 8-ball on this even at birth, because, well, science. Specifically, we have a large "cingulate gyrus", less gray matter in our brains, 30% more nerves firing, and 50% less seratonin flowing. (See my prior post "Sources of Confidence Part 1")

3. Support. From your spouse, from others. This is huge. My prior posts "Meet my Partner" and "Our Sisters Hold Up Our Mirrors" talk about this.