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.

Take the Confidence Quiz!

Spent some time in Salt Lake City, UT last week. Learned a lot about the LDS church, of which I admit I was/still am completely ignorant. Also got some time for self-reflection. All that flying got me through a bunch of books I've been sitting on for awhile, one of which is The Confidence Code by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman. Before I get into my results, take the quiz for yourself: 

http://theconfidencecode.com/confidence-quiz/

Photo: Great Salt Lake, Salt Lake City, UT, taken from my airplane window.

The Rules of "Nice"

I'm reading this book "Reunion: the girls we used to be, the women we became." It's about the lives of women 25 years after graduation from an all-girls' private school in Manhattan. The author, Elizabeth Fishel, one of the girls, spent time with her (living) classmates after their reunion to learn how their sheltered upbringings and old-school education influenced their lives post-1968 -  a period of changing societal/gender norms. Fishel found that these women had to "unlearn" how to be "nice." She describes the rules of "nice" this way:

"Nice is the social graces, dressing for dinner, and putting others needs before your own. It's smiling to cover your fears, camouflage your pain... Nice is 'what would people think?' and 'one doesn't do that, does one?'..." She goes on, but you get the gist.

It's not 1968 anymore, but I see women playing nice all the time: "I'm sorry", "I feel bad", "I don't want him/her to hate me." Women are afraid to assert themselves or afraid to say what they really feel because the boss might not like it, or their direct reports might hate them. Women are afraid to acknowledge personal success among peers because they fear jealousy and gossip. Women who keep playing nice, then, must accept that when others make their opinions known freely, and share their successes, the others are giving management an opportunity to take notice. 

You know that saying, "Well behaved women rarely make history"? Totally true at the office-level: Women who play "nice" won't make partner, manager, or CEO. To unlearn "nice", Fishel illustrates, you have to realize it's ok to be "not nice". "Not nice" doesn't mean "mean". And you don't have to be "well-behaved" to still behave. Years, decades, of rules about being "nice" hammered into our consciences tells us that speaking out is unbecoming, that correcting someone when they err may be offensive, and humility is always better than boasting. These are fine rules for maintaining community with peers, but when it comes to leading them, the rules of "nice" can't apply. 

Challenge: try for one day - maybe even a whole week - to ignore the rules of "nice" and not worry about what others (mostly you) think. Give your opinions the floor every time it's open, give criticism (when it's due), and allow yourself praise for work well done (because it's absolutely warranted). Compare your observers' reactions to the reactions you expected, and measure your results. The worst outcome from this experience is that you retreat back to status quo. The best outcome is you earn new respect - not only from your observers, but from yourself.

For my girlfriends

I have a really fabulous group of girlfriends. It started with me and my best friend J. We met on our first day of our first job - cash register training at a local grocery store. I was 15, she was 16. Years later, days before Christmas, we found ourselves squeezed together on my couch with seven other women who took a short break from the busy holiday season to spend an evening together. Each had started a friendship with one of us, and wound up friends with both. We showed up exactly as we were - in work attire, yoga pants, old college sweatshirts, even a pair of reindeer antlers - drank wine, swapped gifts, asked advice, and shared updates on our work and love lives. At one point J and I looked at each other to acknowledge our shared brainwaves: "Look at what we built." When people talk about the value of friendship and the importance of other women in our lives, I think of that moment on my couch and feel blessed. I can't imagine a world without friendships like these.

It's what you give

Spent the day in San Diego with my best friend and this quote came up in one of our many conversations about life and where we're headed. Later on as we were walking from beach to beach in La Jolla, we saw it on a plaque. Perfect photo op!

Bright Girls

Psychology Today is one of the few magazines I will read cover to cover. Their website is a total guilty pleasure - so much material, sorted by date, topic, author, whatever. I stumbled upon a gender-related article on there last year that really spoke to me: The Trouble with Bright Girls.

The author, Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson, starts out by stating, "smart and talented women rarely realize that one of the toughest hurdles they'll have to overcome to be successful lies within."  My initial reaction was, she's absolutely right.  And I could think of many bright women in my circles to whom this applied. I didn't think it applied to me until I read on.

"Bright girls believe that their abilities are innate and unchangeable, while bright boys believe that they can develop ability through effort and practice."

The author cited some research which showed that not just girls, but smart girls, tend to give up on challenging projects or goals more often than their male counterparts.  The boys actually worked harder on projects they found challenging, resulting in more success.  So what's our problem? It starts as soon as we are born, and continues into our formative years, when girls are more likely to be coddled than boys. (This is a whole discussion in itself.) How many times were we told "good girl" for our good behavior? How much do you think we internalized that? I must be naturally "good" at this, or conversely, NOT "good" at this. Well, I could come up with a laundry list of things I gave up on, or worse, didn't even start just because they didn't come easily - easily meaning, pretty much placed in my lap.

I gave up on my childhood dream of being an architect because I got a B in Trigonometry (the horror!). I gave up running track freshman year of high school because I got sick the first week and couldn't finish a full practice. Like I wasn't going to get better?  Seriously, what goes through my head? God forbid I get challenged every now and then! If these are just some things that I gave up on, think of the potential being wasted as the rest of us sit inside our comfort zones doing the exact same thing.

What are some things that you have given up, just because they didn't come easily to you? What are you afraid to start because of the challenge?

Bad to worse to awesome

I travel. A lot. Given a choice, I would rather drive somewhere than fly. Nothing beats an open road, open windows, and a killer playlist. Except when you get pulled over twice in one week, in two different states.  Suddenly it's probably better to hire a pilot. 

A few weeks ago, I was en route to Lake Placid, New York, for a speaking engagement on college fundraising. Hot off a hefty ticket in Virginia the week before, I was hyper-aware of my speed as I drove up. I'd set my cruise control for the entire 6 hour sojourn into the Adirondacks, adjusting as appropriate for curves and posted signs... except for one. Cop gets me for 51 in a 30 and I have to call my husband when cell reception comes back to give him the good news. I don't like the Adirondacks. I have never liked the Adirondacks. In the back of my head I'm dreading the next two days here as I await another (likely) failing exam score.

Naturally the trip only got worse, as I battled a shirt button that refused to close, an overflowing toilet, and an exploding soda bottle that caused a blood-sucking black fly party in my car. Note to self: wearing bright white cashmere was a poor choice. When my phone (and map app) decided to freeze on the way home, I nearly lost it. I had to have failed this exam because there is clearly no turning this week around.

The next day was score release day. Score release for the exam is web-based, so I plug in some personal information and hit the "refresh" button periodically, meaning every 45 seconds. Somewhere around 4:15 on Friday afternoon the refresh button unceremoniously revealed a passing score and in a split second I was officially done with the exam. All that crap that just happened - now totally worth it. Thank you, Lake Placid.

 

Photo: Mirror Lake from the Golden Arrow Resort, Lake Placid, NY.

What are your three passions?

I started 2014 in a rut. I had just failed yet another part of a licensing exam I've battled since grad school. I planned to devote my holiday break to preparing for a rematch, but a work deadline crept up, followed by two back-to-back jobs in cities farther North than anyone would dare travel in January.  The test had to be pushed back to February, and if I didn't pass the remaining two tests by August, I would lose credit for the two I already (painfully, somehow) passed. All I could think about was some invisible clock ticking for me, and how 2014 meant nothing but another year spent living like that.

On New Year's Day, taking a break from my computer screen, I opened a Dove chocolate Promise - must stop eating so many of these - and read the inside wrapper, "Find your passion." Ha. As usual, maybe next year.  I stuck it on the fridge anyway, and started thinking about it.  Do I even have a passion? No joke, I Googled the definition of "passion".  The definitions varied by source, but by and large the word referred to a strong feeling about something. I Googled some articles about finding your passion. In the event that I ever conquer this exam and have the luxury of looking for some "passion" of mine, how would I find it? The articles suggested that to find your passion, you make a list of the things you like to do in your free time. When you get time to read, what do you read about? What do you frequently search on the internet? What do you appreciate in every day life?

Answering these questions was easy. Deciding on only one thing was not! I pulled out a notebook and wrote the numbers one through three down the side of the page. Let's make this easier - what are my three passions? Immediately I filled in each line: freedom, clothing, and female empowerment. I'm not one for New Year's resolutions but I decided to devote 2014 to pursuing all of these. It's June now, and I've made some really great progress. Every day, I think of this list and ask myself how my daily activities are helping me pursue these three things. Knowing that I do have passions, and the ability to pursue them daily in some small way, is really inspiring.

So, what are your three passions?