they are neither gifted nor special. While we have made great strides in many areas, this self-esteem injury that women have to deal with dashes too many hopes and dreams.
We want to be able to share our authentic selves in our creative work and in our lives. Step number one is to dismantle the limiting beliefs that we carry around that have been indoctrinated into our psyche. I have been amazed at how many of my individual clients, as well as the folks in my Out on a Limb Club groups, Creative Courage Catalyst groups, and Creative Success and Positive Choices workshops, have been haunted and daunted by myths. These axioms of “how life should be lived” have a range of origins—family, friends, colleagues, social theory, outdated norms from the past, old stereotypes about men and women, internal demons, or the projection of other people's fears. All of these myths and distortions eclipse your ability to claim the life that you are uniquely meant to live.
Common myths seem to be:
1 Your perfect job or career path will hit you like an epiphany at an early age (or else you are a lost soul).
2 You don't have the right to save your sanity and your health by leaving a horrible job, marriage, partnership, or business.
3 You need to underachieve or play “small” in your life so that your friends and family members (or their ghosts) will not be depressed or threatened by your talent and your success.
4 You have to do more than feels reasonable for you in order to achieve your goals and be recognized.
5 It is not okay if you don't know what your next step is (you need to be in control and have everything together at all times).
6 You will never recover from getting fired or divorced or rejected by anyone.
7 You can never fail at anything and, if you do, you should hide it.
8 Whatever the truth about your personal, creative work style, it can't be right, so you can't honor it.
9 You have to do things perfectly the first time, which denies that creativity is a process of experimentation and discovery.
10 If you can't be absolutely brilliant or the best at something early on, it's better to quit than to allow yourself to learn how to do it—skill by skill.
11 Criticism by anyone makes you lose your power.
Pay attention to which of these myths are operating in your life and undermining your personal power. You can't be the great businesswoman or professional that you are meant to be if you are afraid of making others feel insecure. Reclaim your own destiny. If you are miserable in any area of your life, choose a more positive direction. If you are afraid to confront the early stages of professional growth, tap into your beginner's mind and give yourself permission to learn the basics. Develop your own list of guiding principles that honor the human spirit, the imperfections of life, and the challenges of fear and change.
Women who are successful can get slammed—and it stings. But it comes with the territory. Ali Brown is a marketing whiz, runs $100K coaching programs and multiple businesses, and has a big vision to empower women to run viable and profitable businesses worldwide that make a difference. She is a generous and strong woman, but when I asked her about criticism, Ali said, “It hurts, though, because as women, we are so sensitive. One thing that comes from success that is nonnegotiable is that you have to accept the fact that not everyone will like you and you may even, in some cases, be detested by some people. This is just a sad, dark side that comes with success and it's such a minor part compared to all the joy, power, excitement, and happy benefits. People look at me and they think, ‘She's fearless. She's got tough skin. Look at her go.’ And then some little thing will happen or some woman will write something and I will just break down in tears.”
After Shine (her annual women's business conference), some woman wrote Ali a lengthy letter saying that it was an insult to the audience that Ali looked so good on stage. The writer said “You've obviously been working out, you had beautiful clothes on, and it made me feel like I should be doing more than walking the dog.” “Can you believe that?” Ali said. Ali said she cried, not only because it was an “ouch” but because during the whole time at Shine she was saying that you should do what's good for you. She told the women in the audience to shine their own light. That was the whole point. What made her sad is what women will do to each other.
Ali went on to say, “You know that's going to happen sometimes, and that it's going to hurt. It's more because of the bigger picture, that women sometimes do that to each other. It's the tall poppy syndrome. What frightens me? I think (and I'm happy to share this), that I am single. I have not had good, strong relationships, and I think that the last missing piece for me is the right guy. I remember seeing the cover of People or InTouch or something, and on the cover were Jennifer Aniston, Cameron Diaz, and another beautiful actress, I think it was Oprah, and the title said, ‘Rich, beautiful, and alone.’ And I thought ‘ooh, ouch.’ Deep down I wonder, am I going to be single forever? I know I'm not, but that's a fear for me. What if I never meet the right guy? I have a good feeling that he's coming soon. In the meantime, I just need to stay positive and open, because if I close myself off, that's not going to help. So I just have fun, and I know that I'll attract the right guy at the right time, whatever God has planned.”
When I talked with Shama Kabani about her new book, The Zen of Social Marketing, some guy had just written a terrible review of the book on Amazon. This reviewer accused Shama of having made up all forty of her five star reviews, because no book could possibly have that many perfect reviews. Shama says, “I think a lot of entrepreneurs face this. Ten people can validate what you are doing, but if one person says, ‘I don't think so,’ that critical person can have more impact than your ten strongest supporters.”
JJ Virgin, author of Six Weeks to Sleeveless and Sexy, had someone write a mean Amazon review about her book that brought her rating down from 5 stars to 4.5 stars. JJ says, “I know as I get bigger and bigger this will happen more; it happened when I was on the Dr. Phil show regularly, and I know it happens with TLC, too. There will always be people who will be critical of you. I mean, my gosh, there is a website called ‘I Hate Rachael Ray.’ How could anyone hate Rachael Ray? It would be like hating Katie Couric. There are always going to be people out there who are going to call you a freak or a quack or whatever. You've heard the saying, ‘well-behaved women do not make history.’ You have to be controversial. If you start giving everyone vanilla ice cream, who cares? They've already got it. So if you really want to get out there, you can't be saying the same old stuff.”
Pat Schroder was certainly controversial during her days in Congress, and I remember always seeing her on TV and in the papers back then. Pat was the Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from Colorado from 1973–1997 and then went on to become the CEO and President of the Association of American Publishers for eleven years. As Pat says about her days in Congress, “I was always so high profile. I kept warning myself to engage my brain before starting to speak, but there were some days that I didn't quite follow my own advice. I would end up on the front page of the paper for something I said and my mother would say, ‘I can't believe you said that.’ The classic that almost put my mother over the edge was when about the fiftieth person said to me, ‘how can you be a mother and a congresswoman?’ And I finally lost it and I said, ‘I have a brain, I have a uterus, and they both work, next question.’ You know, of course, I have had to eat those words forever. I often got in trouble that way.”
Pat talked about how she worked hard for programs for the people, especially women, children, daycare, and veterans, and that the guys in Congress and the press would just roll their eyes when she brought up these topics. As she says, “They really should be issues for both men and women and yet, somehow in our culture, they're not. I used to always say to the
