Enjoy Valentine’s Day – Don’t Indulge Your Girly Thoughts

By Patricia O’Gorman, PhD

author of

The Girly Thoughts 10 Day Detox

#drogorman

 “How do you spell ‘love’?” – Piglet

“You don’t spell it . . . you feel it.” – Pooh

—A.A. Milne, “Winnie The Pooh” 

Perhaps no other holiday creates as much tension as Valentine’s Day. This is the day of love, of being loved, of receiving gifts, all of which say that all of your hard work at maintaining your relationship is worth it!

Yes, it is a day of drama, full of tension and storms, the day that keeps us “in the game,” and due to all the disappointments and heartbreaks you have experienced, it is also a day that has helped you grow deep roots.

Girly Thoughts: the Legacy of Fairy Tales

You were raised on tales of Prince Charming coming to your rescue and thereby proving his undying love. You’ve seen numerous movies and read many books where even strong, feisty women are in need of rescuing by the men of their dreams.

While you may no longer be reading fairy tales, you may unconsciously still be living by the messages they taught, messages that are part of the fabric of your girly thoughts, those toxic messages that tell you your self-worth depends largely on how someone else values, even loves you.

Valentine’s Day Is a Day that Proves . . . Your Self-Worth?

Perhaps on no other day do these messages play out as they do on Valentine’s Day . . . the day your “prince” will prove your genuine lovability.

As a result, you probably attach a great deal of importance to the actions of the one you love on this one day.

We pressure our partners to use traditional tokens of love and appreciation—cards, flowers, chocolates, perhaps even Champagne—to demonstrate our importance in their lives and prove their devotion to us. If they fail in some way, we are tempted to feel diminished, less important, and—sadly—unloved or unlovable.

As a Result, You Feel Held Hostage

You put pressure on yourself to be seen and rewarded, signifying that all the sacrifices you made were “worth it.”

And if you are not rewarded as you feel you should be, your girly thoughts tell you the fault lies within you, and you must try harder, do more.

Or your girly thoughts tell you you’re not loveable because you are too old, not exciting, too fat or too thin, and the inner monologue about your real or imagined negative qualities goes on . . . and on . . . and on.

In this way, Valentine’s Day holds you hostage, creating anxiety and uncertainty, draining you of your power as you unwittingly give it over to another person.

This is the exact opposite of what you’d hoped for.

Does Waiting to Be Loved Work for You?

If waiting to be loved actually makes you anxious and miserable, as it does most of us, I suggest an alternative: Why not (also) love yourself?

This isn’t meant to subtract from your loved one’s importance in your life, merely to balance it by also caring for and cherishing yourself.

Yes, you can still be appreciative of the gifts from your partner, boyfriend, or husband, but you also give yourself something perhaps even more important . . . self-love and self-appreciation, instead of indulging those girly thoughts all day!

Appreciate Yourself on Valentine’s Day 

You may be planning a romantic dinner with your boyfriend. If you have children, you may be putting valentines in their lunch boxes. Perhaps you’ll be posting a Valentine’s Day message on Facebook for your friends and family.

But what about you? What can you give yourself on this day of love? Give yourself …well…gifts! Here are some thoughts to get you started:

  • Plan what you are going to wear on Valentine’s Day in a leisurely way. Instead of just focusing on what you will be making for dinner, think about yourself. Ask yourself: What looks good on me? Which outfit makes me feel good about myself? What do I feel comfortable wearing?
  • As you wear your favorite clothes on Valentine’s Day, tell yourself: I look really good!
  • Write down two things you really like about yourself. You don’t have to display that list, but put it somewhere you’ll see it—and say those words out loud each time you do. They may be as direct as: I am Smart! I am a Good Friend! I can kick (you know what)!
  • Think of ways you can act on those positive qualities and get others to also see them. For example, if you like your voice, sing in your car, sing at work, or entertain your partner.
  • Give yourself attagirls throughout the day for stepping out of your comfort zone and into your power.
  • Tell yourself . . . I love you. 

Now you’re creating a day full of love. You don’t need to spell love, you just need to feel it within yourself.

Wishing you a Happy Valentine’s Day! And stay tuned for my next blog where we’ll check out how you did . . .

You’ll find more ideas for getting rid of your negative self-talk in my book The Girly Thoughts 10-Day Detox Plan: The Resilient Woman’s Guide to Saying NO to Negative Self-Talk and YES to Personal Power

For the New Year, Don’t Listen to Those Girly Thoughts . . . Speak UP at Work!

 By 

Patricia O’Gorman, Ph.D.

#drogorman

 

I can and I will…

Yes, we’re almost a month the New Year, and you are probably finding, as most of us are, that those New Year’s Resolutions are difficult to follow.

To gain some perspective, let’s back up for a moment and consider what the new year is all about. That’s easy: It is a time to start over, to do things differently.

Sound good? But where to begin? How about the way you act at work?

Make a New Year’s Work Resolution 

I know, you’ve already made some resolutions for improving your work situation this year: get a raise, go for that promotion, seek out a new job.

Have you made any progress so far? If not, what’s getting in the way?

Consider making a New Year’s Resolution to address a major obstacle most women must confront to meet their goals—figure out how to challenge your girly thoughts, that internalized, negative self-talk that sabotages your best efforts by telling you (among other things) that you’re not good enough in some way.

Make a Concrete Resolution 

And let’s up the ante and make your New Year’s Work Resolution something concrete, something that will improve your work life—not just today, not just for the rest of 2015, but for your entire career:

Resolve to Speak Up at Work

Why Speak Up?

Why start here? Let’s face it: you face a great deal of pressure in the workplace. Not only was it a struggle to get your job, but you also feel the pressure to keep it and do it well. Some of the pressure you feel is performance based—whether you are a teacher, a computer analyst, an executive, or in sales, you want to be good in your job.

After all, this is where you spend the majority of your awake time; this is the field you have in some way trained for, and you need to stay current with your skill set, all while you navigate those tricky office politics.

How would this look? When you give yourself a voice, you:

  • speak your truth
  • offer your opinion, your wisdom
  • remember that you were hired because you are the best person for your job

So instead of just listening to those girly thoughts, that toxic inner dialogue that tells you to be a good girl and keep quiet, remind yourself of your value and resolve to  let your value show.

Will There Be a Price to Pay for Speaking Up At Work? 

According to Facebook chief operating office Sheryl Sandberg and Wharton Business School professor Adam Grant, the answer is yes, you will pay a price for speaking up. But then you already know that, and have probably experienced it.

In their opinion piece for the New York Times titled “Speaking While Female,” Sandburg and Grant write:

Male executives who spoke more often than their peers were rewarded with 10 percent higher ratings of competence. When female executives spoke more than their peers, both men and women punished them with 14 percent lower ratings. As this and other research shows, women who worry that talking “too much” will cause them to be disliked are not paranoid; they are often right.

Should the Price Stop You?

You’re already paying the price. You’re stuck. But this is a New Year, so let there be a New You! Challenge those girly thoughts that say  be nice, and instead speak up! And if your girly thoughts warn you how much you will be disliked if you speak up, tell them to take a hike!

How to Speak Up

  • Take a deep breath
  • Speak on the exhale
  • Make eye contact
  • Speak in your natural, strong voice, not that so-cute little girl voice

And after you speak, give yourself a private pat on the back—you did it!

You’ll find more ideas for getting rid of that negative self-talk in my book The Girly Thoughts 10-Day Detox Plan: The Resilient Woman’s Guide to Saying NO to Negative Self-Talk and YES to Personal Power.

How have you overcome your fear of speaking up at work?  Let’s start talking …. 

In my next blog, we’ll take a break from work and deal with your heart…. Watch for Enjoy Valentine’s Day – Don’t Indulge Your Girly Thoughts

6 Ways to Know if Your Girly Thoughts Are Holding You Back at Work

by

Patricia O’Gorman, PhD

#drogorman

This year, train for success!

Your girly thoughts are saying:

Be nice, don’t interrupt, don’t be assertive

When you hold yourself back, when you don’t assert the power of your position, share your information, offer your opinion, there is a price to be paid—and it is either paid in real time with negative consequences or paid down the line in a failure to really succeed.

Are You Holding Yourself Back?

If this sounds like you, you can begin by discovering how those toxic inner thoughts, what I call girly thoughts, are getting in the way of you doing the job you were hired to do. Yes, your girly thoughts can trip you up in many places in your life, but let’s begin by tackling one part of everyone’s job: speaking up at work. Whether you are working as a coder or as a surgeon, your thoughts about your work are important. But for many women finding their voice at work is not so easy.

I was recently at a meeting when the staff was asked to offer their opinions on a subject. It was interesting to note that all the men spoke first. Several women tried to speak during the time when the men “had the floor,” but here’s what would happen:

A woman would begin to speak; a man would interrupt, speaking just a little louder; the woman would smile slightly, put her head down, and appear to “wait her turn” as the man continued speaking.

Sound familiar?

In my last blog, For the New Year—Don’t Listen to Those Girly Thoughts . . . Speak UP at Work!  I cited an article by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant on the price women pay for using their voice at work. Yes, there are real consequences for speaking up at work, but there are also very real consequences for not speaking up, for not using your power, for not asserting your valuable professional opinions—and this is why women do not get as far as our male counterparts.

6 Ways Your Girly Thoughts Keep You Down at Work:

Navigating the “Rules of the Office” includes knowing when to speak and how to offer your opinion. To find out if your girly thoughts are getting in your way, ask yourself if you are holding yourself back. Do you:

  • wait for the right time to speak?
  • make sure you are not interrupting others?
  • prioritize politeness and preface your contributions by saying “Excuse me” or “I’m sorry, but . . .”?
  • use your most non-threatening voice, a.k.a. a little girl voice?
  • feel the need to smile as you speak?
  • carefully rephrase your point to be nice when you make it?

How do you feel if someone repeats a point you made earlier as though the idea originated with him or her? Do you feel it is impolite to remind others that the idea is yours by saying something like, “Thank you for summarizing the point I made earlier”?

If your answer is yes to even one of these questions, you need to make some changes.

Stand in Your Power—Warning: You May Not Be Liked

For many women, speaking up at work means being seen as powerful, and that may mean you will not be liked or seen as nice. So let’s take a moment to look at these terms. 

Nice means, for many women, being seen as compliant, understanding, forgiving, and subservient. Said this way, it doesn’t feel very good, does it? So why do so many of us want to be nice? Because our girly thoughts say that’s how we should be acting, that we have each been raised to be a “good girl and good girls are nice, all the time.   No wonder we feel anxious when we push back at work.

As for being liked? Well, you may not be liked if you speak up, but then again you may be respected, listened to, thought of as a force—in short, you may be cultivating many of the qualities that will be important in your career.

This is your choice—choose to keep listening to those girly thoughts or advance in your career.

This Year, Train for Success

For maximum career success you need to train as you would to improve any skill. Begin with a plan for how you will:

  • discover your voice
  • use your voice
  • tell yourself you will use your power and be successful
  • use positive affirmations as I describe in The Girly Thoughts 10-Day Detox Plan. Here’s one to get you started:

“The most important thing I wear is my confidence.”

And have some fun—Just Say NO to your girly thoughts that tell you “You can’t do that.”

Let me know how you have coached yourself to speak up at work. Share your tips and tricks for overcoming your own toxic self-talk

For my next three blogs, we’ll switch from the office to your heart and focus on Valentine’s Day. Yes, your girly thoughts have a field day with this symbolic day! I’ll help you enjoy the day for what it is instead of letting it hold you hostage by creating anxiety and uncertainty and draining you of your power as you unwittingly give it over to another person.

You’ll find more ideas for getting rid of your negative self-talk in my book The Girly Thoughts 10-Day Detox Plan: The Resilient Woman’s Guide to Saying NO to Negative Self-Talk and YES to Personal Power

Imagine a New You in the New Year—Free from Girly Thoughts

By Patricia O’Gorman, PhD

@drogorman

Above all, be the heroine in your own life – Nora Ephron

You’re well into the New Year, and your resolutions probably included losing a few of those holiday pounds, right? If you’re like most of us, that particular resolution is a real stumbling block, and failing to realize it is an incredible stressor.

The See Food Diet—Because You’re a Stress Eater

Yes, you know the joke: you see food and you eat it. But why do you do this? It is because you are defective and have no control? Or is it because you are under so much stress that you need some satisfaction that is pretty quick and immediate? Yes, you are a stress eater. Most of us are.

The source of your stress? Those girly thoughts, which form what one of my reviewers in The 10 Day Girly Thoughts Detox Plan calls “your inner trash talk.”

Your girly thoughts tell you to:

  • stay forever young
  • be thin
  • be nice
  • keep your partner sexually happy
  • and dozens of other things on an impossible list made all the more difficult because more girly thoughts tell you to do the impossible without stumbling, without failing, and without gaining any weight.

Does this spell relief?

New Year’s Resolutions That Will Work

This year, give yourself a real gift—rid yourself from this type of thinking and the resulting self-destructive actions that come when you believe your girly thoughts. I promise you, it won’t be that hard. And we can do this together.

For the next few weeks, each blog will focus on a different girly thought, and I invite you to send me additional girly thoughts through my website: www.patriciaogorman.com, and we can address these together.

Girly Thought #1: I’m Fat

If you’re like the rest of us, you probably ate more over the holidays that you thought you should, and now you feel . . . Fat.

To help ease your anxiety, the multi-billion dollar diet industry is ramping up their appeal, hoping you will buy their books, plans, magazines—all of which offer easy, no-effort-required ways to lose weight.

So what do you do? You sign up for the plan, or buy the new book, or purchase the magazine (many of which have tantalizing desserts on the cover), and you collapse in exhaustion, feeling a wave of overwhelming feelings.

To Lose Weight and Lose Stress, Lose Those Girly Thoughts

As we said earlier, most women are stress eaters. So if you want to lose weight, you have two choices:

  • Go on a diet, which will only increase your stress because you eat when you are stressed, or
  • Lose the cause of your stress—those harmful girly thoughts—and commit to doing a 10-Day Detox to change your thinking, beginning with: Reducing your stress!

Make this next year about losing your girly thoughts—and watch those pounds melt away.

Now say: “Yes, I can.”

Learn more about detoxing from your negative self-talk in my book, The Girly Thoughts 10-Day Detox Plan: The Resilient Woman’s Guide to Saying NO to Negative Self-Talk and YES to Personal Power.

Watch for my next blog for another concrete action you can take to reduce your stress and increase your success in the New Year—speaking up at work!

Find it on:

Amazon paperback, Kindle

Barnes & Noble paperback, Nook

Find me on Facebook

Giving as an Extension of You, Not Your Girly Thoughts

By Patricia O’Gorman, PhD

@drogorman

’Tis the season, with lots of expectations of what you should do, how you should look, and what you should give when gifting. No wonder your girly thoughts, that toxic self-talk that tells you what to do while simultaneously telling you you’re not doing it correctly, have a field day here.

In my latest book, The Girly Thoughts 10-Day Detox Plan: The Resilient Woman’s Guide to Saying NO to Negative Self-Talk and YES to Personal Power, I explain where your toxic self-talk comes from, how it affects you, and how to get rid of it. After all, who needs a voice inside her head telling her she’s a loser?

One way to challenge your girly thoughts, especially during the holidays, is to take planned, concrete action to defeat them, and what better way than to determine what you will and will not give your friends, family members, and co-workers.

Re-thinking What It Means to Give

Instead of scouring catalogues, spending hours you don’t have online, or waiting in endless lines in stores, think outside the girly thoughts box—the one that says your gift must be the latest fashion, expensive, in the right color. Instead, think about what is meaningful for you, and what is meaningful for the person you are gifting.

Consider giving a non-girly thoughts gift:

  • Membership in the recipient’s name in a national advocacy group. Consider one that may be less well known than others but will have more immediate meaning, such as the National Association of Children of Alcoholics (NACoA). As some of you know, I was a co-founder of this vital organization many years ago. NACoA reaches out, speaks up, and helps hurting children in need of comfort and support who live in silence and fear from their parent’s addiction, letting them know it is not their fault.

  • A donation in the recipient’s name to a program for kids. Want to give to small program that is developing a national model for helping kids heal? Check out Horses Healing Hearts (HHH) in Wellington, Florida, a wonderful organization whose advisory board I chair. “One horse, one child, one day at a time . . .” provides direct emotional support and education for young children whose lives have been torn apart by a parent’s death, incarceration, or abuse due to addiction. HHH teaches empowerment, life-coping skills, and helps children build self-confidence by learning about horse care and riding.

  • Give a gift that also gives a gift. My Twill.com, a new company you may not have yet heard about, provides a child in need with a comforting and inspiring blanket for every one purchased. Here is a beautiful, physical gift that keeps on giving.

  • Head off girly thoughts by giving the perfect mother/daughter gift that literally gets mothers and daughter on the same page in addressing how we women learn to disempower ourselves, our girly thoughts. Jane Collen, a lawyer turned children’s book author, has just released What More Can a Fairy Be?, her third book in the Enjella series: Each book is for a different age group, making it a perfect gift for girls from 3–15, and a perfect complement to the messages in my book, The Girly Thoughts 10 Day Detox Plan, for older teens and mothers of all ages.

Let the Gifts You Give Be a Reflection of the Best in YOU

Remember, your gifts are a reflection of you. Give yourself permission to think outside the box that your girly thoughts put you in. Be creative, have fun, and help others do the same—help them give themselves the gift of no more girly thoughts!

Learn more about helping your daughter and the other women in your life avoid internalizing her girly thoughts in my new book, The Girly Thoughts 10-Day Detox Plan: The Resilient Woman’s Guide to Saying NO to Negative Self-Talk and YES to Personal Power.

Find it on:

Amazon paperback, Kindle

Barnes & Noble paperback, Nook

Find me on Facebook

4 Ways You Can Help Your Daughter Measure Her True Self-Worth

By Patricia O’Gorman, PhD

@drogorman

Remember how awkward it felt to be a teen? Remember what it was like to worry each night when you went to bed if you would recognize the you who woke up in the morning? Budding breasts, growth spurts, and those terrible pimples were all potential minefields.

I know I can still feel how my dread on the first day of school in the fifth grade—I’d grown three inches over the summer and developed acne.

Birth of Our Girly Thoughts
As teens, we often felt betrayed by our changing bodies and by that feeling of not being good enough, of being defective. Why? Because as young girls, we felt required to be perfect, and we castigated ourselves because we were not.

We internalized those negative thoughts through a toxic, inner dialogue I call girly thoughts—a way of speaking to ourselves that begins in our teens and continues through our lives. Our girly thoughts chip away at our sense of self-worth until we take direct action to detox from this type of habitual, negative thinking.

Share and Share Alike
There’s a good reason we wouldn’t want to be teenagers again—not only did we not feel good about ourselves, but those negative thoughts were reinforced by our so-called friends, the media—even our own families.

But how did we know we weren’t everything we were supposed to be? Comments, looks, slam books, selective ostracizing—let me count the ways. Then we internalized those negative messages (“You’re not pretty enough.” “Don’t act too smart or the boys won’t like you.” “You aren’t wearing that, are you?”), and we continue to do this to our adult selves.

And the saddest part is that by listening to and acting on our girly thoughts, we inadvertently teach our daughters to do the same.

Girly Thoughts in the Digital Age

As challenging as your teenage years may have been, they pale in comparison to what our daughters are experiencing in feeling judged—not just by peers in the classroom, but also by peers on Facebook, Twitter, and especially Instagram, which a survey found 76 percent of teens chose as their go-to app.

In a stunning article about how to de-code our daughters’ communication on social media, Rachel Simmons, author and co-founder of Girls Leadership Institute writes,

Girls face increasing pressure not only to be smart and accomplished, but girly, sexy and social. . . . Instagram’s simplicity is also deceiving: look more closely, and you find the Rosetta Stone of girl angst: a way for tweens and teens to find out what their peers really think of them (Was that comment about my dress a joke or did she mean it?), who likes you (Why wasn’t I included in that picture?), even how many people like them (if you post and get too few likes, you might feel “Instashame,” as one young woman calls it.)

What To Do?
Now that this judging is so intense and so public, we need to give our daughters additional tools to help them:

Give your daughter a name for her negative self-talk: girly thoughts.
Having a name for something will help her wrap her mind around her experience and see this as something she is doing, not who she is. Helping her see her feelings as transitory and nothing to feel ashamed of will help her overcome the barrage of negativity that is part and parcel of being a teenage girl.

Help her challenge feeling like a victim. This is the end result of girly thoughts your daughter will feel she has no power and feel she is a victim at the mercy of her peers, and the world. Share with her in general terms how you have fought the same toxic self-talk she is fighting.

Encourage her to become involved in activities in which she feels proud of herself. Encourage her to sketch, sing, journal, join the Chess Club, Engineering Club, Babysitting Club, and Church Youth Group, to name just a few. The more positive activities she is involved in, the more she’ll have to post about the best in her.

Help her identify the girly thoughts of her friends. If she has a peer who is cyberbullying another girl because of her braces, breasts, pimples, or who she’s dating, help her see that this is how her peer is responding to her own girly thoughts that say there is only way, and it is the popular way.

The Payoff
It may be rough going at first, but the more your daughter (or granddaughter or niece) can learn to get in front of what is said about her now and learn to define herself, the easier her life will be—not only her teenage years, but for the rest of her life. Unfortunately, she will get a great deal of practice in needing to do this, so why not start now?

Learn more about helping your daughter avoid internalizing her girly thoughts in my new book, The Girly Thoughts 10-Day Detox Plan: The Resilient Woman’s Guide to Saying NO to Negative Self-Talk and YES to Personal Power.

Amazon paperback, Kindle

Barnes & Noble paperback, Nook

Find me on Facebook

5 Girly Thoughts™ that Increase Your Holiday Stress

By Patricia O’Gorman, PhD

Author of The Girly Thoughts 10-Day Detox Plan: The Resilient Woman’s Guide to Saying NO to Negative Self-Talk and YES to Personal Power (publication date 10.28.14) – a fun book about a serious topic

The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power (2013)

Healing Trauma Through Self-Parenting—The Codependency Connection (2012)

It’s almost the happy holiday season, and you’re already feeling the pressure. If you’re like most of us, you’re already hearing that inner voice that pushes you to do more, reminding you that it is up to you to make this a holiday season to remember while telling you that no matter what you’re doing, it is not enough.

How Your Girly Thoughts Turn Up the Holiday Pressure

I’ve named this toxic, negative self-talk your girly thoughts. Girly thoughts function as an internal gauge of perfection against which you measure yourself, and guess what? You find yourself falling short from where you feel you should be.

Here is what your girly thoughts are telling you and what you can do about them:

1. Everyone I know needs a card and a personal note from me. Let’s face it: in this day of digital communication, a handwritten note is a lovely indication of your caring. But having a self-expectation of sending a handwritten note to everyone you know when you now clearly do not send out notes regularly?

Consider writing a lovely email letter and sending this out instead.

2. I need to make home-cooked, memorable meals. The belief that every meal needs to be a masterpiece gets in the way of actually enjoying the meal. If you don’t enjoy it, neither will anyone else.

Instead, tell yourself: I need to make meals I will enjoy. Consider:
• Serving some ready-made foods
• Saying yes when guests ask if they can bring something
• Preparing simpler recipes

3. I must look fabulous. The pressure to look good is always with us; in fact, “I’m fat” is girly thought #1. Time to detox!

Change this to: I need to feel comfortable. Too tired after a day of working and an evening of cooking to wear those heels to the party? Ditch them.

4. I must attend every holiday event, concert, and party. Yes, this is the season of making merry, but that means you want to feel merry as well.

Consider setting reasonable limits on what you will and will not do. Notice the emphasis is not on what you can do but what you will do.

5. I must find the perfect gift that says I love them. Ah, the perfect gift. No pressure here.

Change this to acknowledging each recipient’s specialness, and stay tuned for a blog on gift giving.

—

Give Yourself a Gift for the Holidays—Detox from Your Girly Thoughts

Girly thoughts act like a conduit through which all your discomfort, all the stresses of your life, are filtered, and the holidays just magnify that discomfort.

So this holiday season, give yourself a great gift: stop listening to that negative, toxic voice that tells you what you should do and instead look for ways to reduce your stress so you can experience all the joy of the season.

Even Victoria’s Secret No Longer Feels Your Body Has to Be Perfect—So Why Are You Still Listening to Your Girly Thoughts®?

Victoria’s Secret has seen the light—they’ve dropped the word perfect in their marketing.

What used to be “The Perfect Body” tagline has now become “A Body for Every Body.” This might seem like a small change, but it is an important one. Victoria’s Secret is telling us we do not need to be perfect. Maybe we can begin to believe that!

The power of your anger

Victoria’s Secret didn’t just make this major change on its own. The corporation had a pretty firm nudge—it was pressured to do this by a petition on Change.org that was organized by three British students who may have been tired of—perhaps even angry about—the relentless images of perfection that all women are supposed to strive toward.

I invite you to read the full petition at Change.org; you’ll get a real sense of the anger these young women felt about Victoria Secret’s Perfect marketing campaign, which, in the petitioners’ words, “fails to celebrate the amazing diversity of women’s bodies by choosing to call only one body type ‘perfect’.”

Perfect doesn’t need to be your goal

What did these young women do with their upset over the wording? Well, what they didn’t do was exercise more, go on a diet, and torture themselves with their toxic girly thoughts, those society driven, family reinforced negative messages that tells women they aren’t good enough.

Instead, these women used their annoyance and their anger to push for change and empower others to make their voices heard, and maybe they even had fun doing this together.

And they succeeded.

Baby steps can be powerful

The Victoria’s Secret models still look the same: super slim, very young, and wearing very little, but this change is still progress, even if measured in baby steps.

Changing the wording of a corporate tag line from something that is impossible to achieve to something that instead reflects the reality most of us face is movement toward a new norm, and that is what we all need and deserve.

What action can you take?

As I suggest in my recently released book, The Girly Thoughts 10 Day Detox Plan: The Resilient Woman’s Guide to Saying NO to Negative Self-Talk and YES to Personal Power, one way to put an end to toxic, negative self-talk is to find an ad with an oppressive message that makes you angry, one with an image so perfect it is unreal, or one you just find repressive.

Then write a letter to the manufacturer and tell them how you feel, what you want changed. Trust me, just writing it will make you feel better! You’ll realize how ridiculous it is internalize those negative messages, and you’ll feel empowered to detox from them and from the way they make you feel.

Then have fun with this! Share your letter with your friends. Mail it, or post it on the manufacturer’s website. Start a new petition if you’re so inclined—like the three young women who pressured Victoria’s Secret, you can help others detox from their girly thoughts!

—

By Patricia O’Gorman, PhD

Author of The Girly Thoughts 10-Day Detox Plan: The Resilient Woman’s Guide to Saying NO to Negative Self-Talk and YES to Personal Power (publication date 10.28.14) – a fun book about a serious topic

The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power (2013)

Healing Trauma Through Self-Parenting—The Codependency Connection (2012)

True Kindness – No Girly Thoughts Here

By Patricia O’Gorman, PhD

Author of The Girly Thoughts 10-Day Detox Plan: The Resilient Woman’s Guide to Saying NO to Negative Self-Talk and YES to Personal Power (publication date 10.28.14) – a fun book about a serious topic

The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power (2013)

Healing Trauma Through Self-Parenting—The Codependency Connection (2012)

Women focus on being kind to others, but do we ever stop to think about being kind to ourselves?

How Do You View Yourself?

When you look in the mirror, do you notice:

  • Your beautiful smile . . . or do you focus on where you need Botox®?
  • Your kind eyes . . . or do you tell yourself you need to get your eyebrows done?
  • Your curves . . . or do you fret about losing weight?
  • A capable and competent employee . . . or do you worry that you won’t be liked if you offer your opinion?
  • A valuable asset to your partner . . . or do you focus on being someone you think your partner wants you to be?

Girly Thoughts Teach Unkindness

Every single day you are cruel to the person who is the foundation of your life – yourself! Why? Because those societally driven, family-reinforced notions of how women should look and act – girly thoughts – cause you to see yourself (and other women as well) as not measuring up.

Think not? Listen to what you say, not only to yourself, but also about other women.

• “I can’t believe she got that promotion. She must be sleeping with the boss.”
• “If I just lose five more pounds, I bet I’ll get his attention.”
• “I wish she’d stop bragging about her daughter all the time.”

Your girly thoughts are a major distraction from important parts of your life—love, connection, and compassion, and they teach you to be critical instead of kind. They drain you. You only have so much energy; do you want to spend yours on negative, judgmental girly thoughts or on being kind to yourself and others?

Fighting Girly Thoughts with Kindness

Marisa had already decided to stop beating herself up over not having what society deemed the perfect body. But in a clothing store one day, she heard stifled sobs from the next fitting room, and her heart broke. In there was another a younger, tall, curvaceous woman who was distraught because she couldn’t find anything to wear to a friend’s wedding.

“I’m so fat,” she moaned. “No,” Marisa countered, “You’re a commanding presence!” The younger woman laughed, and Marisa helped her to find the perfect dress honoring her beautiful body.

Detox from Your Girly Thoughts

Want to be kind to yourself? Stop listening to your girly thoughts! Here are some tips from my new book, The Girly Thoughts 10-Day Detox:

1. Realize you’re not the only one who feels so inadequate. Having the right color lipstick or staying forever young are messages women hear every day.
2. Identify those self-defeating messages as girly thoughts. Having a name for something gives you power over it, and helps you say NO to self-defeating thoughts.
3. Get support for outing your girly thoughts. Have fun with friends at a Girls’ Night Out, or with your daughter or your mother to see who can find the most girly thoughts in a TV Show, a movie, or in ads.
4. Challenge your most annoying girly thought. Every time you hear it, name it and tell it to get lost.
5. Replace your girly thoughts with kind messages about yourself. Instead of being angry with your body, thank your “big bottom” for cushioning you as you sit; think of your stretch marks as your tiger stripes. Find the positive in the parts of you that demand your attention.
6. Say daily positive affirmations. I love my body; my body loves me; I like my spirit; I am capable and confident.

Getting rid of your girly thoughts—now that’s being kind to you!