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.
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!
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.
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!
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!
The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power (2013)
Healing Trauma Through Self-Parenting—The Codependency Connection (2012)
One of the many girly thoughts you’ll read about in The Girly Thoughts 10-Day Detox Plan is about the need so many women feel to be nice at work. And this thinking severely handicaps us because we fear, justifiably, that we will be judged for demonstrating our knowledge or offering contrary opinions.
Girly Thought #11: I Need to Be Seen as Nice at Work
So to preview Day 8, which will help you “out” your negative self-talk (aka girly thoughts) at work and change your thinking and actions so you can develop the confidence you deserve, let’s look at a recent Sunday New York Times essay that examined yet another study about women and work. That’s a subject I cover extensively on Day 8 in my new book, which will be released later this month.
Work Is Not a Level Playing Field
In an essay for the Sunday New York Times, author Tara Mohr wrote about a new study conducted for a Fortune 500 Company that looked at the differences in workplace performance reviews given to men and women. The study looked at 248 performance reviews from 28 different companies and found managers (both male and female) gave more negative feedback to women than to men!
The negative feedback wasn’t about performance but about personality. In fact, 76 percent of the negative feedback included judgments that the womenbeing evaluatedwere abrasive, judgmental, or strident, while only 2 percent of the men reviewed received similar negative comments about their personalities.
We Deal with These Judgments by Not Creating Conflict
So what do we do to navigate this system? Yes, we act nice. We try to be acceptable because we know we will be judged for the way we do things and not just for what we do, and that judgment will be harsh. Yet we continue to consult our inner guide—our girly thoughts—about how to act at work—except, as you know, the advice from our girly thoughts is not getting us anywhere we want to be.
I believe this is one of the reasons the new TV show Madam Secretaryis gaining such widespread support: it depicts a competent woman, who doesn’t feel she needs to be liked, making tough decisions and pushing back. Refreshing, isn’t it?
Getting Real
You know it’s impossible to always be seen as “nice” at work. And being competent means risking being called the B word or one of its euphemisms. But what’s the alternative? Letting those girly thoughts get the best of you and reining in your power?
What to do?
Find a mentor, someone who can help you navigate the politics of your employment.
Seek support from other women and men who understand both your work and how hard it might be to do your job while trying to win a personality contest.
Don’t take criticism personally. This is a major struggle for women on so many levels of an organization. Let other’s criticism of you be about them, not about you.
Remember: you were hired to do the job you are doing, so do it.
As women, we are at a new point in our history where we are moving away from traditional roles and traditional ways of doing these roles, and stepping into demonstrating our competency and, as a result, our power. This will have the effect of being seen differently at work. So challenge yourself to step outside of the comfort zone that those girly thoughts provide, and experiment with being competent at work as a first priority. This could be called being nice to YOU!
Learn how to detox from your negative self-talk in The Girly Thoughts 10-Day Detox Plan available for preorder now at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, HCI Books, and wherever books are sold.
The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power (2013)
Healing Trauma Through Self-Parenting—The Codependency Connection (2012)
September is Recovery Month. We’ve had an entire month of reminders that we can change how we feel by changing our actions, our friends, even our diets. Hmmm?
Recovery is a different process than a cure, and much as we would like a cure for depression, addiction, and even our own negative thinking, there just isn’t one. But we have something that in some ways is even better.
Instead of being cured by something done to you, you get to do something to yourself that changes you and brings you into wellness. And you get to invite others into the party that is your wholeness.
Recovery involves paradoxes, one of which is that recovery is a process that only you can do, but you can’t do alone. Recovery involves utilizing your community to develop the support you need to make the changes you require to live the life you deserve. Recovery is so much better than a cure because it connects you to others who share the same struggles.
Detox From Your Inner Trash Talk (Girly Thoughts)
Your inner trash talk, your girly thoughts, are those societally informed thoughts that tell you if you are not perfect in your looks, in your actions, that any negative response you receive is your fault.
It’s time to detox from those and start your recovery! That recovery, too, is a paradox. Only you can do it, but you also can’t do it alone.
Yes, you need your girlfriends and even your guy friends, and maybe even your family, to support you in the process of:
Identifying those thoughts that tear you down and make you responsible for the poor actions of another, such as an abusive boyfriend or a mean boss
Naming these unproductive thinking as girly thoughts
Realizing that you are not the only person who is thinking them, so you can stop thinking you are nuts
Learning to replace this inner trash talk with thoughts that support you.
So as we approach the end of Recovery Month, celebrate by making recovery work for you. Join the process. Get support for feeling better by changing how you speak to the person closest to you: yourself. Recover from your girly thoughts!
I’ve often been asked, “How do girly thoughts develop?” Some women think perhaps they began having negative thoughts about themselves when they entered puberty or became teenagers. The truth might surprise to you.
Your Girly Thoughts in the Beginning
It may be a rude awakening for some of you to really think back and see when you did began to think girly thoughts, that toxic, inner dialogue fed daily by media and some less-than-helpful female traditions, because you will very likely be able to trace it to a much earlier time than you thought.
A woman I spoke to a couple of weeks ago shared that she thought her four-year-old was having girly thoughts. Her four-year-old daughter told her, “I know I’m going to be popular!” Her mother was excited. “Why?” she asked. “Is it because you’re smart, helpful, a good friend?
“No,” her daughter said, smiling and twirling her hair, “It’s because I’m blond.”
A Focus on Fashion Instead of Sports
Even as young girls, we become aware of what is acceptable and what is not. We receive lots of positive feedback for being pretty, being quiet and polite, and most of all for being good . . . but how this translates may surprise you.
A male friend of mine who is the principle of an elementary school shared with me that he dreads spring. Why? “Bare midriffs, short shirts . . . why do mothers buy this stuff?” He doesn’t understand how relentless your girls can be about being accepted (he has a son). But why do mothers give in? We have our own girly thoughts, and so the cycle continues.
What to Do?
I was recently honored to speak at the 2nd Annual Beautiful Women Doing Beautiful Things Women’s Networking Event in Albany, New York, about this very subject. I invite you to watch the video of my presentation, where I give tips on what to do about your own girly thoughts.
Put those tips into action, and let me know what new strategies you are developing.
Patricia O’Gorman, PhD, is a best selling author, psychologist, resiliency coach, former executive, and an international speaker known for her warm and funny presentations. She is the author and coauthor of nine books, including 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), as well as numerous articles in magazines. Watch for Dr. O’Gorman’s newest book A Man’s Guide to girly thoughts, and Out Your Girly Thoughts and Embrace Your Strength—A Resilience-Building Curriculum will be available in 2015; visit www.patriciaogorman.com for more information.
Your wedding should be a joyful day for you and for your guests. This is the day you invite those you love the most to join with you in celebrating a major change in your life. As the day gets closer, so should the joy of anticipation. But that is not how it often plays out.
Your Girly Thoughts Cause Major Stress—Yes, Even on Your Wedding Day
So often as you see your wedding day approach, you feel the stress mount. Why? Your girly thoughts, that toxic inner dialogue that keeps pointing out where you are lacking, where you are to blame, is there telling you what to do . . . and they rob you of the pleasure you deserve to be feeling on your special day.
Girly Thoughts Wedding Stressors
Here are some of the girly thoughts that have the potential to ruin your special day:
1. I’m fat —Interesting that this is the first girly thought I list in my book The Girly Thoughts 10-Day Detox Plan. This is a girly thought that follows us wherever we go. But why let it take up space on this, your special day?
Tell this less-than-helpful, energy-draining thought to get lost. Your weight, whatever it is, is perfect for today. With all of the other stressors heaped on you, you don’t need to stress about losing another five pounds.
2. Your wedding day has to be perfect for everyone—Your girly thoughts say you have to consider everyone else’s feelings when you make your choices for your wedding and reception—the seating, the songs you’ve chosen, the color arrangement, even the flowers you’ve picked. With all the personal decisions you’ve made, there are sure to be some decisions that those close to you won’t like.
Claudia’s sister was upset because she choose a song that her sister claimed as her own. . Her mother thought daisies looked cheap. She put her two aunts—who hadn’t spoken to each other in fifteen years—at the family table. One bridesmaid didn’t like the color of her dress.
Invite your family members to be the adults they claim to be. Push back with resolve, albeit graciously and with a smile and a squeeze of their hand to let them know you understand their pain but you deserve their support.
3. You are responsible for everyone having a good time—Recognize this for what it is, another girly thought telling you to put your needs second, even on your wedding day. This girly thought tells you that you need to earn love by figuring out first how to make everyone else feel loved and honored before you can expect him or her to show you love and support.
Actually, your wedding is an opportunity for those closest to you to celebrate you and your new spouse, not for you to magically solve all the long-simmering issues in your family or between your friends. Treating those you invite to your wedding as honored guests—who you expect to know how to take care of themselves—is a gift you are giving to them.
How to Enjoy Your Wedding
Don’t base your happiness on what others think of you. Make this the day you want, and invite others to join in to the best of their ability. After all, you’ve done your part . . . so let loose from those girly thoughts and enjoy what you have created!
If you enjoyed this article, please subscribe to my blog and you’ll never miss a post! It’s easy: Just enter your email address on the right side of this page, just below “Recent Posts” or by clicking here:
And please know that I’ll never sell, share, or rent your contact information—that’s a promise!
Patricia O’Gorman, PhD, is a psychologist and resiliency coach, and an international speaker known for her warm and funny presentations. She has worked extensively with women and children of alcoholics in private practice with an emphasis on trauma. She also serves on the Board of the NYS Coalition Against Sexual Assault, previously directed a rape crises center as well as the Division of Prevention for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. She founded the Department of Prevention and Education for the National Office of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD), national office, worked extensively in senior management in child welfare, and is a cofounder of the National Association for Children of Alcoholics. The Girly Thought 10 Day Detox Plan: The Resilient Woman’s Guide to saying NO to Negative Self-Talk and YES to Personal Power is her ninth book; others include The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power, Healing Trauma Through Self-Parenting, The Lowdown on Families Who Get High, Dancing Backwards in High Heels, and 12 Steps To Self-Parenting. She invites you to visit her website: http://patriciaogorman.com
Out Your Girly Thoughts…Embrace Your Strength workbook (coming April 2014 from HCI Books)
We say one picture is worth a thousand words. If that is so, then one video must be worth many more.
Out of the Mouths of Babes
I encourage you to watch the video below (sent to me by a reader) of a participant at the Barnard College poetry slam. In it, a young woman speaks to what she sees in her mother that both concerns and infuriates her. She expresses her pain about how the intergenerational messages she has internalized hurt both her and her mother.
Those of us who are mothers may believe that our daughters just follow our directives and do not see the context, do not see our actions or those of our mothers (their grandmothers). We think they do not see the price we pay for following the culturally directed girly thoughts that tell us how to act and how to think, and that promise rejection if we stray from acting in this narrow cultural band.
Think again.
Learning to Take Up Less Space
The poet in this video speaks to how generations of women in her family have been groomed and coached to take up less and less space. “I have been taught accommodation,” she says.
She speaks to being concerned that her mother sneaks downstairs at midnight to secretly eat food to which she does not feel entitled. She talks about how her mother masks her pain with lips coated with wine.
Yes, women have been coached for generations to be smaller, to “wane” as their husbands ‘wax’; coached to be the “woman behind the man,” to be important, yes, but invisible and unrecognized.
But our daughters will break this cycle, won’t they?
“Spend enough time sitting across from someone and you pick up their habits. That’s why the women in my family have been shrinking for decades,” the poet muses.
Sound familiar? Listen to Lilly and ask yourself… is this me as well?
What Can We Do to Support Our Daughters?
Encourage them to give voice to their concerns about us
Ask your daughter to discuss what concerns her about you. Her answers may be difficult to listen to, but it is better to have your daughter put this into words than just do what women have been trained to do, which is to internalize what they are concerned about and not speak up.
Listen to what our daughters are saying
Sometimes it is difficult to listen to our children, particularly when they are angry—speaking to us with raised voices, using profanity, acting in a way we feel is inappropriate, yelling to us from another room. Our children’s behavior may mask what they are saying—but what they are saying may be right on. Listen to the message; don’t just tune it out because you don’t like the delivery.
Change your behavior
Yes, you may need to change. Your daughter’s concerns may be well-founded. There may very well be something there that your daughter is picking up on that you should address by changing your actions, changing your thinking, changing the messages you are sending.
Crisis Is Opportunity
As I wrote in the first step of my book, The Resilient Woman, patriciaogorman.com, crisis is opportunity. Let this “crisis” of your daughter confronting you on modeling inappropriate, ingrained behaviors and attitudes be the opportunity for you to change in a way that benefits you and frees your daughter from following your girly thoughts.
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If you enjoyed this article, please subscribe to my blog and you’ll never miss a post! It’s easy: Just enter your email address on the right side of this page, just below “Recent Posts” or by clicking here:
And please know that I’ll never sell, share, or rent your contact information—that’s a promise!
Patricia O’Gorman, PhD, a psychologist in private practice in Saranac Lake, New York, is noted for her work on women, trauma, and substance abuse and for her warm, inspiring, and funny presentations that make complex issues accessible and fun. She has served as a consultant to organizations in preventative and clinical strategic planning. Dr. O’Gorman is a cofounder of the National Association for Children of Alcoholics (NACOA), and she has held positions ranging from clinical director of a child welfare agency to interim director of a crime victims organization to director of the division of prevention for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). Learn more at http://patriciaogorman.com
