personal power Archives - The Powerful Woman

“Don’t Be So Bossy!”—Have You Internalized Early Girly Thoughts?

By Patricia O’Gorman, PhD

author of: The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power (HCI 2013), and

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, October 2014, HCI)

As a young girl, you received many messages about who you were and how you should act. Some of these messages may have been very subtle, such as the looks you received when you reached for an extra piece of cake. Those glares told you loud and clear that you were not doing what was correct. You probably paid attention and put it back, just like the good girl you were raised to be.

Early Rejection

But you received other messages, too: messages that told to you very directly, with great authority and perhaps even with anger, how offensive your behavior was.

These comments and directions, and the tone of voice with which they were delivered, resulted in you feeling terrible about yourself, and not (at least in the beginning) knowing why.

You concluded that you were the problem because you were acting in a way that was totally not acceptable . . . even if you were not sure of what acceptable was.

As a result, you felt ashamed, and you closed down your spirit because you couldn’t face rejection. This may have proved to be a faithful decision that would affect you not only in childhood but also later in life.

But all you wanted was to be helpful

What caused you to act in such a totally not acceptable way? You were probably just trying to be helpful! Think back; do any of these describe you?

You saw someone about to do something that could be a problem, so you told them to stop.
You saw a better way to do something, so you shared it in a way that young children do, by being very direct.
You took charge! You said what you thought!

And then you were told you were bossy

Bossy, yes, and that’s bad if you are a girl. Now, if you’d been a boy, those around you would have said: Look at him, he’s a little general. He’s a leader. He likes to take charge, isn’t that sweet?

Those are all admirable qualities in a little boy, but in a little girl . . . they are not. As a result, instead of your great ideas and clear direction being supported and nurtured, you are rejected and told clearly to STOP.

This is where girly thoughts are born

Our girly thoughts begin with acknowledging the truth in the negative messages that surround us, but we take it one step further: We believe these messages. We internalize them. We monitor ourselves to ensure our acceptability by letting our girly thoughts, our toxic self-talk, guide us. And we shut our powerful selves down. We try not to be offensive in any way. We certainly try not to be bossy.

To remember how this happened to you, watch this sort, powerful video.

What to do? Become aware of your girly thoughts!

Begin to notice how you treat yourself with less respect than you deserve, or when you speak to yourself in a way you would not speak to a friend—these are your girly thoughts in action, berating you for something because it may not be acceptable.
Ask yourself: What do my girly thoughts try to keep me from saying? What do they try to keep me from doing?
Consider what will happen if you ignore these negative, internalized messages. What price do you fear you will pay for not listening to your girly thoughts?
Support www.banbossy.com, along with Sheryl Sandberg, Condoleezza Rice, Girl Scouts CEO Anna Maria Chavez, and hundreds of other men and women who want to rid the world of this negative word.

Remember: Girly thoughts are learned behavior. What you learned one way, you can learn another! Take control of your own thinking and get rid of those girly thoughts. Now that is tapping into your personal power!

—

By Patricia O’Gorman, PhD,
author of: The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power (HCI, 2013)

Order: Amazon / Barnes & Noble

and coming in 2014

Out Your Girly Thoughts…Embrace Your Strength workbook (coming April 2014 from HCI Books)

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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, 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

Celebrity Status Is a Breeding Ground for Girly Thoughts

By Patricia O’Gorman, PhD,
author of: The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power (HCI, 2013)

Order: Amazon / Barnes & Noble
www.patriciaogorman.com

image source: http://clarityway.com

This poignant and powerful infographic by Clarity Way illustrates how some celebrities deal with girly thoughts.

Do you ever wonder if you are particularly susceptible to an obsession with the clear and/or implied messages of how you should or should not act, how you should or should not look? Do you ever wonder if you are the only one who seems to be ruled by girly thoughts?

The answer is NO. Girly thoughts are a product of our culture. They are also a product of our need as women to fit into the latest version of whatever is desirable and acceptable.

Girly thoughts are powerful because they represent a way to reach the ideal. That is a very big hook.

And don’t think anyone is exempt from the incredible power of culture and the girly thoughts that come from its influence. Just who is ruled by those thoughts might surprise you, though.

Continue reading “Celebrity Status Is a Breeding Ground for Girly Thoughts”

You Are More Beautiful Than You Think You Are

Yes, you are more beautiful than you think you are! How can I make such a stunning statement without meeting you in person? Because you, like many women, have been brainwashed by something beyond your control, a force so strong yet so insidious that you probably aren’t even aware of it. Yet this powerful force is the reason you focus on all your imperfections. You see defects on your face and flaws with your body, and you feel crappy about yourself as you go through your day.

What is this mysterious—yet overwhelming—force? I’ve labeled it girly thoughts—those societal messages women receive about how they look and what makes them appealing. Girly thoughts are born from our need to be loved and accepted. They are nurtured through the fairy tales on which we were all raised, stories that speak to our need to be weaker than we are so we appeal to men, and they are reinforced through the practice of digitally enhancing a woman’s natural beauty to the point that the model doesn’t even look like the actual woman being photographed. The result of this blurring between what is real and attainable and what is not is the huge price we pay for chasing this illusion: we lose access to our personal power, and we berate ourselves for not looking or acting as we feel we should.

During a recent radio interview about my book The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power, a professional model called in and told me that when she wakes up in the morning and looks at her face, she is depressed because she does not look like the slick photographs she sees of herself in magazines. She wondered if this negative self-image was an example of girly thoughts. “Yes,” I answered sadly, “this is how your girly thoughts are affecting you.”

Continue reading “You Are More Beautiful Than You Think You Are”

How Women Sabotage Business Relationships with Girly Thoughts

“The brain is hardwired to keep us focused on others, and on our role and status. When we’re not engaged in some kind of exchange, we’re often thinking about them.”

Marsha Shenk, a pioneer in business anthropology, consultant to leaders from the Fortune 50 to Solopreneurs, and founder of The BestWork® People, wrote those words in this slideshare. Her statement is particularly interesting when we consider that sometimes, we are our own worst enemies because of our focus on others, our role, and our status. How we manage those relationships can ultimately determine our career success. Women bring a unique point of view about relationships to the workplace. While we juggle work and family issues, we rarely spend much time or attention on what we think about ourselves, and how that translates into how we interact with others. We can sabotage all our professional efforts with thoughts about why we weren’t able to achieve a goal when we reason with our inner girly thoughts.

Our girly thoughts are those self-limiting thought and images of who we are, what we are capable of, what we are good for, how we should look, how we should act, and the consequences we can expect when we don’t fit within this very narrow and often unobtainable expectation. Girly thoughts are the subtle, outside messages we internalize that cause us to blame ourselves—even berate ourselves—for not achieving what we feel we should.

This is an especially fearsome problem in the workplace when we are dealing with interpersonal relationships. Because we don’t even realize we are thinking these negative thoughts, we look to external factors to blame for our unhappiness and lack of successful career relationships. Yet our professional failures aren’t found in a specific, unachieved goal—the promotion we didn’t get, the contract we weren’t awarded, or even the ten pounds we gained. And when we try to “fix” these problems, we do what all too often comes naturally: we blame ourselves for the actions of others.

For example, if your boss snaps at you, do you automatically assume it’s because you’ve failed in some way? It’s entirely possible that your boss was up all night with a sick child and is exhausted, or she is facing a major budget cut and has to figure out how to run her department with less money and fewer people. YOU are not necessarily the reason she lashes out, even if you are the recipient of her displeasure.

Using our girly thoughts to navigate relationships assures us that the difficult situations we find ourselves in must be our fault due to something lacking in us. If I’m too opinionated, no one will like me, or If I don’t lose ten pounds, I won’t be considered for that promotion. This is all nonsense, but the tendency for women to blame themselves for the ills that befall them is so widespread as to be considered almost universal. This is energy misspent in a negative internal dialogue that could be better spent understanding and achieving personal and professional goals.

In my book, The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power, I discuss how to overcome girly thoughts and consciously decide to use your resilience to deliberately challenge them. By addressing and challenging your girly thoughts, you position yourself to step into your power. Particularly in workplace relationships, your ability to access your personal power is paramount to every interaction you have and will ultimately determine if you stay at the bottom of the corporate totem pole or move forward in your career by embracing your personal excellence.

How to combat girly thoughts at work? Listen to an oldie but a goodie by Helen Reddy after the jump

Continue reading “How Women Sabotage Business Relationships with Girly Thoughts”

Warrior Women Give Themselves a Voice – A Lesson We Can All Learn

As women we know that within us is a warrior. We may joke about being tiger moms but that’s not far from the truth. And part of our power comes from our being attuned to our own inner opinions, inner voices, if you will. This has allowed us to know when we feel something is right, or should be right, and when it is not. Translating that into action isn’t always as easy, but with using our strengths individually, and as a group we have accomplished many things such as when our great-grandmothers fought for the vote, and obtained this right. We have achieved this again in the military by being recognized for what we are already doing, serving in combat.

Here women have been advocating to be recognized for what they have already been doing – serving in combat. As of 1-24-13 women are able to “officially” serve in the front line, something we’ve been doing, without this being recognized, officially. And guess what, being able to “officially” be in combat puts women in line for promotions that were previously not open to them. Interestingly this action opens up an additional 7.3 percent of positions in the military for women to advance, as combat experience is a big plus for promotion. Read: the possibility of more equal pay. Now women will have the same opportunities for advancement as their male peers. As they will be able to list “combat” experience just as their male counterparts are able to do, a key requisite for advancement (2).

But there is more to this “official acknowledgment” than just the career and financial implications, doing this, changes the culture of the military, for the better. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dempsey, saw the similarities between women and men in the military: we all take the same oath, we all where the same uniform. And in this one action he also sees the possibility of a reduction in sexual assaults in the military. How does he connect the two? He understands the implicit message sent to our military personnel “when you have one part of the population that is designated as ‘warriors’ and one part that is designated as something else, that disparity begins to establish a psychology that — in some cases — led to that environment. I have to believe the more we treat people equally, the more likely they are to treat each other equally.” (1)

In this he is utilizing what research has found, that people tend to form impressions of others based upon how respected they are within their group. So it stands to reason that if you are in a “warrior” group where others (women) are seen as “non-warriors,” then you have set up a situation where there are two classes. And this was the case in the military where women were seen as “less than” than their male counterparts.

Circumstances in which one group has more importance than other, sets the stage for the group in “higher position” to potentially take advantage of the group in the “lesser” position by asserting their power. One disgusting way that this played out in the military is through sexual assaults on women, which we know have nothing to do with sex, and are all about power and dominance. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has acknowledged sexual assault is vastly under-counted in official records (2). But the numbers we do have are mind-boggling; approximately one in three military women have been sexually assaulted, about 33.3%, double the rate of those in civilian life (1), an outrageous number!

What to do?

Women have fought for equal status and we will continue to do so. Yes, when we give ourselves the gift of own power, when we listen and take to heart what our inner voice, the voice of our own personal hard-fought battles, our resilience, tells us, we too can achieve incredible things. In giving themselves a voice, in pushing for their rights, women in the military are creating a safer environment for themselves to not only do their job, but also to thrive. Now that’s a lesson we can all learn from. For more inspiration, listen to Alicia Keys’ ode to giving ourselves a voice and relishing in our personal power –

Continue reading “Warrior Women Give Themselves a Voice – A Lesson We Can All Learn”

Christmas and Perfume

If ever there was a season celebrating resilience it is the Christmas Season. As women, this season represents a virtual treasure trove of elements around which we build our resilience, because our resilience is built around our response to stress; and this is the season of stress, both good stress and the other kind.

During this holiday time we find ourselves playing our own version of three-dimensional chess. We are navigating our commitments to our children, creating a happy holiday season for them whether they are three and still believing in Santa Claus, or twenty-three and moving out on their own. We feel both our love and the pull of obligations, both stated and expected, to our family. This is compounded by needing to make the decision of who to spend the actual Christmas Eve or Christmas Day with, or whether to create the magic of the holiday within our home, figuring out how to do the cooking, shopping, decorating, and still for many of us, keep our day job. We need our friends who tend to be less available, as we are, due to being equally stressed out, running, laughing, and at times stuttering instead of speaking.

And this is compounded by our image of what this important holiday season is supposed to contain, an image not formed by Hallmark, or by the endless ads on TV, but an image rooted far deeper in our psyche, an image formed in our own childhood, an image we revisit, one formed by needs and desires remembering them as fulfilled leaving a smile on our face, or memories of want and need that that are still full of pain.

It is this last element that makes this season so challenging, the fact that we are present to this season not just as a forty-five year old, but also as a five year old. That we are navigating not just a list of expectations of those who we love who surround us, but also we are carrying those needs and wants from the child within us.

This is why it is so important to find a way to give to ourselves this season. Not just an actual gift, which may not be a bad idea, but also an inner gift, one of personal perspective — a gift of gratitude, of appreciation for all the resources that we have, of respect for all that we do, and of promise, a promise to do something special just for us, whether this is taking one single moment to put on a dab of perfume that we like, to remind ourselves as we gently waft it’s aroma throughout the day, that we indeed are special, that we can take care of ourselves, to a commitment to use our considerable resources, our resilience, to begin to take better care of ourselves. Now that would truly make this a merrier Christmas.

By Patricia O’Gorman, Ph.D.

Author of

The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power (publication date 3/5/13)

pre-order available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble