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Girly Thoughts and Lent

Patricia O’Gorman, PhD

@drogorman

“Lent comes providentially to reawaken us, to shake us from our lethargy.”

– Pope Francis

Whether you are Christian or not, devout or not, you are probably aware that we have entered Lent, a season of spiritual growth and self-examination, which often includes fasting and a tradition of giving something up (even though this is pretty short-lived for some of us).

Your Girly Thoughts . . . and Lent?

Pope Francis speaks about Lent as an opportunity to not have life as usual, to awaken from our lethargy that says we cannot change. We can consider expanding that reawakening to include not having our usual thinking about ourselves.

So, how do you usually think about yourself? Of course you have many positive thoughts about yourself. And they’re great. But there are also those other thoughts, less than positive, that I’ve named girly thoughts. Lent can be a great time to give up that toxic way of thinking.

How About Giving Up a Girly Thought or Two . . . Just for Lent?

Yes, during this time of self-reflection, consider changing your thinking, especially your girly thoughts, like I’m fat, or I have to make nice at work. You could decide to totally give up a girly thought, or if that seems too difficult, you could choose one girly thought and refuse to think it for just a limited period of time, like for the Lenten season.

So, instead of giving up a specific girly thought forever, you could:

give it up for now,
see how this feels, and
if you miss it so very much, you can come back to it later and start beating yourself up with this girly thought all over again.

The Payoff

Consider this time-limited practice as a kind of an experiment that not only helps you direct your thinking into more positive directions, but also can have an ongoing payoff:

You begin to feel better about yourself as you stop finding fault with yourself, and you start to appreciate your very special qualities, particularly those that are not in the mainstream, like your wacky sense of humor, your long red hair, your ability to dance and move unlike your friends.

How to begin? Yes, you can reflect on your thinking and change what you say to you about you! This is, after all, what this season of reflection is all about, a time of quiet to prepare for greatness.

For now, every time you slip up and find yourself thinking your specific girly thought, let it be a reminder that you do not need to continue to do to yourself what society does to you! You can begin to step into your power, your personal greatness.

I invite you to take a moment and watch my video blog where I talk to you about your girly thoughts and Lent.

You’ll find more ideas for getting rid of your negative self-talk 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

4 Ways to Tune Out Your Girly Thoughts on Valentine’s Day

Patricia O’Gorman, PhD

@drogorman

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

The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power

There is a crack in everything . . . that’s how the light gets in.

—Leonard Cohen

There is something about a holiday—and Valentine’s Day in particular—that makes us focus even more than usual on what we see as our faults. It must be the connection between our powerful, emotional needs for love and the cultural promise that the perfect love awaits us if—and this is a pretty big if—we achieve all the requirements that are contained in our girly thoughts.

Feeling Defective Is a Conditioned Response to Your Girly Thoughts

You know, girly thoughts, our society’s decisions about how you should look, how you should act, even how you should sound, with the promise that if you fulfill these requirements, jump through all these hoops, fit the current corporate image of beauty, then . . . maybe . . . your Prince Charming will magically materialize and you will have the perfect love you’ve been dreaming of.

Valentine’s Day: An Adult Fairy Tale

Valentine’s Day has become an adult fairy tale. We have the key players—you, the lovely young, innocent woman, and your man, your Prince Charming, who is capable of transporting you to another land where your true worth will be recognized, and where you will no longer need to work your butt off.

Well, you no longer believe in Cinderella and her glass slipper, so why do you believe that if you are perfect, the perfect love awaits? This is a big fantasy, not reality.

Why Don’t You Just Say NO?

You can try to tune out these V-Day girly thoughts, but that’s a lot of work!

Because these messages are all around on Valentine’s Day—from the ubiquitous heart shapes to the lyrics we hear in songs to story lines on TV shows and in movies. They all say the same thing: if you are not receiving the love you want so much, it is your fault because you are:

too old
too young
too aggressive
too passive

In short, you are somehow lacking.

Four Ways to Counter Those V-Day Girly Thoughts

Now is the time to stop blaming yourself for the lack of love in your life! Here are four ways you can:

Become aware of those messages around you that tell you that you need to earn love based on how close you come to meeting these crazy girly thoughts standards. Learn to identify them—and then say, “Oh yes, another message to make my girly thoughts even stronger.”
Laugh! Yes, laugh. Now, you could cry, but why bother? Laugh instead because spending even an ounce of energy on listening to those silly thoughts is ridiculous.
Become curious about your light. Yes, your light: What makes you glow? Let every girly thought that seeks to diminish you remind you instead of the best that is in you! Let each reminder of what is wrong with you, every message of a new hoop you need to jump through, be an invitation to think about what is remarkable about you. These messages have you thinking about yourself, so think about what makes you special!
Don’t be afraid of your cracks. Whether it’s a new wrinkle or a new roll, a hair that has decided to grow on your chin or a new zit, remember how you handle this crack is how you let your light out into the world.

This Valentine’s Day, enjoy every part of you. You’ll discover that the more you do this, the fewer girly thoughts you’ll be nursing and the more you will enjoy your Valentine’s Day—whatever direction it takes you!

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.

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 . . .

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

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.

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!

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