Women Can Heal The World

Photo by Simon Maage on Unsplash

Hello Beautiful Wayers!

When I was in middle school, I rode the bus everyday. In Texas, school started in August and the buses didn’t have air conditioning. By the time we arrived at school, everyone was hot, cranky, and ready to move inside to cool off.

Except for my nemesis - Becky.

She took great delight in tormenting me about my nerdy glasses, my frizzy hair, and my crooked teeth. I dreaded riding on the bus because of her, because it was so painful.

One day, on the ride home, I found a note in my backpack. It was from Becky and it quoted a popular song by the Steeler Wheelers.

“Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.”

Shame flooded my body and my world shrank to the words on the paper. As soon as the bus stopped, I jumped off and ran home. It wasn’t until I reached the safety of my bedroom that the floodgate opened.

Everything Becky had ever said to me, taunted me, or bullied me came flooding back. The emotional pain was excruciating and I began hitting my pillow to release it. I actually believed those cruel words and felt as if my world was ending.

It was only after the storm passed that I sat up and looked at the note again.

I noticed something that my eyes had skipped over.

The note was not addressed to me. It was written to Becky’s best friend, Nicole.

Becky had put the note in the wrong backpack!

I started laughing at her mistake, and it made me realize that Becky wasn’t the perfect person she tried so hard to present.

• She was human and imperfect, just like me.

• She was in emotional pain, just like me.

• She struggled to be liked and accepted, just like me.

Becky felt ashamed about herself but instead of withdrawing as I did, she acted out and became aggressive and verbally abusive. The feelings of unworthiness and shame were the same as mine, but expressed differently.

Women Become Shame

I am sharing this incident with you, because I know you have probably experienced something similar.

Why? Because that what women do. We are trained to think of others before ourselves. We tend to create our self-image comes from the outside.

Researchers have discovered that women and girls turn challenges into shame-based experiences 80% more than men.

Think back on your own life and look at past experiences from a neutral lens. How did you respond to the event? What meaning did you make of it and how did it relate to you? As you consider the choices you made in the moment, what were the consequences?

From your observer lens, notice if you grew and learned from the experience, or did you contract and shrink?

When shame-based meanings are made, women tend to anchor in “fixed mindsets” that disconnect them from the other parts of themselves are that are powerful, creative, and resourceful.

Living from a fixed mindset is like living inside a prison. All you see are the bars on the window, not the space in-between. Creativity and problem-solving disappear and despair, hopelessness, and fear take their place.

It’s not a pretty place to be. But that’s not all women do to themselves.

Women Tend to Underestimate Themselves and Their Capabilities

Research has found that women tend to underestimate themselves more than men. For example, when a new position opens, men will apply even if they only have 2 out of ten skills necessary for the job. Women don’t apply unless they have all ten skills.

The tendency to underestimate skills leads to a lack of confidence and perfection standard. When you wait until everything is perfect, you will wait forever.

Women also defer to authority instead of insisting on their own truth. Research has also shown that women have a more difficult time than men in recognizing their strengths and talents. It’s almost as if women create an “inner glass ceiling.”

The beliefs you hold about yourself, your abilities, and your power impact who you show up as in the world. Instead of drawing from your inner strengths, powers, and intuition, you become stuck and fixed.

How Women Can Move Forward

When you consider that women:

• turn obstacles into shame-based meaning about her value;

• tend to underestimate their abilities and want things to be perfect;

• defer to authority figures instead of listening to their own truth;

It becomes clear why women struggle in today’s world. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

It’s only when women can identify what lies beneath their fixed self-image that change occurs. It’s like unraveling the tangled mess of Christmas lights to find the power cord. Once it’s plugged into the wall outlet, the power surges through the straightened cord and lights up.

The core story about yourself shifts and you gain a new perspective. Your appreciation for your strengths and abilities heightens and you step into a greater role of influence. Instead of playing small and bumping into the inner glass ceiling, you soar above the world and reach greater heights than you ever imagined was possible.

The shift from fixed mindset to growth happens with coaching. You can’t do it by yourself, because you don’t have the objective perspective that a coach uses.

I am a woman-centered coach. If you struggle with wealth or money issues, please reach out and get on my calendar.

The beautiful wave of energy that women create when they step into their authentic power will heal the world.

Blessings,

Kathryn