You Are Wonderful!

Repeat after me, out loud “I am wonderful!”

No, not me, you. You are truly amazing.

I work with women most of my working life. And I can bear out the research and statistics about women – women undersell themselves. It’s rare for me to begin work with a woman who truly knows her value.

Men over play, women under play

Research after research shows that generally women hold back at interview or in games, competitions etc from blowing their own trumpets. Men do the reverse. Good for the men I say but it does mean that skills gaps between men and women can become totally skewed. Men can look disproportionately ‘better’ than women.

And it also means that if we continually undersell ourselves we will begin to lose confidence in ourselves and a vicious circle ensues.

A Wonderful Exercise!

So do this exercise now. List a minimum of 30, yes THIRTY, really positive things about yourself.  They can be qualifications if you like, but think broadly across all spectra of wonderfulness.

Like personality traits, for example. Are you a good friend? Explore that a bit further. Why are you a good friend? What do you do that makes you a good friend? Are you loyal? A good listener perhaps? From that one trait you may extract 3 or more positive things about yourself.

Don’t take too long. Just get them down.

Now look down your list. You have these qualities. You may not be conscious of them across all areas of your life, you may not even have developed them as much as you wish, but you have them. You have masses of qualities and positive traits to develop and work with and be wonderful with. You can transfer those qualities across your life so your resilience in dealing with a personal issues can help you cope with a change at work.

Don’t undersell yourself and don’t underestimate the confidence boost you can get by focussing your energy on your positive qualities. Remember, you are wonderful.

Photo Credit: Katagaci

Advice? It’s a Gift!

We all get offered unasked for advice from time to time. Does your heart sink as you hear the fateful words “If I were you I’d …?

Yes, mine does too.

But not all advice is useless even when unwanted. The trouble is if we haven’t asked for it we tend to automatically stop listening to it and thereby possible missing an absolute gem!

So here’s a tip. The next time someone proffers you some advice, think of it as a gift from your favourite Auntie.

In your mind’s eye see them giving you an unexpected gift. Stop, smile and listen. Once unwrapped it may be something so tasteless that you’ll be offering it to the nearest charity shop as soon as you possibly can. But they have given you a gift and as you’re a polite woman you’ll say thanks so very much and not hurt their feelings by dashing it to the ground.

You may not want to give it pride of place on your mantle piece but it might make it to the spare bedroom. And one day, as things change, maybe it will just look good in a more prominent place! You’ll never know if you don’t unwrap it!

What’s the best piece of advice anyone has ever given you?

Photo Credit: Marija Jura

3 Top Tips for a Confidence Boost!

Confidence. When we’ve got it all manner of things become easier. When we’ve lost it all manner of things become harder…

It’s such a nebulous thing but fortunately there are things we can do to boost our confidence when the confidence wobble strikes.

Here are 3 of my favourite tips for becoming more confident:

1) Take a deep breath.

Not too deep – don’t hyperventilate! If you can, plant your feet firmly on the floor, hold your torso as straight as you can (stay comfortable), breathe out as much air from your lungs as is comfortable and now breathe in. Feel the breath flowing through your body. Try that a couple of times and then just breathe normally.

When we begin to feel lacking in confidence we tend to want to make ourselves small, hunch up and try not to be seen. That has the effect of further decreasing our confidence. (Read An Easy Confidence Boost for the science!) Looking more confident and allowing your body to breathe properly actually helps you to be more confident! Try it now.

2) Tame Your Inner Sabateur

We’ve all got one. That little voice just waiting for our defences to drop before it kicks in. On my Renewyou course I call this the internal mail that you really need to delete before reading it. Recognise the subject heading and do not open!

Take a few moments to listen to your inner dialogue when lacking in confidence. It may be something like “You can’t do that“, “What are you thinking? You’ll look ridiculous“, “Better to say nothing and not take a risk“, “Don’t get above yourself“, “You didn’t get the job last time, don’t put yourself through that again“.

You can really boost your confidence by harnessing that inner saboteur and converting it to your side. The negative message is very powerful in sapping confidence but the good news is that a positive message can be very powerful in boosting your confidence! Turn the negative into a positive. For more information on how to do this take a look at Tips on Positive Thinking but in essence talk kindly to yourself and be your own best friend.

3. Get Back in Your Zone of Confidence

Take yourself back in your mind’s eye to a time when it did come together. It may have been at school, in a previous job, or maybe just yesterday! Often we have confidence in certain areas of our lives and not in others. So we’ll happily undertake a half marathon but are fearful of public speaking. Or vice versa…

Focus on your confident area and remember there once was a time when you couldn’t do that either. (Read First You Wobble, not least because  it has a lovely picture which will make smile!). We get confident by having a go at something. If you can think yourself in the frame of mind when you are good at doing something, it’ll boost your confidence for that first time feeling. (Hope I’m making sense here!!). Take a few moments out to see yourself being good at something and shift your focus from failure to success!

If you have any tips to share on how to boost confidence, please do use the comments section below. I love to hear from you! And if you’ve enjoyed this post you might like to get them sent straight to your in box – simply fill in your email in the RSS box, top right of this page!

Photo Credit: Beth McDonald

Interviews – How Can Women Get to the Top?

I love it when I come across a piece of research that supports what I have always believed, don’t you? (There is a word for this type of bias but in this case I didn’t do the research so am innocent of only seeing what I am looking for!)

Women and Job Interviews

In Women Ahead, one of my personal development courses for women I have a fairly light hearted exercise when I ask participants to think how the world of work would look if it were designed solely to benefit and suit women. The purpose of this exercise is to promote discussion and awareness of how we women are often working at a disadvantage compared to male colleagues.

Working practices we take as givens were designed and originated from one half of the population, men. Ergo, they suit them. It’s much more a matter of chance if it suits the other 50% of the population, women. Yet we are judged against those male yardsticks.

Doing Well at Interviews

One topic course participants often end up discussing is the interview process and most don’t like it at all; they find it unnecessarily adversarial and are not over comfortable with ‘bigging themselves’ up. (Have a look at my 3 Tips to Close the Gender Pay Gap for more on this). It’s also often one of the reasons women come to me for some coaching; they want an interview confidence boost beforehand (and I’m happy to say at time of writing 100% of women who have come to me for that type of coaching have gone onto get the job, but then they are a self selecting group who have made a conscious choice to invest in themselves and their career). I added that last point to buck the trend of women not being good at bigging themselves up!

Research into the Gender Competition Gap

Back to that research. It was carried out by a two academic economists, Jennifer Pate and Andrew Healy and published in the Economic Journal. They were looking at the gender competition gap, in brief, female reluctance to enter competitions (you only have to look at any serious type quiz show on TV -  always far fewer women entering).

They conducted an experiment in which the participants had to answer maths problems as quickly as possible. Participants in teams decided whether they wanted to be paid accordingly to the number of problems answered correctly or whether they wanted to enter a competition against three other teams. Individual participants decided whether they wanted to compete against three other individuals.

The results highlighted huge differences between the genders:

• Even though men and women performed equally well on the task, 81% of men chose to compete as individuals compared with 28% of women
• When participants competed in teams, the gender competition gap shrank by 31% to 22% with 67% of men choosing to enter the competition compared with 45% of women

Previous research has shown that a man is much more likely to choose to compete compared with a woman, even when the two are equally good at a given task.

Women Disadvantaged in Getting on the Board

As a consequence of this research the economists suggest that women are disadvantaged from getting to the top (only five women CEOs in the top 100 FTSE companies) and a different approach to recruitment needs to be taken (I know a lot of women cheering loudly at this).

They suggest a new way of encouraging qualified women to opt in, especially important as while eminently qualified women take themselves out of this competitive arena, much less qualified men opt in! That’s not good for the economy or society as a whole. And if we really did address this issue, how might the world of politics look? I’d venture to suggest, it would look significantly better!

Photo Credit: Daniela Corno

Are You Holding the Past & Missing the Future?

I was at a networking event recently in Bath’s glorious Holbourne Museum (if you get a chance go visit). There is something about that building that I just like. Is it the pleasing Georgian proportions? The modern glass structure at the rear? I don’t know exactly why but I really like it.  It feels right.

And one thing I particularly like is the way it has fused old and new. It’s had a brand new modern extension (tastefully not affecting the front elevation – from the front it looks as it ever was) which has enhanced it greatly. Of course, lots of people were anti the change but it’s been well done; it adds to the grandeur of the building, bringing it alive in the 21st century and of relevance to today. And of course, it’s useful! That’s a result in my book. Beauty and usefulness.

What’s Beautiful and Useful in Your Life?

Holding onto the past is not all bad. In fact, it can be positively life enhancing. If we hold onto the good and beautiful. Sometimes though we can get a bit stuck into holding onto all that is not so great about our pasts and allow it to define us.  For example, if you had a difficult schooling you may well allow that to influence all your attitudes towards learning and reject new ideas; new ideas which might add to the beauty and usefulness of your life.

Or a relationship which didn’t work may colour all future relationships you have because of  suspicion and cynicism. Or past mistakes in your current relationships may be an ever present malign influence if you can’t let them go.

Review Your Past

Take time out to think about the aspects of your past which enhance you, which ‘feel‘ right. That’s what you want to keep.  It makes you beautiful. However, some aspects may need to go into cold storage, and some will need to be jettisoned to make room for something new, to allow you to add something modern and beautiful and useful to you!

Here’s a quick personal development exercise to try! It’ll help you shape a beautiful and useful future!

The Secret of a Great Life!

How to change your life? It’s a question I’m often asked when coaching and here is an analogy I often use. If you’re feeling a bit stuck with life I hope it helps.

Do you ever get in your car, drive, and arrive at your destination (usually somewhere you go regularly like work) and not remember much about how you got there?

You’ve arrived and it’s taken you the same amount of time that it usually does but you were unaware of the journey. It passed in a haze. Maybe you were thinking about the day ahead, or the day just gone. Maybe you were fantasising about a dream life post huge lottery win!

We all do it and it can be a bit scary. What have we missed on the way?

Change Your Life

The reason we drive to work and have no memory of it is that our brains have developed that pathway; it’s a groove we easily slide into. So much so that if our holiday route begins with our work route we may find ourselves halfway to work before we realise. We’ve gone into auto pilot. We need that facility or we’d go mad (imagine having to remind yourself how to do every single thing you know. You’d go bonkers!) but if we live too much in the groove we miss out on so much of the possibilities of our lives.

The good news is it doesn’t have to be like that. Whatever age you are it’s never too late to start to live consciously, to make the most of your life. It’s only too late if you never start!

Change and Grow

So how to change your life? Well, for one thing you could investigate new routes to work and vary it now and again. You’ll notice so much more and quite possibly drive better too! And open up a new pathway in your brain!

And you can investigate new routes in your life too. The more you give yourself new challenges, stray from automatic pilot, the more life opens up its possibilities to you and the more rich your experience of life can be. Sometimes that means having a destination or a goal, sometimes that means maybe taking a risk and following your instincts.  The point is that whatever you are doing you are fully experiencing your life and not cruising through your precious life on auto pilot.

So, what could you change today to make your life great?

P.S Ten Tips for a Brain Work Out will help kick start your thinking!

Photo Credit- Niels Jansen