How to overcome the pain of bad decisions

During my monthly session with my spiritual mentor, I shared with her the excitement and fun I’ve been having from working on an upcoming talk I’m preparing for, but also the emotions this work has brought up by forcing me to dig deep into my childhood memories.

As a speaker I know how important it is to connect with your audience through personal stories. So when I first sat down to write the draft of this talk, I ventured into my memory vault in search of fitting memories for the subject I’ll be talking about. It’s incredible what we can remember when we sit down and intentionally try to. Very soon a number of fun and happy memories surfaced, some of which were so perfect for my talk that I immediately decided to include them. But when it comes to the thoughts that pop into our minds, as you’ll probably know, we’re not always in control. So with the fun memories that surfaced, a plethora of not-so-fun memories made their way back into my mind as well.

Painful experiences, moments of despair, accidents. And bad decisions. Aching, heart wrenching, stomach twisting bad decisions.

Before I would have ignored them, buried them back deeper than where I’d found them. But that’s not me anymore. I love myself to much to do that now. I’m too curious about who I am, and too eager to learn more. So, instead of pretending I wasn’t feeling anything, I decided to open myself up to what those bad decisions desperately seemed to be want to tell me…

The first thing I came across was regret. A universal feeling when it comes to bad decisions: the regret of a missed opportunity, of a chance we didn’t take. Or worse of a chance at something great that we turned into a failure, something that we’re ashamed of even to think about.

So with regret for bad decisions often comes shame. Because a bad decision reminds us that we’re not perfect, that we’re flawed. Most of us don’t like this part of who we are. And would can blame us? Everywhere we’re bombarded with messages about our flaws, and how to fix them. No wonder we feel shame. Or a heap of other negative emotions.

Which brings me to guilt. Another emotion that quickly made it’s way into my heart when I remembered the bad decisions from my past. I felt guilty for the people that I hurt in my life, but also for allowing others to hurt me. Like when I stayed in toxic relationships for too long, knowing they weren’t good for me, but unable to make myself stand up and leave. There’s no such thing as not making a choice. Doing nothing is always doing something. So in my book that counts as a bad decision too.

Once I’d gone through this whirlwind of emotions, and thanks to the beautiful conversation I had with my mentor, I started to look at those bad decisions in a different light.

Bad decisions are part of life. Just like we’re not perfect, our decisions can’t be of service to us all the time. We’re bound to make mistakes, and in fact it’s what makes life so worth living. But what interested me most was to find ways to make the pain go away. I wanted to get rid of the heavy weight that I felt pressing on my heart.

First I met the obvious: you can’t change the past, so why feel bad about it. An absolute truth, if truth there ever was. But in my opinion useless knowledge when you’re trying to relief your heart from sorrows from the past.

So what if I cannot change what happened? That doesn’t change how I feel about it now.

I believe that only transformation can do that.

In order to change an emotion, or to accept the parts of ourselves that challenge us, a transformation needs to take place. We cannot simply convince ourselves that there is nothing more we can do so that we might as well forget about it.

I used to be really good at doing that. But last week those memories resurfaced. I guess I wasn’t all that good at it after all.

So how do we overcome the pain of bad decisions?

First we forgive ourselves. We face the guilt, the shame, the regret and we accept what we’ve done. This is a true act of self-love in which we’re not only accepting that part of us that is “flawed” but also accepting ourselves for all that we are. We do that by saying to ourselves: “Yes this is me. I’ve done that. But I love myself just the same. And I forgive myself.”

Then we allow ourselves to expand. A turning point in my life has been when I decided I wasn’t going to ignore the hurtful parts of me anymore, but that instead I was going to incorporate them into who I was. Which is precisely what I’m talking about today. Growing means expanding. It’s not just about nurturing the good parts of you, it’s also about allowing you to experience the human condition in all of its aspects, including it’s more painful parts. We do that by saying: “Yes this is me. I’ve done that. But that’s how I grow. And expand as a person.”

And finally we make up for it. Once we’ve forgiven ourselves, and expanded by integrating our bad decisions into who we are, we can finally give back. We’ve learned something, Been through something. Felt something. We looked deep into the eyes of our human condition. We can help others because we understand. We’ve felt their pain, we know their shame. What a gift this is.

That’s all I wanted to share today. If you have a heavy heart right now, or know someone who does, I hope this post will help you move through it. And in the comments below, feel free to leave me a note, and let me know how you’re doing. I’d love that.

5 mindset shifts to help you stop being a good girl (and harness your inner badass instead)

Over the past few months, as my coaching business has really started to take off, I’ve found myself coaching and mentoring more and more women to help them go for what they want in life, and grow their businesses. While I’ve witnessed the incredible results these amazing women have created for themselves I’ve also taken note of what I believe is a deeply ingrained pattern common to almost all women: our need to be good girls. Something I believe is holding many women back from going after their most cherished dreams, and creating amazing lives for themselves.

I know this pattern very well because for the biggest part of my life I was a good girl too.

When being a good girl sucks

Whatever the situation, I would always be more concerned about the well-being of others than my own, worrying about what other people thought of me but certainly not about what I really thought of them! I would feeling inadequate, never good enough, and I would put myself under exhausting levels of stress by setting unattainable standards of perfection for myself.

As a result…

• I lived a big part of my life for others and not me,

• I struggled with severe anxiety, worry, and fear,

• I missed out on a lot of things I wanted to do,

• I attracted the wrong people into my life,

• I didn’t love myself.

Good girls are bad for business

But those are only a few of the many issues I experienced from trying to be a good girl all the time. Because to be a good girl you’re forced to suppress your authentic self, and your desires there are many more downsides to it. Like losing sight of who you really are, of not having any boundaries. And that’s without counting all the struggles I had in my career, and my businesses. And that perhaps you’re experiencing too. Like:

• Earning way less than my equal male counterparts because I simply didn’t ask for more,

• Letting interesting contracts slip my fingers because I didn’t want to look greedy,

• Unhappy clients because I failed to set clear boundaries,

• Hiring mediocre team members because I believed I didn’t deserve better,

• More than 15 years building a career, and businesses I didn’t really like.

Whether you’re struggling with being a good girl in your private or professional life doesn’t really matter, at the end of the day trying to please everyone never works, and it will end up making you feel miserable.

There’s an inner badass in all of us

It’s hard to chase your dreams, and go after what you want when you’re always putting other people first. It’s even harder to build a career, or a business. Believe me – on all accounts, I know. I’ve been there. Being a good girl keeps you from having what you want. That’s why it’s time for a mindset shift so that you can harness your inner super woman instead. She’s the one you want making decisions in your life, because she’s the one who has your back, isn’t afraid to speak up, and knows what you truly want.

So in what follows, I list the five main mindset shifts I made to go from always trying to be a good girl to become the much more at peace, self-loving, and self-confident woman I am today.

With those mindset shifts I became much happier, and fulfilled. Absolutely. But they were also instrumental for my career, and business success. Through them:

• I fell in love with myself, and my message,

• I created new, heart-centered, and profitable businesses that work for me,

• I attracted the right people in my life,

• I set strong and clear boundaries both in my private life, and in my business,

• and I became very clear about who I am, what my desires are, and what I stand for.

Mindset shift #1:
Turning not feeling good enough into I am more than enough – and stop the hopeless strive for perfection

When you’re a good girl, it’s easy to feel like you’re not good enough. In fact, that’s precisely what being a good girl does for you. You have your own dreams, and desires but the world keeps telling you to be a totally different human being, with wants and needs that are not your own.

The truth is, we all think we’re not good enough sometimes. It’s one of the most basic fears we all share – women especially. A mindfulness teacher once told me that I am not my thoughts. An absolutely liberating concept for me, that’s been helping me to put things into perspective ever since.

So first recognize that what you think does not define you, a.k.a. that you are not your thoughts! Accept that you have desires of your own, and that you are worth pursuing them. Then try to shift your focus outward instead of keeping it on you. Whatever it is your undertaking, think of what good it will bring into the world, the people you’re helping with it, the difference you will make instead of thinking you might not be up for the job. What you’re creating is the proof that you’re more than enough just as you are. And finally, choose progress over perfection. If you wait for that absolutely perfect moment where you’ll feel totally ready before doing anything, you’ll end up waiting for it your entire life. That moment will never come, simply because perfection does not exist. We all know this, yet we have such a hard time acting on it. But once you do you’ll have a much easier time believing you’re more than good enough, which in turn will help you overcome your need to be perfect all the time.

Mindset shift #2:
Moving from yes into no – and finally have a clue about healthy boundaries

When you’re a good girl, it’s hard to know where you start, and where you end. For a long time I didn’t have a clear set of boundaries. Not in my private life, and not in my businesses. The result of that was that I often pushed myself outside the limits of what felt comfortable for me in my relationship with others, and that I accepted way more than I should have. In my personal life this caused a lot of heartache, in my business it was exhausting, especially with demanding clients.

Once I embraced saying no rather than saying yes, really became clear on the things I would not accept, my life became so much easier, and my businesses really took off.

Mindset shift #3:
Ditching your fear of conflict for a passion for collaboration – and finally stop being afraid to upset anyone

When you’re a good girl, conflict is the last thing that you want. Because if anyone is mad at you, that means you’re not being as good as you’re supposed to be. So you try your hardest to avoid upsetting anyone, even when it goes against your own best interest. But because of this you’re not living up to your own dreams, and certainly not getting what you want.

The point is that all relationships you’ll have with other people will at some point include conflict. We’re all different, and come with our own set of beliefs, values, things we want to achieve. So when you’re looking after yourself, upsetting someone else is bound to happen at one point or another. The trick is not to avoid conflict (like I tried to do for so long), but to embrace it, then transform it. To do that you need to show up as your authentic self. Because when you come from an honest, authentic place, meeting the other person in the middle, there’s a much better chance you’ll both get out of it without being upset.

Of course this is not something you’ll learn to do overnight. But the more you practice standing up for yourself, and expressing your needs, the more it will start to feel a natural part of you, and the less guilt or shame you’ll feel when stepping out of the good girl persona.

Mindset shift #4:
Transform putting everyone else first into becoming your own champion – and never putting yourself last again

When you’re a good girl, it’s easy to forget your own needs in favor of the needs of everyone else on the planet. No wonder, since that’s exactly what being a good girl is. The problem is that by always putting yourself last, it becomes much harder to achieve anything. Because there simply isn’t any time, or energy left to do so.

Rita Pierson gave a beautiful talk about why every kid needs a champion. I totally agree with her. But I also believe that every good girl needs to be her own champion as well. Good girl Uni teaches women to care for others, but not for ourselves. It tells them to root for the success of everyone, except their own. Or worse, to find satisfaction in the success of others, but not their own. The only way for good girls to abandon that mindset is to start championing themselves.

Learning to give yourself the attention, the care, and the love that you so freely give others is essential to harness your inner super woman. Again, she’s the one who’ll help you reach your goals, and achieve the success you want. Not the good girl.

Mindset shift #5:
Going from never expressing what you think to saying what you really want – and finally knowing what that is   

When you’re a good girl, you learn early on that saying what you think is a big no-no. You’re thought that there’s things to say, and things not to say. That accommodating others is more important than expressing what you really mean, because you don’t want to offend anyone right?

So the final mindset shift I want to address might well be the most important one: saying what you really want. Even if you set healthy boundaries for yourself, learn to say no, believe deeply that you’re good enough… if you’re unable to express what you really want you won’t actually get it. I know that saying what you stand for, expressing your thoughts can be really scary, especially if you’re used to being a good girl. It took me a long time to get there, and I still struggle with it sometimes. But I’ve come to believe there’s not really any other way to be, if you want to harness your inner super woman. It takes practice, and a bit of courage too. But the more you do it the better it will feel, and the more rewarding it will be.

That’s it for this one. Now it’s your turn. In the comments below let me what mindset shifts have made a difference in your life, and career or business. What big a-has do you live by? I’d really love to know.

How to set healthy boundaries and stop being a pushover

If you’ve stopped by my blog before you might know I’m a highly sensitive recovering people-pleaser, topped as a recovering perfectionist. Yes, I know! A cocktail of traits that is now one of my biggest strengths though, even if it wasn’t always like that. In fact as a child, and quite a bit into my adult life too, these traits were a real pain, and turned me into a gigantic pushover.

Defining personal boundaries

Before taking you down pushover lane, I want to frame a few things. First, let’s look at what being a pushover really means. According to the online Cambridge dictionary it’s someone who is easily persuaded, influenced or defeated. Now let’s define boundaries. According to the same source a boundary is a real or imagined line that marks the edge or limit of something. A personal boundary then becomes a guidelines, rule or limit that a person creates to identify reasonable, safe and permissible ways for other people to behave towards them and how they will respond when someone passes those limits. That’s according to Wikipedia.

What life looks like without personal boundaries

My personal history is full of pushover stories. In fact, before I realized how problematic my personal boundaries where – or that one could actually define them, it was the only way I knew how to be. It’s not that I didn’t have a meaning about things, or that I didn’t have desires, but something always made me go for someone else’s wish, I was always persuaded that someone else’s idea was better than mine, and practically everyone I encountered had influence on me.

When I talk about this pushover past with people today, most of them are surprised. If you’ve ever spent time with me, worked on a project with me, or been at one of my workshops, you might be surprised too.

I’m not really the pushover type… In fact, I’m sort of strong-willed, I definitely know what I want, and I pretty good at taking action towards it.

Why was I so easily influenced? What did I do to change? Those are the questions I want to answer with this post. Because working my way to healthy boundaries changed my life entirely.

Before… I would want to go see a romantic comedy with a friend, and end up in the cinema watching the latest Van Diesel shoot-em-up.
Before… I would plan a relaxing spa weekend with the boyfriend, and end up at adventure camp for 3 days.
Before… I would long for a delicious vegetarian meal, and end up at Buffalo Grill.

… yes, I know… that’s what life looks like without personal boundaries.

From the examples above you can clearly see that the problem wasn’t in the wished or desires. Deep down I’ve always known what I wanted – as I believe most pushovers do, and also sort of articulated it. The problem was with the boundaries. They were too weak to withstand other people. As soon as someone had a different idea they would bend or break.

I mentioned a few of the typical scenarios that were my life above, but there were others – far less pleasant ones. A lack of personal boundaries can get you into the most annoying, and frustrating situations (if not worse!). Believe me, I’ve been there:

• Doing things I didn’t really want to do just because someone asked me to.

• Spending time with someone I didn’t want to be with just because that person showed up at my doorstep.

• Pretending I agreed with others just because they had a different point of view.

• Doing someone else’s homework just because they’d asked me to.

• Letting someone kiss me that I didn’t really like just because that person wanted to.

• Not being able to leave the office late at night, when I was exhausted, just because someone asked me to stay.

• Not eating healthy just because everyone was else decided to order pizza.

• Not doing what I really wanted to do just because someone wanted to do something else instead.

How to set healthy boundaries for yourself

I’d love to tell you that all at once, one beautiful morning I woke up with healthy personal boundaries. But it didn’t go that way. In my case – and in the case of many of my clients – the first step is awareness (isn’t it always?). In order to be able to set healthy boundaries for yourself, you have to start by recognizing there’s a problem. And the way you do that is by asking yourself the right questions:

• Did I really want to do this?

• Am I really happy with my friends asking me to do that?

• What would I have done if I was the one in charge? (this is a big one, believe me!)

Then, when there’s awareness, you have to figure out what you really want (so this would be step two). A great question to ask yourself to get clear on your own desires is this one:

• If I could have it all my way, what would I really want?

When you’re aware, and you know what you want, it’s time to decide where you’ll draw the line. This is the step where you set your boundaries. Imagine you’re sick and tired of always ending up watching the wrong movie in the theatre. You could set a boundary that states that whatever happens you’ll stick to your choice of movie. Because why else would you go there in the first place?

Do this with every area of your life, based on your answers to the questions above, and you’ll have a set of very healthy, and beneficial boundaries to call your own. Before ending, there’s one last – pretty important – thing I want to address.

How to enforce your boundaries

It’s all good, and well to set boundaries, know what you want, and be aware of what you need. But there’s a whole world out there of people, of which the closest ones to you won’t be used to you being so clear, and firm about what you want.

At first specifically, your boundaries will be fragile, and the opinions of others (how well intended they may be) will make you doubt yourself, and falter. To help me enforce my boundaries, I’ve come to rely on three things:

• My values: I’ve become really clear about what I stand for, and believe in. As a result, I’m able to safeguard my boundaries much better than if I wasn’t quite sure what I believed in, or stood for. When someone tries to convince me to go for Buffalo Grill now instead of delicious vegetarian food. Well… no!

• Self-love: Nothing helps you safeguard your boundaries better than self-love. The biggest issue with being a pushover is often that you’ve become accustomed to coming last. What you want, need, or desire isn’t as important as what someone else is asking for. By focusing on self-love you’re essentially focusing on yourself, and making you your number one priority.

• Trusting myself: I saved the best for last. If you want healthy boundaries I believe you need to learn to trust yourself. At least that’s how it went for me. Whatever choice you’re faced with, there’s always the voice within, and the voice outside. Pushovers trust the voice outside, people with healthy boundaries trust the voice within. You know why? Because it always knows best.

Now tell me, how do you maintain healthy personal boundaries? Let me know in the comments below, I’d really love to know.

How to beat overwhelm, and cultivate resilience

A lot of my clients talk to me about feeling overwhelmed: at work, in their business, with the kids, when trying to marry all their passions, and move forward with what they want for themselves… I know, believe me, I’ve been there. More times than I can remember. In order to achieve the things that really mattered to me, I had to learn how to deal with overwhelm, and find inner resilience instead.

So here’s a short how-to guide for anyone who feels overwhelmed, and wants to find inner peace, wellbeing, and resilience instead.

What you’ll find below are my five main lessons from years of learning how to overcome, and banish overwhelm. Hopefully they’ll help you as much as they’ve helped me.

#1 Slow down

One of my business mentoring clients told me how overwhelmed she felt last week, after having set some powerful business goals for herself.  By digging through the overwhelm together, she realized that it wasn’t the goal that was the issue, but the time she had given herself to achieve it. This is true for a lot of us, and many of our goals.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed about something you want to achieve, take a good look at when you’re expecting to reach that goal. Chances are that that’s the problem, and not the goal.

As an experiment mentally push that goal to the end of the year, and give yourself permission to feel great about not achieving it before that time.

The same goes for other things too. Let’s say you promised someone to help out with something this week, but you’re schedule is absolutely full, and you’re overwhelmed. Now imagine pushing that commitment two weeks into the future, when you have a few days off from work, and time to actually do it.

How does it feel? Still overwhelming? If not, it’s time to slow down. Not only will it get rid of overwhelm, it’s a great way to stay motivated, and build resilience by setting healthy boundaries for yourself.

#2 Think like a microscope

Another recurring culprit that keeps us overwhelmed is focusing on the big picture too much. You set a goal for yourself, let’s say to reach the finish line of a marathon this year, but from day one you focus on the enormity of the distance you’ll have to run to achieve it. While – of course – being totally out of shape. It’s pretty safe to assume that this would overwhelm even the strongest among us, don’t you think so?

The alternative, and a powerful way to not let yourself get overwhelmed, is to think like a microscope. Focus on the absolute smallest task or thing that you can do right now to move forward, without looking at the bigger picture. This has worked successfully for me in many situations, and with all sorts of goals (big or small), and I guarantee it will work for you as well. When we take the hugeness out of something, we often take the overwhelm out of it too.

#3 Don’t take anything seriously

This might sound obvious to you, but I had to do a lot of work to get it. As a recovering perfectionist, and people-pleaser I spent the bigger part of my years trying to live up to unattainable expectations. A sure-fire for overwhelm. But even if you’re not a perfectionist, taking things too seriously might keep you stuck.

The truth is, almost nothing is serious to the extent that you should feel overwhelmed because of it. Instead, be playful. Enjoy what you’re doing (that’s the whole point anyway!). Progress today is better than perfection tomorrow. So what if it’s not entirely like you envisioned it? It never is anyway…

Cultivating this mindset will alleviate more than overwhelm. It will help you get rid of guilt, and stress too along the way!

#4 Let go, and ask for help

So far we know that overwhelm is triggered when something is too much too soon, when it’s too big for us to handle in one go, and when we think our lives depend on it.

But there’s more.

Overwhelm often shows up when we want to control everything. Why? Because it’s impossible to do so! And very often those that want to stay in control also have a hard time asking for help. They believe that it is their duty to do it all. To build resilience while avoiding overwhelm you do the exact opposite. You let go, and ask for help.

#5 Keep moving

Finally, however overwhelmed you feel, whatever your circumstances are my advice is to stay in action, and move forward. Nobody ever got anything done by thinking about it. The same goes for overwhelm. It’s not going to go away on it’s own, it requires of you to do something about it.

Like implementing the tips above, or doing anything else that works for you.

Now do tell me, what helps you to move past overwhelm? How do you build resilience? Let me know below.

3 tips to get started with almost anything – immediately

Last week on the blog I wrote about 5 ways multi-passionate, creative women such as yourself can declutter their minds for success. While the tips I mention in the post are pragmatic, and actionable, there is one thing that remains absolutely necessary in order to achieving anything – success included, and that’s to get started!

After spending years overcoming the fears that kept me from doing what I wanted to do, and be who I wanted to be, I know how hard it can be to get started. Much harder in fact than many things that come after it.

One of the things I procrastinated the longest on was putting myself out there. Spreading my message. Articulating my ideas. Sharing my beliefs. Now that I’ve sort of come out on the other side of that fear of being visible, it’s easy to forget what it took to get here, or how I felt before. When I think about it hard enough, like now when I’m sharing this personal story with you, I remember the hard work that was involved, the fears I had to overcome, the questions, doubts, and insecurities that I’ve worked through…

But what I remember most, and what stands out as an act of personal bravery in my book, is that I got started. Whatever came after, all the successes (and failures) I’ve had until today, none of that would have happened if I hadn’t taken that first step.

You wouldn’t even be reading these words.

That’s why today I want to share 3 tips with you that I’ve used successfully to get started with almost anything – immediately.

The beauty of these tips – as you’ll see below in just a minute – is that you can practice them anytime, anywhere. And what they’ll teach you is how to put the powerful mantra of “do first, think later” into practice for you. Something that has been instrumental in helping me get started on so many of my projects in the past few years.

#1 Ignore (silence) your inner critic

The whole point of doing first, thinking later is that you don’t think but do. Duh! Now listening to your inner nasty doesn’t count as not thinking. However unconscious or subconscious the listening may be, there’s a mental process going on that is keeping you from taking action.

Working my way through my own procrastination, I’ve found that silencing that inner voice really helps to get me moving. One of the ways that really works for me is to acknowledge her, then challenge her beliefs using questions such as “So what?”, “Who cares?”, and “What’s the worst that can happen?”.

#2 Focus on one small step

Failing to take action often comes from wanting things that seem way too big. You’re in a job you hate, single while you’d love to have a relationship, you don’t make the money necessary to live the lifestyle you desire, you’d love to start a business, be fluent in another language, bake cookies for a living… but when you look at where you are right now, you can’t seem to imagine you’ll ever get where you want to be.

I’m here to tell you that there’s nothing wrong with your dream, and that you can achieve it, I have no doubt. But you need to forget about the dream, already! That’s right, in order to work on your dream you need to forget about it so you can focus on one small, and simple step. Nevermind the flourishing business you want to have, the fluency in which you want to speak a new language, or the tons of delicious cookies you’re eager to delight children with. Instead ask yourself what the first step is that you can take to start your business, learn that language, bake a cookie today.

#3 Let your body lead the way

Finally, and this is the tip that really brings all of the above together, let your body take over. To get started we need to physically move our bodies – always. When we imagine doing something we’re firing neurons through our brain, sending signals to our body that something’s about to happen. The body’s reaction is get into motion.

This is not only true when we want to get a snack out of the kitchen, choose a show to watch on Netflix, or grab our laptop to Google something. This is also true when we tell ourselves we should email that accountant about that business we want to start, or pick up that language book and start with that first lesson, or get our ass into the kitchen so we can bake some cookies! The best way to get started is to let your body lead the way. When you’re feeling the body’s readiness to get into action to go and grab that book, let it lead the way.

Before you know it, you’ll have started working your way towards your dreams.

In the spirit of taking action right now, and letting your body lead the way… in the comments below let me know what your big dream is that you’re finally ready to take action on! And if not yet, what’s stopping you from doing it?

The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women by Naomi Wolf

What is beauty? And why are we so obsessed by it?

If you’ve ever suffered to make yourself more “beautiful”, as I suspect you have if you’re a woman alive today, then those questions are worth asking. Not only because of the massive amount of accumulated pains, and moments of physical or emotional discomforts you’ve put yourself through, but more importantly because of the effect it’s had on your personal development, and your position in the world.

I remember my first leg waxing experience as if it was yesterday. I was fifteen, and had just entered puberty. Over the course of a school year I went from flat chested to busty teenager, from boyish hips to curvy, and from hairless girl to hairy lady.

At first I didn’t think much of it. At home beauty wasn’t a thing. My parents were struggling with many issues, for sure, but their appearance, or that of my siblings and I, wasn’t one of them. Actually, if it wasn’t for my then best friend, a girl I did absolutely everything with in total Barb Holland style, I could have walked around like that much longer (OMG imagine that!).

When social pressure turns nothing into something

So one Summer day that year, while we were hanging out my friend looked at my legs, pointed with her index finger towards my tibia, and articulated a alarming “eek!”. Following my friends’ “good advice”, a plan was immediately put in action. She would make an appointment for me to have my legs waxed. A few days later, by then convinced that having hair on your legs was a terrible thing, I laid my faith, and my legs in the hands of a beautician.

I don’t know if you were around in the nineties, but getting a wax back then was a real adventure. It wasn’t quick, or easy. In fact, it was an excruciating process with lukewarm wax paste that could only be pulled off your legs slowly, and little by little.

So I cried, and screamed the entire time. And I also learned a thing or two that day.

First, that when it comes to pain for beauty you’re not supposed to scream, or cry about it, but instead be a brave girl and take it. The beautician made me well aware of this by rolling her eyes about a million times, puffing almost all the air out of the torture chamber, to eventually – when I didn’t get her subtle social cues – telling me to shut up. By the end of the session I must have gotten it, because as I was leaving with my brand new pair of legs, I apologised to her for my seemingly unacceptable behavior.

Then I got a glimpse of what suffering to be beautiful really meant: real pain. There was nothing self-loving or self-caring about the experience, it was just painful. Writing these words as I think back on it I feel for my younger self, and shiver at the thought that our society has managed to brainwash girls, and women into believing that such an act of self-hatred towards the body, and the self is – in fact – self-caring.

The sad thing is, it was my first time going against the nature of my body, but certainly not my last. And so many years later, among many other “self-caring” beauty treats I endure, I’m still having my legs waxed. Aren’t you?

Finally, I noticed the difference. Boys my age were also starting to show hair on their legs, but nobody was telling them to lay down on the torture rack to fix it. In fact, while I was worrying about hair growing on my body my male counterparts were competing with each other to see who was getting the most facial hair…

What about the book?

A long but kind of necessary intro to get to the central premise of The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women, written by the incredibly talented Naomi Wolf when she was only 26 years old.

The book, whose first edition dates back to 1990 (how appropriate), poses the thesis that, as women found a way out of the house, and into the workforce corporations shifted their sales efforts away from women’s homemaking and onto women’s bodies. Where previously advertisement had focused on tyrannizing women into being good homemakers, the pressure is now coming from within as much as outside, with an entire industry telling women to live up to unrealistic beauty standards. This pressure, still present today, then leads to an exacerbated preoccupation with physical appearance both by women, and men, unhealthy behaviors such as eating disorders, and eventually undermines the position of women socially, economically, and politically in society by stealing away their power. Wolf writes:

A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.

Throughout the book, Wolf addresses different areas in which beauty is used against women: our workplaces, the cosmetics, and the diet industry. She also discusses the elusive notion of beauty in relation with aging, and states that when women grow old the grow invisible.

The economic animal cares about profit, not women’s rights

Unlike Wolf I don’t believe there’s someone, or a group in particular out there with cunning plans to keep women oppressed, but I do believe there’s an economic animal living a life of it’s own that has been thriving on our insecurities, and that those insecurities are the result of social norms created, and upheld by a masculine – not to say misogynist – society.

This animal feeds on our desire to be loved, and appreciated by feeding us the same lie over and over again: that we’ll never be good enough.

You have to go back to a time before time almost, to an era where the world was ruled by goddesses instead of gods to find societies where feminine qualities were revered instead of shunned, and where being a woman was enough to be called beautiful. I cannot imagine that in such a time women would have the same issues with feeling good enough as we do today.

And so I follow Wolf when she sees this obsession with appearance, and beauty as the current expression of a long lineage of instruments of oppression against women.

Right after the myth of the immaculate home now comes the myth of the immaculate beauty. Especially when you understand how elusive a concept beauty really is…

Reform cures the symptom, but doesn’t fix the problem

In a recent conversation between Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey (a Netflix original that I can only recommend you watch), DuVernay talks about how the criminal justice system in America (following her incredible documentary 13th, another one you really have to watch), is the modern-day equivalent of slavery, only disguised by law, perpetrating an system of inequality primarily affecting the poor, the black, and the brown (as she calls them). DuVernay says:

Historically reform has always led to further repression. Because reform is really people reshaping these mechanisms, these systems to their own end. (…) Which is basically just change it and make it so that it benefits me. And so reform isn’t really what’s needed.

I believe that the same mechanics are at play where the beauty myth is concerned.

Ever since women started being oppressed by men we have fought back. And when the fight was long, and hard enough things (seemed to) change. But why then are we still fighting? One of the reasons lie in the concept of reform.

What we are given every time we “win” isn’t really what we asked for, but a reshaped version of what we had before.

In a way, it’s a problem of semantics.

We get what we seemingly ask for, nothing more, and quite literally.

For instance, women had to fight until the 20th century to be granted the same voting rights as men, but we’re still waiting for the first woman president in the USA, and in countries where women attain the top politically, they still only represent a very small percentage of available positions. So we got the right to vote (literally) but the implied right to participate in the political system… not so much. Wolf writes:

As soon as a woman’s primary social value could no longer be defined as the attainment of virtuous domesticity, the beauty myth redefined it as the attainment of virtuous beauty. It did so to substitute both a new consumer imperative and a new justification for economic unfairness in the workplace where the old ones had lost their hold over newly liberated women.

Or what about this “new” social fixation on how women look, born almost exactly at the same time that women entered the workforce, some 50 odd years ago?

In her conversation with Oprah Winfrey, Ava DuVernay goes on to say that she is in favor of prison abolition as it exists today. Again, I see the parallel with the beauty myth. As long as the oppressor has a say in what the reform will look like, the inequality – how well-disguised it may be – will remain. The only real solution is for the oppressed to take charge.

How do we fix it?

Wolf ends by stating something similar when she says that it is not men who will change what society dictates us to look like, but that if we want real change we’ll have to do that ourselves. By loving ourselves more, but also by reshaping the relation women have with one another. She writes:

By changing our prejudgments of one another, we have the means for the beginning of a noncompetitive experience of beauty. The “other woman” is represented through the myth as an unknown danger. “Meet the Other Woman”, read a Well hair-coloring brochure, referring to the “after” version of the woman targeted. The idea is that “beauty” makes another woman – even one’s own idealized image – into a being so alien that you need a formal introduction. It is a phrase that suggests threats, mistresses, glamorous destroyers of relationships.

This makes The Beauty Myth an ode to sisterhood, and a plea to reframe the relationship we have with each other back into what I believe is our natural state: one of friendship, compassion, support, and love for one another.

Only then will we be able to challenge the status quo. Only then will we achieve women empowerment, gender equality, and peace on Earth. Wolf ends:

Let’s be shameless. Be greedy. Pursue pleasure. Avoid pain. Wear and touch and eat and drink what we feel like. Tolerate other women’s choices. Seek out the sex we want and fight fiercely against the sex we do not want. Choose our own causes And once we break through and change the rules so our sense of our own beauty cannot be shaken, sing that beauty and dress it up and flaunt it and revel in it.

What about you? How do you feel about beauty, and our society’s fixation on appearance? Let me know below, I’d love to know.

52 books in 52 weeks is a self-improvement goal I’ve set for myself, and my business this year. You can follow my progress here, and/or offer a book suggestion here.

Why forgiveness is an act of kindness towards yourself

Last week on the blog I wrote about what to do when someone hurts your feelings. One of the things that I mention in the post is forgiveness, as a way to help you move past whatever someone did to hurt you.

Since the post has been up, I’ve received a number of emails from readers telling me how difficult it is to practice forgiveness sometimes, and how unfair it feels having to be the one “doing the work” when someone else should be doing it instead.

Thank you all for sending me these great questions. They made me think, and want to dig a little deeper into what forgiveness actually is, and why it’s a true act of kindness towards yourself…

Learn to forgive yourself first

We all have things that we’re not proud of, that annoy us about ourselves, that linger on from the past. Bad decisions we made, situations we didn’t deal with as good as we could have, people we hurt…

I like to think that everything begins with ourselves, forgiveness included. And just like I believe you cannot love someone deeply, truly, fully until you give that same kind of love to yourself, I believe you cannot enjoy the benefits of forgiveness entirely until you’ve learned how to forgive yourself.

So the first step towards forgiveness is not about giving your blessings to someone else, but surrounding your own bright self with the loving-kindness that comes from not beating yourself down anymore over a mistake you made, accepting that you’ve dealt with a situation in a shitty way or made a mistake, and silencing your inner nasty when she’s putting on the blame game.

An easy, yet super powerful way to practice self-forgiveness is this:

• Give yourself credit for recognizing your mistake (or whatever it is you’re blaming yourself for). This is the first step towards growth, and not a trivial thing! You deserve to be proud of yourself. Shoulder tap lady!

• Accept that mistakes are a part of life, and that you’re not the first one to make one, nor that this is the last one you’ll ever make. As a recovering people-pleaser, and somewhat of a recovering perfectionist too (hum hum), this was a difficult lesson for me to learn. For a long time my anxiety, and worry revolved almost entirely around me making mistakes. This made it hard for me to be social, go out and enjoy myself because the next days I would be filled with anxiety, worrying about what those people at the party thought of me, and whether or not I’d said the right thing, and been the right way (as if that exists!) all night long. A total nightmare! Until I accepted that I would never be perfect, and that mistakes were part of my life’s journey.

• Know that you are a magical being that learns, and grows all the time! Mistakes are always in the past. And guess what? You don’t live there! You live in the present. Every moment of your life you have the choice to learn from your mistakes so that you can grow into a better version of yourself. I use this growth mindset attitude on a daily basis. Understanding that I’m not my mistakes, that I can outgrow them, and learn from them at the same time comforts me, and helps me to forgive myself.

Now it’s time to start forgiving others

Forgiving yourself is the most important step – but it’s only the first one. Practice it often, whenever you feel you need to. But don’t fall in the trap I fell into for so long: becoming great at forgiving yourself, but walking around with frustrations, sadness, and hurt feelings as a result of what others have done to you.

If you do, you’ll hang on to toxic energy that – newsflash! – only you feel! That’s right. The person that hurt you is most probably totally in the dark about what you’re feeling, and is not being hurt back. Only you are – again!

Forgiving others is a difficult thing to do. Believe me, I know!

And if you’re anything like me, it won’t come to you overnight either… (damn ego!). But you can do it, and it is so absolutely liberating, that I promise you.

The way I forgive others is not driven by selflessness (sorry Buddha, not there yet) but by sheer self-love.

Because forgiving others means being happier, living a better life, removing toxic energy, moving on… good things that will affect your own life first, not always that of the person you’re forgiving.

Forgiving someone comes down almost the same steps as the self-forgiveness practice above:

• Give yourself credit for recognizing that someone has hurt your feelings. You’re protecting your boundaries, and taking good care of yourself there. Well done! As a people-pleaser, I really had to learn this the hard way… actually recognizing that I’d been hurt instead of internalizing all of it.

• Accept that mistakes are part of life, and that other people are only human too. It might not make the hurt go away, but it can certainly deflect it from your ego, and help you realize that we’re all in this human experience together.

• Use the growth mindset to figure out what you can learn when someone hurt your feelings. I believe there’s a silver lining to everything, and this is no exception. Maybe you’ve stumbled on a sensitivity you have that you need to safeguard more, or you weren’t clear on your boundaries enough. This is certainly not to say that you are to blame for someone hurting you, but simply that you can learn how to protect yourself from it.

When you learn to forgive yourself, and others, there’s one universal outcome I believe will come your way: you’ll have a better life. Less stress, less worry, more love, more compassion, and so many other wonderful emotions, feelings, and experiences.

That’s why it’s an act of kindness towards yourself. And for that alone, it’s worth it.

Now do tell me. Is it easy for you to forgive yourself? Others? What works well for you? Let me know below.