I recently listened to an interview on Laura Ingraham’s talk show. At first I was disturbed by the content of the topic but I am glad I kept listening.
She was interviewing a dear friend, Claire Shipman, who had just published a book called Confidence Code. My initial take was, “Oh, great, now we have another issue to apologize for.”
As I listened, I realized she was not talking about the lack of confidence as a detractor for women, but as a blessing (my words). She offered the need for women to gain confidence by embracing our innate qualities of nurturing, caring, and protection. She reasoned the alternative, war, devastation, and destruction was innately linked to testosterone. If we looked at our attributes as being positive, and thus gained confidence in them, the world might be a safer and friendlier place (her words).
Wow!
I’ve heard people say “if women ruled the world…” and mostly it was not a very happy conclusion to the speculation.
She also mentioned a website where people of both sexes could take a quiz which would help you figure out how confident you are. They expected a few hundred people to take the quiz but it turned out to be thousands.
One point she made continuously is how we need to give up on perfectionism. Clearly we hold ourselves to an impossibly high standard of performance in all areas of our lives. It’s okay not to have the wash done by Saturday at noon, or the food shopping done for the whole month, or the bills paid by the fifth of each month, or any other ridiculous standard we set.
And we have to own that we have the right to be at the top. At the very tippy top. You go, girl!
Photo Credit: International Information Program (IIP) via Compfight cc
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Great article.