Year of the Grown Woman (reprint)

This content initially appeared in the online magazine, The Vyne. It leverages my thinking on authenticity to create a goal-setting (and meeting) process for the New year.

We all have that great aunt or family friend who says exactly what she thinks, whether you ask her or not, and is completely comfortable in her own skin as a self-possessed, powerful woman. That is a grown woman. Grown women are confident, they are clear on who they are and what they think. They make choices in alignment with their goals and are unapologetic about it. More than anything, they are themselves, come what may.

Earlier this year, The Vyne featured an article which highlighted a few grown woman-isms. Among them, tips on the importance of keeping your house clean, your bills paid and your personal presentation tight. But as we move into the new year, a year that promises to bring us new opportunities to shine, perhaps the most important grown woman-ism is to “Be yourself.” In Carla Harris’ book, Expect to Win, she highlights authenticity as being key to achieving personal and professional success. But what is authenticity? Ms. Harris describes it has having a clear sense of who you are and honoring sense of self through your choices. Being authentic maximizes your personal power and attracts opportunity and success to you. Consider these three tips to being authentic and nurturing your inner grown woman:

1) Get clear: If you can’t state with clarity the kind of job, relationship, friends, and life you want do not pass go, do not collect $200. You will be lost until you do. Take an hour, (get a glass of something if you must), make your lists, and prioritize what is important in each of those arenas – you’ll need that for the next step.

2) Make a commitment: When you know what matters to you, and how those things stack up against each other, you can commit to a course of action. If you’ve decided that right now is the time to make the leap for home ownership, then naturally taking a higher paying job trumps being able to work from home 2 days a week. But keep your eyes open – you might be able to have it all.

3) Be consistent: Once you’re clear on your values, your purpose and your needs and you’ve committed, make choices that are in alignment with your values, purpose and needs. Surround yourself with a community of friends and family who are also clear on what your intentions are and who can support you as you move with laser focus. Taking one step at a time in the direction of your goals with consistency will ensure that you meet them.

As we get older (and better!) we naturally become more self-assured but why not give that growth a turbo-boost with some healthy self-reflection. 2011 will be a year of tremendous growth and transformation, but only for those of us who are clear. We need to know now, more than ever, what matters most to us and why. Being a grown woman is about more than just taking care of business. It’s about being clear on who we are and what we want and pursuing those things with confidence. Here’s to the grown woman in you!

So tell us, how do you plan to be a “grown woman” in the new year?

So far, So Fast

This post is dedicated to my Fastgirls, without whom I would not have felt the urgency to be authentic. You inspire, humble and amaze me with all that you bring to the world. Thank you.

Today marks the end of the 90 Day Be the Expert Challenge. As I type this I am overcome with emotion. This post represents the last 'required' post of the last set of tasks for the challenge. I missed the 9PM deadline, rendering me incomplete with the challenge. As usual, I procrastinated and I find myself writing this post to complete the challenge. I feel a mix of emotions but mostly a calm about not having completed the challenge but still having had my life transformed by this work--even in the face of enormous disappointment with myself. I was the only person out of 13 women left in the challenge to be incomplete at this last check in. What can I say about that? I was being authentic. (Insert ironic smiley here.)

The last 90 days have taught me a lot about what I value, how I prioritize my time and what I am willing to do to be true to myself. I fell into authenticity as an area of expertise and as a life practice, as a behavior because this is what the challenge has demanded. It demanded from the beginning that I be clear about my value and values, that I commit to taking action and spending time with my community of Fastgirls, and that I was consistent in each of these things.

Fastgirls helped me refine my passions and create my path forward at a time when things were a bit murky. Fastgirls surfaced the framework for my forthcoming leadership curriculum. In a year of great loss, gave me an expansive sense of self, which is invaluable in a way I never could have imagined. I came to Fastgirls looking for some idea about what would vaguely be next for me and what I leave this challenge with is near perfect clarity about what I am called to do.

When I was 11 years old, I participated in a life-changing leadership development program and the homework component was at times overwhelming. Some nights, at 11PM, when I'd had all I thought I could stand, my mother would offer me a glass of water, rub my back and tell me I could read another page, write another paragraph. From prep school to college, from college to grad school and at every job in between, my mother was there with a word of support and hand to hold.

Though my mother died almost 9 months ago to the day, I have no doubt in my mind that she has been with me these last 90 days, encouraging me to write every blog post, present in every letter of gratitude I've written to poets who've changed my life. She has seen me grow and change in this work, defining for myself a path that she always saw for me when she gave me journals, imploring me to write, or tell me to challenge myself, ensuring that I'd grow. For all that I have gained these last 90 days, I also dedicate this note to my mother, my very first Fastgirl.

And so it begins...

This week when I gave my talk, one of the audience members asked me what was next for me. This was a tough and scary question in that it forced me to declare my intentions. I mean, I have spent the last several weeks, likely months, talking to myself about what I'd need to do next. But here I was, giving a talk, answering questions about my subject matter when someone pierced through the topic to ask me about what all this authenticity stuff meant in my own life. I paused, chuckled nervously and responded, "Well, I have decided to pursue a life as a writer." There, I had said it. I publicly declared that I would abandon my work in education to take a vow of poverty, er, poetry.

What was most interesting about this declaration is that once I made it, the details of my plan came spilling out. I talked about the approach I'd take to making the transition, the tools and resources I'd need to take advantage of and the timing of it all. I was clear, I had committed and because I had made the commitment a public one through this talk's Q&A, I'd be held accountable and made to demonstrate my intentions with some consistency. Clarity, commitment, and consistency. Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

Meaning or Ambition?

Last night, I had the pleasure of having dinner with an amazing group of friends. We were talking about the life changes it feels like we're on the cusp of as individuals, and collectively. We spoke at length about what drives us, what makes us happy, what we do if nothing else mattered and money were not an issue. I was thrilled to hear that it sounds like nothing else does matter with these folks. All compelled by some life's dream or calling, moving at varied speeds for sure, we are all building the momentum we're interested in seeing power our respective projects.

In a recent article on Huffington Post, Russell Bishop poses the question about whether we work for ambition or for meaning? I challenge each of us to think about that as we move about our day to day work.

Poem: I am clear

I've made up the dishes
and dried off the bed
I'm wandering woman
I'm walking while dead
and the voices I hear
have escaped from my head.

I've paid all the houseplants
and watered the bills
I'm listening softly,
and crying at will
and the person I pawned
is becoming me still.

I'm sorry I hate you
I'm happy you left
I'm dodging my feelings
and weaving the weft
I'm wheeling and dealing
with a hand that is deft

I'm writing my eulogy
sealing the chest
I'm toasting the people
who treated me best
I'm taking the good things
and leaving the rest
I am clear, I am clear, I am clear.

Poem: Lie to me

We are afraid--

The world of us--to tell each other our secrets.
In hidden rooms, with jammed tight doors,
we suffer silently per protocol,
make messes of our messes.
if we would stand straight, eye to eye,
confessing our disaster...
 
Perhaps we'd find each other in our messes,
and our masses would seem masterfully drawn
together in the larger open spaces of our togetherness
where doors don't jam
and people cry
and laugh
and hold each other
 
instead of keeping secrets.

Putting it Out There

As part of this challenge, I needed to submit to a contest or apply for an award to demonstrate my expertise. I decided to submit for a contest of a literary journal, Crazyhorse, based on one of my gifts - poetry. After searching for a bit for a contest on authenticity, the only thing I could find was a contest which asked individuals to outline ways in which consumers of news could authenticate/validate the information they get via various news outlets. I decided to submit three poems which reflect my experience over the last several months. The poems follow in separate posts.

Walk the Talk

Over the last 60 days, I have been part of a challenge to become an expert in a specific area. I am working with a group of phenomenal women who are well-versed in such interesting and compelling areas such as sustainability, wellness, youth development, and education. I am even working with folks who are subject matter experts on paths less traveled such as lactation, gratitude, and astrology.

And then there is me. I am struggling still to define my area of expertise. 60 days into the challenge, I am clear that I am passionate about authenticity, but how does one demonstrate that? Unlike a fine art connoisseur, I can’t get ‘training’ on how to be an expert in authenticity. I don’t have a ‘kit’ like a forensics expert to assess the evidence I’m presented with on a daily basis. So what’s my gauge? My barometer?
Personal experience. I can’t say without a shadow of a doubt, that I can ‘teach’ someone else how to be authentic without first knowing that I am living my life as authentically as possible. What this means to me is that I am actively pursuing those things which I am passionate about and which I am good at doing. For as long as I can remember, my two greatest passions have been music and writing - not necessarily in that order.

I’ve sung for as long as I can remember (I even studied jazz and classical music) and I’ve been writing probably since I was 10--journaling, writing poetry and articles for various publications, etc. So in a quest to be more authentically myself, I am grounding myself in my poetry and in my music. I’ll dedicate a few posts not to me pontificating about what it means to be authentic, but just demonstrating it as best I can.

Tell your truth, but not the whole truth

I had an amazing conversation with a man this Monday evening about the importance of being authentic in the workplace. His work focuses solely on helping organizations figure out their HR and Diversity and Inclusion strategies but what we both agreed on is how much bigger than HR and Diversity, work-life (meaning your life at work) is. In the her book, Don't Bring It to Work, Sylvia Lafair offers makes a very astute observation that who we are in the workplace is a direct reflection of who we are period. The folks we have or are working with (super achievers, complainers, hermits, etc.) are 'products of their environments. I encourage you to read this book as it offers insights into how to recognize something, fairly counter-intuitive - that what we see is actually what we get. Even with our attempts to mask our true-selves, we still manifest some version of our 'outside of work' self.

Do what you love. No excuses.

What stands between us and our ability to do the thing we love? Is it fear? Lack of conviction that we are good enough? The possibility of poverty or worse yet social or professional isolation? It is likely some combination of these three things, among a host of other reasons. And while these concerns are valid, they are not necessarily a foregone conclusion.

We are as likely to fail doing something we don't enjoy as we are doing something that brings us great personal satisfaction. Our passions are gifted to us and meant to be tended, like spiritual gardens. They are things which give us illogical bursts of energy on no sleep, and sustain us past the point of rationality when all else points to 'stop.' Passion is the fuel of meaningful contribution. Without it, what we contribute will always be some diminished version of what we are capable of giving. What we do is only a shade of what can accomplish. Passion is the differentiator between those who are merely accomplished and those who are undeniably extraordinary at what they do. It is the measure of a life examined and pursued and the lack of it forms a chasm which only the truly brave and relentlessly authentic may cross.

The following video (from 2 years ago, but still relevant) makes a very strong case for doing what what you love. The language is rough in a few spots but the sentiment is spot on.

Just Do Your Job

I just ended a conference call where I asked the question, "How much should I write in my blogposts?" You might ask, why would I ask anyone, as a blogger, how much I should write. I'd argue that the question is more, "How should I write?" The question is borne out of my concern, as a writer first, that I start in the intuitively 'correct' part of the story and share the appropriate amount of information in order to engage people.

The response to my question was, "Why are you asking that question?" Well I could have responded authentically to say that I am busy and may not have time to write epic posts about authenticity and living purposefully, both of which I fully intend to do at some point. I could have said that I want to know if it's enough to shout out some other less fearful writer/blogger's ideas without having 1,000 words to say on the topic. I could tell the truth - that I doubt myself and rather than trust that I will write what needs to be written, authentically, I'd like someone to just tell me what to do. Sigh, the journey will be long. Rather than wallow in my own analysis paralysis and 'self-talk', here's a video that I will be watching on repeat until I have internalized that I have to just start. Suspend judgment, breathe deeply, trust my instinct for authenticity and write.