Acting in stereotypically feminine ways makes it difficult for women to reach for the same opportunities as men, but defying expectations and reaching for those opportunities leads to being judged as undeserving and selfish.
Self-compassion isn’t talked about as much as it should be, maybe because it’s often confused with its troublesome cousins, self-pity and self-indulgence.
Not only do we learn more from failure than success, we learn more from bigger failures because we scrutinize them more closely.
Feedback is an opinion, grounded in observations and experiences, which allows us to know what impression we make on others.
I have long believed that people need to feel supported and understood at work. I now know that this is even more important after tragedy. And sadly, it’s far less common than it should be.
When someone isn’t making good decisions, few have the guts to tell that person, especially if that person is the boss. One.
Of the twenty-eight women who have served as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, twenty-six were married, one was divorced, and only one had never married.10 Many of these CEOs said they “could not have succeeded without the support of their husbands, helping with the children, the household chores, and showing a willingness to move.”11.
Parental behavioral factors – including fathers who are responsive and positive, mothers who favor “self-directed child behavior,” and parents with emotional intimacy in their marriages – influence a child’s development two to three times more than any form of child care.
She explained that many people, but especially women, feel fraudulent when they are praised for their accomplishments.
One of the things he told me was that my desire to be liked by everyone would hold me back. He said that when you want to change things, you can’t please everyone. If you do please everyone, you aren’t making enough progress.
The first noble truth of Buddhism is that all life involves suffering.
From the moment we are born, boys and girls are treated differently. Parents tend to talk to girl babies more than boy babies. Mothers overestimate the crawling ability of their sons and underestimate the crawling ability of their daughters. Reflecting the belief that girls need to be helped more than boys, mothers often spend more time comforting and hugging infant girls and more time watching infant boys play by themselves.
The two things we want to know when we’re in pain are that we’re not crazy to feel the way we do and that we have support.
As the elephant in the room went unacknowledged, it started acting up, trampling over my relationships.
Men have an easier time finding the mentors and sponsors who are invaluable for career progression. Plus, women have to prove themselves to a far greater extent than men do. And this is not just in our heads. A 2011 McKinsey report noted that men are promoted based on potential, while women are promoted based on past accomplishments.
In China, women who are single past the age of twenty-seven are stigmatized as sheng nu, or “leftover women.” They face severe pressure from their families to marry, stemming from the widespread belief that regardless of education and professional achievement, a woman is “absolutely nothing until she is married.” One thirty-six-year-old economics professor was rejected by fifteen men because she had an advanced degree; her father then forbade her younger sister from going to graduate school.
I will sometimes feel this awful.
Survivor guilt is a thief of joy – yet another secondary loss from death.
When children feel comfortable asking for help, they know they matter.
Reflecting someone’s viewpoint clarifies the disagreement and becomes a starting point for resolution. We all want to be heard, and when we focus on showing others that we are listening, we actually become better listeners.