3Courage + Curiosity
Society and culture – in very overt, but also very covert ways – teach us as women not to value our voices, our needs, our own feminine power. Family and friends can tie you up with expectations, pressure to be something they were or were not, or challenge you to become the version of the person they want or need you to be. For so many of us, we get tangled up in people‐pleasing tendencies. We find ourselves engaged in guilt‐ridden behaviors, in sacrifice for others all the time, so it's no wonder there's a disconnect from what we really feel, need, or want.
In my twenties, I found myself neck‐deep in wanting to appear successful, put together, and on top of things. Like so many other women, I was governing my life by the concept of “The Clock” that apparently only exists for women. You know, the one that starts ticking the day you graduate from college: find a good job, get married, buy a house, have kids. The “American Dream” is synonymous with success. But it shouldn’t be. You need to have your own real definition of “success” independent of a job, husband, kids, new house, and nice cars. Those things can be a part of success, but that's nowhere close to a complete definition. Yet we often still measure a significant portion of our worth, value, and decisions on this uniform, monochromatic definition of “success.”
In this chapter, I share my transition from college graduation to career, pinpointing the moment I realized that I had been chasing an illusion ...