| Release Your Inner Good
Girl!
 In
our American culture, girls are encouraged to:
- Defer to authority: your parents, your teachers,
your Girl Scout leader, etc.
- Follow the rules of whatever game or activity
you’re involved in.
- Color in between the lines, not outside.
- Pay attention to other people’s feelings.
- Respond to the hurt or pain of others.
- Avoid interrupting people.
When you grow up being consistently encouraged
to listen to others first, one common side effect
is that you never develop faith in your own opinions,
decision-making or intuition.
I see this in my past life and I see this often
in my clients. If you’ve been raised as a “good
girl” and you’re also a perfectionist
or people-pleaser, you’re likely someone who
wants to know the rules and follow them. Following
the rules may be your default approach to problem-solving.
You don’t look within to determine your feelings
or your principles first; you look to rules or to
how other people are feeling first.
Here’s a great example of how this
affects the course of your entire life. Anthony
Youn wrote this editorial for USA Today about growing
up Asian American; I read it through the lens of the
“good girl” syndrome. What he describes
fits both worlds.
“I grew up underneath the Bamboo Ceiling,
a barrier that keeps Asian Americans from reaching
the pinnacle of success in anything other than traditional
professional careers such as medicine, dentistry and
engineering. It has to do with how we were raised
as children. We were brought up by our Tiger Parents
to work hard, do well in school, respect our elders
and not to question authority. In order to
reach the upper echelon of most fields, however, other
“non-Asian” traits are typically necessary:
networking, risk-taking, leadership and aggressiveness.“
[emphasis added] USA Today, February 24, 2012.
Substitute “non-good girl” for “non-Asian”
in that last sentence, and you’ve described
MANY struggling women entrepreneurs!
Why Good Girls Struggle with Decision-Making
If you’ve been brought up as a “good
girl”: to respect authority, follow
rules and pay attention to others’ feelings,
your faith in your own decision-making
abilities starts to wither and die. You
wonder whether you can make good decisions for yourself.
You may want to spend your time with other people
you view as good decision-makers so you can follow
THEIR decisions. You may spend a lot of time polling
your family, friends or colleagues to see what they
think you should do. You may feel confused when you
try to come up with an answer to a problem on your
own because you’re not sure exactly what your
feelings are or where they’re coming from.
Why Good Girls Struggle with Sales
The “good girl” syndrome is
constantly pushing you to look at how other people
feel and how they’re judging you. Then
you evaluate or judge yourself based on what
others’ see or say or feel.
That’s a pretty crummy way to live. You
can never feel relaxed in who you are, because
a slightly different message about you is being reflected
back from each person you meet.
It makes sense that this syndrome completely
undermines you in the selling process! How
can you feel confident about what you’re offering
the world, when you’re relying on other people’s
reactions to tell you if what you offer, and by extension
YOU, are any good or not? How can you create healthy
boundaries separating the part of the selling process
that is your responsibility from the parts that are
their responsibility? It’s hard when it ALL
feels like it’s 100% your responsibility.
If this is you, you are likely hesitant when it comes
to selling your product or service. You may worry
about whether your buyer or recruit will receive ENOUGH
value. You question your own abilities and
worry about appearing pushy.
Why Good Girls Struggle with Leadership
In the “good girl” syndrome,
you always accept what others TELL you, even
if your intuition is telling you something different.
As a leader, you are likely dealing with team members
who are all over the spectrum in terms of their willingness
to move forward or embrace change. When someone on
your team says: No, I won’t move forward,
they may really be saying: No, I won’t move
forward, because I’m scared. I’m going
to retreat back to my comfort zone.
Great leaders rely on their intuition to
help them recognize the difference between those two
kinds of No (No because I don’t
want to, and No because I’m scared).
They are willing to offer a hand to someone who’s
scared. If you take EVERY No at face value,
you’re going to leave a lot of people behind
you.
Highly Successful People
Highly successful entrepreneurs trust themselves.
They have faith in their judgment and confidence in
their decision-making.
They listen to their intuition.
When appropriate, they are willing to take a stand
for other people and encourage them to rise up to
a higher level.
They are relaxed and confident in selling situations.
They are confident about their own worth and the value
of what they offer. That allows them to focus on their
conversation partner, instead of having a constant
internal dialog in which they’re worrying about
how they’re coming across or what the other
person thinks of them or their offer.
Call to Action
What are the pros and cons of being a good
girl? Go back through the bulleted list at
the start of this article. How have those qualities
helped you? How have those qualities held you back?
Which of these qualities would you like to
scale back, in order to move forward as an
entrepreneur and as a leader?
Who are the leaders you most admire? What
specific qualities are you most attracted to? How
can you embody those qualities more?
You may have been trained by your family to be a
“good girl” AND you can also choose to
step into a higher way of being: one that honors your
unique gifts and also serves others. That higher self
is already waiting within you; you simply allow it
to appear in the world.
"People often say that this or that person
has not yet found himself. But the self is not something
one finds, it is something one creates."
~ Thomas Szasz
If you’d like support moving out of the “Good
Girl” syndrome and into self-confident selling
and leadership, then I invite you into a complimentary
45-minute Success Session call with me. We’ll
discuss your goals, what’s getting the way,
and how coaching can support you to move forward.
I’m not attached to any outcome; this call is
all about YOU. I invite you to email me at success@marcystahl.com
to easily schedule your call.
Testimonial
 "When
I started working with Marcy, I had a myriad
of limiting beliefs, lack of confidence and
fears of presentations in sales. Through our
work together, I have shed all those negatives
and have more clarity and confidence in my professional
life. Marcy is a great listener and provides
wonderful suggestions that make sense. I owe
much of my success in my most transformational
year to the direction, support and encouragement
that Marcy provided me!"
~ Nancy T. Ferrari, Radio Show and
Media Personality
www.nancyferrari.com, Orange
County, CA |
© 2012 Marcy Stahl
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Marcy Stahl motivates women entrepreneurs to
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|
One
influential April event that I’m still mulling
over is the college graduation of my niece Rachel.
I visited her school: High Point University in High
Point, North Carolina, for the first time last weekend.
Every aspect of the campus and its people reflect
High Point University’s mission statement: “At
High Point University, every student receives an extraordinary
education in an inspiring environment with caring
people.”™
Here’s
a photo of me sitting next to a statue of Gandhi and
one of the graduates getting ready on the Promenade
the next day. 
Myself
Project FREE dial-in event – see below for more
details.
Joanna
Lindenbaum is a coach for busy women who are looking
to nourish their creativity and take their lives to
the next level. She partners with clients to create
vitality, passion, and fulfillment in their lives.
These women are often already working on or are ready
to embark on projects that will launch them out into
the world to have a voice, create inspiration, and
take action. Whether you want to change careers or
find a healthy balance in your life, she can support
you in being as BIG as you can be. Women have the
power to transform the world!
