Girl, Stop Apologizing

Self help books and the nature of the genre has grown into a space highly divided by gender and the types of novels that mean and women consume differently. Women, in particular, are the avid absorbers of self-help novels, not as a result of a greater willingness to improve themselves, but often influenced by troublesome representations that have led society to believe that through greater self-work, women might improve themselves.

On a whole, however, recognizing a genre focused on helping us improve should be open to everyone. While the lessons sometimes need catering to one gender or another to account for how we are different, novels generally should not assume gendered interests or skills. A novel describing financial processes should be a book that more women should consume simply because it has not been typically consumed by their demographic. In the same way men should purchase books about feminine undervaluation or dating concerns. And for white people, books about the black experience and blackness should eagerly be sought out. Reaching across the aisles in these cases allows us to better understand the perspectives and needs of other communities, especially when written about by insiders, as they help us strengthen and build our own awareness and empathy for whom the world treats differently.

One such feminized “self-help” book by Rachel Hollis, called Girl, Stop Apologizing! A Shame-Free Plan for Embracing and Achieving Your Goals, describes many of the cultural norms that have set limiting expectations for how women are able to live their lives. Attention and positive reinforcement reward women for fitting into a binary and convince men and other women to shame girls into compliance when they deviate from the binary. When women of every shape, ability, size, color, ambition or background deviate from the categories do what ‘we’ expect them to be, the backlash is often so scathing that it attempts to push them into retreat. As Hollis describes, while society places your value on how good of a daughter, mother or sister you are, typically you do not place all of your self value on these relationships (18). A woman’s value should not be created by the status of her relationships but rather her status within herself. You were made to ask for more from life than the definition of your identity by your relationships to others.

Image: Happy Momma Trails

“Part One: Excuses to Let Go Of”

You are who you say you are. The perceived societal shaming for women who deviate from “what women do” is entirely made up, false and will never be true. If you’re a woman who wants to advocate for herself, but feel yourself in a space where not many women are, chances are you've been made to feel that you don’t necessarily fit in there. Being singled out, whether or not anyone even notices or mentions it, can make you feel unworthy, less intelligent or not capable enough.

“But sister, let me tell you right now, in the absence of experience or knowledge, determination makes the difference between who you are and where you want to be.” (Hollis, 27).

You perceive others through a lens that you have created from your experiences and how others perceive you. If you’ve seen no women in STEM fields or corporate board rooms, it’s easy to begin to believe that women aren’t supposed to be there because they aren’t. The absence of women actually should be a warning sign that not enough women have been unapologetically themselves or that men hiring have been giving them the space, since childhood, to feel that they’d belong there. Hollis describes how “I had been taught to play small, but I had been born with a heart that only dreamed big,” and for most women, I think this sentiment resonates strongly (Hollis, 32). We need to change as a generation to understand where to break the glass ceiling and encourage everyone to believe that “what women do” is not just filling previously intimidating spaces, but doing exactly what they wanted before anyone told them they couldn’t.

Excuses, Excuses

Anyone—women, men, any way that you identify—the greatest impediment to your goals will be the excuses you make for yourself. Most commonly, we say, “I don’t have time.” I don’t think that the question is what you have time for, but rather what you are going to give up in order to achieve those goals in addition to what you already have to do—the mission is to make more of what you have and of nothing. For example, if you are starting graduate school while working full time, taking evening classes will make you realize that maybe the best time to do your homework is actually during your lunch break. Making “time” for your dreams only depends on how hungry you are to see those dreams come true.

“I’m not good enough to succeed.” Hollis says that in her journey, her grandfather put her dreams into perspective, telling her “I was either going to run this business and scale it with courage and determination and faith in myself, or I needed to stop playing at it,” (46.) And with pressing bills, often you’re forced to stop playing at it after a while. Or are you?

I think the logic of making the most of the goals that you’ve been told to be scared of is essential. If you say that you’re a runner, just go run. If you say that you’re a programmer, the act of learning to program makes it so. Trying and learning are, in fact, good enough. As Hollis says, “personal growth is supposed to be personal” (47).

I’m my own biggest critic. I used to attempt to rationalize this negative impression and self-criticism of myself by saying that it kept my feet on the ground and made me humble. But instead, the only thing that I was doing for myself was gaslighting and rationalizing my learned self-doubt to use it as an excuse for not accomplishing what I wanted to. You need to decide who you will listen to and what criticism you will accept. I said to myself, hey. If it’s not helping me, I’m not going to listen. But you better believe that my mission to stop listening is a constantly ongoing process where I am stumbling and needing to check myself against falling into the fear that others might think me bad, unaccomplished, or stupid.

Resilience. The concept of failure is made out to be so black and white. You either fail, or you don’t. But that’s not true in the slightest. We’ve become so afraid of making mistakes only because we’ve taken humanity out of life and work. As humanity, we seem to have forgotten that “knowing something great can be mined from the ashes means I don’t have to beat myself up when I don’t get it right. It means I stand back up quicker” (Hollis, 66).

I learned this lesson the hard way, recently. Yesterday afternoon, I accidentally sent a messy, incomplete draft to our lead boss without cleaning up our edits, highlights and changes. In my mind, I had thought that sending with the edits might help illustrate our thought processes in reaching our conclusions. To our coworkers who knew what they were doing, I’d seemingly blown up a planet. That afternoon, I beat myself up about my mistake. Something so simple had become so large because the attention to detail that my coworkers take, I had forgotten and jumped over. This case had broken my confidence and one small mistake shattered me because I had been taught that mistakes and failure were the end of my life and the eruption of my self worth, which was intrinsically tied to them. Here’s what I wish someone had told me, and if you’ve just made a seemingly colossal mistake, listen up:

1. Take a breath

2. Understand that mistakes happen

3. Apologize

4. Make a plan to correct the error

5. Put the error in perspective

6. Move on

“Every mistake that you make will transform the next into being just a little bit better than the last,” (Hollins, 67).

This too is a point in itself. Every person that you’re comparing yourself to has made those mistakes—especially back when they were in your position. You just can’t see it because their experiences make them look perfect to you right now. “Girl, stop comparing your beginning to their middle!” And at the same time, if you’re a young man or other Edson who feels that expressing those fears or frustrations to someone close to you will weaken you or turn them against you, that’s a key sign to make yourself scarce from those people.

But if you are expressing your fear, doubt, or stress and someone tells you, with their words or actions, not to feel that way, that’s a theme problem. Get up and walk out if there. “OPO, the other people’s opinions. You down with it? Because I’d you are, you’re giving all your power away” (Hollis, 75).

Good girls, women, girl bosses—any woman that you look up to likely inspired you because she’s a badass and seems unperturbed by what anybody has to say about her or her success. The only difference between yourself and her is your attitude. Let’s look at behaviors that Hollis recommends for us:

1. Stop asking permission

2. Go all in on one dream

3. Embrace your ambition

4. Ask for help

5. Build the right foundation (get healthy, get your space in order, and build a community of people with good habits, good actions and good dreams)

6. Stop letting others talk you out of it (or talk over you for that matter)

7. Say No. It is a sentence.

So, let me highlight where I was best able to engage with Hollis’ advice in my own life. It’s hard sometimes to read a book or blog then go find a professional situation where you can implement it, for example. So, I divided my life into goals versus expectations. (Each item like this is simply another exercise for your brain. That’s why reading so many self help books with different variations of the same can help you tweak your models for life).

Goals are the idealistic things that I had set and had fear about. If you’re thinking oh that looks hard, I hope I can do it, that’s good. It means you’re teaching far enough ahead of yourself to grow. On the other hand, expectations are the norms that I set for how I react to things out of my control, I.e. mistakes, other people’s reactions, judgment or opinions. We often are afraid that people will judge us for striving toward the way we want—a good marathon for yourself: work -life balance. But if they were actually asking for that for themselves, they would understand. If they are not, their perceptions of you shouldn’t even factor in.

Final thoughts

Hollis defined confidence as “the belief that you can count on yourself,” (149). It is produced by how you look, how you act and what you surround yourself with. The best ways that you manage your life from not self-defeating to a good priority list each day to using every free second towards your dreams will ultimately produce your final ability to leave a positive impact on the places, faces and spaces that you fill—and yes, especially my ladies, please fill them. There’s more than enough room.

I think that the act of reading a self-help book is a willingness to seek out perspectives that are different from your own and that you don’t necessarily take at face value. There is no one habit for a successful life, but awareness of things that you previously ignored are coordinates that will help you navigate life with more options. Combining those options in ways depending on the problem should help you feel armed and in command of your own decisions and build the resiliency to let yourself fail in the ventures toward achieving what you really want.