The Wonder Women Blog
Stories of Everyday Superheroes
I have a problem. I see Wonder Women everywhere I turn. Women who power the economy. Women who keep their families afloat. Women who burn themselves out fulfilling someone else’s mission. They put themselves last… and we can’t afford that anymore.
We need women leadership now more than ever, in our families, in our communities, in our boardrooms, and in politics. We can’t afford working women to put their needs last. We all suffer.
Real talk: men find lots of ways to escape. It’s kind of our superpower.
Physically, we go out. We hunt. We play golf. We hang at work. Emotionally, we check out. We game. We get lost in work. We smoke. We drink.
Seriously, now that you have had some time to adjust to the new reality of working from home, how ARE you doing? I really want to know.
Read MoreA woman who attended the Let it GO! Intro Talk this week asked why super.BUILD serves early-career female-identifying professionals. I asked her where the next Elizabeth Warren, the next Lynn Zeitlin, will come from.
super.BUILD is a space for women to learn from each other. It is a place to connect. We need more incubators for leaders and mentors. With super.BUILD, I am creating that community.
Read MoreIn this new age based on connections, your wealth will depend on the quality (not quantity) of relationships you can build and maintain. If you are like Victoria, surrounded by friends-on-paper, where can you start building real bonds with real humans?
Where can you find people who actually “see” you?
Read MoreIf you have questions about super.BUILD, this is the beginning of our “library.”
If you don’t find the answer here, I can GUARANTEE other people are probably wondering the same thing.
You are not alone. Just ask.
Read MoreYesterday, she woke with so much optimism. Why was she suddenly in the opposite mood, disheartened and stressed? She couldn’t shake the fear from the dream.
Janae forced herself to climb out of bed. It was hard to build her morning routine at first. When Janae learned about Positive Psychology at super.BUILD, she learned how to leverage her keystone habit (meditating) to build a routine that allowed her to flex her superpower of creativity.
Read MoreSide effects for people who apply Positive Psychology research include an enhanced sense of mindfulness, strengthening of your focusing muscle, and (lab-proven) improved health outcomes. Users may also experience a greater level of empathy with those they love, or even just like.
Read More“Dad, you do that know that books are dead, right?“ warned one of our kids, to whom I would later dedicate my 2015 book “Laugh More, Yell Less: A guide to raising kick-ass kids.“
And the funny thing is that they were the rare kind of kid that would actually sit down and read. In fact, they would regularly do something that I struggle to do: finish a book.
Read MoreOK, let’s see. Who is in here, fighting for your attention? There's that jumble of emotional reactions that always seem to get tangled up in the corner, waiting for you to express your feelings. We also have your to-do list vibrating down here, bubbling up all these DO-IT-NOW! tasks that were “important” last week. Now they are overdue and starting to stink up the place.
Read MoreWhen you take your full, abundant potential and limit it to one-and-a-half senses (vision and sometimes hearing), you leave out the best parts of yourself. You play the game that is dictated by technology and advertising executives. To build the support team that will help us make better decisions, we need to employ ALL of our senses. Think about the sense of awe you get when you watch a baby learn how to master something new.
Read MoreIn my experience, smart decisions require more than IQ. Professionals with higher Emotional Intelligence (EQ) tend to make decisions with more humanity and empathy. Why does EQ matter in making decisions? Because connections and relationships are more valuable in our new economy than knowledge or status. Your EQ will help you understand what others are doing and thinking and feeling. In the Connection Economy, your future wealth will depend on your EQ.
Read MoreEveryone starts out a little stiff and thoughtful. Who am I going to throw this to? Then we speed up. That’s when we get out of our heads. That’s when the laughter starts…
It shouldn’t feel so foreign to make eye contact but we don’t have real conversations without technology. No one feels heard. And without a place to open up, we don’t bother to speak up. So no one is talking and no one is listening.
Read MoreHere I sit after a few weeks of feeling paralyzed, recalling the ups and downs from my School for Superheroes story. Since 2015, there have been more successes and knock-downs.
I can see the difference in myself from then to now. I have been able to expand my stamina to be vulnerable and to take risks. My resilience has grown stronger to taking hits like these.
Most importantly, I have learned what to do when I get stuck.
Read MoreI sweep in on a wave of adrenaline, like a 2nd grader who strides over and punches a bully in the nose. I felt bold. The plan looked great on paper. Yay me! But once the punch was thrown... , my nervous system did what nervous systems have done for millennia: beyond my control, I froze.
Not fight. Not flee. FROZE.
Read MoreI knew I was in trouble. Alarm bells were firing off in my head. “Now, without saying anything, look in your partner’s eyes. When I start the music, I want you to keep eye contact and dance toward each other in slow motion.” Locking eyes with my partner Tonya Cornelisse for two straight minutes, being vulnerable AND on a stage, snapped me back to the least confident version of myself. Fighting to keep eye contact, I turned into the shy 10-year-old I used to be.
Read MoreLife lasts longer than a 90 day sprint. In real life, despite our best efforts, we gain all the weight back. It makes you wonder why you bother at all. In fact, relying on just your willpower is worse than doing nothing because each failure chips away at your confidence. Why go to all the effort to create a new life that you hate?
Read MoreI brush myself off and get back up again, only to make the same mistake from high school, but in the opposite direction! I see that life is longer than a sprint so I take a longer view. I decide, “Life isn’t a sprint. It’s really a marathon!” Spreading my willpower over 90 days instead of 30, I commit the same mental error, same result.
Read MoreIt doesn’t matter how confident I feel on the outside. There is always an internal voice, working overtime to steer me away from things that might cause me harm. And apparently that inner guide sometimes takes me back to middle school! Is he really just trying to keep me safe?…or is he just traumatized by past crises?
Read MoreUntil you solve it, every challenge looks like a locked door with no handle. Your bad day can be a good story that helps someone else. We don’t give ourselves enough credit for our hard-earned experience. We certainly don’t recognize it as Wisdom.
Read MoreOne day, your daughter, or niece, may want to run for president. Will she be able to turn to a network that supports her to reach her goal to get elected? A team of women who have been there and know how to guide her? What do we need to start building now to support her run in 2040?
Read MoreOver the last six years, each step I took outside of my comfort zone felt like trying to cross a room with no light to guide me. My first blog post, walking into my first improv class, signing a lease for my own office. Each step felt like inching out into the darkness with caution, waiting to bang my head against something I can’t anticipate.
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