Mistakes Working Women Make (formerly Seven Critical Mistakes Working Women Make)

Iris Benrubi

• Not challenging the images, expectations and role models society gives you!

As I mentioned in the introduction, we are bombarded with messages that tell us how we should live and look, and what we should do and own in order to be happy.  We make a big mistake when we ‘buy’ the message (pun intended) the media sends our way. One of the recent soap commercials shows how we are duped into believing the standards we see on television without challenging what we see. It starts with a close-up of a fairly good-looking woman sitting in a chair. Then the picture begins to be altered digitally and her neck and forehead are lengthened, her cheekbones are made more defined, her eyelids are lifted, her eyes are widened and enlarged, her cheeks are tapered and her hair is improved. Then she walks away. What we are left with is a digitally enhanced, ultimately impossible standard of what we should look like. We are left trying to achieve this, but we can’t.

These messages gave us a set of standards that are at best difficult, if not impossible to fulfill and emulate. We end up feeling frustrated and dissatisfied with ourselves. 

• “Shoulding” all over yourself!

Someone once coined the phrase “stop ‘shoulding’ on yourself.”   It is these “should” that create pressure in our lives and have us feeling guilty about what we do and don’t do. I want you to challenge yourself every time you hear yourself saying “I should _________ (fill in the blank).”   I want you to ask yourself if you are really committed to this ‘should’ or is this some belief that you have taken on from your family, the media or your circle of friends? You can even reframe the thought from a ‘should’ to looking at the bigger picture of whether the action under consideration matches your goal and commitment.   Should you exercise or is this something you want to do because of your commitment to health?

When you learn to challenge your “should,” you will have the awareness that other options exist.  You can either replace them with another activity, choose to not do them or maybe replace the word “should” with “choose to.”   An example of this would be instead of saying “I should make dinner tonight for my family” you can change it to “I choose to make dinner tonight because I am committed to creating a warm nourishing experience for my family.”  Notice the difference in stress level and burden each of those statements creates. Notice how different you feel when you tell yourself you should do something versus when you choose to do it. When you learn to do this naturally, you will experience great relief in the demands and stress life places on you as well as relief from the guilt that you carry with you.

Iris Benrubi is a Business and Life Coach who specializes in working with Women Entrepreneurs.  To contact Iris, please e-mail her at iris(at)simplysuccess(dot)ca or call 905-709-8185.