As a woman do you feel invisible? As if your wants and even your needs are just so insignificant that even when you ask for something you’re ignored?
If you do, you are far from being alone.
Nancy D. Solomon, author of “Impact! What Every Woman Needs to Know to Go From Invisible to Invincible” and a veteran life coach, says the reason so many women feel this way is that we have been socialized to not take the spotlight.
“We are taught that others are more important and that it’s selfish for us to take recognition because that means we’re taking it from someone else. This is one reason we’re so good at relationships. We put everyone else’s wants before our needs.”
Think of differences between how a man and a woman at a party behave, she says.
“A man walks in, says he’s hungry and makes himself a plate. A woman comes in, just as hungry, probably more tired and yet, before she feeds herself, she’ll always ask, ‘Can I get anyone anything?'”
Solomon talks about what women can do to change this all too frequent behavior of taking a backseat.
Q. What is the most important change a woman can make to make herself be heard?
A. She needs to be self-accepting and self-appreciating! I’ve made up my own “Solomonisms” – one is “power comes from personal strength.” We need to focus in on what’s right. If I had some fairy dust to sprinkle over our gender I’d use it to teach women to give themselves permission to not be perfect. To focus on what it is you love.
Q. Who do you think is a woman’s best support system and, on the flip side, the one who keeps her down the most?
A. In a perfect situation, the ideal person should be us, to respect ourselves as we respect others. All too often we truly are our own worst enemy. Women need to ask “how do I get out of my own way?”
Q. Do you think it’s possible for a woman to be invincible and not work outside of the home?
A. Absolutely! It depends solely on the woman. If you want to know if I could do that, the answer would be a resounding NO. It would be as if someone had cut off one of my limbs.
However, I had a client who was a vice-president of a major corporation, but what she wanted was to be home with her kids. I helped her see that doing what she wanted made her invincible. She was no longer conflicted. It was a self-made choice.
Q. You speak and write on teaching women how to be all they can be by acknowledging their fears and using them to change their lives. How did you yourself accomplish this and who was your support? Was it one “AHA” moment?
A. It was a series of moments for me. And we must remember something very important: Women are either invisible or invincible all the time.
I was getting paid a lot of money and living the high life, but it wasn’t what I wanted. It was someone else’s existence. I went back to school and re-trained to get my master’s in psychology. It was what I had always wanted to be.
I realized I had to do it for me when I found myself thinking, “How much will they have to pay me to forget how much I hate my life?”
I was 39½ when I earned my degree. Remember, it takes more energy to stand still and stay where you are than to move and change.
Q. Going back to the analogy of how men and women act at a party, why do we all still work so hard and feel we don’t deserve to do for ourselves the way a man does?
A. Because we’ve been programmed to value the external. An example of this is akin to the woman who will spend $300 on a pair of shoes, because others can see them. But feels there is no way she can justify spending that same amount on a life coaching session. No one sees it, so how does she justify doing it? Men are more direct and goal orientated.
Women have been programmed to multitask – and even though we get through a lot of what we perceive needs to be done, we harm ourselves because we can’t focus on what it is we want and need. We’re too busy doing for others.
Q. How do we start to change?
A. Ask “What do I want?” The majority of women will say what they think you want to hear and adapt to that. They need to stop and think what the real answer is.
Next they have to replace the word “BUT” with “AND” in their conversations. “But” is nothing more than an excuse. Women have to get over being afraid to focus on themselves and mean it.
Q. After reading your book and using some of the lessons and ideas, I recognized some of that fear we’ve been talking about and realized that, indeed, it has been holding me back. What do you suggest?
A. Here’s one of my Solomonisms on that: Perhaps you are uncomfortable not because your vision is too big, but that you’re standing in a place that is too small.
You need to set up a plan, just like you would to decorate your home. Be strategic. Where are you now, where do you need to go? The more your heart reacts to what you think you want, the more you love the thought of doing it.
Setting up my plan to write this book took way more time than the actual writing of it. I made up my course of action and they I put it into play.
Q. Anything you’d like to finish up by telling women?
A. Get your own “aha” moment and GO FIND YOUR LIFE.
