I had a coffee morning of one of the group I belong to to attend at 9.30 am, and like pretty much everybody going places at that time of the day in Mumbai, I was down my building, flapping my hand at every empty rickshaws, telling them where I wanted to go, and seeing them speed away.
If you live in Mumbai, 9-10am, and around 6-7pm are the two worst time to get an auto, many drivers finish their shits then, and it sadly coincide with all the people commuting between home and office and back.
So, here I was standing with a crowd of people on the go, trying to find a rickshaw that was willing to take me where I needed to be. The competition can be fierce at time, people will move "upstream" to get first pick at whatever comes empty, and as the minutes and the rejections pile up, people get stressed, angry, and even more determined to get to the first free rickshaw.
I'm usually the patient type, and I don't really mind waiting, but yesterday, I really wanted to make it on time, and the sea of hungry for a rick office goers kept growing.
My first instinct was to just retreat, let them get "first pick". Why? Because I started reasoning saying to myself "Those people are going to work, I'm just going to network"
Fortunately, I stopped myself very quickly in that self sabotaging internal tirade. That innocent reasoning, pretty much was the result of me downplaying myself, and giving people with a laptop bag on their shoulders more importance, and more credit for what they did of their day than I was to give myself.
ENOUGH!
After all, I was also going to work, I'm an entrepreneur, artist and am in the process of taking my brand and art off the ground. That networking coffee morning was as much as work as any work. I didn't have a laptop in my bag, but a big box of stickers, a stack of business cards and a notebook.
I was on my way to meet people, some of them friends, some of them people I didn't know, and selling myself and my work.
But here I was, thinking that lady who suddenly crossed the road, frustrated at not getting results on her side, moving "upstream" from me had a more valid reason than me to get first dib in the great morning commute rickshaw war.
That's when instead of standing where I was, thinking of myself as a reject auto scavenger, I made the mental shift of deciding I was as worthy as anybody down my building to get on the move. I straightened myself up, and walked down that street, past the angry/desperate lady, and toward the main road (upstream from all the office going crowd), a few dozen meters later, I flapped my hand, told the driver where I wanted to go, he agreed, and back toward the crowd I left I went.
My networking coffee morning went well, I made some sales, distributed business card, chatted with the friend of a friend about fabric embroidery, talked about fabric printing with another lady, and ended up spending a bit of the afternoon at the home of another lady to get to know her more. All in all, a productive day on the work front, and a pleasantly social one.
But, that morning rickshaw ride stayed on my mind, and as the day, night and this morning passed, I felt prouder and prouder for putting an end to a very self sabotaging behaviour before it became an issue.
It's all in the upbringing people!
A few years ago, I would have let it go to me, I would have believed the internal lie, I would have downplayed myself, my worth and my strength. Why? Because, let's face it that what we women are taught to do from an early age. And guess what? It's still taught to girls nowadays.
Growing up, not only was I told through countless children books and TV shows that girls are princesses waiting for prince charming to choose them. I was also told that good girls sit a certain way, behave a certain way and avoid making a spectacle of themselves.
This meant that being in the spotlight alone was never an option, even girl centric cartoons from the 80's were teaching us that if we are a rockstar we should make way so that all of our less talented, less hardworking girlfriends also get to share our glory.
As a pre-teen and teen, TV series and novels were teaching me that the go-getter and ambitious girl is a bitch that everybody hates. The heroines were always the ones making way for others to share the glory, and that behaviour would inevitably make the hot and cute guy dump the go-getter for the goodie-girl because in the end, that is what every girl strive to be :
Hard working, pretty, but VERY humble to the point of insanity, and at all cost compromising and yielding to clear the path for another if needed.
And that mindset still prevails today, girls do get exposed to fictional characters that are a bit more assertive and have leadership skills, but again, it's all about being a good team player at all cost.
A few years ago, when Ishita was still into watching Disney Channel, two of her favourite cartoons were Sofia the 1st and Miles from Tomorrowland.
Both had their set of merit and values and were nice cartoons, but there is still one episode of Sofia the 1st that really doesn't sit well with me at all :
In one of the stories, Sofia wins a contest that allows her to be the star singer in an even, as a result she gets her picture painted, gets to try lots of outfits, get gifts, and by the time she is free to go see her friends the day before the big show, she face two bitter losers who can't share her excitement and leave.
Sofia wakes up the next morning unable to talk or sing without croaking like a frog, we learn that her amulet cursed her because she did something bad. Only she doesn't know what bad she did in the first place. We proceed through the story, and learn that her being excited about singing solo, having won the contest and getting gifts was what got her in that fix in the first place.
Why? Because she didn't offer to feel bad for her loosing friends, and make sure they felt ok.
The curse is lifted...yup...you guessed it, only after she announce that she wants her two friends to come on stage and share her big moment.
To this date, I still don't know what was wrong with Sofia being excited and sharing with her friends. The show is trying to teach girls that it was a type of bragging, and that Sofia should have felt sorry for her friends not to win in the first place. It's the same old "You can't be a rockstar unless you share the spotlight with your less talented friends" all over again people!
With Miles from Tomorrowland, the thing that annoyed me mildly, is that the big sister, the brainiac, is also portrayed as frequently nagging and annoying, because clearly, a girl being smart has to still be downplayed as a flaw. She can't be as loveable as the main character because a) the show isn't about her, and b) she is a girl, we wouldn't want her to shine with her brains while her little brother has the whole package.
it doesn't seem like much, but we constantly, in a near subliminal way remind girls that they will never be enough, that they constantly need to binge on very unhealthy amount of humble pie.
Conditioned to settle for second best, we also are told what is work and what is not.
After we grew up to always play it safe and not shine too bright, we enter adulthood with a severe inferiority complex we don't even think we have.
We are also conditioned to think that unless we are 100% perfect (and can prove it) for a job we should not bother applying. Men are far more likely to apply even if they fall short qualification wise and then sell themselves more aggressively during an interviews, because risk taking is a highly praised behaviour trait in boys...from an early age.
The only place where we still more or less fall equal with men, is in what society at large consider work.
I, like many, grew up with the idea that work is something you do for 8+ hour a day, comes with a long commute often, a set amount of paid holidays a year and more often than not, ask you to spend time in an office, in front of a computer, where you crib about how much you hate what you do, grab your pay cheque, crib about the cost of life being too high, and then crib some more about the fact your 10 days holiday to the beach is still 4 months away.
Apparently, if you love your work, have fun doing it, and don't crib about anything there is only three reasons for it :
a) You are not working hard enough and are kidding yourself.
b) You are lying and making everybody look bad with your happy-go-lucky attitude, so you should stop that and get real already (and crib about something...anything about your job)
c) You are a lucky bitch/bastard and we hate you for it.
Raise your hand if you have felt like a a) of b) person
Chances is that the instant you "bragged" about loving your job, whatever that job is, you have either felt guilty about enjoying it too much and felt like an impostor not deserving your position. Or you immediately come with a completely made up reason what you dream job actually suck, simply because you have been conditioned to think that being happy is a flaw in a world of neurotically stressed and grumpy people.
If you've been told to your face that you are a Lucky Bitch or Bastard and you replied by saying "Awww thank you", CONGRATULATIONS! You are living the life and you are awesome. Life is too short to feel you constantly need to level down so that unhappy people feel better about themselves.
Other people's feeling about how you live your own life is none of your business or responsibility
This is a truth I have been working on for myself over several years and still have to work on. The good news, is that in the past 2 years since I really decided to do what I want career wise, I have gotten a lot better about this.
I still have to remind myself regularly that just because I don't lug around a laptop doesn't mean my work is less important.
That just because I work from home and don't do crazy commute doesn't mean I am not working hard.
That because my business meetings include talking with people over coffee with a box of sticker and a phone loaded with Instagram worthy pictures it's not frivolous and useless.
And, that just because I seriously could never work a 9 to 5 routine but safe job in an office it doesn't mean I'm lazy, dumb, or kidding myself.
If people want to think that way, fine! It's their problem, not mine, I'm not responsible for them feeling the way the feel about my life. They chose to feel that way themselves.
If I buy into their thinking, and validating whatever feelings they might have about how I live, I'm essentially slashing my own personal worth in half and I am responsible for the harm discounting myself as second graded person might do to my own health.
Once you realise that, you stop destroying yourself, and you can work on building better foundation for yourself to grow on. I've now come to a point where I really don't like the idea of being my own self-sabotageur anymore.
I became a grown woman who played it safe, displayed the right code of conduct advocated in all my childhood books and cartoons. What it brought, is a Vanilla life and I'm a girl who loves decadent chocolate with marshmallows and sprinkles on top.
I made my first move away from vanilla when I decided to sell and donate all my stuff, give back the key to my studio apartment to move to India in 2003, but it took me a lot more many years to find myself and take a stand against everything I have been raised to believe as true as far as career, life and risks are concerned.
Adulting has so far been a process of starting as my own worst enemy and working toward my own best friend.
