“Women are the largest untapped reservoir of talent in the world.” -Hillary Clinton
Picture Jane: Flawless ensemble, resumé stacked with high-ranking schools and dynamic summer internships, friends galore, and a social calendar filled to the brim. She’s done things: published papers, won awards for excellence, and lived in distant lands. From the outside, she has all the trappings of success: she seems unstoppable. Yet, if she feels trapped by expectations to achieve all of this, is she really unstoppable?
Too many women feel blocked and struggle to create aliveness due to our own perceptions of “I’m useless” or “I’m not enough.” When we think we’re not enough, we don’t deserve or aren’t capable of happiness, the result is insidious self-hate. Thoughts of being overwhelmed, comparison, and self-doubt compromise our joy and ability to help others.
Every story, yours and mine, begins inside a story that’s been written by others. Long before we take our first breath, there’s a plot well under way with characters and a setting that we do not choose. The beliefs and stories we use to operate in the world emerge from the cultural groups we inhabit. Cultural norms can be our prison when we feel they are limiting our potential; yet, these stories can be freeing if they’re aligned with what we want to be. The goal is to stop perpetuating the disempowering stories of the way we “should” be, and rather, embrace the brilliance that we are already given.
This is why the goal is not about making women free. Women are already free. It's about shifting the way we and the world perceive that freedom. We may have the freedom to surf the web, but the shackles of feeling trapped by expectations may be just as limiting as access to a computer. The impact of such limitation is millions of women feeling stuck, useless, and hopeless for change.
The Glow Effect is a tribe of heart-centered, ambitious #glowgetters taking a stand for women to be unstoppable by looking at our stories and perceived limitations first. We’re not fighting for women to leave the kitchen or burn our bras. We’re augmenting our potential and we’re doing it in three ways: 1) healing and empowering ourselves through The Clarity & Purpose Program, 2) connecting to our community through our #IAMempowHER workshop series, and 3) empowering others through The Glow Exchange.
by Saren Stiegel