The Sisterhood

I recently saw a magazine cover with a photo of priyanka Chopra and a tag line – ‘women for women’. The description said priyanka Chopra is promoting a sisterhood. It was probably in the context of ‘me too’ movement but that made me think and reflect on how much do we actually support/encourage a fellow woman in our families, neighborhood, friend circles and at work.

Take an example, imagine that one of your friends (a woman) shares her story of how she got a promotion and how she is now working with a top notch company at the management level or shares photos of their amazing holidays in an exotic country. Or imagine your mother-in-law cooks something delicious or does a beautiful painting.

What do we feel? Do we feel jealous? Sad that we can’t share something like this ? Annoyed that she is showing off? Judgemental that if someone is successful at work then she must be neglecting her family?As a woman do we give heart felt praise or do we hold up/ downplay it? Or do we just feel happy and inspired? Firstly let me tell you that these are all normal emotions/actions. Any average human being irrespective of gender can feel any of these emotions and can react in this way.

For example consider jealousy and sadness. These are the most basic emotions of all. You start to feel these as a child right when you are a toddler and when you don’t even know what emotions are. Any child feels jealous when they see another child with a toy that they would like to have. As we grow up our mind is conditioned to hide or dismiss these emotions as soon as we feel it. But it doesn’t work all the time. The result is a lose-lose situation. We end up feeling low and we knowingly/unknowingly transfer that feeling to the other person who is sharing his/her success story.

As a child however our feelings are gender/age neutral. It doesn’t matter who is holding a toy we want. As we grow up bias can get built inside us. There are some studies that showed women take a success of opposite gender better than their own gender. ‘Queen bee syndrome’ term has also been coined in few studies.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41165076

Statistically significant or not my personal observation is lot of women can be overcritical/judgemental about other women. And if this is your observation as well then clearly us women are making it more difficult for ourselves to fulfill our aspirations while putting up against the age old gender disparity that we have to live with.

So what should we do about it? How do we deal with these emotions that are in-built in us but are not helping us. My solution to this is – to build self assurance.

Self assurance acts like a shield. It shields you from other person’s negativity and it prevents you from burdening negativity onto others. But building self assurance is a long process.

I hit the rock bottom in my life in the second year of my university. My father passed away after a long battle with illness and we were financially broke. Unfortunately I came across people who judged me and wrote me off. When opinions are narrated few times it feels like facts. It had a deep impact on me at that vulnerable times. It was not easy to break that mental barrier. Thankfully I had a little voice inside me which would question these opinions. I refused to believe these judgements.

However the journey from self pity to self assurance wasn’t an overnight journey. It took me years and I am still working on it. Over these years I understood that we need to feed ourselves the ‘right content’.

So what is the ‘right content’? The right content is anything that reminds you of your journey in your life so far. From where you have started to where you are at present. The successes and the setbacks you have had to overcome e.g. completing education, going through a tough pregnancy, fighting an illness, progressing in a job. But there is an important caveat, while doing this you must not gauge and categorise these in a small or a big success. Such categorisation is not fair as it is always done by comparison with some other person. We do not compare bird’s ability to fly with fish’s ability to swim. So why do we need to compare our success with other person’s who’s life journey may be completely different to ours ? You just need plane recollection of the key milestones in your life. How you achieved what you have achieved? What is it that you dreamt for your life – is it to bring the best out of your family? Is it to enable confident and kind children? Is it to be a CEO of a company or to be entrepenure? Or is it all of it!

What is important is that these goals are yours! Not your friends, not your colleagues. Just yours! So when you focus inwards on your life goals it levels out the field. You realise that everyone is running their own track and everyone has their own goal post. That realisation, in my view is the first sign that the process of building self assurance has started.

When this realisation happens you do not feel obliged to meet the standards set by someone else. You do not feel obliged to take part let alone try to win the race which is not yours. Your focus turns into your life expectations which makes you compete with yourself.

So does it mean we should be complacent and give up our competitive spirit which is also one of the basic nature of being human? Absolutely not! Complacency does not allow us to use our full potential. It restricts us from taking risks and to push our boundaries. If we really want to live to our fullest ability we must push boundaries and we must look up to others, but as a source of motivation and inspiration. Not as a source of sadness or jealousy. If we feel happy for someone’s success then we feel inspired. And when we feel inspired we push our own boundaries. And when we push our our boundaries we get sense of achievement. This way we transfer positive vibes to other people and that completes the whole circle. That is a win-win situation!

So where to start? The next time you hear your friends/acquantances success, give them heart felt praises, kind words and appreciation. Don’t stop at just formalities of saying ‘congratulation’. At the same time think about how can you take inspiration from it in the context of your own race. What can you do better to achieve your own goal post ? When you do it few times, your brain will get into the habit of feeling inspired and feelings like jealousy will stay at the bay.

P.S. – The cover photo is the beautiful sketch drawn by mother Maya Kulkarni and is her copyright!

As always this post applies certain assumptions on a generic level and is based on my personal observation. I do not suggest that ALL women feel jealous with each others success or that men doesn’t feel the same. Like everything there are exceptions to it.