Confidence and action – those seem to be the keywords of the modern age. While reflection before action might be, unfortunately, becoming passe, the current reality is that you have to be able to stand up in a room to be heard.
I read an article called The Confidence Gap from The Atlantic and have been thinking a lot recently about how the vicious circle of less confidence leading to less credibility and thus back to less confidence disadvantages women.
The article summarizes many new interesting research projects on this topic. While women and men generally have the same objective abilities (measured in tests of knowledge etc), men consistently overestimate their skills while women tend to the opposite. In my opinion, this is definitely an outcome of ‘nurture’ instead of ‘nature’.
This difference in self-estimated ability leads to big gaps in the opportunities the two genders strive for. The statistic that I keep pondering is that, relating to applying to jobs, women would apply to jobs when they know they fulfill 100% of the requirements. Men apply when they satisfy 60%.
In our world, nothing can be taken for granted. If you don’t reach out to opportunities, they will never come to you.
I felt this deeply recently because of two incidents.
I had a close friend who has, by various circumstances, now a gap year post university graduation. I suggested she can look into some opportunities here and offered to connect her to some friends who might be able to help. Her reply was that her grades were probably not good enough for the job I was suggesting.
!
I was so surprised I got mad. I didn’t even know that could be an answer to someone offering an introduction. I can’t help but attribute it to how she was brought up as a girl – always wanting to be nice, not wanting to trouble anybody, and not believing in her own abilities.
The second incident came from a friend who is trying to start up a new company. She’s smart, connected, extremely capable, and generally a wonderful human being. Except she doubts her ability all the time. No amount of pep talk seems to be able to expel these torturous self-inquiry sessions.
These are just a few examples compared to many conversations I have with other women. They especially stand out because I have equally as many opposite conversations with men: men who are not as capable as they think (or at least in my judgement), but believe they can conquer the world.
Frustrating, yet nothing will change until we personally pull up our bootstraps and start re-training our brains to think positively and confidently.
That leads me to thinking about how it is best to embark on this massive scale retraining program. The obvious answer is to treat young girls and boys in a gender-blind society. But for people my age, the best solution I can come up with is to “just act.”
Cliched, perhaps, but I really think we, as women in general, tend to think too much. Cut that pondering into half and just take action. We might fail (as everyone does), but at least we won’t let opportunities just float right by.
An analogy is when I started learning to play pool, I took forever to position my cue stick. I also didn’t get many good shots. One time, my friend said, let’s play 3 second pool. Once you have decided on the move and position your cue stick, you only have 3 seconds to make the shot. Surprise, surprise, I actually netted more balls that night.
The motto shouldn’t be “don’t think, just act.” It should be “think less and act more.”
Yesterday, I had a chance to grab onto a new project and I just jumped right in. Whether it’s a good choice or not, I’m sure I’ll get good experiences out of it. Self-pat on the back. One step at a time (which seems to be my daily motto these days).