Tag Archives: self worth

How Being Direct Helps Women In Business

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While I realize it might be interpreted as “tacky” to write about something other than Hurricane Sandy, the notion of “nice” has been top of mind for me lately. I think this is really important to address because I see the way this urge to be liked hurts women in their careers–and it’s an emergency situation.

I see women put others ahead of themselves–all the time. I see women who are happy to let other people waste their their time. They undercharge. They let guys (they don’t even like) take advantage of them. They do things for free. And throughout all of this they want to look pretty (to improve their likeability).

I want to help women move forward in their lives. To move forward you have to get clear on your path. You have to decide to put your own needs at the forefront of your life.

Long after I left California I learned I didn’t have to be overly nice to people. You couldn’t blame me for being overly nice. I was born in California where sunshine is a key aspect to an attractive female personality. The point I changed was the moment I started to really believe in myself.

I learned to be direct with people. I learned that being direct and clear is favorable to being vague and wordy. It’s better for everyone.

Life’s toughness also toughened me up. As an adult I had more to worry about than if people liked me or not. I worried about paying my rent and moving up in my career. With more responsibility at work I didn’t have the time to spend framing conversations (saying please, sorry, um, like and I’m SO sorry). I realized being fake nice to people I didn’t want to talk to was not equivalent of being a good person. 

So how is a woman to act? How can she be polite but not so overly polite as to attract the wrong attention? When being liked is so important in the corporate world, how can she maintain her self respect while being chosen for key opportunities?

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Once I worked for a French entrepreneur. He told me women in America smile all the time. He told me in Paris if a girl smiles at you that means she wants to sleep with you. In America if you are a woman you have been told multiple times in your life to smile.

Have you had an experience where being overly nice got you into trouble?

You don’t need to be a character from the Devil Wears Prada to succeed in business and in life. All I’m asking is that as a society let’s decide to cut the nonsense. Let’s use our common sense when we interact with people. Let’s stop being fake.

I wonder why don’t men go to the extent to please as women do. What do you think?

Join Project Enough.

From Self-Loathing To Self Loving: 6 Steps to Body Freedom

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That’s it, I’m going on a diet.

I have experienced periods where I became fed up. I saw a picture or a number on the scale or a family member said something hurtful about my body. Always a sensitive human I cried, then just felt sad and angry for a few days. I never liked being a body first, and a human second. I never liked the once over I felt I got from people before listening to what I had to say. I never appreciated what I felt was other women’s hungry eyes, sizing me up.

At a certain point between the ages of 21and 25 learned I couldn’t trust myself around “real food.” This ultimately led to chaos around food. But of course it was never about the food, and it rarely is.

Periods of eating only pickles, rice crackers, turkey, apples and cottage cheese–sparingly, followed by binges of peanut butter, cereal, chocolate and cheese. I can remember being in college and wanting so badly to be thin (a trend throughout my twenties).

In college I would get so stressed out by what felt like an impossible load of work I didn’t even know how to start. Instead of starting on my paper I would go load up on chocolate peanut butter trail mix. I felt scared and rather than ask for help I ate my anxiety in the form of organic bulk items.

During college food was a comfort for me. What I was really going through was–wow this experience is not preparing me for real life, and I’m scared.

I spent a lot of time in coffee shops avoiding focused study efforts. My favorite was going to the local coffee shop and buying a latte and a vegan peanut butter chocolate cookie (vegan didn’t mean healthy). Saturday mornings included lattes and luxurious banana bread.

Rather than say, I hate college, or I’ve never thought about how I will support myself with a real job, or I have some unresolved pain I can’t name, I would just eat.

After college I went as far away from California as I could. I moved to NYC.

I went to weight watchers for about a year keeping a diary of all my food and exercise. Rather than admit I wasn’t sure what I would do with my future, or how to manage my finances, or how to get attention from guys who were interested only in the hoards of model-looking women, I obsessed over getting thin. Being thin was the key to the magic land.

I was under a spell of keep yourself thin and pretty and a man will come save you.

Getting Real With Yourself.

Today I hate the word diet. I don’t believe in deprivation. I recognize that diets don’t work. Severe deprivation brings binges and out of control eating. I believe in awareness. It’s interesting being someone who critiques society–a culture critic, but also being part of that system. I’ve learned that I will never get over the women’s issues that I write about, however being self-aware has improved my quality of life by leaps and bounds. It has helped my career, my relationship, my opportunities and my sense of freedom.

The last ten years I have gone from an insecure and anxious young woman who wanted to crawl out of her skin to a woman who can sit with her emotions, and love herself despite her flaws.

Here are my six pieces of advice around positive self-talk.

1. I don’t pretend like life is perfect all the time. It is said that often when women get fat, they are wearing a layer of anger they won’t allow themselves to feel. Part of this is because it’s socially unacceptable to be an angry woman. Because I have learned how to take care of the little girl that lives within me–who at one point felt frightened or scared, I find myself getting less angry. I can let stuff go. And we are now doing fine.
2. I’m aware of other people’s projections. I don’t force myself to do things because other people feel I should be doing them. I draw boundaries, and have learned to draw the line between what other people project on to me. I have hurt people’s feelings before but I’m not responsible for how other people feel and cannot control them.
3. I don’t call myself a fat-ass. If I hear something negative bubbling up in my brain I remind myself that not all my thoughts represent me–a lot of it is the crap in the media or other people’s issues I have absorbed.
4. I eat food that I like. If I want something cold, I find something cold. If I want something creamy, I eat something creamy. If I want chocolate, I take some. I don’t hide food from myself, and sometimes I just keep the goodies around because I feel good knowing they’re there, even if I never touch them. I make an effort to identify the flavors and textures of what I’m eating.
5. What am I really hungry for? When I open the fridge and if what I’m hungry for is nowhere to be found, I go sit with my feelings by writing them down or meditate or do another calming activity.
6. Family matters. Human beings are neurotic. I cannot emphasize boundaries enough. There are studies that show girls who have complicated relationships with their mothers are more prone to have eating disorders. The more you know yourself the better you will be able to create boundaries for yourself and your friends, family and coworkers.

How to Deal With Family and Boundaries

Regarding family, sometimes parents can project their own insecurities onto their children. It is very hard at times to keep a good relationship with parents when they make comments about your weight. If this happens and you haven’t vocalized the boundary with them I would encourage you to do so. You can take them aside and in a calm and level-headed tone tell them you don’t appreciate when they make comments about your weight. If that doesn’t work the great thing about growing up is you can create distance if you need to. During the growth/ healing process it can be very helpful to take a back seat role in your parents lives. You need to rebuild your relationship with your body-and this has to be done alone. In order to grow at times you need to isolate yourself from the people who trigger you.

It’s about the small things you do day to day that contribute to an overall better life. That includes boundaries with the people you love.

Toxic relationships with family can drag us down, but additionally we drag ourselves down with an attitude of “I’ll start my life when I’m thinner.”

Too many women live life in the waiting room.

“I’ll go for that opportunity when I lose ten pounds. I’ll call that guy I like when I finally see that one number on the scale. I’m not going to swim in the ocean until I tone up my butt or my thighs…when my belly looks as flat as the diving board.”

If you are female in America it’s likely you have at least one thing you’d like to change about your body.

When the whole world is telling you to look like Gwenyth Paltrow, and you don’t look like Gwenyth Paltrow, you can easily become a self-loather.

According to a survey 97% of women have nasty things to say about their own bodies.

And if you ask me I believe the media is a major part of the problem.

Women who are not a size zero rarely make it onto the big screens. We don’t see them on commercials, we don’t see them in store windows, we don’t see them on ecommerce websites. As far as mainstream media and advertising, women with thighs don’t exist.
If I were an alien, and I landed on planet earth and only had access to media and advertising, I would assume all women looked like June Cleaver from Leave It To Beaver. June Cleaver after she gained access to phen-phen.

What’s interesting is if you google “diet pills” you will find 42,000,000 results and a slew of advertisements for a myriad of diet pill options.

If you google “women self esteem” you hit 44,200,000 results and no advertisements. So apparently it’s not lucrative to build women’s self esteem, because 51% of the U.S. population wouldn’t benefit from feeling better about themselves…right?

You’re Telling Me Those Earthlings Created An Entire Industry Based On The Fact They Don’t Know How to Feed and Nourish Themselves?

We have created an industry that is so insane that none of us can actually see how ridiculous it is. I’m talking about the diet industry.

We have complicated the most basic of human needs. While we’re not thriving, the diet industry is. The 50 billion dollar diet industry was built on a fabricated truth that we can’t trust our own bodies. If we are given access to whole, real, food we will lose control and blimp up. So now we need to eat food that is laced with chemicals that trick our body. That’s right, we need to trick our own body.

Enough is Enough

There is a point that we, as a community of women must stop and put our glasses on so we can see clearly. It’s time to be loving and gentle with ourselves now, not when we look like Gwenyth. Jump in the ocean now, not tomorrow.

You will feel amazing once you let go because…

you don’t need it.

I would love to know your own perceptions about the diet industry, and how you feel about your own body journey. Please feel free to share in the comments section below.

Five Tips For Women On Boosting Your Confidence

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I am a fan of the type of confidence that is humble; a quiet strength that needs no announcement.

Confidence comes from following a path in step with your passion. Confidence comes from true belief in oneself and one’s work. You know what you are building is powerful–you continue down that path even in the face of skepticism.

Whether you are a female entrepreneur or working your way up the corporate ladder in your job, confidence is essential to moving forward.

Confidence is a funny thing. Some of the most seemingly confident people are actually quite insecure, but have become very good at managing their own fears. While physically looking the part can help, true confidence comes from the inside. It comes from your core. And unshakable confidence is something developed over time (for most of us).

Below are five tips that will help you boost your confidence and help prepare you for any situation.

Five Results-Proven Tips for Female Confidence Building

1. Whisper sweet nothings to yourself. We talk about empathy in the business world, but what about empathy toward ourSELVES?  I encourage you to talk to yourself the way you talk to your favorite pet. How do you react when your pet falls down? Do you swear at your pet? Probably not. That being said, you should be as gentle with yourself as you are with your pet. Or think about how you would talk to a best friend if she were to fall down. It is said that what you believe will eventually come true. If you believe you aren’t enough you won’t go as far. This is true because if you think you aren’t enough you won’t push yourself as far as you would if you thought you could achieve anything. You won’t go for that opportunity, job or guy you think you really deserve. It starts with how you talk to yourself. I want to hear sweet nothings ladies! I want to hear self love from the roof tops!

2. Prepare, prepare, prepare. Confidence comes from preparation. Albert Einstein once said, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Let’s use surfing as an example. If you’ve never surfed before, and you take your board out and you can’t stand up–of course your confidence will take a hit. But if you practice on the beach for a while before you go out there, and study up with some other surfers, your confidence levels will improve. You know you’ve got some tools in your surfer belt to be successful. Get it? Make it easier on yourself by heading out to the waves with the right amount of preparation.

3. Move. I honestly don’t know where I would be without the ability to sweat. Probably on a curb somewhere. Every single day I wake up and go move my body. It gets my chemicals flowing and puts me in a positive place. While I try and abstain from talking about exercise on Facebook, the truth is it’s a really important part of my day. I run with my dog Athena constantly. Running is a great way to get rid of toxic energy. Additionally you get some of the best ideas when you’re running. Take your dog if you can. If you hate to run (like my boyfriend does) I don’t care if it’s aerobics, jumping on your bed, or kung-fu–get out of bed and get moving. You will notice how much better you feel about yourself.

4. Follow your passion. When you focus on the aspect of your job that you love you’re enthusiasm will clearly shine through. If you don’t love anything about your job, you should probably quit. Life is too short. When you talk about why you love what you do, and why it’s personally meaningful, people around you start to light up too. That said even if taking out the trash is your favorite part of your job, find one thing that lights you up and talk about it. People are attracted to other people who are lit up!

5. Everything you do, do your best. Do you know people who try hard at everything they do? Some people call this a Type A personality or a perfectionist. I have been called a Type A before, although in no way do I see myself as that. I just can’t stomach the idea of not trying. Trust me there are days when I feel that way and I have to talk myself into trying (harder). We all hate to lose, and winning comes from truly applying your focus to everything you do. You’ve got one chance. Make it count!

What can you add to this list? What helps make you feel confident? Please feel free to comment below and share with me.

Don’t Throw In The Towel, Wrap Your Hair In It

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We all have moments where we feel like throwing in the towel. And during these moments–when we’re feeling vulnerable–it’s easy to conjure up images of what women should do when they’re feeling down-and-out. Three things for me come to mind: chocolate, alcohol and shopping.

The truth about all these short term answers….

Drinking is a depressant–it makes you feel up and then shoots you straight down. What goes up must come down. And shopping when you’re upset can lead to impulse buys and unfortunately for many women in America–credit card debt. All of these things provide short highs and eventually long lows. They simply don’t do what we’re told they should do–make us feel lovely and amazing.

So much of what we’re taught is the answer by the media and advertising is in fact the opposite of the answer. These ephemeral activities don’t leave us emotionally nourished, refreshed or invigorated.

A private moment with a quarter pounder with cheese, a dove chocolate or a tall glass of midori sour doesn’t give us internal nourishment. Real long-term success comes from taking care of our spirits. That includes nourishing our bodies with nutritional food and drink. Additionally financial stability is empowering. Rather than shop save money and invest wisely in your future. So I’m here to set the story straight on how to get yourself out of a rut. I beg you don’t throw in the towel, just take better care of yourSELF.

Kim K. having a great time at a party–probably after a long stressful week at work.
Am I the only San Francisco driver to see this billboard?

I’m not here to berate you about what you eat and drink. I’m here to teach you some simple tools during your dark moment that help you to feel enough. Remember, you’re enough!

Here are six tips you can use for when you’re having a “moment.”

1. Having a tough moment at work? Step outside and take ten deep breaths. Work isn’t the best venue for self-expression. It’s not a good idea to let your boss and your coworkers see you having a bad day (but we’re all human and we all have them). At the same time keeping your feelings at bay for too long will distract you from your work. Let yourself feel what you’re feeling in a safe space. Go outside for a walk, even sneak away to the women’s restroom for a three minute mediation. I don’t care where you can find three minutes of solitude–go find it. Your day depends on it. If you can sneak in a work-out, even better. I work out every day to put myself in a place of gratitude. We were meant to breathe deeply, move and emote. Exercise gets your breathing.

2. Don’t dive into your career stress, take a bath. The funny thing about advertising is we are often taught that when things get stressful, we should reach for a drink. We are taught that a private moment with a chocolate bar is that one panacea that will make us feel strong, competent and happy. The truth is food and alcohol are not the first things women should grab when life gets stressful. A bath can be a wonderful activity that can be nourishing, relaxing and rejuvinating. If you’re feeling like diving into your cabinet to down a box of Madeline cookies, a warm bath (with salts too) will nourish you (and there’s no guilt). Hot baths not only soothe your mind but your muscles too. Hot baths soothe the lungs, heart, stomach and endocrine system by stimulating nerve reflexes on the spinal chord.

3. Allow yourself to feel and process. Women need time to reflect on their lives, their careers and their relationships. There is nothing wrong with letting out a good cry if you need it. Crying helps us release. Crying balances our chemicals. Journaling can also be a great way to stay on top of your moods. By writing down how you feel, you take a load off–even if it’s a note on your iphone or your ipad. Jotting your emotions down can feel amazing.

4. Get a coach or therapist. All too often women don’t have boundaries in their lives. Families and friends cannot always help us in the way that we need. For many millennial women, our moms end up taking on the role of BFF–but at a certain point as women we need to find our own safe space to talk. When women don’t have boundaries in their lives–especially with private information–problems start to happen. By having an objective person like a coach (or even a therapist) you are better able to keep boundaries with your family, your friends and your coworkers. A coach can help you unpack your dreams and goals, and provide a step by step process on how to get there. Encouragement and support is provided along the way. Coaching is not therapy, and therapy is not coaching–however in both venues a woman is provided a private and safe space to vent. All women need a safe space to vent without concern for boundaries. Keep in mind referrals often provide the best coaches and therapists.

5. Write down what you feel proud about. Anything can look like a failure in the middle. Many successful and high achieving women are very hard on themselves. By giving yourself a pat on the back and putting on paper what you’ve accomplished you will have a different perception of where you are. Women have around 60,000 thoughts a day. Can you imagine if even 1/10 of these thoughts were “you’re lovely and amazing and you can do anything”? That’s not the case for too many women. For many women turning the majority of thoughts from a place of fear to a place of yes can be difficult.When you feel good about where you are, your next move will be a positive one. We need more persistent, calm, confident women out there so we start to see the numbers change at the top. Look at all that you’ve accomplished. Write it down. Then keep going!

6. Catch a lack of email etiquette? Back away from the computer.  Ahhh technology. You have made it so easy for us to send quick messages to one another anywhere in the world. But perhaps this is a blessing and a curse. Most people haven’t studied email etiquette, and most people just aren’t very aware of how they come across in an email. How can I emphasize this enough….Get a rude email? Someone offend you by being brief, demanding and demoralizing? Turn off your email. Get out of there. Take a few hours to go away from the computer. Learn to not respond (or postpone responding) to rude messages. Just because someone sends you an email doesn’t mean you need to respond right away. The email offender probably was never taught how to practice email etiquette. This is not about you, it’s about them. This is probably how they talk to themselves–rude, abrupt etc. Be the standard by practicing email etiquette.

Remember, don’t throw in the towel. Take a bath and wrap your hair in it!

Are you in the Bay Area? Join me for a memorable workshop August 11th to “Empower You.”

Summer of Gratitude

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Most mornings I wake up, take Athena the dog out, and attempt to move my wild mind from a place of sleepy yawns and achy muscles to a place of gratitude, sunshine and spiritual wealth. It takes a few minutes but I eventually get there. I notice the better I take care of myself through the prior day–the less chemicals, wine, and processed food I have, the easier it is to wake up in a good space. That’s not true for everyone, but it’s true for me. I has taken me years to understand that.

Here are some ideas around gratitude that have been top of mind for me lately.

Summer of Gratitude:

Don’t hope more than you work. Many people complain about the life they want without stepping in a proactive direction. But one has to ask, is that what they really want? If this was what a person truly wanted, they wouldn’t have time to talk about hopes and dreams, because they’d be busy doing it. If this is you, and you dream of one day having a certain life, job, boyfriend (or girlfriend), look, knowledge, language….there are ten million ways to go about achieving that. Get to work on finding a way. Don’t waste one more moment sitting around complaining. If you think you deserve certain opportunities, you will go for them and you will do your absolute best. If you think of yourself as someone who delivers great work, you will deliver great work. If you think you aren’t good enough you will submit unfinished projects. Capeesh [insert Italian tough love accent here]?

Body-Talk. We forget why our bodies are here. These vertical vessels allow our spirits to move around this earth experiencing the world. I’m not sure where along the spectrum we lost sight of what functions are bodies serve, but we’ve really forgotten the physicality of our bodies. We are too concerned with fitting into a fabricated beauty ideal that frankly doesn’t fit most of the human population. For those of you like me who have gone through struggles, bad days and shame around body talk it’s not always easy to step into a light airy dress of gratitude. We wake up, step on the scale and give ourselves applause or a mental lashing depending on what we see. As Geneen Roth says, shaming yourself will not help you lose weight. Wake up and say your gratitudes for the vessel that allows you to experience this life. Give special love and attention to the very things you see as your flaws. Have you ever seen someone who doesn’t look stereotypically model-ish but is having a damn good time anyway? They glow! It’s not about a number on the scale people!

Count Your Beans. I recently watched a video with Marie Forleo and Kris Carr. Kris Carr talks about how she started her own business and mentions that she spent a good amount of time “counting her beans” before she started her business (Crazy, Sexy, Life). That means SAVING buckets of money. On a related note, yesterday I had coffee with a new friend who is a finance consultant. We were talking about women and money. She felt that a lot of women just don’t want to look. She said the energy around money is unfavorable for many women. She believes many women have a feeling of scarcity around money. For anyone that wants to get their finances in order–they need to respect and appreciate what they have. They need to use tools to look at the numbers and understand what they mean. We all need to know where our money goes if we want to create more of it.

Ok friends, it’s the weekend. Take time AWAY from the computer. Reflect on your week on a hike, outside or away from anything you have to turn on or turn off. Go be with yourself and enjoy.


photo via Henkaa

Hairapy Doesn’t Work

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When I was 24 I remember walking home late one night from Manhattan to Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I had just taken the L train back to Williamsburg and I was walking by a dive bar when a guy stumbled out of it.

He said, “You’re not pretty, but…..that’s ok.”

I remember walking home really annoyed that I had just been emotionally bombed. I didn’t even realize I was in a minefield. I was upset he had planted something so hurtful in my head that I would have a hell of a time getting rid of.

It was a blatant reminder to me that living in New York, even in Brooklyn I felt there was no way to escape the pressure to be thin, well-dressed and pretty.

You can feel it when you walk into a room. And I walked into many rooms where I was heavier than most of the women without designer clothes, with the wrong make-up, the wrong hair, and the wrong confidence. Or so I felt at the time.

The Hamptons

I remember being in the Hamptons one summer. I was very out of my element.

It was a group of mostly athletic frat guys from Long Island. These Italian guys were generally attractive, muscular and loud. When and if they were interested in conversing with me I always felt loved–which is an odd thing, as who could even see clearly with the amount of booze inhaled at these summer parties.

So many times in my life I would put on a mask and become someone else. This summer was one of those times.

Growing up I always felt like an outsider–and when I moved to New York I decided to reinvent myself. There was no better place than New City to put the past behind. I was like Madonna out with a new album–it was the early 20-somethings album and I had made a big leap.

Becoming the Blonde California Blake that Never Was

When I actually grew up in Orange County there were no glamorous TV shows about Orange County. But somehow when I left people knew about “the OC.” And being from California in New York was exotic. Everyone wanted to know why I left California. When I lived in California in actuality I was an artsy recluse hanging out with mostly academic type people who were interested in women’s lib. But when I moved to NYC I decided to become glamorous. I remember that was the time I became aware of the fact that I should carry a purse that was pretty. Because before that it never occurred to me.

I can remember walking to get my hair done one day in Brooklyn and thinking “that’s it! I want to be pretty. I’m going blonde.”

And it worked for a while. I felt I was treated differently when I was blonde. I felt sexier. I got special attention for my bleached locks.

I remember the first time I got it done my hair looked frightening, like someone had poured bleach all over my head. I cried and got it redone. I continued to get my hair done every six weeks. The cost was around $175 plus tip–and I did this consistently for five years. That’s more than $10,000 dollars–not including hair cuts.

Too bad changing your hair color doesn’t make you feel at home in your own skin. It doesn’t make you love yourself. That money could have been put to much better use, but you live and you learn.

Today

About one week ago I changed my hair to a darker color. I did this partially so it wouldn’t be high maintenance and as a way to bring back my authentic self.

When I got my hair done I cried. My boyfriend (“life partner”) Jacob asked me “Blake why are you crying?” I told him that I had dyed my hair blonde to be special. I cried for the death of my blonde personae. I cried because it was officially the end of an era for me. I’ve officially grown up.

And sometimes it’s not just hair.

I wish I knew then what I know now. I wish people like Lena Dunham were on TV when I was 24 to show that you can be sexy and be more than a size 0, and you can have brown hair and be appealing.


This girl ran and ran and ran. Literally. When actually the answers were all inside and to really see them you can’t run. You need to sit quiet and still. I don’t look like this picture anymore, and I’m fine with that.

Hair is used as a shield. We hide in our hair. We wear our hair in our face when we don’t want to be heard. We hide our fat in our hair. We can be overweight but if our hair looks perfect we at least feel secure in that.

But when you finally change the channel and decide to love yourself no matter your hair–you can feel amazing about yourself when you walk into a room, no matter who is standing in it.

Drunk dive bar goers, long island frat boys or the girl in the mirror–no matter who is looking back at you, you feel whole.