When I was a kid, (why do I always seem to be talking about when I was a kid?) I mistakingly thought I was stupid. And my fears made me panic and not do well in school for a time. I know I'm not alone, because as I grew older I started admitting my fears to friends. It turns out that a lot of us have the same fears and challenges that set us back. I'm so thankful for the support of my friends who helped me along the way. I was never stupid, and was able to achieve a lot of scholastic and professional accomplishments despite my youthful lack of confidence.
Girls especially struggle to overcome challenges in school and later in the workplace as adults. We're compared to our male counterparts, and are our own worst enemies at times.
According to a "series of studies in the 1980s, looking at how Bright Girls and boys in the fifth grade handled new, difficult and confusing material. She found that Bright Girls, when given something to learn that was particularly foreign or complex, were quick to give up; the higher the girls' IQ, the more likely they were to throw in the towel. In fact, the straight-A girls showed the most helpless responses. Bright boys, on the other hand, saw the difficult material as a challenge, and found it energizing. They were more likely to redouble their efforts rather than give up."
Further, the article goes on to ask, "how often have you found yourself avoiding challenges and playing it safe, sticking to goals you knew would be easy for you to reach? Are there things you decided long ago that you could never be good at? Skills you believed you would never possess? If the list is a long one, you were probably one of the Bright Girls -- and your belief that you are "stuck" being exactly as you are has done more to determine the course of your life than you probably ever imagined. This would be fine, if your abilities were innate and unchangeable. Only they're not."
Some of you have little girls, and many of the rest of us will have some at some point, I'm sure. Let's do better for them than we did for ourselves.
