What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger
As a young girl I was scared of failure. Scared of getting bad grades, scared of getting scolded by a teacher, scared of not looking pretty, scared of not having friends and scared of not getting into my dream school. All those fears took away from the joy of just being a little girl! Fortunately, most of those fears were unfounded and as I look back I wish I took myself a little less seriously and enjoyed the process more.
But, if you look deeper, many girls live under those fears in the pursuit of perfection that the society prescribes for us. We need to play the role of a perfect daughter, a perfect student, a perfect niece, a perfect sister, a perfect wife and a perfect mother. It’s an impossible goal that puts a lot of pressure on the young girls. This is even more amplified in the social media age that our daughters are growing up in.
For many girls the insecurities carry well into their adulthood. The pressure of being perfect continues and they keep failing to achieve the high standards set by the society.
Many women stop trying in their professional and personal lives since the bar is set too high for them and they are almost setting themselves up for failure. They miss out on learning from those failures. As I look back on some failed attempts in my life, I realize those were the most enriching experiences of my life that I draw my strength from.
What can we do better for the next generation of girls? How do we make sure that they don’t get trapped in these insecurities? How do we make them more resilient to failure? The biggest lesson we need to share with young girls is to not be SCARED of failure! It’s ok to not succeed at everything they do and still keep dreaming BIG and never give up!
This was one of the lessons I taught my own daughter who competed for the state title of Miss Teen USA four times and finally achieved her dream in 2020!
On this women’s day I want all the young girls to know that no one is perfect in this world and it’s perfectly fine to wear your failures as a badge of honor. Always remember — ”What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and wiser”!
Happy Women’s Day! #IWD2020
