Start With Yourself: A New Vision for Work & Life by Emma Grede - 9

Emma, aren’t you so grateful for all that you’ve done in your life?” It was early morning, and I was in a TV studio, somewhere, bathed in stage lighting.

Wait, what? I felt a flash of anger as I processed the question, confused for a second by my own irritation.

“I don’t feel grateful,” I responded. In my mind’s eye, I could see my publicist shift uncomfortably just out of frame behind me. “I don’t feel fortunate. I earned my right to be here.”

The anchor smiled uneasily and we moved on, though I didn’t want to. I wanted to ask her if she’d ask a man the same question, but I played nice on TV at the risk of coming across as an ungrateful bitch.

Now, first, I have a gratitude practice like so many of us. I know the science behind gratitude and that it can lower stress and promote feelings of well-being. I practice this, too. I’m grateful for my beautiful and peaceful home. I’m grateful that I have a wonderful husband who keeps me happy and entertained all the time. I’m grateful that my kids aren’t spoiled brats. I’m grateful for many, many things. I make a list and run through it as I brush my teeth in the morning, and I know the list is long because I brush my teeth for the full two minutes that my dentist prescribes.

But I also know how psychologists Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough define it, explaining that gratitude requires two steps: the first, “recognizing that one has obtained a positive outcome” and the second, emphasis mine: “recognizing that there is an external source for this positive outcome. ” 1 There you go.

So, no, I’m not grateful for my success. I’m proud. I did that. I didn’t do it alone, certainly—I chafe when businesspeople are described as “self-made,” as I recognize I’ve been supported by an incredible team and great business partners, including people who have believed in me before I believed in myself—but that doesn’t diminish the reality that I am responsible for the trajectory of my life. I’ve made something beautiful and significant. I am so proud of myself.

There is a tendency among women to ascribe our success, our achievements, our accomplishments to external factors. We speak in the passive voice: This job was given to me because this person made a call on my behalf. This business became successful because this person posted it on TikTok. There might be some truth to those statements—we encounter and impact each other’s lives all the time—but you are not a bystander in your own life. Your success and ability to move forward is not merely a function of lucky happenstance or a grateful mindset or being in the right place at the right time. To be in the right place at the right time, you must put yourself in motion. You must take action. And you must take responsibility for that action.

When we assume the state of hoping for something to happen to us or credit some external party for determining our future, we do a deep disservice to ourselves and other women. When we attribute our success (or lack thereof) to other people or systems or unseen forces, we are disowning our own power, suggesting that we don’t have much agency in creating our own lives or charting our own destinies. In this view, we’re simply the recipient of a good, or bad, hand of cards. When we’re in this mindset, we see ourselves as victims of circumstances. Of course, there are real victims in our world, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about our tendency to blame or credit other people for what happens with our lives. Stop that. Stop playing down your gifts and your efforts. Instead of: My kids really need me, so I shouldn’t take a bigger job, even though it would be a major next step , how about: Yes, my kids need me, but they also need a parent who is fully expressed. Instead of blaming them for holding me back, I’m going to take responsibility for managing my guilt and ambivalence. Or: I got passed over for that promotion because Andy is a show-off and is always in everyone’s face. Instead: I don’t care if people think I’m full of myself. I’m going to do great work, draw attention to it, and ask for a promotion. If they say no, I will figure out my next steps. If you need some inspiration, I love the Snoop Dogg video when he received his Hollywood star. First he thanks the academy and his fans and family. And then he says: “I wanna thank me. I wanna thank me for believing in me. I wanna thank me for doing all this hard work. I wanna thank me for having no days off. I wanna thank me for never quitting. I wanna thank me for always being a giver and trying to give more than I receive. I wanna thank me for trying to do more right than wrong. I wanna thank me for just being me at all times. Snoop Dogg, you’re a bad motherfucker.” 2 Try this little speech for yourself as you brush your teeth!

You can certainly live your life like you’re a passive actor in a larger play, hoping a director offstage gives you a good part with good lines and tells you where to stand so the spotlight is directed on your best side. But I don’t recommend this, and it’s certainly not how I live my life—nor is it how I assess founders and potential hires. I see myself as the creator of my own life, someone who acts directly on the world and both suffers and celebrates the results. While it’s so much easier to blame others when things don’t go our way, I resist this impulse with all my might. I create my own reality—and then I own it.

This is one of the reasons why I chafe at the way that we talk about “empowering women.” This is part of our collective script, I get it, I’m sure I’ve said these words, too. They’re one of those throwaway phrases that sound good on Instagram or a business panel. But as I think about the idea more deeply, it bothers me. It suggests that whomever we are “empowering”—typically women, people of color, or others whom we perceive to be disadvantaged in the cultural hierarchy—don’t have power already, so we need to give them some. We are all very powerful. It may not always feel like it—often, it can feel like you’re swimming upstream—but I would argue that this type of resistance builds strength and flexibility and endurance. It might feel painful at times, but it is definitely a less acknowledged type of power. I am here for that. So, instead of talking about empowering each other, I’d like us to use more specific language: We can stand behind each other in a show of protection, strength, and support; we can put our resources and energy into each other’s work to expand its reach and add fuel to its growth; we can help create a strong foundation—through sharing advice, expanding networks, making recommendations, investing capital—on which people can both stand and build. We can do this not from a place of scarcity but only from one of abundance.

I’m being a stickler about words because our thoughts dictate our actions, and our actions (or lack thereof) create our reality. Going back to the difference between feeling proud of what you’ve achieved versus feeling grateful for what’s “happened to you,” I want to acknowledge that I know saying “I’m proud” is difficult for us. We immediately try to diminish our own light before others do it for us. We do this out of fear of being destroyed by those who might think we’re arrogant braggarts, women who need to be put back in our place. But I also think we do it because it’s the script handed down by other women. It’s modeled for us everywhere, so we run these same words and thoughts as though they are our own. We are moving through our lives on autopilot mimicking the thoughts and actions of those who have come before us.

There’s some wisdom in doing this, as there’s much to bring forward. I love a shortcut. But when I look at what women have achieved, I’m not convinced that we’ve charted a path to the top of the mountain, or one worth printing on maps and passing to our daughters and friends. This is one of the reasons I wanted to write this book—to add my route to our collective wisdom about women and success. And it’s one of the reasons I push back so hard on abiding by the prevailing thoughts of the culture; doing this isn’t working out so well for us. As Albert Einstein may have (apocryphally I ) pointed out, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Before we dig in, I want to be clear that I’m not suggesting you have control—or that I have control—over the world. I’m not suggesting that I know with any specific certainty what will happen because of my direct actions. Life is wholly unpredictable, which is also what gives it its meaning. (Think about how freaky a cause-and-effect world would be: If you knew what would happen, without fail, there would be no point to life.) While you can’t control the outcome, you can control the way you relate to and respond to the world. That’s what I’m interested in cultivating, both in myself and in all of you. The following pages are about the role we all have in choosing our thoughts carefully—and what’s possible when you take full responsibility for yourself in your life.

None of us have time to wait for equity; we have to make it.