Life Lessons from “Iron Girls”
Life Lessons from “Iron Girls”, a tvN program that features actresses overcoming their weaknesses to take on their first ever triathlon.
Don’t start if you don’t know why. You need a goal and you need to commit to achieving that goal. The fear of not being able to achieve that goal should drive you to achieve it and not drive you to give up. What others say should not matter as they are not you. It is what you want that should matter. You are in the driver’s seat of your life so find a way past other drivers that get in your way.
To have a real chance at winning, you need the necessary skills and support of coaches who have mastered the basic skills and have deep knowledge or wisdom in some areas. You need to master the basic skills and then seek out people that have the right combination of deep knowledge or wisdom to go further. If a challenge is too hard, you need access to more coaches as someone amongst them will know how to get you safely through.
Know that coaches have limits and beware of people who think they know more than they do. Not everyone will know the way that will work for you and not everyone will spend time to understand what will work for you. They will tell you what worked for them and expect it will work for you not understanding your context is different. A coach is not useful if he cares more about how he feels then actually helping you. The best coaches will give you a solution based on your context with intention of helping you to achieve your goals because he wants to. It will be about you. You need to decide if it will work for you and if it doesn’t, don’t get angry. Just try another approach.
Coaches will help you find out where you are and where you need to get to. They will help you learn your strengths and weaknesses. List down where the challenges lie and what basic skills are needed to reach your goal and work at learning those basic skills. Put it all together in a small scale version of the big picture in a controlled environment where you can learn how and when to apply the basic skills in real world examples.
Then work on your pace, rate at which you need to work if winning a race was possible, increasing the level of difficulty as you pass each level. With the right pace nailed down, work on your stamina and keep pushing hard to go as far as you can. With stamina, you will have what is needed to keep going despite all the obstacles in your way. As you clock the mileage, every experience will help you maneuver through unfamiliar terrains as you skillfully apply basic skills at every turn.
To actually win, what you really need will have to come from within. The secret sauce lies in your determination, willpower, belief that you can do it. You need to win the fight against yourself to remove all the old programming that led you the belief that you are not strong enough to overcome you challenge and that you will fail not matter how hard you try. Life is a journey with many races. A failure on some gives you the lessons needed to eventually win as long as you don’t give up.
Needless to say I enjoyed watching “Iron Girls”. It is no secret that I am pushing 50. I have been put down so many times that I now instantly bounce back up and I am deaf to naysayers. Applying the above life lessons to work, I have the following observations to share,
1. Women need access to coaches and basic skills --- without this step, not much will change as we won’t have the numbers in the workforce with the experience to make a difference.
The men show up at work on Day 1 and get the training that they need to work the high paying jobs. Yes, this is true but only for some. I have to acknowledge that all women do expect to be helped in the same way that some men are helped. The reality is that most men are aggressive enough to find a way through. They find their coaches and they focus on working on their pace and stamina. After all, they are encouraged from young to be confident and they are encouraged at every step until they reach the boardroom.
The biggest but necessary step for women is to work more like men... if more women push a path through, the chances for young women to find coaches will increase dramatically...
2. Women need to develop confidence --- without this step, there is no point trying to fight to change anything. All the help in the world cannot guarantee success in the race if the runner will give up easily at the sign of an obstacle.
Working women face a very unfriendly working environment where others won’t hesitate to take what they want, especially if it is at a woman’s expense. Perceived to have less rights, women are often told that they should be at home taking care of their family and not competing with men! But as if that will solve the problem. Ironically, even at home too, families take advantage of women expecting them to be unpaid caregivers while focusing all the money on the men in the family. The least our parents can do is to not discourage their girls and to plan for them like they plan for the boys. Fathers should stop sabotaging the futures of their girls. The least men in the workforce can do is to give women a chance.
The biggest but necessary step for women is to belief in themselves... only then will every barrier put their path come down...