This One is for the Girls - Closing the Confidence Gap

Post from August 13, 2016

Today did not go as expected but there were angels all around me that helped me cross the finish line with Madi holding my hand and running in beside me. My first problem happened at the first buoy... my right calf started cramping and I started to panic. I wish I could tell you her name .... a volunteer that paddled over to me and asked if I needed help. She told me I could hang on as long as I needed. I think mentally I had already started giving up, but hearing her say that made me realize I was not out there alone. My legs were trashed from last night's challenging course and they kept cramping for most of the rest of the swim. At the turn I reverted to my trusty backstroke, my triathlon go-to style before Jada taught me how to swim. That made it tough. I was swimming blind until another race volunteer pulled her kayak up beside me and said "you're so close! I'm going to click my paddle on my kayak when you get too close so you know to correct." It worked and I made it to the first transition.

I knew if I could get through the 14+ miles on the bike, the run would be a cake walk. Running is my thing. That almost didn't happen.

At about mile five going up about a mile long hill both calves started cramping so bad I had to dismount. My calves felt like they were going to explode. Mentally I could not see how I could physically make the last nine miles. I told the trail team I was done. I turned around and started heading back down the hill. And then my next angel arrived... a Lake Lure firefighter named Mike. He pulled over and offered me a ride... some where during our conversation I had a vision of my girl ... waiting at the transition zone for me to cycle in but having someone drop me off in a truck instead. I couldn't do it. I couldn't let her see me quit. With tears of defeat... pain... frustration... determination... I'm not sure... I dragged my bike of Mike's truck and made my way up the hill. Mike stayed behind me for nine miles, encouraging me every step of the way. Let's just say... the run was NOT a cake walk but at that point... nothing was keeping me from crossing that finish line.

A huge thanks to the volunteers, race officials, and my cheering crew who kept my dream alive of completing the Olympiad Three Races in Three Days. Two down. One to go.?

... ... ...

Fast Forward to today, August 13, 2021.

I'm humbled to be Madi's mom.?

Being her mom has taught me so much about myself, and my sincerest hope is that I can do the same for her. I relive this moment often and the decision to finish after I had lost every bit of confidence in myself, and I had nothing left in the tank. Being last that day was not what I remember. Finishing... and running across the finish line with my proud three year old daughter is what I remember.?I stopped thinking about failing and started thinking about finishing.

The timing of this memory is so poignant. Yesterday I grabbed a book -- The Confidence Code -- off my bookshelf. It has sat there for a few years. I can't remember when or why I got it, and why I never read it. Wednesday night I read that Katty Kay launched a new version of The Confidence Code focused on Girls because the confidence gap for women starts to form during the critical development ages 8 to 14. During this timeframe, on average, girls drop 30% of their confidence compared to their male counterparts.?

Madi turned 8 this year. I want to do everything in my power to ensure her experiences help to suck the life out of this statistic.?

I've ravenously powered through this book over the past 24 hours and I'm nearly done. While there is so much to absorb in the research on the genetics and brain science behind confidence (you all know how much I love the brain science behind our behaviors and personalities), one of the most significant is that confidence builds from action, and from finishing... even if finishing is failing. In workshops and coaching sessions and conversations, you've likely heard me say, "Failure is a beautiful thing. Stop thinking of failure as an end. Think of it as the beginning of new knowledge." It's great to know that building confidence can also be added to the mix of what we gain through risk and failure.

If you are a women, this book is a must-read. If you are a parent with daughters, this book is a must-read. If you are an ally for women and girls, this book is a must-read. Let's connect back ... let me know what you think.?And in the meantime, let's keep gently pushing our girls to try new things on their own. Let them fail when it's not their time yet to succeed. Talk to them about what they've learned. Push them to try again. Normalize acceptance of failure and learning by making it OK and talking about what you learned when you fail.

“If you choose not to act, you have little chance of success. What’s more, when you choose to act, you’re able to succeed more frequently than you think. How often in life do we avoid doing something because we think we’ll fail? Is failure really worse than doing nothing? And how often might we actually have triumphed if we had just decided to give it a try?”

― Katty Kay, The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance---What Women Should Know