“Life is not a bed of roses”- this is what my mother told me every time I was complaining about something when I was little. Years later, I discovered this to be painfully true, when she passed away and I was only 19 years old. Indeed, “Life is not a bed of Roses”, it is filled with ups and downs, and as a woman, the challenges of life multiply as you get older because Women have wear so many hats.
We are first daughters to parents who expect us to take charge of our lives, get an education and do something remarkable with it. Then as we progress in our careers during our 20’s and 30’s, we are constantly reminded by our parents that “we need to get married before we get too old to give birth”.
Then, when we become wives, we are expected to make sure that the home is well run, always clean, cook in addition to meeting the our expectations our husbands and the society at large. By the time we become mothers, we are now 100% responsible for moulding our children’s lives, morally, mentally, emotionally, and academically. We are the first lens which they use to see the world, they depend on us to help them become who they will be in future.
In our jobs, we are usually paid less, and required to work twice as hard without a seat at the table. We also have to deal with intimidation, misogyny and sometimes harassment. Internally, we struggle to integrate our work expectations versus family expectations. Our lives are never in sync.
In our businesses, we are tasked to create our own path and future because we have few role models to emulate for motivation and encouragement. We struggle to get financing and compete twice as hard to get our business ideas and plans implemented.
Now, more than ever, we need a blueprint to RISE and LEAD so that we can lead ourselves to turn our pain into power, develop a growth mindset to achieve fulfillment, success, joy and work life integration. In order words, we need our lives to be in sync.
Because of all these, we also struggle with self-doubt, low confidence and imposter syndrome. We feel beaten down most times, figuratively and literarily.
What can we do to move towards a place where we can rise and lead?
In order to answer this properly, I would like to share a little bit of my story.
I grew up as an insecure child in Benin City, Edo State, with very low self-esteem, I felt that I will never be able to accomplish anything in my life. Because I was bullied in school and teased a lot, I had no zest for life and was in a constant state of self-doubt. Life seemed to me to be a series of disappointment, challenges and responsibilities which emphasised my inadequacies. As the oldest child of my mother and growing up in a polygamous home, I struggled to find acceptance, I had this constant voice in my head that told me that “I was not good enough.
As mentioned earlier, when my mother died, I was only 19 years old, and this situation compelled me to become a leader to my 3 younger siblings. I realised that I had developed self-confidence and self-leadership, both qualities I knew I had in very short supply.
Despite how difficult it was, I rose up to the responsibility of a mother- figure to my siblings. This helped me gain wisdom and insight that were non-existent in my life until that point.
When I got married at 23, I worked hard to maintain my home and my career as a banker while raising 4 children and then 2 bonus children as well. Every day was challenging and I would sometimes break down, and then pick myself back again.
As a young banker in a male dominated and highly toxic environment, the glass ceiling was low and I reached it quickly. I found it difficult to get my voice heard because of office politics which I did not know how to play. However, just before my 40th birthday, I had an epiphany which changed my life forever which lead me to life sync and how to rise and lead.
Find out next week what I had to do!
