No more Ms. Nice Lady

I've been a lot less nice lately, and it's not always making me popular. I've been more outspoken on LinkedIn about my politics and beliefs, set firmer boundaries in my personal relationships and reduced my overall tolerance for bullsh*t. Quite frankly, I've had enough. The desire to be liked has been outweighed by my desire for self-respect.

I haven't been doing it perfectly, and in some cases I've got it wrong. I've been all the things a fed-up human often is: hypocritical, irritated, harsh and unfair. But I'm keeping at it. I've decided the price of inexperience and learning is worth the reward of greater peace and integrity.

It was well-timed then, when I received a question yesterday from J, a long-time WW reader. She asked about how to stop getting in her own way, as a woman, and why she's so burnt out all the time.

There's a lot to that, the basics of which are:

• The Confidence Gap: Women experience more self-doubt than men because we're expected to do more, be better, and feel worse about it.

• The Exhaustion Gap: Women take on significantly more labour than men at home and work, especially the invisible stuff. 

I've written this article to open up the conversation about why that is, and offered some advice for how we can turn the curve. Men: I need you to read this too, please.

Beyond that, feel free to watch with amusement as I bang around in the dark and learn how to use my voice more usefully.

If you've also reach the point of fed-up recently, please accept this as your words of encouragement for the day. You've got this. You deserve better. Keep at it.