Girl Code: Unlocking the Secrets to Success, Sanity, and Happiness for the Female Entrepreneur

What is your personal mission statement?
Shockingly, I have no personal mission statement. My core mission is to
serve as many people as I can to bring glory to God. But my personal
mission changes with the seasons. I don’t believe people have one singular
life purpose. I believe we are given seasonal purpose and that our life
purpose is the culmination of the work we do each season.
Have you ever felt envious of another woman? If so, how did you deal
with it?
Ugh, yes. I spent most of my life envying other women. I was the girl who
said, “I prefer to have guy friends” or “I get along better with guys than I do
with girls.” I was jealous of the tall, thin girls with the perfect toe arches in
dance class, I was jealous of my good friend because she had more money
than my family did and could afford the designer labels. I was jealous of my
sister because she could come and go as she pleased but I was forced to be a
latch-key child. At my all-girls high school I was jealous of the smart girls
who never studied but still got A’s. Who wasn’t I jealous of?
Once I became an entrepreneur the jealousy didn’t stop either. If anything, it
intensified. Her website is prettier than mine, her copy is better, her list is
bigger, she has more money than I do for support staff, she has more
Facebook followers than I do, blah, blah, blah.
One day I got so tired of being a hater than I decided it was time to change
myself. I knew that issue lay within me. Throughout my life these women
had done nothing to me. They were just doing them; living their lives and
walking their purpose. So asked myself, “Why does this bother me so
much?”

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The answer was simple: I was envious because these women were doing the
very things I wanted to be doing but had convinced myself I couldn’t.
“I’ll never be thin.”
“I’ll never be able to afford those labels.”
“I’ll never get straight A’s.”
“My website won’t be that great.”
“I suck at copy writing.”
“People won’t follow me because I’m not as good as she is.”
Outwardly I was telling the world I was a positive person, but inwardly, I
was full of self-doubt and insecurities. And I was tired of it. I got angry and
decided I wasn’t going to be that person anymore. I decided if I wanted to
have what those other women had, I was going to get myself together and
start taking confident action. I don’t know something? I’ll google it. I can’t
afford to hire someone? I’ll trade with them. There is an answer for every
question and a solution for every problem and I decided I was going to
figure it all out by just taking action every single day.
I could lie and tell you that I never feel a twinge of envy or that I’m not
occasionally triggered by a brilliant woman from time to time, but I won’t.
When those brief moments occur I pause. I ask myself the same question I
asked myself so many years ago, “Why does this bother me?” and then I
work like a mad woman to find the answer and make it right in my world.
You can’t feel jealous or envious when you’re genuinely pleased with your
own world.
I also find that celebrating women and giving compliments to random,
female strangers on a daily basis helps me appreciate the hustle of a woman
just trying to do her best. They smile, I smile and our hearts wink as we
celebrate what Girl Code really means. We’ve got each other’s back even if
we don’t know each other’s names.

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