10 reminders for expanding the company you keep as a woman with agency and impact.
1. Keep company with not doing, yet
The power move isn't always immediate action. Sometimes it's the pause, the message left unanswered, the meeting where you simply observe.
2. Curate your collection of diverse responses
Your many voices, from boardroom to playroom to protest line, makes you adaptable and therefore unwavering.
3. Expand into spaces unapologetically
Keep company with women who take up space physically, intellectually, emotionally.
4. Make boundaries even with your closest
The most powerful phrase in your repertoire is "No, that doesn't work for me." Get comfortable with the discomfort of setting limits.
5. Study the aftereffects of your actions
Each move teaches something about aim, about impact, about your own stance. Invite reflection as a regular practice to improve your next move considerably.
6. Learn about the women before you
Your great-grandmother's silence at the dinner table might have been as powerful as your speech at the podium. Cultivate knowledge of women's history, both the documented and the whispered.
7. Embrace both adornment and assertion
The exterior polish doesn't diminish inner power. Wear beauty and strength simultaneously and reject any suggestion that they're mutually exclusive.
8. Share your knowledge with younger women
You cannot be what you cannot see. And once you see it, you can see beyond it. Be what is now possible to inspire whoever that comes after.
9. Disconnect your value from external validation
Your worth remains unchanged regardless of others' ability to recognize it. Your intrinsic value is yours to own and wield.
10. Remember your capacity to alter everything
A single well-placed action can transform a relationship, a workplace, or even a system. Keep company with your own potential, promise, and power.
Saved in my bookmarks this month are all examples of women who understood precisely when and how to exert their power:
Zoe Scaman’s call to arms for the real state of women’s rights today.
Gwendoline Christie on Bella Freud’s Fashion Neurosis on the power of dressing on identity and belief.
Sophia Chang consistently directs her creative expertise in design, pushing into categories traditionally owned by male sponsorships and representation.
Amelia Dimoldenburg’s brazen and unstoppable rise from a one-woman media company built around her for-camera personality as a flirt.