Hey First name / friend,

If you're new here, I try to kick off every email with either a useful tool or tip that you can put into action right this exact minute. 

Today, I want to talk to you about something a little more uncomfortable, but equally useful. Mental health. Wait, don't go, we almost ALL have something wired differently in our brains, and it may be coloring our job search or career! The following isn't medical advice, just nerdy technological advice. 

What I want you to begin doing, if you're comfortable, is talking with your therapist about your career and job search, but also using AI in the interim. 

How can one use AI? 

Glad you asked, great question. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), the number one mental health diagnosis is “anxiety disorders” (ranging from generalized, social, panic, to phobias). 

Fully 19% of Americans have this diagnosis. So if you’re part of that 19%, congrats, you’re in excellent (and very large) company. 

Let's say you have an anxiety disorder as an example - here's how you could use AI (adapt to your own diagnoses): 

 

1. If you're a Plus/Pro ChatGPT user, start a "Project" as a dedicated space. If not, consider trying paid option for a month.
 

All chats inside a Project share the same uploaded files and custom instructions, so you can upload your resume, job-ads, and anxiety-management notes to stay “loaded” without repeating yourself. It’s also easy to rename chats and move older threads into the same folder for tidy record-keeping.

• Click Projects → New → name it “Career & Anxiety Support”

• Upload docs (resume, list of anxiety triggers, etc.). 

 

2. Start with an “About Me” section and instructions.

It can all be in one prompt to get started. Include: 

3. Structure each prompt with RSD

Because you're using a “Project,” you can start multiple threads in the same folder, basically. No need to re-feed info. And trust me, you're going to want to start a new thread in the same project when there's a new topic or the lil' robots get confused. 

In each, a good framework is RSD: Role, Situation, Deliverables.

4. Three RSD-formatted prompts to experiment with: 

Remember to take note of what worked and what didn't work, and pivot accordingly. Also, take these notes to your therapist and report back - AI use may not be right for everyone, but it can help you to understand how others perceive a situation differently, or how to move past certain points that might otherwise hold you back. I'm cheering for you, friend!

👉🏻 Try it out and let me know what you think? What immediately works for you (or doesn't)? Is this framework helpful? Hit reply to let me know - I'm truly interested!!

Take it away, Angela: 

If you search for women's leadership or business events, you’ll find a pretty common trend of focusing on mindset, confidence, courage and a variety of other buzzwords that for some can turn them away from attending. But are these buzzwords and common themes too much? Are we focused too much on building confidence in women?   

 

In my opinion, as a person who hosts these exact types of events, and has done so for the last 7 years - yes and no. 

 

Before we get into some of the nuances of confidence building events, it’s incredibly important to talk about the reality of confidence in women and how it evolves. 

 

According to Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, authors of The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance - What Women Should Know and The Confidence Code for Girls, confidence in young girls drops by 30% starting at age 8.  That’s important, because we spend the rest of our lives trying to build that confidence back up - whether it be in our personal lives or our professional lives.  Yet, women are consistently excelling in nearly every area, more women earn college and graduate degrees then men, we’re working our way up the corporate ladder and making more money than the women before us. So that begs the question, why do we still lack confidence? 

 

There are still inequalities in the workplace. Men get promoted faster, get paid more and there are fewer women in the C-Suite than men named John, James and Robert.   It’s hard not to let those inequalities take a hit to our confidence. We know that women are not applying for jobs they want unless they meet 100% of the qualifications, versus men who apply when they only meet 60% of the qualifications. Women are, however, asking for promotions. Yet, for every 100 men promoted to a management role only 87 women receive the same promotion.  There’s still a long way to go when it comes to resolving the pay gap and the promotion gap.  Women’s networking and leadership events are a great place to start for women. But many events get it wrong. 

 

My business partner and I founded Glass Ceilings Inc., a women’s leadership development organization and community here in Austin.  We have a long history of building women’s communities. We used to run a company called The B Hive Apiary, that supported women building authentic friendships in person. When we started Glass Ceilings we really wanted to approach it differently. Both leaders in our respective areas, we didn’t feel supported by women’s groups. It all felt surface level or marketing focused and gimmicky. The approach many women’s events take when it comes to confidence is to travel down the road of surface level or all fluff, focusing on mindset, affirmations and other things that don’t always support truly building confidence in a concrete way. 

 

Sure, speaking affirmations are a tool in the toolbox  (because yes, you can actually create new neural pathways in your brain), but it shouldn’t be the only thing we’re doing to build our confidence.  How we walk, how we dress, if we smile enough, if we are presenting ourselves as “warm” or happy, how we talk, if we’re cracking jokes or making eye contact all can have an impact on our confidence but they are not how we build confidence. 

 

One of my least favorite pieces of advice people tell women to build confidence is to speak up and ask for what you want. It seems so simple right? Just go into your boss’ office and say “I want a $20k pay increase!” In reality, it doesn’t work that way for many of us. Instead of focusing on the superficial tactics to build your confidence, women’s events need to focus on the things that do build confidence. 

 

We often think of confidence as a feeling - we feel secure in what we’re doing, we believe in ourselves and aren’t afraid to do what we need to do. But feelings are an interpretation of an emotion. 

So how does one build confidence and how can women’s events do better?

 

I think the first thing we need to remember is that confidence is a skill. It can be learned. Just like any other skill, you have to practice being confident!  This is what I personally think events miss. We talk about all of the things that you can do to feel confident, but we don’t talk about the work it takes to build confidence. Practice and consistent effort are required to build mastery of a skill.  What we tell our community is that you must dedicate time to practice - that could mean writing down what you want to say before you go into a meeting and practicing it in front of a mirror twenty times. 

 

Just like any other skill, we need to educate ourselves on how to improve.  We tell women in our community, beyond practice, you need to educate yourself about what it is you want to improve - including confidence.  Read books, listen to podcasts, understand the science and whatever else helps you to fully comprehend what confidence is and how you can control it. 

 

We also tell our community that writing things down helps. We often provide actionable prompts at our events that encourage attendees to think carefully about what they are looking to achieve. If they’re looking to build confidence, create a repository of things you have accomplished and write down what’s stopping you from taking the next step. Creating actionable plans of how to overcome the things you lack confidence in can make a world of difference and really move the needle in your success. 

 

There are a million different tricks, tips and strategies to help build your confidence. And from our perspective, most women’s events gloss over those real tangible actions.  They focus on positive affirmations and short term confidence boosters instead of really putting strategy behind how you can build the skill.  We’re beyond the “bossbabe” and “girlboss” era - we need real strategy, real skill building and real tactics at events. Not just fluff. 

GET THAT NEW JOB!?

Melissa Espitia starts her new job this coming Monday - yes, her search is THAT fresh. So what did her path look like? 

Here's her tale: