MSUGANA

when u change the way u look at things, the things u look at...

Wed, 22 May 2013 19:34:15 -0400

when u change the way u look at things, the things u look at change. horrible jakarta traffic lookin beautiful 😜

Lao-Tzu

Thu, 16 May 2013 13:06:19 -0400

The master of the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he is always doing both.

From Seelig’s ‘What I Wish I Knew When I Was...

Thu, 16 May 2013 10:18:59 -0400

From Seelig’s ‘What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20’

splurging my time under the blanket reading these before leaving...

Tue, 14 May 2013 20:15:12 -0400

splurging my time under the blanket reading these before leaving for Indo. ladieeess i think they’re worth ur investment esp @sherylsandberg’s and @ivankatrump’s! #theyresoperfect

"There are roadblocks to our success at every turn, and it is up to each of us to find the resiliency..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 20:14:05 -0400

“There are roadblocks to our success at every turn, and it is up to each of us to find the resiliency and strength of character to get past them. Finding fortitude needed to achieve long-term success is one of the fundamental challenges facing young people in business.”

- Ivanka Trump - The Trump Card (amazing boook!!!)

"Be fearless when it comes to life and careless when it comes to what people think and say about..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 19:13:56 -0400

“Be fearless when it comes to life and careless when it comes to what people think and say about you.”

currently reading miranda kerr’s treasure yourself 😋🌸🌷🌺

Tue, 14 May 2013 09:40:24 -0400

currently reading miranda kerr’s treasure yourself 😋🌸🌷🌺

"The only thing standing between you and your goals is the bullsh** story you keep telling yourself..."

Wed, 01 May 2013 11:13:05 -0400

“The only thing standing between you and your goals is the bullsh** story you keep telling yourself as to why you can’t achieve them.”

Might As Well Call This Blog a Sandberg Fan Club Blog

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:46:00 -0400

My favorite quotes by her:

“I feel really grateful to the people who encouraged me and helped me develop. Nobody can succeed on their own”

“I wish I could just go tell all the young women I work with, all these fabulous women, ‘Believe in yourself and negotiate for yourself. Own your own success.’ I wish I could tell that to my daughter. But it’s not that simple”

“I want to tell any young girl out there who’s a geek, I was a really serious geek in high school. It works out. Study harder”

“Until women are as ambitious as men, they’re not gong to achieve as much as men”

“Fortune does favor the bold and you’ll never know what you’re capable of if you don’t try”

“If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on.”

“Being confident and believing in your own self-worth is necessary to achieving your potential”

Love this song from Phoenix new album Bankrupt

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:35:32 -0400

Love this song from Phoenix new album Bankrupt

Do You Measure Up?

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 12:43:23 -0400

Tatiana Boncompagni explores the trend that has even smart, successful women scrambling to keep up.

Read more: Beating Adult Peer Pressure – How to be a Successful Woman - Marie Claire

I recently attended a black-tie benefit, one of those swanky Manhattan affairs teeming with A-list socialites and minor royals. There was a red carpet outside, a star chef in the kitchen, and lots of champagne swirling around on silver trays. Dressed in black silk and peep-toe Louboutins, with my dapper husband at my side, I thought my flute of bubbly looked plenty full.

And then I met her. She had long, graceful limbs; silky blonde hair; and, arguably, a better dress than mine (certainly bigger jewels). She was a lawyer for a foreign policy think tank (the career I, with my Georgetown School of Foreign Service degree, was supposed to have) and a mother of two little boys enrolled in one of the city’s top nursery schools, married to a husband who, I learned over a meringue-topped dessert course, regularly reads her to sleep at night. Meanwhile, my husband won’t even put his plate in the dishwasher.

Suddenly, my glass didn’t look so full.

To be clear, it wasn’t envy I felt — it was inadequacy. Experts call it “yardsticking,” the impulse to privately pit yourself against your peers in order to determine your own social standing and self-worth. And now more than ever, women are succumbing to it, especially in still-flush cities like New York and San Francisco, where the ruler is notched not simply with dollar signs, but also far subtler markers of success: invites to prestige events like Davos and TED, the minutes you can hold a crow pose, and the pairs of Rag & Bone skinnies in your wardrobe. Women are supposedly more empowered these days — we graduate from college in droves, rake in bigger paychecks, and have staked out more corner offices on higher floors than ever before. (We also have the socially sanctioned option to throw it all in and stay at home.) And yet, here we are, years out of high school, still enslaved by our own insecurities.

Three years ago, economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers published an explosive study in the American Economic Journal, which found that female happiness had declined sharply over the past 35 years. They concluded that the downturn correlated directly with the progress women were making in the workplace — although women were earning more money and enjoying better career opportunities and greater conveniences on the home front, it came at the expense of their senses of contentment and well-being. Stevenson and Wolfers offered myriad explanations for the trend, but it boiled down to the fact that maintaining a household and overcoming marital challenges are exponentially harder when both spouses work. But adding to our difficulties is the ubiquity of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Tumblr, sites that invite relentless yardsticking in the form of “Look what I got!” status updates and 140-character-or-less “Aren’t I clever?” posts. Who wouldn’t be insecure (and invariably unhappy) surrounded by hundreds of smiling friends, all ostensibly kicking ass professionally and personally? When was the last time you saw anyone chronicle a marital spat on Facebook or a particularly stinging disappointment at work?

Another issue that makes us especially vulnerable to peer pressure: We are inundated with so many cues as to what defines a successful woman today that it’s downright impossible to figure out which attributes are truly attainable. So we scramble to keep up with all of them: the killer post-baby body; the book deal based on a popular Tumblr; celebrity friends; personal assistants. Used to be you only had to compete with the other moms in your kid’s preschool or the ladies in your church’s social committee. But who lives that kind of siloed life anymore? Everyone, from the alpha girls to the stay-at-homers, is expected to be a constant, high-gloss superwoman. Even if you’ve got a career, you also need to juggle (with aplomb) Spin classes, school board meetings, and outings with friends, never mind the after-hours work commitments (which, have you noticed, keep going later and later?). Having it all has never been a more literal proposition, nor the attendant angst and yardsticking more severe.

“It’s perfectly normal,” explains Jennifer Tanner, a developmental psychologist at the Institute for Health at Rutgers University. Tanner says that registering and responding to social cues and expectations is a vital part of adulthood, especially in today’s fractured society, when we marry later, live far from our families, and conduct so much of our socializing online. Keeping up with the Joneses helps us figure out how to comport ourselves and solve thorny problems — like balancing work and family, or reviving a flatlining marriage. To illustrate the point, she cites mousy copywriter Peggy and sexy office manager Joan on Mad Men. “They looked at each other to see what one another had,” says Tanner, and ultimately, the exchange benefitted both. “Getting feedback from like-minded people within your own community is valuable. It’s healthy to have that intrinsic feeling: I want what she’s got. How do I get it?”

As Tanner tells it, yardsticking can be an act of self-improvement. It becomes problematic only when it overrides common sense and better judgment. In other words, it’s OK to covet what your best friend has, or even to cave to importuning friends needling you to stay for one more drink. The key is being able to discern the difference between a harmless longing and reckless striving.

Case in point: At a holiday party last year, I watched a petite brunette, a friend of a friend, take an ill-advised puff on a joint in a lame attempt to fit in with her husband’s hard-partying friends, real estate professionals and regulars on New York City’s nightclub scene. Though she hadn’t smoked in years, she got caught up in the raucous, boozy atmosphere and, I suspect, wanted to prove to her husband as much as to his crew that she was still spontaneous and cool enough to hang with the best of them. It was like a scene out of an after-school special: She took one hit and was hobbled by a coughing fit. And once the pot kicked in, she was reduced to a hazy mess, teetering on the edge of a couch, refusing to talk to anyone. Not long after, her shamefaced husband ushered her home in a cab. Not a good look for either of them.

Or take a friend of mine we’ll call Lisa, a globe-trotting finance-wife and mother of one blessed with ample resources and a stimulating social network. This otherwise levelheaded woman admits to unraveling upon learning of an acquaintance’s big-ticket expenditures — say, a new pair of diamond earrings — which invariably sparks a bitter scuffle with her own husband about his measly gifts and her out-of-control spending. Privately, Lisa has confessed to me that she feels “shortchanged and underappreciated” by her husband relative to how other wives in her set get treated.

It’s easy to write off this kind of adult peer pressure as the next iteration of affluenza, just another gimme-a-break affliction of the 1 percent. But I’ve seen it play out among smart, professional women who are also vulnerable to the all-consuming urge to keep up and fit in. It has mangled relationships, ravaged credit ratings, and wreaked emotional havoc. And I’ve witnessed it all too often among women desperately pursuing today’s ultimate female status symbol: motherhood. One friend nearly went bankrupt after shelling out for several rounds of IVF (at $15,000 a pop, courtesy of the same doc treating the other women in her neighborhood) and then a costly nanny for the twins she finally conceived. The financial strain was such that her family left Manhattan for a lower-priced rental in the suburbs, and the last time I saw her, she was a shadow of her former self #8212; gaunt, exhausted, doing piecemeal freelance work to pay the bills, and bemoaning her exile from the buzzy life she once led.

I hear horror stories like that and can’t help but acknowledge that I’ve done pretty well for myself: two well-received novels; a devoted husband; three beautiful children; a spacious, sunny home in one of New York City’s trophy neighborhoods. And yet, I’m constantly measuring myself against every woman I meet who’s also managed to create a nice life for herself. Awful, right?

Mulling Tanner’s observations, I surveyed my social landscape once more. What was it about all those other women whose lives I coveted? Mostly, I imagined that they weren’t doing it alone, like I was — trying to foster a career while cooking every night and ferrying three kids around town. What I needed, I realized, was a once-a-week housekeeper or regular babysitter, someone to lighten my load and give me time for myself — to work, cook, whatever. Sounds small, I know, but the very idea brought me peace of mind. And I wouldn’t have reached the conclusion (obvious though it was) were it not for my run-in with that blonde, leggy think tank lawyer. Turns out, I just wanted the freedom to do my own thing, a few more hours for myself. The next time I see her, I’ll be sure to thank her.

Harvard i-lab | “Women, a Competitive Advantage”...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:44:59 -0400

Harvard i-lab | “Women, a Competitive Advantage” with Patti Pao and Surbhi Sarna

some of my favorite quotes from Lean In

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:34:33 -0400

some of my favorite quotes from Lean In

Photo

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 07:03:38 -0400

I post too much about Sheryl but seriously….Aaaaaahh so in...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 18:42:51 -0400

I post too much about Sheryl but seriously….Aaaaaahh so in love with her. At HBS W50 Summit, April 2013.

casual gym read. thanks marieclaire.

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:32:16 -0400

casual gym read. thanks marieclaire.

thanks cici

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:29:57 -0400

thanks cici

"The upside of painful knowledge is so much greater than the downside of blissful ignorance."

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 18:04:05 -0400

“The upside of painful knowledge is so much greater than the downside of blissful ignorance.”

The Proactive Professional: Why Can't a Woman be LESS Like a Man??

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:47:08 -0400

The Proactive Professional: Why Can't a Woman be LESS Like a Man??:

proactiveprofessional:

Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” Professor Henry Higgins pondered as he tried to understand Eliza Doolittle. My Fair Lady premiered as a motion picture in 1963 and yet many of us are still asking that question. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard one of these statements:

Men are…

Wom' Entrepreneurs Network: Success v/s Success through the gender lens

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:45:24 -0400

Wom' Entrepreneurs Network: Success v/s Success through the gender lens:

womentrepreneursnetwork:

What is success? Does it really mean the same thing to men and women?

Is success only the result of hard work, is it the achievements and rewards earned through the amount of efforts put in? And what exactly do rewards mean? Does it mean the same thing for men and women?

This question is…