To be a Pink Prepper, you have to be emotionally strong. You must believe how you feel about yourself is more important than how others feel about you. This is true—consider all those celebrities who were adored by millions only to commit suicide. If you don’t care about yourself, it doesn’t matter how many others do.
Tips for Increasing Your Emotional Toughness
Fly solo more. The more activities you do on your own, the stronger and more self-reliant you will be. Traveling alone is amazing—and empowering. It forces you to navigate new cities and deal with new situations on your own—it makes you grow. Try it—you might like it.
Set and enforce boundaries. Stop believing you have to be so accommodating and so nice. People with boundaries are people you respect. People with no boundaries are the world’s doormats. If you’re okay with someone showing up at your house uninvited or friending all your Facebook friends after your second date, that’s fine. Everyone has different boundaries. But if those behaviors bother you, speak up. Every time you do, you will be stronger (and more respected). And every time you don’t, you will be a little weaker.
Learn to say no. This is harder for most women than for men. Men don’t take things as personally as we do. A man can ask another man to go for a drink, and if the second man says no, they move on. If a woman asks another woman to go for a drink, the second woman might think, “I hate to say no. I said no last time. What if she doesn’t ask me again or feels I’m upset with her? Maybe I should go. But I honestly don’t have time. I have to finish that report. But I don’t want her to get mad at me.” Then she goes and stays up half the night to finish her report.
Next time this happens, take a deep breath. If you truly don’t want to go, don’t go. I don’t want my friends to do something with me if they don’t want to, do you? If you don’t want to go to the baby shower, wedding, baptism, whatever, don’t go. My rule is if I can’t go with joy, I’m not going.
You will get tons of requests and opportunities, and you can’t say yes to all of them. Every time you say yes to something, you are saying no to something else. Your time is the most valuable asset you have, so protect it by saying no.
Face your fears. Ask yourself what scares you. Don’t want to discuss money because you are afraid your beloved will leave you? If you can’t be comfortable discussing something this important, that’s a red flag. Let them go. Afraid if you let them go, you’ll be alone forever? Please. There are almost 8 billion people on the planet—you’ll find someone else. And clearly, someone better.
Being brave is not about never being afraid. It about being afraid and moving forward anyway. Every time you face a fear, you’ll be stronger and more confident.
Most people are far stronger than they think they are. I know women who have beat cancer but believe they can’t ask for a raise. Women who have started businesses but are afraid to ask a man out. Do something once and you own it. If you’re reading this, you lived through a global pandemic. And you’re telling me you can’t ask your mother-in-law to text before dropping in? You are a warrior, start acting like one.
Keep your eyes on the prize. It’s easier to tell your friends you can’t go to an expensive restaurant if you have a bigger goal in mind. Do you want to have drinks or start your own business? Do you want to have a new pair of shoes or toilet paper during the next supply chain breakdown? (No one is going to see those shoes when you’re sheltering in place.) Where you will be in the future depends on the plans you make and the actions you take today.
Act like a Pink Prepper. Fake it till you make it. A Pink Prepper is a strong, confident woman who knows the right lover/friend/business partner for her is the one who wants an equal, not a subordinate. A Pink Prepper takes care of herself so she won’t be a burden to others. And a Pink Prepper is no one’s victim. She has boundaries in place, and if people won’t respect them, she finds new people.
If you act confident, people will respond to you as if you are confident, and your confidence will grow. From time to time, I get nervous before a big speech. I find if I fake it (direct eye contact, big smile, big open arm gestures, standing tall), the audience responds to me as if I am confident and, next thing I know, I am. Carry yourself like a leader, and people will treat you like a leader.
Being emotionally strong doesn’t mean you are heartless or bad or anything else. In fact, the more emotionally strong you are, the more you can be strong for others. You can’t lift others up if you have to be carried.
Comments are closed