Be a professional in what you do
In anything you do. If you want to achieve something, you have to be better than others in these particular things. Be ready that your knowledge and skills will always be questioned — be able to prove that you really deserve this job, because you really deserve to be respected and treated as equal. If you are getting negative responses and feedback, first question you should ask yourself is “Maybe I really am not qualified enough yet?”. Get yourself ah honest answer and fix it if the answer is yes. Getting more expertise in some field or technology brings value not only for your professional qualities, but also gives you much more confidence. So, be honest with yourself, never stop learning, always stay in shape professionally and be confident!
Be ready to get attacked and smile
In many ways. In a figurative sense. Actually, you might get attacked or might get not. Each person is different, doing different things, with different dreams and different ways to make them come true. Some people are limited and tend to be not very open-minded to what the way of some other person might be. They might start pushing the ungrounded critics or even offensive statements directed to you. This may manifest itself in the form of doubts in your qualities, professional abilities, skills or some gender related specifics. What is the solution to this problem? First step — learn to distinguish between “useful critics” and “empty critics” based on some hidden personal factors that criticizing person might have against you. Second step — don’t take empty attacks emotionally, just ignore it.
Don’t get distracted. Be strong and haters gonna hate
If you are clear with your goal, don’t let yourself get distracted by what others say about what you have to do. Don’t get distracted if someone says you can’t do this and that. You know that you can, because you know what you want, you are professional in it, you move in the right direction and you love it. Unfortunately, now a woman can receive lots of comments like “you should better stay at home and cook Borshtch” or “this kind of thing is not for girls” or worse. I personally had a lot of cases like this and much worse, and the simple thing I learnt is — I just don’t give a fuck. First couple of times I was trying to reconvince those people, but after some time realized that I would spend 24 hours a day to make that happen and that there are a lot of other, much more important things I want to do instead of it. Later I found out that there is a feminists’ movement where they fight against discrimination of women and for equal rights. I support equality. However, I don’t have time to actively participate in this either. My strategy for dealing with ungrounded critics and people who don’t believe in me is not being distracted trying to reconvince them, but to prove them wrong by finally achieving my final goal. Also, having the rule of “today’s goal to feel proud of myself” helps a lot. Then getting distracted by twitters, facebook and other mess will make you feel shitty. So don’t get distracted and keep doing what you are doing!
Work harder than others
Of course, it depends on how much you are into your goal or dream (it’s the same thing anyways). Even for a very smart person it is sometimes hard to be noticed and believed. Due to lots of different reasons: unconscious social bias, specifics of the field or industry, high level of professional competition, etc. Especially if you are a woman. You have to be good at what you do and be able to compete with other members of technical society, which currently are mostly men. In order to be noticed, valued and treated as equal you have to work on it. Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.
Know your long-term end goal and be patient
Know your BIG dream and make a goal from it. Even if it seems impossible at first. Nothing is impossible (almost, to be realistic). Divide it into parts, write out what’s left for you to do to make it happen and follow the plan. I wrote something about working hard, but this point is actually more important. If you are working really hard on something wrong, then it makes no sense, right? While you are working hard, always reevaluate if you are still on the right way to your big thing, not to the right or to the left.
Be brave and don’t be afraid to demonstrate your abilities
Sometimes bravery isn’t something that every person has. However, it is something that every person can learn! In the right moment, always show that you know how to do this and this and that. Then you will have a chance to demonstrate your excelent abilities, be noticed and move closer to your goal!
Learn how to get along
Yes, it is strangely important. At some point it becomes very handy, because we are all in one society and having friends is a good thing. If it is hard for you to be social — learn how to be a pleasant person, have an interesting conversation anyway. Then you can share knowledge, they can find out how smart you are and you can learn something from them.
Originally published at lenadroid.github.io.
