Feel good, French style

When you’re living in full bloom – what the French call épanoui – you can’t help but glow. This week, I asked Joi Gordon, the CEO of Dress for Success Worldwide, to share her own recipe for success.

You have the glow of a woman who is on a mission and full of passion. Tell us about your work.

Dress for Success is an organization that helps women get back to work by giving her her interview suit, but more importantly giving her the self confidence and self worth she needs so she can go into an interview looking and feeling great. In light of the recession, we’ve expanded our programs to help women land jobs as well, with initiatives such as our Breakfast Clubs. We’re focused on women’s professional development and economic independence in a very holistic way.

What is a typical day like for you, Joi?

My work day starts out the way I prioritize my life, which is family first. The best part of my day is going to my kids’ bedrooms, waking them up, and looking at them and realizing one, that they’re all mine. And secondly, watching them grow.

From there, I take the quickest path I can to get to work. For me, it’s never been a job. I can remember when I first wrote the cover letter for the job in 1999 and I still have my cover letter. In it I said, “working at Dress for Success should never be a job. It has to be my mission.”

The day is busy. It’s full, but it’s full in a great sense – it’s full because it fills me. It’s just beautiful to know in some small way you’re helping someone else succeed.

Where do you get your energy to keep up the traveling, work and family?

I think energy is all relative. I get the opportunity to see women who have very little make the best of what they have. And so the women who walk into Dress for Success, I find, are the most resilient women. These are in most cases single mothers with multiple children who have to balance working and life.

I gain a lot of strength from seeing what our women had to overcome so they can get to where they are today.

What is your advice to women who are trying to combine a busy professional life with their own family and personal life?

What I say to women is this: if you have great joy in your purpose in life, if you found your purpose and its within your job, and it’s important to you, be great at it. Because if you’re happy, then your family will be happy. So find something that gives you great purpose and passion and then everyone else will be happy. It’s when you’re not happy that your whole life is off kilt.

As working women, it’s never a true balance though. It’s a daily struggle, so finding your purpose and passion helps.

What do you do if your job and your passion don’t match? If you don’t have the sense that you’re living your purpose?

If your purpose and passion don’t align with what your day job is, I say, women, men, anyone, can find it in volunteering. Sometimes you just have to find that extra hour or two. It’s where you can really let your passion flow.

What does it mean to you to live épanoui?

For me, it’s loving yourself as you are. As women, we tend to be really hard on ourselves. I think overall we’re just fabulous and if you feel that every single day, you’ll walk taller, you’ll seem smarter, you’ll feel greater.

So well said, thank you, Joi!

I recently learned that French lingerie house Simone Pérèle has partnered with Dress for Success to donate a minimum of $25,000 to the organization. They will donate an additional $5 for every purchase made on their Online Boutique and at participating stores. This program now ends August 31^st – so make a note for your pre-Fall shopping list.

Beautiful French lingerie, helping women feel confident and empowered…I’m glowing already!

Live épanoui*

Elisa

* in full bloom

French Elle magazine recently declared 2010 The Year of the Thigh. I had a feeling our center of gravity was trending South given fashion’s current love for cut-offs and short shorts. This Summer, I dared to go where I had never gone before, baring my least favorite body part – my thighs – and jumping right into a (relatively) short pair of shorts.

After the Wonderbra 90s and the derrière era personified by JLo, the Kaiser himself, Karl Lagerfeld, elevates the thigh to new heights in this boudoir shot of Vanessa Paradis for Chanel. Forget the Coco Cocoon bag. It’s those thighs I want!

We all have our insecurities, and they typically crystallize around one body part. “If only I had skinnier legs, a smaller nose or straighter hair,” we muse as we hone straight into the offending area with each glance in the mirror, like a moth drawn to a lightbulb.

I’ve always wanted Gisèle’s limbs or to look as good as Kate in my skinny jeans. And that pressure to look Condé Nast perfect remains a big part of the problem. Despite recent efforts to present a more real image of women in the media, they are often thin, young and air-brushed. In business and society circles too, there is no overlooking the pressure to be both competent AND beautiful.

Against that backdrop, I’m starting to master the idea that my beauty – and my thighs – are more in my head than in my reality. Likewise, your self-image may be built on physical characteristics, but it goes beyond being brunette, short or pretty. It’s built up over time around your thoughts, feelings, senses and experiences.

To change how you look, maybe it’s time to stop hitting the treadmill or the plastic surgeon’s and start reshaping your thoughts. Catch the negative or pressure-filled jabs at yourself and replace them with new positive ones. “My thighs are sexy like Beyoncé’s,” or “My hair is flat today, but people like me for my wits.” Practice zooming out to see the big picture too. You often have a tendency to magnify those problem areas, when the overall effect looks quite smashing.

It would be oversimplifying to try and combat years of self-consciousness with a few “I think, therefore I am’s.” Yet feeling at home in your body is as much about reshaping your internal dialogue as it is about what’s on your plate.

So bring it on, Karl. I have my eye on a certain pair of leather shorts for Fall, and I’m looking pretty darn hot.

Live épanoui*

Elisa

* in full bloom

This was supposed to be a blog about juicy Summer eating. But when the time came yesterday to hunker down in front of the keyboard, something happened.

My body and my psyche rebelled. My stomach was nervous. The Sunday evening program of getting a head start on the work week and writing my blog left me lifeless and uninspired.

Instead, I did something which used to be quite difficult for a work-focused high-achiever like myself — I listened to my inner voice. Inside, I knew that I still needed to relax and fully disconnect in order to start the week fresh.

As I mentally shifted through my to-do list, I took the pressure off myself. The things that were absolutely necessary and time-sensitive, I’d do. The rest would take a back seat for now. After all, in our constantly shifting world, my priorities would be reshuffled numerous times over the course of the week. Why get ahead of myself? Instead, I chose to be confident in my ability to know exactly what I needed to do, right now.

That’s how I ended up writing this blog on the terrace of my favorite café, sipping rose, watching smiling babies with tomato sauce on their chin, and grooving to a great jazz mix. It’s when you just let yourself be that inspiration smacks you right on the tip of your nose.

Live épanoui*

Elisa

* in full bloom

Woman power is in the air these days. Alicia Keys recently announced the launch of her new site I Am A Superwoman.com and unveiled her Blogger-in-Chief on Good Morning America, the bubbly and smart Alexis Tirado. Last week, Wonder Woman got a full make-over, trading in her signature superhero briefs for a sleek pant and biker jacket combo almost as good as a Balmain runway look.

This new generation of super women is about to shake things up, and we need it. On the one hand, women recognize that a Super Woman who juggles several full-time roles – career woman, mother, wife, friend – can’t do everything perfectly and shouldn’t have to. On the other hand, The Superwoman Squeeze – that pressure to do it all – lingers. A recent study found that 86% of full time working women do most of the housework and 77% do most of the child rearing.

We might have let go of the Super Woman model, but it’s tempting to want to chase after her trophies – a  job title, perfectly-toned triceps, a Featured spot on Etsy, or a home in the country. In one of the only memorable scenes in Sex and the City 2, Miranda and Charlotte popped their lids and revealed the pressure inherent in maintaining the image of perfect moms.

External standards are hard to measure up to, and one size can’t fit all. We need to re-invent a Super Woman who is at once inspiring and accessible; empowering and pragmatic; universal and personal. This means that being a Super Woman has less to do with the external world and traditional measures of success, and more to do with what’s happening on your insides. It’s your attitude, not your calling card.

My Super Woman may look different than your Super Woman, but she shares the same inner core:

1. She nurtures her sense of self.

Your sense of self resides deep inside. It’s your inner voice, your knowing wisdom. Building a ready access to that knowing place is an on-going process. It starts by building awareness and by getting to know yourself, both the shadowy aspects and the glowing ones.

Building the connection with yourself and exploring its ever-changing contours contributes to the richness of life. It happens in a multitude of ways — when you create a little time and space for yourself, when you listen to your body, when you check-in with your gut, when you take the time to appreciate your food, or when you put your thoughts and feelings to paper. Having a strong sense of self doesn’t solve your problems, but it does confer confidence and benevolence, elevating you to super hero status.

2. She cultivates optimism.

Optimism is a way of looking at the world, a belief that you’ll experience life in a positive manner, and that good things are plentiful. Since to a large extent our perceptions create our realities, perceiving with rose-colored glasses can make today’s “bad,” upsetting, or scary situation look interesting.

Optimism isn’t about taking an unrealistic Pollyanna approach to life. It’s about planting the seeds of joy within yourself. Those seeds become the roots of serenity, of happiness and of well-being. No matter where you tend to operate on the glass half-empty, half-full spectrum, optimism seems to be a naturally occurring brain function in everyone. Neuroscientists studying the brain found that your brain lights up more when you think about positive events as compared to negative ones. You literally give more brain juice to the positive stuff.

In a world full of suffering and problems to heal, it’s comforting to know that combat begins by harnessing your own joy power. Optimism is the Super Woman’s turbo charger.

3. She engages with her world.

When you come from a place of strength inside, reaching beyond your own self happens naturally. Boundaries and old protection mechanisms tend to melt away.

Today’s Super Woman is connected with others and with her world in dozens of different ways. She cares for her family and leads a company. She smiles to someone down on his luck and runs a foundation. She makes the news and tweets a comment. Whatever her modalities, however big or however small, and regardless of the challenges and frustrations inherent in interacting with others, she is a Super Woman for trying.

Painting yourself into the larger picture of humanity begins with little brushstrokes. It may mean adopting a different take in relating to others – family members, colleagues or friends. This entails letting things roll more easily off your back, assuming good intentions over bad, and perhaps sucking it up to make someone else happy over yourself. In sum, acting like the grown-up version of you as frequently as possible.

That Sunday-best self is your inner Super Woman, the apple of your eye, the winged heroine zooming through the sky.

Live épanoui*

Elisa

* in full bloom