A couple of days ago I received an e-mail from Anneli from Sweden (quoted with permission):
Hi!
On your “about”-page you state that you are “inspired by People.”
I think you should write “inspired by MEN” as you don’t seem to get inspiration from the other sex.
Or do some rethinking.
With greetings from Sweden
Anneli
The e-mail puzzled me at first (I thought I used bad English…as it’s not my native language), but when I looked at my about page it hit me! All the people in the list were men, not a single woman was to be found there. Point taken!
I don’t consider myself male-biased, so I thought I’d add a couple of women I find inspirational to the list… but none came to mind at first. I walked over to my bookshelf to help me remember. But again, not many books were written by women, and the ones that were, well just didn’t classify. Back at my computer I was getting worried that I in fact was male-biased when it comes to getting inspired, without knowing it.
The list of people who inspire me is not really big (yet). I have a high standard when it comes down to this. Don’t get me wrong, I learn from a lot of people (I try to learn from everybody) however inspiration is on a different level. I haven’t rationalized it; it’s more of an emotional thing for me. But now I’m thinking on the subject, the elements that make a difference for me are originality in thinking, humor, an adventurous attitude towards life, a respectful people-oriented attitude and of course the feel of authenticity in their success.
Now looking at the list, I decided to take out David Allen. I learned a lot from David Allen, and his excellent books, but inspired…sorry David, not yet. I added Majora Carter, whose passion and energy for her work I admire. She also has an excellent talk at TED (watched it three times). One woman on the list… onward to see if I can find more.
Inputs I used:
- Google (variety of search terms)
- Amazon (biographies of inspirational women)
- Blogs (posts about inspirational women)
Google came up with some interesting stuff to read, and some possible candidates. Amazon came up with very little biographies about women, yet they did not quite meet my criteria (sorry Anna Nicole). I remembered that Tom Peters is writing a lot about the rising success and importance of women, and I found a couple of good posts and links. But I didn’t know any of these people, or their work, and it was hard to get to know them from these links. I did stumble upon JK Rowling and Oprah Winfrey (I feel I should’ve come up with them without the searching…). They might be inspirational.
For JK Rowling, I didn’t really know her. I knew about her story, and I like her books. I found her (50 minute) biography on YouTube. It contains a lot of inspirational quotes. I love how she tells about her inspired thought when she made up Harry Potter in the train. And I love the metaphor in the entrance to platform 9 ¾: “Anyone who ran at the barrier with enough confidence would be able to break through…” As for Oprah…well that’s Oprah, however at times she’s somewhat “over the top” for me. Her Wikipedia page is impressive.
Anyway, it took me a while to find women that inspire me. The media didn’t help as I found this male-bias to be very widespread. Who do you consider to be inspirational women? Why do they inspire you? I’d love to get to know more inspirational women…
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
When I read your 3 subjects at the bottom of your About page, I said wow, I’m right in line with this person!
here are some inspirational women to consider:
Madonna – like her or not, she has accomplished much success through a lot of hard work.
Nancy Pelosi – Speaker of the House (US Congress). She has come a long way. She is strong, but carries herself with grace.
Angelina Jolie – she seems to give a lot of her time toward helping the poorest people of the world. I read she gives 1/3 of her income to charity.
Ann Richards, deceased -former governor of Texas. She was an excellent politician and fabulous public speaker.
Mother Theresa – gave selflessly of her whole life to the poor.
There are several international women who are doing great things today, but I’m not familiar with their names at the moment.
There are many more who are inspirational, but they are not “famous.” A lot of them go by the name of “Mom” “Mommy” “Ma” etc. As a biased member of the motherhood community, let me raise a toast to the collective group of people who are “mothers.” Lots of blood, sweat and tears. Fame is not necessary in that realm.
Considering I gave you inspiration for this question, I still think it is a pretty difficult one. There are lots of inspiring women of course, but not many that go on the web/blogosphere to teach us how to live a good life or getting things done or to find peace of mind. However there is one person – and her team – that really makes a difference in a lot of homes all over the world. http://flylady.net And that by telling us that we must start to “Finally Loving Yourself” FLY. She deals with CHAOS – Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrom and SHE-ness Sidetracked Home Executives. She gives us missions to do so that no part of our homes is forgotten and she also gives us tips on how to manage life’s other parts such as relationships, work and health issues. The mailing list now has about 400.000 members and there is an inspirational radio show available on the net as well. FlyLady is Marla Cilley, also author of two books. Even if the website is rather ugly it gets you motivated to deal with clutter and stop procrastinating.
I just thought of another great role model from the blog scene: Gretchen Rubin from The Happiness Project http://www.happiness-project.com
There’s some good stuff there, thanks!
@AgentSully:
Madonna and Angelina Jolie have so many peculiar traits that prevent me from designating them role models. I do admire what they have accomplished and what they (now) do for others. Politicians (male or female) do not really appeal to me, but that can very well be a prejudice, I’m going to read more about the two. And mother Theresa, well she indeed is an inspiration.
@Anneli:
I subscribed to the happiness project, it looks good at first glance. Flylady seems to be very female-oriented, and too bad that she has no feed…
Thanks for inspiring me. I was amazed by the amount of time I needed. It’s somewhat comforting to hear that you find it difficult as well
How does your wife, the love of your life, inspire you? That’s a woman that should be number one on your list.
Hi Ben,
For this article I limited myself to publicly known women. Spouses and mothers, as you can read in the other comments, are role models as well.
Your comment made me think. I noticed that you’re an NLP-trainer and as you may know, I’m currently in training to be NLP Practitioner. Your comment triggered a lot of meta-model questions
Hi Lodewijk,
) mention the love of your life. Inspirational to me is sometimes a sentence uttered by somebody in the street and I wil never forget the face and the looks of the person nor the moment, because they inspire me to do what I do. It’s not only about the great work they (the publicly known women) did, but also about the way they (the real life people around me) touch my soul.
Yeah, publicly or not, I had to (one of my parts told me
I overheard one woman telling another one (in a dialect I can’t really translate): “He hav stole your past, don’t make him grab your future”. I thought she was absolutely right and I still tell the story as a metaphor to some people.
So, let’s also pay some attention to the wisdom and love close to us.
And you’ll learn the Milton model soon, I suppose, where you intentionally use the Meta model to trigger people into thinking
.
Carola P. Estés is one of the woman inspiring me: “Women Who Run With the Wolves” is well known, http://www.mavenproductions.com/estes.html