A entrepreneur friend of mine, who happens to be female, and I were talking. Another female entrepreneur had said that she couldn’t get funding for her company because she was female, and that she would have easily gotten it if she was male.
Now, I have no idea if this is true or not. As a straight white male, basically no one has any biases against me. And I have enough female friends to know that women are, in some ways, treated worse than men. That’s an unfortunate fact of modern life that seems to be changing in a positive direction. Venture capitalists seems like a smart enough bunch that they would see an opportunity if female entrepreneurs weren’t getting the same amount of funding as their male peers, but again I have no firsthand experience so I don’t really know.
My friend and I were talking about this and she said something that I thought was really smart. She said, “There are disadvantages to being female, but their are advantages to it, too. And either way, I’m going to do the best I can with what I’ve got.”
What a perfect attitude. It’s so obviously true, and it’s both a diagnosis of the situation and a solution to it as well. She will be discriminated against in some cases because she’s female. But she will also get some opportunities as a result. And either way, she’s going to play the cards she’s dealt to the best of her ability.
Seeing the world clearly is so important. You can be the best navigator in the world, but if your map is wrong, you’re still going to have problems. It seems very often that people with a victim mentality cling to an inaccurate or shaded view of the world, and it holds them back.
I have advantages, and I have disadvantages. I don’t complain about my disadvantages and I try not to be too proud of my advantages either. It’s just where I’m at right now. I work on the disadvantages to try to prevent them from getting in my way, and I try to focus my energy such that I’m leveraging my advantages as best I can.
At the end of the day, that’s the only attitude that yields results. You accept the truth of your situation, whether you like it or not, and you make the best of it.
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Photo is the Sydney Opera house. Did you know that the roof is ceramic tile? I figured it was metal mesh or canvas or something from all of the photos. It’s really a pretty spectacular sight in person.
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