Is it hard to advocate for yourself, just for you? If so, know this - You are allowed to advocate for yourself in the same way you advocate for others.

Let me be clear - advocating for others is good!

But you also get to advocate for yourself, just on behalf of you. For your salary, your time, your energy - anything.

Can you set boundaries and still be seen as a team player and high performer? YES.

In fact, I've seen time and time again that if you set and communicate boundaries clearly, people are most often fine with it.

Even more interesting....I've seen MANY example of people being seen as a HIGHER performer after they set boundaries because they have the time and energy to focus on what's most important - and those are the things that often get recognized and rewarded!

How can you respond when you get interrupted? Take it back!

Women are 2-3 times as likely to get interrupted and that is FRUSTRATING - or maybe a few steps past frustrating to angering.

Watch the video for two phrases I've found to be particularly helpful to redirect the conversation back to what you were saying so you can get heard!

A few weeks ago I was challenged by some successful speakers to look at how I was messaging my business - and I realized I reacted COMPLETELY differently to their feedback than I would have in the past.

When I first started my business (and for most of my corporate career as well), I took every single piece of feedback as verbatim truth, especially when it came from leaders and people I viewed as "experts."

This was the overachiever in me. Be better! Do it all! And do it all NOW!

I recently presented my keynote at a large conference for women in Engineering. I opened my keynote — Discover Your Authentic Voice - And How To Use It To Create Change — with a story about the feedback I received in my corporate career that I was too direct. Because of that feedback, I started to hold back the bold, fiery side of me. I questioned my voice and began to speak more cautiously. Not thoughtfully, cautiously.Which begs the question -- should I have ever listened to that feedback in the first place?!?

I speak at events for mostly women through employee resource networks and conferences. As you might imagine, over the years I've heard A LOT of stories of the bias that women experience in their day-to-day lives. So I decided to put those stories into a blog. It's the ten most common experiences of bias I've heard from women. I decided to share this list of the bias women experience to build awareness and start conversations.

I loved Untamed, but as I thought back on the book and all the self-help geared towards women, I realized most of them had one thing in common: The turning point in a woman's life hinged on falling in love or, even more so, having children. This realization made me MAD. On a deep, deep level.

Last Friday I laced up my hiking shoes, silenced my phone, and headed out for a short walk in the woods. Ten minutes into enjoying the sunshine and movement I was suddenly overcome with words I just HAD to write. I pulled out my phone and stood on the side of the trail writing line after line into my Evernote app. This is what came out. This is everything I want to say to my clients, to myself, and to all women everywhere. This is my message for you.

Cyndi Lauper embodied a totally different kind of power than what we would traditionally define as powerful. She was powerful in her joy. In her light. In her FREEDOM.