For all their good intentions, New Year’s resolutions can lack staying power. There’s never a perfect time–and it never gets easier– to make changes in your life or career, so Go-Getter Girls tend to just bite the bullet and get to it. In the spirit of this tackle-the-hard-stuff attitude, here’s a thought-provoking passage from a book I read over the holidays, Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee. The book follows the post-college life of protaganist Casey, a Princeton-educated New Yorker (from Queens) and daughter to Korean parents who own a drycleaner.  She’s not sure what she wants to do with her life and is kind of stuck — hampered by debt from overspending habits; too prideful to ask others for help when it comes to her career; and too individualistic to embrace the traditional path her parents want: go to either medical or law school (with business school a barely acceptable, very distant third) and marry a Korean boy. At one point, frustrated with Casey’s lax attitude toward (to put it bluntly), getting her sh*t together in general, her workplace/big picture mentor, Sabine, who owns the boutique where Casey’s been a part-time sales associate for years, delivers a wake-up call speech that is full of GGG wisdom.

“Listen Casey . . . ” Sabine talked faster and louder because the girl’s attention was slipping.  ”Every minute matters. Every damn second. All those times you turn on the television or go to the movies or shop for things you don’t need. . . every time you sleep with the wrong man and wait for him to call you back, you’re wasting your life. Your life. Your life matters Casey. Every second. And by the time you’re my age– you’ll see that for every day and every last moment spent, you were making a choice. And you’ll see that the time you had, that you were given, was wasted. It’s gone. And you cannot have any of it back.” Sabine tiled her head her eyes full of worry.  ”Oh my darling, do you see that?”

. . . Sabine reached across the table to cover Casey’s hand. “I’m not saying you can’t f*ck it up. I’m just saying you should be making the mistakes as you head toward your goals. Okay?” . .  .”If you made the hard choices and tried to live by them, you’d be at greater peace with yourself.” [pp. 168-169]

The passage acts as a sort of turning point in the story (don’t you want to find out what Casey does next?!) and– if you’ll let me indulge my inner English major!–  represents the crux of the dichotomy facing each of the book’s characters, and most of us at one time or another: fulfillment vs. happiness.

The New Year is a great time to consider,  Are your actions helping you move towards your life goals, or just making you feel good in the moment?  Are you making the hard choices?

Here’s to making every moment count in 2010. Happy New Year!

Part of the Go-Getter Girl philosophy behind Expanding your Circle is that you never know when and where you’re going to make a meaningful connection with someone new.  For me last week, it was on a flight back to Atlanta from New York.  My neighbor had asked me to give up my beloved aisle seat to sit next to his wife, and I obliged, a little begrudgingly. Then, the woman in the row ahead of me, Iris, kindly offered to let me sit in the empty aisle seat next to her. Turned out she was from Atlanta, a successful businesswoman… and fellow author, too! We chatted about the publishing world, family, cooking (she wrote a cookbook for young adults titled Mama Says, No More Frozen Pizza), traveling, life in general– and the joys of using the new inflight wireless internet. She even Facebook “friended” me at 30,000 feet. Today, she wrote about our fun flight and the book on her blog, Mama Says. Check it out here!

Moral of the story: try to always keep an open mind. It can make life (and traveling) much more fun.

Earlier this week I spoke at a bookclub for Ed2010 (a great org for magazine editor-types) alongside author Jennifer Scanlon, a professor of gender and women’s studies who wrote Bad Girls Go Everywhere, a biography of famed Cosmo editor Helen Gurley Brown (or HGB, as she is called). Scanlon argues, somewhat controversially, that HGB should be credited as an antecedent of Third Wave feminism– i.e., the more individualistic strain of feminism that emerged in the 1990s.

One hot-button topic discussed was if/how HGB used sexuality to get ahead in work and in life.  She admittedly slept with a few bosses (though said a woman can’t sleep her way to the top) and told women that “A lady’s love should pay for all trips, most restaurant tabs and all liquor.” Some of the young women in the group took issue with her ‘calculated’ methods, and questioned HGB’s feminist legacy.  One girl asked something to the effect of, “How could you call [Cosmo] a feminist publication today if every cover says 105 ways to please your man?”

As an advocate for women being sexually liberated, taking care of themselves physically and emotionally, advancing professionally, and most-important, earning their own money, HGB was obviously an original type of Go-Getter Girl. However, as I write in the GGGG, I do think there’s a big difference between using your sexuality to get ahead and embracing your femininity in the workplace. GGGs don’t do the former, period!

On another note, one of the young women at the event was a Columbia grad who has been on the job hunt for a minute. She asked me a few questions about job searching for her blog, Ivy Leagued and Unemployed. You can check out the post here! http://bit.ly/47RJJC.

Coming up next, a primer on negotiation, Hong Kong market-style!

Sometimes, you can’t judge a book by its cover, but in the case of Farahad Zama’s The Marriage Bureau for Rich People, the richly-designed jacket is the perfect embodiment of the delightful story inside. This is the captivating, but understated, story of Mr. Ali, a restless retired government worker who, when his wife becomes fed-up with his meddling in her daily household duties, decides to open a marriage bureau. Add in Mr. Ali’s government-protesting son; the bureau’s assistant Aruna, whose quiet demeanor shields her wise and frustrated soul; and a colorful mix of clients, neighbors, and relatives– and you have a rich kaleidoscope of plots and subplots on the importance of making the “right match.” It is the kind of book that should be read on a summer afternoon,  relaxing on a porch or terrace, as a warm breeze coaxes your transport to modern-day India. 

Peppered with insights on a country still working through complicated issues of class, politics, and religion, the book will feed your appetite for something more substantive than summer fluff.  But at the core, it is a charming romance novel you won’t want to put down.

Dr. Linda Babcock, a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University, is a preeminent scholar on women and negotiation. If you haven’t already purchased her books Women Don’t Ask and Ask for It, cowritten with journalist Sara Laschever, they should be in your Amazon cart right now.  A few months back I chatted with Dr. Babcock for The Go-Getter Girl’s Guide, and here are a few of the fantastic insights she shared about overcoming self-doubt and taking the most important step in a negotiation– that is, choosing to negotiate at all.

How did you become passionate about studying women and negotiation?

I always considered myself a feminist, though I’d never done any studies in the area of feminine studies. But then I had experiences with my [female] graduate students and saw how when they didn’t ask for or get a certain professional opportunity, it held them back for long time.  It struck me that asking for one opportunity could have such a big impact on their careers.

Why are women plagued with such self doubt when it comes to asking for things career-wise?

Men learn early on to deal with rejection.  When they play little league baseball, they might hear from a coach, “If you never get thrown out, you’re not stealing enough bases. You should get thrown out.”  Boys learn the benefits to risk taking—and it’s really reinforced lots of any ways. When the coach says ‘yes steal that base!’ and it turns out well, the boy gets rewarded. And even if it turns out badly, the coach and teammates might say ‘good try’. It’s all positive reinforcement around risk taking– and it’s those messages that we’re not really conscious of that [may enable one] to get over feelings of self-doubt.

Also, so much of self doubt is about whether I deserve the things I want– entitlement. ‘Do I really feel like I deserve it?’ And women doubt that so much more than men.

How can women begin to shed those tendencies?

I think practice is really key. In the new book, Ask for It, we include a  negotiation “gym”:  Six weeks of exercises to go negotiate different things in the world. It really opens your eyes about what’s possible to negotiate. It’s interesting because women feel pretty comfortable negotiating things for our kids and families all the time. By practicing negotiating [in other spheres], you can develop the same confidence and skills as you would for something personal or at home.

How easy is it for you to negotiate these days?

You know, I actually did an op-ed column for New York Times a few months back, and I wrote about a situation that happened to me. All my colleagues that were hired the same time as me were all getting promoted to full professer, and I was thinking and complaining, ‘why am I not being promoted?’ I got all crabby with my husband. Then I realized, I need to just go in and say ‘I need to be promoted,’ and sure enough, [my boss] agreed that I should be on the same promotion schedule as my colleagues.  I was just like oh my god, why didn’t I ask sooner? It kind of reinforced this issue that women really need to think about what we want, instead of accepting the world as it comes to us.

Visit Linda and Sara’s websites at www.womendontask.com and www.askforit.org.