3 Things you Can Do in Response
“Bigger girls wear bigger jewelry.”
It was an early morning on a major network. I was getting ready to deliver an early morning report on how the US markets were shaping up on international TV.
My earpiece was in my right ear, as it always was, giving me a direct line to the director’s cues. The familiar chatter of the voices in the master control was buzzing away in my ear. As the fixed up my framing, I heard the director say aloud to his fellow operators, “Bigger girls wear bigger jewelry,” referencing the silver piece I was wearing today.
He didn’t realize his microphone was open.
He didn’t realize I could hear him.
I was stared down at my notes, stung.
I had just returned from Calcutta. My grandmother bought me some necklaces. Each morning, she would call on the neighbors in the village to turn on their tv’s and watch. I wore one necklace gifted by her under my ‘very business’ business suits as a ‘nod’ to her since she didn’t speak English. This day, I had chosen to wear a silver piece with a large pendant.
I heard the music and the anchor introducing me, “Joya Dass joins us from New York with a look ahead to the US Markets.” I lit up with a Christmas tree smile and delivered the report with trained verve.
I’m sure there were many, many other comments I never heard. TV is glamorous from the outside. But there is a downside of being ‘out there’ in such a big way.
I repeated that story this morning to a member who was considering doing TV and I shared the three things I learned from that moment:
🧨 Take feedback from *only* from someone with a dog in the fight. In this day of social media, folks are offering their opinions of you/your posts in real time. Before you integrate the sting of the comment, think critically, “Does this person have a dog in the same fight? Are they qualified to give advice?” If the answer is no, be like teflon. Let the comments slide off. They don’t even have the courage to be in the arena.
🧨 Don’t reward the behavior. Nude photos of Madonna were once published. She never commented publicly or addressed it. Guess what happened? The buzz about the photos died just as quickly as they surfaced. As a trained professional, she knew that validating it would be the ‘reward’ people were seeking. Instead, she diffused it by saying ‘nothing.’ The reflex is “to respond” when someone is trolling. The most powerful reflex (And requires practice) — — is to not.
🧨 Investigate what is being triggered in you? This is the real work. People, clients in our experience are often **triggering** something we are suppressing in ourselves. The director that morning at 5:30am was reminding me that I work in a visual medium. The daily 4:30am wakeup calls had caused me to gain weight, and I needed a harsh reminder that wasn’t going to fly with a career in TV. I wasn’t confronting it.
Today I think about the ‘gifts’ in hard moments like these, versus the ‘sting’
I host a Mastermind for women leaders looking to build a personal brand in 2023. Dm me joya@joyadass.com to join. We have one spot remaining and kick off this weekend.
