It Takes Girl Grit To End Girl Growls with Paula Kramer

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Hello and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negative mindsets so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches you want in life. Join us here live every Tuesday at noon Eastern and dialogue with us at 818-572-2910. You can also chat with us at BlogTalkRadio.com/SheddingtheBitch or share share your stories on our website at sheddingthebitch.com. Whatever the bitch is that's holding you back from living your life to the fullest, it's not worth giving up the riches in life that you deserve. So call in now and let Bernadette Boas know what's holding you back.

818-572-2910.

Good day, good day, good day everyone! How are you? Happy, happy, happy Tuesday, uh, wherever you are in the world. It is a gorgeous day here in Atlanta, Georgia, and it's— there's still a breeze. I'm not sure, isn't it April 17th? Let me just check just in case I'm having a brain fart, uh, but I do believe it is April 17th, and it is about 45 degrees here in Atlanta. I don't unders—

stand.

But I'm sure many of you, especially those of you dealing still with snow, um, are saying, uh, really, Bernadette, uh, 45 degrees, you know, try feet, you know, inches of snow. Oh my gosh. I, although I'm, I'm kind of glad because it has been a very, uh, mild pollen season. If I do sound scratchy or I'm sniffling, The little bit of pollen that has been able to breed is definitely impacting me. But again, I'm not going to complain because there's a lot of you dealing with a lot worse conditions out there than Atlanta's 45-degree weather. So I hope you are having a beautiful morning, noon, or night wherever you might be. I love our global audience, and you're going to thoroughly enjoy this conversation. I mean, anything with Girl Grit in the title, I mean, you have to appreciate, right? Or even Girl Growl, uh, is, uh, something that you definitely want to, uh, hear and learn about. Uh, before we get in there, let's see, Rich News. I just want to say, uh, this year has been one of those years, um, that we talk about here on the program— transform, transformation, shift, shedding— and it certainly has been for me. And I was And I had mentioned to all of you that I was on the Weight Watchers, have been on the Weight Watchers program since the beginning of the year, roughly about middle of January, and went to my meeting this past Sunday, finally got over, I had an objective to get under 160, regardless of how many pounds that was. I just wanted to get under that mark, and actually it was about 20.2 pounds, so I was very excited. That I did. It came after, though, someone challenging me, and this is where the transformation and shift comes in. Somebody challenged me to ramp up my running again. I had taken a number of years— I used to use Charlie as an excuse all the time— I had taken a number of years off, and I figured, you know, at 55, 56 years old, do I really want to be beating my legs up, that kind of thing. But I must say, it was a 5K. It had mimosa in the title. So you could kind of surmise what the motivation was, thinking at the end you are actually going to be able to sip on a mimosa. But I did allow my friend to convince me. Went out there on Saturday, the day before the weigh-in. I thought it would be an extra boost. And once again, I mean, I certainly didn't run the whole hilly. Atlanta is very hilly. Hella coarse, but at the same time felt awesome afterwards. And what really kind of convinced me about just what we all just want to be thinking about when it comes to shifts and transformations and taking care of ourselves and shedding whatever is holding us back, whatever excuse is keeping us where we are today, I looked around the probably 1500, 2000 people that were there running. And none of us have an excuse to not be able to get out there and take on a challenge, whatever it might be. There was young people there. There was older people. And I mean, like those in their 80s. This one couple holding their hands as they speed— fed walked up, you know, these hills and down the hills. There were women with strollers, you know, pushing their strollers. There was, you know, certainly those walking, those even really, you could tell that they were already, maybe they showed up in pain and this was a challenge for them. But it was a lot of fun. I challenged myself to finish the 3.2. I challenged myself to be able to get up the hills. Not necessarily running, but with great determination. And at the same time, I was also determined to just stay very in the moment, very much in the moment, just looking around and really enjoying everything around me. So it just allowed and created a great shift for me to kind of remind myself that you could put your yourself on a shelf for a while. You might, you know, put aside your passions, your dreams, your goals, your ambitions, your desires to get fit, lose weight, get more money, start a business, find a relationship, whatever the case might be. But whether you're at 20 or 55, 56 like I am— I'm 56 actually, I don't know why I keep saying 55, 56, uh, 56— or if you're 86, 96, you can always start today to kind of want to pursue those type of things. And it really lends into our conversation today because it is all about us owning our story, us owning our highs and our lows, our successes, failures, trials, tribulations, whatever it might be, and then learning from them and, and, you know, growing as a result of them. So stay tuned because we will be talking with her in a very short bit because there really is no other rich news, which is a good thing. Sometimes it's, you know, things going on from a disaster perspective or horrific incident. Unfortunately, there is not. So hopefully just everybody is quietly, calmly, peacefully, happily, you know, moving into spring, looking for those flowers to bloom, the sun to shine, and for their spirits to flourish. And that's what today is going to be all about. Of course, you can always go back to our shows in archives. You can always go back to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and see all of our episodes. You can also go to our sheddingthebitch.com radio channel and check them out there. And keep in mind, you can also join in with us on a weekly basis if you follow the program Shedding the Bitch Radio on BlogTalk, and of course every one of them is recorded and uploaded to iTunes and to BlogTalk, to sheddingthebitch.com, and a number of other streaming services. So you won't miss out from all the great guests that we have. And then keep in mind, the first Tuesday of every month is our Ask Bernadette episode. Basically, you can ask me anything, and we will talk and share not only when you ask it— maybe you posted it to Facebook or Twitter But, uh, uh, we will also talk about it right here on the program, even giving you an opportunity to call in and have that conversation with me. And you can ask all kinds of questions, first Tuesday of every month. And you can call into our, our show anytime when we're live, 1-818-572-2910, and chat with myself and/or our guests and, uh, just have a lively time really just finding those things in your life that you want to be able to shed and then create so you can accelerate successes. Okay, oh, let's see, I think that's it. So this is what we're talking about today, that it takes girl grit to end girl growls. I love that. So girl grit is the courage to create equality for all girls and women, including girls and women who create inequality for you. Girl growls are those betrayals and sabotages between individual women that hold all women back. That is so key for all— every single one of us to understand. You sabotage or betray one woman, it's hurting all of us. Girl growls inevitably backfires, if only in building and reinforcing glass ceilings for all women. So what are you going to listen for and learn today? Well, there's 4 cultural themes of betrayal between women. You'll learn about that. You'll learn about girl growls that are based on those themes of building betrayal and glass ceilings. And then we're going to develop girl grit by refusing to betray yourself according to those themes and chip away at that glass ceiling by ending girl growls. And I'm not sure if you know this, but according to our guests, only 10% of a population is necessary to introduce change into the population. So let's be that 10%. Let's even grow that 10% so each one of us does just a little bit of something in order to, to bring and introduce change into the world. So your rich question I want you to be thinking about and putting in the back of your head as we have this conversation is, what role— I want you to be honest with yourself, that's what Shedding the Bitch is all about, it's self-awareness, it's honesty, it's truth. What role— R-O-L-E for those of you who think I have an accent— what role have you played in creating potential betrayal or sabotages between other women, with you and other women?

What role?

We have to acknowledge these things in order to change and shift. So what role have you played And what are you willing to do about it? So that's your rich question. What role have you played in the betrayal and sabotages of other women? And what are you willing to do to create a shift? So your rich tag for today, of course, it's always "Shame the bitch," but we'll invite you to also use "Girl grit." Love that. Girl grit. And we're going to come up with one other one. How about, um, Girl Goodwill, hashtag Girl Goodwill. And you'll hear shortly, that's actually a Facebook page of our guests that you're gonna be able to look up as well. So we're gonna take a quick break, we're gonna come back, we're gonna introduce our guests and get into this conversation about girl grit and girl growl. We'll be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitch of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette Boas' book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, TSR Consulting, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate-sized clients. Go to TSRConsulting.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker78@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone, we are talking Girl Grit and Girl Growls. Our guest, Paula Kramer, began paying attention to her betrayal— betrayal between women after watching a female talk show host make a female guest responsible for men's thoughts and actions. The implication was that if that female guest got raped, it would be her fault. Paula wrote her master's thesis about women as television talk show hosts and she spent 5 years watching every female talk show host on television, keeping track of topics and guests for each episode. That list from hundreds of episodes revealed repeating topics, the 4 cultural themes of betrayal between women. Paula faced the uncomfortable realization that she had betrayed other girls and women throughout her life. Paula also realized that girl growls based on those cultural themes always backfires in some way. The loss of a years-long friendship was a particularly painful backfire. Paula is here to help you understand how to stop grouse with girl grit and girl goodwill. Welcome to the program, Paula.

Hello, Bernadette.

How are you?

I'm good. I'm in the opposite weather than you are. We had almost 3 feet of snow over the weekend.

Ah, and tell everyone where you are hanging out.

Central Wisconsin.

Oh, Wisconsin. You got feet of snow, huh?

Feet of snow, yes.

You guys must be just over it. This has been a very rough, rough, rough winter for you guys.

Yes. Well, no, actually, Central Wisconsin has had better weather than other areas like the Northeast and the central Midwest like Chicago. We've had less snow. This is our first really big snow this year.

Oh wow, okay, all right. I gotta get my map— I gotta get my map out and teach myself some geography. Well, that's good, but I— and I guess some people might say, you know, well, if you like snow, better late than never, but at the same time, uh, it is April 17th, so— Right.

Oh, I like snow. I like winter. I like winter walking. However, April 7th 15, 16 is a little late for this kind of storm.

Yeah, yeah, I would say so. I was even like, the other day it happened to like go from very bad temperatures to very nice temperatures, and I was like, okay, so can I still wear these like boots that I absolutely love, but is it appropriate because it's spring? But then when it was like 40, I was like, yeah, I'm wearing my boots even though it's April 15th.

Sure.

Yeah, exactly. Well, I want to tell everybody before we get into this conversation, we have a lot to talk about, especially around this, the cultural things we want to learn about. I want everyone to check out speakingfromtriumph.com. That'll give you tons of information in regards to Paula. And I had mentioned a Facebook handle that was mentioned in her bio. Her Facebook page is Girl Goodwill. So it's girl.goodwill. You'll find Paula out there. Her Twitter handle is Paula M. Kramer. And then of course you can find her on LinkedIn, Paula Kramer, and definitely hook into her. And if you ever have a question or a situation or just a story and you want to reach out to her, her business Speaking from Triumph should tell you a great deal about this conversation today. So we welcome her to the program. But to get started, Paula, I want you to kind of help us, you know, step back because I have read in multiple places where your bio is concerned, kind of the unbelievable background even you have had when it comes to, you know, there was one situation around mur— you know, murder or attempted murder, and then there, and an injury to your spine. And then you know, what you write in your bio about your loss of a longtime friendship. So give us some idea of how you got here today, including being on the program.

That is a good story. My mother grew up with all those cultural themes of betrayal. One of them— well, the four cultural themes of betrayal are women as mothers, women and their appearance, women as deviants, and teenage girls as threats to society. There is a Girl Grid page on my speakingfromtriumph.com website that gives all kinds of information that everybody can read. My mother grew up with these cultural themes of betrayal. She was taught that she could prove herself to be a good woman only as the mother of a son. I was her second daughter instead of her first son. She had taken these cultural themes of betrayal to heart so much that she tried to kill me twice because I was a threat to her as a woman, to her image as a woman. This shows how women betray themselves. My mother betrayed herself by accepting this idea that she could be a good woman only as the mother of a son. She's an intelligent talented person, but she believed these cultural things were betrayal, as did I, because I betrayed other women myself.

Right.

Well, okay, so let me, let me just, let me just pause there for just a second. So I mean, that's just overwhelming. I mean, I'm sitting here like, and I'm hard for loss of words. But, you know, for that to sink in everybody, as I mean, because that you say it very, not casually, but you, because I'm sure there's a heavy heart there, but very factually, very factually. And yet we're sitting here going, holy mackerel. Okay, so how has that played out? And maybe that's where you're going with your story. So, you know, continue because that has had to play out in some way, shape, or form to where you are today.

So I grew up knowing that I— that my mother was wrong, that I was— was worth something. My father loved me and let me know that he loved me, which kept me sane since I did live with this woman who attempted to kill me, right? But I grew up knowing that I was worth something. That was always in the background. I knew I was worth something, and I stood up for myself when I felt safe. I had complex post-traumatic stress disorder because I lived with my attempted murderer for 20 years. But in the background was always this feeling that— this feeling of being loved that helped me survive many things. But when I didn't feel safe, when I felt fear, then I betrayed other women. And other girls.

And explain that. What does betrayal look like to you?

It is treating women as less than they are, women and girls. It is stereotyping them. Those 8 words that I spoke that ended a friendship of years, I spoke them about another single mother. I was a single mother because my husband died. When her daughter was a baby. This was another single mother. I said 8 mean words about her because I had endured a lot of stereotypes as a single mother. And I felt this one particular single mother had made my life worse. In response, I made her life worse instead of making it better, because making her life better would have made my life better. But I hadn't learned that yet. I said those 8 words, mean, mean words, and a friendship just died that day.

Wow, wow, wow. And so how long did it take for you to realize what kind of what you were doing to yourself?

By that time, I, let's see, Kristin, I'm trying to figure out my daughter's age. 'cause she was 6 when I did that. I had not yet started writing my thesis. I had not yet watched that talk show where I realized the talk show host was making the woman responsible for men's thoughts and feelings. And it wasn't even then— that's when I started thinking about it 'cause I couldn't understand how that host could make this woman responsible for men's thoughts and feelings. It wasn't until I had watched all those talk shows and started going through the list of topics that I started recognizing these repeating themes. When I recognized those repeating themes is when I realized, oh my God, I've done terrible things to girls and women.

Wow.

Oh wow, wow. Okay, I was 35— I was 45. I didn't realize it till I was 45.

There's, there's got to be something in that number 45, because that's when I did my whole shedding. And I, I totally get that You know, a woman— so for any women under 40, that, you know, listen up here because there's some bright light coming to, you know, in your direction.

Bright light coming.

Yeah, because I, I definitely think that, you know, 20, you really don't know yourself, you're trying to figure yourself out. 30, you're, you're, you're kind of focused on, you know, um, kind of knowing who you are, but at the same time everything external is important to you. And then all of a sudden you get closer to 40 And it just appears that there's this time when you say, okay, now I want to think about other people and my role in those other people's lives. And the next thing you know, all these shifts happen for people, especially women, I think. Do you have any— does that make sense? Is there any logic to that?

Yeah, there's logic to it, but we need to get that age lower. We need to get women— we need to get girls realizing. —what they're doing to each other and to themselves at a young age. So you can turn it around.

And is that where Girl Grit and Girl Growls kind of came from, is wanting to solve that problem for young girls?

That's when I started thinking— that's when I thought of the term Girl Goodwill because I knew I had to do something different. I knew I had to change the way I did things. And it took a while, but I came up with 12 Girl Goodwill Steps. There's a Girl girl goodwill page on my website. You can read all about those steps and I have examples from Lucille Ball. Lucille Ball is the most successful woman in television ever and she went out of her way to use girl goodwill with other women, including an actress her husband was chasing around the set. She used girl goodwill. And she's the most successful woman in television history.

Okay, so when you say girl goodwill, give us an idea of how you yourself implement that. When you say what girl goodwill is for everybody, you say positive things about women.

You talk about positive things about women. I can say something positive about my mother who tried to kill me twice. She has a wonderful singing voice. She's made a lot of people happy singing at special events. Right, right. She was able to make other people happy. She didn't— couldn't make me happy, but she made other people happy. She could do that because she wasn't feeling threatened. We, right, are mean to other women when we feel threatened. So how do we recognize— if we recognize— if we recognize our tendency to be mean to other women, to betray other women, to sabotage other women when we're not feeling good about ourselves, Then we know that it's time to do something good for ourselves, say something good to ourselves. I'm good at this. I did this well. This person's life is better because I did this. When we can say those kinds of things to ourselves, then we can say them to other girls and women. Right. So it's kind of—

it kind of starts with us first in regards to recognizing when we're feeling a little bit off, a little bit negative, a little bit hard on ourselves, a little bit ugly, you know, however we interpret that for ourselves. And it's acknowledging that and then shifting through kind of really focusing on positivity of someone else.

Right, right. And then, and then you, then you intentionally create success for other women, which is how I got on your show. Yeah, I contacted you. I I looked up, I had to go back and look up how I discovered you in the first place. You wrote a comment on a LinkedIn discussion. You mentioned your book. I went and looked at your book and realized it would be a good resource to add to my Girl Grid page. I emailed you and said, "I want to add your book to my Girl Grid page as a resource." You emailed me back and said you loved my Girl Now platform. Right. That's why I'm here. That's how you create success. I tried to create success for you and you created success for me. That's how we get more in the world as women, by creating success for each other. Absolutely. Oh, I love that.

Love, love, love, love, love, love that. And you're so, so, so right. So I want to go back to your girl— your Girl Goodwill page on your website. And the list of 12 points that you mentioned. Is this something that any one of us can pull down and maybe give to the girls in our lives, maybe give it to girls of a classroom? You know, is it something for girls to use? I have posters.

I have a Girl Goodwill poster in my Speaking from Triumph store that lists the steps.

Nice. Okay, good, good. So, and we're speaking, um, or let me rephrase that because I'll confuse the website. So we want them to go to speakingfromtriumph.com to look at that, right?

And then there is a Speaking from Triumph store page, right? Correct. It has all kinds of posters, right? Cool. That I call, I call the poster Standards for Success posters because they say they give information about what should which behaviors create success and which behaviors create failure. When you put a poster up on a wall, everybody knows who's creating success and everybody knows who's creating failure.

Right, right, right. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm writing something down for you. Okay. So, go back to now, because you had mentioned them, but I want to kind of get into each one of them. Go back to explaining the 4 cultural themes of betrayal between— and let us say not between just women, let us say between girls and women. So we all get in our heads that even our daughters may need to, you know, have some of this, this information passed to them. What are those 4 cultural themes? First off, like from a summary perspective, but then what is some meat behind them, like the detail behind them?

Women as mothers have been criticized since the written word, probably, because people, other people have been laying down rules for mothers. I was somehow blessed when I was writing my thesis because everywhere I went while I was working on my thesis, I came across advice books for women. Everywhere. Literally everywhere. I went to a house where Someone was having a potluck. They said, "We have books upstairs. We're getting rid of them in the attic." I went upstairs. I found 2 or 3 books on advice for women in this old farmhouse in Central Wisconsin. And they're all these advice about women as mothers. The advice changed over time because society's needs for blaming women changed over time, blaming mothers. Sometimes we were good mothers, sometimes we were responsible for brainwashing during the war in Korea. Anything mothers did could be bad according to the beliefs at the time. And in the— in modern times, there's been a lot of conflict between women. Who are mothers about whether it's better to stay at home or better to go to work. There is one well-known— I don't have her name right now. It's not off the top of my head, but there's one woman who insists that women are betraying other women if they do not go work full-time, even as mothers. She was a mother herself. She went and worked full-time. If you don't go and work full-time, you are betraying women everywhere. That's from a woman, a feminist leader. She was a feminist leader. She was older. She's probably dead now. But that's from a woman. You don't have a choice. That's one of the things about these themes. You don't have a choice. Women and their appearance includes what you wear, what you— your hair, your age, your behavior. And your skin color, everything. There are, back in the, oh, in the early 20th, early 19th century, there were S-shaped girdles that women were supposed, well, this would be upper class women, of course. Upper class women were supposed to wear. Wearing these S-shaped girdles, the bosom stuck out and the butt stuck out and women could not sit down. In these girdles, but they were supposed to wear them. And the— and the— if they traveled by train, they had to lean forward on pillows because they could not sit. Whether women should be heavy or thin depends on the time period. We've gone from the early part of the 20th century where heavy women were a sign that they're wealthy husbands to— we have to be stick thin, right? Right, right. And then your behavior, your behavior— there was, there's a— it was a photograph online of a woman running for a political office who was nursing her baby in the photograph. Another woman wrote about how she should be modest. This is what breasts are meant to do, nurse babies. And I see a nursing politician as someone who is pro-life. Because she's doing what she should do. I wrote a comment to her saying that modesty is on a spectrum that includes she asked for it. Expect women to be modest, then they're responsible if they got raped because they weren't modest, right? Wow. Yep. Wow.

And plus, it's nobody's business. But anyway, that's all right.

Yeah. Okay. Then women as deviants, you can— we're deviant just by being female. We're deviant if we stepped out of the approved roles. How dare we go into this kind of job? How dare we? Office jobs were originally staffed by men. When women started moving into the office, it was terrible. Sometimes women are okay to take on jobs that are generally male jobs, like during wars, then it's okay for women to work in factories. As soon as the war is over, how dare you, you left your children, abandoned your children to go out of the home. That actually, there were actually people who wrote that, men who wrote that after World War II. You abandoned your children.

My dad, my father verbalized that to me, um, he was a Depression child. He grew up in the Depression, and he was visiting me with my mother in Florida and sitting on the couch watching the, um, the USA, uh, shipping, you know, the, the yacht racing, the World Cup of yacht racing. And, and the Ameri— there was an American woman that was the captain, that was the lead of this for the first time ever. And, um, Yeah, he didn't realize he said it out loud, but he verbalized out loud how, you know, God, you know, you don't deserve— she was being interviewed, and he's like, you don't deserve to, you know, be profiled. I mean, you're leaving your children behind for weeks and months on end to do this. And oh, you don't want to know my response to my father. Yeah. It wasn't pretty.

I can imagine it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But go ahead, I'm sorry.

Okay, women can even be deviant when they want to move up in society and be equal to higher-class women or professional women. Professional women and higher-class women treat other women as deviant for wanting to share the same success. I've experienced it myself. Right.

Let me ask you something though, because deviant, when I first saw, you know, kind of understood that as one of your, the cultural things you were talking about. Is there, is there another word, um, that maybe most will see? Because deviant, a lot of people might think of as kind of like, um, it's almost like perverse, right? Yeah. Um, yeah. And I'm, I'm just trying to figure, is there another word that people can kind of relate, the women can relate to that's within this, that they really don't like women who go against the grain or women who, who kind of, um, oh my gosh, for a, uh, for a so-called writer, I'm drawing a blank on words. Um, but is there— is that a— is that a useful— or not useful word— is that a word most understand as far as their role in betraying other women?

I have not had anyone tell me that they do She didn't understand what I was saying. Okay, good.

All right, then we'll move on. She didn't understand what I meant. It might be just me and my perverted mind. We'll just move on.

That's okay. That's okay. One more thing about women as deviants. Women are often considered more deviant than men who are deviant. Ah. Think about the male politicians or any male accused of sexual harassment. Right. Women are more deviant to many people. Yep. Yep.

Men are just assumed that they are deviant, I think. I think women just, you know, accept that. Yeah. That's a great point. Okay. All right.

And then teenage girls as threats to society. Society sees teenage girls as needing to be prepared to please men. And they endanger adult males and arouse inappropriate sexual feelings in men. Another talk show host did a show focused on 13-year-old girls who dressed older. They dressed older and adult men had relationships with them. The host blamed the teenage girls.— Right.— for dressing older. So, but if they dressed older, the men were adults. During the show, they went to commercial break. They came back from commercial break with a graphic on the screen that said something along the lines of, girls under the age of 15 who have had sex with men, adult men, say that it was forced on them by older men. What is that? That is rape, right? Forced sex is rape. This is a rape of a child by a man, an adult. But she went right back to blaming the teenage girls.

Mm-hmm.

They should not dress older than their age because they were too tempting to the men. How is this any different from the Arab world, the extreme right in the Arab world that expects women to cover up completely so they don't tempt men? Right. It is not different. It is the same.

Wow. And I'm sorry, could you— what is that full, full, um, uh, title of that theme? I got teenage girls something, something to society.

As threats to society. Teenage girls as threats to society. They threaten society by upsetting men, by ruining men's lives. Men who are the caretakers of— who make society happen. Right.

Okay, so we're going to take a quick break. I'm going to absorb this because I really think we— so we have women as mothers, women on their appearance, Women as deviants and teenage girls are threats to society. I want all of you thinking about those 4 different areas of where women can betray other women and therefore what we need to do is use girl grit to kind of banish those girl growls. And then consider your rich question. What, you know, what role have you played in, you know, any one of those 4? And what are you willing to do to change it. When we get back, I want to be talking about, okay, how can we be really leveraging the understanding of these 4 cultural themes in order to both recognize it within ourselves and then come up with things we could be doing differently. We'll be right back with Paula Kramer.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch Rich to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, TSR Consulting, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate size clients. Go to TSRConsulting.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium size businesses. Email Debra Parker at debraparker78@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone. We are talking to Paula Kramer, a transformational strategist that you just really need to understand and learn her story. So I want you to go to Speaking from Triumph and she has tons and tons of information out there and resources that you can use. You can look up her Girl Goodwill page and she has a list of 12 talking points— not talking points necessarily, but things that you could be doing to even for the girls in your life, not only for women in your life, but for the girls in your life that you could be doing to lift up other girls, other women, as opposed to tearing them down. And we're talking about girl grit and girl growls. So Paula, based on those 4 cultural things we just talked about, one, how have they changed over time that you've been focused on them and working with other people on those things? And what from your backstory, how have you coped with the girl growl from other women and kind of what are you able to now use as tips for other people to get beyond that girl growl?

The changes have to do with changes in society, changes in the themes. Whatever is important in a society at the time is what will reflect in the cultural themes. When I'm 67, when I was a child, women going into the workforce was very, very unusual, except especially in upper levels. I remember in Chicago, the newspapers having job listings for women and for men. They did not combine job listings, they separated them. Now the job listings are combined, but there is still bias against women. Some of the cultural themes have gone underground then, because now it's not okay to say this job is for women, this job is for men. In some ways they've gone underground. I have an example of how I used a girl growl and turned it around. I had a job. I had— my spine was injured when I was 12 years old when a boy in school pulled a chair out from under me. If any of you have any children in your lives, tell them to never pull a chair out from under anyone. Some people are instantly paralyzed. I wasn't paralyzed, but the injury was misdiagnosed for 33 years, leaving me in pain. Sitting and standing normally were painful. So, For a lot of my adult life, I had trouble earning money. After I finally got the correct diagnosis and treatment, which came from Girl Goodwill, by the way, because I did this— I said this story about my injury and never pulling a chair out from under anyone at the beginning of a talk I did to a women's business group. Please tell, children never pull a chair out from under anyone. And I explained I had to sit on a stool because I couldn't stand or sit without pain, and I had all kinds of things with me to ease my pain. Afterwards, a nurse in the audience came up to me and gave me the correct diagnosis and told me the correct treatment for my injury. Wow! I followed her advice and the pain in my spine went away in 1 hour. Wow. Because the injury, because the original injury had been misdiagnosed for so long, however, other problems developed. So I had problems earning money still, just for different reasons. I got a, I got a seasonal job at a catalog company because I could work the hours I chose and ease my back into normal activities. There was a supervisor there who made a point of insulting people, insulting the people beneath her. It was a highly stressful job, so she was pressured and she didn't feel good about herself, and she insulted those beneath her to feel better about herself. I wrote a letter to human resources about her, and so did another person. Because two of us wrote letters, human resources believed us and talked to the supervisor. Supervisor. She stopped insulting us, but she was very angry at me. Instead of growling at her because of how she had insulted me, I went out of my way to give her what I call moments of dignity. This is a whole separate website, smilesparksuccess.com, where you can go look, but I gave her moments of dignity. I didn't have to agree with her. I didn't have to like her. I didn't have to do anything with her but just give her moments when she could feel a bit of dignity. She left the job before I did. I actually got to the point where I could get her laughing. That's how well I was able to turn it around. She left that job before I did. Years later, when I needed something that only one organization where I lived provided, I called the organization and who answered the phone? That old supervisor. Because I knew that she had been insulting because of the stress on her at that other job, I said to her with sincerity, she could hear the sincerity in my voice, I said, "I'm glad you got a better job. I'm really happy for you." She went out of her way to get me more than I was calling about.

Wow, wow, wow. And I think it's really important to kind of like reflect and really think about kind of what you just, that story you just illustrated. Because one, I think it is, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, did you, you didn't compromise yourself by giving her a moment of dignity. You simply found a different way of being able to manage and— I don't want to use the word handle, but manage her in a way that, one, kept you kind of grounded and not allowed it to impact you, her treatment of you to impact you negatively. At the same time, while respecting her or giving her dignity for the role that she was in. Is that— Is that—

that's right. I, I— what I did left both of us feeling good, right? She felt dignity, and I felt good about myself for acting with goodwill, right?

And I, and I think that's important for everybody to understand because it's, you know, there's going to be people in our lives, and some people are going to be paying us, some people are going to be in love with us, some people are going to be blood relatives, whatever the case might be, that we don't necessarily have to agree with them and we may not get along with them and we may have totally different views from them, doesn't mean that, in your words, we can't give them moments of dignity to where we manage that relationship and make it work for everybody. Wow, that's powerful. And the fact that it came back around, it came back around in the way that it did for you is just is awesome, just absolutely awesome.

Right, and you can never look at someone and know what future benefit they could bring to you. You cannot do that. Right. You can never know. Just by— you can't go out one day and look at everyone and say, oh, I'll be nice to that person and to that person because they'll do something for me. You never know.

Yeah, yep, yep. And what you put out, you get back, and it may not— it's not going to come back in the way that you put it out, but it'll come back in some other way. So just, uh, we just all have to live kindly and with dignity. I love that moment of dignity. Um, now I want to mention to everybody a couple of things, um, in regards to, uh, Paula. Uh, of course you're going to go to speakingfromtriumph.com, um, for this, but she has Standards for Success posters. She mentioned that, um, that you can get there. Look for her store on her, uh, SpeakingFromTriumph.com website. It includes a poster which will say something to the effect of, "Speak what you want to hear, because men will deny equality to women as long as women deny equality to each other," which I think is very powerful. Until we treat each other with dignity, as she says, you know, men have no reason to. The other thing I want you to look for is her Wonder Women Breaking Glass Ceilings: Inviting Loyalty, Limiting Backlash workshop and seminar and consulting. She has a free download, Your Wonder Woman Tiara, which gives women the mental framework they need to use Wonder Woman strategies for breaking glass ceilings. You can find all of that, all of those things at speakingfromtriumph.com. So I wanted to bring that up last because You must have some strategies that you can recommend for others to use in our last few minutes so they too can kind of speak what they want to hear and treat people with dignity and do the things that will uplift all of us.

Can you share some of those with us? Well, I just did a workshop and this one woman worked on past relationship with a supervisor who was just horrible, just horrible, horrible. She was a supervisor for certain projects, not for this woman's whole department, but the woman had to, the participant in the workshop had to work with this woman. And she did everything wrong, she discovered. I helped the The Smile Spark Success website is all about behavior styles and recognizing behavior styles, and the strategies for the Wonder Woman bracelets are based on someone's behavior style and their guiding values, which are fairly easy to recognize when you get to my website. The woman was a high D behavior style, high D dominance, meaning she wanted to be in charge. I told the participant that what she should have done was to create— let the supervisor know about information or actions that could help her be more successful and to help increase her chances to move up. She was not her direct report supervisor, remember, but she was someone she worked with on the projects. Still have given her information that would have helped her manage the projects better than without the information. That would have satisfied her need to dominate, and she would not have been brutal. She was a bully to the participants. She would not have bullied someone who was giving her information to help her be more successful. Plus, she had a first guiding value that was a position value. You'll have to read more at the Smile, Spark, Success website. But position meant she wanted to be a leader. She needed to be a leader. As a leader, she needed to feel she had a position in a chain of command. The participant, because she disliked this woman, went around her and above her instead of talking directly to her about her projects. Because the participant— violated this woman's chain of command need, the supervisor bullied her again. If she had gone to her directly on the project that she was supervising, the supervisor would have felt respected and would have been nice to her. Now, of course, the supervisor should not have been betraying any other woman, but because she felt threatened herself, she was betraying other women. Right. When we take away the threat by satisfying needs and passions, then it's easier for them to treat other women better. If we make it easier for any woman to treat other women better, all women benefit.

Right, absolutely. Well, and I think it's powerful what you said at the early beginning too, around the fact that Women, basically women who hate on other women really have internal issues of their own that they're just projecting out onto other women. So if we can just think about, ladies, if we can just think about that, when we get negative with someone else, you know, we really actually need to kind of stop ourselves and go in, inward, because we're actually lashing out due to whatever it is that you might be dealing with. And that in itself should help, you know, you recognize, you know, what you could be doing to give a moment of dignity to that other woman that you might be betraying or disparaging in some way, shape, or form. In our last, like, minute or so, what other tips would you have for women, for girls around, you know, using their grit, to kind of, as we say here, shed their growl and help each other?

There are the 3 Girl Grit lessons, which quickly are: the words we use about other women go into other people's ears and come out of their mouths. If we want negative— if we put negative words into other people's ears, they'll come out of their mouths. Especially if we say negative things about other women, they could come out of their mouths about us, those negative words. If we put only positive words about other girls and women into other people's ears, that's what's likely to come out of their mouths about us.

Nice. Nice. Very nice. Very nice. And are you optimistic about the future of our society and that the society can change and things can be different.

Society can change. That 10% works. That's the Me Too movement. We got to 10% with Me Too. We didn't get to 10% when Anita Hill did her hearings, but we got to 10% this time, and things are changing, right?

Well, and I think it's— it was really— I don't know if you saw the interview with this the CEO of Salesforce.com, and he was talking about, bottom line is, he had, over the last few years, he has worked to give equal pay to everyone based on their role. So he went, him and his leadership team went, and it cost them $3 million initially to get everyone who was in the same role, they were all paid regardless of gender and race and everything else, they were paid equally. And then he came back like a year and a half later and saw that due to acquisitions and buying other businesses, it kind of started skewing away from that again. So he sent everybody through another audit to make sure, you know, that was done as well. And he really kind of lifted the MeToo movement as well to say that, you know, with all this current media view on these gender disparity issues and equality issues, it really should not be a big effort for companies to make those changes if they're willing to make them. And I think that's what you're saying too, Paula, right? Is if you're willing to make a change, like our rich question asked at the top of the hour, you can turn and make girls Grit help you banish girl growl, right? That's right.

You just said the change starts with you, and then you'll get back benefits you didn't know were possible. I didn't know how to be on your radio show, Bernadette, and I— here I am.

Yeah, awesome, awesome. And I love helping other women, especially ones that have a great message like yours. So speakingfromtriumph.com, everyone. Check out Paula. Paula, thank you so much for being part of the program. This has been a great conversation. Thank you, Bernadette.

It was a great conversation. You're very welcome.

And everyone, we have Jim Beach coming on the program next week. We're going to be talking about a subject that I'm asked often about, and that is about how to leverage these podcasts and radio shows to really uplift your business, your brand, whatever it is that you're doing. I love doing it because it brings me closer to you. So tune in next Tuesday at noon Eastern time for Jim Beach, and be sure to check out every one of our episodes of Shedding the Bitch Radio. And we will talk with you right back here next Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Have a great week, everybody.

Bye! Thank you for listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. Join Bernadette every Tuesday at noon Eastern as she helps you shift your bitches to riches. And the dialogue is always going on at sheddingthebitch.com. See you next week.