July 12, 2019 Meeting Notes

Happy Friday BOSLadies,

What a turn out on Tuesday!!! Thank you again to Alexandra for hosting and for everyone who came to celebrate one year of BOSLady! And extra props to Mandy who miraculously had a tripod that allowed us to take the family photo at the end of this email

We took an in-meeting poll to determine that our read for next month is Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (spoiler alert from Srushti: surprise, we make it)

“From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.”

Here are some notes from Tuesday and our discussion of Do it Scared

• How common it is to have fear that stems from imposter syndrome and methods for fighting that

• Situations in which fear has prevented us from acting, even when we felt strongly compelled to, and what actions we took after to prevent the same situation from happening again

• The concept of visioning, setting an intention of how you want to show up in a particular setting or imagining yourself taking the steps you’re thinking about (these are just a couple of ways of visioning – it casts a much wider net)

• Our tendency when we are an outsider amongst people who know one another well to downplay our personalities in order to integrate. Once we integrate, then we feel more comfortable and can express ourselves more freely and with less fear, having already been accepted

• Why some of us can have difficulty making decisions for ourselves but not others. Possibilities are that women are better at advocating for others, decision fatigue and that making decisions for others is simply easier because you are a third party with the ability to see things more clearly

We also talked about the app Trello, which Ruth’s sticky notes reminded us of, and the hilarious yet enlightening podcast The Bechdel Cast

“Developed by cartoonist Allison Bechdel, the Bechdel Test requires that a piece of media have 1) two named female-identifying characters 2) who speak to each other 3) about something other than a man. The Bechdel Cast sheds light on one of Hollywood's biggest problems -- the under- and misrepresentation of women.”

Last thing to add: DOES ANYONE KNOW THE WORD FOR COGNITIVE BIAS AGAINST A TYPE OF LANGUAGE? **mentioned in the context of not taking a qualified person’s advice or knowledge seriously because of the sound of his/her voice**

Everyone have a fantastic and gorgeous weekend!!