The Female Leader. Sonja Becker

play with your feminine charm so that men sniff around out like Pavlovian dogs and, yes, sit up and beg. As is well known, men can always do that. But if the woman isn’t interested they don’t have a chance. And everything that men do, they do only to win women, even if they aren’t aware of it. And if that isn’t an incentive to use this wonderful feminine quality in your career, we don’t know what is. At last that is the aim of this chapter: to show how women can determine their goals.

      What would happen to these wonderful values if you didn’t use them? Of course you need a target before you can hit the bull’s eye. And a target needs a playing field, a system of coordinates in which the time span and the challenge are plotted. Then your values will turn into a mission. For one thing has been missing in our notes up to now. And this factor comes into play in this chapter: other people. Your mission is your personal vision of how to use your values in reality. This vision can be brilliant, bombastic, challenging or simply sweet, humane and tender: there is no difference in principle between Joanne K. Rowling with her empire and Mother Theresa. Some people want to change the world, others to have a good life and raise a family. And some want both.

      Your mission is a game for life, a strategy which will in every case even fascinate and attract like-minded people. If you ply them with what arouses your curiosity and bring out what is within you, you will not be alone for long. As soon as you channel your values into a coherent mission, your life takes on a sense of direction. You will have comrades-in-arms who love you and want to put the same values into practice with you. Only: the others have to realize that these values can be implemented together.

      Up to now we have talked about general values that are important for you. These are abstract values that you have taken for your personal ones. But up to now we haven’t been dealing with concrete things, personal goals, content. Life isn’t a church synod. It is great to be for peace, but it won’t bring you any closer to your goals. Think more individually, more egoistically, more materially: what can I do for peace? What are my intentions? What do I want to be successful at? Not what do I want to be, but what do I want to achieve. This is nothing to do with thanks and recognition for great human endeavors, but with success. Enough of petting, what you need is a brilliant idea, which however you have to be completely convinced by. Then, and only then, will your success be unstoppable.

      What arouses my curiosity?

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      he fundamental question of your mission is: what arouses my curiosity?

      What is it that keeps me going, what theme can I play upside down on the keys like Mozart, for what do I have the right touch, will I appear genuine to people, what drives me, what things that others don’t see can I paint in oil if I have to, curiously enough? What devolves on me, what is so easy for me that I am amazed that others don’t find it so?

      The answer is very simple: your genius. And your genius consists in exactly those things for which others admire you, even if it is that you are the only one around who can open every kind of tin can. And that’s why missions develop out of things that can be seen. Your mission is no longer an abstract mental picture, but an ability to attract the attention of others in the real, physical world. You often do something that arouses your curiosity and combines two of your basic interests in a strange way – look at Anita Roddick – and suddenly everything revolves around you. It is decisive that you see these things in all clarity. Don’t think too much about what you would like to be or to have, or about false compliments, or your career will take completely the wrong direction. You discover two things: that your road will cost you trouble and pain, and that your efforts are not fully recognized. A genuine mission comes true when people come to you in droves by word of mouth and enthusiasm, because they can see that you are the best at what you do!

      You have one major talent in your own right: you can see the truth. In the end you are a professional in your chosen field. Like a premiere league football coach you know every move, every trick inside out from your own experience. No one can fool you. And so you can look on with partial amusement when others in your own field make the most stupid mistakes. You are professional and realistic, and see things as they are, so you also know your limitations. There is little point in projecting yourself as Marlene Dietrich when you aren’t. What one person can do others can do better.

      Find out exactly what specific field you can be the best at, even if it’s a self-organized world championship in female can opening in which possibly thousands world wide would take part.

      If you regard yourself as a small player in a big game, you will not only disappoint yourself, but won’t be able to entice anyone out from behind the oven because you don’t appear credible or fascinating enough. So, Ms. Cobbler – stick to your last, and go for quantity. Aim for high goals. Really make something of your mission. How? By visualizing it. That’s enough of theory.

      Anybody who has a vision can see something: the goal. It becomes visualized. You see a million human beings all over the world sitting in front of the TV or the internet to watch the world championship in tin can opening which you as former champion organized! You see how you are acclaimed, carried on people’s hands, honored, valued…and loved by millions.

      This is what a vision looks like. Three dimensional. It can be grasped in the hand. Not something far away. If that is the case, Helmut Schmidt is right. Anybody who has visions should go to the doctor. And so don’t ever give in to small, realistic, attainable short-term goals. There aren’t any. Instead live your life as a series of astonishing incidents and take care of the surprises yourself: throw parties, go on exciting journeys. Take the bull by the horns:

      meet the people you have always wanted to meet, for example.

      A journalist we knew always had a list of prominent people whom he would most like to meet – particularly architects, musicians, philosophers, futurologists and visionaries. But how? Simple: he founded a magazine dealing with the subject. Not financed by himself. Instead he convinced the boss of a PR agency of the idea of starting a customer magazine through which the company could make a name of itself as cutting edge. It worked. He was even astounded how easy it was to get an agreement from these people as soon as he became a representative of the press. For the next few years he traveled all round the world, met everyone he wanted to meet and a few more, and was paid a princely sum for his interest.

      It is very simple: become a person whom others admire and the person you have always dreamed of being…Close your eyes and envision yourself in your wildest dream. That is your mission.

      Comments are killers

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      f course the road to success, your “Road to Mandalay”, isn’t always visible as far as the horizon. There are often obstacles in the way. There are well-meaning friends, who comment on your project to death, who want to demonstrate that they are leading the right life and you the wrong. And they are not in the least malicious: but being frustrated themselves, they don’t see that others might fare differently. Because they have accepted their lot.

      This is the negative side of the mission: melancholia. When you look back on your life high spots appear which are irretrievable. They move further and further away from you. As long as you fail to embark on your mission, these images will remain present. There are people who live entirely in the past. You can recognize them by the fact that they are always telling anecdotes and “stories from my life” that begin with, “Do you remember…?” They are satisfied getting old with a partner and a pension. Hello? “I want to live while I’m alive” is a wonderful and simple lyric and very close to reality. How many people can honestly say that they are in fact alive during their lives? Instead they have given up at some time in their lives. They lay most of the blame on others without realizing it. They can least stand it when others dash ahead. They prefer to be mired in mutual misery.

      Germany is a very melancholy country. It can be seen from the peculiar unanimity in grumbling. It is simply alien to most Germans to be greeted in a friendly way by someone in the street. On the other hand it is completely acceptable to get volubly excited over some nuisance, and a whole chorus of dissatisfied people can be found to agree with it, whether it is delays on the railroad