CONFIDENCE IN DISGUISE

Finding Your FIERCE
Katie Kinnemeyer
I am 28 years old and I am FIERCE.
And you’re FIERCE too. Do you know that?
If so, high five yourself! If not, high five
yourself anyway! Because you are... but it’s
understandable if you don’t know it yet...
My FIERCEness is directly correlated to my
evolution as a female. I didn’t really enjoy my
experience as a female until recently, and that’s
because I’ve always had this nagging feeling
that there was something – this invisible force
field – that directed me down a certain path,
and when I tried to deviate it would bounce me
back to its own trajectory. It’s taken me a solid
28 years to 1) figure out I am a FIERCE being,
and 2) believe that 24/7.
Ladies, we are recipients of a centuries-old
legacy that just doesn’t work in the 21st
century (really, it never did). For millennia,
women played a role in society that was largely
determined for them, not by them, with them
having no say in the matter. Their FIERCE was
diminished, if not extinguished, by the stories
their societies were telling them about their
“place” in society.
FIERCE = bold, fiery, intense, passionate,
powerful, relentless, strong, untamed, wild.
FIERCE = no more following the script that has
been laid out for you.
FIERCE = having control over your own
agency, and blasting it out into the world.
Taking control over your own agency means
you are making your own moves. You know to
the depths of your soul who you are and you
interact with the world accordingly. You are
a FIERCE being who doesn’t act according to
others’ wishes or expectations – you act from
your core, your center.
I can remember starting my journey to
discovering my state of FIERCE when I was 15.
It didn’t really click until I was 27. But when it
did click, I didn’t want to be anything other than
FIERCE. I started figuring out how to be more
FIERCE more often, and bring that energy into
my life so I can put my FIERCE energy back into
the universe.
Here are the steps I’ve taken to make sure
I’m living my life more and more FIERCELY
everyday.
NOTICE.
The first step to finding your FIERCE is simple:
start paying attention. WAKE UP! Start noticing
the times when you are following a script that
is not your own. You can find your own clues
by noticing when something doesn’t sit well
with you, or make sense to you. When you pay
attention to these moments, you’ll naturally start
questioning what is going on in those situations,
and why it doesn’t make sense to you.
When I was in high school, I was expected to
follow this path: get good grades go to college,
get a secure job, get married, have a family, live
happily ever after. This story was constantly
reinforced (it still is) – by my family, teachers,
career counselors, peers, Disney movies, the
media, you name it. For the most part, I bought
into this story up until it was time to get my first
job after graduate school.
I graduated with my MBA during the first year
of the recession. The story for newly-minted
MBA graduates is that the next logical step
is to immediately start working in a secure,
predictable, well-paying corporate job. When I
started grad school, my goal was to have a job
at Procter & Gamble when I graduated. In my
first few months, I met someone at P&G who did
exactly what I wanted to do, and I convinced
him to informally train me. I learned a lot about
what it was like to work at P&G, and I realized
it was not appealing. Around the same time, I
discovered I love the energy at startups and
small companies.
All of the sudden, I felt an internal resistance as
I applied for jobs in the corporate world. When
I considered other options, I realized I needed
to do something so I wouldn’t stay stuck in the
MBA graduate story, where I was beginning to
suspect I didn’t belong, which brings me to the
next step of finding your FIERCE:
REBEL. LOUDLY.
When you start paying attention to something
that doesn’t sit well with you, it’s hard not to
do something about it. This is where you rebel!
I’m not talking about breaking rules just to be a
punk, but deviating from the script you’ve been
unknowingly playing by all along, and making
tweaks to the story until it starts making sense
to you.
I didn’t get a job until 7 months after I graduated.
The delay was uncomfortable (MBA’s are
supposed to graduate with a job lined up!), but
I knew that settling for a job that would make
me miserable would be unbearable. My first
job was a 3-month contract working for a small
interactive firm. No benefits, and no guarantee
of employment beyond 3 months. Despite my
parents’ concern, I jumped on this job, because it
was my first foray into a field I really wanted to
be in.