From the outside, my life looks exemplary. The clients of my company are the most influential people in our country. I have two children, regular flights around the world, exciting travel... But sometimes I am regularly torn apart by internal contradictions, doubts, questions. Well, why? You open the Instagram feed, and there are all superwomen: a happy wife and mother of five children, a successful business lady, a socialite, the creator of a fitness program, a guru and a coach, Miss World - and everything somehow miraculously fits in one person weighing 47 kg. Where do the less perfect girls go?
Like many women, I am often confused. Due to a couple of extra pounds, due to the fact that it is not possible to spend as much time with children as you need (and how much is needed ideally?) This is almost a rhetorical question. To develop a business, in our time you need to work for three, the time for everything else is not enough catastrophically. And you look at all these perfectly polished Instagram accounts and you frustrate: why can others do it when I can’t? I'm a bad mother. I'm not successful enough. I don't have enough abs, butts and oblique abdominal muscles. I don't know enough about contemporary art. And so on to infinity. You can always find a reason to complain about yourself. It seems to be nonsense, but all these unfunny thoughts greatly affect the quality of life - you just stop enjoying ordinary things and what you have.
In our time, you can not be considered a role model if you have the wrong shape of eyebrows, no man who daily floods you with gorgeous bouquets and a couple of million followers in social networks, but there are stretch marks.
I am 30 years old and have my own private jet company. Do you need to know who is using these services? I often come to meetings and see in the eyes of a potential surprise: “Girl, what are you doing here?” Call your uncle. Some people ask, “Who is your husband?” Father? No, not yourself. Gifted? What can you do, this is the kind of society we live in. While 21-year-old Kylie Jenner is making her second billion, we lesser-known girls make excuses for our small successes. No, I've learned to be calm about it, not to punch myself in the chest and not try to convince anyone. But the most offensive things can be heard not even from men, but from women - we have no equal in the art of biting and wounding. Honestly, I think the most important sexists are women. Open the comments to the post of any famous and accomplished girl - well, if there are no direct curses, but for sure there will be several dozen, or even hundreds of tactless inappropriate remarks, jokes of questions.
Now on the wave of popularity, a variety of motivational courses and trainings – I will immediately say that I am quite skeptical about them. First, it’s just another trend, like superfoods, leopard print or stretching. And secondly, I like to go my own way, get my own experience. A set of mistakes, misconceptions, some “imperfections” and scars with wrinkles and makes us unique. In their perfection, everyone is the same - like the queens of Instagram with indistinguishable filler-enhanced faces and huge lips. I don’t see the need to go to a plastic surgeon as if I were at home, or to fill my head with trends that have an expiration date of a month. I just live at different speeds. I prefer classical education – now I am improving and deepening my knowledge in state and municipal management at RANEPA. I try to prioritize the right things in order to have time and raise children, and lead a team, and always stay in touch with clients, and at the same time remain a young active woman. I only find time for what I am really interested in. After all, does it make sense to live someone else’s life when your own is filled with experiences and events?
Every time it seems like things are going wrong, that I'm just a weak little woman who wants someone to hold her, I look at my kids. And, perhaps, they are my main inspiration, a source of inexhaustible energy and strength. Thanks to my first pregnancy, I once made the decision to take a risk and start my own business. As time has shown, this was the right idea. Because now I have a team of brilliant professionals who are ready to fly a jet in the storm, even organize tours to the most inaccessible, closed and exotic places in the world. My clients trust me – their vacations, their business trips, their lives and the lives of family members, after all. What could be more important? Of course, it’s not easy to keep everything under control every second – it’s an incessant mode of multitasking and full concentration. Different time zones, different requests. But this has its own special thrill – each time to push your own boundaries, expand your own capabilities, learn something new about people, countries, different cultures, about life. And of course, I want my children to have the opportunity to expand their horizons, learn as many languages as possible, endlessly learn something new, travel.
What's next? Of course, your business, even a very successful one, is not a ceiling. I hope that the knowledge and skills acquired at RANEPA will help me to realize myself not only in business, but also in politics. To benefit the country. Yes, I am imperfect, yes, not a model, not Miss World and certainly not a coach. But it’s much more important, I think, to be yourself and live your real life, not an Instagram illusion.
Source: Cosmopolitan
