Win the BRAND MINDS BOX for DRIVEN WOMEN!

To celebrate International Women’s Day, BRAND MINDS is launching Win the BRAND MINDS Success Box for Driven Women!

The box contains 10 bestselling books by world-changing women authors to support the growth of the winner.

The campaign is not limited to women, men too are invited to join the campaign as the generous box makes for a great gift. Join the campaign.

The BRAND MINDS Success Box for Driven Women contains the following books:

1. Becoming by Michelle Obama
2. Daring Greatly by Brené Brown
3. Thrive by Arianna Huffington
4. Blue Ocean Strategy by Renée Mauborgne
5. Educated by Tara Westover
6. The anatomy of love by Helen Fisher
7. Grit by Angela Duckworth
8. The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins
9. Quiet by Susan Cain
10. Build an A-team by Whitney Johnson

Every book in this list was carefully chosen to serve a specific goal: show the story of a driven woman. The winner will get to read ten powerful stories of ten ambitious women and what was like for them to find their way in life.

Becoming is the story of a woman who has steadily defied expectations. A driven woman, says Michelle Obama embraces her roots while finding her voice. She experiences triumphs and disappointments but doesn’t fight them. Instead she allows both experiences to shape her and teach her valuable lessons.

It’s a man’s world out there and women could be tempted to do business the same way men do and become part of the boys’ club to fit in and be successful. Brené Brown argues against it. Women shouldn’t embrace toxic myths such as vulnerability seen as a weakness. The renowned researcher found data that dispelled this myth. In truth, vulnerability is strength and when we shut ourselves off from vulnerability, says Brene in her book Daring Greatly, we distance ourselves from the experiences that bring purpose and meaning to our lives.

What does being successful really mean? We used to measure success by two metrics: power and money. These two metrics are again signals of a testosterone-filled society where competition implies there is only one winner and he or she is expected to sacrifice anything on the way to the top, including health and family life. It’s a toxic approach to living a successful life which Arianna Huffington has come to realize the hard way. Thrive is Arianna’s story of how she turned her life around after suffering from exhaustion and lack of sleep.

Running a successful business has more to do with strategy than having the lowest price. Why do what everyone else is doing and become indistinguishable from the competition? Ambitious and driven women look for a way to stand out in the crowd and be different. That’s what co-author Renée Mauborgne advocates for in Blue Ocean Strategy: the pursuit of differentiation by creating and capturing uncontested market space.

We all know this: women tend to overanalyze, have a high level of self-criticism and set very high standards for themselves looking for perfection. More often than not a woman’s worst enemy is herself. Did you ever hear a man saying he’s not good enough in a situation or for a particular job? I generalize, of course, but men don’t usually overthink, they just go for it whether they’re prepared or not! That‘s what Mel Robbins recommends in her book, The 5 Second Rule: if you have an instinct to act on a goal, you must physically move within 5 seconds or your brain will kill it. The campaign’s winner will have the opportunity to read Mel’s book and transform her life, work, and confidence with everyday courage.

What do all driven women have in common? Passion and perseverance. Pioneering psychologist and researcher Angela Duckworth shows in her book that the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a focused persistence called “grit.” Grit is a must-read book for any woman striving to succeed.

Having a thriving and fulfilling life means being successful in both your private and professional life. Successful professional life doesn’t compensate for unhappiness in your private life. It’s like walking with one shoe: eventually your shoeless foot is going to hurt. That’s why driven women should be driven when it comes to their relationships or family life also. Just like we can improve our professional life by learning from experts, mentors or other professionals, we can improve our private life by learning from experienced psychologists and human behaviour researchers. Helen Fisher’s The anatomy of love is a cutting-edge tour de force that traces human family life from its origins in Africa over 20 million years ago to the Internet dating sites and bedrooms of today. It’s a great book that helps us discover more about love, marriage, divorce and the future of sex.

We cannot choose our parents. As children, we have no say in how our parents parent us. Some children receive the level of nurturing and care they need to become successful adults. Others are not so lucky and spend their adulthood trying to erase the negative influence of an unhappy childhood. It’s an emotional process. In Educated, Tara Westover recounts overcoming a harrowing childhood. Read her book to discover what she had to do to protect her mental health and allow herself to become the best that she could be.

Here’s an interesting statistic regarding introverts: 56.8% of people around the world prefer Introversion. Given such a high percentage of introverted people worldwide, you would think that introverts also filled most leadership roles. You would be wrong. Culturally, we associate successful leadership with a high level of self-confidence. Extroverts express their opinions with great ease and give the impression that they know what they are doing. Thus, extroverts get noticed and get promoted faster than introverts. It’s an unconscious bias which makes the business world lean towards extroverted CEOs. In her book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, author Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so.

What’s the secret to having an engaged and productive team? According to innovation & disruption theorist Whitney Johnson, author of Build an A-Team: Play to Their Strengths and Lead Them Up the Learning Curve, the secret is to develop a learning plan for all employees, no matter where they are on their personal learning curves. Your organization stays competitive in an unpredictable, rapidly changing business environment by designing people’s jobs around the skills they have today as well as the skills they’ll need tomorrow.

It’s a great list of 10 amazing bestsellers!

See here how you can join the campaign.

All You Need To Know About The 5 Second Rule

Making decisions is always hard and, most of the times, we tend to think and re-think them over and over again. It seems like the famous speaker and influencer Mel Robbins has an easy answer to our problems, in her book “The 5 Second Rule”, that “simply” requires you to make a decision in five seconds. Therefore, when an opportunity arises, you mustn’t think too much about it, just count down from 5 to 1 and decide.

The technique helps you avoid procrastination and get over your fear of making a bad choice. “5-Second Decisions do not allow your brain to be involved and it all comes from your heart combined with your instinct. If you wait longer than 5-seconds, you’ll talk yourself out of making the decision. The 5-Second Rule is a bias towards action instead of overthinking and been taken over by fear. In that 5 seconds, you get the opportunity to be courageous. It’s a small window of courage that you can access for free. After 5 seconds, your days are numbered and your brain will sabotage you,” wrote Tim Denning for medium.com.

Still, as liberating as it might be the rule, one should take some steps before jumping into it:

Get yourself in the habit of being courageous

What does represent more precisely? Make sure you know exactly what you are getting yourself into and start taking small, courageous, everyday actions for the week leading up to the negotiation.

NO is still very powerful and you can use it

“The most difficult part of the negotiation process is knowing when you walk away. Overthinking the decision in haste will lead to accepting an offer that may be below your value and the long-term value of your professional contributions,” wrote entrepreneur.com.

Admit that you are stressed out

According to inc.com, you shouldn’t analyze or dissect it. Just accept that what you’re dealing with is not a fault, defect, or inability in you but a reaction to stress. It’s real, and it’s driving your decisions. That takes a bit of the pressure off and enables your prefrontal cortex to play a role in the next decision.