Elizabeth Hilts - The Bitch at Work

The author would like to thank (once again) Deborah Werksman, for all shes done for the Inner Bitch.

Thanks to everyone at Sourcebooks, particularly Susie Benton, Leigh Albright, and Rebecca Kilbreath.

Clearly, there are a number of women who were instrumental in helping me bring my Inner Bitch to work (now theres an idea for a nationwide campaign): Laura Fedele, whose intelligence, humor, and unbelievable work ethic continue to be an inspiration; Dawn Collins Hobbs,, Nancy Cooper Smith, Michelle Gershkovich, Sheila Manning, Ingrida Perri, Elaine Osowski, Ruth Swanson, and Sandra Charles.

Oh, and my boys, Tom Connor, Michael Du Mez, Miguel Frasconi and David LeTourneau. Thanks to my brothers, Robert G. Hilts and John D. Hilts, for being funnier than, well, almost anyone.

As always, thank you, Neilfor the tea, for being the Total Package, for helping to make all my best dreams come true.

C ongratulations! Youve taken the first step in tapping into the power of your Inner Bitch. Yes, just by picking up this book, youre on the way to creating success for yourself.

What does the Inner Bitch have to do with success? Well, everything. Let me explain.

In my first book, Getting in Touch with Your Inner Bitch, I exposed Toxic Nicenessthe mysterious malady that drives us to self-defeating behavior, the only cure for which is getting in touch with your Inner Bitch. Toxic Niceness goes by a couple of aliases: the disease to please, co-dependency, nurturing (which is fine in moderation, but which can be Toxic Niceness in sheeps clothing). No matter what you call it, when we suffer from Toxic Niceness everyone else in our lives gets more out of our efforts than we do. Toxic Niceness makes us say yes when we want to say no. We eat a piece of cake (or even a whole cake) instead of giving someone a well-deserved piece of our minds. We apologize for things that are not our fault. Being in touch with our Inner Bitch, on the other hand, means calling it as we see it and never being afraid to speak our minds. The Inner Bitch is that part of ourselves that is smart, confident, and dignified. She knows what she wants, and she isnt willing to settle for lesswhich has everything to do with success.

Naturally, Toxic Niceness is lethal to relationships, a discovery that led to my second book, The Bitch in the Bedroom.

So this book was inevitable. After all, what else are you going to do with all that energy that you used to devote to taking care of everyone else? You might as well put it to work in the work-place, tapping into the power of the Inner Bitch to become as successful as possible. And your Inner Bitch wants you to dream big when it comes to this (and every) part of your life.

The trick is figuring out exactly what success means to you. Because lets face it, one-size-fits-all doesnt work with success any more than it does with clothes.

Your Inner Bitch will help you find the way to move beyond the stumbling blocks that stand in the way of successhowever you define it.

How do I know this? I know this because everything I have today I owe to getting in touch with my Inner Bitch. Besides the obvious, being in touch helped me get honest with myself about the road mines that impeded my path to success stumbling blocks that, in some cases, I planted myself. For example:

I had a hard time admitting that Im ambitiousthis was, of course, part and parcel of the way Toxic Niceness operated in my life.

I was involved with people who didnt support my effortsin my case, this group included my then husband, coworkers, bosses, and friends, some of whom actively discouraged me from pursuing success.

For a long time, I was in the wrong career, which for me was a choice powerfully influenced by Toxic Niceness. Because I was so invested in making sure that everyone around me was taken care of, it took me a long time to realize that going to work every day was just misery, and not just because I had to wear pantyhose every day.

When I finally started to get in touch with my Inner Bitch, those road mines began to disappear. It wasnt magic; it took a lot of hard work. But my point is this: Im speaking to you from the trenches here. I dont have an MBA; I havent climbed any corporate ladders; the only thing Im an expert in is the Inner Bitchand I promise you that being in touch with your Inner Bitch will help you find the success you really want.

How? Why, with a handy catchphrase, of course. Getting in Touch with Your Inner Bitch employed the phrase I dont think so (really, such an all-purpose phrase); The Bitch in the Bedroom used What am I thinking? (which beats what was I thinking? any day of the week). In keeping with the Inner Bitch tradition, to help you on your way, the handy catchphrase for the The Bitch at Work is Ill think about that.

Ill think about that can work for us in a number of ways:

Its a great alternative to saying yes to every request that comes your way.

It gives you some breathing space before you formulate a definitive response.

It makes you look like youve got your eye on the big picture.

Its simple to use.

Lets explore, shall we?