One of my favorite movies is the chick flick "Legally Blonde," starring Reese Witherspoon and Luke Wilson. I love how the moment Reese's character, Elle Woods, a pretty-in-pink sorority girl with ambitions to become an attorney, stops being who everyone else wants her to be and steps into her powerful self, her life turns around.
Perhaps the best lesson is when she is at one of her lowest points and about to quit law school because the lead law partner in charge of her internship makes unwelcome and inappropriate advances, she finds an unexpected advocate. Elle (Witherspoon) is at the local beauty shop and complaining to her friend about what's happened. At another station is the tough-as-nails female law professor that we met earlier in the movie and she overhears Elle.
It turns out this professor, generally quite intimidating, has a softer side and encourages Elle wholeheartedly not to give into the frustration or be deterred by the bad behavior she encountered. Instead she needs to chalk it up to the profession and keep going.
We all need advocates and sometimes they are hidden inside people who intimidate us. It's up to us to find what I call, the marshmallow inside. Everyone has a "rest of their story" that you don't know and it is in the rest of their story that their marshmallow is found. When you let down your guard you are likely to learn a lot more about them and they about you.
