Mindy Kaling is smart, funny and one of my favorite women on TV. I like that she looks more like I do than the other actresses. She claims that every single American is a treadmill and six laser treatments away from looking like Hollywood, and I’d like to believe her! I, too, could look like Kelly Ripa if I were willing to swear off taste and have a heart attack on a treadmill. 😉

But Mindy Kaling doesn’t look like Kelly Ripa. She looks more like I do. She obviously eats, and she doesn’t shrink back in horror at the sight of her hips and thighs. She embraces it, smiles that super-watt smile and then eats again. She also writes, stars in and produces her own show.

Mindy Kaling has confidence. She writes about how she got there here, and it is very worth your time. Because Mindy doesn’t think that confidence comes from being pretty or being thin, or even being sexy just the way you are. Mindy thinks that confidence comes from working your butt off toward your non-weight related goal and believing that you deserve the fruits of your labor. That’s an ideology that I can get behind.

Confidence is like respect. You have to earn it.

As all girls growing up, I struggled with confidence, too, but as a grown woman, I’ve learned to stand tall. This is me. This is my talent. And I like who I am. I grew up in a generation where awards were given out if you earned them. There were three of them. And there like 400 kids. A lot of awards passed me by (I was not coordinated, lithe, willowy or athletic) but then one year I won one—a writing contest. There was never a question of how hard I’d have to work, or if I was willing to put in the effort. I joke around saying that I’m only good at one thing, but a more precise way of saying it would be, “I only like one thing enough to work this hard.”

Mindy also points out that people  get uncomfortable around you when you’re doing well. People are really chummy with you if they think you’re failing, but if they think you’re achieving something, it gets chilly. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. But if you put yourself out there and fall back to the earth in a flaming ball of humiliation, you don’t need to worry. You’ll have a LOT of friends willing to help pick you up. It’s when you start achieving that the willing hands thin out and you find out who your friends are. But you’ll find that while you’re working your butt off, pouring yourself into something you truly love, then when you start to achieve you don’t feel flustered and self-effacing. You feel fantastic!

And for that, a woman should never need to apologize.

Mindy certainly doesn’t.