I Shouldn't Be Telling You This Part 1

I Shouldn't Be Telling You This.

SUCCESS SECRETS EVERY GUTSY.

GIRL SHOULD KNOW.

KATE WHITE.

Introduction.

We haven't met (unless you're a friend of mine who was nice enough to buy this book!), but I know something about you. The very fact that you've started reading a book about the secrets of success says that you're clearly interested in and even committed to the idea of getting ahead in a career you love, supersizing that success, and then being able to relish the rewards that come along with it.

This book will offer you plenty of ways to do all that. It includes smart, gutsy advice from some of the incredible women I've met professionally over the years and also plenty of strategies from my own delicious career in the magazine business and as the author of a dozen books, both fiction and nonfiction. Why am I so eager to share my favorite secrets? Because I'm at a point in my career where it costs me nothing to do so-and I'm grateful for all the advice that's been offered to me. I hope you'll find the book not only useful but also very fresh and candid. From years spent writing cover lines for Cosmopolitan, I've learned to be pretty frank!

This isn't my first career book, by the way. In the late 1990s I wrote a best-selling book called Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead . . . but Gutsy Girls Do that many women have told me made a major impact on how they approached their work and their careers. I've always been intrigued by how people move ahead and achieve what they long for, and I love sharing what I've learned with younger women. This book is based on many of the things I've discovered since I wrote Gutsy Girls, particularly from being the editor in chief of Cosmopolitan magazine for fourteen years. From the moment I arrived at Cosmo I realized that overseeing such a big, iconic brand meant that I would have to simultaneously do the job and teach myself everything I could.

There's something fairly ironic about the fact that I ended up running Cosmo. When I was seventeen, my mother handed me a copy of s.e.x and the Single Girl, the cla.s.sic 1962 best seller by Helen Gurley Brown, and encouraged me to read it. I felt briefly fl.u.s.tered by the idea that my mother was giving me a book of s.e.x tips (at that age you're still not convinced your parents have ever had s.e.x), but it was soon clear that she had another motive: she wanted me to use Helen Gurley Brown as a role model.

My fabulous mother knew, you see, that I yearned to be a writer and maybe a magazine editor one day, and I think she a.s.sumed that Helen's career could be a kind of blueprint for me. After writing her best seller, Helen, as many women know, went on to brilliantly reinvent Cosmopolitan magazine, starting in 1965. Of course, I don't think my mom ever expected that I'd take her advice quite so literally and one day become the editor in chief of Cosmo myself.

It would be nice if I could tell you that from reading the book I absorbed a bunch of helpful strategies, and then, following college, strode boldly into Manhattan and shot up the ladder of success. Not.

Though the book helped fuel my pa.s.sion to head to New York City one day, it unfortunately offered no specific tips for breaking into the magazine business. When I left college, in fact, I felt pretty clueless. The Internet didn't exist yet, so it was tough to research a career field, and interns.h.i.+ps hadn't come into vogue either, so there was no easy way to scout out opportunities. I also had a lot of good-girl tendencies then, which meant I wasn't going to burst onto the scene, bidding for attention. Therefore, like a lot of other young women in the 1970s, I just kind of stumbled into Manhattan, hoping for the best.

Though my arrival wasn't very glamorous, it did grab a little attention. The night I left upstate New York for good, my brother Jim accompanied me to the train station, and much to my annoyance, asked an older man on the platform to watch out for me. The guy ended up sticking to me like a Velcro hair roller for the entire ride, even sitting in the seat next to me. I noticed after a while that people had begun to gawk at us, though I had no idea why. It wasn't until I made my way back from the restroom that I understood the reason. Coming down the aisle, I saw for the first time that the man had an emblem on the lapel of his blazer. It said GREEN HAVEN CORRECTIONAL FACILITY. Good G.o.d, I thought in horror. People clearly a.s.sume that I'm a convicted criminal being transported to a downstate prison.

Things thankfully improved a tiny bit from there. I had won Glamour magazine's Top 10 College Women contest and appeared on the cover during my senior year, and Ruth Whitney, the legendary editor in chief of Glamour, had promised to help me find a job at the magazine. But because I felt too timid and self-conscious to say I wanted to be a writer, I ended up accepting a job on the business side-in the merchandising department. It involved running the slide carousels for breakfast presentations and doing the dishes afterward. I was utterly miserable.

But at least I was smart enough to see I'd made a dumb move and needed to correct it. I started volunteering to write for a section of the magazine that featured short items on relations.h.i.+ps, health, and self-improvement. Over time Ruth seemed to note my enthusiasm for writing. When Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus asked the magazine if it wanted to send someone to be a guest clown for a day and write an article about it, I was chosen. Oy. That idea held no appeal for me, but I decided that if donning a red rubber nose and performing in Madison Square Garden would help jump-start my career, I would have to throw myself into it. After I handed in my story, Ruth summoned me into her office and told me that she not only really liked my piece and was paying me extra for it but she was also making me a writer in the articles department. That was one case where fortune favored not the bold but the buffoon!

From there I moved up fairly steadily-though I encountered my fair share of b.u.mps in the road. After Glamour I became a senior editor, and later the executive editor, at the Sunday newspaper supplement Family Weekly (which eventually became USA Weekend magazine) and then the executive editor in charge of articles at Mademoiselle. After being promoted to the number two position at Mademoiselle, I went on to run four different magazines: Child, Working Woman, McCall's, and Redbook. On a Sunday afternoon during my fourth year at Redbook, my boss at the Hearst Corporation called me at my family's weekend home and asked me to come to her office, where she announced that she wanted me to take over Cosmopolitan, the most successful young woman's magazine in the world.

All my jobs have been great in their own ways, but Cosmo turned out to be the most thrilling and rewarding. Despite the occasional migraine-producing moment-such as getting a call from a record company executive saying Lady Gaga was having a minor meltdown and would have to cancel the cover shoot three days from then (see "18 People Principles: Because Now You Really, Really Need Them," for how I salvaged the situation without having to give away my firstborn son)-I could see from the start that it was going to be a fantastic job, full of variety, surprises, and rewards. A few years after my arrival, Cos...o...b..came the number oneselling magazine on the newsstand in the United States-circulation on my watch grew by 700,000. Readers regularly write in to Cosmo to say how much the magazine empowers them and encourages them to go after everything they want in life: from loving, supportive relations.h.i.+ps to great s.e.x to fabulous careers. Eventually my job evolved to include overseeing the Cosmo website, Cos...o...b..oks and e-books, television projects, various brand extensions, and all the digital projects and apps. And hey, I shouldn't neglect to mention what turned out to be one of the most fun parts of the job: writing cover lines such as "Mattress Moves So Hot His Thighs Will Burst into Flames."

As a friend of mine once pointed out, an interesting phenomenon occurs when you take a backward glance at a more or less successful career: some of the wackier choices and decisions seem to make better sense in hindsight-as if your subconscious had always been guiding you to a certain destination. Even the whopping goofs-and I've made many-can seem part of a destined learning curve.

I'm not sure my subconscious brain had a master plan, but looking back at my entire career, particularly the Cosmo years, I do see in much sharper relief the strategies that helped me come out on top. And in this book, I'm going to share these strategies with you. They're organized into three separate sections: Success: how to get it. The first years of a career can be especially tricky. You're excited and game-in fact, you may want success so much you can practically taste it-but first you have to convince someone to let you come on board. Once you get started, you quickly discover that your workplace isn't necessarily like a teaching hospital: no one feels obligated to show you the ropes. You have to figure so much out on your own, and you don't have any momentum going to help ease you along during dicey periods. You may not even be a hundred percent sure that you've picked the right field to try to excel in. In this section I'll explain how to determine what you really want to do, nail a job interview, navigate the early days of a job, dazzle your boss, develop a golden gut, ask for what you want, generate buzz about your achievements, and score your first major career breakthroughs.

By the way, this section isn't just for those who are in a first job. It's also good to read if you're switching jobs, getting back into your career after a mommy sabbatical, feeling stuck, or have woken up one morning and realized it's time to brilliantly reinvent yourself. And the tips on stuff like asking for what you want, trusting your gut, and generating buzz are beneficial for whatever stage you're at in your career.

Success: how to go big with it. Okay, now you're off and running in your career. There's a nice momentum that begins to happen at this stage. Success begets success to some degree, and certain doors open simply because of what you've already accomplished. But there are also plenty of challenges. Office politics become more complicated. You're expected to generate big ideas and make them work. And it can be tricky to balance your demanding workload with prepping for the future. It's at this stage that I see some women lose their way. They seem to either rest on their laurels or become unsure about what steps they need to be taking to reach the next level. In this section I'll explain how to supersize your success by generating wow ideas, being an inspiring boss, breaking the rules (yes, you need to!), and managing your career at the same time you're managing your job.

Success: how to savor it. Success isn't worth much if it doesn't bring you pleasure and make your life better. Helen Gurley Brown once said that she loved to go home at the end of a challenging workday and sniff the panties she'd been wearing. Um, sorry-that may not be an image you want to hold in your head for very long, but on one level I found it kind of inspiring. It means that she loved kicking off her stilettos at night and relis.h.i.+ng the day she'd just spent at her demanding, yet fantastic job.

But it can be tough at times to enjoy success, especially if you're trying to juggle motherhood with work. In many businesses you're expected to be on call 24/7, responding to e-mails late into the evening and even on your days off. There's a crazy one-upmans.h.i.+p thing happening lately about how many hours people clock working. Recently I caught an episode of a TV reality show about interns working in a fas.h.i.+on-related field. During that particular episode, the female boss was using a very snooty tone to chew out an intern. She wanted to know why the girl hadn't come to her and asked a critical question. "You can't use the excuse that I'm not around," the boss said. "I'm the first one in every morning, and usually the one who turns off the lights at night." All I could think when I heard the comment was "What the h.e.l.l fun is that?" I was tempted to call that woman and suggest she try leaving a little earlier some nights-and maybe even give her panties a nice sniff when she got home.

I've tried to savor my career, and I've never let myself be a slave to it. I have a solid marriage and two good kids, and in the past twelve years, I've also auth.o.r.ed eight mysteries and thrillers. In this section you'll find strategies on how to find more minutes in the day, balance your family with your work, create more moments of pleasure just for yourself, survive insane days, fulfill a back-pocket dream, and even reinvent yourself if you so desire. But no more about panties, I swear!

I hope this book turns out to be a valuable resource for you. I hope it helps you not only gain the success you want but also enjoy the amazing perks that come along with it. I'd love to hear what you think about the book and which strategies have benefited you the most. Let me know, will you? Just e-mail me at

Part I.

{ Success: How to Get it }.

When I think back on my career-the highs, the lows, the big wins, and the sometimes cringe-worthy blunders-I realize that some of the most challenging times were in the very early years when I had just started my career. It wasn't as if I was trying to save the euro or learn how to perform brain surgery, but I still felt very confused and uncertain. As an editorial a.s.sistant at Glamour, I was thrilled to have been given an entree into the world of magazine journalism, yet I soon realized that getting my foot in the door was no guarantee that I'd be a success. I looked at the women above me in awe. They seemed to not only perform their jobs very well but also really relish them. I thought, "I want some of that," but I had no freaking clue how to get there.

If you're right out of school or starting a brand-new career, I'm sure you're able to relate. I think most women experience that new-girl-on-the-block anxiety. You're excited to be in the game and longing to make it, but you feel baffled at moments, not at all sure of how to pull off that first project, deal with your new boss effectively, or score your first big win. You'd be more than willing to accept guidance, but your boss and other senior people in your area may be too crazy busy to explain things in more than a cursory manner. At Cosmo I once had a disgruntled intern's mother write me and say that no one had ever shown her poor daughter where the ladies' room was. I laughed out loud when I read that. I wished the girl was still at Cosmo so I could have told her, "Sweetheart, we're not your mommy here." The bottom line is that when you start a new job, they may not even show you the way to the loo, let alone how to master your a.s.signments or deal with the psycho chick who works in the cube at the end of the hall. You have to figure out all sorts of details like that on your own.

And it's not just basic stuff you need to concentrate on. At the same time that you're learning the lay of the land and how to handle your a.s.signed responsibilities, you must begin plotting the moves that will make you stand out from the pack and charge ahead in your career. According to a recent Pew Research Center Report, two thirds of eighteen- to thirty-four-year-old women say being successful in a high-paying career is "one of the most important things" or "very important" in their lives (59 percent of guys feel the same way), which means you have a ton of compet.i.tion. You'll never make your mark if you concentrate solely on the a.s.signments you're given.

I hope I haven't made your heart start to pound in fear. Sure, new jobs are challenging, but they're exciting, too-they're where you first get a taste of success and can begin to run with it.

And though, as I said before, no one in your workplace may pull up a chair, plop down beside you, and explain the ropes, I intend to do that-right now. This section of the book is all about scoring your first successes. You'll find strategies for figuring out what your calling in life is, nailing a job interview, knocking your new boss's socks off, trusting your gut, handling coworkers successfully, asking for what you want, generating buzz, separating yourself from the pack, and finally, propelling yourself to the next big level of your career.

{Rule #1: Go Big or Go Home}.

I once heard someone famous say that what separates successful people from the unsuccessful ones is their willingness to work really, really hard. Sure, hard work is part of the equation, and so are well-honed skills. And in certain cases, success is even somewhat about the people you know. But I think those factors get you only so far. From what I've seen again and again, success is most often the result of doing the bold extra something that no one else has thought of or dared to try.

I call it the go-big-or-go-home strategy. And before I even talk about the ins and outs of gaining your first career successes, I need to stress the importance of going big. It's a strategy you need to use now and during every other stage of your career.

You've heard the phrase "go big or go home," right? My first encounter with it was about five or six years ago. A young staffer used it when she was talking about her plans for Sat.u.r.day night. What she meant was that if she wasn't willing to give the whole night an extra push-with her outfit, her hair, her makeup, her att.i.tude-she should bag the entire thing.

I secretly co-opted that phrase for everything I did in the next years at Cosmo. The magazine is geared toward fun, fearless females, and from the moment I arrived I tried to factor that into my approach. But I liked having a specific mantra to work with. With every photo, article, and cover line I began to ask myself: did I go big or go home with it? If the answer was that I went home, I gave myself a swift kick in the b.u.t.t and rethought what I was doing.

Soon I began using that mantra in other parts of my life. And as I thought about it, I realized that most of my successes-and the successes of women I knew-always involved going big. Doing a job well is not enough. The key is to do more than what's expected, power it up, go b.a.l.l.s to the wall.

Going big doesn't always have to involve some huge undertaking. You can go big in key little ways, too. Here's a sampling of how I've used the strategy in my own career.

* When I was up for my first big job-as editor in chief of Child magazine-the headhunter mentioned that the magazine was looking for someone who was "mediagenic." So right before my first interview, I had my hair professionally blown out and styled. And I swear that my long, flowing, "mediagenic" locks helped me land the job.

* When I shot a cover of Pierce Brosnan, his partner, Keely Shaye Smith, and their newborn for Redbook, they asked the photographer to take a few pictures of the baby breast-feeding for them to keep personally. But when I saw those photos, I decided, with the couple's permission, to run one as the cover image. That photo literally became news around the world.

* When one of my top staffers at a magazine resigned to take another job, I didn't just graciously (or grumpily) accept her resignation. I wrote a memo called "Ten Reasons You Shouldn't Leave" and left it on her chair. She decided to turn down the offer and stay.

You'll see the "going big" theme running through everything I talk about in this section, as well as the rest of the book. You may be just beginning in a particular job or field, but in order to score your first major successes, you're going to have to go big-with your job search, the interviewing process, your early career moves, everything.

In this world of the supersized, going big is, in fact, probably more important now than ever. Everything seems to be bolder and even more bada.s.s. When Cosmo interviewed Pink after the birth of her daughter, she told us she was going to get back into the game full throttle. "I want my alb.u.m to be really great, and I want to do an amazing tour. I'm going to up the ante, even if it means covering myself in Velcro, lighting myself on fire, and shooting myself out of a cannon. I'll do that, no prob."

I'm not suggesting you shoot yourself out of a cannon, but you need to push the envelope these days.

You have to be strategic, though, and a.s.sess your surroundings first. If you're in a new job, how much (from what you can tell) will your new work culture welcome the big idea, the bold new strategy? How much will your boss welcome it? What kind of big ideas is your boss likely to be receptive to? Good bosses will respond positively and love you for it.

A small warning: when you go big, whether it's early in your career or later, there will be people wis.h.i.+ng you had gone home instead. Perhaps you're pulling off a feat someone else wishes she'd thought of or you're infringing on her turf-at least in her own mind. Or maybe one of your accomplishments has necessitated a change in someone else's daily work MO and that person now has to take care of business each morning rather than spending an hour nibbling on his blueberry m.u.f.fin. You may end up with a few haters.

Regardless, you can't get caught up in worrying about whether everyone you work with likes you. Ultimately you want the respect of your coworkers, but you don't need them to be your buddies. No one says this better than Mika Brzezinski, the cohost of MSNBC's Morning Joe, whom I asked to write a work column for Cosmo. "Look, it took me twenty-five years in television news and writing two books to realize that it doesn't matter if everyone adores me," she says. "Being liked is what women strive for. But when you make that mistake, it diverts your attention from more important tasks at hand."

So go big, love the thrill of it and the prizes it brings, but know that when you make a big move, it creates a big breeze, and that can sometimes ruffle feathers.

{What Are You Really l.u.s.ting For? }.

One day at Cosmo my art director, John, was driving to a photo shoot in a van with a bunch of twenty-something models. All of a sudden one of the male models noticed that the van was headed out of Manhattan, and when he asked for an explanation, he learned for the first time that the shoot was in the suburbs and the group wouldn't be returning to the city until at least nine that evening. "Wait," he told John. "I've got plans with a girl tonight. I can't get back that late."

"Sorry," John told him. "Your booker should have explained the situation. There's nothing I can do now."

Ten minutes later, just as the van was approaching the entrance to the highway out of the city, the model clutched his abdomen and began to moan. "Can you pull over?" he muttered to the driver. "I feel sick." Once the van stopped, the model stepped outside, leaned over for a moment as if he was about to hurl the contents of his stomach, and then, yup, stood up and took off down the street like a bat out of h.e.l.l, never again to be seen by the Cosmo crew.

I burst out laughing when I heard the story the next day. "Well," I said to John, "at least the guy knows what his priorities are."

One thing almost all the successful women I know have in common: they're doing something they really love and that matters to them. Your chances of being a success are much greater when you follow a course that you're totally pa.s.sionate about. Because pa.s.sion energizes you, creates clarity about your choices, and makes you fearless. And it provides plenty of pleasure. Of course, it also has to be something that pays the bills-unless you've got a nice trust fund.

I was pa.s.sionate about writing and editing from the time I was little. At about seven I started writing plays and stories, and also producing little newspapers and minimagazines. By the time I was in high school, I was fantasizing about moving to New York one day and becoming a magazine writer or editor or author.

But just because you might not have figured it all out before you're twenty-one doesn't mean you're at a huge disadvantage. It often takes people a while to discover their true pa.s.sion, and that's fine. You don't want to get stuck toiling for years at something that barely stirs your libido. It will be tough to ever feel satisfied or grab the success that could be yours elsewhere. Plus, the longer you stay on a career path you're not excited about, the harder it will be to s.h.i.+ft gears into an entirely new area. Why not start thinking now about where you really should be? If a bad economy makes it difficult to act on your idea, you will at least be poised to move when things improve.

Fortunately, there are a few tricks for figuring it out. Even if you're pretty sure of the answer already, these are good to have up your sleeve. That's because over time, you may feel an urge or need to try something brand new but may not be sure of the possibilities. Or you may have a general sense of what you want but haven't nailed down the specifics. These strategies should help.

Be a glutton for unusual, even weird experiences. From interviewing women for one of my previous career books, I made a fascinating discovery-though it didn't occur to me until the book was actually published. Most of the women, I realized, had found a career they loved not by contemplating what would turn them on but by b.u.mping into it someplace out in the world.

If you haven't found your calling yet, the best thing to do is get your b.u.t.t off your chair, fill your life with a wide array of unusual experiences, and allow yourself to b.u.mp into what will exhilarate you.

This advice may seem a bit contrary to what you've heard elsewhere. When you're about to finish school (or are further along in your career but feeling restless), well-meaning family members and friends will often suggest that you "think about what you want" or grab a legal pad and list the pros and cons of a variety of fields. Or someone may direct you to a book such as What Color Is Your Parachute?, which suggests that you fill out pages of a workbook to determine your calling. That may do the trick for some people, but as I said, it's not how many of the successful women I know figured it out. And the "b.u.mp-into-it" way is a h.e.l.l of a lot more fun.

One of my former fas.h.i.+on editors described this serendipitous approach beautifully. I asked her one day how she had decided to become a fas.h.i.+on editor. My a.s.sumption was that she'd probably always loved clothes as a girl and had gone to some kind of fas.h.i.+on school. Her answer took me totally by surprise. She said that she'd actually been an art major in college and had graduated with no clue as to what she wanted to do. She and her boyfriend had decided to head to Africa, just for the adventure of it. They were traveling around Egypt by bus, and at one of the stops they came across a fas.h.i.+on shoot for a European magazine. As my fas.h.i.+on editor stared at the stylist who was dressing the models, she had a eureka moment. That, she realized, was what she wanted to do. "Sometimes," she said, "you have to be on the bus to Cairo to know what you want." I love that story.

You don't have to take her advice literally by heading to Cairo, but you should hop on the bus metaphorically. Have lunch with people you've just met or haven't seen in years. Wander down streets you've never been on before. Take one-night cla.s.ses in surprising subjects that you might not automatically think to delve into. Go on an Earthwatch expedition (I did several trips of that nature during my twenties, restoring an old stone site on the South Pacific island of Rarotonga and tagging penguins in Patagonia, and they opened my eyes to all sorts of things). Visit people you know at their jobs and note how you respond to the vibe. Check out the websites of newspapers in cities you don't live in. Go to art galleries, especially ones with the type of art you rarely look at. Visit friends in towns you've never traveled to. Stop at bookstores and breeze through books you wouldn't normally bother with-or browse through books and DVDs online. Check out www.uroulette.com, which takes you to an evolving, random list of websites (the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra website might appear right next to one called All About Pumpkins), and you can then click on any one that catches your fancy. Read old letters people wrote you and/or journals you kept; be on the lookout for a pa.s.sion you once had but abandoned. And actually go to Cairo-or Paris or San Francisco or Santa Fe.

You can also volunteer or freelance in certain fields to gain a feel for them and measure your response. Though I loved the idea of being a writer, other fields sometimes beckoned me and I wanted to be sure I'd made the right choice. During my mid-twenties I was the volunteer coordinator at night in a couple of different political campaigns and also worked as a model on my lunch hours and days off (when people in my office would see me in ads, I'd tell them it was my doppelganger). During my late twenties, I volunteered at a tiny TV station and eventually anch.o.r.ed a newscast one night a week. These were all fascinating ways to test the waters.

When you're exploring, look for moments when you feel your curiosity stir. Is there something about a certain experience that makes you inordinately satisfied or excited? Do you long to repeat it? Dr. Ellen Marmur, a fantastic dermatologist I met through Cosmo's Practice Safe Sun campaign, left college unsure of what she wanted to do-maybe go into business, maybe study to be a rabbi, she just didn't know. On the fence about what her next move should be, she signed up to help lead a camping trip that involved canoeing through the wilderness. One day one of the campers fell and broke her leg. The group was miles from nowhere, but, rather than feel frightened, Marmur moved into super-control mode. "I knew," she said, "that the camper would have to be carried out on a makes.h.i.+ft stretcher and that somehow I needed to create a splint for the broken bone. I picked up one of the canoe paddles and snapped it in two over my knee. And there was something so incredibly satisfying about the crack it made. It was a defining moment for me. I began to sense then that what I really wanted to do was be a doctor, taking charge, helping people."

By the way, your pa.s.sion doesn't have to be utterly precise. Perhaps, for starters, you just feel an urge to work with kids or organize things, or create a website. Start with an instinct, tease it into different directions (by researching, talking to people, etc.), and see which area not only fits well but also could pay off. Kate Spade and I worked at the same magazine and later, after she'd started her business, I asked her how she'd developed the idea. Her answer surprised me. I remember her saying that her initial inclination had been to simply be an entrepreneur, maybe even open a restaurant. Her then boyfriend, now husband, Andy, had said, "You know, you really like handbags-you have so many." And things began to evolve from there.

Don't believe everything you think. Even if you have a sense of what you want, you need to challenge yourself about it. Is it definitely what you want or simply what other people-such as your parents-want for you? Or could it be what you've always told yourself you wanted but isn't the case anymore (or perhaps never was). Are you thinking boldly enough? Is there something bigger waiting for you that you've been afraid to envision for yourself?

One Sunday afternoon in August 1998, my boss phoned me at my family's weekend home, a little farmhouse in Pennsylvania. My knees immediately went wobbly because she never called me at home. She asked if I would drive into the city right then so she could talk to me about a special situation. I was the editor in chief of Redbook then, but I guessed that was about to change. Because hey, when your boss calls you on a weekend and asks you to cross a state line, you can bet that something big is afoot.

Leaving my family behind to wrap things up in Pennsylvania, I drove into New York and headed for my boss's office. I was so nervous I was practically hyperventilating. Once I arrived, she asked me to sit down and then delivered this wallop of a line: "Kate, we'd like you to be the next editor of Cosmopolitan." Bonnie Fuller, the editor in chief who had replaced Helen Gurley Brown for just eighteen issues, was defecting to Glamour.

It's not an exaggeration when I say I was speechless. Not only had there been no inkling that Bonnie was bolting, but I'd also never once imagined myself connected to Cosmo. I said yes, of course. Cosmopolitan was the Hearst Corporation's most successful magazine, and being asked to run it was a major honor.

I was unable to reach my husband by phone, and when he burst into the house later that afternoon, he was dying to know what the deal was. As soon as I gave him the news, a big, mischievous grin spread across his face. "Wait," he said, "you mean I'm going to bed tonight with the editor of Cosmo?" In his mind it was as though I'd managed to learn the entire Kama Sutra between the time I was given the job and when I arrived home.

But though he seemed happy as a pig in you-know-what, I was secretly miserable. Sure, it was an incredible job and I hadn't even had to do a thirty-page proposal to land it, as you so often have to do with editor in chief jobs, but I just couldn't see myself heading up Cosmo. I hadn't read it much in my twenties and I had barely glanced at it in years. I couldn't imagine how I was going to relate to the content. Plus, because it was such a huge cash cow for the company, I sensed that the pressure would be unbearable. I was 100 percent certain, in fact, that if the job had come up on the open market, I would not have even thrown my hat in the ring.

For the first few months I sucked it up and tried my best. I had terrible insomnia and often went to work having slept for only an hour or two. Tons of Bonnie's new staff followed her to Glamour, so in addition to trying to get the magazine out the door every day, I had to focus on plugging the holes in the dike. I left the office at five thirty every day because my kids were young and I didn't want to shortchange them, but after they went to bed I worked for hours more each night.

And then something funny began to happen: the newsstand sales numbers started coming in for my first issues, and it turned out I was selling tons of copies. Cosmo readers were gutsy and fun to talk to. The content was irreverent and over the top and wonderful to create. I soon realized that I actually loved what I was doing now. In many ways it was the job I'd been waiting for all my life.

Maybe I should have just smiled and accepted how fascinating fate is, but over the next year I was bugged by how blind I'd been. I kept wondering how a bunch of people in suits had known so clearly what I should be doing professionally and I had been so dead wrong.

And then one day while I was reading the edit of one of our self-help articles, a line really grabbed my attention. It said, "Don't believe everything you think." The point was this: we don't always see clearly what's right for us, no matter how smart and self-aware we are.

Why can't we see? It's sometimes because we've been led astray from our natural instincts. Though I have a risk-taking gene, twelve years of Catholic education and some second-guessing had tamped down those instincts. The idea of running Cosmo at first scared the pants off me. It was only when I was thrust into it that I saw that the job really suited me.

Of course, parents can play a big role in shaping the way you view your future. When researching my thriller The Sixes, I interviewed Dr. Jill Murray, a terrific psychotherapist from Los Angeles. Dr. Murray had paid her own way through undergraduate school since her parents didn't believe she needed college the way her three brothers did. One day when she was an adult, her mother mentioned to her that she'd had an intriguing dream that one of her children, one with big hands, would become a doctor. Murray and her mother spent time that day trying to a.n.a.lyze the dream but were puzzled because none of her brothers had big hands. Years later, when Murray was about to go to the podium to receive her doctoral degree, she suddenly remembered her mother's dream and looked down at her hands. She was one with the big hands. At the time of the dream she had been so locked into her parents' sense of her that she had never considered herself to be the doctor candidate.

So how do you make certain you're not thinking all wrong about your destiny? You need to always challenge your thinking, especially anything you're especially adamant about. (Be wary of thoughts like, "I would never be a. . . .") Ask yourself why you're so sure and what the alternative would be like. Don't be afraid to ask, "What if . . . ?"

Encourage friends to challenge your thinking, too. We published research in Cosmo showing that our friends are often better judges than we are of whether our romantic relations.h.i.+ps will last. I think they can also sometimes see our career ident.i.ty more clearly than we do. Take a friend out for a drink and ask, "What do you see me doing?" or "If I were going to change careers, what do you think I should choose next?" or "Is there something you think I'm good at that I might not see?"

Consider, too, how you feel. "So many young women treat life as a constant status update," says Jane Buckingham, CEO of the consumer research and trend-spotting company Trendera, whom I hired my first day at Cosmo. "They're thinking about how their lives look instead of how their lives feel."

Determine the viability. It's fabulous when you can follow a career path you love, but is the one that's emerging for you going to pay off financially? Do you have the right instincts and skills for it-or could you get them? Is there a need-and potentially a continued need-for what you have in mind?

"You have to consider what the world wants from you," says Alexa Hirschfeld, cofounder of Paperless Post, "not what you want from the world."

Be open to tall dark strangers. If you're going to find what you're truly l.u.s.ting for, you have to be open to the s.e.xy stranger who comes out of nowhere. Maybe you majored in economics and totally saw yourself in that field, but one night you attend a political rally and you feel totally charged by the experience. Be open. Ask questions. There's nothing wrong with being seduced if you love what you see.

What if you still don't know what you want? Then "follow the river" for a while. That's a great phrase I heard from the comedian Amy Schumer. I met Schumer when she was first performing in New York. Since then I've watched her become a finalist on Last Comic Standing, appear on shows such as Ellen, Conan, and Curb Your Enthusiasm, and get her own TV show. "I always knew I wanted to entertain people somehow," she says. "When I was little, I had all these characters I created, but I never had a big endgame or pictured how that goal of entertaining would take shape. I really followed the river. As opportunities appeared, I went after them and saw where they took me. For a while that even meant acting in theater until I started doing stand-up."

So jump in-and see if the river takes you someplace magical.