After generations of women being told they can’t aspire to a career, or to only a very small number of them, it’s understandable why it’s so tempting to tell girls they can do or be whatever they want. But that is not the world we live in. While we’ve made huge leaps forward, the fact of the matter remains that there’s a lot keeping women and girls from doing whatever we want professionally, and very little of it is in our control. The realities of being a working woman are bleak. We’re still just making 77 cents to a man’s dollar — and those numbers only get worse if you’re a woman of colour. There are still no federal protections for paid maternity leave , and women who do choose to have children have to deal with a wage gap of their own . Yes, there are the victories we can celebrate, but even they often come with an asterisk. In 2017, there are a record number of female Fortune 500 CEOs , but there’s still only 24 of them. A baby girl born today who lives to 100 won’t live to see equal pay for equal work. A woman finally won the popular vote, only to lose the presidency to a man who has shown himself to be a misogynistic sexual harasser. Obviously, there are plenty of glass ceilings that we still need to shatter. But when we simply tell girls they can do anything and don’t give them the tools to back up that promise, we’re doing more harm than good. We absolutely need more women in boardrooms, on judge’s benches, at Silicon Valley startups. But it’s short-sighted to simply tell girls and young women that all they need to achieve their dreams is hard work. It ignores a history of sexism and societal inequality that will be there to slam the door. And if we’ve only ever told girls that the limit is their imagination, who will they blame when they fail? I am not saying that we have to correct every 6-year-old who declares she’ll be president, but I do think that well before her first job interview, we need to be talking to her less about the limitlessness of what she can achieve in the future and more about what she can do now. We can tell girls they are strong, smart, problem-solvers who can take on challenges. And, like my mother, we need to remind girls that they will fail, too. Then we can nurture resilience, and tempered (rather than blind) optimism, and the resulting self-esteem will be made of steelier stuff. Telling girls that their power lies in what they already are versus what they might do may seem subtle, but it’s all the difference in the world. And maybe if we raise a generation of girls who believe in themselves that way, we can be even more amazed by what they accomplish.