Do You Believe You Are Good Enough To Succeed?
I recently addressed a large audience of women at the annual NAPW conference in New York City. I asked them to raise their hands if they considered themselves to be ambitious. Most everyone raised their hands with much enthusiasm. I then asked them to keep their hands up if they were ready to take action for their ambition. All the hands stayed up.
That was a great response but in reality how many of us truly believe that our ambition will be rewarded and recognized? How many of us believe we are worthy of this recognition and most importantly, how many of us will take positive action to realize our goals? The truth is that the negative preconceived perceptions we have about our ability to succeed will sabotage our success. And these deeply held beliefs we have about not being good enough will continue to work against our success no matter how ambitious we say we are.
These belief systems are formed early in our development. Brain science teaches us that if we believe we are unworthy, we will continuously look for situations to validate that this is so. What this means is that on a conscious level, we look for opportunities to advance our careers, but on an unconscious level we seek to validate our unworthiness. This unconscious pursuit will undermine our promotion efforts unless we are aware of our limiting beliefs in this area.
According to Dr. Jacqui Grey, author of Executive Advantage,
“We look for evidence to validate our existing beliefs, and the filters ensure that is all we see. These form patterns which our brains recognize, sometimes erroneously because our brains are recognition machines: they will take the best pattern match rather than look for contrary evidence.”
This is tricky, isn’t it? How do we counter this unconscious sabotaging behavior?
Dr. Grey states,
“Executives can substantially improve their promotion prospects just by looking for evidence that confirms their capabilities rather than their flaws.”
Keeping a success journal can help you to disregard your preconceived perceptions and build new neural pathways to support more positive beliefs.
To help you figure this out, ask yourself these questions:
Am I ambitious?
Do my actions support my ambition?
If not, what is really getting in the way?
Perhaps your self-doubt is the answer. Perhaps you truly don’t believe you are worthy of success. Understanding what possible limiting beliefs you may have and how they are keeping you from reaching your goals is critical to taking positive action to support your ambition.
Are You Ready To Spring Forward?
I’m so excited that spring has arrived here on the east coast! Even in the morning when it’s still a little chilly there are signs that spring is here. You hear birds chirping. You see some brave little flowers testing the warmth of the sun. And of course, the days are longer!
Spring is a time of rebirth and rejuvenation. On my run this morning, I felt the new energy that comes with this season. It’s a wonderful sense of well-being and passion for my life and work. It’s also a great feeling of unlimited potential.
As I was running, I was thinking about this blog and how I might pass along these thoughts to all of you. My hope is that you are also ready to step out of your comfort zone, escape complacency, and spring forward with your career and life. Are you ready?
Answer these questions:
- Do you wake up in the morning excited about your day?
- Do you feel challenged in your work?
- Do you ask for new responsibilities or volunteer for new projects?
- Do you fall into bed at night exhausted but feeling you truly accomplished something?
- Do you see a clear career path for yourself in your present company that aligns with who you are?
- Do you have a defined career goal?
- Do you have a strategic plan to reach that goal?
- Are you ready to face your fear or self-doubt that may be holding you back from springing forward?
- Do you feel that your boss/company appreciate the work you do?
- Do you feel empowered to take control of your career?
If you answered “yes” to these questions, I applaud you! You are ready to spring forward!
If by reading these questions, you realize that you are stuck in your current job situation or your own internal barriers, what are you ready to do to move forward? Sometimes it only takes one baby step to start the process.
For today, define what that one step is and commit to it. It’s the season to spring forward and leave your fears and complacency behind.
Be Bold: What Does It Mean To You?
Last Friday at the Bay Path Women’s Conference, I listened intently to Queen Latifah talk about her career and her bold move at 17 as a hip hop star to call herself “Queen Latifah”. She said Latifah was always her nickname, but putting “Queen” in front of it was certainly a bold statement, especially at such a young age. But she did it and the rest is history!
This made me think about the different bold moves I’ve made in my own life and career and specifically what has prompted me to step out of my comfort zone at times. I’ve always been a bit of a risk taker, but a risk taker in a very strategic way. Sure, sometimes I do things impulsively but for the most part I seek opportunities to move my career forward and evaluate those opportunities that present themselves to determine if they make sense for me and where I am in my career.
After having been with one company for 9 years and losing a promotion, I took a tremendous leap out of my comfort zone. I moved from the east coast to Chicago to run a national healthcare company. It was a huge step up to be a CEO and I could have easily talked myself out of it. “I’m not ready to do this.” “It’s scary to move away from my family and friends.” “I am afraid I’m not good enough.” I’m sure you’ve all had similar thoughts, but in the end despite my fear I was bold and made the move and I’m happy that I did. It was a turning point in my career.
Being bold can be different things to different people. In some cases, it’s taking on a new job, changing careers, leaving work to raise a family. In some cases it’s calling yourself “Queen”.
In the end, Queen Latifah said she was comfortable enough in her own skin to celebrate who she is, as she is and told the women in the audience to strive for the same.
“Be bold, be brave enough to be your true self,” she said.
What bold move have you done lately?
Dealing With Difficult Women at Work
Women now find themselves working with other women in large numbers at all levels of the corporate structure. This can be good, but it can also be very intense and horrible. Instead of harmony, there can be power struggles, sabotage and downright meanness and today we’re going to talk about how women can make the best of the worst situations with other women in the workplace and joining me to offer some great practical advice on this subject are my guests, Katherine Crowley and Kathi Elster.
Featured Guests
Katherine Crowley is a Harvard trained psychotherapist and Kathi Elster a management consultant and coach. Their company is K Squared Enterprises. Since 1989, they’ve combined their expertise to develop a unique method for dealing with difficult people and challenging conditions at work.
Bestselling authors, educators, public speakers, and executive coaches, Katherine and Kathi are experts in the area of professional fulfillment through self-awareness and self-management.
They have appeared on Good Morning America, CNN, The Today Show, Good Day NY and many radio shows. Together they’ve written Working for You isn’t Working for Me, Working with you is Killing Me, and now their latest book, Mean Girls at Work: How to Stay Professional When Things Get Personal.
Listen to the Wednesday, January 16th show at 12 noon EDT or download the podcast.
Evict Your Obnoxious Roomate: The Negative Self-Talk That Holds You Back
Last week I attended the Pennsylvania Conference for Women and had the pleasure of hearing Arianna Huffington speak. She shared her ideas about what it takes to be successful for a woman in business today.
My biggest take-away from her talk was when she spoke about the obnoxious roommate, that nagging voice in our head that constantly tells us that we arent good enough. Im sure you are all familiar with this voice. You cant do this. You should have said this. This roommate moved into our lives somewhere very early in our childhood and seems to have taken over the kitchen, Youre too fat, the living room, You should stay on the couch where its safe and you wont make any more mistakes, and the bedroom, No one will ever love you. You dont deserve it.
Do you have an obnoxious roommate like this who has taken over your life?
If so, how much attention do you give your roommate? How much of your energy does she consume each day?
Im certain that this roommate may be trying to protect you from harm by keeping you from playing big and getting hurt, but the end result is that if you give her voice credence, you never will be big. You will never get out of your comfort zone to expand your skills, your network, your personal and professional relationships, your career and your life.
Our quest for perfection starts at an early age. And since no one can possibly be perfect (there is no such thing as perfection after all even though we all chase it as if it were attainable), we will use any excuse to beat ourselves up for not measuring up. The quest for perfection and our obnoxious roommate, who is the voice to all this self-doubt, are relentless unless we tune it all out.
One sure fire way to quiet these voices is to create another louder voice to drown out the negative one.
Start keeping a success journal. Each day keep track of all your accomplishments, big and small, and each week review your entries and write down what all this says about you. This is the best way to quiet the obnoxious roommate in your life and let a new supportive and positive roommate move in.
Its your choice. Evict the obnoxious roommate and take control of your life and career or let her stay in your life knowing she will keep you from reaching your full potential. What will it be?
Asking for Help: Does Your Fear Hold You Back from Advancing Your Career?
This past week on my radio show, GPS Your Career, I had a lively discussion with Margaret Heffernan about what it takes for women to be successful in business today. Quickly the conversation turned to the importance of building relationships for career advancement and the hesitancy we have to leverage these relationships. In other words, we dont ask. We dont ask for help. Why?
An interesting study was done over thirty years ago in the New York City subways by psychologist Dr. Stanley Milgram. In this study, first year graduate students were asked to go into the subways, board a crowded train, and ask someone for a seat. The results were important on a couple of levels. First of all, what may be surprising to most of us is 68% of the people, when asked directly to give up their seats responded positively. People genuinely want to help others!
But theres another important point. The people who had to do the asking in this study were traumatized by the task. The ask was so difficult for them and so far from their comfort zone, they became physically ill in some cases.
Why are we afraid to ask? There are most likely many psychological explanations. But put yourself in the position of the person being asked to help. Wouldnt you too respond positively? People want to help especially if they understand what you need.
What are the lessons here for us?
- Most people want to help. The study shows that even strangers will help others when asked.
- You must communicate clearly what it is you need so that people can help you. In this study, the percentage of people who gave up their seats decreased when they werent directly asked.
- Understand your fear of asking is holding you back from receiving the assistance that can make a profound difference in your career.
It is vital for your career advancement to understand the politics in your company and the way decisions are made. Your network should not merely consist of people you like, but also people who can influence your professional growth. Identify these people, build relationships with them and ask for their help if appropriate.
At first, practice asking for help from those you feel comfortable with and build your asking muscle.
Secondly, always offer to help others even when not asked. This will also help you to feel more confident when you make the request.
Investing in Your Business and Career: Coming to Terms with Your Issues
In my blog last week, Get Savvy: 10 Tips to Help You be Successful in Business, I talked about the things that I feel have helped me make my business successful. I asked for feedback and a few people responded that they thought that #3, Investing in Your Business, was critical for their success.
I thought it would be helpful to explore this and tell you more about my story.
Once I accepted the fact that I didnt have all the answers and that I needed to find the right people to help me move my business forward, I still hesitated. I didnt want to spend the money. I was frightened and I thought that I needed to make the money first before I spent it.
If you agree with this, I can tell you honestly that this ends up being a merry go round that will not move you forward. There comes a time when you need to make the decision to have a real business not just a hobby. Real business owners invest and re-invest in their business. There comes a time when you realize that if you want the career you know you deserve, you need to invest in yourself to help you move forward.
Taking the risk and using credit to pay for the services I needed was really scary to me. I was brought up to pay off credit cards and not carry balances; not to extend myself beyond what I could comfortably cover each month. So I was stuck. I knew that I needed some guidance but I wouldnt take the risk or invest in myself to get that help.
But there was much more going on.
- I had to address my issues about money. What did I learn from my parents about money that might be holding me back? Do you know what your money issues are?
- I had to face my own insecurities about the ability to make the money in the future to pay my bills. If you are unwilling to invest in your career and business, what does that say about your faith in your ability to be successful?
- I had to come to terms with my own relationship to success. Was I more comfortable playing small? What is your comfort zone?
I can tell you now that I have faced these issues head on and continue to work on them. I have invested big time in my business and it has made a huge difference. For one thing, I have learned valuable information that I would not have otherwise had at my disposal. Ive also found that its much easier to ask my potential clients to invest my services because Ive done it myself and have reaped the benefits.
If you really want a successful business and career, then step up and do what you need to do to get there. Step up and face your issues, invest in yourself and recognize that it could be you, and no one else that is holding you back from what you want.
12 Tips to Kick the Nice Girl Habit and Propel Your Career Forward
Who ever thought that being nice would work against our career advancement? Its not just being nice that sabotages us in the workplace. Its when you are so nice that everyone else comes first and you have an inordinate need for everyone to like you.
It may be our nature because of our upbringing to defer to others and consider others before ourselves. But its critical to understand how this type of behavior will sabotage your career and how you will become invisible in the workplace, lose respect and that others will perceive you as not being competent. In short, the nice girl behavior will hold you back from advancing your career.
When it comes to leadership, women face a cultural conundrum. Studies show that when women adopt certain behaviors believed to be essential to successful leadership such as assertiveness, they are evaluated more negatively than men. And when women behave in more feminine ways, such as being nice, they are perceived as less qualified than men.
That being said, if given the choice between being nice and being effective, most experts agree that women should choose to be effective.
Some tips on how to kick the Nice Girl habit:
- Identify what your nice behavior patterns are and put a plan in place to monitor and modify this behavior.
- Ask a trusted colleague for continual feedback.
- Envision who you want to be and act accordingly.
- Detach. Detach from your need to be one of them and everyones best friend. Detach from your emotional response.
- Stay fact-based instead of emotion based. Your job is not to be everyones best friend, but to help them achieve their career goals.
- Work on changing your behavior, attitude and expectations of doing a good job rather than being liked. Focus more on being respected and less on being liked.
- Find a balance between being reachable and letting your staff know clear expectation.s
- Be consistent, fair, and honest. If your employees know they can depend on you to be fair, they will recognize your not so nice actions are for the good of the company.
- Focus on relating skills such as asking, listening, coaching, encouraging AND requiring skills such as creating expectations, focusing on goals, setting controls, asserting point of view, confronting problems. If you push one skill set over the other consistently, it can hurt you.
- Be strategically nice. Women can use their Emotional Intelligence to their advantage and decide when and to whom they should be nice. There is a time to be nice and a time to make tough decisions and being nice can be viewed negatively at that time.
- Rethink your definition of nice. Nice doesnt mean doing things everyone wants and never making anyone mad. Nice doesnt mean pretending everything is always okay and never getting frustrated with people or situations. True nice is about being clear on your worth, being confident and in control, making the best choices you can in each situation, and acting consistently with a positive and professional attitude.
- Develop your true confidence and inner strength. This is key to learning how to own their power without needing to wield it over others. This confidence that comes from within will allow you to act in ways that are effective without needing to be liked at any cost. Its insecurities that can create an overly nice person.
Think about this: at the root of the desire to be nice is the need to have others think highly of you because you dont think that way about yourself.
Change how you feel about yourself, and you will no longer have the need to constantly please others and put yourself last.
BE NICE TO YOURSELF and you will stay on track for moving your career forward.
How to Overcome Your Self-Doubt to Reach Your Full Potential in Business
How many of you have ever moved into a new position or a new company and worry that you dont have what it takes? You worry that someone will discover that you really arent all that qualified, even though your resume and your accomplishments clearly show a track record of success?
This is actually quite common and its called the Imposter Syndrome. An important study was done in 1978 that found that most accomplished women in the 1970s felt they werent smart and had fooled anyone who thought they were. They attributed their promotions to luck, timing, faulty judgments by decision makes. Even, if some of these women thought they were intelligent, they were hesitant to express their opinions and ideas. Researchers labeled this the imposter syndrome. No matter how hard these women worked and how successful they were, they felt they were imposters and would be found out.
My guest today, Valerie Young is an expert on this topic and today we will discuss how the imposter syndrome impacts our careers and what we can do to counter this self-doubt to establish thriving businesses and careers.
Featured Guest
Dr. Valerie Young is the author of The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It published by Random House. In addition to speaking at to over 60 major colleges and universities including Harvard, MIT, Cal Tech and Stanford she has spoken at such diverse organizations as Intel, Chrysler, Boeing, IBM, Procter & Gamble, Ernst & Young, American Women in Radio and Television, the Society of Women Engineers, and the Association of Women in Science. Her career-related tips have been cited in publications around the world including The Wall Street Journal, USA Weekend, More, Womans Day, Redbook, Psychology Today, The Chicago Tribune, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Daily Mail, The Irish Independent, and The Chronicle of Higher Education to name a few. In addition to her work at ImpostorSyndrome.com, Valerie is also the founder and Dreamer in Residence at www.ChangingCourse.com where her newsletter teaching people how to profit from their passion is read by over 23,000 people around the world.
Listen to the Wednesday, July 25th show 12 noon EDT or download the podcast.
Do You Need Stress in Your Life to Reach Your Full Potential?
We live in an age of great stress. We are bombarded daily with more information than we can possibly assimilate, and we are always connected to this flow of information with our iPhone, Blackberry’s and computers. There is no end to the information that is at our finger tips 24/7. It seems there is no place to hide either. Our personal and professional lives are now publicly displayed across the Internet. The job market is tough, the economy weak, and competition for advancement has increased dramatically with more and more highly educated women in the workforce. And many of us are trying to balance our careers with a family as well.
It would seem only logical that we should strive to eliminate the stress in our lives in order to achieve more equilibrium, health, and happiness.
I thought it was interesting, therefore, to read a recent post, Stress is Not Your Enemy, by Tony Schwartz in Harvard Business Review that states that we need stress in our lives in order to reach our full potential.
Tony says, Subjecting yourself to stress is the only way to systematically get stronger physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. And you’ll get weaker if you don’t.
This is the use it or lose it mentality that maintains that if you dont exercise your mind and body muscles, you will atrophy and, as a consequence, will not be able to grow and improve.
We live by the myth that stress is the enemy in our lives. The real enemy is our failure to balance stress with intermittent rest. Push the body too hard for too long chronic stress and the result will indeed be burnout and breakdown. But subject the body to insufficient stress, and it will weaken and atrophy.
Few of us push ourselves nearly hard enough to realize our potential, nor do we rest, sleep, and renew nearly as deeply or for as long as we should.
The real message here is that moving outside your comfort zone can be stressful, but it also allows you to increase your skill set to advance your career. Stretching yourself to take on new responsibilities at work, volunteering for high profile projects, speaking up in meetings and voicing your opinions when youd rather keep silent can certainly be stressful, but if you want to get out of the trenches and move your career forward, its important to take the leap even though it gives you some anxiety initially.
Tony Schwartzs point is that we need to do these things to grow personally and professionally but we also need to learn how to better manage our stress and know when its right to take a break and rest. We are not going to eliminate all the stress from our lives, but we can certainly learn to control our reaction to stressful situations so that it does not derail us.
This Wednesday, May 9th, at noon EDT, Dr. Fred Luskin from Stanford University will be my guest on GPS Your Career: A Womans Guide to Success to discuss the simple techniques we can all do to manage the effect stress has on our personal and professional lives. I hope you can join us.
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