Welcome to the Stop Sabotaging Your Success Podcast, episode thirty-nine. I’m your host, Cindy Esliger. This is the podcast focusing on what we can do today to take control of our careers and overcome the inevitable barriers to success that we encounter along the way. 

How can we build a life around what it is that we want? Is that even possible in these uncertain times? Finding a mentor to help guide us will certainly help fast track our careers, but what if we never find someone to provide that guidance, what then? 

In this episode we’ll explore the inner wisdom that is in each of us that knows what to do next if we’re willing to tap into that powerful tool. Surviving in today’s workplace is not enough. Wouldn’t it be better if we could start playing big and work towards living up to our full potential?

In times of change and uncertainty, we might be thrust into transformation, whether we like it or not. Most of us would prefer to curl up in a little ball and avoid it all together. I invite you to take a more empowering, proactive approach. When external circumstances are impacting us, it’s time to look inward, to listen to your own longings and desires. See it as a blank canvas. Ask yourself, what brings me the most joy and meaning? What can I do to build my life more around that? These are big questions and there are tools available to make these questions less overwhelming. 

We’ve all been encouraged to get a really great mentor to give us the answers for where to go next and what direction to take to find job satisfaction. But to be honest, I never found that mentor. I encountered people whom I admired, but there was always something they had that I didn’t want in my life. And sometimes, it was something that was a non-negotiable for me, yet missing in their lives. It seems that there were always major trade-offs, sacrifices that had to be made that I didn’t want to make. They may have known what was right for them, but not for me. 

In the absence of that mentor I was seeking, I tended to rely more fully on my inner mentor or inner sage. I related to that figure much like I’d rely on a real-life mentor. It helped reinforce what I already knew and it helped me make a shift in my perspective about what was possible for me.

Your inner sage is really just a way of getting in touch with your inner wisdom. I wasn’t completely convinced at first. Could the answer really be that simple, once I heard it from that place inside me? It helped me get clarity around something I wasn’t clear on before. It helped me tap into my future self, which as it turns out, can be much nicer to me than my inner critic. That inner critic has its place, mostly to stop us from acting on impulse. 

I found my inner sage much more helpful by encouraging me to step outside of all those expectations of others and society as a whole. Even if I didn’t feel great and nothing seemed clear or straightforward, it was reassurance that I was moving forward, moving towards something, not just running away from what was hard and uncomfortable. What it was trying to tell me was that when you get to where your future self is, you’ll understand that you didn’t need to be worrying about everything or overthinking every decision or choice. 

Your inner sage is a calming, reassuring presence that everything is exactly as it should be. If someone on the street said to me that it’s going to be fine, don’t worry about this so much, I wouldn’t find that reassuring. That would just make my heart rate go up, because after being taken advantage of for so many years, I’ve learned not to trust what other people say or suggest is right for me. But I’m learning to trust myself and to surround myself with more supportive, trustworthy people. The ones who say, “I can’t wait to see what’s next for you.”

Surviving isn’t thriving. There’s a primal part of us that doesn’t want us to come to any risk or harm. It’s an instinct to ensure our physical safety. Our response to any threat or danger is one of fight, flight or freeze. We still have that safety instinct, even though we aren’t facing mortal danger on a daily basis. 

The danger we do encounter is more of an emotional threat, like fear and vulnerability. I’m sure I’m not the only one who tries to do everything in my power to avoid feeling embarrassed, experience rejection, be subject to criticism, or feel like I don’t belong. 

We all tend to avoid taking emotional risks, but how do you have a life you love, without putting yourself at risk? Even just raising your hand in a meeting involves an emotional risk. That inner critic is just a strategy our safety instinct is using, saying things like: 

• Who do you think you are? 
• You don’t have the relevant experience. 
• That’ll never work. 
• It’s way too late for that. 

Those stories we tell ourselves that include these intimidating narratives just activate that safety instinct. Apparently, it’s trying to protect us, but sometimes it feels more sneaky and manipulative in trying to keep us from what we desire.

It’s time to become aware. Sometimes I think we need some training about our inner critic to be conscious of it, but not buy into everything it says. We tend to think it’s us, that it’s reality, but really it’s just one voice inside us. When you’re taking emotional risks, you are going to hear it loudly. And while it’s not going away, you can learn that we don’t have to take direction from this inner critic. 

In this industry, we’re going up against big societal norms and expectations of how we are to behave as women. We’ve internalized the message and we’ve adopted the beliefs, and now it affects how we think about ourselves and view our abilities. These external influences are what shape what our inner critic says. 

Some say there is no such thing as self-discipline and willpower. I disagree. For many things, I can white-knuckle my way through and get a lot of things done. I think that’s tapping into my self-discipline and willpower for sure. But there are competing motivations that we also have to learn to deal with, because the white-knuckle approach requires far too much effort and energy and it’s not sustainable. We need to put the necessary supports in place to keep at this over the long term. That’s where the belief in ourselves comes into play. 

We tend to underestimate ourselves as women, but men do just the opposite. If we could just move a little more along that continuum, we’d still be in the reasonable range, but feel more capable and see more of what’s possible for us out there. In general, women tend to be really good students.

I, for one, like being in student mode, doing more research and continually learning. “Always being prepared” is more than a motto for me. But there is plenty of room to be more confident without reading everything ever written on a topic. 

Self-promotion is so uncomfortable, but necessary. Maybe it would be more palatable terming it as increasing our visibility. We tend not to want to play office politics, but the harsh reality is, that if you’re not noticed, your work won’t get recognized, and you won’t get rewarded. 

I was always a good student. I loved math and science because there was a right and a wrong answer. During high school, I decided on engineering and there was no changing my mind, even though I knew it was definitely a male-dominated profession, and I would be the odd one out. 

During first year university was the first time I experienced doubt that I could handle the workload, but I learned how to study and I figured it out. But self-doubt was alive and well, both socially and academically. There, women were treated equally by faculty, and when I graduated, I was one of only a few with a job right out of school. We were coming out of a recession and hardly anyone was hiring new grads with little to no experience. Many of my peers went on to graduate school and many more left engineering to do something completely different. 

Right from my first job, I was exposed to the inequality in the workplace and the strength of the old boys’ club culture. I had high hopes for finding an environment more equally shaped by women and men, but those hopes were quickly dashed. We may have come a long way, but much more needs to change, with the practices and the face of leadership, to create a place where women can truly succeed. 

I tried adopting a more masculine attitude to fit in at work where I was usually the only woman, except for the support staff, and maybe it helped me not to stick out as much, but it didn’t work so well in helping me progress alongside my peers. Then we decided to start a family, not having given much thought that having kids could have a negative impact on my career trajectory. Boy was I wrong. That pushed me into giving a long, hard look at my ambition and reluctantly accepting that I couldn’t have it all, or so I was led to believe. 

My priorities did change by becoming a mother. For a while there, I was ready to forego engineering for computer science, because I thought that there would be more gender equality in a younger industry, so I went back to school and I got another degree. But due to life circumstances, I never ended up using that one. 

I definitely felt a disconnect between what I really wanted for myself and my career, and the message I was receiving about what was possible. I became disillusioned because someone else decided that I couldn’t have a family and a big ambitious career. I was beginning to resign myself to the “mommy track” and stop questioning why this was happening to me, and the few other women that I knew at my career stage and above. 

Looking around, I knew sacrifices had been made by most women in leadership. Senior women were slow to move up in the ranks and commonly passed over for promotions, especially when they had a family. Highly qualified women with important ideas to share, left on the sidelines. I was disappointed, but there was still a part of me that wasn’t ready to give in and let all my ambition be squashed. 

We’re told that women have equal opportunity in the workplace. I’m hoping that happens somewhere, because I didn’t see it. There’s this inevitable tension between work and family, where women with experience and knowledge are not advanced into positions of leadership, yet they’re used for their strong work ethic, but not their unique ideas, insights, talents, or brilliance. 

I started seeing something else entirely, the power differential, a lack of support fueled by conscious and unconscious bias, contributing to a lack of confidence and risk-taking. I was struggling with it myself. Somehow, even my considerable career success had somehow not provided the self-confidence I needed to continue, or maybe it had been eroded over time. I was no longer eager to pursue my dreams. I had convinced myself that it wasn’t meant to be, a consequence of the choice we made in having a family, and yet I persevered. 

Maybe it was just my stubbornness, but I wasn’t going to let anyone sideline me in a career I’d worked hard in creating. It was not easy at times, pretending I didn’t have small kids at home, who got sick and had to be shuttled to appointments and activities. I leaned on my husband for much of that in the early years because he worked for people who were much more understanding of the perils of parenthood and allowed for flexibility when needed. 

As the years went on, I started experiencing the inner dynamic which causes women like me to hold ourselves back. I started to think that this is not what I wanted to be doing long-term, and maybe I’d already been at it for far too long. I still had real dreams for my career, but they were beginning to get buried in a pile of resistance. By that point, I had achieved a level of success and financial independence that allowed me to step away from the corporate world. 

I became consumed with all the talk about what’s wrong with status quo in this industry, and it seemed to be that all the blame was being placed on a broken system and societal norms. My experience allows me a unique perspective on what change is needed, and by whom. It’s not that I don’t agree the system is broken, and we suffer from the expectations of how women ought to behave, but I see that there is a lot of room for improvement on the internal barriers that we encounter that hold ourselves back and sabotage our own success. 

Now, I’m focusing on sharing alternative visions of how things could be, if we were to reclaim the power that is ours and has always been there. While it may require a leap of imagination, I think we have important ideas and questions to be raised in order to create change, but those ideas are not yet making it to where they can be heard, where they are desperately needed, to create a more hospitable work environment for everyone. 

What is your ‘why’ for your career? Is it something that you want to do, a mark that you want to make in this industry? What’s stopping you? Why aren’t you playing big? 

I’ve been there. I understand how hard it is to keep putting yourself out there, while it’s much safer to keep your head down and do the work you’ve been assigned to do, to ignore the comments that undermine your capability and credibility, to say nothing of the sexist remarks that have become a part of the corporate culture, and to let go of your ambition. Because who are we to want that for ourselves anyway? But recognize that you’re really just hiding from the truth. 

There are things that you can do right now, today, to start reclaiming your power and stop playing small. Are you ready to take a leap? Are you ready to start playing big? 

Frame this as an experiment. Test things out, to see if they are a good fit for you, and your needs and wants. You’ll always be successful in the leap, if you frame it as a learning experience and detach from the outcome. Frame each step you take as a success, not for the results it achieves, but for the power you feel in simply pushing forward. This is equally applicable to our personal lives and our professional lives. 

We tend to give away our power to everyone else. It’s time to play big in all areas of your life. Take the necessary action. Do as your inner sage suggests. Trust in that inner wisdom we all possess. Often other people can’t understand our vision, or why we even have a big dream that necessitates playing big to achieve. Family and friends may not get it at first, and they may never get it, and that’s okay. Expect that they will react with a protective, well-intentioned fear, but hold on to where you want to be, and create that roadmap of where you’re going, for yourself. 

What’s the biggest challenge for you in your career? 

Maybe some of these resonate with you: 

• work-life balance
• stress
• being on the brink of burnout
• not enough time
• questioning whether this is the right career for you
• questioning whether you have what it takes
• playing small

Give it some consideration because the first step is becoming aware of the problem. 

What is it you don’t like about your career? It’s okay if right now you’re not sure what to do about it, but at least acknowledge that there is a problem there. While we do things that contribute to our own dilemma, there are real barriers to career advancement. We’re not solely to blame, because these barriers are both internal and external. Sometimes we’re victims of bias, poor work-family policies, and pay disparity. Some say that women are to blame because we are doing these things to ourselves. Really? There are many unfair and arbitrary external barriers to our empowerment that we end up having to navigate that are not of our making.

But all hope is not lost. It’s the internal barriers that we can focus on that can make a real difference in how we think of ourselves, and what we see as possible for our lives and work. We’re shaped by our fears in speaking up, rocking the boat, or displeasing others. We’ve developed behaviors to survive without power: conflict avoidance, self-censoring, people-pleasing, a hesitation to act, and tentative speech patterns. 

We have a lot of inner unlearning and relearning to do, and coaching can help, because together, we can reach our full potential. So if you’re interested, reach out and see if coaching can help you start playing bigger. 

And that’s it for this episode of Stop Sabotaging Your Success. Remember to download your Guide to What Is Your Why at cindyesliger.com/podcast, episode thirty-nine.

Thank you to our producer, Alex Hochhausen and everyone at Astronomic Audio. Get in touch, I’m on Instagram @cindyesliger and my email address is info@cindyesliger.com. And if you liked this show, please tell a friend. Subscribe, rate, and review. 

Until next week, I’m Cindy Esliger. Thanks for joining me.