Remember this, please. You can never and should never please everybody. Even the status quo is pissing someone off somewhere. Internet trolls have taught us nothing if not this. So Judge your success, not by the reactions of the mediocre who surround you. Judge your success by your own results and how you feel about them.
I wish we talked more about failure. Like everywhere – work, home, friends, with your kids. To build confidence, I say we must embrace it, and the bigger the better! One is because failure suffocates perfectionism, but more so because failure prevents shame. It is a natural human instinct to avoid failure. It’s also natural when we do encounter it, to internalize it. That means we hide it and bury it deep where others won’t find it. But when we don’t air out our failures, we create a deadly equation: Failure + Aloneness = Shame
There’s a super important step in becoming your braver self that nobody talks about. It’s the recognition of when you’re playing small. It’s noticing that fear has come to sit next to you on the bleachers and is running her mouth so you don’t get on the court and play. She’s hard to notice because, in my experience, fear sounds a lot like perfectly logical reasons. Often it feels more like my old friend “busy” sat down. Or even her cousin procrastination. But fear?!
For years I couldn’t even tell you my favorite holiday moment or tradition. It all just whizzed by in a blur of behind the 8-ball moments of catch up and failure prevention. I didn’t have time to plan, and even when I did pull off the PERFECT gift, I felt a little disappointed in the reaction it netted. That’s right, I measure the gift planning to recipient reaction ratio and ROI. Call me a shallow sales leader, I own that.
How do I promote more women into sales leadership? Thanks for asking, because it does take a conscious effort (otherwise we wouldn’t be having this discussion, would we?). After I briefly give you some “whys,” I’ll share ideas on “hows” that I’ve learned over my 3 years with the amazing community of #GirlsClub.
At #GirlsClub, we talk a lot about confidence, but what does it truly mean? Confidence is a deeply rooted feeling that you’re okay with yourself. Heck, it might even be liking yourself (gasp!). It’s the feeling of self-belief and self-worth. It’s NOT about being perfect or being good at what OTHER people need you to be.
I’m excited to share a very powerful weapon we all have available to beat imposter syndrome.
If you’re new here, Hi. 🙂 I’m LB. We try to do regular installments on beating the widespread disease I define as an ugly underlying and persistent belief that I don’t own nor deserve my own success.
There’s a scent of possibility in the air. Have you clocked it? I caught it somewhere between a no-facemask gas station and accepting a fly-to-me speaking gig. The world is starting to feel more open. My choices for the kid’s summer camps were slim, but then something amazing happened.
Were you raised to believe that selfishness was essentially the worst character trait you could have? In my household, I was taught that selfishness meant that you do not care for others. It was negative – if I was told that I was “selfish,” I knew that I had failed to show that I was kind. I knew I was a kind person and yet, I internalized this definition of selfishness. Sure, I probably was selfish at times – but what kid is kind or caring 100% of the time?
How many articles have you read about the “Gender Pay Gap?” If you’re anything like me, the answer is A LOT! The more I read, the more I wanted to explore how we here at #GirlsClub could proactively start closing the gap. Insert the always helpful, Mikelann Valterra of Seattle Money Coach. Mikelann joined us recently to provide 5 strategies to prevent underearning.
Imposter syndrome is not an actual diagnosis (apparently). It’s a behavior pattern that is so common (and equally common among men and women, by the way) that in 1978 Suzanne Imes and Pauline Clance coined the term. Imposter syndrome is defined as “a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments.”
My upbringing was the perfect training for me and my challenging sales career to rise up and speak up. The qualifier is to do so in a pleasant tone. Anger never solves anything, whereas a natural smile will catch the bullies off-guard. As they allow ego to take over, we are then perfectly positioned to pose a question that they cannot answer. Accordingly, we free ourselves to proceed as we desire. The worst-case scenario is to walk away and continue doing what we believe to be right. So how does this work?