Have you ever thought of being successful and then got scared of it all at once? Does the prospect of success fill you with both excitement and dread? Do you look at other successful women wondering what it would feel like to reach your dreams but not quite daring to dream that big?
If you’ve nodded while reading any of the above questions, you’re not alone. As a matter of fact, you’re probably joining the ranks of a majority of brilliant, competent, working women who work hard to make it, yet are well…terrified of succeeding. Counter-intuitive much?
In her famous doctoral studies, Dr. Matina Horner showed the astounding impact of the fear of success on women’s careers (Horner, 1972). Horner describes the motive to avoid success for women within the expectancy-value theory of motivation, as the social stereotype according to which independence, competence, intellectual achievement and competence are viewed as positively related to masculinity and not femininity. As such, there is an expectancy that achievement-related success will arouse negative outcomes for women.
Fear of success is one of the psychological factors that most affects women’s career development (Komalasari, Supartha, Rahyuda, & Dewi, 2017), and discourages them from going after achievements and opportunities. This fear of success in women has been demonstrated in numerous studies (Hoffman, 1974), showing how the threat of affiliative loss affects women’s motivation and attainment of goals. This fear of success is even more acute in non-gender appropriate conditions, such as in professions typically reserved for men (Cherry & Deaux, 1978).
For so many women, success is appealing, yet terrifying. It simultaneously crowns their efforts with both the recognition finally deserved, and the negative perceptions, often leading to rejection and communal disempowerment so feared by women, precisely because of their nurturing and community-oriented nature. This fear manifests itself in commonly known yet not as often suspected forms such as procrastination or self-sabotage.
So how do you fight this so often inherent fear of success as a working woman? Frankly speaking, it’s easier said than done. The fear of success is often ingrained in women as early as in their childhood, along with societal and communal expectations of who and what a woman should be and do. Pushing past these expectations and the related mindsets and self-destructing behaviors requires an intentional decision and journey into understanding oneself, and making peace with one’s purpose and personal path.
If this is a journey you’ve been thinking about, or are currently on, here are a few tips to get you started or to continue on your way to ridding yourself of the fear of being successful:
Change your mind!
Literally! After years of social conditioning and messages all around us about the place and role of women, we seldom realize how much we tend to work against ourselves. Changing your mind to embrace your true desires has to become a constant process of identifying your own negative and self-defeating patterns, and replace them with positive ones.
Normalize defining success on your own terms
What is success, really? My favorite quote about success is from Dr. Maya Angelou: “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.” After years of subscribing to other well-intentioned people’s definition of success, it took me a long while to discover what success truly meant for me. Once I did, I was no longer afraid of someone else’s ethereal, impersonal definition of success. Rather, I started feeling emboldened to bring my own vision of success to life.
Practice being unapologetic about what you want
I used to want to apologize for literally taking space, as if my achieving anything made me indebted to others. With the guilt of achievement, often comes the urge to apologize for simply being there. It takes the conscious realization of this, as well as the intentional decision to refrain from being apologetic about what you want.
Grieve the loss of prior expectations
However, with normalizing success as a working woman, also comes the death of prior expectations from society. These are usually communal expectations of what a “feminine” woman looks like, that have been deeply embedded in the collective psyche over time, such as “girls should be seen and not heard”, or that female success equates the loss of all femininity and societal acceptance. These are also expectations that at some point or another, you may have carried with you, and that you must now allow yourself to grieve.
Commit to your own personal journey of growth
Last but not least, fighting the fear of success and building confidence as a working woman is not an overnight affair. It’s the journey of a lifetime, one that requires commitment, devotion and most importantly, the blood and sweat of your legacy.
Are you afraid of achieving success as a working woman?
Welcome to our periodic letter to working moms everywhere, saluting their courage, resilience and beauty…
Dear Working Mom,
2020 certainly tried it, what with remote learning, job losses mostly impacting women, women-owned small businesses in peril, and a global health and race crisis wreaking havoc on the planet…You’ve had to put your goals aside, focusing instead on keeping your family safe, homeschooling your kids, and creating a decent space for your loved ones to live, work and study in together….From one day to the other, you were stripped of the very security and foundation you had in a stable society, a secure career, good health, and thrown into the uncertainty of an unknown disease, a crumbling economy, racial unrest, and most of all, a heart-wrenchingly worrisome outlook for your children…
You’ve had to un-learn your old normal, and learn to navigate an unpredictable tomorrow. Zoom calls have become your new day-to-day, and exhaustion the price of making the “unworkable” work for everyone else, often forgetting yourself in the process. You’ve had to carry the weight of racial unrest and political tension, without the support of friends and family you’ve had to stay away from for the sake of mutual protection. You’ve watched some of your relationships crumble, revealing the harsh pull of distance and time, as you’ve coped with maintaining some sanity and peace in and around you…
Yet, you’ve made it! You’ve closed yet another year, albeit maybe one of the most challenging thus far. Despite still facing much uncertainty, you’ve managed to start anew, renewing your hope, starting from experience and hard lessons learned…
While this year may not bring back much of a sense of normalcy, as we knew it, it may spell a new beginning towards a stronger, more resilient, more flexible and adaptable you. Maybe the old normal was not working, as it was, what with our over-burdened schedules and chronic exhaustion. And maybe what we’re after is not really a new normal, with new incongruencies and excesses of its own.
Maybe what 2021 is offering us, is the opportunity, after surviving 2020, to thrive by re-inventing the processes, systems, and norms that held us captive before.
Re-invent the type of care we give ourselves and others.
Re-invent the way we work and define success.
Re-invent the thought patterns that made us who we are.
Re-invent the way we mother and nurture our families.
Re-invent the space we ought to take in the different spaces of our lives.
Re-invent the relationships that define us.
Re-invent the way we accomplish our purpose and reach our goals.
Re-invent the way we choose to live.
Dear Working Mom,
2020 tried it, and you survived it. Now it’s time to thrive…
2020 has been the year of lessons for small businesses worldwide. Women-owned small businesses in particular, have been especially impacted. From the challenge of work-life balance arising from household and childcare responsibilities being shifted to women, to navigating current times and challenges to adapt their business model to the new economy, many women small business owners have been struggling to say the least.
Despite advances made by and for women business leaders, including the 1988 Women’s Business Ownership Act promoting female entrepreneurs, and the nearly 13 millions women-owned small businesses employing 9.4 millions individuals and earning $1.3 trillion in revenue, there is still a lot of progress to be made. The pandemic has taken some of this progress away, instead penalizing women for owning businesses.
A business is an endless source of learning and applied lessons. As contexts and business environements change, as they certainly did in 2020, so are small business owners expected to learn new trends, new concepts, and new ways of doing business. This is even more important for women-owned businesses that are more at a risk of not surviving than others.
Know your business inside out.
Do you really know your business, from your vendors to your customer base and cash flow? Many small businesses fail to survive or stay stagnant because of a basic lack of understanding of the business itself. While you don’t have to be an expert in all areas of your business, you should understand it well enough.
Focus your business.
An unfocused business is a business at greater risk. The more you can focus your business, from streamlining your operations to simplifying your offerings, the more you can control your business and the quicker you can adapt to change.
Plan for childcare.
As a woman business owner, you may have to deal with the responsibility of childcare, along with running your business. Whereas before, your life and business could have been running somewhat smoothly together, now they are blended more than ever. Planning for childcare in a way that allows you to be the best mother and the best business owner you can be, is a priority.
Mind your cash flow.
Most businesses fail because of poor cash flow management. Women-owned businesses are no exception. A cash-poor business is a business that is limited and unable to expand. Make it a point to manage your cash flow, and work to increase it so you have access to additional resources in times of economic strain.
Explore new streams of income.
A successful business is a business with multiple options to create income. This doesn’t mean that you need a gazillion product or service offerings. However, it implies being able to maximize your current products and services so as to create multiple streams of income that can prove helpful in times of crisis.
Mind your costs.
Along with managing your cash flow, you must also make managing your costs a priority. Where can you cut costs in an efficient manner? How can you consolidate some of your costs? These are questions you must periodically ask yourself in order to run a lean and efficient business that can survive and thrive in times of crisis.
Have an emergency plan.
Do you have a contingency plan in case of emergency? Do you have business savings you can potentially dip into when the going gets tough? Due to lack of funding and financial precariousness, many women-owned businesses may not have the necessary emergency structure to help them navigate difficult times. This is a reminder to invest in emergency plans and savings in your business.
Get online: you MUST have a website.
The 2020 pandemic has shifted most businesses to their online platform and offerings as a way to survive at a time when in-person contact was prohibited. This has emphasized the importance of having and developing an online presence as a business.
Diversify payment options.
How can your customers reward you for your products and services? When in-person contact is out of the question, can your business still receive revenue in different forms? Diversifying your payment options, through online and remote alternatives mostly, can also help your business make it through challenging times.
Invest in mentors.
As women-owned businesses face more challenges, especially as related to funding and growth opportunities, than men-owned businesses, having expert guidance can tremendously help. Investing in mentors in and outside of your industry and business type can help you get to the next level, and address challenges and obstacles in a more focused and informed manner.
Focus on hiring and retaining employees.
The 2020 crisis has seen an unprecedented rise in unemployment, which has contributed in weakening businesses at an alarming rate. Hiring and retaining employees has thus proven to be one of the greatest challenges brought on by the pandemic. Yet, it is also one of the greatest business needs faced by small businesses.
Learn about financing options.
While women have historically been at a disadvantage when it comes to business financing and funding, there have been increased efforts to grow and develop resources to fill this gap. Make it a point to learn as much as possible about financing options and prepare your business to avail yourself of these.
Create a flexible business structure
A heavy, clunky business structure is also one that doesn’t lend itself to change and growth. Whether it’s around your operations, your personnel, or your finances, ensuring that you can be flexible in case of change, or even worse, crisis, can help you maintain and grow your business over time.
Embrace innovation.
Necessity is truly the mother of invention. When you need to create something out of nothing in your business, and to remedy the lack of resources and results as experienced during the pandemic, you need to innovate. Embrace doing things in a different, still efficient manner, rather than being attached to the same processes and outcomes.
Prioritize relationships.
Business is done through relationships. Being away from each other during this pandemic has reinforced this notion, confirming that businesses really suffer in the absence of concrete, healthy relationships.
Charge what you’re worth.
Women are notorious for not charging what they’re worth, be it through salary or business negotiations. The feminine instinct to help, coupled with a disadvantageous lack of confidence, keep us from truly maximizing our gifts and talents and asking for what we are truly worth. This is also what keeps us from building successful and sustainable businesses, amplifying the impact of crisis like the 2020 pandemic.
Prepare to deal with uncertainty.
Uncertainty is par for the course when it comes to business and life in general, as we’ve seen in 2020. Part of building a great business is also building a foundation that can survive in times of uncertainty and change, through flexibility, adaptability and innovation.
Do it now or never.
Time is not promised to us. Neither is the possibility of starting and running a powerful business. Many women fall prey to insecurity and lack of confidence, foregoing their chances to build the business of their dreams. Don’t be one.
Technology is your friend.
Last but not least, 2020 has shown us all the incredible power of technology in times of crisis. This is a power that as women small business owners, we must learn to harness and use to our advantage to not only bridge the female entrepreneurial gap, but thrive through it.
What other lessons have you learnt as a woman small business owner?
2020 was a lot of things, but one sure thing it was, was a year of lessons. From the global angst of an uncontrollable pandemic to the anxious frustration of quarantine, not to mention the aggravated stress of an ever-looming financial and economic pit and the stinging heartache of hundreds of thousands of lives taken away, lessons, hard, heart-wrenching, implacable lessons, were everywhere. These are timeless lessons that will undoubtedly forever stay with us, especially as working women and moms…
While there have been twice as many fatalities affecting men than women worldwide, more women have been affected by the pandemic than men. On the work front, women constitute 70% of the health workforce, thus being more prone to infection. On the home front, from the increase in domestic violence to the lack of domestic and emotional support for working moms, women are facing incredibly high obstacles. An entire generation of progress and advancement for women is also at risk…
This year has shaped the way I see myself, the world around me, and the work I do. Like so many of you, as a working woman, a mom, a wife, a sister, a daughter, it has stretched me, pushed me, punched me, egged me on in ways I could have never imagined. Ultimately, it has rewarded me with the precious gift of appreciation and gratitude for the rare privilege, taken away from so many who did not cross this year’s threshold, to simply be…
As I’m grateful to put a period on 2020, I’m also so thankful for the precious lessons this year has allowed me to etch on my mind and memory. Here are 20 of them, that I’m taking with me and am privileged to share with you:
Prioritize your mental health
If there is any year that has tested our mental health, it is this one.
This year taught us that even when you’re low on strength and resources, you cannot afford to neglect your mental health..
Not when you’re up at 2am frantically checking your email for your COVID-19 lab testing results…
Not when you have to dig deep into your last resources of love, calm and resilience to soothe a crying child frustrated by weeks of quarantine and Zoom video calls, as you struggle with putting on a brave face for yet another online meeting…
Not when you’re watching heart-wrenching stories about George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and dealing with an entire world’s racial reckoning..
Taking care of your mental health is not just necessary to survive, but to thrive in all areas of your life and career.
Your career should be an expression of your purpose.
What happens when crisis hit? When the world as you knew it no longer exists? When the “new normal” is nothing but?
You do what working women and moms with an endless to-do list, bills to pay and a couple of extra smart mouths to feed would do. You re-consider your priorities, very often ending with a big question mark over the one activity most of us spend most of our time in: our careers…
For many, if not most working women and moms, it has become obvious that our careers should be an expression of our purpose. That if, faced with the fragility of life, we must devote time to work, it must be work that serves a purpose. Our purpose, to be more specific…
You own your career, and not the other way around.
So often, we feel like our employer is our source, that our careers own us, long hours, bad managers and all…It’s not until something drastic happens, that we finally dare to take back ownership of our work, and ultimately our lives. While women are leaving the workforce in greater numbers than men due to handling the brunt of household duties and chores at home, they’re also faced with the harsh decision to redefine and reclaim their careers.
This year, I learnt crisis is actually opportunity. The opportunity to re-define your work and career, rather than let it define you.
Resiliency is key to career success.
Careers are like good cakes. They’re made with the right ingredients, with time and enough consistency to breed the type of success that is not just glowing in appearance, but fulfilling and sustainable.
For working women and moms faced with so many odds on the home and work front, especially during this past year, resilience is one of these indispensable key ingredients to career success. It’s the ability to keep going when the going gets tough, like it has certainly been during this pandemic, and to still be there when most have left the career battlefield or resigned themselves to career stagnation.
Your career evolves with you.
One of the biggest misconceptions about our careers is that our work is separate from our personal lives as individuals. As we’ve all come to find out through the extraordinarily drastic circumstances of the 2020 crisis and pandemic, nothing could be further from the truth, especially for us as working women and moms.
As this crisis has stretched and weighed down so many working women and moms, it has also shown that our work, the way we work, and the ability to do our work is not separate from who we are and what happens around us. As millions of working women have had to leave their jobs to attend to childcare responsibilities and home duties, their careers have changed along with them. And as so many working women and moms learn to re-define work through this crisis, their careers are bound to evolve with them.
Crisis is opportunity in disguise.
For working women and moms, the balance of work and life has dangerously tipped, seemingly abolishing decades of feminist advances. For women owners of small businesses, the crisis has been particularly harsh, replacing the glimmer of previous hope with a stark preview of things to come.
However, it’s also taught us new ways of doing business, the ability to transform our operations from in-person to remote, and the importance of using hardship as an opportunity to reinvent the way we do what we do.
Be flexible with your approach to reach your goals.
2020 has taught us what all crises do, that is to be flexible, agile and adaptable in the face of change. It has forced us to reconsider our most prized goals, and re-prioritize our objectives. Some of these goals have been put on the back burner, others are no longer relevant, and most of them are looking very different from the way we originally envisioned them.
As working women and moms, although the losses are undeniable, the hidden gains, in terms of added clarity, flexibility and strength, are here to stay.
A career detour is not a denial.
Working women have borne the brunt of unemployment during this crisis at a much higher rate than their male counterparts. As owners of small businesses in the service industry, and employees on the medical front line, so many women have lost their jobs and sources of income.
However, these career detours into temporary failure are also uncovering systemic gender-related gaps and issues that can now be addressed. For many women, this will be the opportunity to turn a career detour into a better path for gender equity.
Do not hide your gifts.
What the 2020 pandemic and crisis re-emphasized to all of us is the preciousness of time and the fragility of life. As we watched reports of millions of people taken by the disease, weighed down by its economic burden, and permanently affected by its disastrous impact, we were reminded to make the best out of what we have, right here, right now.
As working women and moms, it also means resisting the temptation to hide our gifts, to bury our abilities and capacities under appearances of conformism and correctness. For many, it has ignited the beautifully desperate call to not leave our best for last.
Do what you can with what you have right where you are.
Going from having so much freedom and choice to being limited in action, resources and access, especially as mothers, workers, and leaders, is a reminder to make the best of what we have. Despite the enormity of the struggle facing working women and moms, kids still went to school, work still got done, and food still made it on the dinner table.
Failure is the most powerful of teachers.
So many started the year with lofty goals and ambitious objectives. As unfortunate circumstances continued to unfold, we learnt from failing to achieve what we thought we needed. Instead, we learnt from the lessons of failure, unemployment, business demise, and family challenges, some of the most powerful lessons of our lives.
Pick your career battles wisely.
What do you do when you’re stuck between a career rock and a personal hard place? When you have to attend to your family, and risk your job at the same time? When the mortgage is due, and you’ve just been let go from work? When you have to choose between childcare and work?
These questions, and so many others, were ripe in the minds and lives of working women and moms during this pandemic. Hard choices had to be made. All throughout, these women learnt to pick what matters most.
Respect the different seasons of your life and career.
Through many of the heart-wrenching choices and adjustments working women and moms have had to make during this crisis, they have also had to accept the different and challenging seasons of work and life. From career breaks to unemployment, and business re-adjustments, honoring and learning from the various seasons of our work and life is invaluable. It is what gives us the stamina and inspiration to keep going, and to re-adjust our sails as we go….
Do not dwell on what it looks like, believe in what can be.
Crises make it hard to see the forest from the trees. When everything looks bleak on the horizon, it can be close to impossible to keep our eyes on the prize, whatever that may be for us.
Yet, as a working woman and mom, it was crucial for me to believe so I could keep striving towards not what I could see, but what could be. Striving towards the health of my family, the pursuit of my purpose, and the hope that we can be the light at the end of our own tunnels.
Find the positive in every situation and work it to your advantage.
Being quarantined for almost the entirety of 2020 allowed us to get back to the true spirit of family, and for most of us as working women and moms, re-prioritize precious time and energy. While we were away from work, technology stepped in to help, albeit imperfectly, keep business going. In the direst of circumstances, there is always a glimmer of positivity we can work to our advantage.
Learn from every situation.
2020 was one of the biggest lessons most of us had the opportunity to learn. One giant lesson we’re still absorbing, especially as working women and moms…Every situation has something to teach us, most of all the ones we desperately try to avoid or run away from…
Do not be afraid to define success on your own terms.
Challenging situations have a way of bringing clarity into the darkest of circumstances. What with mass layoffs, overwhelming unemployment, and the gigantic burden on working women and moms, learning to re-define success on our own terms in the face of adversity may just have been the greatest gift of this season.
Prioritize what is sacred to you.
What is truly important to you? What matters the most? What is sacred to you?
Often, we tend to wait for a catastrophe to ask ourselves these questions. Maybe the lesson of this past year is to stop waiting for unfortunate circumstances, or the other shoe to drop, and instead get in the habit of prioritizing what is sacred to us at all times…
Let go of what and who is not for you.
As working women and moms with unending to-do lists, letting go may not be our first instinct. I know it’s not often mine. Yet, the pandemic and global crisis of 2020 taught me, as it did most of us, that in order to focus on what truly matters, the less important has to go…
“Knowledge without wisdom is like water in sand.” – African Proverb
Too often, especially as working women victims of the proverbial “glass ceiling” in corporations or other obstacles to career advancement, we may look to tirelessly improve our knowledge and the structures we’re part of in search of greater equity and fairer opportunity. However, one of the places we sometimes fail to look at, is our own mindset. Yet, mindset has been proven to be the single most important factor affecting an individual’s success.
I know most of the advice I, and so many other working women, have received when it comes to career advancement ranges from technical to strategic and tactical recommendations. Very seldom, are we encouraged to re-visit and reinvent our mindset for career success. And this, despite having been conditioned for so long to perceive and accept the working world as a gendered construct built for and to the advantage of men. Without knowing it, we may be expanding countless personal, professional, and even emotional and psychological resources fighting battles we may already have lost in our own minds, as we hold negative, counter-productive beliefs about ourselves, doubt our strengths, and lack a clear sense of purpose.
Long before I had even heard of the “glass ceiling”, or the “concrete wall”, or concepts such as “mansplaining” for instance, I believed I would inevitably have to face a career ceiling. I could never speak up long and assertively enough to be heard. Or maybe I didn’t know all the right people, or did not have the right skills… For me, like for so many other working women, the invisible but quite palpable professional ceiling was still alive and well, most of all in my mind…
In a world where the career success ceiling for women still exists, despite numerous significant advances, it is crucial for working women to not only continuously work on their mindsets, but to strive to re-invent it at all times, against the common pressures of modern society and our own internal preconceptions.
To begin this reinvention process, here are 3 tips to reinvent your career mindset for success:
What are your predominant beliefs about yourself and your work?
We don’t talk enough about the role of our mindset at work. I had to learn the hard way that the biggest block in my career was my mindset. Not the boss, not the co-workers, not even the glass ceiling and some of the discrimination so many of us encounter…The biggest block was in my head!
Our mindsets are shaped from childhood on, from the words spoken by well-intentioned (or not so well-intentioned) family, friends and other people in our lives. For instance, if you were always told you were shy, like I was, this may have become a self-fulfilling prophecy for you, and the message you would hear from your inner voice every time you sat at a meeting and were afraid to speak up. Or that “little girls should be seen and not heard”, another proverbial self-fulfilling prophecy for so many working women afraid to let their voices be heard.
Now your turn:
What are those predominant beliefs about yourself?
Which ones are negative self-beliefs?
Can you replace them with the exact, positive opposite?
Re-discover your strengths
So often as working women, we don’t realize our strengths. Remember, we tend to be most critical towards ourselves. We also often forget to focus on our strengths, or to notice how they have evolved over time. Re-assessing your strengths, or even discovering them for the first time, takes the cap off of what you can achieve.
Here are a few steps to re-discover your strengths:
Take the time to self-evaluate
Ask friends and family
Analyze your successes
Get some clues on your failures and attempts
Rethink your WHY
WHY are you doing what you’re doing? Is it for the purpose of it all, the money, the relationships, to pay your student loans, take care of your family, etc? When I started my career, I didn’t have a clear WHY. It took me quite a few years to figure it out, and to figure out that it also changes with time. The WHY you had when you started your career is likely not the same WHY you have today.
By identifying and acknowledging our predominant beliefs about ourselves and our work, especially the negative ones, re-discovering our own unique strengths, and re-thinking our why, we also learn to re-wire our mindsets for success on our own terms.
How do you re-invent your career mindset for success?
