If you have ever wondered what you can do in your career to pave the way for other women, aside from being there as a working woman yourself, you are not alone. As working women, many, if not most of us, are keenly aware of the challenges we face in the workplace, from lack of gender equity to the glass ceiling and pay gap. As we strive to overcome these challenges and ascend to higher levels, we also aspire to give back by sharing what we’ve learnt along the way and hold the door open for our fellow working women coming alongside and behind us.
Yet, the question often arises as to how exactly, other than through our own examples, we can open doors for other women at work.
We all have different ways of working and relating to others. As such, we may serve our fellow working women in different ways, none better than the other, all effective at unlocking the gates of success for all. In my own career, I’ve had the privilege of benefiting from the experience, wisdom and extraordinary compassion of other women who have shepherded me along my path, each in their own way. I have learnt from them that there are many ways of paying it forward to other women, and turning open the hard locks sealing closed so many of the career doors standing in their way.
Here are 7 ways to open doors for other women at work:
Invite other women into your network
Do you see a woman around you who has great potential? Does one of the women in your department, company, or institution do exceptional work? There may be an opportunity for you to get to know her better, and possibly tell your friends about her, share her story, and help her obtain bigger and better opportunities.
Serve as a mentor
Mentoring is one of the most powerful ways to overcome gender inequity, especially for women who are still ascending to the top of their careers. These are the women who desperately need to learn from other women who have been there before them, and have successfully passed the same or similar tests they are facing. Mentoring these women can not only take them to the next level, but also reveal new and overlooked talent.
Champion other mentors by being a sponsor
While a mentor can come from a different company or industry, a sponsor tends to be more internal and act more proactively to endorse and provide opportunities for an individual. Sponsoring other women is particularly powerful as it allows for increased opportunities for females as well as more female leadership.
Create a community
Too often, women do not feel welcome in their organizations, and/or at higher levels of influence. Opening spheres of influence, and formerly closed doors to female leadership, has the potential of fostering stronger communities of belonging. By doing this, diversity and inclusion can become larger than inanimate policies and procedures, but real human communities.
Be a change agent
So often, as working women, we may experience a sense of guilt as we work on our own careers. We may feel that our efforts are too focused on us, and are not contributing to elevating other women. However, every time we reach a milestone, every time we sit at the table, enter the room or voice our opinion, we’re registering yet another win for other women. Just by being in the room, we are change agents, thus creating the opportunity for others to do the same and even better.
Share your story
Women’s stories are powerful. They are the fabric of our society, the rhythm of our communities and the voices of our people. However, too often, they get muted and silenced by fear, conformism, and lack of focus.
Sharing our stories as working women is yet another way of hurling the door of opportunity open for so many women, eagerly waiting to see their own stories validated, believed and reinforced.
Believe women
Last but not least, listen to the women around you. Believe their stories and testimonies, and allow them to have a voice where they may not have been authorized to do so before. This may mean welcoming another woman to the table, advocating for another woman, or sharing another woman’s business or resources.
How will you be opening doors for other women at work?
In my lifetime, as an immigrant, I have had the opportunity to witness the first American Black president Barack Obama, and now the first woman of color Vice-President. Yet, even more importantly, I’ve had the opportunity to witness my own children witnessing these historical achievements. It’s the opportunity to see them not only take in what is happening, but never have to doubt again that seeing a Black president, or a woman vice-president, can exist.
The wall of firsts has effectively been shattered, and with it the door of opportunity open for generations coming behind. Such is the power, yet also the burden, of being the first.
The first to break barriers.
The first to enter the room.
The first to create change.
The first to open the door of Change…
Today, Kamala Harris is the first to walk through the doors of the White House as the first one to be called “Madam Vice-President”. What she’s also doing is demonstrating the power of being the first, and making the seemingly impossible possible. What she’s doing is planting the seed of Possibility in the hearts of women and little girls everywhere, and dispelling the myth and fear attached with being the first.
Many of us are called to be firsts, in an official sense. However, all of us have the ability to open doors for other women coming alongside or behind us, in our own unique way. It may be in our unique way of handling an issue, in our innovative manner of tackling a problem, in the diversity of thought and creativity we bring to the table, in just being authentically ourselves.
What Kamala Harris, and all the other women whose shoulders she stands on, really did, doesn’t solely consist in showing us what is possible and opening the door for the rest of us. Most importantly, it’s normalizing for all of us the ability to open doors for any woman coming alongside or behind us, in our own capacity, position and ability.
Have you ever found yourself self-sabotaging, whether consciously or unconsciously? Whether it’s by procrastinating, delaying the inevitable, or betraying ourselves by accepting what we don’t want, we, as working women, can unfortunately contribute to self-sabotage.
It wasn’t until I started looking into some of my worst habits that I started asking myself about my own self-sabotaging tendencies. These would usually manifest before an important event or deadline.
Here are 10 ways that self-sabotage can manifest itself for working women:
You’re not thinking big enough
How often do you use the word “little” do you describe characteristics about yourself or your achievements? You may not be thinking big enough, keeping yourself and your accomplishments small, so as not to make yourself or others uncomfortable.
You worry too much
Do you anticipate all the possible negative scenarios in a situation before they’ve even happened? Are you already imagining all the issues that may come with a particular project or endeavor? Worrying too much may also be a way of sabotaging ourselves and our work.
You misunderstand yourself
Do you really know what your true strengths and limitations are? Or do you tend to assess your strengths in a limited manner, and not to have a clear picture of the areas where you could stand to improve? Having the wrong idea about yourself can literally rob you of a clear perception of your abilities and weaknesses, and drive you to sabotage yourself as well.
You don’t set appropriate boundaries
How many times have you said “yes” when you truly meant “no”? How often do you find yourself in inconvenient, unnerving situations you don’t deserve and are not beneficial to you because you failed to set proper boundaries. As women with strong nurturing instincts and communal tendencies, setting appropriate boundaries can be challenging. Yet with enough practice and self-work, it can become a positive habit over time.
You don’t assert yourself
What do you really want? What are your true desires, at work and in life? Do you dare to speak these out loud and assert yourself, or are you used to shrinking and making yourself small not to rock the boat? Not asserting ourselves as working women, is also a subtle way of casting a sabotaging shadow on our careers and lives. To change this, it takes to assess what we really desire first, and work at honoring ourselves by authentically expressing these and striving towards them unapologetically.
You’re too busy
Is your to-do list too long to even begin with? Do you fill up every minute of your time with something to do? Are you questioning how busy you are, and how productive your schedule really is?
If so, chances are, you’re crowding your time with too many activities in a subconscious attempt at not focusing on what truly matters. So many of us, as working women and moms, are incredibly busy. Yet, we find ourselves depleted and unfulfilled, precisely because busyness has become yet another way of sabotaging ourselves.
You don’t communicate your needs
Are you in charge of all the aspects of your household, your work and your relationships? Do you sometimes wonder why others are not helping you? Do you hesitate to ask for help? If so, you may be stopping yourself from communicating your needs in an authentic and effective manner. Repressing your needs is also another self-sabotage mechanism, that drives you to take on too much, grow resentful and miss out on being the person you’re truly meant to be and focusing on what matters most.
You isolate yourself
How much of a supportive network do you have? Do you find yourself alone and isolated as you push others away? Do you decline offers of help or invitations to network or build relationships? If so, you may be sticking yourself in a corner, out of fear of letting others in to help, assist or support you. This may keep you from striving effectively towards your goals, sabotaging your efforts in the process.
You procrastinate
Procrastinate much? If you find yourself putting off tasks until the last minute, delaying important projects, or being easily distracted, you may use procrastination as an unconscious, or conscious excuse not to accomplish your objectives.
You don’t pay it forward
Do you usually empower other women? Or do you fall victim of self-inflicted jealousy wounds when other women around you win? Do you often compete instead of collaborating with other women? These may be signs that you may be hoarding your own resources, and fiercely refusing to share the support, motivation and empowerment you may receive or need. Whatever you don’t give out of, you end up running out of yourself. This is also self-sabotage. So pay it forward…
What signs above are you witnessing in your career and work?
Have you ever put off an important task until the last minute without understanding why you were even procrastinating this much? Have you been struggling with getting much done, especially when working from home? Are you quick to give in to the temptation to be distracted rather than accomplishing a task?
I know, I’ve been, and sometimes still are, there…And so are countless women, who have been proven to be genetically more prone to procrastination, according to this 2014 study. Apparently, the female sex estrogen appears to play a role in the inter-dependency between gender, more specifically the female gender, and procrastination. In addition, working women and moms tend to wear so many hats, both on the office and the home front, that procrastinating may be a result of the resulting stress. This is all the more prevalent as stress has been directly linked to procrastinating habits. An additional study on the relationship between motivation, fear and procrastination among working women found that decreases in motivation, result in increases in working women’s fear of failure and procrastination.
Other reasons explaining procrastination include lack of self-compassion, trouble with negative moods, or avoiding the task at hand, to cite a few. For women, it may also have to do with self-doubt, and the mental pull to under-achieve as a way to be more accepted socially. What procrastination is not necessarily, is a reflection of poor time management,which it tends to usually be blamed for.
I’ve dealt with procrastination long enough to know all about the temporary sense of relief it brings at first, which is quickly replaced by disappointment and anxiety. As a matter of fact, people who tend to delay tasks until the last minute have also been shown to suffer from more acute levels of depression, anxiety and stress, according to this 2016 study. I used to beat myself up for putting off often smaller tasks for later, and then stressing out in the wee hours of the day before a deadline. Yet, what history and research show is that procrastinators are not necessarily lazy people. Actually, some of the greatest of this world, from Jane Austen to one of my favorites, Nancy Pelosi, are self-proclaimed procrastinators, as revealed in the book “The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing” by John Perry.
So now that we know that procrastination can come from so many different sources, and we can relax that it’s not a sign of laziness, what can we do about it, especially as over-burdened, often over-taxed working women?
Work on building your confidence up
Most of the working women I know who are struggling with procrastination also struggle with self-doubt, despite being some of the most competent and extraordinarily gifted women I know. Building your confidence up will help you have the courage to tackle seemingly unattanable or intimidating tasks.
Start with the hard stuff…
When faced with the hard and easy, start with the hard stuff. Getting done with a challenging task at the onset will give you the confidence and stamina to keep plowing through your to-do list.
But begin with the simplest part
Yet even when you begin the hard stuff, pick the easiest part of it. Maybe it’s answering related emails quickly, or formatting a document before digging into the specifics of the assignment. Whatever it is, allow yourself some time to work yourself up to the task.
Get some accountability
Nothing like being accountable to a few trusted individuals…Share your goals with your team, or well-selected friends or colleagues who can hold you accountable and can stay on top of you to meet your deadline or complete planned milestones.
Skip multi-tasking
Multi-tasking is the anti-thesis to productivity, and certainly a pretty potent ally to procrastination. The more you try to handle all at once, the more overwhelmed you may get, and the more you may be tempted to procrastinate.
Let it be imperfect
Perfectionist alert! As a recovering perfectionist, I know all too well about the agony of wanting to get a task completed to perfection. The more you strive towards perfection, the longer you may want to delay submitting or completing it, for fear you may miss something. Let it go, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be done!
Use the power of reward
Last but not least, don’t forget to give yourself something to look forward to as a reward for beating your own procrastination. Whether it’s a special treat, some relaxation time, or just acknowledging that you made it, don’t forget to celebrate!
How do you beat procrastination as a working woman?
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?
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?
