“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?
The Corporate Sis.
