In South Korea, they have a saying that translates to something along the lines of “you have to climb to get to the best things”. The upshot of this is the truth in any success. It is hard work. An overnight success is never an overnight success.
I was sitting in a training session run by a gentleman that some hate and others think is the best things since sliced bread, when he started doing an open coaching session with a woman who volunteered herself up. As she started speaking, I found my-self mentally shouting – STOP!
She started to explain what her problem was that she has attended the training in order to find the solution for. At the beginning I started to feel a little bad for her because it seemed like the person doing the ‘coaching’ was giving her an unnecessary hard time. Then I started to feel uncomfortable, partly because I was beginning to hear my own excuses in what she was saying, and then I finally got to the point where I wanted to shout stop. I also wanted to explain to her that she wasn’t coming up with reasons for why she had a problem, she was being a victim. The hardest part of listening to this, was not because the man in question was being harsh, she had actually given him permission to do so by volunteering herself up after seeing how he worked only minutes before, it was watching her fail to hear the advice that had been given. It then got worse when she was asked what she had done in the three weeks since she had last attended one of these business training weekends, and yet another excuse was offered up.
She had fully embraced victim mode, whether she realized it or not.
It was making me uncomfortable because I realized that regardless of the reasons, I was in the same position at that point in time. I had fallen into the same trap. Me the highly successful career woman, come entrepreneur, author and international speaker, had become a victim.
I was horrified!
The horror was totally at my own behavior not at anyone else.
Victimhood can claim any of us. Let me be clear there are times when we are victims and it may take us time to recover from the event that placed us there but what was happening with me at this point was a choice, not necessarily consciously made, to stay in this role.
What it meant was that I was creating my own glass ceiling of sorts. In this moment it got me thinking, is this something that we all do to ourselves at some stage. The honest answer is yes.
Only the evening before, I had been catching up with a good friend, who was also running her own business. Julie Creffield is an amazing woman. She is also an amazing entrepreneur, blogger, author and single mum to a beautiful and vivacious six-year-old daughter. I admire Julie. I admire her wiliness to get up off the ‘floor’ and just make it happen in order to put a roof over her head and food in her mouth. I admire her vulnerability. I also admire her strong and smart business radar.
I am sitting with her and because we are friends, I have the privilege of being able to talk through some of my current struggles and try to find solutions which will take me forward. It is difficult for me to say this, particularly in print, but my business has recently hit a rough spot. I am embarrassed about it. It is also hard to admit after 15 years of running a business at some level or another because it is almost like I am a fraud. Yet I would be the first to admit, that you should accept your mistakes and failures, analyze them to learn, remember to mourn (only a little to get it out of your system) and move forward.
I hadn’t been taking my own advice.
To make matters worse, whilst I was happy with some of the great advice I got from Julie, I walked away with my brain churning over a comment that she made, that made me angry. Then after I had churned that over for a while, I started making excuses. You don’t need to know what they are, other than to know my excuses were holding me in victimhood.
Poor me, I am a successful, blah, blah, blah and I shouldn’t have to go back to zero.
The reality was that Julie was right. It took watching someone else doing what I had been doing to open my eyes and ears up!
It got me thinking about all the things we do as women that will hold us back in our businesses and careers when we sink into victim mode.
In South Korea, they have a saying that translates to something along the lines of “you have to climb to get to the best things”. The upshot of this is the truth in any success. It is hard work. An overnight success is never an overnight success. It takes hundreds and hundreds of hours of practice to become a successful speaker. May multimillionaire business owners have multiple, major, business failures behind them. This tells us that being uncomfortable on our journey to success, is just a part of the journey.
The real question is:
How do we get out of our own way?
I am going to give you five steps to do this. They may seem simple but at times they will be challenging and at others they will seem almost impossible. The key will be to stick with it and be ready to catch yourself when you sink into victim mode.
In South Korea, they have a saying that translates to something along the lines of “you have to climb to get to the best things”. The upshot of this is the truth in any success. It is hard work. An overnight success is never an overnight success. It takes hundreds and hundreds of hours of practice to become a successful speaker. May multimillionaire business owners have multiple, major, business failures behind them. This tells us that being uncomfortable on our journey to success, is just a part of the journey.
The real question is:
How do we get out of our own way?
I am going to give you five steps to do this. They may seem simple but at times they will be challenging and at others they will seem almost impossible. The key will be to stick with it and be ready to catch yourself when you sink into victim mode.
Step 1: Self Awareness:
In order to even be able to recognize that you are in a particular mode, like victim mode, you need to be ready to recognize it. In order to be able to do that you need to be self-aware. The number of people I have worked with over the years who have been so attached to their excuses that they cannot see them for what they are, are many. Not one of them has been able to move forward until they were aware of this from within themselves, not just agreeing with someone saying it to get them to be quiet.
We have all been guilty of that at some stage.
Part of this self-awareness is knowing what you are like. It is also being willing to own it even if it makes you feel uncomfortable. I am going to go back to my friend, and successful business woman, Julie here.
One of the reasons I admire her so much is that Julie is so open and vulnerable. As the author of the blog, The Fat Girls Guide to Running (http://toofattorun.co.uk/), Julie is not a stranger to creating a bit of controversy or even calling people out for things that they do. What I love about Julie, even more than her highly visible vulnerability, is her ability to own that only she can make it change. She is open about when something saps her energy to the point that she feels she can barely function.
The thing that she does well though, is pick herself up and step out of victim and back into her own power.
This is what she has such a strong following, it is why she is a success and it is why, despite many of the prejudices she has to deal with, at the end of the day, she smashes glass ceilings and just keeps climbing.
This is self-awareness.
Here are a couple of questions to keep in proximity for if you find yourself in a place where you feel like you might be handing over your power to someone else:
When looking at the problem in front of you do you have a solution to focus on or a list of reasons why you have the problem?
If you answer yes to the solution, move forward to the next step. If it is the list of reason get someone else (that you trust) to say them to you, are you now feeling the need to defend them with more reasons? Is it making your feel uncomfortable? If it is yes, you have slipped into victim mode. It is time to look for the first simple step to take in order to walk down the solution pathway back to your own power.
Step 2: Self Control
You know that you have been making excuses or slipped into that dark place. It is time to take control of where this goes from here. This is the point that you need to listen to those inner instincts you have. There will be an idea that your brain just keeps going back to, it may feel uncomfortable, silly or even like you are taking a step back, but something keeps bring you back to it. Listen to this as you are likely to find that it is that first step along your solution path.
As mentioned about my first step was that the discomfort, I heard listening to the women make excuses because it reminded me of myself. I started taking control when I went back to the fact that my brain was turning over and over on the visibility point that Julie had raised with me. My first step was realizing that the reality of my situation was I needed to go back to basics on my business and I just needed to get over the fact that it made me angry and that it seemed unfair. My step back to self-control and having my power back was the realization that I needed to stop directing the anger, which was meant for myself, at others, just because they seemed be getting the success that I used to have.
The big step in regaining my self-control on this occasion was realizing that as long as I kept saying it wasn’t fair, I had more experience, more whatever than so and so, I was handing over my power and was unable to get me and my business back on our feet. The point was I wasn’t those things any more. Yes, they are there and yes, I have the experience from them but now when I start from zero, I have a wisdom, I didn’t have last time, so my path will be quicker. As long as I hang onto my self-control.
I took that anger, what had become my addiction to victimhood, and turned the energy I was using to keep it going into focusing on what it was I needed to do, in small chunks to get back into visibility and success.
The things you need to look at to take back your self-control are:
What are you angry at? Why is this? Is it helping you by focusing on that anger? What would it help you to focus on? What do you need to do to keep your focus on this place?
Step 3: Motivation
What is your motivation for staying on the path you need to in order to gain, or in my case, regain your success? Is your dream a must have? Is it like breathing? You need it in order to survive, or is it something that would just be nice to have?
This may seem like a funny question but stay with me for a moment. In victim mode my dream became something that was so unattainable because (insert seemingly appropriate excuse here). At this stage it was no longer something I wanted so badly as living, it became the thing that was lost to me. The moment I gain focus on it again, it became something that I wanted with every fibre of my being. Once I had that back, I could get clarity around it again.
The first thing I needed in order to have my full motivation in place was an understanding as to why it is that I am pursing this type of business. I could be going out and getting a job, or running a HR Consultancy again, or teaching secondary school children, or any number of things. The motivation comes from understanding why this is important.
My big thing is creating a change in culture around how Mental Health is viewed. It is the big why and what make me unique in this, where I found my motivation. It is also in part where I found my self-awareness and my self-control.
I advocate that having a mental health disorder doesn’t make me less. It doesn’t make me less able; it doesn’t make me unable; it just makes me different. Yet in that moment of clarity I realized that the number one excuse I was reeling out in my victimhood was my mental health condition meant that I couldn’t do it.
What rubbish!
(Just to be clear this is because it wasn’t any different from someone without a mental health condition having a fail point in their business, it had nothing to do with the disorder)
This also became my motivation. You see my motivation to create my dream is that it will be the vehicle that will help me get the message of ‘Different not Less’ out to the world. It IS the reason I breathe.
The question here is what is YOUR reason? What is YOUR motivation?
Step 4: You first
As women we are the worst for doing this one around the wrong way. We are so focused on what we need to do for others, we forget that we can’t do this if we don’t take care of ourselves first.
The key thing you need to remember here is you can’t change the world if you are unable to help yourself first. This means you need to know what your values are and live by them. You need to take the time to ensure that you see to your needs first. If you don’t do this, you will stay in victim mode.
One of the key things I had to review in being back at ‘zero’ was how much time I could give to others. I hold a number of volunteer roles, I always have. It is a core part of my value system. In putting me first, I had to go back to some of these and reduce the amount of time I was spending on them. Some of them I had to step away from all together for a while. It is not just volunteering; it is also the time and energy you give to your family and their problems. Before the mothers out there jump up and down, I am not advocating that you tell your kids you can’t look after them but I am advocating that if you need to talk to a partner, friend, mother, father, or other significant person in your life about the support you might need from them at this time and why, then please do.
My partner and I are trying to start a family, whilst I am in a position of building my business back up from the beginning. We both have mental health conditions that need to be considered. He had support needs as well. By having an open conversation with him about what I need to help me get back on my feet, from him emotionally, and what I can give him in emotional support, was absolutely necessary. Without it so much energy would’ve gone into countless unnecessary conversations.
It was a compromise, but it was also able making sure that I kept my values in check. One of them is my partner is important to me, I have made a lot of life choices that show that, and I needed to honor that by talking to him about not just what I needed from him, but also what I needed to be able to give to him in support to feel like I was honoring me.
You see my other hardship in the failure was that I have never relied on someone else to pay for anything or look after anything since I had my first job at 16. This was a huge step for me. I also needed to be able to honor the love I have for him and the support I know he needs in reaching his goals but needed to shift them slightly, to give a little more energy back to me.
What do you need to look at and honor?
Step 5: Situational Awareness
You need to be aware of needs to change to allow for success. In my case a reset button needed to be hit. I am going back to zero because that is what is needed. This is what the current situation calls for. I need to gain my proof of expertise again for the new market (the UK and US not Australia or the Middle East).
New Start.
Sometimes that situation might just be to shift your path slightly. You need to be able to step out of your own mind and look at the situation analytically and chose the best path forward. You need to be able to accept that it might not be the one you were on.
Another entrepreneur whom I admire greatly has been looking at this recently. She is also a great example of the fact that the shift coming to refocus a goal rather than deal with a failure. Mel Sherwood is a highly successful Pitch and Presentation specialist. Her superpower is that she can pull out just the pitch needed to win that funding for your business. She helps people to say it well as well.
Recently Mel has been looking at what she is getting from her business and decided that a sight can still honor the success of her business but step into a new light where she can get people to see the power of stepping into their own uniqueness. This is not a re-start or a complete change, it is not even something inspired by failure, but rather than by success and a need for something more. This path allows her to still use her superpower but now she focuses it to the essence of what gives an individual that extra something which draws people to them, their business or their product.
Key questions you need to ask yourself here:
What is happening right now that needs to change in order for your goal to stay in focus? What steps do you need to take? Do you need to change something? Do you need to do something different?
At the end of the day, there are many things that might put the figurative glass ceiling in our path but when you really think about it, ultimately the person who keeps it a ceiling rather than turning it into a floor, is you. Not saying it is an easy task, but it is possible.
It’s possible because you and your dream is possible.
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